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Anti-Semitism, Democracy and the Labour Party

Anti-Zionism and self-censorship

The witch-hunt against Jeremy Corbyn and the left is still in full swing – and spreading across society, reports Carla Roberts 

Who would have thought we would ever be relieved to read an attack on Jeremy Corbyn? We are talking about the recent uproar over his “scruffy” attire on Remembrance Sunday – where he, would you believe it, wore a jacket with a hood! This kind of low-level bad publicity looks as quaint as the “donkey jacket” that then Labour leader Michael Foot was wearing in 1981 (and which turned out to be a £250 coat from Harrods). There are even rumours that Corbyn wore it on purpose – perhaps to get some kind of short reprieve from the far more serious, political campaign against him and the Labour left.

Alas, it did not last long. Just in the last couple of weeks, the witch-hunt against Corbyn and the left has been ratcheted up:

* Scotland Yard launched a well-publicised investigation against some members of the Labour Party for alleged anti-Semitic comments.

* Chris Williamson MP was de-invited by Sheffield Labour Students after complaints by the Jewish Student Society that he was “encouraging a culture of anti-Semitism”.

* Most bourgeois newspapers breathlessly reported that a Labour Party branch in Stockton-on-Tees “voted down a motion on the Pittsburgh synagogue attack”, because “there was too much focus on ‘anti-Semitism this, anti-Semitism that’”.  Far from being voted down by the left (which all the articles imply), this was actually opposed by the ‘moderates’ – perhaps because they resented the idea in the same motion that there was a need for ‘anti-Semitism training’, which the mover had previously suggested should be delivered by the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement. Incredibly, the proposer of the motion thought it was a good idea to publicise his branch’s non-adoption far and wide. Of course, the right jumped on it and predictably used it to batter Corbyn some more. The technical term here is ‘useful idiot’.

* The Labour Party’s national constitutional committee has just expelled Mike Sivier (see below) – apparently explaining that their lack of evidence against him were “technicalities” and that “it’s about the impact in the public domain” and “about perception … It’s about how this is perceived by the Jewish community.”

* Scottish Labour Party member Peter Gregson is under investigation for producing a petition that states: “Israel is a racist endeavour.”

* A council worker in Dudley was suspended from work for publishing the same phrase online, while advertising a lobby of Dudley Labour MP Ian Austin’s surgery.

Of course, these are just the cases, allegations and ‘scandals’ that make it into the public. We know of plenty more cases of Labour members currently being investigated on the most absurd allegations (and not just to do with anti-Semitism).

Clearly, the witch-hunt against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour left shows no sign of slowing down – in fact, it is spreading into all areas of society and, perhaps most worryingly, the workplace. Labour Party Marxists secretary Stan Keable remains sacked, having been secretly filmed by a journalist at the ‘Enough is enough’ demonstration in March 2018, when he stated that the Zionist movement had collaborated with the Nazi regime – a historically inconvenient truth.  We know of at least one other similar case. There will be more, but – not surprisingly – not everybody accused of such ‘crimes’ will want their name dragged through the mud in public and many choose to keep quiet.

This is perhaps the most worrying aspect of the witch-hunt: the silencing of debate on the left and the self-censorship.

Sheffield

Take the events in Sheffield: Chris Williamson MP had been invited by Sheffield Labour Students (SLS) to speak on ‘Why we need an anti-war government’. But they got cold feet when the local Jewish Society (JSoc) complained publicly that he should be banned from campus, because he “repeatedly defended, and shared platforms with, anti-Semites expelled from the Labour Party” (they mention Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker and Ken Livingstone – the latter two have of course not been expelled from the party). Apparently, according to JSoc, comrade Williamson is “encouraging a culture of anti-Semitism” and his invitation was “a betrayal of Jewish students in Sheffield”. 

At first, the SLS committee – which has a clear pro-Corbyn majority – confirmed that the meeting would go ahead, though its affirmation that Williamson “has never been and is not accused of anti-Semitism through disciplinary procedures within the Labour Party” probably sounded sheepish enough to further encourage the right.

And, yes, all hell broke loose: JSoc secretary Gabe Milne publicly resigned from the Labour Party, stating that this was the “final straw”.  Needless to say, he has never been a fan of Jeremy Corbyn, to put it mildly. He seems to be a member of the Jewish Labour Movement and has re-tweeted its demand that Chris Williamson should have the Labour whip withdrawn. 

Labour Students BAME (run by the right) quickly jumped on the bandwagon, stating how “disappointed” they were over the planned event, “which can only further damage Labour’s relationship with British Jews”. Other rightwingers piled in … and then Labour Students committee saw its first resignation: Caelan Reid – who is, incredibly, also a member of the Momentum Sheffield leadership – stated that he had argued the committee should have followed JSoc’s “quite reasonably request” and that he “had hoped that the committee would listen to and accommodate the requests of a minority group”.

When Labour Students committee met again on November 2, they had been spooked enough to overturn their previous decision. In a jaw-dropping statement, they first wrote that the event was to be “indefinitely postponed” and then clarified that they will revisit the decision after “the current Scotland Yard police investigations into allegations of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party has been resolved”. They continue:

Although Chris Williamson MP is not personally implicated by these allegations, Sheffield Labour Students believes that due to the nature of the investigation calling into question the efficiency of the disciplinary procedures within the party, and the current climate within the wider movement, we do not feel that the event should take place at this moment in time. Another vote will be held after the conclusion of the investigation to determine if the event should take place.

Needless to say, Scotland Yard is unlikely to ever “resolve” this investigation. For a start, no fewer than 45 different allegations were passed to the police. After “assessing” the charges for over two months, Metropolitan police commissioner Cressida Dick announced on November 2 that “some” of the material is now being investigated, “because it appears there may have been a crime committed”.  Even the widely quoted former Met officer, Mak Chishty, managed to identify only four cases of the 45 that could be described as “potential race hate crimes” (my emphasis).

Of course, this highly political police investigation was always a cop-out, conveniently used by the remaining members of the SLS committee – as they quite rightly state, it has nothing to do with either Chris Williamson or holding a meeting on ‘Why we need an anti-war government’.

During this debacle, a total of seven members of the SLS committee resigned their position (most of them more ‘moderate’ than left, as it turns out). Credit must go to Sheffield Labour Left, which quickly took over the hosting of the event and organised a petition against the decision, which has been signed by almost 90 Sheffield Labour Party members. After Jeremy Corbyn himself, comrade Williamson must by now surely be most vilified politician in Britain – and not because he “encourages a culture of anti-Semitism”. He is in fact pretty much the only MP who has taken a principled stand on the ongoing witch-hunt that seeks to label opposition to Zionism “anti-Semitic”. A sad state of affairs indeed.

Mike Sivier

The case against Mike Sivier is intriguing, because he seems absolutely right when he claims that there is precious little evidence that supports his expulsion from the party.  Even those claiming that Sivier is clearly anti-Semitic and have written long articles about his case cannot actually produce any real proof. In a piece entitled The ballad of Mike Sivier,  the hostile author, Marlon Solomon, draws a long list of examples of Sivier’s ‘crimes’ – which basically amount to the fact that he was defending various people falsely accused of anti-Semitism.

We read, for example, that he supported Ken Livingstone’s reference to the 1933 Ha’avara agreement between the Nazi regime and the Zionist Federation of Germany (which paved the way for the migration of around 60,000 German Jews to Palestine), sided with Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein and recommended that people should watch Al Jazeera’s excellent programme The lobby, which exposes how the pro-Israel lobby has helped to manufacture the anti-Semitism ‘scandal’ in the Labour Party. And that is it.

Solomon laments that (at the time of writing in January 2018) “none of the above is now considered sufficient to expel someone from the Labour Party”. Quite right – it should not be. In August, Sivier won a complaint taken to the Independent Press Standards Organisation against the Jewish Chronicle, which had falsely claimed he was a “holocaust denier”. Interestingly, back in February 2018, Labour’s national executive committee discussed Sivier’s case and voted 12-10 to lift his suspension dating back to May 2017 – under the condition that he attend so-called “anti-Semitism training”, conducted by the pro-Zionist Jewish Labour Movement. To his credit, he refused, insisting on his innocence. The NEC, clearly at a loss, thought it best to refer this case to the national constitutional committee.

He had no chance in front of this committee, which is still dominated by the right and will continue to be so, even after its expansion from 11 to 25 members, agreed at Labour Party conference this year. While the six candidates backed by Momentum and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy will probably win, they will still be in a minority – and it remains to be seen how ‘leftwing’ these six really are, in any case: Sadly, Stephen Marks of Jewish Voice for Labour is the only one who has come out against the witch-hunt. In any case, the NCC, still chaired by rightwing witch-hunter general Maggie Cousins, decided on November 13 to expel Mike Sivier – but only for 18 months. And without providing any proof of Sivier’s alleged anti-Semitism. As he writes on his blog, his requests to produce actual evidence were rebutted with “No comment”; “We’ve not provided evidence – it’s about the impact in the public domain”; and “This is about perception … It’s about how this is perceived by the Jewish community.”

In other words, he has been expelled because his refusal to receive pro-Zionist training by the JLM makes the Labour Party look bad! This expulsion is clearly a travesty and should immediately be overturned by the NEC.

Similarly ridiculous is the case of Edinburgh Labour Party member Peter Gregson, who is currently “under investigation”. We will not be surprised if Gregson is also either told to undergo the JLM’s pro-Zionism training and/or referred to the NCC. The NEC’s dispute panel, meeting on November 20, will decide his fate (and that of a large number of other cases, presumably including the absurd allegation against Lee Rock, who stands accused of having argued “in favour of masturbation at the workplace” (!) in a Facebook discussion with radical feminists in 2015, over 15 months before he joined the Labour Party.  We could make some guesses as to the kind of ‘training’ he might be offered, but maybe not).

Firstly, we should say it is to be welcomed that there have been some positive changes to the disciplinary process introduced by the new general secretary, Jennie Formby. The automatic suspensions doled out so liberally under her predecessor, Iain McNicol, seem to have stopped altogether. That is hugely important, because it allows an accused member – in theory – to retain their full membership rights. As it turns out, this is not always the case and we hear of examples where members who are merely “under investigation” have been blocked from standing for various positions, because the mere fact of the investigation against them could bring “the party into disrepute”. Full circular logic there.

