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Democracy and the Labour Party

June 8 – the end of Corbynism?

If a week in politics is a long time, then the June 8 general election is very far off. All sorts of imponderables could be waiting for us between now and polling day. As the quotable Tory Harold Macmillan (purportedly) responded to a journalist who had asked him what is most likely to blow incumbent governments off course – “Events, my dear boy, events”. Who knows what could derail the government party over the coming weeks? We can speculate, but we can’t know.

However, there are three things we are currently certain of:

  1. May was always going to opt for this snap election, despite the naïve complacency of many – left and right – who should have known better. We can take the PM’s own explanation with an unhealthily large pinch of salt – ie, that she settled on it during a short holiday, wrestling with the options as she wandered lonely among the Welsh hills. So, the blather about the difficulties of working with a narrow parliamentary majority or the need for a reinvigorated mandate for Brexit need not detain us long. In fact, and at the risk of outraging the Merseyside readers of this bulletin, The Sun (April 19) calls it right: the election and the anticipated Tory landslide will be a “blue murder” intended to “kill off Labour”.
    So, the coming general election is an expression of the Tories’ relative strength, not their weakness. Our more delusional comrades on revolutionary left who are telling us that May has actually been forced to call this election “because of the government’s weakness in face of a rising tide of anger in British society” perhaps fool themselves, but very few others outside their own ranks.
  2. Evidence that a Labour electoral culling is a realistic outcome is provided not simply in the dire poll results, but also ‘pitter-patter-splash’ noises of a small swarm of rats vacating HMS Labour. 13 Labour MPs have announced that they not be standing again on June 8. Some have given blandly neutral explanations. But, let’s recall the carefully choreographed resignation of two thirds of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet in 2016 and the same year’s 172-40 ‘no confidence’ vote by Labour MPs in the man’s leadership. Are these treacherous elements now happy to fight for Corbyn as this country’s next prime minister? What on earth are they going to say when a question along these lines is put to them by some reasonably astute media hacks?
    Whatever energy Corbyn brought to the launch of the campaign, the party he leads is fatally split and the acid drip of rightwing criticism continues. Lord Kinnock has told BBC Radio 5 Live (April 21) that he is “gloomy about my prospects of living to see another Labour government” and a member of Corbyn’s front bench, John Healey, has “refused to say whether he would mention the leader in his election literature”!The calamitous result of this wrecking operation is likely to be evident in the result of the May 4 local elections, where Labour is expected to lose around 125 council seats. Ominous omens abound for Corbyn.
  1. The Corbyn-McDonnell strategy of conciliation of the party’s right wing, supplemented with the occasional plaintive call for unity, has been an unmitigated disaster.A one-sided war rages in Labour. Leftwing activists are suspended and expelled on trump-charges of anti-Semitism or support for other left parties deemed verboten, their rights as party members flagrantly trampled over in the process. Meanwhile, the Jon Lansman-coordinated coup in Momentum (actively abetted by the likes of Corbyn, McDonnel and Abbott) has demobilised, demoralised and scattered precisely those forces who could have been deployed to counter-attack in the party. Unsurprisingly, reports reach this publication of dramatic declines in the numbers attending Momentum meetings nationally and at the national organisation’s damp-squid Birmingham “inaugural conference” in March. (Unequivocally stamped by LPM’s Carla Roberts as “without doubt the worst leftwing event I have ever attended.”)
Anti-Semitism, Witch-hunts and expulsions

London Communist Forum April 9: Defend Ken Livingstone!

Sunday April 9, 5pm, The Calthorpe Arms, 252 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8JR.

Co-sponsored by LPM and CPGB

Speakers:
Mike Macnair, CPGB
Tony Greenstein, Jewish anti-Zionist

The media fuelled furore over Livingstone’s (admittedly clumsy) remarks on the limited collaboration between some Zionist organisations and the Nazis in the early years of the fascist regime is a profoundly distasteful provocation against the left of the Labour Party. The historical truth is that the Nazis initially explored different policies to deal with Germany’s Jewish ‘problem’. These included social and financial pressures on Jews to emigrate, forced relocation, evictions, measure designed to pauperise the population and confiscate their possessions … and some degree of collaboration with Zionist groups to promote emigration: http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1112/why-ken-livingstone-was-right/

So, Livingstone’s comments were clumsy and historically hazy – but not fantasy, still less ‘anti-Semitic’. The continuing ‘anti-Semitism scandal’ is nothing but the continuation of the right-wing’s coup against Corbyn. Which makes it all the more regrettable that he still choses to follow a path of appeasing the right.

Come along to discuss this complex question.

Momentum

Wasted opportunities galore

Carla Roberts of Labour Party Marxists was appalled by Momentum’s ‘inaugural conference’ and its Duracell bunnies

Momentum’s March 25 “inaugural conference” was without doubt the worst leftwing event I have ever attended. I do not often agree with bourgeois journalists’ take on the left, but a sarky scribe from The Independent does sum up the day quite neatly:

Tom Watson and his allies who fear Momentum should relax … They’re not capable of plotting. In a draughty old, cold ex-factory in Birmingham, no policies were being formulated – far from it – beyond the usual devotionals for Corbyn.1)www.independent.co.uk/voices/momentum-conference-corbynism-corbynites-labour-party-birmingham-jeremy-corbyn-john-mcdonnell-a7650191.html

It really is astounding that the best an organisation with 22,000 members and a database of over 250,000 supporters should come up with is such a lame, apolitical and tiny gathering. Who would have thought 18 months ago that the incredible energy, enthusiasm and pure joy created by the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party would be so criminally wasted?

Momentum might claim that 600 people attended the event in a freezing former factory a mile from the nearest train station in Birmingham. But unless they counted people twice as they went in and then left again (for quite a few not a great deal of time passed between those two moments), they have clearly applied the creative counting method so beloved by sects like the Socialist Worker Party. No more than 350 people shivered in the graffiti-covered hall with its (literally) shitty toilet facilities.

Socialist Resistance – which in its usual Johnny-come-lately fashion only recently and only half-heartedly turned its back on Left Unity in order to join the Labour Party and Momentum – has published a rather hyped-up report, according to which there were about 500 people present, which meant “it was standing room only at the plenary sessions”. But the author fails to mention that the organisers had only put out 100 chairs.

Maybe some young, trendy east London hipsters would have felt at home here. But virtually the only young people present were the two dozen or so Momentum employees and volunteers running the thing. For the rest, I would say, that 50-plus was the average age. On paper there might be many young Momentum members, but visit any local Momentum meeting and you will see who is really active within it.

No Grassroots

Mind you, the ‘opposition’ to Jon Lansman’s autocratic rule is not faring much better, I am afraid to say. The steering committee of Grassroots Momentum has so far not managed to meet and it looks like its first gathering will not happen before April 22 – a whopping six weeks after it was elected. And, although the SC continues to squabble over such weighty issues as how long its lunch break will be, a majority did manage to agree on one thing: not to make an organised intervention on March 25. There might have only been 350 people there, but clearly not all of them were loyal and unthinking Lansman supporters. They could and should have been engaged with, at the very least by handing out a leaflet, intervention from the floor and perhaps at a fringe meeting. There certainly was plenty of political space to fill.

But only three SC members (Tina Werkmann, Simon Hannah and Nick Wrack) agreed with the proposal to produce a leaflet, based on the decisions agreed at the Grassroots conference. The rest of the SC opposed or did not comment. This is probably going to be the only time the opposing sides on the SC (anti-Zionism campaigner Jackie Walker and the pro-Zionist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty) will agree on anything.

