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Discussion point: is there any good reason why Momentum shouldn’t have a children’s wing?

From the Guardian:

Momentum to start children’s wing to boost ‘involvement in labour movement’

Momentum, the social movement set up to support Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, is launching a children’s wing called Momentum Kids.

Momentum is organising a fringe festival, The World Transformed, alongside next week’s Labour party conference in Liverpool and Momentum Kids will launch with a creche for parents attending the event.

Momentum claims it will then spread nationwide, aiming to provide cooperatively run childcare, including breakfast clubs, for parents who want to get involved in political activity but find it hard to fit around their caring responsibilities.

The new group is also aimed at “increasing children’s involvement in Momentum and the labour movement by promoting political activity that is fun, engaging and child-friendly”.

27 comments to Discussion point: is there any good reason why Momentum shouldn’t have a children’s wing?

  • Lee Moore

    I have to confess that I’ve always thought “Tomorrow belongs to me” is a rather good tune – and the scene is rather a good scene.

  • Gene

    Of course it’s a good idea. How are we to purge the wreckers, revisionists and wrongthinkers if we can’t get their children to turn them in?

  • Sean

    It would be clearer is they called it the “actual children” wing (to differentiate it from the existing “think like children” and “act like children” wings) – no?

  • J.M. Heinrichs

    Will these children’s wings, like buffalo wings, include extra-spicy and honey-garlic flavours?

    Cheers

  • CaptDMO

    The US has something similar, child day care, and “unionized labor” instruction.
    We call it FREE Public School, that manages to consume MOST
    of town taxes. Previously optional private/congragation funded Kindergarten (4-5yo)is increasingly mandatory.
    College students have “safe spaces” for “students” that just can’t seem to get by. Metropolitan public school “teachers” have rubber rooms. “Administration and compliance” union members seem to have….immunity.
    Children can learn ALL about their sexuality/bathroom/parental “abuse” options in public (K-6)School in the US.

  • john malpas

    The instant I saw the video clip I thought ‘Hitler Youth’ . Blond , bland etc you know.

  • Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker!) Gray

    Wouldn’t this be discriminatory? Can’t you get a judge to force them to take in baronets and baronettes?

  • Phil B

    Why not? The Nazi party had the Hitler Youth, Italy had the League of Young fascists and the various communist parties had variations of the Young Communists league.

    All totalitarian parties recognised that the teachings of the Jesuits* – “Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man”, was the key to reshaping society.

    *(Though this has been variously ascribed to Aristotle, St Francis Xavier and others , usually to the Jesuit Baltasar Gracian – a Spanish Jesuit scholar 1601 to 1658).

  • Of course, speaking as a libertarian, I have absolutely no objections. Believing as I do in freedom of association and the right of families to educate their children as they see fit.

  • GC

    Keep children out of 1) Sex 2) Politics. For the same reasons.

  • Natalie Solent (Essex)

    Wh00ps,

    Not that I didn’t think there might be a few jokes about the Young Pioneers and Teddy being denounced as a Blairite (I liked the suggestion on Redit that the new group be called “Child Labour”), but that was the point I intended to make.

  • Natalie Solent (Essex)

    GC,

    I don’t see that the reasons – presumably related to informed consent – are at all similar in the two cases. All parents and all schools attempt to transmit some sort of ethical code (politics being part of this) to the children in their care. To fail to do so would be abusive, if it were even possible in any environment other than such extreme neglect that the child scarcely was spoken to at all. I do not say all the ethical codes are equal. I do say the Momentum people have every right to send their kids to socialist Summer School, just as religious people have every right to send their kids to Sunday School, and just as any sort of people have every right, moral and legal, to tell their children what to believe. Just not to force them, and not to cut them off from knowledge that there is a world where others believe differently.

  • Andrew Duffin

    “All totalitarian parties recognised that the teachings of the Jesuits* – “Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man”, was the key to reshaping society.”

    It’s interesting to note that these words, almost exactly, were recently used by the Supreme Court (of the United Kingdom) no less, in their judgment overthrowing – or at least, severely circumscribing – the SNP’s “personal commissars for all” plan.

    One rarely sees such blunt language from such an august source.

  • “Do unto others…” is the golden rule. Will the Momentum parents/guardians permit others of differing views the same freedom (permit in theory now, permit in practice if they ever get power)? If not, will the media allow it to be known? (Corbyn is not so popular with the media so they might?)

  • Mr Ecks

    With all the “Every man is a paedo” horseshit beloved of the scum of the left (esp the femmi-scum) there must be some way to get this wannabe Kommosol caper stopped in its tracks as “child abuse”.

    After all if the other type of socialist –the corporate socialist as portrayed in Cabaret– tried to start–or re-start– their own Jurgend crew that would certainly be stopped somehow.

    I see no reason why the Marxian scum of ZaNu should not have the same obstacles placed in its path.

  • Watchman

    I don’t see a problem with Momentum having a children’s wing.

    I do see a problem with members of Momentum having children – surely that’s child cruelty?

  • The Jannie

    A children’s branch of the “Labour” movement? Worked well in Norway . . .

  • Stonyground

    Around 150 years ago, some of the most effective anti religious campaigners were victims of religious brainwashing. Charles Bradlaugh was destined to become a clergyman of some kind but he asked too many awkward questions. He went on to be Britain’s first openly atheist MP. I suspect that lefty brainwashing will produce thousands of ineffectual lefties and two or three really effective rebels.

  • Mr Ecks

    Stonyground–maybe.

    But cultural Marxism has already done huge harm to the world by media control and Uni-based propaganda and scum recruitment.

    We can’t ignore any new mind control schemes the vermin of the left dream up.

  • Rich Rostrom

    ISTM that the answer to “Is there any good reason why Momentum shouldn’t [fill in the blank]?” is always “yes”. Unless the fill-in is “disband”.

  • Julie near Chicago

    Perry,

    I thought that was the best (most artistic, evocative, effective) scene in the movie. Just excellent! Still gives me chills, as it should, and the boy is so beautiful (no I am not “Strange” 😉 )

    .

    John Malpas, to me anything but bland! I witnessed fervidity, in a snake shuffling off its human skin to become its true self: A monster.

  • Julie near Chicago

    Natalie, September 20, 2016 at 8:53 am:

    As you wrote it, I agree completely — well said indeed.

    .

    Of course, there are problems with this. For instance, is putting your kiddies into, or allowing them to join, Hitler Youth or the local version of Komsomol a breach of the guardian’s duty? (Either as abuse or as neglect?) Yet if it is, then:

    Since most of what you do with intent involves “freedom of expression,” such as sending your kid to Sunday School, or to a secular private (American) private school, is similarly freedom of expression thwarted if a guardian is forbade from doing such?

    First Amendment: We hardly knew ye.

    When we moved to letting “freedom of speech” cover “freedom of expression” generally — which I personally think it should, we also opened a large can of those creepy-crawlies known as “worms.” We could try to fix this by an Amendment specifying is meant in the First Amendment as it presently reads — though like the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, there is difficulty in specifying the protected content of various expressions. Sometime SCOTUS gets this almost right: Not be specifying what is allowed, but rather whether Government is in not empowered to interfere with.

  • Patrick Crozier

    Is this any different from Sunday school?

  • Natalie Solent (Essex)

    Patrick Crozier,

    No. I have read accounts from the 1930s into the 70s of communist Sunday Schools. I think the journalist David Aaronovitch went to one. His parents were very left wing.

  • Paul Marks

    Every movement, religious or secular, that wants a future pays close attention to the young.

    That includes evil movements (such as “Momentum”), but good movements also.