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Anti-Semitism, Conference 2018, Momentum, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Witch-hunts: When chickens come home…

Jeremy Newmark is in deep trouble, Ann Black has been dropped by Jon Lansman and AWL members have been declared ‘unwelcome’ by London Young Labour, reports Carla Roberts

Imagine the following: a well-known Corbyn supporter is accused of “misusing” tens of thousands of pounds of a charity he is running in order to go on holiday with his family, leases a “46,000 luxury car” and awards his wife contracts worth £36,000. General secretary Iain McNicol and his compliance unit would have acted with speed … and with some not inconsiderable glee.

Of course, we are talking about Jeremy Newmark, until recently chair of the Jewish Labour Movement and, as we go to press, still a full Labour Party member and a Hertsmere councillor. Unlike many of the pro-Palestinian campaigners, of course, that he and the Jewish Labour Movement have successfully managed to get suspended from the party on the flimsiest of accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’.

The enthusiasm with which the pro-Zionist Jewish Chronicle has attacked Newmark is quite breathtaking – after all, it has given him and the Jewish Labour Movement many a platform to attack pro-Palestinians and anti-Zionists. But clearly, a good story beats religion. JC alleges that Newmark’s financial dealings with the Jewish Leadership Council were – how shall we put it? – somewhat suspect. And, when awkward questions were asked, Newmark agreed to resign from his position as chief executive for “health reasons”. Not that his health stopped him from being leader of the JLM, a Labour councillor and running as the parliamentary candidate in Finchley and Golders Green (he just failed to become an MP).

Not the job of socialists to appeal to the witch-hunter general Iain McNicol
Not the job of socialists to appeal to the witch-hunter general Iain McNicol

We need not point out the hypocrisy in the different treatments that Newmark and Corbyn supporters have been receiving – not just from the compliance unit, but also the bourgeois media. Apart from a couple of articles in The Times, there is an eerie silence. But it is not the job of socialists to appeal to McNicol to discipline fellow Labour Party members (after all, we want McNicol sacked and many of the disciplinary offences he so freely wields abolished).

And, of course, we believe in the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’. But, firstly, that does not go for the dozens, if not hundreds, who remain suspended and expelled from the party for a wide range of ‘crimes’ – including being rude on the internet or being an alleged supporter of a Marxist group. And, secondly, from reading the allegations in JC there appears to be damning evidence against Newmark, which would at the very least warrant an investigation. McNicol’s claim that the issue is “private” is quite frankly breathtaking. Even the Jewish Labour Movement had the sense to agree with Newmark that he should resign.

There are lessons here. The Momentum leader, Jon Lansman, has previously boasted that “I work closely with Jeremy [Newmark]” and explained how he took the advice of the JLM before ‘demoting’ Jackie Walker from her position of vice-chair of Momentum.

And, in the mistaken belief that he could shield himself from the accusations of being soft on anti-Semitism, Jeremy Corbyn has given the JLM in effect a free hand to wreak havoc with its ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ campaign. Shamefully, Corbyn has silently stood by, allowing pretty much any criticism of the actions of the state of Israel to be branded as evidence of anti-Semitism. All in the empty hope that he will finally have given the right wing in the party enough scalps to shut up and let him lead.

NEC elections

Jon Lansman has given up all pretence of leftwing candidates for the national executive committee being chosen by some kind of semi-democratic decision-making between various groups under the umbrella of the mysterious ‘Centre Left Grassroots Alliance’ (CLGA). Once upon a time, this might have been a real attempt to get together left Labour organisations in order to discuss joint candidates – but even then it was always done firmly behind closed doors.

Now Jon Lansman, who literally owns Momentum, seems to be in sole charge. Last year, the CLGA managed to agree on three NEC candidates within a matter of days, in a much-ridiculed process, where – surprise, surprise – Lansman was one of those chosen.

For the 2018 elections, it looked as if a similar process would be employed. Nominations on the Momentum website opened on January 8, ended on January 14 and by January 18 the Momentum candidates were supposed be chosen by a panel from its national coordinating group to then go to the CLGA. Momentum’s website still states: “Please note that because Momentum is only one out of a number of organisations which has input into the CLGA, gaining the support of Momentum does not guarantee getting the final support of the CLGA for these elections.”

But somewhere along the line Lansman thought, ‘Nah, why bother?’ On February 9, the final list of the nine candidates supported by Momentum only was leaked to the Huffington Post – before the rest of the CLGA could pretend to have a say on the matter. It took another week before he informed Momentum members, via email on February 15. We understand that, at the heart of this, is the fact that Jon Lansman and his old comrade in the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, Pete Willsman, have fallen out over the matter of Ann Black.

We could already gather from NEC veteran Willsman’s latest email report (sent out on January 31) that something fishy was going on. In a minor point he says that at the last Labour NEC meeting “Ann Black, in her usual reasoned way,” argued against a particular oversight and that, “as usual, Ann’s reasonable arguments carried the day”.

Ann Black
Ann Black

Yes, that is the same Ann Black who has played a despicable role in sidelining Corbyn supporters in the run-up to the leadership elections. The same Ann Black, who as long-serving chair of the disputes panel played a key role in keeping the witch-hunt against the left alive. Her replacement by Christine Shawcroft was long overdue.

But not for comrade Willsman, apparently. We understand that he has been arguing vehemently that she be included once again on the CLGA slate. But he was narrowly outvoted by the CLPD executive. However, comrade Willsman did not budge on the issue and kept on insisting she be nominated.

Anyway, Jon Lansman did what he does best: went nuclear. He announced nine candidates supported by Momentum – not including Ann Black. Nevertheless, “I shall be standing as a candidate for the NEC, on the centre-left platform that I have supported for the past 18 years,” she told the Huffington Post. Doubtless, Black’s politics have not changed much in 18 years, but it is a sign of the weakness of the Labour left that it ever supported her in the first place.

Current NEC members Claudia Webbe, Rachel Garnham, Yasmine Dar, Pete Willsman, Darren Williams and, of course, Jon Lansman himself, are featured on the new slate. The newcomers backed by Lansman are Huda Elmi (Momentum national coordinating group), Nav Mishra (a Momentum regional organiser) and Anne Henderson (assistant secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress). All nine are virtual shoo-ins for the 2018 NEC elections, some major political earthquake notwithstanding.

One person missing from the Momentum slate, however, is Rhea Wolfson, an entirely forgettable member of the NEC, had it not been for her proud membership of the Jewish Labour Movement (she also sits on the editorial board of the AWL-sponsored magazine The Clarion). Unfortunately, her departure is voluntary and not the result of a campaign of the pro-Palestinian left. She appears to harbour ambitions of becoming an MP – which is, we understand, the main reason for not throwing her hat in the ring again.

Victims and perpetrators

AWL members were amongst the first victims of the anti-left witch-hunt in the Labour Party, when, just after the publication of Tom Watson’s ‘dodgy dossier’, a dozen or so members and supporters were expelled from Labour. And yet the group has itself been giving encouragement to the witch-hunt against leftwingers in its own way.

Its participation in the ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ campaign is not of the same calibre as that waged by the JLM and the ‘Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’, which systematically, and with a lot of technical know-how and money, scroll through Facebook and Twitter accounts to catch out members for using particular words.

For one thing, the AWL lacks the numbers and finance for that type of campaign. It represents more the type of busybody who would report their neighbour to the East German Stasi for watching West German TV. In the worldview of AWL leader Sean Matgamna (who, like others in their leadership, open declares himself a Zionist), pretty much anybody on the “fake left” who has the audacity to criticise Israel is an anti-Semite.

AWL guru Sean Matgamna
AWL guru Sean Matgamna

AWL members on the (then) Momentum steering committee joined Jon Lansman in voting for the removal of Jackie Walker as national vice-chair – in fact they enabled the man to go one further a few weeks later and abolish the steering committee and all democratic structures with it in the now infamous Lansman coup of January 10 2017. AWL leader Sean Matgamna continues to call for Ken Livingstone to be expelled from the Labour Party for making factually slightly wrong, but politically entirely correct, statements about the collaboration of Nazis and Zionist leaders in the 1930s. [The editorial team of their paper Solidarity seems to disagree about calling for his expulsion, but they happily print Sean’s articles without critiquing his call and regularly denounce him as an anti-Semite in their pages].

It joined with the JLM and the rightwing media hysteria in condemning Moshé Machover’s article, ‘Anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism’, in Labour Party Marxists, which led to his expulsion (after a massive campaign within the party he was subsequently reinstated three weeks later). “Overnight, Machover’s article became a cause célèbre for left anti-Semites (and anti-Semites in general)”, states the AWL in its paper, Solidarity.

Displaying its ignorance and lack of basic sense of solidarity with a victim of Iain McNicol’s compliance unit, the AWL claims in an official statement that the article was carried in a leaflet, which

was distributed at a fringe meeting of the rightwing Labour First faction, in a stunt obviously designed to catch the eye of the Labour right and provoke expulsions to generate publicity for themselves … We restate our opposition to the existence of this rulebook clause, and its usage to justify summary expulsions, including in this case. But we have no sympathy with the leaflet stunt, and no desire to defend it as an exercise of democratic rights.

This deeply problematic statement also shows that the AWL must have been asleep throughout conference last year – otherwise they would have noticed that comrade Machover’s article was carried in our A3-size newspaper (not a leaflet) and it was widely distributed every day at various fringe events, as well as at conference itself. Jeremy Newmark – who was almost as outraged as the AWL about the article – picked it up on the first morning outside the main conference entrance – and then telephoned various journalists, who were keen to cover the story. But don’t let the facts get in the way of a good smear.