At the Momentum ‘conference’ itself, the day began and ended with a plenary session held in a big hall in the centre of the factory, with three one-hour-long workshops sandwiched in between. All the rooms for the group sessions had at least one wall missing – curtains were used as substitutes. This meant the noise from other sessions and the stalls area made it difficult to hear people speak.

Hope not Hate presenting a workshop at Momentum’s “conference”

And, when you did hear them, you often wish you had not. A majority of the workshops were run by outside organisations, without being labelled as such. For example, Labour Party Marxists supporters attended workshops that were run by The World Transformed, Talk Socialism and even Hope Not Hate. They were clearly based on ‘training sessions’ that these organisations run on a relatively frequent basis – utterly devoid of any real politics, focusing only on ‘method’ and run by young, overly eager people who reminded me of Duracell bunnies.

They included icebreakers like telling the person sitting next to you what you had for breakfast, shouting “one-word answers” about what you liked or disliked about the European Union ‘leave’ or ‘remain’ campaigns and writing “objectives” on paper plates, then sticking post-it notes onto a flipchart grid. You get the drift. It was really, really grim. Worst of all, any of these workshops could just as easily have been presented to Progress or Labour First.

Turn the other cheek

The speeches in the plenary sessions were hardly more inspiring, although I suppose you could say they did contain some politics – of a certain type.

Speaking in the first plenary, shadow chancellor John McDonnell was – as is now unfortunately the norm for him – more than underwhelming. He claimed that he and Corbyn had transformed the Labour Party into “an anti-austerity party”. I do not know how he squares that with the fact that thousands of Labour Party councillors up and down the country are enforcing the draconian cuts imposed by the Tory government – under the clear instruction of Corbyn himself, who wrote to them in December 2015, asking them to continue to set “balanced budgets” and not rock the local government boat. 2)www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2015/12/jeremy-corbyn-warns-labour-councils-not-set-no-cuts-budgets

McDonnell went on to complain that he was being hammered by the media, “although I’m putting forward the same things that Ed Miliband stood for”. He is right, of course – his ideas for a “national investment bank”, a “cap” on energy price rises and “more council houses” are hardly radical. But worse was to come.

He reserved much of his speech for the need to “work in unity” with the right in the Labour Party and thought it was “striking to see members of Momentum and Progress putting their differences to one side and campaigning together for Labour”. He said he wants Momentum members to “work comradely with everybody else, listen to their views patiently”. He added:

Many people are fed up with all the divisions and splits. I am fed up with all the divisions and splits. If I can offer to have tea with Peter Mandelson, then surely we can all work together in Labour Party branches, whatever groups and political backgrounds we come from. And when you are being provoked, then meet this provocation with comradeship and solidarity.There is so little that divides us politically. There were hardly any political differences in the leadership campaigns, for example.

So there you have it. A statement of utter capitulation to the pro-capitalist Labour right. Such a course totally rules out campaigning for the kind of programme needed to transform the Labour Party into a weapon of and for the working class. A programme that would, of course, include the mandatory reselection of MPs (needed to curb the power of the right), rescinding the barring and expulsion of thousands of leftwingers, the abolition of the compliance unit, making conference Labour’s sovereign body, etc.

Instead, everything has to be subordinated to winning the next election – no matter on what programme of half-baked reforms. We in Labour Party Marxists believe that, unless we are in a position to implement the full minimum programme of Marxism, socialists can achieve much more when we organise as a strong party of opposition. We envisage the taking of power not just in Britain in isolation, but as part of a worldwide movement of working class self-liberation that has Europe as its decisive point of departure.

References

References
↑1 www.independent.co.uk/voices/momentum-conference-corbynism-corbynites-labour-party-birmingham-jeremy-corbyn-john-mcdonnell-a7650191.html
↑2 www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2015/12/jeremy-corbyn-warns-labour-councils-not-set-no-cuts-budgets
Democracy and the Labour Party, The right, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Tom Watson inflicts further damage on Labour Party

There is a real danger that after triggering article 50 Theresa May will follow through with a snap general election, writes Eddie Ford (this article first appeared in the Weekly Worker)

Looking to the future, Tom Watson has shifted the right’s focus from a direct attack on Jeremy Corbyn and his leadership to Momentum and Unite’s general secretary election. Obviously the right wants to see the back of Len McCluskey and a victory for his challenger, Gerald Coyne. Jon Lansman, the chair and effective owner of Momentum, was, of course, taped in Richmond on March 1, and the transcript was carefully released, to full media publicity, just as polling papers were being sent out to Unite members. How convenient.

Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson have issued a joint statement agreeing that groups have a right to influence the Labour Party so long as they “operate within the rules.” But what Watson was trying to do was to influence the Unite election, not expose any wrong doing by Momentum.

So it is worth asking whether or not Watson and Coyne are involved in a Machiavellian plot to shift opinion in Unite and maintain the right’s grip over the structures of the Labour Party, up to and including the Parliamentary Labour Party, in perpetuity. Did brothers Watson and Coyne know about the “secret” Richmond tape before the “shocking revelation” was made public? Were they involved in any way in the taping, in transcribing it or in timing its release to The Observer?

Jon Lansman says he hopes that both Unite and the Communication Workers Union will soon affiliate to Momentum. Nothing sinister in that. They would merely be following in the footsteps of the TSSA and FBU. Doubtless that would mean more money in Momentum’s coffers and more full-timers for Jon Lansman to appoint. A leftwing bureaucracy to rival the rightwing bureaucracy of the hugely well financed – not least thanks to Lord David Sainsbury – Progress faction.

Watson claims Momentum will “destroy Labour as an election force”. Certainly the intervention in Unite’s election and the civil war unleashed against Corbyn – by Iain McNicol, Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Watson himself and the vast majority of the PLP – has severely damaged Labour’s chances in a general election.

The by-election results in Stoke and Copeland surely prove it. Yes, Labour won in Stoke Central. But unfortunately this did not represent an endorsement of the Labour Party, nor was Ukip “well and truly stuffed” – a rather silly statement made by the ex-Trotskyist, Paul Mason, who went on to claim that Stoke “shows how to destroy” Ukip (actually it is Theresa May and her pursuit of a hard Brexit that is doing that).1)www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/27/stoke-destroy-ukip-brexit-byelection

Back in the real world though, Labour’s candidate, Gareth Snell, did well to get 7,853 votes (37.1%), as opposed to ‘Dr’ Paul Nuttall’s 5,233 (24.7%) on a very diminished turnout of 38.2% (down 11.7% from 2015).2)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke-on-Trent_Central_by-election,_2017 But Labour’s vote declined both in absolute and relative terms. In percentage terms we lost 2.2%, while Ukip gained 2.0%. Moreover, both the Tories and Liberal Democrats increased their share of the vote: 1.8% and 5.67% respectively. And, of course, if Ukip were “well and truly stuffed”, it would have seen them come not second, but at the bottom of the list, along with the Monster Raving Loony Party, the British National Party and the Christian People’s Alliance.

