Thread for anyone to explain why Labour would do better under Owen Smith's leadership.

[Denzil_DC]

32. Being so ridiculously selective in your outrage

will only persuade those who don't bother to read beyond the headlines and your spin. From the article you link:

But the word “nonviolent” was dropped from the code after several members argued that Momentum members should have the right to defend themselves if attacked by police or fascists.

...

Mountford, who has since been kicked out of the Labour party for being associated with the AWL but remains on Momentum’s steering committee, said she and other members objected to the use of the word “nonviolent”.

“I raised a point that if we stuck with the suggested wording, and our members were arrested for defending themselves on a protest, then we would have to consider expelling them from Momentum,” she said.

“As people who are organising and protesting, we have to have a right to defend ourselves. I cited the fight against fascists in Cable Street, the right of self-defence during the miners’ strike, the suffragettes. Those struggles showed us that while the right might accuse the left of violence, we should defend the right to defend ourselves.”

So no, it doesn't indicate that Ken's claim is untrue. Take a look at the images of any number of pro-Corbyn gatherings - the vast, vast majority of those attending look like - and are - "mainstream people," like your friends and neighbours, no matter how much you try to strap ridiculous horns onto them because of political differences of opinion.

Now, I'm in favour of non-violent resistance by whatever imaginative means people can come up with.

For instance, I wish the miners had taken some leaves out of CND's book during the Miners' Strike, and sat/lain down rather than jostling physically with the police on pickets as was the traditional way, not least because it would have presented very different pictures in the media.

But then Orgreave showed that even people desperately running away from conflict having offered no conceivable threat of violence at all could be run down and have their heads stoved in by the police, so that's a rather privileged outlook that's not necessarily in step with a large swathe of the population who do believe in self-defence by whatever means the moment demands. As for fascists, the Scottish Yes movement had famous run-ins with drunken sectarian EDF/SDF Unionist thugs in George Square, Glasgow on the day after the indyref1 result. As it happened, there was no proven violence, even in self-defence or retaliation, from those on the Yes side, but if one or more of them had felt it necessary to intervene to protect themselves or others from these thugs if the police hadn't been so on the ball, I'd have a serious problem condemning them out of hand.

So I don't agree with this change of stance by Momentum, but it's a hell of a stretch to claim that this indicates that Momentum is not "peaceful."