At the AGM of London Young Labour on February 3, the AWL once again played this bizarre double role. The meeting adopted a truly contemptuous motion submitted by the AWL-backed Labour Campaign for Free Movement – and then voted in favour of one that comes close to calling for the expulsion of AWL members from the youth wing.

The motion submitted by LCFM starts by stating, rather problematically, that “we have recently seen a rise in racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic hate crime” and that “Muslim and Jewish women are disproportionately targeted in terms of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism”.

It does not quote the source of these claims, but chances are the AWL has joined a range of bourgeois journalists in adopting in an entirely uncritical way the claims made in the ‘Report on anti-Semitic incidents’, which is published twice a year by the pro-Zionist charity, Community Security Trust (a charity “known to have links to Israel’s Mossad spy agency”, as the award-winning Electronic Intifada states).

The motion goes on to make some utterly forgettable, non-controversial demands (“it is essential that we stand up for the rights of everyone in this country to practise their faith and be safe from hate”), which, incidentally, do not include the call for free movement beyond what exists across the EU today.

Bizarrely though, the LCFM motion commits London Young Labour to:

8. Work alongside the Jewish Labour Movement, Labour Muslims, Sikhs for Labour and other faith groups to address the systemic hate faced by those who identify into these groups, both within and outside of our movement.

9. Run training with Hope Not Hate on how to tackle bigotry and xenophobia in society.

Point 8 does not just support the clearly untrue claim of there being a huge ‘anti-Semitism problem’ in the Labour Party. It commits the organisation to work with the disgraced JLM, which has played such a deplorable role in the witch-hunt of pro-Palestinian Corbyn supporters.

Hope Not Hate, while not playing an active part in the witch-hunt, is a rightwing version of the Socialist Workers Party’s ‘Stand Up To Racism’. For example, the anti-Corbyn MP, Ruth Smeeth, was a director of Hope not Hate for many years – she also worked for the Community Security Trust mentioned above. Nice bedfellows indeed.

The same Young Labour event then went on to adopt a motion in response to recent allegations made by a former (then 16-year-old) AWL member of sexual misconduct by another member. The motion claims that the event was then “covered up by the AWL student organiser”. The details are quite well known by now. They are unpleasant, but not of such a level of seriousness to warrant that

the presence of AWL members/supporters at London Young Labour organising and social spaces is unacceptable and unwelcome until they carry out a formal, open transparent investigation. The processes of this investigation must be ones in which the survivor has confidence, and the processes and outcomes of the investigation must centre the needs of survivors of sexual violence. (see full statement below)

A group of young pro-Lansmanites seems to behind this motion (who would have thought that such a tendency would ever exist?). AWL members are quite right to smell “a witch-hunt against Workers’ Liberty”:

The cynical use of this important issue, by some, ultimately is a means of silencing political opponents. It is a danger to the entire left. It will not end with Workers’ Liberty. It can, and will, be used against anyone else seen not to have ‘the right line’ on any number of issues. It creates a movement within which reasoned discussion of political differences becomes impossible.

Like, say, the issue of opposing Zionism, perhaps? The words ‘kettle’, ‘black’ and ‘pot’ spring to mind.

‘Sexual violence’ and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty

London Young Labour notes:

1. In January 2018, it emerged the AWL had covered up the sexual abuse of a child, who had been offered drinks by AWL members despite being under 18. The sexual assault was covered up by the AWL’s student organiser, and the AWL member in question faced no disciplinary action or expulsion from the AWL.

2. The victim was subjected to a campaign of smears and harassment, which included ablist remarks hurled at him on the street and slanderous complaints made to his employer.

3. A statement on the AWL website confirmed the allegations of the victim’s statement, but deflected blame to “online trolling”.

London Young Labour believes:

1. Sexual violence is not confined to one tendency or political leaning, but certain structures and organising tactics – such as the AWL’s secretive, top-down structures – are more likely to enable and mask abuse of all kinds.

2. Sexual violence pushes out women and other marginalised groups from our party.

3. As an organisation, LYL must also take into account that the survivor of this assault was underage. The AWL members had bought him drinks and got him drunk, which is an incredibly serious breach of safeguarding.

4. Sexual violence must not be tolerated within our organisation and neither must apologism for sexual abuse.

London Young Labour resolves:

1. To make clear that the presence of AWL members/supporters at London Young Labour organising and social spaces is unacceptable and unwelcome until they carry out a formal, open, transparent investigation. The processes of this investigation must be ones in which the survivor has confidence, and the processes and outcomes of the investigation must centre on the needs of survivors of sexual violence.

2. To carry out research into our own processes and policies and make sure they adequately support survivors of sexual violence.

Inside the Labour Party, The left

Labour Representation Committee: Reduced to a think tank?

An existential crisis continues to haunt the dwindling forces of the Labour Representation Committee, reports Stan Keable

Around 120 Labour Representation Committee members gathered in London’s Conway Hall on February 10 for yet another angst-ridden ‘special’ general meeting (SGM), in which a bewildered leadership shared with its rank and file its own failure – like most of the left – to draw into membership or engage with the ‘radicalised’ mass intake of Corbyn supporters into the Labour Party.

The exception to this failure is, of course, Momentum. The LRC executive’s statement jealously admits that Momentum “has successfully organised many of their number” into 150 local groups, which have “formidable electoral achievements under their belt” and are “feared by the Tory enemy”. By contrast, the statement repeats the LRC’s own longstanding wish to “rebuild” its “network of local groups”. Before this meeting it had called on “experts on particular subjects” to develop an imagined “comprehensive and impressive bank of educational material” on the “new LRC website” – the “formation of local LRCs may hopefully follow as a result”.

This pious wish, however, bears no relation to the reality. As political secretary Mick Brooks accurately declared, “The LRC has stagnated” in this “most favourable situation for socialists”: the Labour leadership is “probably the most leftwing ever”, the Tories are in disarray and the 2008 economic crisis showed that “capitalism has failed”.

Founded in 2004 in the dark days of New Labour – when clause four ‘socialism’ had been destroyed and Blairism seemed permanently victorious – the LRC was based on the belief that Labour had to be rebuilt from scratch, just as the original LRC had created the party in 1900. Hence the organisation’s cumbersome, unwieldy structure, designed as a replica of the party: the rights of individual members were to be trumped by affiliated trade unions and socialist groups, and – ironically, keeping up with New Labour – bureaucratic ‘equality’ rules were to guarantee the election at all levels of women, LGBT, BAME and disability representatives, instead of assessing candidates on the basis of their politics. But news of the death of Labour was exaggerated, and as a result the LRC has always been plagued by uncertainty of purpose.

Now, with John and Jeremy heading the party – backed by Momentum’s mass membership and those 150 local groups – the project of refounding old Labour is superfluous. So what is the point of the LRC? Back in February 2016, at a previous SGM in the early days of Momentum, the NEC statement opted for “maintaining the existence of our own organisation – for the time being”, but foresaw the possibility that it may soon have “outlived its usefulness”. And John McDonnell mused that “maybe in the future” there will be “just one organisation” (Weekly Worker February 25 2016).

Democracy

However, Jon Lansman’s January 10 2017 bureaucratic coup put paid to that happy prospect, and at this SGM Momentum’s shortcomings became the raison d’être of the LRC. “We are not a fan club for the Corbynite movement,” claimed comrade Brooks. “Momentum does not have conferences, elections, policies. It has a democratic deficit.” And chairperson Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, stated: “The key role of the LRC is to ensure discussion and debate takes place.” As the NEC statement declared,

The LRC is pluralist internally. We can develop independent-minded supporters of the Corbynist movement, which neither Momentum nor the [Campaign for Labour Party Democracy] are designed to do …. We regard democratic discussion and debate within our ranks as the essential oxygen of our organisation.

Then why, we must ask, does it convene ‘special’ general meetings, in which amendments to the rambling NEC statement are not allowed? Take it or leave it. And why were Labour Party Marxists and a few other political groups quietly ‘disaffiliated’ by the leadership in 2016, if not to curtail discussion in order to avoid embarrassing criticisms of Corbyn and McDonnell? This is more or less confessed in the NEC statement, where it shamefacedly attempts to set out the limits of legitimate discussion: “Debate within the LRC is not concerned to score points or make sectarian contributions against others.” So no polemics. “As long as we see ourselves contributing in a positive light to a movement going forward rather than carping at its inadequacies we can’t go too far wrong.” So no real criticism.

Class politics was emphasised by NEC member Maria Exall of the Communication Workers Union:

Working class empowerment should not be simply put in a list alongside the empowerment of women, people of colour, LGBT people, etc – we prioritise working class women, working class coloureds, working class gays and lesbians. Working class representation is what we are about.

And she spoke about the problem of the trade union bureaucracies and the “ongoing project” of “how to democratise the trade union link”.

The LRC leadership seems, at last, to be overcoming its reluctance to take sides in political struggles within trade unions. The NEC statement asserts:

Unlike CLPD and Momentum, we actively support workers’ struggles and do not confine our attentions to the Labour Party. We are in the process of organising a Unite LRC caucus … the first of trade union caucuses for all major unions. … We need to organise within the unions … for trade union democracy and socialist policies.

All very positive – but why not adopt Labour Party Marxists’ aim to win all trade unions to affiliate to Labour?