Right answer

Judging by the examples of recent investigations we have seen, the accused usually receives a number of leading questions they have to answer to each piece of ‘evidence’ (usually a Facebook post or Tweet), along the lines of: “Do you accept that some people might find this offensive?” The right answer is almost always ‘yes’, naturally. And the questions are formulated in such a way as to coax the accused to apologise and, crucially, to promise never to do it again. In many such cases, the investigations then end in a rather patronising “official warning”, which will be “kept on file”.

Clearly, this method encapsulates the opposite of the culture of open debate and exchange of ideas that Marxists strive for. It is designed to shut people up. This is not just undemocratic: it is also dangerous. Rather than politically challenging wrong ideas and prejudice and thereby changing somebody’s viewpoint, this method encourages people to bottle ideas up and let them fester.

Still, it is good that at least formally the disciplinary process now seems to acknowledge the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’. However, the actual reasons why investigations are launched against somebody have been expanded massively. This is particularly true since the NEC’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance ‘working definition’ of anti-Semitism, together with all 11 examples. Only the most naive or wilfully ignorant could really have believed that the IHRA document would bring the ongoing witch-hunt against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour left to an end. Quite the opposite: it has been used by the right to increase and widen the attacks.

Peter Gregson is a perfect case in point. Just after the NEC’s collapse over the IHRA document, he produced a petition that boldly states: “the existence of Israel is a racist endeavour”.  This refers to the most disputed of the 11 examples – and the one that Jeremy Corbyn tried to ‘neutralise’ with his unsuccessful amendment to the NEC. The petition has been signed by more than 700 people who claim to be “Labour Party members”. So far, only Gregson seems to have been charged over it. He has also been suspended by his union, the GMB – a move that he claims was orchestrated by outgoing NEC member Rhea Wolfson, a member of the JLM. We would not be surprised if that was the case.

Of particular interest is the reaction of Momentum owner and Labour NEC member Jon Lansman, who lost his rag when Gregson emailed him for the umpteenth time. He admitted that “declaring Israel to be a racist endeavour and challenging the NEC to expel him alongside others who signed a petition he launched may not be anti-Semitic …” But he continued: “… it is a deliberately provocative act, which is most certainly prejudicial to the interests of the party and I therefore urge the general secretary to take the appropriate action against you.”

Labour Against the Witchhunt quite rightly condemns Lansman’s intervention: “‘Provocative’ acts are the stuff of political debate. Lansman is effectively calling for the silencing of support for the Palestinian struggle against Zionism and Israel’s apartheid.” LAW, while defending Gregson against any disciplinary action, does not support the petition because it is, in parts, rather clumsily (and unfortunately) formulated.

Clearly, the NEC must halt the investigation into Peter Gregson immediately. It is exactly such unnecessary and politically charged disciplinary cases that bring the party into disrepute.

 

Anti-Semitism, Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

NCC ‘left’ slate farce ends in another Jon Lansman surrender

The manoeuvres over joint candidates for Labour’s disciplinary committee exposes the political vacuity of the existing left groupings, says Carla Roberts.

If any more proof was needed that the organised Labour left is in deep trouble, the last week has surely provided it.

Since its foundation in 1995, the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance has operated as an underground club, to which only a few lucky reps of approved groups are invited. This thoroughly undemocratic and unaccountable lash-up has always taken it upon itself to ‘recommend’ various candidates for Labour Party internal elections – consistently guided by its original assumption of the necessity of reaching out to ‘honest’ moderates.

For many years, the CLGA stuck to its mantra that the only way to defeat the Blairite right was through an alliance with centrist candidates, and rejected any moves to present an openly leftwing platform. This hopeless perspective explains how Ann Black could remain on the CLGA ticket for so long, despite being very much on the centre-right of the party.

Despite its name, the CLGA’s two main current constituent parts – Momentum and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) – are, of course, both on the left of the party. But they have now fallen out quite spectacularly over which six candidates to support for the newly-expanded national constitutional committee (NCC). This is a crucial body in the Labour Party. It deals with all disciplinary matters that the national executive committee feels it cannot resolve and – given that it is dominated by the right – the referral of a left-winger to the NCC usually results in expulsion from the party. Incredibly, even after its expansion from 11 to 25, only a minority are to be chosen by rank and file Labour members. The rest are appointed by affiliates, which explains why in the last few crucial years, the NCC could be so (badly) chaired by Maggie Cousins, a delegate from the rightwing GMB union.

After three meetings, the CLGA talks deadlocked on October 10, apparently because Momentum (aka Jon Lansman) refused to support Stephen Marks, a member of Jewish Voice for Labour, which has been included in the CLGA negotiations for the first time. Lansman tried to veto Marks, allegedly arguing that “‘the Jewish community’ will not tolerate a JVL representative”.

So, on the morning of October 11, the CLPD simply put out its own slate of candidates, which included Stephen Marks. The slate was also supported by JVL and the “Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament”. (The whole CLGA project has the definite whiff of ‘Potemkin Village’ about it. Jon Lansman, for example, is representing two organisations – Momentum and his own blog, Left Futures, which is so crucial to the labour movement that its latest entry is dated February 5). After a lengthy discussion, the Labour Representation Committee also decided to support the slate, despite the fact that the only candidate they put forward, LRC treasurer Alison McCarty, was rejected by both the CLPD and Momentum.

Momentum published its slate later the same day. And indeed, it did not feature Marks (though there were three candidates who were also on the CLPD/JVL slate: Khalid Moyer, Cecile Wright and Annabelle Harley). Now Lansman let it be known that Momentum “had been prepared to back Stephen Marks”, but did not include him because of ”concerns about the geographical balance of the CLPD slate”. Or, in Lansman’s own unconvincing words: “Half of CLPD’s slate live in London or the south-east. So do three out of four of the existing CLP reps”, he tweeted . This transparent obfuscation over “concerns with the geographical balance” reminds us of his crass attempt to bullshit his way out of his ill-judged attempt to become Labour’s next general secretary. Remember, he claimed then that his only motivation in standing was to increase the gender balance – oddly enough, by standing against a woman, Jennie Formby!

What do they stand for?

Lansman opposes Marks for political reasons, of course – not geographical ones. Stephen Marks has written about how the problem of anti-Semitism in the party has been “exaggerated and weaponised by JC’s enemies”. Clearly that makes him, in Lansman’s view, the ‘wrong kind of Jew’. Which also reveals as utter bullshit Lansman’s claim that Marks could not represent “the Jewish community” (our emphasis). There is no uniform, politically homogeneous Jewish community – the simple fact of the existence of Jewish Voice for Labour proves that. There are pro-Zionist Jews and there are anti-Zionist Jews – and that is just for starters. Politically, in today’s toxic climate, you cannot get two more implacably opposed viewpoints in the party. We know which of the two viewpoints Lansman supports.

He has been on the wrong side of the Labour witch-hunt from the start: a soft Zionist who has argued for the party to adopt the full ‘working definition on anti-Semitism’ put out by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance – including the full list of highly disputed “examples” that effectively bans criticism of the state of Israel. ’Zio’, the diminutive form of ‘Zionist’, should be banned as ‘insulting’, according to him. And don’t forget, Lansman – alongside Margaret Hodge (that charmer who branded Jeremy Corbyn a “fucking racist and anti-Semite”) – recently attended a conference organised by the Jewish Labour Movement. Readers will not need reminding that this outfit supports and aligns itself with the Israeli Labor Party: that is, the foul organisation that orchestrated the nakba (the forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians in 1948) and which presided over the colonialist conquest of the Golan Heights and the West Bank in 1967. Momentum’s constitution – enforced by Lansman after his coup – bans from Momentum membership anybody expelled from the Labour Party. It internalises the witch-hunt, in other words.

The farce continued when a candidate on the CLPD slate withdrew: “We understand that Kaneez Akhtar has been put under pressure to withdraw,” the CLPD’s statement read. “We are seeking further info and if true will ask another BAME woman candidate to put her name forward.”

Put under pressure by whom, exactly? We are not told. But apparently, it had something to do with the fact that Jabram Hussain, a candidate on the Momentum slate, is the brother of Bradford East Labour MP Imran Hussain and that Kaneez Akhtar is a Labour councillor for Bradford City. We can only guess at the power games being played out here. She was replaced by Sonia Klein, who, like Annabelle Harle, is a member of Welsh Grassroots Alliance (we can only guess how Jon Lansman must have suffered under this geographical and gender imbalance).

Of course, the whole Labour left went berserk over there being two rival leftwing slates. But, after a week, ‘harmony’ was again restored on the morning of October 17. Momentum released a press statement: “Following our call to reopen negotiations, we’re happy to announce a joint list of candidates backed by Momentum and CLPD.” Clearly, they did not even bother inviting any of the other organisations who are officially part of the CLGA. The agreed candidates are Cecile Wright, Khaled Moyeed, Annabelle Harle, Susan Press, Gary Heather – and, wait for it, Stephen Marks.

So, the new “negotiations” basically led to Momentum collapsing and accepting Stephen Marks after all. In turn, the CLPD now supports Susan Press (a councillor and Lansman loyalist, who had been put forward by Momentum for all sorts of other positions in the past). Sonia Klein and Michael Menear, another loyal Lansman supporter and member of Momentum’s national coordinating group (NCG), have been dumped. Not that they matter, to be quite frank. The real disagreement was always over Stephen Marks.

Apart from Marks, who has written on the question, we have to guess what these candidates think about the witch-hunt in the party, the necessary reforms of Labour’s disciplinary process or the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. The CLPD and Momentum give us some short information about the colour of their skin and where they live – but no politics at all.

It does not bode well that both Momentum and the CLPD have been very quiet on the witch-hunt against Corbyn and his supporters. When Willsman was accused of anti-Semitism (see below), he incredibly chose to publish an apology and referred himself for equalities training … when clearly the witch-hunters deserved a two-fingered reply. Both Willsman and Lansman support Cecile Wright for the NCC – it was she who smoothly and swiftly replaced Jackie Walker as Momentum’s vice-chair when she was first suspended from the Labour Party on false charges of anti-Semitism. Can we really rely on her to speak up for other members who are similarly falsely accused?

