Category Archives: Democracy and the Labour Party

Witch-hunts and expulsions

Race, prejudice and stupidity

Diane Abbott’s version of identity politics has proved to be a gift for Sir Keir and his drive to complete the marginalisation of the left, argues Kevin Bean

Amidst all the blabber and prattle surrounding Diane Abbott’s suspension from the Parliamentary Labour Party one thing is blindingly obvious – it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism or her tunnel-vision ideas about racism. No, withdrawing the whip from Diane Abbott is just the latest round in Sir Keir Starmer’s campaign to show the ruling class that he really is a man they can trust – and to remind the woefully misnamed Socialist Campaign Group just who is in charge in the Labour Party.

Abbott’s letter to The Observer highlighted what she sees as a distinction between racism and prejudice, and the argument that, while “many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice … they are not all their lives subject to racism” (April 23). She went on to cite Jews, Irish and traveller people.

Making matters worse, she put the claim of black uniqueness in historical terms, citing apartheid South Africa and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It is undoubtably true that the trans-Atlantic slave trade and apartheid in South Africa were ideologically justified on the basis of biological racism. However, the same can be said of the oppression of Irish Catholics by the British colonial authorities, and Jews, above all under the Hitler regime. Indeed, Ireland was radically depopulated through famine, imperial neglect and mass emigration, and the Nazis exterminated between four and eight million Jews – not least by putting genocide on an industrial basis.

As for today’s Romany gypsies and Irish travellers, while they appear to Abbott as just another type of white people, the fact remains that, when it comes to poverty, educational attainment, imprisonment, health, life expectancy, mental illness and other such criteria, it is clear that they face far more than mere prejudice. In fact, they are subject to overt racism by politicians, the media and the police.

In reducing racism to simply a question of skin colour, Abbott drew on the very same ideas of a hierarchy of racism that her letter was ostensibly designed to counter. Seemingly equating ‘prejudice’ experienced by redheads with the persecution of Jewish people under conditions of feudal decay in tsarist Russia and petty bourgeois counterrevolution in capitalist Germany, is, of course, stupid beyond stupid. But then that is Diane Abbott for you.

What happened within hours of her ludicrous letter appearing in The Observer followed a pattern with which we have become all too familiar since the big lie of ‘anti-Semitism’ was first used some eight years ago to undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and smear the Labour left. The usual suspects from the Labour right, aided by the supposed spokespeople for the ‘Jewish community’ and rightwing media commentators, all quickly jumped in to denounce yet another example of anti-Semitism from a leading Labour leftwinger and demand firm action from the party’s leadership.

Labour renegade Lord John Mann, former Labour MP and returning traitor Luciana Berger, and long-time witch-hunter Margaret Hodge MP were amongst the first out of the blocks. However, there was no need for them to worry. Sir Keir recognised an opportunity when it was presented on a plate and he took no time in rounding on Abbott. Here was his chance to further marginalise what remains of the parliamentary Labour left.

Big lie

It is important to remind ourselves why the pro-capitalists in the Labour Party weaponised anti-Semitism in their fight against the Corbyn leadership and why they continue to use this vile smear against the left.

This goes beyond simply utilising the moral opprobrium that comes with accusations of racism and the equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. For Starmer, demonstrating his loyalty to the political and economic status quo means, first and foremost, showing that he is committed to ‘the west’: that is, the continued dominance of the US as the world hegemon and the strengthening of the Nato alliance in Europe. Support for Israel, the US’s most reliable client and ally in the Middle East, is also an important element of that strategy, whilst also acting as a key political marker at home.

If the accusations of anti-Semitism and faux outrage in the media from the likes of Times columnist Melanie Phillips or Tory ministers were predictable, so too was the rather muted response of Abbott’s supporters in the official Labour left. This is pretty much in line with how all the supposed ‘left’ MPs, Abbott included, have conducted themselves throughout the witch-hunt. They bow, scrape and keep their heads firmly down … in the hope of saving their miserable parliamentary careers.

Once the storm broke, Abbott even rushed to denounce herself. She was sorry for the anguish caused, for the offence. Though her letter was sent twice to The Observer, Abbott made the claim that it was the “wrong draft” – all in the hope of placating Starmer.

Believe the wrong draft claim if you wish – bizarrely, there are those on the left who are defending what Abbott wrote but is now apologising for.

A similarly apologetic line was adopted by John McDonnell – now the only leading Corbynite who retains the Labour whip:

… those now sitting in judgement of her have the generosity of spirit to acknowledge that for decades she has been at the forefront of campaigning against racism and has endured so much herself. Hopefully we can all learn from this.

These apologies and retreats in the face of a clear political attack are nothing new and merely repeat the appeasement and political weakness that typified Jeremy Corbyn when he was leader. In failing to stand up to the big lie campaign of the pro-capitalist right and their friends in the media, Corbyn simply increased the confidence of his enemies in the PLP. Moreover, by allowing thousands of left activists to be expelled, he sawed off the very branch on which his own leadership depended.

The stranglehold that Starmer and his apparatchiks now have over the party machine and the way they effortlessly purge such figures as Corbyn, Livingstone and Abbott shows how totally worthless and counterproductive the official left’s ‘strategy’ has proven to be. Indeed the pathetic state of the official Labour left and the toothless ‘threat’ it now poses is perhaps illustrated by the rather patronising tone of some of the reactions of the Labour right to Abbott’s letter. Shadow minister Pat McFadden and Blairite commentator John McTernan have suggested Diane Abbott’s apology was indeed ‘genuine’ and that perhaps the Labour leadership should be more understanding and forgive and forget her transgression.

Obnoxious

Given present conditions it is undoubtably right to defend Diane Abbott from this latest attack by Sir Keir. After all, if she has been stupid – and she has – her sins pale in comparison with the Labour right and the vast majority of the PLP. They are pro-Nato, pro-Israel, pro-nuclear weapons and pro-capitalist to boot.

In calling for Abbott’s reinstatement we are simply defending the limited space that remains in the Labour Party where leftwing ideas can be voiced, promoted and debated. In that context we most certainly denounce her utterly confused – and frankly obnoxious – identity politics. Her comments on the racist oppression and persecution of Jewish people are historically ignorant and border on the unhinged. Reducing racism to a question of skin colour and stressing ‘blackness’ as a primary distinction is rooted in the same essentialism she attacks as a privileging hierarchy of racism. As expressed in her Observer letter, this is a politics of competitive victimhood, in which one ethnic or identity group who claim that they are more oppressed than others now demand recognition for both past and present persecution.

Communists are opposed to all forms of oppression and stand with the oppressed against persecution and discrimination. But that resistance to oppression and the defence of the persecuted is not the same as identity politics or demands for the recognition of victim status by the bourgeois state or capitalism more generally. Instead of a particularist, essentialist and ahistorical politics of identity, Marxists advance working class politics and the struggle for universal emancipation. Like so many on the contemporary left, Abbott defines oppression in the simplistic and reductive language of identity rather than class.

For example, British police forces systemically discriminate against young black males through racial profiling, yes, but this is because of street crime which is often associated with being at the bottom end of the economic pile. Fraud in the City, blackmail threats of litigation by the ultra-rich, advertising hoaxes, phone scamming operations, indeed the straightforward rackets of everyday business involve robbery on an infinitely greater scale, but they hardly concern the police. What matters to them is not so much the law, rather it is order. What young black males experience today poor young Jewish and Irish males experienced in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Locating these types of persecution in capitalist society itself rather than in an ahistorical essentialist understanding of identity points the finger directly at the real nature of oppression and how the working class movement can begin to fight against it. Identity politics of the type espoused so confusingly by Diane Abbott in her letter only serves to further obscure the causes of oppression and so prevent the development of the only form of universalist politics that can overcome both oppression and exploitation – the politics of the working class.