LRC president John McDonnell turned up in the afternoon, fresh from Labour’s ‘alternative models of ownership’ conference, which, he said, was shaping policies “almost like those of the LRC 10 years ago”. Since the 2017 general election, the Labour leadership has been “consolidating”. Unintentionally exposing the LRC’s overblown claim that the election had been fought on a fully socialist manifesto, he stated that For the many, not the few was “just for that election”. So now “we need to radicalise those policies” and “develop an implementation manual”, together with “draft legislation ready for office”.

And, worryingly, he claimed: “The Parliamentary Labour Party are signed up to this exercise.” Wrong, wrong, wrong, John. The LRC NEC statement takes the opposite view – not that anyone bothered to tell him. Perhaps that would be seen as negative or “carping”. Or maybe the NEC statement itself is “carping”? Here is what it says:

The Parliamentary Labour Party and the party bureaucracy remain firmly in the hands of the right wing. They seemed determined to rule or ruin. Corbyn’s role as leader is untouchable for the time being on account of his 2017 electoral success, [but] his position, and that of his supporters, remains precarious.

Spot on, NEC. But comrade McDonnell is already on a different page. “When the LRC was set up on Tony Benn’s advice, we were within a Labour Party we could not recognise. We are on the edge of government now.” So the LRC’s role now should be as a “think-tank, to develop ideas into policies” – and he saw Mike Phipps’s book For the many: preparing Labour for power as making a start.

‘Centre-left’ slate

A revealing episode at the SGM was an emergency motion moved by Marc Wadsworth of Grassroots Black Left. This criticised the way in which the “centre-left slate” had been selected for the forthcoming elections for Constituency Labour Party seats on Labour’s NEC:

This SGM notes with grave concern that the ‘centre-left’ slate for Labour’s next NEC elections appears to have been chosen unilaterally by Momentum without consulting its members and before the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance had completed its discussions on the slate. We consider that this could split the left and divide supporters of Jeremy Corbyn’s progressive agenda for government. Irrespective of the outcome and content of the slate, we believe this is not a democratic and transparent process in line with Jeremy’s ‘new politics’. We call on the incoming LRC NEC to formulate a response to challenge the democratic deficit in deciding the slate.

In my years as an LRC member, I confess I have never discovered exactly how candidates for the slate were selected – it always seemed to be done behind closed doors, and I do not remember ever being asked to vote on the matter. The LRC leadership was supposedly consulted, though it had sometimes complained about not being invited or about their views being ignored, especially with respect to their longstanding wish to remove Ann Black. The CLPD, under Pete Willsman’s leadership, always defended Ann Black and always got its way.

But the left is evolving new forms, so the cosy, behind-the-scenes process has to be made transparent, and the members of the participating groups have to have their say. This time, not only was Momentum involved, but also Jewish Voice for Labour (and perhaps other groups). The newly formed Grassroots Black Left, however, was excluded.

What happened, we are told, was that all parties except the CLPD wanted a slate without Ann Black, because of her role in the anti-Corbyn shenanigans of general secretary Iain McNicol’s apparatchiks. They had excluded masses of new Labour members from voting in leadership elections, suspended left-led CLPs and waved through the automatic suspension and even expulsion of leftwing members on trumped-up charges.

However, the CLPD would only accept a slate which included Ann Black. But when the 80-strong CLPD executive (in reality, volunteers who are voted in as a block at the AGM) took the unheard of step of actually voting to resolve a disputed issue, CLPD secretary Pete Willsman and his co-thinkers lost the vote narrowly. Then, when Willsman and co refused to accept the vote, Jon Lansman jumped in to impose a Momentum slate – without consulting the Momentum membership, of course.

LRC secretary Michael Calderbank, in asking for Marc Wadsworth’s motion to be remitted, said:

The slate-making process is broken. It is opaque, carried on behind closed doors. Not only were Momentum members not adequately consulted: neither were LRC members, nor the LRC itself.

Graham Bash, supporting the motion – which, after all, only commits the LRC to fight for a democratic slate-making process, confirmed that the present system is broken, but insisted, quite rightly, that “fielding an alternative left slate would be a disaster”. The motion was carried overwhelmingly.

Clause 4, Transform the Labour Party

Clause 4: Why revive a stinking corpse?

Jack Conrad questions the worth of the ‘Labour4Clause4’ campaign being promoted by Socialist Appeal. Instead of fostering illusions in Fabian socialism, surely the task of Marxists is to win the Labour Party to Marxist socialism

(first published in the Weekly Worker)

A hundred years ago this month, the Labour Party adopted its famous clause four – a declaration of aims and principles, which Rob Sewell, editor of Socialist Appeal, tells us committed the party to “the socialist transformation of society”.

Undoubtedly, clause four – rewritten under Tony Blair in 1995 – carries totemic status for partisans both of the right and left. But should the left seek to raise the 1918 corpse from its grave? Or should we audaciously reach out for another future? Socialist Appeal, the British section of the International Marxist Tendency, is fully committed to what is, in fact, an anti-working class tradition. 1)As are Socialist Appeal’s old comrades in the Socialist Party in England and Wales. After the 1991 split in the Militant Tendency, the minority around Ted Grant, Alan Woods and Rob Sewell became Socialist Appeal. The majority – around Peter Taaffe, Tony Mulhearn, Hannah Sell and Dave Nellist – evolved through Militant Labour and became SPEW in 1997. Needless to say, comrade Nellist – former Labour MP for Coventry South East and nowadays national chair of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, insists that the 1918 clause four must be “reinstated” (Coventry Telegraph August 19 2011

It has thrown its weight behind the ‘Labour4Clause4’ campaign and has, so far, gained the backing of Ken Loach, the leftwing film director, MPs Dennis Skinner, Ian Mearns and Ronnie Campbell, and trade union leaders such as Ian Hodson and Ronnie Draper of the bakers’ union, and Steve Hedley of the RMT.

The February 1918 Labour Party conference agreed a new constitution. Clause four (of the party’s objects) committed Labour to these aims (subsequently amended in 1959):

1. To organise and maintain in parliament and in the country a political Labour Party.

2. To cooperate with the general council of the Trades Union Congress, or other kindred organisations, in joint political or other action in harmony with the party constitution and standing orders.

3. To give effect as far as possible to the principles from time to time approved by the party conference.

4. To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

5. Generally to promote the political, social and economic emancipation of the people, and more particularly of those who depend directly upon their own exertions by hand or by brain for the means of life.

6. To cooperate with the labour and socialist organisations in the commonwealth overseas with a view to promoting the purposes of the party, and to take common action for the promotion of a higher standard of social and economic life for the working population of the respective countries.

7. To cooperate with the labour and socialist organisations in other countries and to support the United Nations and its various agencies and other international organisations for the promotion of peace, the adjustment and settlement of international disputes by conciliation or judicial arbitration, the establishment and defence of human rights, and the improvement of the social and economic standards and conditions of work of the people of the world.

As with comrade Sewell, this formulation – crucially its fourth subsection – is celebrated as being a defining socialist moment. Yet, when it was first mooted in November 1917 – amidst the slaughter of inter-imperialist war – Sidney Webb, its Fabian author, had no thought or intention of promoting genuine socialism.

Indeed the Fabian Society had long been known as the quintessential expression of opportunism in the British labour movement. Leaders such as Webb, George Bernard Shaw and William Harcourt, were pro-imperialist, eugenicist and thoroughly elitist. The Fabians wanted Britain to retain its global empire; defective men, women and children were to be dealt with by the means of a “lethal chamber”; and the working class educated in the sprit of their betters. Understandably, Fabian ‘socialism’ was gradualist, managerial and relied on an alliance with enlightened liberals: in other words, we have a variety of bourgeois socialism.

By cynical calculation Webb had three goals in mind.

Firstly, clause four socialism could be used to divert the considerable rank-and-file sympathy that existed for the Russian Revolution into safe, peaceful and exclusively constitutional channels. That did not stop prime minister David Lloyd George from declaring, in his closing speech of the 1918 general election campaign, that the “Labour Party is being run by the extreme pacifist Bolshevik group”. 2)Quoted in R Miliband Parliamentary socialism London 1973, p64n

Secondly, by adopting clause four socialism, the Labour Party could both distinguish itself from the exhausted, divided and rapidly declining Liberal Party and please the trade union bureaucracy. Since the 1890s the TUC had been drawing up various wish lists of what ought to be nationalised: eg, rails, mines, electricity, liquor and land. Clause four socialism also usefully went along with the grain of Britain’s wartime experience. There was steadily expanding state intervention in the economy. Nationalisation was, as a result, widely identified with efficiency, modernisation and beating foreign rivals. It therefore appealed to technocratically minded elements amongst the middle classes.

Thirdly, clause four socialism must be implicitly anti-Marxist. Webb knew the history of the Social Democratic Party in Germany well. And, of course, Karl Marx had famously mocked various passages in its Gotha programme (1875), not least those which declared that every worker should receive a “fair distribution of their proceeds of labour” and that “the proceeds of labour belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society”.3)K Marx and F Engels Collected Works Vol 24, London 1989, p83

Contradictory and vacuous, concluded Marx. What is fair? What about replacement means of production? What about the expansion of production? What about those unable to work? More than that, Marx explained these and other such woolly formulations as unneeded concessions to the followers of Ferdinand Lassalle. His Workers’ programme (1862) called for “an equal right to the undiminished proceeds of labour”. Obviously Webb wanted to give clause four a distinct Lassallean coloration not out of admiration for Lassalle, but because he wanted to distance the Labour Party from Marxism.