True, there had been intense media speculation, ever since Tristram Hunt resigned the seat for his “dream job” of director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, that Stoke Central could fall into the hands of Ukip – for fairly good reasons, it does have to be said. Stoke council, though not the same as the constituency, has been under ‘no overall control’ since 2015, with Ukip at its core. Stoke, of course, notched up the highest Brexit vote of any UK city with 69.7% – hence the exaggerated talk about the “Brexit capital of Britain”, and so on. Generally, Labour’s base in the area has undergone a considerable erosion in recent years, enabling Ukip to make relatively impressive gains in all three of the city’s constituencies at the last general election – for example, closing the gap with Labour to just 2.7% in neighbouring Stoke-on-Trent North.

Overall, you can say that Stoke was not a disaster for either Labour or Ukip – depending on what their expectations were. At Ukip’s recent spring conference, Nigel Farage set the bar very high, describing Stoke as “fundamental” for “the futures of both the Labour Party and indeed of Ukip too” – it “matters and it matters hugely”. By that criterion, Stoke was a failure – but, regardless, for the time being Farage is publicly standing by Nuttall. Only time will tell. Anyway, Stoke was only a “decisive rejection” of Ukip if you were genuinely convinced that it should have been a shoe-in for Nuttall – which was always a dubious proposition.

Copeland, however, is a different matter. Yes, you can talk about special circumstances – such as the importance of the nuclear industry as a major local employer, Storm Doris, and the fairly small size of the Labour majority (2,147). Nevertheless, in terms of the core constituency, Labour has held Copeland3)Or its predecessor, Whitehaven – created in 1832 and renamed Copeland in 1983 since 1935, when it was recovering from the debacle of the 1931 national government. In the end, the Tory candidate, Trudi Harrison, won with 13,748 votes (44.2%) on a much higher turnout than Stoke of 51.33% – amounting to a 6.7% swing to the Tories. Labour slumped to 11,601 (37.3%), down 4.9% – whilst the Lib Dems and Ukip trailed well behind, getting 7.2% and 6.5% respectively (meaning that Ukip’s vote fell sharply by 9%).4)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copeland_by-election,_2017 This represented the first gain for a governing party at a UK by-election since 1982. Copeland also saw the largest increase in a governing party’s share of the vote in a by-election since 1966.

Hence, Labour’s situation is even worse than it first seems, when you remember that by-elections tend to underestimate support for the governing party and reward oppositional parties – an opportunity to give the government a mid-term kicking. This makes it all the more telling, and ominous, that it was May who had the most to celebrate afterwards. If we are to be brutally honest, Labour is in danger of decimation at the next general election.

Revival?

These by-elections raise a number of questions. Firstly, does Ukip have a long-term future? You do not have to be a genius to think it is pure nonsense to believe that Ukip is on the road to replacing Labour as the official opposition or natural voice of the working class. The Labour Party is a historically constituted party based on the trade union movement. True, that movement may have considerably declined over the decades, yet we are still dealing with a membership of six million – not something that will go away easily.

Ukip, on the other hand, is an ephemeral organisation based fundamentally on opposition to the European Union. In that sense, Ukip can only be defined negatively – by what it is against, not what it is for. Now, after June 23 – with Theresa May skilfully appropriating the ‘hard Brexit’ agenda – what actually is the point of Ukip? Maybe to stumble on as a pressure group, making sure the prime minster keeps to her pledge – which is not much of a reason to exist. No wonder Ukip tops are falling out with each other. Arron Banks with Douglas Carswell, Nigel Farage with Douglas Carswell, Neil Hammond with Nigel Farage, etc.

Essentially, in Copeland a big slice of the Ukip vote simply marched into the Tory camp. There is every reason to think that that this pattern will be replicated, to one degree or another, in the general election, as May ploughs ahead with her Brexit plans – EU deal or not, World Trade Organisation rules or not. If Brexit actually happens, which is a real possibility in the new world of Trump, that would further place a question mark over Ukip’s future – with job done, surely time to close shop. Then again, if Marine Le Pen does defy the polls and becomes president of France – not something you can completely dismiss – then the EU will be finished anyway, almost making Brexit redundant. There would be nothing to exit.

What about the Lib Dems? Historically speaking, these should be ideal conditions for a revival after they were punished by voters for getting into bed with the Conservative Party in the coalition government. We have had the unedifying spectacle of Jeremy Corbyn getting out his three-line whip and urging Labour MPs to vote with the Tories to trigger article 50 and proceed with what Labour was telling us would be a catastrophe for the British economy – in which case, surely we should be duty-bound to oppose it? Step forward the Lib Dems, saviours of the country from Brexit darkness. After all, almost half of the electorate voted ‘remain’ and even in Stoke just over 30% came out for continued EU membership. And here is the party that is making opposition to Brexit its core issue. Yet what did they get in the by-elections? In Stoke, their vote only went up 5.7% (to 9.8% – at least they saved their deposit this time) and it was pretty much the same in Copeland – only increasing by 3.8%, putting them on 7.3% of the total vote.

You could argue that we could be seeing another attempt to create a centrist third party – in that the cross-party Open Britain has been backed by Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, John Major and others. Thus John Prescott in the Sunday Mirror says that OB “looks like an SDP mark two”, with Mandelson and Blair “whipping up dissent to split Labour”, just like Roy Jenkins and David Owen did before they launched the Social Democratic Party in 1981.5)www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/after-disappointment-copeland-labour-must-9916059 This is very unconvincing, to say the least. In the 1980s you saw an upsurge of the centre ground – just as importantly, if not more so, for a while it looked as if joining the SDP could possibly be a good career move: it seemed to be going places.

But the situation today is totally different. British politics is increasingly polarised, albeit in contradictory ways, between left and right – and now is being repolarised along Brexit lines, with even more contradictory outcomes. The centre ground is not undergoing a significant revival. In Stoke and Copeland the Lib Dems merely showed that they still exist. Nor does anyone in the Labour Party seriously think that there is going to be another SDP that is going to provide them with an alternative career plan – or dislodge Jeremy Corbyn.

This explains Tom Watson’s reaction to the by-election results at the Scottish Labour Party conference in Perth – he argued strongly that there should be no more challenges to Corbyn’s leadership. Further attacks on Corbyn from the PLP could result in Labour MPs losing their seats (and lucrative careers) – and for what? Corbyn cannot be removed under current circumstances, as the mass membership retains faith in him – that was recently tested with the second leadership contest. Owen Smith, the right’s candidate, for all the backing from MPs and the media, lost badly – therefore to keep openly attacking Corbyn would be self-defeating. That is the calculation of most of the PLP: stick with JC as leader for now and muddle through to the next election, hoping that events might come to your rescue.

Flawed

When you look at opinion polls, what is immediately noticeable is not the growth of the centre – forget it – but the strength of the Tory Party, increasing its standing over this period to almost 1950s levels of support. Recent polls have put the Conservatives on over 40% and Labour as low as 24%. Theresa May continues to be the favoured choice for prime minister, with one poll showing 49% of people preferring her to Corbyn. The Labour leader is backed by only 15% of voters, whilst 36% don’t know.

The last time the monthly Guardian series, for instance, produced a larger Conservative lead was back in 1983, just before the June general election trouncing of Michael Foot. In other words, in terms of popular support, it is the Labour Party that is losing out – in Scotland to the Scottish National Party, and in England and Wales to the Conservatives. Stoke and Copeland just underline the growing ascendancy of the Tory Party.