Kaneez Akhtar, the CLPD candidate from Bradford who eventually withdrew, said in an interview: “I fully support the IHRA definition on anti-Semitism and was indeed proud that Bradford council adopted this definition.” The acceptance of the IHRA by the NEC has already led to an increase in suspensions and investigations, as it dramatically widens the definition of what constitutes anti-Semitism (calling Israel a “racist endeavour”, for example). How on earth did she end up on a ‘left’ slate?

Labour Against the Witchhunt seems to be the only organisation that has asked the candidates some pertinent political questions. That is a much better approach, in our view. But, for the time being, we have to guess about the politics of the other candidates. We fear that – apart from Stephen Marks – no other candidate can be relied upon to challenge the false narrative that the Labour Party is awash with anti-Semites. That is a truly worrying state of affairs.

Lansman humiliated

The joint CLPD/Momentum slate represents without a doubt a new political humiliation for Jon Lansman. Pretty much all leftwing organisations had backed the CLPD slate, while Lansman’s was supported by Momentum – and nobody else. Funnily enough, even Lansman’s former NEC ally, Christine Shawcroft, came out for the CLPD: “The only result of supporting the Momentum ‘slate’ for the NCC will be getting rightwingers onto the NCC,” she wrote on Facebook. Did we mention she is a director of Momentum Campaign (Services) Ltd?

Most local Momentum groups who said anything on the matter also fell in behind the CLPD slate. We hear of a number of frustrated Momentum members setting up ‘secret’ WhatsApp and Facebook groups to start organising around Momentum nationally. An online petition of “active members of Momentum” who are “increasingly concerned about the lack of democracy in Momentum” is spreading like wildfire.

No doubt, Momentum is in deep trouble. Yes, Lansman still owns the data of tens of thousands of Corbyn supporters. But politically, he has managed to make one huge mistake after another, shedding support and members in the process. It all started with his coup of January 10 2017, when he simply abolished all democratic structures in Momentum, imposing his own constitution on the organisation.

But dumping Pete Willsman from the slate for the NEC elections earlier this year was the real turning point for many. Willsman, long-term secretary of the CLPD, was a victim of the witch-hunt directed against Corbyn and his supporters. His comments, recorded at a closed NEC meeting and leaked to the press (by whom, we wonder?), forcefully called into question the ‘anti-Semitism problem’ in the party. While someMomentum members followed Lansman’s toxic advice not to vote for Willsman, he was nevertheless re-elected to the NEC (albeit with a smaller share of the vote than the rest of the CLGA slate).

This was followed by Lansman’s collapse over the question of mandatory reselection at this year’s Labour conference. Despite the fact that over 90% of delegates wanted to discuss the issue (and presumably vote in favour of it), Lansman urged Momentum supporters to vote against. Few people followed his advice and, in the next vote, 75% of delegates continued to support open selection.

Clearly, Momentum enjoys less and less political authority amongst the Labour left. Some people seem to think that it can be reformed: the petition quoted above, for example, demands that “minutes from all past meetings” are published, “calls on the NCG to oppose individual opinions that are not in line with Momentum members” and “calls on the NCG to be accountable and contactable, and carry out a review of the structure and democracy of Momentum with widespread input from members”.

Obviously, none of these rather naive demands would change how Momentum is run. There are probably some more radical ideas being discussed right now. But this monstrosity of an organisation cannot be reformed. The constitution imposed by Lansman makes sure of that. Both organisationally and politically, it is deeply flawed. Yes, it has played a relatively useful role in getting Corbyn re-elected and has organised some useful training for local party members. But it plays no real role in educating, politicising or even just organising its 30,000 or so members. They are treated as mere voting fodder.

Flawed method

Lansman and Willsman are old comrades – and it shows. They are both presiding in pretty unaccountable fashion over their respective organisations. In March this year, they first came to blows over which candidates to support in the elections to the NEC. Lansman refused to continue backing Ann Black. Quite right, in our view – and long overdue. But Pete Willsman insisted on giving her support – he had worked well together with her on the NEC, despite some political differences. He even, undemocratically, overruled his own executive committee’s decision to drop her from the CLGA slate. So Lansman simply leaked his nine candidates to the press – minus Ann Black, of course (at this point the list still included Pete Willsman).

For decades, Willsman and Lansman worked together in the CLPD: both feature in a very entertaining BBC drama, which shows how the CLPD successfully fought for mandatory reselection in the Labour Party back in 1980. Funnily enough, as soon as Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, both gave up the fight for this important leftwing principle: CLPD dropped it; Momentum never adopted it. In this, they were following Corbyn’s lead. Unfortunately, he still attempts to appease the right, in the vain hope that this will keep the centre on board and thus eventually neutralise the right.

This is tactically inept, of course. The majority of Labour MPs have been plotting against Corbyn from day one, if not before. Should he become prime minister – which is far from certain, even if Labour wins the next general election – he would be held hostage by the Parliamentary Labour Party. In all likelihood the right would try one manoeuvre after another to get rid of him. By refusing to back mandatory reselection (aka open selection) at conference, which would have allowed the membership to rid the PLP of the anti-Corbyn right, Momentum and the CLPD (as well as Corbyn himself) seriously undermined the leader’s position.

This is very much in line with the old political method of the Labour left: getting the Labour Party into 10 Downing Street trumps everything. Open criticism of the party’s flawed programme or the Labour leader are taboo, as they could harm electoral prospects. Political differences are treated as a huge problem, to be kept under wraps. Socialist politics are hidden, because they could be perceived as unpopular.

This latest farce ought to spell the end of the CLGA. Its politics and methods belong to the scrapheap of history. We fear, though, that even if it was killed off, it would probably be replicated under another name – reborn as an organisation with the same flawed political method. After all, programmaticallythere is very little that distinguishes Momentum and those Labour left organisations that supported the CLPD slate. Neither organisation involved in these abortive subterranean negotiations have seen the need for transparency on any of the political differences involved, let alone the views of the candidates they support.

Clearly, there is a huge space for a principled organisation of the Labour left that criticallysupports Jeremy Corbyn, fights against the witch-hunt and campaigns openly for socialism and the thorough democratisation of the party and the left itself. Reporting openly and honestly about what is going on must be an integral part of the culture of such a new organisation.

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

Two alternative left slates for NCC elections

The Centre-left Grassroots Alliance (CLGA) seems to have finally imploded over which candidates to select for the newly expanded National Constitutional Committee. The winking out of existence of this shady organisation is long overdue. 

[this article has been updated on the evening of October 11]

Since its foundation in 1995, the CLGA has operated as an underground club, to which only a few lucky reps of carefully screened groups are invited. This thoroughly undemocratic and unaccountable lash-up takes it upon itself to ‘recommend’ various candidates for Labour Party internal elections – consistently guided by its assumption of the unelectability of the party’s left. (An especially perverse template to work to in the aftermath of Corbyn’s victory and the membership surges he inspired.)

For many years, the CLGA stuck to its mantra of giving support to centrist candidates and rejected any moves to either present a leftwing platform or support openly left individual candidates. It is this hopeless perspective that explains how Ann Black could remain on a ‘left ticket’ for so long, despite clearly being very much in the centre/right of the party. (More background here).

The two main current constituent parts of the CLGA – Momentum and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) – have now fallen out quite spectacularly over which six candidates to support for the NCC. This is a crucial body in the Labour Party. It deals with all disciplinary matters that the National Executive Committee (NEC) feels it cannot resolve and – given that it is dominated by the right – a referral to the NCC usually results in an expulsion from the party.

The talks “deadlocked” on Wednesday October 10, apparently because Momentum (aka, Jon Lansman) refused to support Stephen Marks, a member of Jewish Voice for Labour (which has been newly included in the CLGA negotiations). Lansman argued that “‘the Jewish community’ will not tolerate a JVL representative”, as the Skwakbox reports.

So, on the morning of Thursday October 11, the CLPD put out its own slate of candidates, which includes Cecile Wright, who is also championed by Momentum. And, of course, Stephen Marks. The slate is also supported by JVL and the “Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament”. Who? Have readers seen much evidence of the work on the LCND beavering away in the ranks? No, us neither.  The whole CLGA project has the definite whiff of ‘Potemkin Village’ about it (Jon Lansman for example is representing two organisations, Momentum and his own blog, Left Futures, which is so crucial to the labour movement that its latest entry is dated from February 5.) After a lengthy discussion, the Labour Representation Committee also decided to support the slate, despite the fact that the only candidate they put forward, LRC treasurer Alison McGarry, was rejected by both the CLPD and Momentum.

Momentum published its slate later on the same day. And indeed, it does not feature Marks [tough there are three candidates who also feature on the CLPD/JVL slate: Khaled Moyeed, Cecile Wright and Annabelle Harle]. Lansman let it be known that the organisation “had been prepared to back Stephen Marks”, but did not include him because of “concerns about the geographical balance of the CLPD slate“: “Half of CLPD’s slate live in London or the South East. So do 3 out of 4 of the existing CLP reps. I regret that CLPD launched their campaign today without agreement. Momentum will launch its more representative slate later today whilst continuing to seek to negotiate with CLPD”, Lansman tweeted during the day.

Utter bollocks, of course. He opposes Marks for political reasons – not geographical ones. Lansman has been on the wrong side of the Labour witchhunt from the start. He is a soft Zionist who has argued for the Labour Party to adopt the full ‘working definition on anti-Semitism’ put out by the Holocaust Remembrance Alliance – including the full list of highly disputed “examples” that effectively bans whole swathes of criticism of the state of Israel.  The diminutive “Zio” should be banned as ‘insulting’, according to him. And don’t forget, Lansman – alongside Margaret Hodge (that charmer who branded Jeremy Corbyn a “fucking racist and anti-Semite”) attended a conference organised by the Jewish Labour Movement. Readers will not need reminding that this outfit supports and aligns itself with the Israeli Labor Party: that is, the foul organisation that orchestrated the nakba (the forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians in 1948) and which presided over the colonialist conquest of the Golan Heights and the West Bank in 1967.