Democracy and the Labour Party

Driving a dead man out

 

Kevin Bean asks what lies behind Sir Keir and the NEC barring Jeremy Corbyn from standing as an official Labour candidate in Islington North

The motion passed by Labour’s national executive committee at its March 28 meeting, barring Jeremy Corbyn from standing as a Labour candidate in Islington North, was perhaps the most unsurprising political event of the year. The only real question was, what took Sir Keir and his allies so long to finally pronounce an anathema that had been flagged up since Corbyn lost the Labour whip in November 2020?

Given the way that Sir Keir and the Labour right have consolidated their hold and continued their attacks on party democracy since then, it was only a matter of time before Corbyn would finally get the boot. In the days that followed there was the inevitable media speculation about whether he would go quietly and accept the ban, or instead stand as an independent against the officially endorsed Labour candidate. Although Corbyn himself was keeping his counsel, there were plenty of others who were prepared to offer advice on what he should do.

Much of the speculation suggested that, should he stand, Corbyn would have a good chance of retaining his seat against an official Labour candidate. He has a strong base in the local Constituency Labour Party and would probably have enough supporters on the ground to mount an effective electoral campaign: the officers of Islington North CLP rejected the NEC’s “undue interference” and argued that local party members should “select their candidates for every election”.[1] Corbyn is widely regarded as a good constituency MP and, while the importance of the ‘personal vote’ can be overstated, it could be a key factor in a closely contested election. Moreover, the precedents of ‘rebel candidates’, such as Ken Livingstone and George Galloway, successfully winning against the Labour machine seem to stand in Corbyn’s favour.[2]

Let us suppose he does stand. What will the impact of his campaign be in the wider political context? True, he will be the focus of some attention in the media. He will draw left activists from all over London and beyond to fight for him, clearly giving whatever Starmerite clone they put against him a run for their money. If any individual candidate could mount a successful electoral challenge against Sir Keir’s Labour, it is Jeremy Corbyn. However, the key word here is individual. Despite being the figurehead for many on the Labour left, Corbyn has made no serious attempt to organise that support or build a political alternative to the pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist Labour right. His Peace and Justice Priject remains a well-meaning, but nebulous ‘campaign’ of rallies and press releases – not the militant, organised, political alternative the left is crying out for. While many still pin their hopes on him and believe that a challenge to the official Labour candidate could galvanise a wider resurgence and be the catalyst for some new party or movement, this increasingly seems unlikely.

One reason is that Corbyn’s comrades on the official Labour left will not rally around any banner he is likely to raise in Islington North. True, a handful of left MPs, such as Diane Abbott, have tentatively raised their heads above the parapet to bemoan the way Labour has “shot itself in the foot”, and complain that “there is no good reason to block Jeremy Corbyn as a Labour candidate”.[3] Similarly, the Socialist Campaign Group of left Labour MPs, along with Momentum, have added their own muted responses about the terrible injustice that had been done to the former leader.[4]

But, for all the expressions of sympathy, the official Labour left remains the Labour left: that is, a political trend whose entire raison d’être is grounded in Labourism and the strategy of achieving ‘socialism’ through the election of a Labour government. Even discounting their own career aspirations and personal interests, the leaders of this official left are an integral part of the political and organisational structures of the labour bureaucracy. For them there is no life outside Labour and that is where they will stay. For all their protests and warm words, they will not be following Jeremy Corbyn into the wilderness any time soon (unless Sir Keir has plans otherwise). So, even if he retains his seat, this is one king who will not be returning from over the water to reclaim his throne.

Keeping mum

A more important issue, in the short term at least, is why Sir Keir has chosen to finally purge Corbyn at this point. After all, Corbyn poses no political threat to Starmer, while the toothless organised Labour left, such as the SCG, Momentum, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and the Labour Representation Committee, have shown that they are utterly useless. The cowardice and vacillation of the SCG was exemplified by the way some of their MPs withdrew support from a wishy-washy pacifist Stop the War Campaign statement and by their almost total silence over the whole of last year about Nato’s proxy war in Ukraine. So, whatever the motive, Sir Keir is not acting out of fear and a sense of danger emanating from this quarter.

The explanations advanced by the official Labour left themselves do little to really explain Sir Keir’s decision. As if to hide their own impotence and failure, they profess injured innocence and lay claim to genuine Labour loyalism. The CLPD, for example, blames it all on ‘factionalism’ and the leadership’s failure to recognise that Labour is a ‘broad church’. They call for unity and a focus on the main task of preparing for the general election and the next Labour government, not unnecessary in-fighting and spurious claims against decent comrades.[5]

In a similar Labour-loyalist vein, left member of the NEC Jess Barnard describes the decision to block Corbyn as “dishonest, undemocratic, unwise”.[6] Right on two counts there, Jess – but unwise? No, Sir Keir knows exactly what he is doing, and the reaction of Barnard, the CLPD, Momentum and the rest of the unity-mongers of the official Labour left shows that they do not have a clue about what is going on. This failure to recognise a civil war when in the midst of it is not simply a failure of understanding, but flows from the very compromise and capitulation inherent in their politics.

Sir Keir is not ‘unwise’. Along with the bulk of the Parliamentary Labour Party and the rest of the Labour machine, he is a servant of the bourgeoisie working in the interests of capitalism and the state. As leaders of a bourgeois workers’ party, those who head Labour have historically played that role and, given his career background and political trajectory within the state legal machine, it is one that Sir Keir plays to perfection.

The purging of Corbyn may be part of a cunning triangulation election strategy designed to win back allegedly ‘patriotic left’ voters in the red wall who defected to the Tories in 2019, but Sir Keir’s real audience is the capitalist class itself, above all in Washington.[7] He needs to reassure them that he is not only a safe pair of hands and a reliable ally at home and abroad, but that in any future Labour government the influence of the left will be non-existent. After the ‘horrors’ of the Corbyn era and the renewed militancy of the working class in the current strike wave, Starmer has to continue to demonstrate that he can be ruthless in purging the left and standing up to the trade unions.

Loyalty

Some comrades might object that Sir Keir has long proved his loyalty to capitalism, just as the Labour left has long shown its reluctance to fight for the working class. Why bother with Jeremy Corbyn, yesterday’s man, when he is a busted flush? Why waste time bullying the official Labour left into utter submission, when they stood idly by during the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ purge? For one thing, symbolism is still important in politics and the Labour leadership understands the need to continually remind both the capitalist class and the official Labour left of how things stand.

Also important in determining the timing of Sir Keir’s NEC resolution are the electoral dynamics. Although Labour still enjoys a comfortable lead in the opinion polls, there has been some slippage in recent weeks and an overwhelming Labour victory in the next general election looks less certain.[8] While it is still most likely that Labour will have a clear working majority, other possibilities, such as a much narrower majority or even a hung parliament, cannot be ruled out. Not only may this explain Sir Keir’s decision to lay down the law at the NEC, but it has also fuelled speculation about the strategy of the SCG and the official left. Are they keeping their powder dry for now, staying on board and so getting into position to exploit a tight parliamentary situation, should it occur after the next election?[9] Shades of the Callaghan government in the 1970s, anyone?

Likewise, trade union leaders might also exploit any perceived weakness in the parliamentary position facing a future Starmer government to extract concessions for their members and the union bureaucracy. Picture John McDonnell and his white cat plotting the future course of events. Not very likely, is it? All very Machiavellian and too clever by half! However, whether it is the possible parliamentary manoeuvres of the SCG or the clientelist deal-making of the trade union bureaucracy, these tactics merely seek to obtain crumbs from the table: they are about small concessions and sectional benefits, not the militant working class politics and the principled programme our movement needs.

[1]. labouroutlook.org/2023/03/28/islington-north-clp-rejects-necs-undue-interference-as-corbyn-blocked-as-candidate.

[2]. www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/02/why-the-odds-are-stacked-against-jeremy-corbyn-the-outsider-labour.