Needless to say, this poses acute problems for the Corbyn-McDonnell-Milne strategy – which appears fundamentally flawed, as argued by professor John Curtice in The Guardian. Curtice notes that Labour seems to have “misguidedly” decided that its “first priority” is to “stave off the threat from Ukip to its traditional working class vote – much of which supposedly voted ‘leave’ in the EU referendum”. But in so doing, he writes, Labour “seems to have forgotten (or not realised) that most of those who voted Labour in 2015 – including those living in Labour seats in the north and the Midlands – backed ‘remain’”. Therefore the party, he concludes, is “at greater risk of losing votes to the pro-‘remain’ Liberal Democrats than to pro-Brexit Ukip” – with Stoke and Copeland seeming to prove that ‘remain’ voters “must now be Labour’s top priority”.

Instead of ‘respecting’ the verdict of the British people in David Cameron’s botched referendum, Labour needs a clear perspective when it come to Europe. Labour Party Marxists opposes all Brexit calls – even at this stage. However, that implies no illusions in the EU as presently constituted. Yet for socialism to be a viable project Europe must be our decisive point of departure. So we should commit ourselves not to making Brexit a success, but developing links and coordination with working class and leftwing forces in Europe.

Far-reaching

Our main goal should certainly not be the attempt to win the next general election by rebranding Jeremy Corbyn as a populist, courting the capitalist media or striking the latest compromise deal with Tom Watson, let alone going for a “a broad political alliance” with the Liberal Democrats, Greens, Scottish and Welsh nationalists. A well-trodden road to disaster. No, our main goal should be transforming the Labour Party, so that, in the words of Keir Hardie, it can “organise the working class into a great, independent political power to fight for the coming of socialism”.

Towards that end we need rule changes to permit left, communist and revolutionary parties to affiliate once again. As long as they do not stand against us in elections, this can only but strengthen us as a federal party. Today affiliate organisations include the Fabians, Christians on the Left, the Cooperative Party, the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Business. Allow the SWP, SPEW, CPGB, the Morning Star’s CPB, etc, to join our ranks.

Moreover, programmatically, we should consider a new clause four. Not a return to the old, 1918, version, but a commitment to working class rule and a society which aims for a stateless, classless, moneyless society, embodying the principle, “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. Towards that end the Labour Party should commit 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 should support a single-chamber parliament, proportional representation and annual elections. All of that ought to be included in our new clause four (see box).

The PLP’s perpetual rebels are out-and-out opportunists. Once and for all, we must put an end to such types exploiting our party. Being an MP ought to be an honour, not a career ladder, not a way for university graduates to secure a lucrative living.

A particularly potent weapon here is the demand that all our elected representatives should take only the average wage of a skilled worker. A principle upheld by the Paris Commune and the Bolshevik revolution. Even the Italian Communist Party under Enrico Berlinguer applied the ‘partymax’ in the 1970s. With the PCI’s huge parliamentary fraction this proved to be a vital source of funds.

Our MPs are on a basic £67,060 annual salary. On top of that they get around £12,000 in expenses and allowance, putting them on £79,060 (yet at present Labour MPs are only obliged to pay the £82 parliamentarian’s subscription rate). Moreover, as leader of the official opposition, Jeremy Corbyn not only gets his MPs salary. He is entitled to an additional £73,617.6)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leader_of_the_Opposition_(United_Kingdom)

Let them keep the average skilled workers’ wage – say £40,000 (plus legitimate expenses). Then, however, they should hand the balance over to the party. Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Dianne Abbott ought to take the lead in this.

Imposing a partymax would give a considerable boost to our finances. Even if we leave out our 20 MEPs from the calculation, it would amount to a £900,000 addition. Anyway, whatever our finances, there is the basic principle. Our representatives ought to live like ordinary workers, not pampered members of the middle class. So, yes, let us agree the partymax as a basic principle.

Given the huge challenges before us, we urgently need to reach out to all those who are disgusted by corrupt career politicians, all those who aspire for a better world, all those who have an objective interest in ending capitalism. Towards that end we must establish our own press, radio and TV. To state the obvious, tweeting and texting have severe limits. They are brilliant media for transmitting simple, short and sharp messages. But, when it comes to complex ideas, debating history and charting political strategies, they are worse than useless.

Relying on the favours of the capitalist press, radio and TV is a game for fools. True, it worked splendidly for Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell. But as Neil Kinnock, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband found to their cost, to live by the mainstream media is to die by the mainstream media.

No, to set the agenda we need our own full-spectrum alternative.

The established media can be used, of course. But, as shown with the last anti-Corbyn coup, Tom Watson’s latest stunt and the Unite elections, when things really matter, we hardly get a look in. Indeed the capitalist press, radio and TV are an integral part of the ruling class establishment. There are, of course, siren voices to the contrary. Those who think we can win over The Guardian, the Mirror, etc. But, frankly, only the determinedly naive could not have anticipated the poisonous bias, the mockery, the hatchet-jobs, the implacable opposition.

Once we had the Daily Herald. Now we have nothing. Well, apart from the deadly dull trade union house journals, the advertising sheets of the confessional sects and the Morning Star (which is still in the grip of unreconstructed Stalinites).

We should aim for an opinion-forming daily paper of the labour movement and seek out trade union, cooperative, crowd and other such sources of funding. And, to succeed, we have to be brave – iconoclastic viewpoints, difficult issues, two-way arguments, must be included as a matter of course. The possibility of distributing it free of charge should be considered and, naturally, everything should be put up on the web without paywalls. We should also launch a range of internet-based TV and radio stations. With the abundant riches of dedication, passion and ideas that exist on the left here in Britain and far beyond, we can surely better the BBC, Al Jazeera, Russia Today and Sky.

Of course, the Jeremy Corbyn-John McDonnell leadership faces both an enemy without, in the PLP, and an enemy within, in their own reformist ideology. They seriously seem to believe that socialism can be brought about piecemeal, through a series of left and ever lefter Labour governments. In reality, though, a Labour government committed to the existing state and the existing constitutional order would produce not decisive steps in the direction of socialism, but attacks on the working class … and then, as we have repeatedly seen, beginning with the January-November 1924 Ramsay MacDonald government, the re-election of the Tories.

References

History

Jeremy Corbyn’s staff: What was Straight Left?

Lawrence Parker investigates the political origins of Jeremy Corbyn’s director and deputy director of strategy and communications

When Jeremy Corbyn’s campaigns chief Simon Fletcher quit last month, it was widely interpreted as a victory for Seumas Milne. Fletcher was known to have heated exchanges with Corbyn’s director of strategy and communications on a range of issues, including Brexit. Now, Corbyn has signed up Steve Howell to be Milne’s deputy. Howell’s official job description is to help “oversee the leader’s media strategy and to implement the communications grid”. He is taking an indefinite leave of absence from his lobbying agency, Freshwater, to take up his role in the Labour leader’s office.1)Howell founded Freshwater in Cardiff in 1997 after working as a news reporter and producer for BBC Radio Wales. The 19-strong public affairs and PR agency now has offices in Cardiff and London. According to the APPC register, the firm’s most recent clients include the multinational building materials company Tarmac and the personal injury lawyers Thomsons.

There are unlikely to be heated exchanges between Milne and Howell not least because they are old friends and old Straight Leftist comrades. Andrew Murray, chief of staff for Unite and yet another former SL member, recently left the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain to join Labour and is also thought to be in Corbyn’s inner circle.