The simple fact of the existence of Jewish Voice for Labour proves that Lansman is wrong to claim that there is a uniform “Jewish community”. There are pro-Zionist Jews and there are anti-Zionist Jews, for a start. Politically, in today’s toxic climate, you can’t get two more implacably diverse viewpoints. We know which of the two viewpoints Lansman supports. His transparent obfuscation over “concerns with the geographical balance” reminds us of his crass attempts to bullshit his way out of his ill-judged attempt to become Labour’s next general secretary. Remember that he claimed then that his only motivation in standing was to increase the gender balance – oddly enough, by standing against a woman, Jennie Formby!

Chequered history

In truth, we are surprised that Momentum and CLPD still attempted to be in the same room together. After all, they also came to blows over which candidates to support in the elections to the National Executive Committee (NEC) in March this year.

Lansman, owner of the Momentum database, refused to continue backing Ann Black. Quite right, in our view – and long overdue. She supported the move to stop tens of thousands of pro-Corbyn members from voting in the second leadership election and, as chair of the NEC disciplinary panel, gave her backing to much of the witchhunt against the left – for instance, by voting for the suspension of Brighton and Hove CLP. Many have questioned, quite rightly, why the CLGA continued to back her.

But CLPD’s secretary, Pete Willsman, insisted giving her support – he had worked well together with her on the NEC, despite some political differences. He even overruled his own executive committee’s decision to drop her from the CLGA slate.

So Lansman simply leaked his nine candidates to the press (sans Ann Black, of course). Deal done. At this point, of course, the list still included Pete Willsman, who Lansman later dropped after ‘somebody’ had recorded the comrade at an NEC meeting and leaked the audio to the press. He was charged with ‘anti-Semitism’– for questioning the severity of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party! ‘Bizarre’ does not quite do it justice.

Lansman and Willsman are old comrades, of course – they worked for decades together in the CLPD: both feature in this very entertaining BBC drama, which shows how the CLPD successfully fought for mandatory reselection in the Labour Party back in 1980. Funnily enough, as soon as Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party, both gave up the fight for this important leftwing principle. In this, they were following Corbyn’s lead, unfortunately, who still attempts to appease the right, in the vain hope that this will keep the centre on board and thus neutralise the right.

This is tactically inept. The majority of Labour MPs have been plotting against Corbyn from day one, if not before. Should he become prime minister – which is far from certain, even if Labour wins the next general election – he would be held hostage by the Parliamentary Labour Party. In all likelihood the right would try one manoeuvre after another to get rid of him. By refusing to back mandatory reselection (aka open selection) at conference, which would have allowed the membership to rid the PLP of the anti-Corbyn right, Corbyn has seriously undermined his own position.

What now?

This latest episode must serve as serious wake-up call for the whole Labour left. As this year’s conference showed very vividly – especially the debacle over open selection – there is now a massive democratic deficit on the Labour left. A huge gap exists between the aspirations and the hopes of many members about what the Labour Party is and what it could achieve – and the attempts by the Labour leadership to steer the organisation into another direction altogether.

There is a huge space for a principled, leftwing organisation of the Labour left that critically supports Jeremy Corbyn, fights openly against the witchhunt and campaigns for the thorough democratisation of the party and the left itself. Reporting openly and honestly about what is going on must an integral part of the culture of such a new organisation and that is why we say that the politics and the methods of the CLGA belong on the scrap heap of history. Neither organisation involved in these aborted subterranean negotiations have seen the need for transparency on any of the political differences involved, let alone to criticise the methods employed. In emails to their members both JVL and CLPD do not even mention the fact that there has been a disagreement with Lansman.

This, comrades, is just not good enough.

Anti-Semitism, Democracy and the Labour Party

AWL: Despicable participants in an ongoing witch-hunt

In their latest attack on Jackie Walker, Chris Williamson MP and LPM, the social-imperialists of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty have shown once again that they constituted themselves as allies of the Labour right, the mainstream media and the Israeli political establishment, writes Carla Roberts

The latest issue of Solidarity features an unpleasant, unsigned ‘Diary of a delegate’, who only seems to have managed to attend one session at Labour Party conference: namely the afternoon of Tuesday September 25, which saw the debate around the motions on Brexit and Palestine. The unnamed author writes:

Emily Thornberry’s speech was rambling, but she said; “There are sickening individuals on the fringes of our movement, who use our legitimate support for Palestine as a cloak and a cover for their despicable hatred of Jewish people, and their desire to see Israel destroyed. These people stand for everything that we have always stood against and they must be kicked out of our party.”

These people are not just on the fringes of our movement. I sat just behind the honourable member for Derby North – a man who is happy to peddle the idea that the whole anti-Semitism issue is really a matter of it being “weaponised” by the right to harm Jeremy Corbyn. Extreme holocaust denial may be on the fringes, but anti-Semitism in the form of wanting to see Israel destroyed, as shown by the chanting at Labour conference, is not.

In a disgusting attack, ‘Labour Party Marxists’ in their Red Pages bulletin took exception with Rhea Wolfson being allowed to chair the session on Palestine! She has pro-Palestinian views? Ah, she is a member of the Jewish Labour Movement and a Zionist! They raised no objections to anyone else chairing sessions.

That sort of dog-whistle anti- Semitism from LPM, coupled with the glowing reception two members of Neturei Karta got when leafleting, shows that some Labour members have a long way to go on managing to make solidarity with Palestinians without falling into the trap of anti-Semitic actions and views. 

This is pretty low even by the standards of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. Of course, everybody knows that it has a thing about ‘anti-Semitism’. Their leaders and writers see it everywhere – and have been doing so long before it became quite so fashionable with the Daily Mail and the right wing in the Parliamentary Labour Party. It is, after all, the AWL’s ‘unique selling point’, with which it tries to distinguish its otherwise pretty unexceptional Trotskyist economism from that of the rest of the left. Or “fake left”, as AWL guru Sean Matgamna insists on calling all other leftwing organisations in its irregularly published Solidarity.

Back in 2003 Matgamna declared that, forthwith, AWL members shall proudly call themselves “Zionists”. And, boy, have they made their master proud. In 2016, the AWL’s representatives on the then steering committee of Momentum voted enthusiastically with Jon Lansman to kick Jackie Walker off the organisation’s leading body when she was first falsely accused of anti- Semitism – perhaps giving the owner of the organisation’s database the last bit of courage he needed before he went on to abolish all democratic structures in Momentum in his coup of January 10 2017.

This episode could stand symbolically for the AWL’s whole misguided approach to the witch-hunt. Some people just cannot see the wood for the trees (or maybe they just ignore it). Even when AWL member Pete Radcliffe was expelled from the Labour Party two days after a hilariously misinformed Owen Smith (remember him?) accused the AWL on Question time of “flooding the Labour Party” and “bringing anti-Semitic views”, the penny did not seem to drop.

While there are a few isolated cases of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party (just as there must be, statistically speaking, of Islamophobia, homophobia, paedophilia and even bestiality), the witch-hunt has clearly had nothing to do with opposing anti- Semitism. The aim of the charade is to get rid of a certain Jeremy Corbyn.

By accepting the false narrative that Labour is awash with anti-Semitism, the AWL has provided leftwing cover for the witch-hunt – even while its own members became collateral damage. You could not make it up.

Zionist chair

According to Sean Matgamna, a Zionist nowadays is anyone who believes “in the right of Israel to exist and defends its existence”.

Of course, historically, Zionism was a “definitely reactionary ideology“ (Lenin), according to which Jews and gentiles could never live together peacefully and Jews therefore needed a separate Jewish state. The creation of Israel and subsequent expansion has been characterised by horrendous crimes against the indigenous Arab population, including, crucially, the nakba – the forced expulsion of around 800,000 Palestinians. What began as a colonial ideology of the oppressed has metamorphosed into a full-blown ideology of colonial oppression. Modern-day Zionism, as the state ideology of Israel, not only retrospectively justifies the foundation of Israel, but seeks to perpetuate and extend the privileged position of Jews in that state. Witness the recent passing of the Nation-State of the Jewish People’ law, which constitutionally enshrines the long-established discrimination against Israel’s non- Jewish citizens.

So, yes, we should oppose in the strongest terms the fact that Rhea Wolfson, who proudly self-defines as a Zionist, chaired a session debating the oppression of Palestinians! Wolfson – until recently an editor of the AWL’s magazine The Clarion – is a member of the pro-Zionist Jewish Labour Movement, which supports and aligns itself with the Israeli Labor Party: the same party that orchestrated the nakba and presided over the conquest of the Golan Heights and the West Bank in 1967.

Hilary WiseIt is no surprise then that Wolfson chaired the session in a highly biased way. For example, she rudely interrupted Hilary Wise from Ealing and Acton Central CLP (pictured), who spoke passionately about the anti-Semitism smear campaign: “I never seen anything like the current campaign of slurs and accusations made against Jeremy Corbyn and the left in the party. I am afraid it is an orchestrated campaign and if you want to know how it works I urge you to watch ‘The lobby’ on Al Jazeera.”

At that point Wolfson warned her: “I would ask you to be very careful. You are straying into territory here.” What “territory” exactly? Telling the truth about the smear campaign?

Comrade Wise went on to warn quite rightly that “this campaign will only get worse and the list of people being denounced as anti-Semitic will get longer, often simply for being proponents of Palestinian rights”. Here, Wolfson interrupted her again: “I urge you to be careful” – and then went straight on to tell her abruptly: “Take your seat – your time is up now.”

After two minutes and 45 seconds, that is. All other delegates got a minimum of three minutes, with Wolfson gently requesting that they finish when their time was up. The video of comrade Wise’s speech and Wolfson’s interruptions is available online.

palestine flagsFlags everywhere: conference was in full solidarity with the Palestinian cause. The Labour membership clearly rejects the ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ slurs and lies

 

 

 

Choosing a Zionist to chair this most controversial session of the whole conference (which also included the debate on Brexit) was, of course, a highly political move by the party leadership, intended to show that it ‘takes anti-Semitism seriously’. A bit like if Barbara Castle had been asked to chair a session on the impact of Ted Heath’s anti-trade union laws. Or Jack Straw on the Iraq war.