[3]. morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/labour-has-shot-itself-in-the-foot-over-corbyn.

[4]. morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/corbyn-slams-ban-from-standing-again-part-broader-assault-democracy.

[5]. www.clpd.org.uk.

[6]. tribunemag.co.uk/2023/03/starmers-purge-dishonest-undemocratic-unwise.

[7]. labourlist.org/2023/04/labours-pitch-to-these-two-key-voter-groups-will-be-crucial-to-election-victory.

[8]. www.politics.co.uk/reference/latest-opinion-polls.

[9]. www.thetimes.co.uk/article/keir-starmer-is-still-vulnerable-to-a-corbynite-comeback-fszmc6jf3.

Anti-Semitism, The left, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Open for business

Starmer is determined to display his loyalty to big business, the state and the Atlantic alliance by purging what is already a totally marginalised and useless official left. But, asks Carla Roberts, what if Jeremy Corbyn stood as an independent?

Sir Keir Starmer was quick off the starting blocks after the misnamed ‘Equality and Human Rights Commission’ report predictably cleared the Labour Party of the “unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination” it had allegedly been guilty of under Jeremy Corbyn. He announced that Corbyn would not be standing as a Labour candidate at the next general election.

For the EHRC, Sir Keir’s “action plan to drive out anti-Semitism” (also known as his purge of the left) has apparently done the trick! Sure, it took a redefinition of what anti-Semitism actually is: instead of ‘hostility against Jews’ (which very, very few Labour Party members could be convicted of), it is now almost universally understood as ‘criticism of Israel’.

The EHRC is, of course, far from independent – nor very much interested in human rights, for that matter. It is a deeply partisan body whose members are appointed by the government, and it is now firmly in Tory hands. Corbyn should have told the EHRC to get lost when it first launched its investigation of Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ back in 2019 when he was still leader. But his active cooperation was yet another symptom of his futile campaign to appease the right. It is quite astonishing that he continued to pursue this strategy to the bitter end. Even in his final moments as leader, Corbyn sought to reward deputy leader Tom Watson with a seat in the House of Lords, though this witch-hunter continued to stab him in the back.

With the EHRC’s clean bill of health in his back pocket, Starmer moved to his coup de grâce. When  asked if Corbyn will be a Labour candidate at the next election, Starmer bluntly pronounced: “Jeremy Corbyn will not stand for Labour at the next general election.”

The day before publication of the EHRC report, Starmer confidently wrote in The Times:

The changes we have made aren’t just fiddling around the edges or temporary fixes. There are those who don’t like that change, who still refuse to see the reality of what had gone on under the previous leadership. To them I say in all candour: we are never going back. If you don’t like it, nobody is forcing you to stay.[1]

As most of those members who actively and loudly supported Corbyn have now been expelled, suspended or have simply resigned in disgust, it does beg the question: who was he talking about? The few ‘leftwing’ MPs in the Socialist Campaign Group have clearly given up the fight. Showing up on a picket line is the most radical thing that some of them are prepared to do. But even that seems to be going too far for some of them: they have recently set up an alternative group entitled ‘New Left’, which so far acts as a group within the SCG.[2] The neo-Blairite undertone of their name surely cannot have escaped MPs like Clive Lewis, Dawn Butler, Sam Tarry and Nadia Whittome (the latter a fellow traveller of the pro-imperialist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty). Apparently, they model themselves on ‘The squad’ of politicians in the US, despite the fact that this opportunist quartet has pretty much collapsed.

As for Starmer, he was really talking to big business and the mainstream media, to those who used to love Tony Blair. He might not have the same alleged ‘charm’ and media savviness, but he is certainly a lot more brutal, when it comes to reshaping the party and purging the left, as shown by his decision to pursue five former Corbyn staffers in a civil case for leaking what was going to be Labour’s submission to the EHRC. The unredacted 860‑page report highlighted the right’s campaign against the Corbyn leadership (as well as that leadership’s appeasing efforts to push out Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker and others falsely accused of anti-Semitism). Even though this case might cost the party between £3-4 million, this is money well spent for Sir Keir. It signals that Labour is, once again, open for business. Starmer might have stood for Labour leader on the 2019 Corbynite manifesto, but he has certainly washed his hands of it now.

Unity

It is rather incredible that, at the same time, the official Labour left is still barking up the ‘unity’ tree. “The blame for this polarisation in the party lies with Starmer and his fixation on the left, while there is so much wrong in wider society,” says Mike Cowley on the dying Red Line TV show, which is loosely linked to the Labour Representation Committee. Why, oh why, can’t Labour concentrate its fire on the Tories instead of attacking the left?

Cowley is, of course, encapsulating the political outlook of the official Labour left, despite its obvious and painful failure in the last eight years. It is exactly such useless appeals for ‘unity’ that have led to Corbyn’s futile strategy of trying to appease the right rather than take it on.

Starmer’s ultimatum serves as a reminder that the Labour Party is still a ‘bourgeois workers’ party’. The party has trade union affiliates and still relies on hazy notions of class to get votes, but the right commits itself to maintaining the existing constitution and pursing common interests (read: the interests of capital). Of course, Starmer is doing his best to limit the damage caused by the presence of active socialists in Labour’s ranks to the carefully crafted pro-big business image. But the continued affiliation of the big trade unions, representing millions of workers, means that for now Labour remains an arena of the class struggle.

And no, that does not mean that communists believe that the class struggle can be decisively ‘won’ in the Labour Party and even less that socialism can somehow be realised through a vote in parliament. But, as should have become crystal-clear over the last eight years, the bourgeoisie did everything in its power to prevent a Corbyn government, which was clearly a manifestation of the class struggle.

Proscriptions

In his bid to shift the party still further to the right, Starmer may well be investigating the possibility of yet more bans and proscriptions.

Momentum might well be put on the list, despite the fact that the organisation has loyally implemented the witch-hunt. Its founder, Jon Lansman, actively and eagerly participated in it and his various heirs and successors never strayed much from this path. To this day, they are continuing to implement the witch hunt in their own ranks. Momentum does not allow anyone to be a member who has been expelled from the Labour Party. They are harmless, loyal and entirely useless as an opposition. So they may be spared.

Ditto groups like the Labour Representation Committee and the even more ineffective Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. While the LRC somewhat flaccidly stood up to the witch-hunt, supporting this or that protest or open letter organised by the likes of Labour Against the Witchhunt and Jewish Voice for Labour, it is barely alive nowadays.

Red Line TV was perhaps the last spark of life emanating from that corpse and it is now “taking a break”. At its Kafkaesque AGMs, the LRC continues to elect John McDonnell as its president – the same man who has embraced the anti-Semitism smear campaign and goes on about “zero tolerance”. Naturally he did not raise the rafters when his old friend Graham Bash, editor of Labour Briefing, was expelled. President McDonnell used to write a monthly column … so presumably he is in Starmer’s cross-hairs.

CLPD guru, Barry Gray (also a leading member of the Stalinoid sect, Socialist Action), has given out the message that it is heads down for the next 10-15 years. The hope is that eventually some leftwing leader will come along and bring salvation. All the while he and his chums kept their silence as comrades were purged one by one. When founder-member, Pete Willsman, was suspended and then expelled in November 2022 (for – you guessed it – false claims of anti-Semitism) the CLPD looked the other way.

Jewish Voice for Labour, one of the few organisations that did dare to speak out, has been a likely candidate for proscription, but perhaps Starmer has been fearful of the obvious charge of anti-Semitism being made against him! It seems that JVL too has been struggling, as most of its members have themselves been suspended or expelled from the party. It does put such groups into an existentialist crisis – their whole political outlook is based on work in the Labour Party. It is not surprising that there is so much demoralisation on the left.