Red ribbon

Almost needless to say, clause four was mainly for show. A red ribbon around what was Labourism’s standing programme of social liberalism. In parliament Labour supported Liberal governments and their palliative measures of social reform. Because of its alliance with the Liberal Party, the party even found itself divided over the abolition of the House of Lords and the fight for female suffrage. While a tiny minority – eg, George Lansbury and Keir Hardie – defended the suffragettes and their militant tactics, the majority craved respectability. As Ramsay MacDonald wrote, “The violent methods … are wrong, and in their nature reactionary and anti-social, quite irrespective of vote or no vote.”4)Socialist Review August 1912 – quoted in R Miliband Parliamentary socialism London 1973, p25n

Even if it had been put into effect, clause four socialism remains antithetical to working class self-liberation. Capitalism without capitalists does not count amongst our goals. Railways, mines, land, electricity, etc, would pass into the hands of the British empire state. 5)The Fabians supported the British government in the 1899-1902 Boer War. They justified their stand in a pamphlet, edited by Bernard Shaw, Fabianism and the empire (1900). They did not want Britain to lose out, when it came to the division of the world by the great imperial powers. As might be expected, the Fabians wanted a civilising British empire. The white dominions should be given self-government. However, “for the lower breeds” there should be a “benevolent bureaucracy” of British civil servants and military officials guiding them to “adulthood” (G Foote The Labour Party’s political thought London 1985, p29-30)

Capitalist owners would be bought out – eased into a comfortable retirement. But, as they vacate the field of production, a new class of state-appointed managers enters the fray. In terms of the division of labour, they substitute for the capitalists. The mass of the population, meanwhile, remain exploited wage-slaves. They would be subject to same hierarchal chain of command, the same lack of control, the same mind-numbing routine.

Marxism, by contrast, is based on an altogether different perspective. If it is to win its freedom the working class must overthrow the existing state. But – and this is crucial – in so doing the proletariat “abolishes itself as a proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state”. 6)K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 25, London 1987, p267 Capitalist relations of production and the whole bureaucratic state apparatus are swept away. Every sphere of social life sees control exercised from below. All positions of command are elected or chosen by lot and are regularly rotated. Hierarchy is flattened. Alienation is overcome. What is produced and how it is produced radically alters too. Need, not exchange, is the ruling principle. And alone such an association of producers creates the benign conditions which allows for the full development of each and every individual.

Admittedly, the old clause four resulted from progressive political developments. The Russian Revolution has already been mentioned. But there is also the formation of the Socialist International, the world-wide celebration of May Day, the considerable influence of the socialist press, the increased size of trade union membership, the formation of the shop stewards network and the election of a growing body of Labour MPs. Then there were the horrors of World War I. Because of all this, and more, capitalism was widely considered abhorrent, outmoded and doomed. Socialism more and more became the common sense of the organised working class. 7)‘Common sense’ being the continuously changing but widely held outlook of various classes and strata. Gramsci called it “folklore of philosophy”, because it exists “halfway between folklore properly speaking and the philosophy, science and economics of the specialists” (A Gramsci Selections from the prison notebooks London 1973, p326n)

By contrast, Fabian socialism meant arguing against unconstitutional methods, slowly expanding the provision of social welfare and persuading all classes of the benefits that would come to the nation, if the commanding heights of the economy were put in state hands. In other words, the Fabians consciously sought to ameliorate the mounting contradictions between labour and capital … and thus put off socialism. Fredrick Engels branded the Fabians as a:

band of careerists who understand enough to realise the inevitability of the social revolution, but could not possibly entrust this gigantic task to the raw proletariat alone … Fear of revolution is their guiding principle. 8)K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 50, New York 2004, p83

And, needless to say, the years 1918-20 witnessed army mutinies, colonial uprisings, a massive strike wave and brutal Black and Tan oppression meted out in Ireland.

Interestingly, before 1918 attempts to commit the Labour Party to socialism met with mixed success. The 1900 founding conference rejected the “class war” ultimatum tabled by the Social Democratic Federation. 9)Though it had two guaranteed seats on the LRC’s leading body, the Social Democratic Federation disaffiliated in August 1901. Despite that conference voted to support the “socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange”. The next year a socialistic motion moved by Bruce Glasier was defeated. In 1903 another socialistic motion fell, this time without debate. Two years later conference passed a motion with the exact same wording. In 1907 the previous endorsement of socialism was overturned at the prompting of … Bruce Glasier. Despite that the same conference agreed to set the goal of “socialising the means of production, distribution and exchange”. 10)See RT McKenzie British political parties London 1963, pp465-71.

The explanation for the seesawing doubtless lies with electoral expediency. While most in the party leadership considered themselves socialists of a kind, they were mortally afraid of losing out in the polls. What appeared acceptable to likely voters – in other words, the popular press – set their limits. So, instead of fearlessly presenting a bold socialist vision and building support on that basis, Sidney Webb, Arthur Henderson, Ramsay MacDonald and co chased the vagaries of popularity. With the growth of militancy and radicalism, socialist declarations were considered a sure way of adding to Labour’s ranks in parliament. 11)Labour gained 15 seats in the December 1918 general election, making it the fourth largest party in parliament after Bonar Law’s Tories, Lloyd George’s Coalition Liberals and Sinn Féin. It had a total of 57 MPs. Forming a government being both a means and an end.

Nevertheless, the Blairising of clause four in 1995 was hugely symbolic – the ground having been laid by the Eurocommunists and their Marxism Today journal. Socialism was declared dead and buried, the working class a shrinking minority. Only if Labour accepted capitalism and reached out to the middle classes would it have a future. Neil Kinnock, John Smith and finally Tony Blair dragged the party ever further to the right. Out went the commitment to unilateral disarmament, out went the commitment to comprehensive education, out went the commitment to full employment, out went the commitment to repeal the Tories’ anti-trade union laws, out went the commitment to “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”.

By sacrificing the old clause four in the full glare of publicity, Blair and his New Labour clique sought to appease the establishment, the City, the Murdoch empire, the global plutocracy. Capitalism would be absolutely safe in their hands. A New Labour government could be relied upon to not even pay lip service to a British version of state capitalism. Leftwingers such as Tony Benn, Dennis Skinner, Diane Abbott and Ken Livingstone protested, trade union leaders grumbled, but the April 1995 special conference voted by 65% in favour of Blair’s clause four.

Needless to say, his version is stuffed full of managerial guff and classless nonsense. Just what one would expect from the architect of New Labour. After all, one of Blair’s big ideas was to replace ‘socialism’ with ‘social-ism’. Another was communitarianism. But, of course, the media glowed with admiration. Crucially, Rupert Murdoch agreed to unleash his attack dogs. Within a few months John Major was almost universally derided as a total incompetent, heading a sleaze-mired government.

Riding high in the opinion polls Blair inaugurated a series of internal ‘reforms’. Conference was gutted. No longer could it debate issues, vote on policy or embarrass the leadership in front of the media. Instead the whole thing became a rubber-stamping exercise. Then there were the tightly controlled policy forums, focus groups and the staffing of the party machine with eager young careerists (most on temporary contracts). Blair thereby asserted himself over the national executive committee … considerably reducing its effectiveness in the process.

Calls for a return of the old clause four are therefore perfectly understandable. But why go back to a Fabian past? Instead we surely need to persuade members and affiliates to take up the cause of “replacing the rule of capital with the rule of the working class”. Our socialism would (a) introduce a democratically planned economy, (b) end the ecologically ruinous cycle of production for the sake of production and (c) move towards a stateless, classless, moneyless society that embodies the principle, “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” (see model motion below).

Towards that end our party must be reorganised from top to bottom. A special conference – say in the spring of 2019 – should be called by the NEC with a view to radically overhauling the constitution and rules and undertaking an across-the-board political reorientation.

As everyone knows, Labour members loathe the undemocratic rules and structures put in place by Blair. The joint policy committee, the national policy forums – the whole sorry rigmarole – should be junked. The NEC must be unambiguously responsible for drafting manifestos. And, of course, the NEC needs to be fully accountable to a sovereign conference.

Reclaiming

Real Marxists, not fake Marxists, have never talked of reclaiming Labour. It has never been ours in the sense of being a “political weapon for the workers’ movement”. No, despite the electoral base and trade union affiliations, the Labour Party has been dominated by career politicians and trade union bureaucrats: a distinct social stratum, which in the last analysis serves not the interests of the working class, but the continuation of capitalist exploitation.

Speaking in the context of the need for the newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain to affiliate to the Labour Party, Lenin said this:

… whether or not a party is really a political party of the workers does not depend solely upon a membership of workers, but also upon the men that lead it, and the content of its actions and its political tactics. Only this latter determines whether we really have before us a political party of the proletariat.

Regarded from this – the only correct – point of view, the Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois party, because, although made up of workers, it is led by reactionaries, and the worst kind of reactionaries at that, who act quite in the spirit of the bourgeoisie. It is an organisation of the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically dupe the workers with the aid of the British Noskes and Scheidemanns [the German social chauvinist murderers of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht – JC]. 12)VI Lenin CW Vol 31, Moscow 1977, pp257-58

Despite all the subsequent changes,

 this assessment retains its essential purchase. Labour is still a “bourgeois workers’ party”. Of course, once Corbyn was formally announced leader of the Labour Party, on September 12 2015, things became more complex. Labour became a chimera. Instead of a twofold contradiction, we have a threefold contradiction. The left dominates both the top and bottom of the party.