It was another sign, if one was needed, that Corbyn is still not prepared to take on the right, but continues to try and appease members of the PLP, etc, in the vain hope of keeping them quiet. Fat chance. Wolfson was not a neutral chair – and was not supposed to be one. The AWL might pretend not to understand that, but it was pretty obvious to the rest of us.

But then, the AWL is more than friendly with the JLM – in 2016 it even organised a joint meeting with this Zionist outfit – along with, wait for it, the pro-Blairite Progress group. After all, on the question of Israel-Palestine, there is nothing that indicates that the AWL might stem from a socialist tradition. Mike Cushman brilliantly describes this bizarre meeting as a “love-in” over a “common object of affection”: Israel. He writes:

But not the Israel we see every day abusing Palestinians and harassing dissident anti-Zionists. It was an Israel of their imagination, moving gracefully to a two-state solution, abandoning settlements and occupation on the way.

What he says is well worth a read if you want a taste of the AWL’s ahistorical and emotional attitude to the question.

Qualitative difference?

It is difficult to talk of ‘quality’ in this context, but the latest rant in Solidarity represents, perhaps, a qualitative difference. AWLers used to be rather careful, for example, not to label Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker as full- blown anti-Semites and desisted from calling for their expulsions from the Labour Party. When Matgamna fumed that Livingstone is a “functioning anti-Semite”, who “should be expelled from the Labour Party”, the Solidarity editorial committee quickly pointed out that “our editorial position is that we do not call for Livingstone to be expelled. We want to limit, not expand, the powers the current party regime has to ‘ban’ political views.” All clear then?

Now Labour Party Marxists is accused by the AWL not just of “dog- whistle anti-Semitism”, but also of “anti-Semitic actions and views”. We did not see Matgamna at conference, so we presume this is not one of his ‘special’ articles that have to be taken with a handful of salt, but the “editorial position”.

The article does not specify if the AWL thinks LPM members should be expelled from the Labour Party. But clearly this is the logic of what it is doing by naming and ‘shaming’ people in the middle of this vile witch-hunt directed against Corbyn and those who defend him from the right.

We have been assured that the AWL does not actively report people to the Labour Party’s compliance unit – but it might just as well. Its poisonous campaign has certainly helped to create and maintain today’s toxic and fearful atmosphere in the party and will no doubt have encouraged others to report cases of alleged anti-Semitism to the thought police. This has nothing to do with helping to ‘cleanse’ the workers’ movement, as some turncoats on the left seem to think.

Labour Against the Witchhunt was spot on to launch its open letter, ‘No, Jennie, we will not be informers’, in response to requests by general secretary Jennie Formby that members should report cases of alleged anti-Semitism to the Labour Party’s ‘complaints department’ (aka compliance unit).

As LAW writes elsewhere, “We have seen people being suspended for using the word ‘Zio’ or for expressing their outrage of the horrendous crimes committed by the state of Israel in a confused manner. The vast majority of these people are clearly not anti-Semitic. And yet, they have been publicly labelled as such” by the mainstream press and the right inside and outside the party, “often causing great distress to the member” in question.

We agree with LAW that “open and democratic debate, without fear of being reported, is the best way to educate people and fight prejudice and racism”. Reporting people to the thought police in the party, however, will only strengthen the hand of the witch-hunters and the right wing.

Neturei KartaMembers of Neturei Karta, an anti-Zionist, ultra-orthodox Jewish sect, handed out a good leaflet, ‘Jews in support of Jeremy’, at Liverpool conference. They condemn the foundation of a secular state of Israel as religiously blasphemous. The so-called Alliance for Workers’ Liberty prefers Zionist advocates of colonisation and ethnic cleansing

 

In its article, the AWL does not just attack us, but also the two members of Neturei Karta, anti-Zionist ultra- orthodox Jews who were calmly giving out their rather good leaflet, ‘Jews in support of Jeremy’, at the Labour conference; not to mention Chris Williamson MP, whom the AWL labels a “sickening individual” with a “despicable hatred of Jews”. Now, I am not an expert on legal questions, but that is not just pretty stupid and clearly untrue, but also sounds pretty libellous to me. Talking of which, it seems the AWL has now also taken to calling Jackie Walker an “anti-Semite”. Or, more precisely, to shout about it.

According to a statement posted on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/jacqueline.walker.3990, October 5 2018), AWL members told students at a fresher’s fair that they are “fighting anti-Semitism in the Labour Party” and that “we’ve got known anti-Semites living in this area. Jackie Walker, for example”. Jackie Walker has sought a retraction from the AWL and has emailed it twice, but has so far not even received an explanation. She says she is now considering reporting it to the police as a “hate crime”. [Update from Jackie Walker, October 12: “The AWL finally finished their investigation and got back to me …. and guess what, none of their activists owned up as having named me as an antisemite in their local recruitment drive. Everything however about this incident is now on file. I know the time it happened so identifying the person involved from the description would not be problematic.”]

We do not advocate bringing the state into disputes inside the workers’ movement and we would urge comrade Walker not to get the police involved. Having said that, it is, however, questionable whether the AWL should still be considered a part of the left.

We should also consider the actual, real-life implications of the AWL’s comments and articles. Being expelled from the Labour Party is one thing. But comrade Walker has become something of a pin-up for the witch-hunters; her face is plastered all over the hate-filled outputs of GnasherJew, Guido Fawkes and other such unpleasant mediums. The bomb threat made during the screening of the documentary, ‘The political lynching of Jackie Walker’, at the Labour conference was ‘only’ a hoax, but one can imagine the possibility of some deranged person being tempted to ‘do a Jo Cox’.

By supporting and perpetuating the witch-hunt against comrade Walker, Chris Williamson MP and Labour Party Marxists, the AWL has managed to stoop to a new low, even by its standards.

The left, Trade unions

Socialist Party wants to affiliate to Labour

SPEW has written to the Labour Party asking to affiliate. Peter Manson looks at the background (reproduced from the Weekly Worker)

Those who do not read The Socialist may not be aware that the Socialist Party in England and Wales has applied to affiliate to Labour – a couple of weeks ago the SPEW weekly published correspondence on the matter between Labour’s general secretary, Jennie Formby, and its own leader, Peter Taaffe (September 19).

This is of particular interest, since for more than two decades SPEW insisted that Labour was now just another capitalist party – like the Tories or Liberal Democrats. But in its April 6 letter to Jennie Formby, in which SPEW expressed a wish “to meet with you to discuss the possibility of our becoming an affiliate of the Labour Party”, comrade Taaffe describes the election of Jeremy Corbyn as “the first step to potentially transforming Labour into a mass workers’ party”, standing on an “anti-austerity programme”. So now “all genuinely anti-austerity forces should be encouraged to affiliate”.

While we should, of course, welcome SPEW’s application for affiliation, it is surely pertinent to ask why SPEW stresses the need for an “anti-austerity programme” above all else. It does this even though it correctly states in the same edition of The Socialist: “When the Labour Party was founded, it was a federation of different trade union and socialist organisations, coming together to fight for working class political representation”: ie, nothing so limited as merely opposing spending cuts. I will explore this in greater detail below.

Eventually, on July 27 – ie, almost four months after receiving comrade Taaffe’s original letter – Jennie Formby replied, beginning her letter, “Dear Mr Taaffe”. She pointed out that Labour rules prevent the affiliation of political organisations with “their own programme, principles and policies” – unless they have a “national agreement with the party”. Also groups which stand candidates against Labour are automatically barred: “As the Socialist Party is part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, who stood candidates against the Labour Party in the May 2018 elections, it is ineligible for affiliation.”

In his next letter (August 23) Peter Taaffe answered the first point by saying that SPEW wanted a meeting precisely to discuss the possibility of such a “national agreement”. And, in response to the second point, he said SPEW would much prefer to be part of an anti-austerity Labour Party “rather than having to standagainst pro-austerity Labour candidates” (my emphasis). After all, while Tusc had not contested the 2017 general election, in this year’s local elections in England it stood no fewer than 111 candidates against Labour.

Following this, Jennie Formby replied rather more quickly. On August 29 – this time starting her letter “Dear Peter” – she ruled out any meeting: “Whilst the Socialist Party continues to stand candidates against the Labour Party … it will not be possible to enter into any agreement.” Therefore “there can be no discussions”.

As I have stated, it is good news that on the face of it SPEW has at last started to take Labour seriously. But obviously it needs to stop standing against Labour candidates, including those who it says are “implementing savage cuts”. As the Labour general secretary points out, while SPEW says it wants to affiliate in order to support Jeremy Corbyn and help defeat the right, “The leader of a political party is judged by their electoral success. Standing candidates against the Labour Party is damaging not only to local Labour Parties, but also to Jeremy.”

Nevertheless, Jennie Formby’s second letter appears to leave the door open to affiliation by left groups. Such a change would be highly significant, possibly marking a return to the basis upon which Labour was founded in 1900.

Anti-austerity

Let us now examine why SPEW states that what is needed is not a party of all working class formations, including both trade unions and leftwing groups, but one of all “anti-austerity forces”. This can be traced back to the changing face of Tusc itself.

Founded in 2010, Tusc was the successor to the short-lived Campaign for a New Workers’ Party, and both organisations were open in their aim – made explicit in the CNWP’s name – of establishing a new mass party to replace Labour. However, according to the ‘updated’ statement of aims on its website, Tusc was set up “with the primary goal of enabling trade unionists, community campaigners and socialists to stand candidates against pro-austerity establishment politicians” (October 2016).

But that is being economical with the truth. SPEW was, of course, the prime mover within both the CNWP and Tusc and, in the words of central committee member Clive Heemskerk, writing in The Socialist on February 3 2010:

The Socialist Partybelieves that the Labour Party has now been totally transformed into New Labour, which bases itself completely on the brutallogic of capitalism. Previously, as a ‘capitalist workers’ party’ (aparty with pro-capitalist leaders, but with democratic structures thatallowed the working class to fight for its interests), the Labour Party always had the potential to act at leastas a check on the capitalists. The consequences of radicalising the Labour Party’s working class base was always afactor the ruling class had to take into account. Now the situation is completely different. Without the re-establishment of at least the basis of independent working class political representation, the capitalists will feel less constrained in imposing their austerity policies.