Origins

Straight Left’s origins lie in the left, pro-Soviet oppositions that emerged in the Communist Party of Great Britain in the 1960s. In this period, a definite ‘party within a party’ existed, with figures such as Sid French, district secretary of Surrey CPGB, becoming key leaders. The general critique that came from this faction was a concern over the CPGB leadership distancing itself from the Soviet Union (such as around the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968) and other ‘socialist’ countries; a preference for a more ‘workerist’ identity (for example, the faction would have been happy with the CPGB’s paper remaining as the Daily Worker in 1966) and a concentration on workplaces/trade unions; and a sense that the party was squandering its resources in futile election contests and alienating the left of the Labour Party, with whom it was meant to be developing a close relationship on the British road to socialism (BRS), the CPGB programme.

However, a significant part of the faction felt that the BRS was ‘reformist’ and ‘revisionist’ in all its guises from 1951, counterposing a revolutionary path to the parliamentary road to socialism envisaged in the CPGB’s existing programme. This stance was clouded in ambiguity in many sections of the CPGB’s left, with the default position usually being expressed in a preference for the 1951 version of the BRS that had been overseen by Stalin, as opposed to later versions modified by a ‘revisionist’ CPGB leadership. This opposition suffered a major split in the run-up to the CPGB’s 1977 congress, with Sid French taking away 700 or so supporters to form the New Communist Party (after French realised that the CPGB’s leadership was intent on a reorganisation of his Surrey district, which would have deprived him of his organisational bridgehead).

The rump left opposition in the CPGB coalesced around Fergus Nicholson (other key figures were John Foster, Brian Filling, Nick Wright, Susan Michie, Pat Turnbull and Andrew Murray), who had been the CPGB’s student organiser until 1974. The Straight Left newspaper was launched in 1979, it was edited by Mike Toumazou and had Seumas Milne as business manager. Later a theoretical magazine, Communist, appeared. Membership figures are impossible to guess. However, judging from Communist, the faction did have a wide national infrastructure beyond London through the 1980s and was certainly on a par with, if not in some places more deeper rooted than, the other oppositional stream around the Morning Star (see below).

Factional infighting

The Straight Left group provoked a lot of enmity from its factional rivals in the CPGB. Thus, Mike Hicks, who was involved in the Communist Campaign Group (CCG), set up after the rebellion of Morning Star supporters against the CPGB leadership in the mid-1980s, and later the first general secretary of the 1988 Communist Party of Britain split (both criticised and opposed by the Straight Leftist faction), said in the late 1990s: “Straight Left was neither straight nor left.”2)F Beckett Enemy within: the rise and fall of the British Communist Party London 1998, p234. The accession of a group of ex-Straight Leftists (including Andrew Murray and Nick Wright, who had split from Straight Left to form Communist Liaison in the early 1990s) into the ranks of the Communist Party of Britain contributed to a bitter faction fight in the organisation, in which Hicks was eventually deposed as general secretary, and a strike by Morning Star staff.

Similarly, a CCG document complained: “The individuals grouped around Straight Left have their own newspaper, their own organisation and their own objectives.”3)Communist Campaign Group The crisis in the Communist Party and the way forward (no date but circa 1985). I have been told anecdotally by CPGB activists of the time that Straight Left was thought to have three circles: an inner ‘Leninist’ core; a broader circle of sympathisers in the CPGB; and the ‘softer’ Labourite and trade unionists grouped around the Straight Left newspaper (non-CPGB trade unionists such as Alan Sapper and Labour MPs such as Joan Maynard were on its advisory board). Certainly, the majority of the content of the newspaper was hewn from the same, dry ‘labour movement’ template used by the Morning Star, with little indication that it was the work of communists, apart from its commentary on the Soviet Union and other international matters. (The Communist journal, obviously aimed at CPGB sympathisers, was much more orthodox and harder Marxist-Leninist in tone, with a lot of very interesting commentary on inner-party CPGB matters.)

So Straight Left was a faction and did indulge in political camouflage, but in this it was merely of its time. For example, the CCG’s disavowal of Straight Left’s factionalism was merely an attempt to throw people off the scent from the CCG’s own factionalism (the CCG unconvincingly complained it was not a faction at all; just a group that wanted to follow the CPGB’s rules – which fooled nobody). The CPGB was riddled with factions in the 1980s, not least those grouped around Marxism Today and the party machine.

Similarly, on Straight Left’s broad left camouflage in its newspaper and other forums, this was the modus operandi of nearly the whole far left, from the Morning Star to various Trotskyist groups: ie, communists clothing their politics in everything from trade unionism to feminism and concealing their true aims in the pursuit of mass influence. Again, in hindsight, Straight Left does not strike one as very exceptional in this regard. In retrospect, the enmity aimed at it on these counts stands revealed as the product of mere factional rivalry.

However, another area of criticism aimed at Straight Left may have more mileage in terms of a lasting judgement. The group was deemed by its CPGB factional rivals (both in the CCG and the small group around The Leninist, forerunner of the Weekly Worker) to have a ‘heads down’ approach to CPGB work. In the words of the CCG, such an approach

counsels caution and compliance with the authority of the [CPGB’s] executive committee. It says that if there is disagreement and dissatisfaction with the Eurocommunists [the faction then dominating the party’s leadership], then opposition must be expressed and conducted via the normal party channels. That is to say, we must try at successive congresses to defeat and remove the Eurocommunists.4)Communist Campaign Group The crisis in the Communist Party and the way forward (no date but circa 1985).

This led to such notorious moves as Straight Leftists walking out with the CPGB leader, Gordon McLennan, when he closed down a London district congress in November 1984 that threatened to become a point of opposition to the party leadership. Mike Hicks, in the chair of this meeting, later contemptuously observed that Straight Left “ended up selling Marxism Today [the CPGB theoretical journal much despised by the party’s left in the 1980s for its Eurocommunist proclivities] instead of the Morning Star because the executive told them to”.5)F Beckett Enemy within: the rise and fall of the British Communist Party London 1998, p234

However, what this Straight Left strategy of avoiding open conflict eventually led to, in the context of a CPGB that was being set on a liquidationist course, was it being left somewhat high and dry. SL had built a considerable base in London by the end of the 1980s “by showing a willingness to take on responsibilities at a time when few candidates were to be found”.6)W Thompson The good old cause: British communism 1920-1991 London 1992, p205. This was to be a very hollow victory indeed, given that the CPGB was soon to pass into oblivion and the succession of congresses to win was coming to an end.

Labour Party

In terms of the Labour Party, Straight Left took the BRS injunction of developing an alliance with Labour to effect radical changes to its logical conclusion by arguing that the CPGB should affiliate to the Labour Party and – more controversially for both the left and right of the CPGB – that the party should end its independent electoral work. Thus a typical article in Communist argued:

… it is difficult to see there being much movement against the exclusion of communist trades unionists from the Labour Party until our electoral strategy is based on non-sectarian principles and imbued with a thoroughly consistent and positive attitude to the Labour Party.7)‘40th congress of the Communist Party’ Communist September 1987

Thus Straight Left picked up clearly on the attitude of the pro-Soviet CPGB opposition of the 1960s, which consistently drew attention to the political impact of declining electoral votes on the avowed Labour-communist strategy of the party. However, this opened up Straight Left to jibes of ‘liquidationism’ from both left and right in the CPGB8)For the right wing of the CPGB, see Dave Cook in the pre-congress discussion of 1981(Comment October 17 1981); and, for the left, see Alan Stevens in the same context (ibid). and, in retrospect, isolated the group further.

