Category Archives: Democracy and the Labour Party

Defend Corbyn

Gallery July 8, 2016

Join, get new affiliates, attend face-to-face meetings, caucus, subject MPs to mandatory reselection, transform the Labour Party from top to bottom. James Marshall outlines the Marxist programme of immediate action and long-term strategic goals

Operation Get Corbyn started even before the results of the Labour leadership election were announced. At the well publicised prompting of Peter Mandelson, Charles Clarke, David Blunkett and above all Tony Blair, the right launched a no-holds-barred struggle. Blair’s ‘Alice in wonderland’ opinion piece in The Observer had nothing to do with the former prime minister trying to swing votes in the closing two weeks of the leadership contest.1 Corbyn had already won and everyone who had an ounce of common sense knew it. No, the purpose of Blair’s article was perfectly clear. Rally the Labour right and their corporate, state and international allies … and put the wheels of Operation Get Corbyn into motion.

A direct assault was immediately discounted. Corbyn’s margin of victory made that impossible. So there had to be a campaign of slander, sabotage and spin. Corbyn was to be slowly, inexorably, pitilessly, ground down.
Operation Get Jeremy Corbyn is, undoubtedly, well financed and carefully choreographed. Alastair Campbell, the Fabian Society, Portland Communications – all have been implicated.2 Using the capitalist media, every action, every statement, every gesture … even Corbyn’s choice of clothes, is to be savaged. As the relentless psychological pressure built up and up, the calculation was that he would eventually buckle – throw in the towel and resign.

By-elections, local elections, the London and other mayoral elections have been fought with constant sniping from the right and predictions of disaster. Another strand of Operation Get Corbyn is, of course, the utterly cynical ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smearing. Dozens of loyal Labour Party members fell victim to the Compliance Unit’s witch-hunt. However, with the EU referendum result the right believed at last it could deliver the coup de grâce. Corbyn simultaneously got the blame for the narrow failure of the Remain campaign and for not pandering to the anti-immigrant sentiments of exiters. The bitter sense of disappointment felt by many, especially the young, could thereby be directed against Corbyn. To modify Abraham Lincoln’s famous adage, “You can fool some of the people, some of the time …”

Operation Get Jeremy Corbyn entered its final phase. In a late-night phone call on June 26, Hilary Benn informed Corbyn he had “lost confidence” in his leadership. Following Benn’s inevitable sacking, two thirds of the shadow cabinet subsequently resigned, along with dozens of junior shadow ministers and numerous aides and advisors. One after the other they deserted their posts and lined up to appear on eagerly awaiting TV and radio stations. Steve Bassam – Baron Bassam of Brighton, leader of the Labour Party in the House of Lords – formally broke off links with Corbyn’s office. Then there was the joint letter of 57 prospective parliamentary candidates, the 600 councillors, Alan Johnson, Kezia Dugdale, Ed Miliband, Neil Kinnock, Tom Watson, etc. All played their role in Operation Get Jeremy Corbyn. Crucially, there was, of course, the Parliamentary Labour Party and the 172-40 no confidence vote.

Rules

Given this predictable outcome, it is clear that Jeremy Corbyn has been badly advised. From the beginning he had the majority of the PLP profoundly, implacably, irreconcilably set against him. He should have been told so in no uncertain terms. Instead, he had Seumas Milne’s widely over-optimistic spreadsheet. It showed just 85 MPs who could be considered “core group negatives” or “hostile”. Milne was providing misinformation. He put 19 MPs in Corbyn’s “core group”, while 56 were classified as “core group plus” and 71 as “neutral but not hostile”.3 Obviously, the 172-strong right were never reconciled to Corbyn’s stunning leadership victory.

Yet Corbyn still remains hugely popular at a rank-and-file level. Opinion polls show that in no uncertain terms. And in the week following the EU referendum result 60,000 signed up to join the Labour Party. Corbyn has also received the backing of Unite, GMB, Unison and other unions. Nevertheless, Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, promises a bruising contest. Here, at least, he is being honest. Expect, therefore, an unremitting anti-Corbyn media barrage. More ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smears. More suspensions. More exclusions. More accusations of intimidation. More so-called revelations about the left.