Corbyn is not the equivalent of George Lansbury or Michael Foot – an elementary mistake. They were promoted by the labour and trade union bureaucracy after a severe crisis: namely Ramsay MacDonald’s treachery and James Callaghan’s winter of discontent. Corbyn’s leadership is, in the first instance, the result of an historic accident. The ‘morons’ from the Parliamentary Labour Party lent him their nomination. After that, however, Corbyn owes everything to the mass membership. Those already in and those coming in.

That has given us the possibility of attacking the rightwing domination of the middle – the councillors, Iain McNicol and his national and regional apparatus, the Parliamentary Labour Party – from below and above. No wonder the more astute minds of the bourgeois commentariat can be found expressing profound worries over the prospects of Labour being dominated by leftwing socialists, militant trade unions and Marxists.

Of course, there is the danger that Corbyn will be drawn into yet further rotten compromises. We have already seen Trident renewal, a ‘jobs and the economy’ Brexit and the disgraceful silence over the ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt. In other words, it would be fatal for the leftwing majority at a grassroots level to content itself with playing a support role for Corbyn. Nor should the role of the left be to provide a counterweight to the rightwing pressure on Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott.

No, the left needs to fight for its own aims and principles.

 

Model motion

This branch/CLP notes that this year marks the centenary of the adoption of clause four by the Labour Party.

The old clause four was drafted by the Fabian leader, Sidney Webb, in order to divert the considerable rank-and-file sympathy that existed for the Russian Revolution into safe, peaceful and exclusively constitutional channels. Clause four was managerial, statist and predicated on the continuation of wage-slavery. It had nothing to do with putting an end to capitalism and bringing about the socialist transformation of society.

This branch/CLP notes that, by sacrificing the old clause four in the full glare of publicity, Tony Blair and his New Labour clique sought to appease the establishment, the City, the Murdoch empire, the global plutocracy. Capitalism would be absolutely safe in their hands. A New Labour government could be relied upon not even to pay lip service to a British version of state capitalism.

The Labour Party has been transformed by the influx of tens of thousands of new members and the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader. This branch/CLP therefore believes that the time is ripe to commit the party to the following, genuinely socialist, version of clause four.

1. Labour is the federal party of the working class. We strive to bring all trade unions, cooperatives, socialist societies and leftwing groups and parties under our banner. We believe that unity brings strength.

2. Labour is committed to replacing the rule of capital with the rule of the working class. Socialism introduces a democratically planned economy, ends the ecologically ruinous cycle of production for the sake of production and moves towards a stateless, classless, moneyless society that embodies the principle, “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. Alone such benign conditions create the possibility of every individual fully realising their innate potentialities.

3. Towards that end Labour commits itself to achieving a democratic republic. The standing army, the monarchy, the House of Lords and the state sponsorship of the Church of England must go. We support a single-chamber parliament, proportional representation and annual elections.

4. Labour seeks to win the active backing of the majority of people and forming a government on this basis.

5. We shall work with others, in particular in the European Union, in pursuit of the aim of replacing capitalism with working class rule and socialism.

This branch/CLP calls for this version of clause four to be included as part of Labour’s constitution at the earliest opportunity.

[For trade unions: This branch/conference calls upon the union to campaign within the Labour Party at all levels for this version of clause four to be included as part of Labour’s constitution at the earliest opportunity.]

References

References
↑1 As are Socialist Appeal’s old comrades in the Socialist Party in England and Wales. After the 1991 split in the Militant Tendency, the minority around Ted Grant, Alan Woods and Rob Sewell became Socialist Appeal. The majority – around Peter Taaffe, Tony Mulhearn, Hannah Sell and Dave Nellist – evolved through Militant Labour and became SPEW in 1997. Needless to say, comrade Nellist – former Labour MP for Coventry South East and nowadays national chair of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, insists that the 1918 clause four must be “reinstated” (Coventry Telegraph August 19 2011
↑2 Quoted in R Miliband Parliamentary socialism London 1973, p64n
↑3 K Marx and F Engels Collected Works Vol 24, London 1989, p83
↑4 Socialist Review August 1912 – quoted in R Miliband Parliamentary socialism London 1973, p25n
↑5 The Fabians supported the British government in the 1899-1902 Boer War. They justified their stand in a pamphlet, edited by Bernard Shaw, Fabianism and the empire (1900). They did not want Britain to lose out, when it came to the division of the world by the great imperial powers. As might be expected, the Fabians wanted a civilising British empire. The white dominions should be given self-government. However, “for the lower breeds” there should be a “benevolent bureaucracy” of British civil servants and military officials guiding them to “adulthood” (G Foote The Labour Party’s political thought London 1985, p29-30
↑6 K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 25, London 1987, p267
↑7 ‘Common sense’ being the continuously changing but widely held outlook of various classes and strata. Gramsci called it “folklore of philosophy”, because it exists “halfway between folklore properly speaking and the philosophy, science and economics of the specialists” (A Gramsci Selections from the prison notebooks London 1973, p326n
↑8 K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 50, New York 2004, p83
↑9 Though it had two guaranteed seats on the LRC’s leading body, the Social Democratic Federation disaffiliated in August 1901.
↑10 See RT McKenzie British political parties London 1963, pp465-71.
↑11 Labour gained 15 seats in the December 1918 general election, making it the fourth largest party in parliament after Bonar Law’s Tories, Lloyd George’s Coalition Liberals and Sinn Féin. It had a total of 57 MPs.
↑12 VI Lenin CW Vol 31, Moscow 1977, pp257-58
Anti-Semitism, Democracy and the Labour Party, Witch-hunts and expulsions

NEC readmits leftwingers

But hopes that this might mark the beginning of the end of the witch-hunt could be premature, warns Carla Roberts

One of the biggest problems the Labour Party has today is its lack of a media outlet. Apart from the occasional email and snazzily produced video, we receive very little unfiltered, unbiased news from Jeremy Corbyn.

Having said that, it is, of course, far from certain that he and his allies would indeed always be prepared to share important decisions and developments with the membership. Take the last meeting of the party’s national executive committee, on January 23 in London – its first meeting since its expansion following the election of three pro-Corbyn members. We all know of the decision of the NEC to request a “pause” in the housing development in Haringey (we will come that later). But apparently the meeting also took the decision to readmit a number of members previously suspended or expelled from the party. An important and potentially very positive development, that we were informed of through an acidy skewed report in The Sunday Times:

A holocaust denier and a leading member of Militant during its takeover of Liverpool council are among a first wave of expelled hard-left activists who have been readmitted to the Labour Party. Activists have been allowed to rejoin despite still belonging to organisations ‘proscribed’ by Labour – including a Trotskyist group, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. Others stood against Labour for hard-left parties as recently as 2016.1)The Sunday Times February 4

Clearly, the information was leaked by a rightwinger on the NEC, with the intention of inflicting damage on Jeremy Corbyn. There are no official reports or records of these decisions to be found anywhere. In fact, we still do not know how many members have actually been suspended since Corbyn’s election (and how many remain suspended) or how many have been expelled for ‘supporting’ non-Labour organisations. The Times last week wrote that the party “had to suspend 18 members for anti-Semitism”.2)The Times February 2
 If this figure is true, that immediately begs the question: how on earth can the right can get away with continuing to claim that anti-Semitism is a huge problem in the party?

We also do not know if The Sunday Times is correct when it claims that “the appointment of leftwing members to review leftwing activists’ membership appeals was part of an understanding that would allow centrist members to review their own allies’ disciplinary cases”. It seems rather unlikely that the right of the party – which, of course, initiated the expulsion and suspension of so many leftwing members – would now simply leave everything to the pro-Corbyn NEC left to deal with. Also, how many disciplinary cases are there against “centrist” members? Not many, presumably. But we have to guess here, of course.

Even the latest, extensive report sent out by veteran NEC leftie Pete Willsman (Campaign for Labour Party Democracy) does not mention any of this. We cannot even be sure if the January 23 decisions on disciplinary matters are in any way unusual, as we do not know how many cases have been dealt with at previous meetings.

The Sunday Times (and those leaking to it) does, however, present the decisions of the meeting as highly unusual, as the outcome apparently “shows the extent of the resurgent left’s control over the party after recent elections to its governing body, where Momentum candidates won a ‘clean sweep’ of new positions”.

With a bit of detective work, we can gather that the NEC on January 23 decided that the membership requests from three applicants should come “under NEC review”: They are Ken Livingstone’s “race tsar”, Lee Jasper, who stood against the Labour Party for George Galloway’s Respect in 2012; Kingsley Abrams, who stood for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in the 2015 general election; and a man convicted of fraud in 1981, for which he served a seven-year sentence.

The NEC also decided to reinstate one member suspended for anti- Semitism (under certain conditions – see below) and that the membership applications of two previously expelled activists should be accepted. Here are the cases the NEC dealt with :

Alan Fogg was a Labour councillor in Liverpool, when he was expelled from the party in 1985 for supporting the Militant Tendency (today’s Socialist Party). He stood for Tusc in the 2016 local elections. The acceptance of his membership application is good news for a number of leftwingers who have been denied membership on the grounds that they have stood for Tusc or Left Unity. It is also an indication that Lee Jasper and Kingsley Abrams will probably be reinstated, too. Good.

