The Left on the web

To appreciate leftist cyber-discourse fully, you need to look away from mainstream sources. The Respect Unity Coalition has an unusually (for the left) well-designed web layout at www.respectcoalition.org. There’s a wide range of resources to be downloaded, from leaflets in different languages, to audio footage.

Respect has been a success as a forum for different socialist visions, as much as it has developed a political voice of its own. One affiliated site well worth checking out is the Socialist Unity Network, which is full of topical reporting; more originally, it operates an inclusive policy to prospective contributors - so get writing.

Any brief guide to the web activities of the left has to include the Socialist Alliance - an indispensable resource for keeping up-to-speed on campaigns, and for opening up the complex umbrella that is red-green politics.

Many of the established organs of the left simply set up a website to mirror their existing activities. But the web is more effective when linked to grass-roots action. Take a look, therefore, at some of the sites related to your locality. The SWP is a perfect case in point: in contrast to the central site (www.swp.org.uk: a clunky, unwieldy interface), a number of local branches provide excellent web-based information, from York, to Cambridge, to London. These sites get you involved, as well as informed.

There’s a whole range of local issues conducted through the web: Oxford-based Left Laundry offers a suitably erudite capitalist critique. Brighton’s Cowley Club offer a well-designed site, in addition to a café/ bookclub at the hub of the local socialist scene.

Any guide to the cyber-left is necessarily flawed, however: the best advice with the web is simply to surf, and get sucked under the tide. Check out the blogspots blossoming everywhere, which offer distinct and challenging views a mile away from the mainstream media. Good start-off points include The Yorkshire Ranter and Alister Black.

Finally, if you want a laugh, or something to measure true free speech against, take a look at New Labour’s laughably uncritical Big Conversation website. Just don’t say we didn’t warn you...