‘I’ve noticed that many people brought into activity in recent years have a dislike of the far left. They believe it to be authoritarian organisations, governed by self perpetuating cliques — who lead them to piggyback on many campaigns. Maybe these activists wish to dissociate themselves from it, up to and including hostile exchanges at demos.’
Sorry, BB, you’ve got that precisely backwards. It is the Far Left groups who, over the past few years, have initiated, sustained, financed and built the campaigns against austerity in this state. Aside from noble efforts like the Ballyhea protests, the campaigns against the household tax, property taxes and water taxes which were started by existing Left groups in long standing non-affiliated Left groups and individuals. It is the headbangers who have piggybacked on that effort, not the other way around, as you are suggesting.
Your last paragraph is almost touchingly naive. These groups with their extreme hostility towards the Left are not going to be bound by stewarding arrangements or anything that resembles a structure. Any organisational method that sees existing Left groups playing a role will be automatically deprecated by these groups. They can’t be worked with. Full stop. The question is how the Left sidelines them and works around them. That will be difficult.