An anonymous “Labour figure” speculates on the Skwawkbox website that the Stop the War Coalition could be next on Starmer’s hit list, which, given the ‘withdraw your signatures of else’ instruction to the spineless SCG 11 back in February 2022, seems quite possible.[3] Jeremy Corbyn is deputy president alongside the Communist Party of Britain’s Andrew Murray. And, of course, StWC dares to criticise the US/Nato proxy war in Ukraine (even if it does so in a peacenik kind of way). Such a ban could lead to all sorts of Labour lefts being expelled, including Corbyn.

Independent?

Many on the left are now pinning their hopes on Corbyn standing as an independent in Islington North. And, while he has chosen not to publicly speculate about such a move yet, the odds are that he would win, having served as the local and popular MP for over 40 years. It is unlikely though that Corbyn would receive any kind of support from the cowards in the Socialist Campaign Group. They much prefer saving their own stalled careers and keeping their heads down until it is time to cash in their lucrative parliamentary pensions.

Corbyn is also unlikely to form any kind of a political party, which is what many on the left urge him to do. That is rather surprising, considering that he was prepared to sacrifice hundreds of his own supporters in the witch-hunt, many of whom are still being vilified as anti-Semites in the national press. Reputations have been ruined and not a few livelihoods and careers badly affected. Thanks to the internet, this will be so for decades to come. But, incredibly, for many the man still seems to walk on water.

A Starmer government might take on the unions if they cause UK plc too much trouble over pay and conditions. A serious confrontation might see some big unions disaffiliating and forming a new version of the 1900 Labour Representation Committee. Should any such new kind of ‘broad left party’ emerge, communists would of course participate. It would be sectarian and stupid to do otherwise. But the main task remains fighting for a mass Communist Party l

[1]. The Times February 14.

[2]. labourlist.org/2022/02/revealed-new-left-group-sparks-debate-over-divisions-among-left-mps.

[3]. skwawkbox.org/2023/02/19/starmlins-next-proscription-will-be-stop-the-war-not-yet-momentum.

Democracy and the Labour Party, Momentum, The left, Transform the Labour Party

Salvaging the wreck?

Kevin Bean assesses the parlous state of the official left:
illusions must be cast aside

If anyone was in any doubt about the political direction that Sir Keir is taking, his speech at last weekend’s London Labour conference should have settled the question once and for all. As might be expected, he aimed his remarks squarely at the capitalist class, not the audience in front of him.

Sir Keir’s message was clear. Labour has changed irrevocably. It is now the party of “sound money and public service”. It unequivocally backs Nato’s proxy war in Ukraine. It puts “country before party.”

Alongside this pro-business, pro-imperialist message there was another important theme: no let-up in the purge. That was the real meaning of his promises, that “Never again will Labour let hate go unchallenged”, and that this struggle will never end and never stop. Although it was suggested in some reports that there was opposition to the leadership’s line, what remains of the left was easily seen off.

With Starmer in full control, the poor showing of the Labour left only shows its current demoralisation and disorganisation. In the days before Starmer’s speech, Momentum circulated a briefing about how it planned to fight back against the right and ensure that ‘left’ positions became party policy.[1] So there will doubtless be worthy CLP motions on nationalising the energy industry, ending private-sector involvement in the NHS and backing striking workers, which will go into the bureaucratic quagmire of the party’s National Policy Forum (NPF) and perhaps reach the annual conference.

The official Labour left has tried to big up this stuff. Momentum, for example, boasts of support coming from the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs. Remember them? A rag-tag-and-bobtail bunch of supposed left MPs, who withdraw mildly critical statements on the Ukraine war when Starmer bids them and the rest of the time stay safe by keeping their heads down and avoiding any risk to their precious careers.

Any realistic assessment of the balance of forces will tell us that the ‘strategy’ advocated by Momentum is just so much whistling in the dark. Momentum’s much vaunted strength has been clearly on the wane since 2019 and its impact on Labour politics is much reduced. But ignore that for the moment and follow the argument they advance. Let us suppose the left actually succeeds in getting motions through the CLPs and then passed by NPF and party conference. Given the right’s control over the party machine, what happens next? Who is going to campaign for the policy or implement it? Labour leaders historically have ignored conference resolutions and Sir Keir is clearly no different. The Labour right overwhelmingly dominates the Parliamentary Labour Party and, amongst MPs, the left is probably at its weakest point since before World War I.

The record of the SCG is utterly dismal and, given the current state of its political disorientation and abject surrender, only the most wide-eyed optimist would expect militant leadership coming from that quarter. Any such ‘socialist’ strategy that banks on the SCG, Labour Representation Committee, Campaign for Labour Democracy, the Chatham House left, etc, is hopelessly delusional.

Left policies that are really left, will not find their way into the election manifesto, because Sir Keir and the right will have the last word. Moreover, there is no real countervailing force from the left to prevent that happening: the union leaderships and their conference block votes will, in the main, fall in behind the leadership.

While this is a well founded assessment of the impotence of the current official Labour left, it leaves out, perhaps, the fundamental, determining reasons for its historical weakness. The official Labour left is shaped by the nature of Labour as a bourgeois workers’ party and its relationship to the organised working class. From its very beginnings the Labour leadership has been closely bound into the capitalist state and fully accepted the legitimacy of its constitutional and social order.

The official Labour left relies on trade union militants and elements of the trade union bureaucracy and CLP activists. But personal ambition, comfortable sinecures and reformist ideology sees its ‘socialism’ rendered into little more than a modified, state-regulated version of capitalism, to be achieved, and this is crucial, by the election of a Labour government. This binds the Labour left to the Labour right. Although the right and left appear to be antipodes, they are actually mutually reinforcing and dependent on each other within the framework of a bourgeois workers’ party.

If we are to really understand why the Labour left has suffered such a dramatic strategic defeat and how we might actually transform Labour, then we need to be clear about the real nature of the official left and its politics. Labour Party Marxists can and does place demands on leftwing leaders, eg: no serving in Sir Keir’s shadow cabinet as a matter of principle; and standing shoulder to shoulder with victims of the anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism witch-hunt.

LPM does not have any illusions in the politics and leadership of the official Labour left. We do not fall into the cosy belief that those on the official left are simply misguided friends. Far from it! Politically the official left can be just as dangerous as the hard right. Consider the capitulations and compromises that the Corbyn leadership made, actually initiating and joining in the witch-hunt against leftwing activists. If there is one lesson we all need to learn from the Corbyn period, it is that that type of Labour left is not only politically bankrupt: it is a serious obstacle to transforming Labour. Far from being the solution, it is actually part of the problem.

Many on the left are still struggling to understand and explain the defeat of the Corbyn movement, and why it failed to confront the witch-hunt and the smears against the Labour left. Talal Hangari’s article in last week’s Weekly Worker was a useful contribution to the debate and clearly outlined the nature of the witch-hunt and the type of campaigning demands the left should have advanced.[2] The operative past tense is the key here: this is what should have happened, but that time has now passed. Where are the forces of the left that can now carry out that fightback within the Labour Party? The official left joined in the witch-hunt and is committed to staying in the Labour Party no matter what. So, the central issue now is not trying to revive the flagging horse of the official left and refight yesterday’s battles, but rather to look to the tasks of the future.

If Labour retains its historic structure as a bourgeois workers’ party, it will continue to reflect the class struggle, no matter in how distorted a form, and will probably spontaneously generate a leftwing opposition. However, if this left remains ideologically trapped within the narrow, pro-capitalist, logic of Labourism, it will be impossible to challenge the Labour right and transform the party, let alone fundamentally break with capitalism. Only a mass Communist Party armed with a revolutionary programme, acting as a pole of attraction to the left currents that might well emerge within Labour at some point in the future, can offer the political coherence and strategic leadership to really transform a bourgeois workers’ party into a united front of a special kind.

The Labour Party remains, for the moment at least, the dominant political force in the working class movement. It can neither be ignored nor wished away. Transforming it remains a possibility, but only a possibility and not one we should rely upon. The key to everything is building a mass Communist Party.