Soviet Union and ‘socialist’ countries

The Straight Left group, again showing its origins in the CPGB’s pro-Soviet left of the 1960s, took an extremely uncritical view of the Soviet Union and other ‘socialist’ countries, and regarded the actions of the CPGB as a ‘national’ sin against the ‘internationalist’ probity of the Soviet Union’s camp. Straight Left publications were filled with reprints from Soviet agencies such as Novosti and other agencies from the eastern bloc.

Thus, an article in Communist argued:

Communists in the capitalist world are not, in general, in a position to make the judgements that the CPSU is obliged to. Was it right or wrong to intervene in Afghanistan in 1979 to block the spread of counterrevolution? Is it right or wrong to withdraw the Soviet army from there today? The CPGB does not have to answer those questions. Our views are unimportant, and we do not have to live with the sharp consequences of the answers. The CPSU has to make those judgements, and it has the right to expect support and understanding in making them.9)H Sanderson, ‘Socialism today’ Communist September 1988

Neither did this stance seemingly allow criticism of even the most crisis-stricken and sickly military dictatorships of countries such as Poland in the early 1980s. Straight Leftist Charlie Woods, complaining bitterly of CPGB criticisms of the Polish regime in 1983, said:

After all, how would our [CPGB] leadership take it if the over two-million-strong Polish United Workers Party took time off from trying to solve the problems of socialism to remonstrate with our 16,000-member party’s failure to achieve it at all?10)C Woods The crisis in our Communist Party: cause, effect and cure 1983. Woods was a miner and party veteran from county Durham, who was expelled for writing this pamphlet – although he was very much viewed as a ‘fall guy’, with Fergus Nicholson or Brian Topping thought of as the more likely authors

The implication of this little homily being, of course, that those British communists really should not venture to criticise their Polish brethren at all.

Straight Left and gays

The group does not appear to have produced any significant material or statement on what would now be called LGBT questions (and an appeal from myself to its members to produce such a statement to clear this issue up, when this article originally appeared online, yielded nothing).11)This article originally appeared on the Hatful of History blog in October 2015. We are reproducing it here – in slightly amended form Members of the group have claimed that calling their newspaper Straight Left was a boxing metaphor (and some of its members certainly knew a thing or two about physical tussles with gay protestors); while others have suggested that it was recycling an old Sunday Worker slogan from the mid-1920s, when the CPGB was involved with the National Left Wing Movement: ‘Labour’s Straight Left’.

If it was the latter, it was a significant abuse of the slogan. The CPGB had this slogan to differentiate itself from traditional Labour lefts such as George Lansbury and the like: ie, those who were not ‘straight’, who would potentially disown communist allies and cosy up to the Labour right. It was not a slogan that covered the kind of homogenous ‘broad left’ that the likes of Straight Left advocated.

However, slogans can change their meaning with time. To call a newspaper Straight Left when your main factional opponents in the CPGB, the Eurocommunists, are keen on promoting gay rights, only invites some uncomfortable questions about your modus operandi on such issues. It is quite inconceivable that Fergus Nicholson and company were not aware that the name would be interpreted in this negative sense, particularly when it was the production of staunch advocates of the Soviet Union – a state with a problematic relation to homosexuality, to put it mildly.

To call all Straight Left members homophobic would be over-egging the pudding; to state that this group was one that had pronounced problems with homosexuality would not be stretching the truth l

 

References

References
↑1 Howell founded Freshwater in Cardiff in 1997 after working as a news reporter and producer for BBC Radio Wales. The 19-strong public affairs and PR agency now has offices in Cardiff and London. According to the APPC register, the firm’s most recent clients include the multinational building materials company Tarmac and the personal injury lawyers Thomsons.
↑2 F Beckett Enemy within: the rise and fall of the British Communist Party London 1998, p234. The accession of a group of ex-Straight Leftists (including Andrew Murray and Nick Wright, who had split from Straight Left to form Communist Liaison in the early 1990s) into the ranks of the Communist Party of Britain contributed to a bitter faction fight in the organisation, in which Hicks was eventually deposed as general secretary, and a strike by Morning Star staff.
↑3 Communist Campaign Group The crisis in the Communist Party and the way forward (no date but circa 1985).
↑4 Communist Campaign Group The crisis in the Communist Party and the way forward (no date but circa 1985).
↑5 F Beckett Enemy within: the rise and fall of the British Communist Party London 1998, p234
↑6 W Thompson The good old cause: British communism 1920-1991 London 1992, p205.
↑7 ‘40th congress of the Communist Party’ Communist September 1987
↑8 For the right wing of the CPGB, see Dave Cook in the pre-congress discussion of 1981(Comment October 17 1981); and, for the left, see Alan Stevens in the same context (ibid).
↑9 H Sanderson, ‘Socialism today’ Communist September 1988
↑10 C Woods The crisis in our Communist Party: cause, effect and cure 1983. Woods was a miner and party veteran from county Durham, who was expelled for writing this pamphlet – although he was very much viewed as a ‘fall guy’, with Fergus Nicholson or Brian Topping thought of as the more likely authors
↑11 This article originally appeared on the Hatful of History blog in October 2015. We are reproducing it here – in slightly amended form
Momentum

Momentum Grassroots: Time to up the fight

William Sarsfield spoke to Labour Party Marxist supporter Tina Werkmann, who was elected to the Grassroots Momentum steering committee

Was there a good turn-out?

There were about 200 people present, including Sahaya James and Rida Vaquas, both newly elected onto the Momentum’s official national coordinating group (NCG), which – and what a coincidence! – met for its first gathering on the same day in Birmingham. The two comrades chose the Grassroots event instead, which is not necessarily the choice I would have made. But they both got elected onto the new Grassroots steering committee too (Rida first resigned and then withdrew her resignation again). In any case, I’m sure they will have some interesting discussions with Jon Lansman, who, I hear, has just been ‘elected’ as chair of the Momentum NCG.

The Grassroots event was bigger than I had expected. Especially as the conference arrangements committee had the remit of organising a delegate conference. There were, in fact, 70 or so official delegates from branches. Members in Momentum branches with pro-Lansman majorities were supposed to participate as observers with speaking, but no voting, rights. As a member of Sheffield Momentum, one of the many branches that is split 50:50 over the coup, I thought that was a really poor decision. As it was, there were no official delegates from Sheffield, York, Manchester, Leeds – and those are just the big branches I know of. Unfortunately, the organisers had simply ignored our various calls before conference to allow such minorities to fully participate.

However, when we arrived at conference, it actually transpired that there was a big difference on the organising committee about this issue. The final meeting of the subsequently abolished Momentum national committee, which met on January 28 in London, had decided to entrust the running of the March 11 event to the pro-democracy members of the (also abolished) steering committee and conference arrangements committee. But, although the two groups continued to meet, it seems they did not really work together. I was told that the remaining members of the SC decided that every Momentum member should be able to attend and vote at conference – but the CAC overturned this at its own meeting the day after.

So there are political differences between the two groups?

Definitely. This is reflected in Grassroots Momentum as a whole: Those left on the old steering committee included Alliance for Workers’ Liberty supporters Michael Chessum and Jill Mountford (plus Fire Brigades Union leader Matt Wrack and Jackie Walker); the CAC is made up of Jackie Walker, Alec Price and Delia Mattis (Josie Runswick resigned early on and was replaced by Lee Griffiths). The CAC took control, chaired the whole day and managed to almost totally sideline the AWL.

Jackie Walker and her supporters hate the AWL with a passion, of course.