While SPEW was clear that this could not come about immediately, the ultimate aim was stated by comrade Heemskerk to be: “A new mass political vehicle for workers, a new workers’ party”. He explained:

For the Socialist Party the importance of Tusc lies above all in itspotential as a catalyst in the trade unions, both in the structures and below, for the idea of working class political representation. It can also play a role in drawing together anti-cuts campaigns, environmental campaigners, anti-racist groups, etc (my emphasis).

So campaigning against cuts, etc was most definitely seen as secondary. First and foremost was the need to lay the basis for a new workers’ party – the nature of which was made clear in the above quote: “working class political representation” primarily for the unions – in other words, a ‘Labour Party mark two’, as we in the CPGB have always called it.

How things have changed since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader. In her article, posted on the SPEW website following the May local elections, deputy general secretary Hannah Sell writes:

… the support for Corbyn has created the potential for a mass democratic party of the working class, which is desperately needed. If it is not to be squandered, it is vital that there are no more retreats, but instead the start of a determined campaign to transform Labour into a party capable of opposing austerity with socialist policies, in deeds as well as words.

Since SPEW now apparently agrees that the Labour Party itself ought to be transformed, it is unsurprising that it has dropped the call for “a new workers’ party” to replace it – Tusc was supposed to provide the basis for that, remember (always wishful thinking, of course).

So now we find that the purpose of Tusc is suddenly “to stand candidates against pro-austerity establishment politicians” – as if the original aim of “a new workers’ party” had never existed. And, I suppose, that is why comrade Taaffe feels obliged to emphasise the need for all Labour candidates to stand on an “anti-austerity programme” and for the party to welcome “all genuinely anti-austerity forces”. Only if that happened could Tusc shut up shop!

In its statement following the May 2018 election results, Tusc claimed:

This was the most selective local election stand that Tusc has taken in its eight-year history, following the general recalibration of its electoral policy after Jeremy Corbyn’s welcome victory as Labour leader in September 2015.

There was not a single Tusc candidate on May 3 standing in a direct head-to-head contest with a Labour candidate who had been a consistent public supporter of Jeremy Corbyn and his anti-austerity policies. Tusc only stood against rightwing, Blairite Labour councillors and candidates. The Labour candidates in the seats contested by Tusc included 32 councillors who had publicly backed the leadership coup attempt against Jeremy Corbyn in summer 2016, signing a national open letter of support for the rightwing challenger, Owen Smith.

However,

In a situation where Labour is still so clearly two-parties-in-one … – with many local ‘Labour’ candidates standing more ferociously against Jeremy Corbyn than they do the Tories – the task is still there to make sure that politicians of any party label who support capitalism and its inevitable austerity agenda are not left unchallenged.

So that was the position in relation to the (‘pro-austerity’) Labour right – expose them by standing against them. But what did Tusc (and SPEW itself) recommend in wards where there were pro-Corbyn candidates? The truth is, there was no call for a Labour vote anywhere – how was that supposed to aid the Corbyn wing?

What about the unions?

So has SPEW really changed its approach to Labour? For example, why do its comrades in unions like the PCS and RMT still oppose their affiliation to the party? SPEW has argued that, until the Labour right is defeated, it is just a ‘waste of money’ for the unions to spend thousands on affiliation fees. Yet, in its August 23 letter to Jennie Formby, comrade Taaffe wrote:

We see a very urgent need to organise and mobilise all those who support Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity policies into a mass campaign to democratise the Labour Party, allowing the hundreds of thousands who have been inspired by Jeremy’s leadership to hold to account, and to deselect, the Blairite saboteurs.

Surely, if that is the aim, the affiliation of left-led unions like the PCS and RMT could only but help the process.

Perhaps I am being cynical, but the possibility does suggest itself that the principal purpose of Tusc was always something other than its stated aims (either original or amended). Maybe SPEW wanted to work within a broader formation primarily in order to win recruits for itself? It is almost as though SPEW would actually prefer a right-led Labour Party.

However, irrespective of what SPEW is really up to, at least we should be grateful that the affiliation of left groups has been broached once more; and that the Labour general secretary – no doubt after consultation with the leadership team around Corbyn – has left the door open to that possibility.

The Labour Party rules must be changed, so that all the current bans and proscriptions are scrapped. The aim must be to transform Labour into a united front for the entire working class.

Democracy and the Labour Party

Labour Party conference 2018: Aspirations frustrated

Emily Thornberry posing left to justify the witch-hunt against Corbyn supporters was one of the many lowlights for Carla Roberts, who gives her impression of conference. 

It was a very successful conference – from the leadership’s point of view. It managed to put a lid on the huge disagreements over Brexit. The defeat of open selection has assured rightwingers that Jeremy Corbyn is not out to get them. And John McDonnell’s proposals for limited nationalisations and handing some workers some shares has persuaded even commentators in the mainstream press that Labour might be ‘onto something’. The Independent gushed that there

was something different about the Labour Party conference this year – something not seen perhaps for two decades… the party and its leader seemed to be, if not reconciled, at least prepared to unite in the common purpose of winning an election.

Is Labour under Corbyn finally safe for capitalism? Corbyn and his allies are certainly trying their hardest to give that impression. In that sense, conference has certainly shown very vividly the huge gap that exists now between the aspirations and the hopes of many members about what the Labour Party is and what it could achieve – and the attempts by the Labour leadership to steer the organisation into another direction altogether.

Take John McDonnell’s key speech, in which he outlined his plans for “true industrial democracy”. Companies employing more than 250 staff would have to pay 1% of their assets, or up to 10% of their shares, into an ‘inclusive ownership fund’. Although they would not be compelled to pay out dividends, McDonnell reckons that most companies would do so, which would mean up to £500 a year for perhaps 11 million workers.

Anything above £500 would be paid into a fund to help finance public services. McDonnell believes that would provide an extra £2 billion a year for the NHS, etc. Although he was trying to sell all this as being very radical, he was careful to emphasise that it was actually in the interests of capital too. You see, “employee ownership” is likely to increase “a company’s productivity” and encourage “long-term thinking”.

No wonder many bourgeois commentators seemed sympathetic to the idea. Because in reality there is nothing radical about such sub-John-Lewis-type schemes. They are designed to paper over the cracks of capitalism in decline. Far from empowering our class, the intention is to emphasise a ‘common interest’ with the capitalists – if we cooperate, both sides will benefit, right? That is why similar programmes have been introduced in several countries – often by rightwing parties. Surely if we have a share in the ownership of the company employing us, that will make us more likely to work alongside the bosses to help increase profits, won’t it? And it would not be a good idea to go on strike.

This scheme would be unlikely to make workers better off. It is obvious that funds diverted to shares for employees would have to be taken from somewhere – companies would argue that this additional cost would reduce their ability to increase wages.

McDonnell, of course, knows that workers and capitalists have no common interest and that, far from promoting a more cooperative form of capitalism, we need to establish our own system, based on production for need, not for profit. But now, instead of targeting the system of capital itself, he restricts his criticism to the “financial elite”.

When it came to the proposed public ownership of industries like water, energy, Royal Mail and the railways, McDonnell reiterated that this would not represent a “return to the past”. This time the nationalised sector would be “run democratically” – with workers’ representatives sitting alongside state appointees.

Despite this vision of a more ‘ethical’, participatory form of capitalism, McDonnell ended his speech by describing it as “socialism” – before shouting “Solidarity!” to the largely approving delegates.

While he might have won over most delegates and somecommentators in the political mainstream, the problem he and Corbyn have is that, no matter how much they go out of their way to reassure the establishment, the latter just does not buy it. It knows that, with their past record of siding with the workers, neither can be trusted to run the system.

Brexit

The apparent ‘unity’ that was achieved over Brexit is also rather fragile. The key paragraph of the composited ‘super motion’ adopted at conference reads:

Should parliament vote down a Tory Brexit deal or the talks end in no deal, conference believes this would constitute a loss of confidence in the government. In these circumstances, the best outcome for the country is an immediate general election that can sweep the Tories from power. If we cannot get a general election Labour must support all options remainingon the table, including campaigning for a public vote.

In other words, a continuation of the ‘studied ambiguity’ that has characterised the leadership’s position in the last two years. Not a bad tactic – from Corbyn’s point of view: let the Tories mess it up and then we’ll come to the ‘rescue’ (anything will look better than their shambles). Let’s not rule anything out, but let’s be as vague as we can in our proposals.

There is only slightly more emphasis in the motion on demanding a snap general election. The idea is obviously that Labour would win it. And then? Would a Labour government see through Brexit – or call a people’s vote? In fact, the motion clarifies nothing at all. There are clearly ongoing huge disagreements between those who insist on going ahead with Brexit and those who want a second referendum (in order to overturn the first one, of course).

Yet, if we read between the lines, there must have been some promises made to the proponents of the People’s Vote – otherwise, why would they support a motion that actually took out their key demand? They could have insisted on pushing an alternative motion on this key issue.

It seems that the proponents of a People’s Vote are actually rather aware of the fact that saying so – openly, now – would cost the party a huge number of votes (especially when there might be a snap election very soon). Poll after poll indicates that another referendum would lead to almost exactly the same 50-50 split in the population – and many ‘remainers’ would probably vote for the Liberal Democrats instead – at least they have been consistent in their message. So the plan seems to be to resuscitate this issue only when Labour is in office – trick people into voting Labour, in other words.

Of course, the main problem here is that Labour, as a party wedded to the British constitution, is incapable of breaking free from this false choice of ‘Brexit’ or ‘remain’. This also finds reflection in most of the Labour left, which feels it has to opt for one side or the other. However, few take it as far as the campaign, Another Europe is Possible, led by Luke Cooper (ex-Workers Power) and Michael Chessum (a supporter of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty). AWL members were busy at conference handing out hundreds of free T-shirts, canvas bags and campaign packs with the logo, ‘Hate Brexit, love Corbyn’. All financed by George Soros’s £70,000 donation to AEIP, we presume.

In his post-conference piece in The Guardian, Chessum says: “Corbyn must lead the ‘remain’ campaign with a vow to go into Europe and fight the elite.” Hmm, like George Soros, for example? Most capitalists want to remain in the European Union, of course, because it often makes it easier for them to make a buck. The left should stay well clear of such forces.