[1]. labourhub.org.uk/2023/01/16/momentum-pushes-back-on-starmers-rightward-policy-turn.

[2]. ‘From amidst the wreckage’ Weekly Worker January 26: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1427/from-amidst-the-wreckage.

The left

Rout on all fronts

Official leftwingers cry foul, but have absolutely no answers, says Kevin Bean

News that Sam Tarry has been deselected as a result of a trigger ballot is just another example of the rout of the official Labour left and the stranglehold of the openly pro-capitalist right.

Whatever the exact circumstances – there are, of course, various allegations of irregularities – the selection of Redbridge council leader Jas Athwal as parliamentary candidate for Ilford South is yet another victory for Sir Keir. The positive reaction of the media, as well as the leading rightwinger and neighbouring MP, Wes Streeting, is surely proof.[1]

The campaign to unseat Socialist Campaign Group member Tarry had all the elements you would expect: rightwing unions like Usdaw, Unison and Community threw their weight behind Athwal, while Labour’s regional officials encouraged the right sort of members to turn out on the day. It seems that similar tactics have also been used in the unsuccessful campaign to unseat leftwing Coventry MP Zarah Sultana and the ongoing attempt to deselect another SCG member, Ian Byrne, in Liverpool West Derby.[2]

Angela Rayner has complained. The SCG too. But we positively favour the right of members and affiliates to deselect sitting MPs. If the right can mobilise members and affiliates, why can’t the left? It could and it ought to, yet not a single Labour MP was deselected under the much vaunted leadership of the spineless Jeremy Corbyn. He and his allies, including the Straight Leftist advisors, Andrew Murray and Seumas Milne, sought to conciliate, not fight.

The same cannot be said of the right. The campaign to exclude leftwingers from selection panels and parachuting in favoured candidates has been stepped up with a 2024 general election fast approaching. Sam Tarry’s deselection and Ian Byrne’s continuing travails, the exclusions from selection processes of Maurice Macleod in Camberwell and Peckham, and Emma Dent Coad in Kensington, combined with similar rightwing machinations in Sedgefield and Stroud CLPs, are just the well-publicised cases.[3]

Tarry’s case has some additional elements, which have attracted the headlines – notably his recent dismissal from Starmer’s shadow cabinet because of his posturing support for striking railworkers and his close relationship with Labour’s deputy leader. Putting Tarry in his place sends out a clear signal, not only to the wider left, about who is now really in charge.

Sir Keir is going from strength to strength since Labour’s annual conference. Pollsters put Labour on 40, 45, 50, 53 percent. And don’t forget the idiot left which said Labour could not win the next general election, that Starmer’s only purpose was to purge Corbyn and the Corbynites.

True, there were some supposed left victories at the Liverpool conference. But PR elections and green new deals are perfectly acceptable for the coalitionist-hankering centre and right. The idea that the left is setting the policy agenda owes something to delusion, something to a willingness to be bought, and nothing to reality. Starmer can safely ignore anything he wants, as he continues his version of Blairism and New Labour.

The fall-out from the Kwarteng mini-budget, the judgement of the market and the visible disintegration of Truss’s government has made him prime minister in waiting.

Fightback

Starmer’s triangulation strategy also explains the current round of attacks on the official Labour left. Removing this or that minor-nuisance left MP, rigging longlists and shortlists, and, moreover, to be seen to be doing so, only amplifies the message that it is the Labour right which is running the show. A few media stories about disgruntled leftwingers claiming foul play will do Starmer’s leadership no harm at all. In fact, he calculates it will only strengthen his position.

However, the Labour bureaucracy and rightwing apparat at regional and local level are also playing their own distinctive role. As the cases of Sam Tarry and Ian Byrne show, Labour councillors and other rightwingers who felt threatened by the growth of the left during the Corbyn period have now taken the opportunity to exact revenge.

The response of the Labour left, as represented by the SCG, Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, Labour Representation Committee and Momentum, is exactly what we have come to expect. Pathetic moans and groans, but nothing serious about a concerted fightback. It has all been weak and mushy stuff. Momentum’s leadership criticises the treatment of Emma Dent Coad in Kensington as a “travesty of justice”. In the exact same spirit, John McDonnell calls on Keir Starmer to intervene to ensure fair process.

If he thinks the treatment of Tarry and Dent Coad is disgraceful, why did he turn a blind eye to the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smear campaign? Does he not remember how, when he was shadow chancellor, he shamefully conciliated with the Labour right and threw his old comrades to the wolves? Perhaps, more pertinently, given these recent examples of trigger ballots against left MPs, why does McDonnell not recall how he held back activists who wanted to deselect rightwing Labour MPs plotting against the Corbyn leadership? Who was it who promised the right in 2015 that “there is no way there are going to be de-selections and we would not support them. Quite the reverse – we want people back involved.”?[4]

There is an important political reason to go over this old ground. The authentic left, both within and without the Labour Party, needs to fully understand how we have arrived at the current dire position. As the shameful record of John McDonnell – still LRC president – illustrates, under the Corbyn leadership the left went for conciliation. Far from taking the war to the right and purging the party of its openly capitalist elements in the PLP and the party apparat, it assured them that their place was safe and pleaded with them to stay. A one-sided civil war.

Such an approach is inherent in the political economy of the official Labour left. Being variously situated between the militant working class and the passably rewarded outer defences of the bourgeois state, their default argument is that any Labour government, even one headed by such an arch-capitalist politician as Sir Keir Starmer, is always better than a Tory government. What this means in practice is falling in line behind the right to ‘get the Tories out’. The SCG, CLPD, LRC and Momentum thereby act as a left cover for the pro-capitalist, rightwing leadership.

[1]. www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/10/sam-tarry-deselection-bid-ilford-south-constituency.

[2]. www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/zarah-sultana-thrilled-reselection-coventry-25244858; see also: skwawkbox.org/2022/07/28/exclusive-latest-byrne-result-16-14-7-of-his-supporters-not-allowed-in.

[3]. skwawkbox.org/2022/10/16/exclusive-mcleod-labour-black-socialists-on-labour-blocking-candidacy-and-its-feeble-excuses; www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ex-mp-emma-dent-coad-28260342; labourlist.org/2022/10/sedgefield-clp-officers-resign-after-announcement-of-selection-longlist; labourlist.org/2022/06/labour-council-leader-excluded-from-standing-as-parliamentary-candidate.

[4]. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35133585.

Democracy and the Labour Party, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Onslaught on Labour left

Kevin Bean reviews The Labour files, a series of four TV programmes from Al Jazeera Investigations, directed by Phil Rees and available on YouTube

Timed to coincide with the Labour Party conference, the The Labour files looked at the causes and consequences of the witch-hunt against the left in the party.

Its starting point was a huge tranche of emails and internal party material – the ‘Labour files’ of the title – which formed the basis of its narrative about events in the party following the election of Jeremy Corbyn. Alongside this were interviews with expelled members and others, which highlighted particular case studies and examples of the Labour right’s onslaught on the left.

The documentary also drew on a previous Al Jazeera film, The lobby, to establish a wider political context and to link the attacks on the Corbyn leadership and the left to agents of the Israeli state and pro-Zionist party officials. In several hours of film the documentary also considered the role of the media, especially the BBC, in this campaign against the left, as well as the response of the Labour bureaucracy and the Starmer leadership to allegations that a ‘hierarchy of racism’ existed within the party. The swift action and readiness of the party machine to deal with alleged ‘anti-Semitism’ was contrasted with the tardiness of the party machine in acting against claimed anti-black and anti-Muslim racism. In what looked like a late addition after the main filming was completed, the programme also devoted 20 minutes in part four to the alleged hacking of email accounts and attempts to silence criticism of Newham’s Labour council leader by a local media blog and party activists.