But will there be a fair contest? Will Corbyn be allowed to stand? Everyone knows our rules are ambiguous. Here is the relevant section of the 2016 Labour rule book, chapter 4, clause II:

2. Election of leader and deputy leader.

A. The leader and deputy leader shall be elected separately in accordance with rule C below, unless rule E below applies.

B. Nomination

i. In the case of a vacancy for leader or deputy leader, each nomination must be supported by 15% of the Commons members of the PLP and members of the EPLP combined. Nominations not attaining this threshold shall be null and void.

ii. Where there is no vacancy, nominations may be sought by potential challengers each year prior to the annual session of party conference. In this case any nomination must be supported by 20% of the Commons members of the PLP and members of the EPLP combined. Nominations not attaining this threshold shall be null and void.

iii. Affiliated organisations, the ALC [Association of Labour Councillors – JM], Young Labour, and CLPs and Labour MEPs may also nominate for each of the offices of leader and deputy leader. All nominees must be Commons members of the PLP.

Understandably, that is why the left has concentrated efforts on ensuring a rule change at this year’s Liverpool conference. Till then, however, doubt remains. Does a sitting leader automatically appear on the ballot paper? Do they have to pass the 20% nomination threshold of MPs?

The National Executive Committee may well decide that Jeremy Corbyn, being the incumbent, should automatically be allowed to stand, if he so wishes. Then the chances are that the right’s ‘unity’ candidate will be soundly beaten. To prevent such a totally unacceptable outcome expect the right – maybe in the form of general secretary Iain McNicol – to take matters to the courts. Needless to say, the judicial system is no friend of the working class. Remember the Taff Vale judgement (1901), the Osborne judgement (1909), the Viking, Laval, Rüffert and Luxembourg judgements (2007, 2008).

Huffington Post UK reports legal advice from Doughty Street Chambers. It concludes that B (ii) only applies to a “potential challenger”. The right, however, has “two rival legal opinions, suggesting that, because the current rules are ‘silent’ on the explicit need for nominations, he [Corbyn – JM] would indeed need nominations from MPs”.4 The precedent of Neil Kinnock securing the symbolic backing of numerous Labour MPs when faced with Tony Benn’s leadership bid back in 1988 is frequently cited (Benn was trounced, picking up 11.4% to Kinnock’s 88.6%).

Hence, we can certainly imagine a leadership contest where the right’s ‘unity’ candidate is soundly thrashed by Corbyn. What would the PLP majority do after that? On the other hand, it is quite conceivable that Corbyn fails to secure enough nominations and, thanks to a court judgement, there is only one runner – the ‘unity’ candidate of the right. What would the party’s affiliates, members and supporters do in the event that, instead of a right vs left election contest, we get the crowning of the right’s candidate?

A historic split is clearly on the cards.

Our best-case scenario is that Corbyn beats the right’s ‘unity’ candidate. Maybe then, all the 172 rebel MPs will do us a favour and go for another Social Democratic Party. Admittedly an outside possibility – but political suicide is an unattractive prospect for most of the PLP. They remain acutely aware of the sorry fate of the SDP. Moreover, unlike the early 1980s, the political centre is not enjoying a sustained revival.5 At the last general election the Lib Dems were decimated. They remain marginalised and widely despised.

Given the punishing logic of the first-past-the-post election system, it is therefore unlikely that the PLP majority will do us that favour. No, probably the right will rely on the rule-based fact that as sitting MPs they are set to be official Labour candidates in a November 2016 or February 2017 general election.

Also, well before that, expect the PLP right to elect its own, unconstitutional, leader (maybe their leadership candidate). The result: in effect two rival parties. A rightwing Labour Party with by far the biggest parliamentary presence. Then, on the other hand, a leftwing Labour Party with trade union support, but a much smaller number of MPs.