Unite and open selection

Unite leader Len McCluskey has taken much of the flak for the fact that the very popular demand for open selection – whereby current MPs are no longer automatically reselected – was defeated at conference and now cannot be discussed again until 2021, thanks to Labour’s undemocratic three-year rule.

To a degree, McCluskey deserves the stick he got, of course. At conference, he told anybody who would listen that he would instruct his delegates to vote in favour of mandatory reselection of parliamentary candidates – but only if that rule change reached conference floor. In the meantime though, he did everything to avoid exactly that.

Over 90% of CLP delegates wanted to hear (and presumably vote in favour of) the rule change moved by International Labour – but they were defeated by the almost solid union bloc vote. Clearly, some reform is needed here. The fight to democratise the Labour Party cannot be separated from the fight to democratise the trade unions. Trade union votes at conference should be cast not by general secretaries, but proportionately, according to the political balance in each delegation.

But, of course, as McCluskey explained, the union tops (apart from Matt Wrack of the Fire Brigades Union) were only following the wishes of one Jeremy Corbyn:

These plans were presented with the full backingof Jeremy Corbyn at the NEC as a sensible and democratic way forward. I only regret that the leadership did not make that clearer at conference, since doing so would surely have taken much of the sting out of the debate, even if some delegates might have remained unhappy … If Jeremy and his team – taking the overview of the entire political landscape, including the situation within the parliamentary party and the leadership of Momentum – urge a particular course of action, Unite is not going to go against that without the most serious reasons … Anyone, including good comrades like Chris [Williamson], who uses ultra-leftist terminology like ‘machine politics’ and ‘bureaucratic machine’ risks undermining the wishes of Jeremy Corbyn and the unity he has created.

McCluskey is unfortunately correct – not just about Jon Lansman’s ambivalent position on the issue, but also the fact that Jeremy Corbyn has not called for mandatory reselection of MPs. The strategy of Corbyn and his advisors and allies has from day one been that of conciliation: in the hope that, by keeping the centre on board and neutralising as many rightwingers as possible, he would be swept into Downing Street.

Remember, the method of selecting parliamentary candidates was not even part of the remit of the Party Democracy Review – the NEC proposed the reform of the trigger ballot system in order to stop open selection in its tracks. It is interesting how little Jeremy Corbyn gets blamed for these types of manoeuvres.

This is particularly inept tactically, when we consider that the majority of Labour MPs have been plotting against him from day one, if not before. Should Corbyn become prime minister – which is far from certain, even if Labour wins the next general election – he would be held hostage by the Parliamentary Labour Party. In all likelihood the right would try one manoeuvre after another to get rid of him.

By refusing to back mandatory reselection, which would have allowed the membership to rid the PLP of the anti-Corbyn right, Corbyn has seriously undermined his own position.

No Momentum

Momentum played almost no role at conference. Of course, it organised The World Transformed across three venues, but with varied levels of success. It felt smaller than previous events and much less relevant, with most sessions having been outsourced to other organisations. While Freedom of Speech on Israel, the Liverpool 47 and Labour Against the Witchhunt were denied spaces, those allowed to organise at TWT made use of it by putting on such valuable sessions as ‘Decolonising yoga’ and ‘Acid Corbynism’.

Last year, Momentum made a huge effort in advance of conference to gather data from delegates, so that they could be regularly sent text messages, carrying frequently useful voting guidelines. None of that happened this year. Momentum had published an app, but, unless you actively went looking for recommendations, you would not know how Jon Lansman (the owner of Momentum’s database) felt about the various conference motions. Momentum also did not put forward any candidates – or voting recommendations – for positions on the conference arrangements committee.

And crucially, Lansman badly folded on the question of mandatory reselection. Having opportunistically jumped on the open selection bandwagon about a week before conference (and collecting 50,000 up-to-date names and email addresses with a petition on the issue), he let it be known during the debate on the Party Democracy Review that Momentum would now prefer that delegates voted in favour of the NEC motion after all – ie, a reform of the trigger ballot rather than its abolition.

Momentum has proved once again how utterly useless it is, when it comes to actually organising the Labour left. Things really started to disintegrate in the wake of the coup on January 10 2017, when Lansman abolished all democratic structures and imposed his own constitution. But the farce over the defeat of the principle of mandatory reselection exposed rather dramatically the huge vacuum that exists on the left of our party. We urgently need a principled, effective organisation of the Labour left that can coordinate the fight for the democratic transformation of the party and sustain a national campaign for mandatory reselection and other important democratic demands. Momentum clearly cannot play that role.

There is some hope that the campaign around the fight for open selection might become permanent and take on the fight for other democratic demands. The FBU’s Matt Wrack has declared that his union would support such a move. Chris Williamson MP, in the meantime, has indicated that he will keep his ‘Democracy Roadshow’ going and continue his campaign for open selection.

Emily Thornberry

Last but not least, the role of Emily Thornberry at conference was very interesting. It is becoming more and more obvious that she is being groomed to take over from Jeremy Corbyn – by both ‘moderates’ and some on the left. Note John McDonnell’s repeated demands that the next leader has to be a woman (she is the highest-ranking woman in the shadow cabinet). It was also interesting that she positively referenced fellow soft pro-Zionist Jon Lansman in her speech. As a member of the pro-Zionist Labour Friends of Israel, unlike Corbyn she is not tainted by the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign in the party.

Her rousing conference speech cleverly showed that she’s all about ‘unity’: she made positive references to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to tickle the tummies of the right; but her main rhetorical fire was directed at reeling in the left: She positively mentioned the suffragettes, International Brigades and the Anti-Nazi League:

We were there in Spain fighting Franco in 1936. We were there in Cable Street that same year fighting alongside the Jewish community to stop the Blackshirts. We were here in Liverpool a year later, when Oswald Mosley tried to speak in this great city and was forced out without saying a word. And we were there in the 1980s – I was there myself – when we marched against the National Front.

She clearly was playing rather fast and loose with working class history. For a start, the Anti-Nazi League, set up by the Socialist Workers Party in 1977, started to wind down in 1980 and finally closed shop at the beginning of 1981. While the Independent Labour Party sent volunteers to Spain, the same cannot be said of Labour, which officially kept its distance (though Clement Attlee did visit British volunteers in December 1937). Also the Labour Party did not support the anti-fascists in Cable Street, though individual Labour Party members were present. As Dave Renton points out,

The main way Labour responded to Cable Street (ie, afterwards) was by calling for a ban on public demonstrations – by the left or the right. Labour conference was shortly afterwards. And announced that it would support what became the Public Order Act. If I recall rightly, the first demo banned after Cable Street was one called by the local and Labour-run trades council. The Labour Party’s general approach to Cable Street was neither pro-left nor pro-right, but pro-police.

Lawrence Parker, author of Communists and Labour: The National Left-Wing Movement 1925-1929, told us:

The CPGB had begun to colonise the Labour Party at this point and was already in a very strong position in the Labour League of Youth; so, while the Labour Party may have been officially opposed, there were Labour Party organisations at Cable Street, some of whom would have been influenced by the CPGB. The boundary lines between Labour and the CPGB were very blurred after the Comintern told the CP to enter into Labour. So, when individual Labour members went to Cable Street, some were probably following the instructions of the party… the Communist Party!

We very much doubt whether a careerist like Emily Thornberry would have been amongst those who went against the official Labour Party line on any of these occasions.

Of course, historical accuracy was not the point of Thornberry’s speech. No, having established herself as a defender of all that is good and noble in recent British working class history, she went for her killer blow – firmly directed at appealing to the right:

There are sickening individuals on the fringes of our movement, who use our legitimate support for Palestine as a cloak and a cover for their despicable hatred of Jewish people, and their desire to see Israel destroyed. These people stand for everything that we have always stood against and they must be kicked out of our party, the same way Oswald Mosley was kicked out of Liverpool.

She basically justified the witch-hunt against many Corbyn supporters who have been accused of anti-Semitism by comparing them to fascists: comrades like Tony Greenstein, Marc Wadsworth – both already expelled – and Jackie Walker, who is about to be thrown out. All of them have been found guilty of anti-Semitism in the media and by rightwingers in the party, even if the official charge is ‘bringing the party into disrepute’.

But none of that should surprise us, because Thornberry is a member of Labour Friends of Israel, which features various articles on its website attacking Jeremy Corbyn for his ‘softness’ on anti-Semitism and proudly declares that it “works closely” with Israel’s Zionist Labor Party. LFI is run by Joan Ryan MP  (she of the no-confidence vote) and Louise Ellman MP (who used to run the Jewish Labour Movement).

At an LFI event last year, Thornberry criticised the boycott movement and all those who “deny Israel the right to defend itself from military assault and terror attacks. That sort of bigotry against the Israeli nationhas never been justified and it never will be.” The same rationale is, of course, employed by Binyamin Netanyahu, when he orders his snipers to take out unarmed kids or shoot paramedics in the back.

According to Asa Winstanley of the award-winning Electronic Intifada, at this year’s conference Thornberry tried her best to water down the motion on Palestine. In an hour-long meeting, she heavily leaned on the movers to delete any reference to the nakba (Israel’s expulsion in 1948 of some 800,000 Palestinians to establish a “Jewish state”) and demanded that the motion’s call for an immediate arms trade freeze be removed. But the movers refused on both counts and even made reference to her in their speech. Good on them! Thousands of comrades waved Palestine flags, handed out by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Labour Against the Witchhunt – a fantastic sight.

Emily Thornberry is no leftwinger. And she would be a ‘unity’ candidate of the worst kind: using slightly leftwing rhetoric to keep the Labour left quiet; painting herself an internationalist, while firmly siding with the Zionist regime in Israel. She would steer the party back to where it was under Neil Kinnock – if not Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Democracy and the Labour Party, Europe

Left Labour remainers: seriously wrong to take £70,000 from George Soros

(the longer, original of this article appeared in the Weekly Worker)

The Brexit issue is a perilous territory for the workers’ movement. The most egregious consequence is the flat-out refusal of the Labour leadership to make a clear call for one ‘side’ or the other of the Brexit debate, and its particularly acute expression in official politics, the question of a second referendum. Corbyn and his immediate allies have adopted an impressively unmovable ambiguity on the issue. Once more, conference has contrived to fudge things – with an election quite possibly imminent, now is not the time to play your hand, and so they have not, instead motoring on with a compromise that commits nobody to anything.