The most powerful elements of the documentary were the excerpts from internal Labour emails and documents, and the interview clips. Many of these were already in the public domain and would have been familiar to many already. The sabotage carried out by Labour bureaucrats and their successful attempts to smear leftwing activists, as revealed in these messages and documents, is now firmly established as a matter of public record. Even so, it still remained shocking to hear again about how so many party members had been fitted up and verballed during the witch-hunt.

For me the stand-out examples were those of so-called ‘Labour investigator’ Ben Westerman, who lied about what Rica Bird, a Jewish party member who was subsequently expelled, had said during an “informal interview”, or the cack-handed attempt at a latter-day Zinoviev letter drafted by a Wirral Labour councillor, and cited by Labour’s then deputy leader, Tom Watson, which fabricated transparently false ‘evidence’ against the left in Wallasey CLP. Other examples in the film of bureaucratic manoeuvres and slanders against the left drawn from Brighton, Liverpool Riverside and Croydon, as well as during the internal selection process for the party’s candidate for Liverpool city mayor, were just as shocking. Moreover, these highlighted cases are merely the tip of the iceberg: this is not past history; the witch-hunt still remains in full swing under the Starmer leadership. As Brighton activist Greg Hadfield so accurately put it, on this evidence “the Labour Party is a criminal conspiracy against its members”.

Dodged questions

However, if these interviews and email transcripts were not enough to provide a sufficiently compelling weight of evidence, something else was also on hand to support the main premises of the programme. A well-established element in contemporary documentaries is the ‘neutral’ voice or figure supposedly representing ‘sensible’ opinion. Theirs is the authoritative voice that sets the standards and invites us to make judgements on the evidence revealed in the film. The choice of such a ‘talking head’ is very important in understanding and assessing the intentions of the film-makers and the key themes they wish to highlight. In doing so the political and moral framework of the documentary can be explicitly revealed to the viewer. So the choice of Peter Oborne as just such a commentator in The Labour files has an importance that goes beyond mere production values.

A former chief political commentator at The Daily Telegraph, Oborne is an idiosyncratic, if conservative, critic of the failings of the media and the behaviour of the ‘political class’ – a term he is credited with originally coining. So, in contrasting the “decency and fairness” which should characterise the Labour Party and its politics, according to Oborne, with the reality revealed by the film, he framed his argument within his wider normative critique of contemporary politics and public life. Thus, in defence of Corbyn’s decency and fairness, Oborne drew attention to the fact that disciplinary action against so-called ‘anti-Semitism’ actually increased after Labour’s rightwing general secretary Iain McNicol was replaced by a Corbyn nominee, Jennie Formby!

Oborne was not the only one to implicitly concede the Labour right’s case that there was a serious problem with anti-Semitism in the party. The Labour files also featured James Schneider, a leading figure of Momentum and a member of Corbyn’s inner circle in this period, who justified the way the left buckled under pressure and had been ‘forced’ to accept the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. This ‘working definition’ equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, and so was consciously used by the Labour right to open up further attacks and expulsions of the left.

In accepting Oborne’s critique of how contemporary politics are conducted as its starting point and failing to look more critically at the Corbyn leadership’s response to the attacks made upon it, the programme dodged some of the most important questions about what was going on in the Labour Party. Whilst the accounts of Anna Rothery, Jenny Manson, Becky Massey et al were valuable reminders of the type of lies and vicious behaviour of which the Labour right are capable, the film did not really explain why the party machine felt the need to resort to such tactics. Most importantly, the failures of the Corbyn leadership and the compromises and retreats that the official left undertook to placate the Labour right were left completely unexamined, and so a significant factor in how the witch-hunt has unfolded was left out of the reckoning altogether.

Although unexplored by The Labour files, these questions still remain crucial for today’s rather disorientated and demoralised left. Drawing up such a balance sheet and making a real assessment of both why the pro-capitalist Labour right launched these particular attacks and the woefully inadequate response of the Labour left is vital if we are going to build any sort of working class politics worthy of that name. This is especially important, as many comrades are now concluding that the continuing witch-hunt and Starmer’s tightening grip over the party show that Labour is dead and that we now need some form of new party. It is true that The Labour files shows that the Labour machine is thoroughly corrupt and is a weapon to fight the left. It is part of an apparatus to control the working class and ensure that the party remains a safe second eleven for capitalism which could be called into action when the main bourgeois party is not up to the job. As has been the case virtually since Labour’s inception, the leadership is structurally integrated into the state and its politics are thoroughly pro-capitalist.

For Marxists this film tell us nothing new about Labour: it simply provides yet more evidence, if it were needed, about the absolute rottenness and thoroughly reactionary nature of Labourism as an ideology and an organisational form. However, Labour Party Marxists argue that Labour remains a bourgeois workers’ party while it retains its links with the organised working class through the trade union link and, as such, should not be lightly abandoned as a site for struggle for revolutionaries.

Both recent and historical experience has shown that any ‘new’ initiative that might emerge from a rejection of this perspective will probably take the form of a broad alliance of left reformists and avowed Marxists, based on lowest-common-denominator politics and rotten compromises to keep everyone on board. Whatever its verbal rejection of Labourism, it will repeat the same mistakes and be, in essence, a Labour Party mark two.

That is why we are repeating our call to continue to fight back within Labour and re-establish a militant campaign within the party against the Labour leadership’s witch-hunt. That is an important first step to rally the left, whether inside or outside the party. But much more is required. The fight against the witch-hunt has to be linked to the fight to forge Labour into a vehicle for militant politics. That struggle is not one to ‘reclaim‘ Labour – it was never truly ours in the first place – but rather to refound it as a united front open to all socialist and working class organisations and currents.

That can only be achieved as part of our central task: the building of an explicitly Marxist party that rejects Labourism and is fully committed to the overthrow of capitalism and the self-emancipation of the working class.

Labour Party Marxists, The left

Sir Keir’s good week

The left is disorientated, in denial and still suffering from an orchestrated campaign of suspensions and expulsions. Kevin Bean calls for reviving Labour Against the Witchhunt and some serious rethinking

I was part of the Labour Party Marxists team that attended the September 25-28 conference in Liverpool. My article last week was based on first impressions (‘Political wing of capitalist class’ ) and what follows are more considered thoughts.

It was a good week for Sir Keir Starmer. Not only was it a good party conference from his point of view, but Labour now has a tremendous lead over the Tories in the opinion polls. Of course, to some extent that results from the wider economic crisis, the disarray in the Truss government and the reaction of the markets to the mini-budget. But it is also a sign that the clearly defined Starmer strategy is paying off – he is certainly getting a lot of good press, with papers that were previously rather hostile now treating him very much as a prime minister in waiting.

I want to look at his strategy, but also the response of the left inside and outside the Labour Party. Like a lot of comrades who were present in Liverpool, I attended fringe meetings and took part in many discussions – particularly at a series of events under the title of Beyond the Fringe.

Two anthems

The conference can be summarised in some ways as a tale of two anthems. It opened with the singing of the national anthem, a first, while Ukraine’s was played before the debate on foreign policy. These two anthems symbolise where Labour is at under Starmer. Singing ‘God save the king’ was really hyped before the conference – a sign that this was a new, patriotic Labour Party, at ease with the constitutional order, but, above all, it was sending out a clear message: this is not Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party! This is a more acceptable Labour – the ‘extremism’ of the Corbyn years has been banished.

The anthems are also part of his triangulation strategy – that is, to locate Labour firmly on the ‘centre ground’. Class issues and working class politics are now completely marginalised in the way that Starmer presents things.

Starmer’s ‘safe pair of hands’ routine came out very clearly in his conference speech. Many comrades would have seen this on TV, and indeed the whole event – the giant Union Jack, the camerawork – was designed to be a televisual experience, carried out for effect, for appearance. His speech was the epitome of stage-management. For example, at a certain point Starmer received a standing ovation when he stated he was working to “purge the party of anti-Semitism” and “dangerous extremism”. In similar vein shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves emphasised “sound money”, “stability”, working with entrepreneurs and serving “the interests of the nation”.