However, there is an obvious problem for the right. The Liverpool conference, or a special conference before that, can be expected to change the rules. Not only B (ii). New rules must be introduced subjecting all elected representatives, crucially MPs, to mandatory reselection. A welcome threat now coming from Len McCluskey and Unite, which we have every interest in getting into the rule book.

So, on balance, I would guess. the right is probably banking on excluding Corbyn from the ballot. It therefore expects the courts to oblige. With its ‘unity’ candidate elected by default, the right would then do everything within its power to ensure that the trade unions, the left, the majority of members and supporters are driven away. Obviously a high-risk strategy. But that shows just how desperate the right actually is.

Ruins

The well-timed series of resignations by members of the shadow cabinet need to be understood not, as claimed, as a heavy-hearted response to Corbyn’s “weak role” in the EU referendum, lack of “leadership skills”, “poor response” to the Shami Chakrabarti report, etc. The right wants to split the Labour Party and establish an out-and-out bourgeois party on its ruins.

What should the left be doing under these unprecedented circumstances? As the right goes in for the kill, we must respond using all our energy and all the weapons at our disposal. Obviously Corbyn must be unconditionally, but critically, defended. Certainly this is no time to faint-heartedly opt out of “Labour’s internecine strife” (Owen Jones).6 Unite’s Len McCluskey has warned the right that a leadership election without Corbyn on the ballot paper will set the Labour Party “on course for a split”.7 However, that split should not come from the left. Instead, we should use our conference majority to change the rules and if necessary rerun the leadership election … with Corbyn on the ballot paper. If the right refuses to accept conference decisions the NEC should swiftly counter with some well chosen expulsions.
Hence the Labour left has five immediate tasks.

Meanwhile, take full advantage of our current rules. The ‘trigger’ mechanism allows local party units, including both individual members and affiliated organisations, to “determine whether the constituency holds a full, open selection contest for its next candidate, in which other potential candidates are nominated, or reselects the sitting MP without such a contest”.8

Secondly, Momentum must be transformed. The inertia that paralyses us today must be replaced with … well, momentum. That can only come about through democracy, open debate and the election of and right to recall all Momentum officials. Membership lists must certainly be handed over to local branches as a matter of urgency. Without that our ability to fully mobilise our forces will be severely diminished.

Thirdly, there must be an education campaign to overcome the illusion that Facebook, Twitter, etc, are the future of politics. They are, in fact, echo chambers. We must persuade Corbyn’s Facebook, Twitter, etc, supporters that they have to become full individual Labour Party members … and then regularly attend face-to-face meetings. If you want to defend Corbyn, if you want to ensure that he stays true to his principles, if you want to transform the Labour Party, then you must use your vote to swing the NEC to the left, select and reselect MPs, MEPs, councillors, etc. Only card-carrying members can attend ward and constituency meetings and stand for officer positions. But caucus beforehand with your Momentum, Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, LPM, etc, comrades. That is what the right does with Progress, Labour First, etc. We must do the same … only better.

Fourthly, within the affiliated trade unions we must fight to win many, many more to enrol. Just over 70,000 affiliated supporters voted in the 2015 leadership election. A tiny portion of what could be. Over four million pay the political levy.9 Given that they can sign up to the Labour Party with no more than an online click, we really ought to have a million affiliated supporters as a minimum target figure.
Fifthly, every constituency, branch (ward) and other such basic units must be seized, revived and galvanised by the left. The right has done everything to make them cold, uninviting, bureaucratic and lifeless. The left must convince the sea of young new members, and the elder returnees, to drive out the right. Elect officers who defend the Corbyn leadership. Our constituencies and branches can then be made into vibrant centres of organisation, education and action. Only then can we hold wayward councillors and MPs to account.

Long term

Whatever the particular scenario, the Labour Party must be reorganised from top to bottom. That should be our overriding aim – as opposed to trying to win the next general election by concocting some rotten compromise with the right.
Organisationally and politically radical change must be put on the agenda. We need a sovereign conference. We need to subordinate MPs to the NEC. We also need to sweep away the undemocratic rules and structures put in place under Blair.