Author Mike Sivier, according to The Times, is a “holocaust denier” and was suspended last year for “comments about Jews and Zionism”:

On his website, Sivier, 48, said it “may be entirely justified” to say Tony Blair had been “unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisors”. He also said he was “not pretending it was a big problem” if Jews were omitted from a list of holocaust survivors, and claimed “I’m not going to comment” on whether thousands or millions of Jews died in the holocaust, as “I don’t know”.

Mike Sivier has commented at length on the “libellous article” and, while this writer did not have the time to investigate the whole case or all of the man’s writings, it seems pretty clear that his few words above – which have been taken from a single Facebook thread and seem to form the entire case against him – were presented to the Labour Party by the truly vile ‘Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’ out of context, out of sequence and in a seriously misleading way.

Take his most problematic comments about the holocaust – I mean, how can you pretend not to know about it? Sivier explains the context: a Facebook conversation with somebody called “Ben”, who seemed intent on setting him up. Ben sent him a link to an article in the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s publication Workers’ Liberty, which stated:

In 2008, the SWP issued an explanation of the holocaust that referred to “thousands” (not ‘millions’) of victims and omitted any reference to Jews. Whether this was ‘organised’ or ‘just a mistake’ seems irrelevant.

Workers’Liberty featured alongside it a picture of a scruffy Socialist Worker petition against the “Nazi BNP”. And one of the points on the petition does indeed read: “They [the BNP] deny the holocaust, where thousands of LGBT people, trade unionists and disabled people were slaughtered.” Sivier explains:

I responded: “I’m not going to comment on ‘thousands’ instead of ‘millions’, because I don’t know” – meaning, of course, I don’t know why the SWP had said that. I have always used the ‘high’ figure of six million Jews who were killed in the Nazi holocaust. Perhaps your reporter should have read my recent articles on Holocaust Memorial Day before typing that reference into his piece? Or, indeed, any of my articles.

Clearly, this man is no David Irving, problematic formulations like the “‘high’ figure” above not withstanding. Understandably, the NEC felt it needed to let him back in. According to The Times, “the NEC voted by 12 to 10 to issue Sivier a ‘warning’, but not to expel him, suggesting the new arithmetic on the body had a decisive impact.” Indeed. We also know that Jon Lansman in particular is a firm believer in the anti-Semitism “problem” in the Labour Party, so it is more than doubtful that he would indeed vote for the readmission of somebody who is indeed a “holocaust denier”. We simply presume, of course, that it was the NEC left voting in favour of his readmission, rather than the right – but who knows?

As an aside, we also wonder if the voting figure is correct, seeing as there are 39 members of the NEC and the fact that The Sunday Times got another thing wrong: Sivier has actually not (yet) been readmitted, because he is refusing to attend the NEC-instructed “anti-Semitism awareness training”.

Janine Booth, senior member of the AWL, has seemingly learned nothing from her own expulsion or those of her comrades. On Facebook, she replied “Indeed” to a comment that repeated the description of Mike Sivier as a “holocaust denier”. The writer continued: “Extraordinary to put you in the same article as a holocaust-denier. How utterly appalling. I hope he is not readmitted.” Underneath Janine approvingly posted a tweet by Richard Angell, leader of Progress, who wrote: “Why the leadership on the verge of winning an election would want to be associated with holocaust deniers and the like?” She comments: “Richard Angell (Progress) makes an even stronger connection.”

Well he would, wouldn’t he? No doubt it was his Progress friends on the NEC who leaked the decisions to The Sunday Times – in order, of course, to harm Jeremy Corbyn.

One really has to wonder sometimes about the pro-Zionist AWL. In its blind mission to label everybody on the “fake left” anti-Semitic, it fails to grasp some pretty basic political truths. The witch-hunt against the left in the party has nothing whatsoever to do with wanting to stamp out anti-Semitism, real or imaginary – it has everything to do with weakening Jeremy Corbyn by tainting his supporters on the left. Which is, of course, why the witch-hunt is also directed against members of the AWL.

Janine Booth also proudly posted a tweet by Jeremy Newark, leader of the Jewish Labour Movement, who wrote: “Putting other politics aside, I know that Janine Booth’s readmission means the Labour Party gains a robust and fearless voice against anti-Semitism – much needed right now.”

Her lack of political astuteness (acquired through years of membership in the AWL) aside, we do, of course, welcome Janine’s readmission into the Labour Party. The party should be the home of all socialists and trade unionists – and there will be plenty of members with perhaps even funnier ideas.

Her reinstatement gives some hope that we might be seeing the beginning of the end of the witch-hunt against the Marxist left in the Labour Party.

Her case is, however, quite different to that of the dozens (hundreds?) who have been expelled from the party for their alleged support for groups like Socialist Appeal and Labour Party Marxists. It does, however, highlight how the rules are being used, abused and even ignored, depending on who is applying them and for what reason.

Janine was expelled from Labour in 2003, after having stood as a candidate for the Socialist Alliance in Hackney in the general election of 2001 and the local elections of 2002. She was expelled under rule 2.4.1. A, according to which “anybody who stands for election … in opposition to a Labour candidate shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a party member”. It carries an automatic ban of five years.

She applied to rejoin in 2015, when the (not yet Corbyn-dominated) NEC ruled that it had no objections to her readmission and that it was solely up to her CLP (Hackney South and Shoreditch) to decide on the matter. The CLP “objected on the grounds that (a) I (allegedly) support Tusc and (b) I’m a member of Workers’ Liberty.”

The first accusation is quite funny, of course, because it shows how little the witch-hunters know about the left. The AWL never did more than back a few individual Tusc candidates. She “freely admitted the second, arguing that there are plenty of factions in the Labour Party and that is part of healthy debate”.3)www.janinebooth.com/content/my-exclusion- labour-party A week later, she received an official letter refusing her application to rejoin. It mentioned, however, that she could reapply in two years’ time.

Which Janine did again last year, when once more the NEC ruled that it was up to her CLP to make the decision. This time, the local party agreed – no doubt a reflection of the dramatic political changes in its membership.

Bans and proscriptions

The Sunday Times complains about her re-admittance: “Activists have been allowed to rejoin despite still belonging to organisations proscribed by Labour – including a Trotskyist group, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty.” Further on though, the same article quotes “a senior party source” as saying that the party

no longer recognised the list of proscribed organisations, so people linked to them could not be banned. “There is a debate about whether these existed at points in Labour history,” the source said. “Our view is that they no longer exist.”

Proscribed-Groups-1935 2Labour has not had an official list of proscribed organisations since 1973. In 1930, the party leadership produced its first ‘proscribed list’, squarely aimed at the Communist Party of Great Britain, which included organisations and unions influenced by the CPGB.4)www.labourpains.group.shef.ac.uk/dust In 1939 the NEC added the Socialist League to the list, then in 1942 the Labour Research Department (which had originally been founded in 1912 as the Fabian Research Department, an offshoot of the Fabian Society). In the McCarthyite atmosphere of the 1950s, a few more organisations and publications were added, including Socialist Outlook and the Socialist Labour League (of which Gerry Healy was a leading member).

In 1973, general secretary Ron Hayward abolished the list, because “Difficulties have been experienced in keeping a current record of the many political organisations that are established, many of which are of short life, change their names or merge with other organisations.”5)R Hayward, ‘Discontinuation of the proscribed list’ (circular to secretaries of affiliates and Labour Party organisations, July 1973 In other words, it was not a democratic policy – quite the opposite. The list had been viewed more and more like an entry visa for all those organisations not featured on it.

For the Militant Tendency (today’s Socialist Party in England and Wales), the bureaucrats had to think of a new trick: after various failed attempts to kick it out, in 1982 they proposed the establishment of a register of non- affiliated groups that would be allowed to operate in the Labour Party. Militant was invited to apply – and was rejected. Not a few of its members were expelled over the next few years.

The bans continued. In 1990, a proposal to ban the newspaper Socialist Organiser was confirmed at Labour’s annual conference. In response, the Socialist Organiser Alliance dissolved and in 1992 launched a new grouping: the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty! Some people claim that this means the AWL and the Socialist Party remain the only two organisations that are featured on the (unofficial) list of organisations proscribed by the Labour Party.

Of course, we welcome the news that the list seems no longer to be “recognised”. It has always been a tool of the right to keep the party ‘safe’.

Whose rules?

While Marxists today are not being excluded for membership of explicitly “proscribed” organisations, they are, of course, still being expelled. In the wake of the publication of Tom Watson’s ridiculous ‘Reds under the beds’ dossier of 2016, supporters – and alleged supporters – of LPM, Red Flag and the AWL have received a standard expulsion letter, which reads:

It has been brought to our attention that you have been closely involved with and supported [named organisation], whose programme, principles and policies are not compatible with those of the Labour Party. Chapter 2.I.4.B of the Labour Party’s rules states:

A member of the party who joins and/or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour group or unit of the party … shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a party member” (my emphasis).

The first paragraph does, of course, give the impression that there is – perhaps in some well guarded location – a secret list of dangerous organisations or some sort of overview of banned terms (like ‘revolutionary’) that could explain what makes a group incompatible with the Labour Party.

It seems not. More likely the bureaucrats have been picking and choosing from the rulebook as they see fit. According to the constitution, it does not actually matter if the programme of the organisation you are deemed to be supporting is “incompatible” with that of the Labour Party. Indeed, the organisation in question does not even have to have a programme to lead to the instant expulsion of any “supporter”. The witch-hunters have mangled up 2.4.1.B with rule 1.2.5.A, which deals with organisations wanting to affiliate:

Political organisations not affiliated or associated under a national agreement with the party, having their own programme, principles and policy, or distinctive and separate propaganda, or possessing branches in the constituencies, or engaged in the promotion of parliamentary or local government candidates, or having allegiance to any political organisation situated abroad, shall be ineligible for affiliation to the party (my emphasis).