And I totally understand why. The ugly truth is that AWLers have actively participated in the ‘anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt against her. They supported Jon Lansman in sacking her as Momentum vice-chair in September 2016. In effect, this was a dry run for the next coup – the ‘big one’ on January 10 – when Lansman crushed any democracy in the organisation and simply imposed a new, crassly undemocratic constitution.

It was clear at the GM conference that the AWL has really made a lot of enemies in all of this – just to add to those of us who already opposed their pro-Zionist social-imperialism. There was a great deal of hostility against them on display – and it only increased during the day. I must confess, I almost felt a bit sorry for them. Almost …

Because the few proposals on display were presented so out of context and in a truncated manner, AWL members tried to make various ‘points of order’ throughout the day. Some were more useful than others; some were presented more coherently than others. The AWL’s Rosie Woods, who had taken up a position near the stage, was greeted, after she’d been on her feet a few times, with a rather sectarian chorus of “Sit down, sit down” (led by Gerry Downing, of all people – he’s been on the receiving end of people’s displeasure a few times, so probably should know better). But to claim that they “disrupted” the conference, as some comrades have since done on Facebook, is seriously misleading and excuses the CAC’s role in the often disorganised and muddled way conference was planned and conducted.

Actually, it reminds me of the way Jon Lansman, Owen Jones and Paul Mason have tried to blame ‘the Trots’ (ie, the left) for the failures of Momentum to take off. Not a healthy response …

How was it that everyone present got the right to vote and not just the minority of branch delegates?

It was actually me who suggested that everybody present should be allowed to vote and I told conference of how in Sheffield we have been unable to choose delegates, as the pro-Lansman right is pretty strong. I was surprised that the chair simply put it to conference without any discussion and delegates supported the proposal by 43 votes to 24.

Afterwards, other LPM comrades disagreed with me for making this point of order. In general, I am very much in favour of delegate decision-making and I agree with my comrades that there was a democratic problem, in that some people at the conference represented an organised branch, while others simply showed up as individuals.

On the other hand, the planning of this conference was appalling. A lot of people from a lot of branches were not represented. So I think it was fair to challenge the voting criterion. To be honest, I don’t think it made much difference to the outcome – delegates and observers seemed to have been of a similar political composition.

Was this the only problem with the conference?

Hardly. For a start, contributions from the floor were limited to two minutes, which is simply ridiculous. At the election hustings at the end, we got 30 seconds each. Nobody can make any coherent political point in that amount of time. But unfortunately we did waste almost the entire morning putting amendments to a ‘motherhood and apple pie’ statement on what GM should be ‘campaigning’ on. In its report of conference, Socialist Appeal rather weirdly calls this GM’s “constitution”. It clearly is nothing of the sort.

I spoke against compiling a long list of statements on worthy causes and argued that GM should not replicate campaigns that the Labour Party itself can organise far more effectively. I said that we should focus on the fight to transform and democratise Labour. A fair number of speakers supported the proposal and it is now part of a very long document.

I think it was Tony Greenstein who suggested that we also speak out against the fake anti-Semitism witch-hunt in the Labour Party and Momentum, and not just against “the factionally motivated and unjust suspensions/expulsions/exclusions”, as was the previous formulation. Leading AWLer Sacha Ismail spoke – in vain – against this amendment. But then he would, wouldn’t he? His flimsy arguments that it would “complicate” things and “make a mess” of conference were rejected by the overwhelming majority in the room, and the amendment was passed.

Tell us about the discussion over choosing a new leadership. It didn’t go to plan for the organisers, did it?

Not at all. I have to say though that this whole discussion was far more fractious than it had to be. For some reason, the chair ruled that no amendments would be allowed and, even when it became clear that many people favoured a combination of option 2 and 3 – for example, when it comes to calling regular meetings of GM braches and members – she was unwilling to amend either option.

The three proposals all fit comfortably on an A4 sheet, which is never a good sign. But they had to be moved in two minutes and could therefore not be explained properly. No context was given and, crucially, neither option featured any method on how to change things: for example, how to get rid of anybody elected onto any leadership position.

It was clear that the CAC had expected option 2 to win. I have no doubt that they had already made decisions on dividing up positions on the new leadership. But it was not to be … They were very clearly gobsmacked with the vote and didn’t know how to proceed. A woman in the audience quite rightly interjected: “Obviously, you didn’t expect this result. But conference has made it – now get on with implementing it.” Around 45 people put themselves forward as candidates and everybody got 30 seconds to whiz through an election pitch. That took up almost all the remaining time.

What option did you go for?

I supported option 3, as it is the most flexible and simple. There seemed to me two serious problems with option 2: firstly, it would have meant that members in groups with pro-constitution majorities like my own would have to split from Momentum in order to get fully involved and “affiliate” to GM. Also, Jon Lansman would have had a very easy time simply dissolving all those Momentum groups who officially affiliate to Grassroots Momentum. Option 2 was the splitters’ option.

Secondly, there was no proposal on how we could ever replace the ‘coordinating group’ directly put in power by conference. It just smacked too much of a version of a Lansman-style stitch-up to many people in the room.

So a good conference? Bad? Indifferent?

I didn’t get the impression that the day inspired many with great confidence that GM is now on the verge of impressive forward steps. But clearly there is an urgent need to properly organise the left in Momentum and the Labour Party. I think the jury is still out on whether GM can play an effective role within that struggle. Half of the new steering committee is made up of people from organised groups: there are six supporters of the AWL, two from the LRC and one from Workers Power.

I hope the hostility between those people does not stop GM from organising members effectively and democratically. For instance, quite a few people (among them AWL members) are now bemoaning the fact that Gerry Downing was allowed to attend conference and stand for the steering committee.

Others don’t want the AWL involved – something I have sympathy for, but would not pursue at this point. Also, to fight Lansman’s witch-hunt with more witch-hunts seems, well, spectacularly dumb in my view. Yes, there should be no relenting in criticising the AWL’s pro-imperialism and pro-Zionism – let’s make it as uncomfortable as possible for them. But I would argue against throwing them out of GM or keeping them off leading committees – the AWL should be fought in GM with politics, not crude, bureaucratic stitch-ups.

What is the key lesson you take away from all of this?

I think we should make sure that GM does not try to recreate Momentum on a smaller, much less effective scale. In my view, Grassroots Momentum can, however, act as a leftwing pressure group within the official body.

We need to keep this in mind when it comes to Momentum’s March 25 conference. I’m hoping that the new GM steering committee will agree with what I’ll be pushing for – that is, to make an organised intervention. We must speak to these comrades and make the case that we need to seriously up the fight against the Parliamentary Labour Party right wing, to thoroughly democratise the party from top to bottom and to win an overwhelming majority for genuine working class politics.

Momentum

Momentum Grassroots conference: Against Jon Lansman, for what?


On March 11, Grassroots Momentum met at Conway Hall in central London. Simon Wells and Carla Roberts report

Over 200 Momentum members attended the first gathering of the newly established Momentum Grassroots network. It could have easily been much bigger, had it not been built as a ‘delegate’ event – a decision which was overturned at the beginning of the meeting by a clear majority of the branch delegates (see interview opposite).

The organised left was there, of course: there were about two dozen members and supporters of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty/The Clarion and a handful of supporters each of Workers Power (Red Flag), Socialist Appeal and Labour Party Marxists. The Labour Representation Committee and Nick Wrack’s Labour Party Socialist Network had a few members present, though neither seemed to make a coordinated intervention.