The joint policy committee, the national policy forums, the whole horrible rigmarole must go at the earliest possible opportunity. Politically we need a Marxist – not a Lassallian, not a Blairite – clause four and a programmatic commitment to working class rule and international socialism.

In terms of our history we are rightly proud of being a federal party. Trade unions, the Co-op, socialist societies, etc. Therefore securing new affiliates ought to be a priority. The Fire Brigades Union has reaffiliated. Excellent. But what about Rail, Maritime and Transport union? Let us win RMT activists to drop their misplaced support for Tusc. Instead affiliate to the Labour Party. And what about the National Union of Teachers? Why can’t we win them to affiliate? Surely we can … if we fight for hearts and minds.

What about the Public and Commercial Services union? Thankfully, Mark Serwotka, its leftwing general secretary, has at last come round to the idea. The main block to affiliation now comes in the form of opposition from the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party in England and Wales. True, PCS affiliation will run up against the Trades Disputes and Trade Union Act (1927). A piece of vicious class legislation introduced in the aftermath of the 1926 General Strike. Civil service unions were barred from affiliating to the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress. However, the Civil and Public Services Association – predecessor of PCS – reaffiliated to the TUC in 1946. Now, surely, it is time for the PCS to reaffiliate to the Labour Party.

When we in LPM moved a motion at the February 2015 AGM of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy calling for all trade unions to be encouraged to affiliate, we were met with the objection that for the PCS it would be illegal. However, as NEC member Christine Shawcroft, who was sitting next to me, said: “What does that matter?” Here comrade Shawcroft, a close ally of Corbyn, shows the exact right spirit. Force another change in the law.

Then there are the leftwing groups. They too can be brought under our banner. Labour can become the common home of every socialist organisation, cooperative and trade union – the agreed goal of our founders.10 In other words, the Labour Party can become what Leon Trotsky called a permanent united front of the working class.
We in Labour Party Marxists unapologetically take our programmatic lead from the CPGB. Since the CPGB has been demanding the right to affiliate since its foundation in 1920, we simply extend that so as to include the SWP, SPEW, Left Unity and other such organisations.

Yet, sadly, there has been a distinct lack of imagination here. Instead of a vigorous banging on the door, there has been cowardly disengagement. An approach undoubtedly designed to preserve sectarian interests and brittle reputations.
Take the SWP. An official statement admitted that SWP members “did not sign up to vote in the [Labour leadership] election”. Why did the comrades refuse to register as Labour Party supporters? After all, to have voted for Corbyn cost a mere £3 … and for levy-paying members of affiliated trade unions it was free. As the statement pathetically explains, Corbyn faces “a firestorm of opposition” from the right. There are no more than 20 MPs “who really support Corbyn”. Etc, etc.11

What ought to be a challenge to throw oneself into a pivotal battle becomes an excuse to stand aloof. Beset by splits and divisions in the 1970s and then again in the 2010s, the SWP apparatus wants nothing to do with anything that carries even the whiff of factional strife. So there is the routine call for marches, protests and strikes … as counterposed to the Labour Party, the PLP, CLPs and participating in a concentrated form of the class war. However, in rejecting any sort of front-line involvement in the Labour Party, the SWP stays true to its modern-day version of Bakuninism.

Under these circumstances we urge SWP members to organise factionally and openly revolt. At the very least, however, become a Labour Party supporter or register as a voting trade union affiliate. Many already have. A silent rebellion is better than no rebellion at all.

Then we have SPEW. Having categorically dismissed the Labour Party as an out-and-out capitalist party since the mid-1990s, it has been busily rowing … backwards. The old Militant logo was cosmetically placed on the masthead of The Socialist. Despite that, Peter Taaffe, SPEW’s founder-leader, refuses to actively engage in the Labour Party. Instead he clings to Tusc and for show calls for a labour movement conference to defend Corbyn … crucially one that is open to SPEW. A classic case of Mohammed and the mountain. Except, of course, that, whereas the Labour Party, with its affiliates and mass base, are undoubtedly a mountain, Taaffe is no Mohammed. Time and again he has proved himself a buffoon. Eg, failure to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, failure to predict the period of reaction that followed, failure to predict the revival of the Labour left, etc. If his Tusc stood on something that resembled a Marxist programme, Taaffe would still be guilty of another blundering strategic error. Suffice to say, Tusc is committed to nothing but left reformism and will continue to be politically, organisationally and electorally irrelevant.