Starmer used the death of Elizabeth Windsor to contrast his loyal patriotism with the uncertain loyalty of those on the left. In upholding the monarch as a symbol of duty, of service, of “public responsibility”, he was clearly trying to feed off the days of national mourning. Starmer also used Tony Blair’s phrase: Labour is the “political wing of the British people”.

A theme repeated by Reeves – we are “ready to work with business” and are certainly “not in hock to the trade unions”. We are indeed a “party ready for government”. And, of course, this type of message was aided by what was going on outside conference. Clearly the shadow ministers, instead of working off carefully scripted speeches, had been waiting for the reaction – not least from markets – to the mini-budget delivered by Kwasi Kwarteng. So, in a sense, all they really had to do was come out with platitudes about ‘responsibility’ and how they would balance the budget for their strategy to work.

Casting the Tories as ‘extremists’ who no longer spoke for the nation would have been difficult before last week’s ‘fiscal event’, but now there was plenty of raw material available. So both opinion polls and the current sense of governmental collapse into economic and political crisis made things much easier.

There was also another element in Sir Keir’s favour: the demoralisation, disorientation and marginalisation of the left. Personally I have been to the last four Labour conferences and what struck me about this one was the atmosphere. It was radically different. For example, in and around the conference arena most delegates were ‘suited and booted’ and it was clear that there was a much greater proportion of apparatchiks, bureaucrats and aspiring parliamentarians. Overall attendance was down compared with recent years, and the right was clearly dominant. The left was very much in the minority.

I spoke to people who had been sympathetic to the Corbyn project, but were now prepared to give Starmer the benefit of the doubt – we have to ‘rally behind the leadership to get the Tories out’. They thought that this is no time for voicing dissent – the main focus must be on winning a Labour government.

It is obvious that the left has lost, and lost badly. Lobbies and demonstrations – for instance that organised by Labour Black Socialists over the Forde report and the failure to deal with racism – were poorly attended, in marked contrast to previous years. In and around the conference arena, leftwing leafleting, paper sellers, interventions, etc were similarly at a much lower level.

In the hall itself, it was noticeable that the left was indeed highly marginalised. This, in part, resulted from manipulation by the chair, but there has also been a large number of exclusions. Stories were circulating throughout the week of delegates who turned up in Liverpool, only to be told that their credentials had been withdrawn and their membership suspended. There was, of course, the example of Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi – a newly elected NEC member suspended from the party just before conference. The most blatant example was the delegate from Leicester East, Angelo Sanchez, who spoke against Nato in the Ukraine debate. He was suspended immediately afterwards.

There was also a real lack of morale amongst the left. True, there was no great enthusiasm for singing ‘God save the king’, but where were the socialists, republicans, democrats who objected? Where were the objections to the constitutional loyalism? Last year, when Starmer spoke, delegates were standing up holding red cards and heckling. None of this now.

It has been argued that many people on the left, including trade union delegates, stayed away, while others say that the national anthem was not the issue to raise – there were more important questions than such petty matters! But for me both the singing of the anthem and the backing for what was essentially a warmongering policy for Ukraine (and the falling in behind a pro-Nato strategy with barely a peep of opposition) tells us a lot about the nature of today’s Labour Party, including its left.

Starmer’s economic and political policies were fairly clear and I believe he is going hell for leather (albeit in a quiet, understated way) to become prime minister. Those who have objected that he was risking electoral victory by focusing on the left have, I think, misunderstood his whole rationale. Starmer is part of a long line of Labour leaders who have openly lined up with the ruling class – nothing new there. Likewise he wants to demonstrate that he is not only a safe pair of hands, but also that he can deliver – not least that he can ensure that Labour is viewed as a reliable alternative government.

It is clear to me that Starmer is now seen by sections of the ruling class as not just an alternative, but actually a safer option, because of what is going on in the Tory Party. That applies not just in terms of economic management, but also in terms of the party’s relationship with the organised working class. So Starmer is not just playing an electoral game – not just appealing to that mythical ‘centre ground’ – but is appealing to the ruling class as well. The type of coverage he is getting in the less hysterical bourgeois papers indicates that he is succeeding.

Left response

One of the features of the fringe meetings I attended was a real failure to come to terms with what has happened. There were a series of events and rallies – some organised by new groupings, such as Enough is Enough, others by The World Transformed, as well as Tribune and the Socialist Campaign Group.

The first thing to note was the presence of Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, plus a number of prominent trade union leaders. They helped attract quite large audiences – delegates and visitors, but overwhelmingly from Liverpool itself. One had probably around 1,000 people and even some of the smaller ones often numbered in the hundreds. The common theme was a type of ‘revivalism’. The reaction to Corbyn was overwhelmingly positive, as if Corbynism was still a living project.

But what was really lacking in all of those meetings and rallies was any realistic appreciation of what had gone wrong. Why was Corbynism a failure? How was it defeated? A good example was the meeting on the Forde report. If you remember, the Forde report declared that there was a major problem of factionalism within Labour, which, particularly from the rightwing apparatus, had undermined the party’s election campaigns. The report, however, seemed to suggest ‘a plague on all your houses’ and that we should all unite.

Corbyn and many others went along with that line. Far from seeing the attacks on the left for what they were (and, in particular, looking at the nature of the Labour bureaucracy), they took the Forde report at face value. Some agreed that factionalism on the left was also part of the problem! So the battle that should have been fought in the party – the need to defeat the pro-capitalist right – was not taken up at all. The central mistake that had actually resulted in the defeat of the Corbyn leadership was still being repeated – concessions to the right, arguments about the need for compromise – all were clearly in evidence.

This is connected to something else that actually goes back to the very foundation of the Labour Party. Comrades see the state as an instrument for achieving socialism. Arguments were put forward that, if Starmer adopted a leftwing programme, this would make him very popular and then we would be able to begin the task of building socialism in Britain.

Of course, we as Marxists recognise the nature of the capitalist state – it is not an instrument that can simply be laid hold of and used by the working class. In fact that state will be used against any government, however ‘moderate’, if the interests of capital demand it. And this, of course, is a fundamental element of official left Labourism: it not only sees the state as an instrument that can be utilised, but believes that ‘socialism’ can be achieved through a succession of Labour governments. So the focus is on unity and maintaining the Labour Party as it is currently constituted, even if that means being humiliated, taken for granted or purged.

In other words, the problem is not only the undemocratic, anti-left measures taken by Starmer: there is also the fundamental ideological weakness of the official left.

A number of measures favoured by the left were passed at conference – the minimum wage, some aspects of the Green New Deal and a rather ambiguous motion on public control of the railways – and heralded as some great triumph. It was even suggested by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy that the party’s agenda was now determined by the left. The problem is not only that the official left’s policies are so tame and pro-capitalist that they can be happily adopted by Starmer: it is also quite possible for Starmer to sometimes use radical language, when it meets a particular need.

It was very clear from a number of conference votes that the left still enjoys a certain position in the constituencies – it probably has the support of around 40% of Constituency Labour Parties. But contrast that with the situation a few years ago, when it was probably more like 80%-90%. So it is essential that the Labour left is realistic about its decline: the left has been very clearly defeated and the pro-capitalist wing is now firmly in control. Taking solace from some rather anaemic motion (which will be ignored by Starmer if it is not to his liking) is to deceive oneself and to deceive others.

Mark two

The other question we have to look at relates to comrades who have adopted a rather different – indeed, opposite – conclusion: ie, that Labour is now dead and that what is needed is an alternative in the shape of some kind of Labour Party mark two. In a number of fringe meetings that type of question was raised – particularly in those organised by Beyond the Fringe.