It is a funny thing. To look at the liberal and centre-right media over the weekend, you would get an image of a tsunami of remainer opinion about to blow over the leadership. One centrist or right-wing grandee after another trooped onto the morning news shows to trumpet the need for a second referendum. We had been assured already – by a wildly optimistic reading – that the major unions were in favour of a do-over, when they had merely refused to rule out pursuing one at some later date. The Guardian has found no end of space for the left-remainer group Another Europe is Possible, presently headed up by a comrade Michael Chessum, the last president of the University of London Union before it was ushered gently into that good night, and sometime Alliance for Workers Liberty hanger-on. (The AWL, ever the idiot stepchildren of the Foreign Office, have much the same kind of attitude.)

So far as the Blairites are concerned, remainerism is a simple matter indeed – a matter of the perceived national interest. For the trade union bureaucracy, there is – in spite of Viking and Laval – a marginally kinder legal regime than the unvarnished Thatcherite hostility of the British body politic in the last three decades. Brexiteer outliers among them have their commitments based in general politics (for example, the late Bob Crow’s unrepentant Stalinism) rather than the sectionalism that preponderates by default in the union movement’s upper reaches.

Left-remainerism is a rather more peculiar phenomenon. There is a limited principled basis for it in that a clear majority of Labour members are for remain, for better or worse. The tricksy tactical outlook of the leadership, the insistence on backroom stitch-ups, is thus profoundly opportunist and amounts to a denial of democracy – hardly the most serious to have taken place this conference, alas.

Yet we do not, in fact, find the left remainers fighting out on principle at all, but precisely engaged in tactical skulduggery as well. To wit, comrade Chessum in the Guardian:

Theresa May’s Chequers proposals were dead before the Salzburg summit, killed off by her own party long before Donald Tusk stuck the knife in, but their demise leaves her stranded. The government now faces a choice between a hard border in Ireland on the one hand, and a humiliating climb-down into the EEA on the other. This is a crisis for the government but it raises questions about Labour’s position, too. If the EU won’t entertain May’s proposals, then the idea that a Jeremy Corbyn-led government could come to power and deliver a bespoke Labour Brexit before March 2019 is effectively out of the window.1

That means that “any superficially ‘left’ case for leaving the EU” is out – because the same options will be on the table. (Chessum seems oddly unaware that left-Brexitism tends towards a cliff-edge mentality.) The costs of Brexit outweigh any unfortunate details of EU state aid rules – which, anyway, “are far less restrictive than some would lead you to believe”. The answer, of course, is a second referendum, called with dogged fatuousness by its advocates a ‘people’s vote’. Committing itself to such a vote will, according to a poll Chessum brandishes, win the Labour Party 66 seats in a general election. But the benefits keep on coming!

This is a difficult time for the Corbyn project. On one flank, it faces the prospect of an SDP-style split that would fatally undermine Labour’s electoral prospects. On the other, it faces a support base that is up in arms about attempts by unions and the leadership to block open selections and enforce a higher threshold for leadership elections … By backing a referendum and endorsing a roadmap out of the nightmare of Tory Brexit, Corbyn can kill off the political pretext for a split from the Labour right. Instead of horse-trading with union leaderships and placating the parliamentary party, Corbyn can stick to his principles and make the case for democracy – in the party, and, ultimately, in the country.

The peculiarity of this view is that Chessum starts from exactly the same premises as the party and union leaderships, but draws opposite conclusions. Both proceed from the assumption that the priority is to trigger a general election in the short term in order to get Corbyn into No10. Both subordinate everything to the electoral calculations. Both want to avoid a split with the right. Yet they end up at rather different destinations; Chessum wants full-throated support for a second referendum, whereas the leadership spared no exertion to make sure nothing of that kind would be voted on by delegates at conference and to keep its determined ambiguity as intact as circumstances allow.

Within this thought universe, it has to be said that Chessum and his left-remainer chums have the worse of it. He cherry-picks one poll, ignoring the combined weight of evidence that there has been no significant shift of public opinion on whether to go ahead with Brexit, that calls for a second referendum are entirely associated with remainerism and described as treacherous in the Brexiteer galleries, that a shift to clear identification with remain would certainly cost Labour votes in its northern heartlands, and would be a serious risk in swing constituencies. At the most recent electoral test, in 2017, Corbyn and Momentum overperformed in part because they refused to be drawn on this – despite contemporary jeremiads from remainers.

By their friends …

Some clues as to the discrepancy may be found in another Guardian piece, profiling Chessum and other left remainers. Another Europe is Possible is not strictly a Labour outfit; it enjoys the support of what remains of Left Unity and the Greens. It works with Labour for a People’s Vote, whose administrator Mike Buckley tells our intrepid journos that, before these initiatives got to prominence, “there was nothing [for left-remainers] to rally behind … The people talking publicly about having another referendum, however well-intentioned they are, they are not going to gather the majority of Labour party members behind them because they are seen as being anti-Jeremy.”2

That’s rather delicately put – it is surely not unfair that the likes of Chuka Umunna and Tony Blair are “seen as being anti-Jeremy”, because they are anti-Jeremy. These comrades are delighted at the turn of events that appears to have put the latter sorts of MPs in their debt, but we wonder if the reality may be the other way around. Elsewhere, we learn that Another Europe is Possible has received a cool £70,000 from George Soros. Imagine, for a moment, the outcry that would greet this news if it was a Russian billionaire funnelling money into a British political campaign, especially given that it is clearly an act of subterfuge – billionaires, and billionaires’ friends, putting some leftwing frontmen and women up in pursuit of their interests. It is of no consequence to the Guardian, however, which breezily lets the factoid slip with no worries expressed at all; clearly it does not bother AEIP itself either.

I do not accuse Chessum and co of corruption, only of extraordinary naivete. I suspect that they do not fully understand how completely they have been roped into a political rearguard action on the part of big capital. Chessum’s article is followed by a byline identifying him as a “socialist activist”, but you would hardly know it otherwise – half of its actual prose might have been cribbed from a KPMG Powerpoint slide (“Deliver a bespoke Labour Brexit”, indeed!). He claims to be “hard left”, “hard remain”; but he is not currently even the latter, pursuing only the dishonest intermediate objective of a second referendum, dutifully recycling the official branding put on it by Soros, Blair and co. Another Europe is possible, apparently, but you would never know there was anything wrong with the current one. On Viking and Laval, on the troika’s punishment beating of Greece, on the morally repugnant attempts to bribe trouble-spot regimes to pen refugees in fetid camps for the noble aim of sparing Frau Merkel her blushes, Chessum is diplomatically silent. Until the more important matter of Brexit is sorted out, we surmise, another Europe is beneath mentioning – and the crimes of the extant incarnation must be brushed over with a grimace and a few hail Marys.

It is Chessum’s peculiar bedfellows also that, in the end, give the lie to the sagacity of his electoral advice. Suppose the left-remainers were absolutely right, and the international working class has a compelling interest in continued British membership of the European Union. It would then simply be the case that there was a commonality of interest with finance capital in making that happen – and a limited common front on that issue would be no more unprincipled than trade union support for Liberal legislation in the unions’ favour in the 19th century, or for that matter many of the electoral arrangements between the Bolsheviks and the liberal bourgeois parties in pre-revolutionary Russia.

The trouble is that this by no means implies that there is a common interest on any other matter whatsoever. In the current context, there is a particularly obvious divergence. Chessum wants a Corbyn government; Soros certainly does not, and neither do the Liberal Democrats or Tony Blair … or, if he is being honest with himself, Chuka Umunna. For them, the electoral failure of Labour is not an especially expensive price to pay for an end to the Brexit madness; for many of them, indeed, it is a positive good. Even the sitting Labour MPs can look forward, in the event of personal defeat, to the honours list, the after-dinner circuit and the lucrative corporate sinecure. No such rosy fate awaits useful idiots on the “hard left”.

So far as Brexit is concerned, it seems – after a week of frenetic activity and drama – we have arrived more or less where we were. The immediate crisis in the cabinet is over; the real players have been corralled into support for the Chequers deal, in lieu of anything better. (May is fortunate that the Daily Mail is swinging behind her and distancing itself somewhat from the ERG.) Labour has made a great show of having a vote in favour of the idea of nothing being off the table; in short, in favour of … nothing. Kier Starmer spins it his way, John McDonnell his; in the meantime, go back to your constituencies and prepare for government!

The Labour leadership is, of course, correct – as far as things go – that the only chance at breaking the deadlock is a general election. Reports of plans afoot for a snap election in November – if only contingency plans, for now – were denied by the government, but surely must reflect some reality. It will not be an attractive option unless there is a great likelihood of victory, however, and nothing is certain. If Chessum had got his way, and Labour had committed itself to remain, then the case would be very compelling to go for it and clean up; we must assume that the possibility has receded somewhat.

The grain of truth to left-remainism is, of course, that the Labour leadership’s balancing act is profoundly dishonest. Absent from the discussion is any possibility that we might actually convince anyone to change their minds. That is far too high risk an endeavour, with a snap election to win. Risky, and also slow: the ticking-time-bomb aspect of the matter leads to the abandonment of principle, the high premium on knights in shining armour, and – of course – the hysterical sense of crisis that leads well-meaning left remainers to cash George Soros’s dirty cheques.

We leftists are in this mess, in large part, because one such crisis has followed another, and the only constant has been the abiding sense that something must be done right now and there is no time for teasing out the treacherous subtleties of the issues before us. We assert, again, that a dispute that unites Michael Chessum with Tony Blair on one side, and the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain and Jacob Rees-Mogg on the other, must be posed differently altogether for the workers’ movement to make any serious purchase. For it is an argument about the relationship between the British state and a EU bureaucracy, which ignores the reality that both are in enemy hands, and that both must be destroyed, and a genuine socialist internationalism put to work replacing them.