Left Unity is essentially no different. As with SPEW and the SWP, members peeled away to join the Labour Party as individuals. Undaunted, LU’s beleaguered leadership is determined to carry on as a halfway house project that merely comments on developments in the Labour Party. A detached form of politics utterly alien to the spirit and practice of Marxism.

Partymax

Our PLP rebels are out-and-out traitors. They are also out-and out carreerists. Once and for all we must put an end to such types exploiting the Labour Party for their own narrow purposes. Being an MP ought to be an honour, not a way 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 allowances, putting them on £79,060 (yet at present Labour MPs are only obliged to pay the annual £82 parliamentarian’s subscription fee to the party). Moreover, as leader of the official opposition, Jeremy Corbyn not only gets his MP’s salary: he is entitled to an additional £73,617.12

We in LPM say, let them live on the average skilled worker’s wage – say £40,000 (plus legitimate expenses). Then, however, they must hand the balance over to the party. Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott should take the lead.
The partymax would give a considerable boost to our finances. Even if we leave out Labour’s 20 MEPs from the calculation, with 229 MPs it would amount to roughly £900,000 extra. Anyway, whatever our finances, there is the basic principle. Our representatives ought to live like ordinary workers, not pampered members of the middle class.

Given the Labour Party’s mass membership, affiliated trade unions and the huge electoral challenges before us, we urgently need to reach out to all those who are disgusted by corrupt career politicians, all those who aspire to 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. Brilliant mediums for transmitting short, sharp, clear messages. However, when it comes to setting the agenda, educating members, debating principles and charting political strategies, they are worse than useless.

Relying on the favours of the capitalist press, radio and TV is a fool’s game. True, it worked splendidly for Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell. But, as Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband found to their cost, to live by the mainstream media is to die by the mainstream media. No, we need our own full-spectrum alternative. The established media can be used, of course. But, as shown with the anti-Corbyn coup, when things really matter, we get hardly a look in. Indeed the capitalist press, radio and TV are central to the anti-Corbyn coup. There were, of course, idiot voices to the contrary – those who wanted to court The Guardian, the Mirror, the BBC, etc.13 But, frankly, we should have anticipated the bile, the mockery, the relentless stream of lies.

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 under the control 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 such a paper free of charge should be considered and, naturally, everything should be put up on the web without pay walls or subscription charges. We should also launch a range of internet-based TV and radio stations. The left in South Africa, Iran and the US do it … so should we. With the abundant riches of dedication, passion and ideas that exist on the left here in Britain and far beyond, the BBC, Al Jazeera, Russia Today and Sky can be bettered.

Leader

Of course, in the medium to long term, we Marxists want the abolition of the Bonapartist post of leader. But these are extraordinary times and require extraordinary measures. Ed Miliband abolished the fleeting practice of having the PLP elect the shadow cabinet and, understandably with the election of Corbyn, the right touted the idea of a restoration. That would have left Corbyn without John McDonnell and Diane Abbott and utterly isolated in the shadow cabinet. Thankfully Corbyn’s early pronouncements favouring such an outcome were quickly rethought. He wisely opted to keep the dictatorial powers long favoured by past Labour leaders.

Appointing the shadow chancellor was always going to be a litmus test. The more timid members of Corbyn’s inner circle were reportedly urging him to opt for someone from the centre. Instead he chose John McDonnell. Hence the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership. Offering shadow cabinet seats to the likes of Hilary Benn, Angela Eagle, Lucy Powell, Lord Falconer, Chris Bryant, Owen Smith and Lisa Nandy was always going to happen. Corbyn is a natural conciliator. And the fact of the matter is that Seumas Milne’s “core group” of 19 loyalist MPs was too small if all posts were to be filled. Unless, that is, Corbyn went for a pocket-sized shadow cabinet and even drew upon talents from outside parliament (as seen during World War II under Winston Churchill with Ernest Bevin – he was appointed minister of labour in 1940 despite not being an MP). That is what we LPMers advocated.