A number of comrades from currents and traditions both within and outside the Labour Party took part and I spoke on behalf of Labour Party Marxists. What was interesting was that all present claimed to recognise the nature of Labour and they all accepted what for Marxists has been a longstanding truth: that Labour is a bourgeois workers’ party.

As I pointed out, this is not just a way of attacking the Labour leadership: it is actually a scientific description. Labour leaders have always been closely connected to the ruling class – often being drawn into it. In the case of Sir Keir, before entering parliament he was a key member of the state legal apparatus as director of public prosecutions.

There is, amongst most sections of the Labour left, an attachment to the past, when they believe that Labour was actually a workers’ party – referring to the party’s foundation in 1900 or the 1945 Labour government, for instance. So, whereas Labour was once a ‘socialist party’, it has now been taken over by the right.

The Marxist argument is that, unlike the European social democratic parties, Labour was not founded as a socialist, let alone a revolutionary organisation. It was, of course, supposed to represent the working class, so it does have links to the organised working class in the trade unions. Therefore it is a workers’ party in that sense. But the paradox is that the function of the elected representatives of the trade unions, for example, is actually to mediate between the labour and capital.

So, while Labour is a party supported by and with roots in the organised working class, it is, nevertheless, a bourgeois party. This raises the key question for Marxists: how do we orientate towards it? Many comrades were saying that Labour, as a bourgeois workers’ party, is now dead. Comrades from the Socialist Party in England and Wales, along with others, were arguing that we should now concentrate on building some kind of new organisation. There was a very similar set of arguments in the earlier meetings organised by Resist, in which they bizarrely announced that they had decided to join the virtually non-existent Socialist Labour Party. Founded by Arthur Scargill in 1996, it secured 494 votes in the 2019 general election and has a website that produces a can’t be reached message.

In all the above fringe meetings a great deal of emphasis was placed on the growth of working class militancy, demonstrated in the current wave of strikes – in particular, historical references to things like the anti-Poll Tax movement and a whole series of working class struggles. It was suggested that the current actions could throw up new possibilities for the left to develop a socialist alternative to Labour. That was also the message in some of the rallies, where the importance of new layers being drawn into struggle was stressed.

In other words, there was a great deal of emphasis on spontaneity, and the subsequent ‘rapid growth’ of the left as a result of militancy. Dave Nellist of SPEW, for example, stated that after a couple of years something like 25 million people were involved in a non-payment campaign against the poll tax. He repeated, with reference to the Russian Revolution, the myth that the Bolsheviks had expanded from a tiny group into a mass revolutionary party in a matter of weeks. The belief amongst these comrades on the left, of course, was that we now have to break from Labour.

The point was clear to me, however, that they might well be breaking with Labour, but they were not breaking with Labourism. In particular, they are not breaking with the historic model of the Labour Party – many were talking about a party that would have trade union affiliates, etc. Above all, they were not arguing that socialism can only be achieved through the leadership of a party with an explicitly Marxist programme, committed to revolutionary transformation. They still thought in terms of immediate, trade union-type struggles, which, according to their ‘transitional’ model, was the way to develop a socialist revolutionary consciousness.

This meant that the organisational model of a new formation would actually be similar to that of the original Labour Party. It also assumed that there was no need, for example, to develop a hegemonic Marxist party, but simply build consciousness through existing organisations and struggles. This ‘movementism’ informed all their politics.

So there were two linked aspects to the left’s view of conference. Firstly a failure to recognise the current weakness of the left and, secondly, an overstatement of the potential of some spontaneous protest and/or industrial movement, which would allegedly create some kind of revolutionary consciousness. It was also noticeable that the comrades advancing ideas for a new initiative on the left – already pushed for a number of years in the form of the SPEW-led Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, for example – could not give any real account of their failure to date.

So these were clear themes running through this conference – a failure to do any real stock-taking or make any historical analysis. No-one really wanted to look back – and, when they did, it was to the ‘good old days’. There was no critical engagement, only celebration – when there should have been a lot more thoughtful analysis.

Demoralisation

The other element I would like to draw attention to relates to the future of the left. Once more, in comparison to any previous party conference I attended in the last few years, clearly the left was experiencing profound demoralisation, following a huge defeat. But now they have reached the crossroads.

The various initiatives, already undertaken or about to be, are likely to run out of steam. The cost-of-living crisis we are facing will pull people, as voters that is for sure, to rally to the Labour Party. The old slogan that ‘any Labour government is better than a Tory government’, will be heard again.

This is probably a bad time to launch any new initiative of the kind being suggested – indeed the majority of the official Labour left clearly intends to remain on board. A number of comrades believed that the Enough is Enough initiative might be the basis for some new mass party. Although it claims to have support from thousands of people, it is clear that there has been no break with Labourism.

In many areas, Enough is Enough is being run by the trade union bureaucracy and the official left – for example, by Momentum. It may mobilise people, drawing them into rallies, demonstrations and protests, but it does not resemble anything like a vehicle for a new party. Anyone who views it as a kind of forerunner of the Chartists is sadly mistaken (I certainly do not see Andy Burnham in the role of Feargus O’Connor!).

Clearly the official Labour left is incapable of imagining anything beyond the perspective of securing a Labour government. Towards that end even individuals who might occasionally be critical have silenced themselves – note the way they all fell into line over Ukraine and how obsequious they were around Elizabeth Windsor, and how they continue to remain silent on the witch-hunt.

What about the ‘other left’? The left which very much exists within rank-and-file activists and the CLPs – there were 4,686 first preference votes for Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi in the NEC elections, for instance. That part of the left was also represented within the fringe at Liverpool, those who are still looking for some sort of lead.

It can be quite dispiriting to hear arguments that were made 30 or 40 years ago: predictions about the growth of the left, including that a strike wave will spontaneously lead to a new leftwing party, which seems now to be the ‘common sense’ of many. In contrast, we argue that a Marxist party is central, if we are to develop and strengthen a working class revolutionary consciousness which will be fully aware of the class nature of the state and which poses the question of power.

The other issue (and this is where Labour Party Marxists still has an important role) relates to the fact that Labour cannot be ignored. As a bourgeois workers’ party, it still retains considerable support among the organised working class. So how should we orientate towards it, if our aim is to break people from Labourism; from reformism and from concessions to capitalism? The LPM argument has not been ‘Labour or nothing’. On the contrary, we insist on the centrality of a Marxist party with a Marxist programme.

At the same time there is a need to take the Labour Party seriously – but we do not call for unquestioning loyalty to it. Comrades need to fight to transform it into a united front of all socialists and working class organisations. And I would expect that perspective to get a hearing, partly because it recognises the current reality of the left, and that it can grow again.

But it also recognises that Labour as it currently exists is not an organisation capable of being transformed into a vehicle for revolutionary transformation. So long as the argument of many remains that the way to achieve socialism is through a series of Labour governments, the left will stay trapped within electoralism and constitutional loyalty.

Therefore there is a dialectic between developing the forces of Marxism and orientating towards the Labour Party – the point about transforming Labour into a united front, while at the same time building a Marxist party with a revolutionary programme, aimed at achieving the emancipation of the working class. The two go hand in hand.

What the left needs to do now is engage in some good, solid thinking about what went wrong – not to mention challenging some of its own basic assumptions. This is where LPM can play a leading role. We need, of course, to begin again the fight against the witch-hunt – Labour Against the Witchhunt, albeit under a new name, needs to be revived. It was a big mistake to close it down.

The absolutely criminal attacks on a newly elected member of the NEC, keeping Jeremy Corbyn out of the Parliamentary Labour Party, suspending a delegate simply because they dared speak against Nato’s proxy war in Ukraine, closing down CLPs and barring critical voices from conference  – none of this must go unopposed.

This article is based on Kevin Bean’s talk to the October 2 Online Communist Forum, which can be found at youtu.be/duRO9HO1i04