Neither the AWL, Socialist Appeal, Red Flag nor LPM have applied for affiliation – though we are very much looking forward to the day when socialists organisations can do so again – an absolute necessity in the fight to transform Labour into a real party of the whole class.

It goes without saying that both rules should be abolished (along with a few others!) as part of the long process of transformation ahead of us. According to rule 2.4.1.B, Janine Booth would now have to be expelled again, because she openly admits to being an active member of the AWL.

While it obviously makes sense to stop Labour Party members from standing against the party, rule 2.4.1.B has to go. It is wide open to abuse. Notoriously, Moshé Machover was expelled for having articles published in Labour Party Marxists and the Weekly Worker. That, apparently, was enough to prove his “support” for a non-Labour organisation. After a national campaign, in which dozens of Labour Party branches and CLPs issued statements in opposition, he had to be reinstated within three weeks. How different from the case of Mike Palin, who remains expelled under the same rule – simply for sharing Facebook posts that included a handful of articles from Labour Party Marxists and the Weekly Worker.

All this proves that the problem is not the rules in and of themselves. The problem arises from those in charge of applying them. Of course, we will continue to demand the abolition of the various witch-hunting rules (like 2.4.1.B and 1.2.5.A), but an important part of that fight is to get Labour Party members and branches across the country to protest publicly. The active involvement of the largely pro-Corbyn membership is the best way to aid this necessary transformation – as will continuing pressure from campaigns like Labour Against the Witchhunt.

References

References
↑1 The Sunday Times February 4
↑2 The Times February 2

↑3 www.janinebooth.com/content/my-exclusion- labour-party
↑4 www.labourpains.group.shef.ac.uk/dust
↑5 R Hayward, ‘Discontinuation of the proscribed list’ (circular to secretaries of affiliates and Labour Party organisations, July 1973
Democracy and the Labour Party

Should it be an offence to “intimidate a political candidate”?

Poor MPs and councillors: not only do they have to endure having their speeches being dissected, voting records analysed and actions questioned by the media. Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, they now also get plenty of ‘commentary’ from normal folk. And no doubt, much of it is not very nice.

In case you have not guessed,
 I am referring to this week’s announcement by Theresa May that she would engage in consultations on the possible introduction of a specific offence of “intimidating a political candidate”. Rather incredibly,
 she squeezed this move into her much-published speech on the 100th anniversary of the Representation of People Act, which gave all men over 21 and some women (those over 30 and “with property qualifications”) the right to vote and be elected to parliament. (It took until 1928 for women to be granted the same voting rights as men.)

Like most newspapers, May falsely claimed that the introduction of the legislation in 1918 was the result almost entirely of the campaign by the militant suffragettes, ignoring not only the labour movement and the far larger and peaceful “suffragists”, but also the small matter of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Women’s Social and Political Union in fact suspended its campaign at the beginning of World War I, rallying patriotically behind the British troops (as did the Labour Party, of course). The WSPU formally dissolved in 1917. It was to a large degree the
fear of the ‘red threat’ spreading to western Europe that forced bourgeois leaders across the continent to grant a range of social and political reforms.

May also applauded the “heroism” of the suffragettes, while Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson enthusiastically joined calls by various newspapers (and Jeremy Corbyn) to pardon them all. Home secretary Amber Rudd has since put a damper on this campaign, referring to the militant history of the women as “more complicated”.

Just a bit. Even the most cursory glance at the actions employed by
the women – in line with their motto, “Deeds, not words” – would lead anyone to suspect that the suffragettes would today be vilified as “terrorists” (just like Nelson Mandela was by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s). We wonder how many politicians at the time might have felt “intimidated” by having their windows smashed in or the letterboxes outside parliament firebombed? Suffragettes did not just throw themselves under horses: they also planted bombs outside the bank of England and St Paul’s Cathedral.

Still, Theresa May has been enthusiastically supported by some members of the Parliamentary Labour Party, including, unsurprisingly, 
John Mann and Stella Creasy. Miraculously, their contributions
to this week’s – closed – meeting
of the PLP made their way into
the bourgeois press. Creasy in particular was as outspoken as ever on the “abuse” she claims to have received – mainly from pro-Corbyn members of her own party, naturally. She will happily jump on Theresa May’s bandwagon if it means she 
can get one over on Jeremy Corbyn. Apparently, “Creasy made an impassioned plea for action, as she detailed how she and her family had been targeted for over 20 months and demanded to know why the party
had allowed suspended members
to continue with misconduct” (my emphasis), writes the Huffington Post.

As the term “misconduct” remains unqualified and undefined (just as “intimidation” is in Theresa May’s plans), it is safe to assume that she is referring to suspended members like Tony Greenstein, David Watson and Jackie Walker simply contacting and/ or criticising her. If anything more had happened, we would surely have been told by now.

Jackie Walker in particular has indeed been trying to contact Stella Creasy for the whole of last week, in order to get her to comment on the now infamous recent tweet by her boyfriend, Dan Fox, a former director of Labour Friends of Israel, which reads: “Jackie Walker – so thick,
 if you tried to drink her through a straw, your ears would bleed.” The story even made it into the Daily Mail, who will happily print Creasy’s anti-Corbyn tirades, but will also have no qualms turning on her when it suits the Mail’s much broader agenda. Needless to say, Theresa May’s dream legislation would not be for the likes of Jackie Walker, who is of course one of the bad guys in this story.

The Huffington Post claims that the PLP meeting also heard MPs criticise the “harassment received by Haringey council’s outgoing leader, Claire Kober, who this weekend revealed she’d been subjected to stalking threats, intimidation and sexist and anti-Semitic abuse”.

Kober is another politician who mixes up “intimidation” and “abuse” with ‘criticism of me’ – in order to damage Jeremy Corbyn and the
left in the party. She feebly tried to explain as much in an interview with the deliciously sceptical Guardian journalist, Decca Aitkenhead:

Why did Kober cite “sexism
and bullying” in her resignation letter? “Well, I don’t think the argument that I’m incompetent would even have been marshalled if I was a man. Because I think it’s incredible – absolutely incredible. I almost wince in saying this, because I’m not trying to say I’m great, but I’m the chair of London councils, I’m the most senior councillor in London, I lead on finance in the Local Government Association nationally, I’ve led
a borough for 10 years – yet the national executive of my party has people in it saying I’m incompe- tent.” She’s sure this would not have been said to a man? “Utterly inconceivable. I cannot for the life of me, in any way, think a man would be bullied in that way.”

This episode beautifully sums up who this type of legislation would be designed to serve – and why: parliamentarians threatened with deselection; councillors criticised for signing one PFI contract after another; politicians expecting to go about their daily business without being criticised for their actions.

Most likely, it will not be implemented any time soon. In truth, it is merely a symbolic gesture by May – which also serves to support the right in the Labour Party in its ongoing civil war against Jeremy Corbyn.

Momentum

Corbynmania and the SPD

Emma Rees and other Momentum employees have been sent to Berlin to help the German youth wing oppose the latest grand coalition, writes Susanne Holstein

(This article first appeared in the Weekly Worker)

The German political system is in crisis: more than four months after the elections of September 24, chancellor Angela Merkel has still not succeeded in putting together a coalition. Never in German history has it taken that long to form a government. Merkel is currently leading a ‘caretaker government’.

It was not a good election for the big parties: both the conservative CDU/CSU and the social democratic SPD suffered bad losses. With 32.9% of the vote, Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU might be the biggest party in parliament, but this represents a loss of 8.6%, compared to the last general election of 2013. The SPD lost 5.2%: Its 20.5% share of the vote is, in fact, its worst ever result. The leftwing Die Linke and the Greens remained stable at 9.2% and 8.9% respectively.

Big winners were the liberal FDP with 10.7% (plus 5.9%) and, most worryingly, the rightwing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which increased its national share from 4.7% to 12.6%. In 2013, both parties narrowly missed the 5% hurdle, which is designed to stop smaller parties from entering parliament.

Initially, the SPD refused to continue in another grand coalition government. Since Merkel became chancellor in 2005, she has been continuously backed by the SPD (only interrupted when the Liberal Democrats temporarily took their place from 2009-13). And the SPD has paid a bitter price for its participation in a government that has been characterised by increasingly precarious working conditions, a worsening of welfare provisions and widespread privatisations: electoral support for the SPD has been steadily decreasing and members have been leaving the party in droves. In 1977, there were over one million; in 2005 590,000 – today, there are only around 440,000 members.

Just after the elections, Merkel tried to form a so-called ‘Jamaica coalition’ with the liberal FDP and the Greens, but the negotiations were ended in November by the FDP, which demanded stricter controls on migration. Eventually, the SPD leadership, under pressure to avoid an unstable minority government, agreed to join another grand coalition – without Merkel having to make any major concessions.

Hot potato

On the most contentious issue, for example, Merkel got exactly what she wanted: a commitment to cap “new migration” at “between 180,000 and 220,000” per year. The word Zuwanderung (migration) is, of course, totally misleading. “Economic migrants” from the rest of Europe, the US, etc, are explicitly excluded from the figure. What is meant here is the number of refugees and asylum-seekers allowed to stay in the country – which includes, contentiously, family members of refugees already in the country, who currently still have the right to join them.