It is, of course, long overdue for the left within the Labour movement to start to get organised. But, on the day, GM’s main political problem became more and more evident: it has been set up as a reaction to Jon Lansman’s January 10 coup, when he simply abolished all elected Momentum bodies and imposed a bureaucratic constitution. All GM supporters are united in their opposition to this highly undemocratic manoeuvre. However, when it comes to the way forward, there were – at least – three different viewpoints present on March 11:

  • Some want a clean split from Momentum – the sooner, the better. There are, naturally, differences over with whom to split, to form what exactly and on what political basis.
  • Some want to continue to work in Momentum for now, while at the same time almost replicating the official body – with parallel structures and similar political limitations, but on a lower level: similar campaigns, similar leadership elections, etc.
  • Some – and LPM belongs to this third group – agree that we should continue to work within Momentum for the time being, but with a clear understanding of its limited shelf life, openly criticising its exceedingly pinched political outlook and subordination to the politics of Jeremy Corbyn’s 10 pledges.

How not to run a conference

Unfortunately, the GM conference made no attempt to clarify where GM as a whole might stand in relation to those three main options. In fact, we did not get a chance to discuss anything much at all, let alone serious politics.

To put it mildly, the organisation of the event was a shambles – reflecting, of course, the ideological and political poverty of much of the left. As is now common at such leftwing gatherings, we were presented with a stuffed agenda, which included speeches from strikers – but we had no time for proper, meaningful discussion or decision-making. Of course, we support the Picturehouse workers struggle for a living wage and are with the teaching assistants in Derby in their strike against the Labour council. But should the founding conference of GM really have devoted so much time to hearing their representatives, when contributions from the floor were limited to a measly two minutes?

An exception was made for Matt Wrack, leader of the Fire Brigades Union, who was allowed six minutes, but this was not enough to outline a set of serious proposals. Comrade Wrack had personally sponsored the conference with a “large contribution” – since his election as general secretary of the FBU, he has been “setting aside a portion of my wages to help fund the labour movement”.

It would have helped if we had started the day with this comrade’s contribution, but it was not until just before lunch that he spoke. He explained that the FBU “continues to keep an open mind” about Momentum and Grassroots Momentum, but had so far declined the offer to take up a seat on Lansman’s national coordinating group. He spoke about the need to democratise Labour, fight for the selection of socialist MPs and for socialist policies – and said that in fact “we are making almost no progress in any of these areas”. He quite correctly stated that “the right is running rings around the left at conference” and “expulsions for political reasons are not being challenged”. He was also right to say that “Corbyn will lose, unless he faces these challenges head on”.

The biggest problem was the agenda, which really was the wrong way round. We were to discuss campaigns first (see interview), then democratising the Labour movement, and only then were we supposed to have a discussion on “the way forward for GM”, including how to elect some kind of a leadership. This last item was supposed to last just over an hour and a half. But clearly there were a lot of disagreements in the hall.

What kind of leadership?

LPM supporter John Bridge successfully challenged the agenda and after lunch we went on to discuss the future of GM. This challenge turned out to be quite crucial, as that discussion went on for the rest of the day. Clearly, conference should have started with it. And maybe then we would have had time to debate this question politically, rather than just decide on a method of electing a new leadership.

On this issue, we were presented with three options, which were put together by the former chair of the (now abolished) conference arrangements committee, Alec Price – himself a supporter of option 2 (he also started chairing the session, but after a challenge from the floor sat down again).

  • Option 1 was not very serious: keep things as they are, with the remaining members of Momentum’s official national council (also abolished), who were elected many months ago, continuing to meet. Only one or two people voted for this.
  • Option 2 was favoured by the ex-CAC members and was given by far the most time: local groups would affiliate to GM and send two representatives each to a leadership meeting every three months. Plus, conference was to directly elect a ‘coordinating group’ of six named positions. These two bodies would work together in perfect harmony, with the national meeting of branch delegates supposedly being the superior committee. But this is obvious nonsense. In practice the six directly elected officers would be unaccountable little Bonapartes – an all too common practice of the left and fervently opposed by LPM. Much to the consternation of the top table, after a couple of recounts, option 2 was defeated with 83 for and 89 against. Those who had already divvied up the six jobs between themselves were visibly stunned. For a good five minutes they literally did not know what to do.
  • Option 3 was textually the briefest and allowed for “15-20 people” elected at conference to form a “steering committee” that “can elect an executive if they wish”. This was successfully carried with 88 for and 68 against.

In general, option 2 was supported by comrades who want a politically narrower leadership (specifically in this case excluding the AWL/The Clarion) – about half the conference. As we had no proper discussion on this issue, it was projected onto the 30-second (!) hustings contributions by the 40-plus candidates who put themselves forward for the 20 national committee places. Without any consultation, let alone a vote, the chair announced that a least half the committee had to be female (ie, the quota system loved by liberal bureaucracies everywhere). And it is no surprise, especially given the numbers they had mobilised, that the AWL candidates did well. They make up around a quarter of the committee (that despite the fact that in the morning session they badly lost out when they spoke against the proposal to include in GM’s basic platform opposition to the bogus ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt).

The left within Momentum is, though, surely split on the most crucial question before us: what it is we hope to achieve in the Labour Party.

Is it about following the masses into Labour and building this or that social movement? Is it about splitting off a leftwing minority to form the core of a future revolutionary ‘party’ – ie, one of the sects writ large? Is it about working for a Labour government and hoping that Jeremy Corbyn manages to hang on till 2020? Is it about fighting for a left-reformist Labour government that will carry out a limited range of progressive measures within the confines of the existing monarchical constitution?

Or, on the contrary, is it about transforming the Labour Party into a permanent united front of the entire organised working class, a party programmatically committed to republican democracy and a new, socialist, clause four? If it is the latter – which is certainly the case with LPM – then this means recognising that taking such a course will ensure that Labour remains a party of extreme opposition for many years to come. We prefer that to forming a government that has no chance of carrying out the full programme of Marxism. Hence we envisage the taking of power not just in Britain in isolation, but as part of a worldwide movement of working class self-liberation that has Europe as its decisive point of departure.

There is clearly no real political coherence among the comrades involved in GM at this stage. This is something we shall seek to rectify through a process of debate, discussion and involvement in what should be our common struggle to influence Momentum’s 22,000 members. This means that, in our view, GM should as a matter of tactic, not principle, remain a part of Momentum – just so long as we can make our voice heard in it and there are people to listen.

That does not mean we politically subordinate ourselves to Jon Lansman or, for that matter, Jeremy Corbyn. Of course not. But, if we arm ourselves with principled politics, we will have the opportunity, in however limited a way, to win many thousands to the cause of socialism. For example, LPM secretary Stan Keable stood in the recent Momentum elections to the national coordinating group for the South East constituency. He won a respectable 458 votes on a Marxist platform, which included a strongly-worded condemnation of the Lansman coup, naturally. Where is the downside of that, exactly?

Steering committee

The following were elected:

Matt Wrack,137
Sahaya James, 95
Tracy McGuire, 93
Jackie Walker, 93
Nick Wrack, 89
Simon Hannah, 82
Delia Mattis, 82
Kevin McKenna, 80
Jill Mountford, 75
Graham Bash, 71
Rosie Woods, 71
Rida Vaquas, 69
Lee Griffiths, 69
Alec Price, 67
Pete Radcliff, 64
Ed Whitby, 63
Tina Werkmann, 61
Jan Pollock, 58
Richard Gerrard, 56
Joan Twelves, 53

Further results here: