Standing in Elections for Compass Management Committee



I am standing in elections for the Management Committee of Compass, the broad Left pressure group which used to be attached to the Labour Party but more recently opened itself up to sympathisers from all political parties and none.



This is the statement I have submitted to support my nomination:

"I write a blog called A Free Left Blog, which I set up out of concern about forms of ‘group think’ on the Left which demand obedience and discourage open-mindedness.  I believe the Left should be generous and welcoming, open and tolerant, and also ethical in the way it behaves. I am against ideologies like neoliberalism and ‘vulgar’ Marxism, and forms that have emerged around the politics of identity, including strictly deterministic versions of feminism. These offer simplistic, all-encompassing explanations about our world while setting different groups in society against each other.

I see better ways to be found in a culture of democracy, a deeper version of equality than the version that is dominant; a respect for land and the natural world with which we are so connected; economics as a means not an end; and freedom, as something rooted in a shared good life."


http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.co.uk/
   
@bencobley

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