Nevertheless, equipped with his left-centre-right coalition, Corbyn could claim the moral high ground. He was reaching out to all sections of the party. Now, in terms of internal perceptions, it is the “hostile” and “core negative group” of MPs who, hopefully, will be squarely blamed for undertaking a completely cynical coup attempt against Corbyn that, whatever the outcome, will surely badly damage Labour’s chances in a widely expected early general election. That might play well with traditional Labour activists. Normally, they do not take kindly to anyone damaging Labour’s chances at the polls. After all, for most of them, the be-all and end-all of politics is getting elected and re-elected … even if the manifesto promises little more than managing capitalism better than the Tories. A misplaced common sense that wide swathes of the Labour left, including Corbyn and McDonnell, have thoroughly internalised.

However, the “hostile” and “core negative group” of Labour MPs have the full backing of the capitalist media, the City of London, the military-industrial complex, special branch, MI5 and their American cousins. Corbyn’s much publicised admiration for Karl Marx, his campaigning against Israel’s settlement of the West Bank, opposition to US-led imperialist wars, call to junk Trident and nuclear weapons, his commitment to increase the tax taken from transnational corporations, the banks and the mega-rich, his platonic republicanism, even his unwillingness to enthusiastically sing the royal anthem mark him out as completely unacceptable.

Of course, there is still the danger that the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership will have their agenda set for them by their futile attempt to restore PLP unity. Put another way, in what is still a coalition cabinet, the right sets the limits and therefore determines the political programme. Why? Because they were always prepared to walk. That is what Andy Burnham could still do over so-called anti-Semitism, EU negotiations, nuclear weapons, the monarchy, etc. The decision by Corbyn to kiss the hand of Elizabeth Windsor, though not to kneel, in order to gain access to the privy council was therefore highly problematic.

Staying silent, abandoning principles or putting them on the backburner in an attempt to placate the right was never a good strategy. We saw that with John McDonnell’s pusillanimous statements on Ireland, Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to defend the victims of the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt, lauding the Jewish Labour Movement, etc. Now there is the call from the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership to have a “sensible” discussion on immigration.
Following the EU referendum McDonnell says we are no longer obliged to defend the principle of the right of people to free movement (he was disgracefully backed by Unite’s general secretary, Len McCluskey). Such a course may court the working class EU exiters. But it demobilises, demoralises and drains away Corbyn’s mass base.

Reclaim

So, the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership faces both an enemy within the PLP and an enemy within 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 produces not decisive steps in the direction of socialism, but attacks on the working class … and then the election of a Tory government.

Tactically, today, Marxists are right to concentrate our fire on the 172 “core negative group” of “hostile” MPs. ‘Blairites out’ should be the common slogan on the left. Yet the majority of Labour affiliates, members and supporters still trust the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership. Despite that, they have to be presented with a programme that decisively breaks with their conciliations, compromises and concessions. Everyone on the left will have an instinctive loathing of those seeking to oust Jeremy Corbyn, who support US imperialist wars, who follow the lead of Progress, Labour First, etc. Therefore our call is to turn the tables. Purge the right and transform the Labour Party.

Naturally, real Marxists, not fake Marxists, never talk of ‘reclaiming’ the Labour Party. It has never been ours in the sense of being a “political weapon for the workers’ movement”. No, despite the electoral base and trade union affiliations, our party has been dominated throughout its entire history by career politicians and trade union bureaucrats. A distinct social stratum which in the last analysis serves not the interests of the working class, but the continuation of capitalist exploitation.
Speaking in the context of the need for the newly formed CPGB to affiliate to the Labour Party, Lenin had this to say:

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

Regarded from this, the only correct, point of view, the Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois party, because, although made up of workers, it is led by reactionaries, and the worst kind of reactionaries at that, who act quite in the spirit of the bourgeoisie. It is an organisation of the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically dupe the workers with the aid of the British Noskes and Scheidemanns [the executioners of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht].14