Anybody who enters German territory may apply for asylum and until now the only basis used to decide if the application should be allowed was its ‘merit’ (although the right to stay has been massively eroded in recent years, including through the introduction of rules that saw refugees being sent back to Drittländer – ie, countries they passed through before they got to Germany). But there has never been a cap on their numbers.

This is the same Angela Merkel who welcomed one million refugees into Germany in 2015 – initially, to the entire establishment’s delight at the leader’s ‘morality’, not to mention her economic far-sightedness. After all, the birth rate in Germany is amongst the lowest in the European Union, and the president of the employers association, the BDA, argued that Germany was right to welcome refugees, because “in the next 20 years, we will need a lot more workers than this country can produce”. In his estimate, there are 500,000 “unfilled positions” – most of them not the kind of jobs that Germans are too keen on taking up. Refugees tend to be young, male and eager to work. Perfect fodder for the always-hungry capitalist machine.

But Merkel messed up big time. Very little effort was made and very little money spent on integrating the newcomers. It was down to local volunteers to organise language courses, for example. Famously, 1,000 refugees were housed in the tiny village of Sumte (population: 100). In many places, Syrian families were sent to live in school sports halls – and sports lessons for local children were cancelled indefinitely. In other cities, refugees were housed in empty barracks or deserted houses in troubled and neglected neighbourhoods. Add to that the effects of decades of failed integration of the millions of ‘guest workers’, especially from Turkey, and you have the perfect conditions for the shit to hit the fan.

And indeed, depravation, crime and trouble ensued, and we saw the rise of the ridiculously named organisation Pegida (‘Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident’) and the growth of its electoral equivalent, the AfD. At first, Merkel – no doubt keenly aware of the needs of German capital and clinging on to her cherished image as the caring Mutti der Nation – refused to change her so-called ‘open-door policy’ on migration. Which was always anything but, of course: refugees from, say, Somalia or those pesky ‘economic refugees’ always had as little chance of making it into Germany as Britain.

But the rise of the AfD has certainly scared the whole political establishment and the 2017 election was a brutal wake-up call for Merkel, who quickly changed her tune and called for the cap on refugee numbers. While the SPD leadership now agrees with her figure of around 200,000, many SPD members are unhappy about joining another grand coalition, at least on this particular political basis.

At a special SPD delegate summit on January 20, the proposal to join such a government won the day by 362 to 279 votes. Speakers opposing the deal got standing ovations, especially Kevin Kühnert, leader of the SPD youth wing, Jusos. Dozens of delegates held up big signs, declaring “GroKo: Nein” (GroKo stands for Große Koalition = grand coalition). According to Kühnert,

The election result of September 24 has clearly shown that a continuation of GroKo is not desired by most people. There would be a continuation of bad compromises on various issues that don’t serve anybody. We will not support that. The SPD needs to renew itself and many people are joining to help us with that process.

This narrower than expected vote and the vocal anger of many members has left the SPD leadership seriously rattled: after all, the final coalition agreement will have to be approved in an all-members ballot in February. In between agreeing to the basic deal on January 12 and the start of the more detailed negotiations on January 28, the SPD leadership suddenly remembered that in fact they want more than was actually agreed. For a start, there should be “more relaxed” rules for those migrants joining family members already in Germany. The SPD leadership also wants a legal restriction on the increasing use of short-term employment contracts and a “start of the end” of the two-tier health system – ie, the abolition of private health insurance. As we go to press, the negotiations have stalled over the hot potato of migration.

The negotiations are scheduled to last until around Easter – ie, SPD members will have to vote on the deal without seeing the ‘improvements’ the leadership is now claiming to be fighting for.

To the rescue?

It is nothing new for the Jusos to oppose a grand coalition. They also called on SPD members to oppose the deal of 2013, which was eventually approved by 76% of SPD members. Things look rather different this time, however. Many members believe that another GroKo could kill the party off altogether. And, according to a recent poll, only 26% of the German population favours one. With this in mind, the Jusos have launched a campaign to get people to temporarily join the SPD – mainly in order to vote against the deal. They are using the slogan, ‘A tenner against the grand coalition’, €10 being the cost of two months’ membership. Apparently, within the first 24 hours more than 1,700 new members joined.

And, according to The Times, “The Young Socialists are now modelling themselves on Momentum … Activists were briefed by Emma Rees … during her two-day visit to Germany” last week. Rees (pictured), who resigned as Momentum’s national coordinator in October 2017, is now mysteriously back in the role,which was still being publicly advertised in November 2017. Funnily enough, her visit has not made it into the German press, so we must remain cautious about the accuracy of who actually invited Rees or who she met in Berlin (The Guardian for example describes Rees as “one of Momentum’s four founding members”… who are the other three supposed to be?).

Nevertheless, such international cooperation is interesting. Politically, of course, it is absolutely vital that the left across Europe (and beyond) works together and learns from each other. Despite – or maybe even because of – Brexit, capital across Europe is uniting on an ever closer basis. So must we. But there is pathetically little cooperation amongst the socialist left in Europe.

How much the Jusos can and should learn from Momentum and its owner, Jon Lansman, is, however, debatable. His undemocratic methods, his political collapse when it comes to the fight for issues like mandatory selection and his bending over backwards to the pro-Israeli lobby make him and his organisation a very bad role model indeed.

We should remember that it was not Momentum that got Jeremy Corbyn to where he is now. His election to party leader was made possible by a handful of ‘moderate’ knuckleheads in the Parliamentary Labour Party, who lent him their vote to get him onto the ballot paper. And in terms of the ongoing fight to democratise the Labour Party, Momentum has played a lamentable role. It has all but joined the witch-hunt against the left in the party. It treats its members with contempt, giving them no right to vote on anything. It does not organise the left in the party politically, but merely regards them as voting fodder, to be turned on and off according to need.

When there is a successful challenge to the right in the party, as we are currently witnessing in Haringey, this is entirely down to local party members. Many are inspired by what Jeremy Corbyn stands for (or what they think he stands for) – but they are not being organised by Momentum nationally.

Differences

But clearly something is moving in the German SPD and that is very much to be welcomed. Like any half-decent youth organisation, the Jusos are firmly on the left of the SPD leadership and their politics are indeed quite similar to those of Jeremy Corbyn and his allies who run Momentum. They are all soft social democrats.

But there are obvious and important differences between the situation of the SPD and the Labour Party, which explain why, unfortunately, the SPD is probably not going to experience the same kind of major shift that Labour is currently undergoing, no matter how necessary and overdue it is. There are three key differences.

Firstly, the socio-political basis of the Labour Party is very different to that of the SPD. In Germany, unions do not affiliate to political parties, mainly for historic reasons. In Germany the workers’ movement first formed the SPD (and its forerunners), which was then instrumental in founding several unions.

Of course, there is a massive crossover between German unions and the SPD, especially in their common bureaucracy, and both have been haemorrhaging members on a similar level. But German unions do not exercise the same kind of influence over the SPD as British unions have had over the Labour Party. The SPD, while far more leftwing than the Labour Party in its early life – Lenin thought it was the model for Social Democratic parties everywhere – has moved steadily and almost without internal opposition to the right.

Because of its lack of a formal relationship with the unions, it is not a ‘bourgeois workers’ party’ in the same sense that the Labour Party is. Here, affiliated unions can send voting delegates to Constituency Labour Parties and even help pick prospective parliamentary candidates. The political and organisational support of, for example, Unite leader Len McCluskey for Corbyn has also been crucial over the last two years, but there is no major union support for any leftwing SPD leader or potential leader.

Secondly, Martin Schulz is no Jeremy Corbyn. Yes, he is to the left of some of his predecessors and has criticised the ongoing draconian attacks on employment rights and the welfare system (‘Agenda 2010’), which were introduced by Gerhard Schröder in 2003. In sharp contrast to other mainstream politicians in Germany, Schulz is also an occasional critic of some of the actions of the Israeli government. Some 30,000 people joined the party following his election in March 2017.

But the euphoria did not last long. Schulz might have shone for a few short months, as he spoke passionately in favour of European integration – just after the Brexit vote, that resonated well in Germany. But he has since come out as just another tame, mainstream SPD leader who wants power at all costs. Including in a grand coalition.

As opposed to the Labour Party, which elects its leader in a ballot of all members and supporters only when there is a challenger to the post or “a vacancy”, German parties are required by law to elect their leader at least every two years. The SPD currently does so at its annual delegate conference. Theoretically, that should make it easier for a leftwinger to get in, but, quite frankly, there is no agency capable of organising such a move. Even if plans by Schulz for a Labour-style all-members ballot for the leader come to fruition,there is currently no real force pushing for a leftwing challenger. That can, of course, all change, and relatively quickly at that.

Thirdly – and perhaps most crucially – Germany already has a formally leftwing party, Die Linke, which won 9.2% of the national vote in September. There is, in truth, very little that distinguishes its programme from that of the soft left Jusos (and there is widespread cooperation between the two forces on the ground). Should the mainstream of the SPD move to the left even a little – for example, while refusing to join the grand coalition – it would easily encroach into Die Linke’s political territory.

Die Linke is far from a consistent socialist alternative. In the federal states where it is big enough to govern, it does so with relish, enforcing draconian cuts on the population like any bourgeois government would do. The only reason it still looms relatively large is because of its history as the former ruling ‘official’ communist party of East Germany. It still polls around 20% in regional elections there and it has replaced the SPD as the real Volkspartei. It will remain difficult for the SPD to win over Die Linke supporters in the east.