An assessment which retains its essential purchase. But the PLP is now two parties. One is a 172-strong bourgeois party. The other is a 40-strong potential workers’ party. However, the potential workers’ party has every chance of keeping the loyalty of the affiliated trade unions, the leftwing mass membership and, albeit after a fierce fight, the working class electoral base. With Corbyn’s election in September came the chance to transform the Labour Party by attacking the right both from below and above. It was never going to be easy and not easy it has proved. But that chance still remains before us. Hence, we must ensure that Corbyn is re-elected and the right is humiliatingly defeated. Then we can regrow the PLP, not as the master, but as the servant of the labour movement. That prospect genuinely sends shivers of fear throughout the bourgeois establishment. No wonder Angela Eagle, Owen Smith, the PLP right, the Mirror, the Sun and David Cameron have been united in calling upon Jeremy Corbyn to resign.

Notes
1 The Observer August 30 2015.
2 http://www.thecanary.co/2016/06/28/truth-behind-labour-coup-really-began-manufactured-exclusive/.
3 The Guardian March 23 2016.
4 www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jeremy-corbyn-legal-advice-automatically-on-ballot-leadership-challenge_uk_577003cfe4b0d2571149d42a.
5 From a 2.5% historic low point the Liberal Party saw a revival in the 1970s, which saw it win 19.3% of the popular vote in the February 1974 general election.
6 https://medium.com/@OwenJones84/my-thoughts-on-the-plight-of-labour-38413229f88#.13swc959x.
7 The Guardian June 26 2016.
8 www.grassrootslabour.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=200:how-labours-trigger-works&catid=43:forum&Itemid=60.
9 D Pryer Trade union political funds and levy House of Commons briefing paper No00593, August 8 2013, p8.
10 At the 1899 TUC, JH Holmes, a delegate of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, moved this resolution: “That this congress, having regard to its decisions in former years, and with a view to securing a better representation of the interests of labour in the House of Commons, hereby instructs the parliamentary committee to invite the cooperation of all cooperative, socialistic, trade unions and other working class organisations to jointly cooperate on lines mutually agreed upon, in convening a special congress of representatives from such of the above-named organisations as may be willing to take part to devise ways and means for securing the return of an increased number of labour members to the next parliament” (www.unionhistory.info/timeline/1880_14_Narr_Display.php?Where=NarTitle+contains+%27The+
Labour+Party%27+AND+
DesPurpose+contains+%27WebDisplay%27).
11 Socialist Worker September 8 2015.
12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leader_of_the_Opposition_(United_Kingdom).
13 Eg, Owen Jones The Guardian September 16 2015.
14 VI Lenin CW Vol 31, Moscow 1977, pp257-58.

Democracy and the Labour Party, The right

Turn the tables on the right

Gallery June 30, 2016

The coup attempt against Jeremy Corbyn presents the left with both a huge challenge and an historic opportunity. James Marshall, writing for Labour Party Marxists, assesses the balance of forces, and outlines a programme of immediate action and long-term strategic aims

During the EU referendum campaign Labour’s right, Cameron’s Tories and the ‘remain’ media all observed a kind of ceasefire. Attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smearing, ‘Labour is bound to lose’ predictions, etc, were temporarily put on hold. They needed him to bring on board traditional Labour voters and the young. But, once the EU results were announced, Operation Get Jeremy Corbyn was set in motion.

In a late-night phone call Hilary Benn told Corbyn he had “lost confidence” in his leadership. Following Benn’s inevitable sacking, two thirds of the shadow cabinet subsequently resigned, along with dozens of junior shadow ministers and numerous aides and advisors. Operation Get Jeremy Corbyn is, undoubtedly, carefully choreographed. One after the other they resigned and duly lined up to appear on eagerly waiting TV and radio stations. Steve Bassam – Baron Bassam of Brighton, leader of the Labour Party in the House of Lords – played his part too. He formally broke links with Corbyn’s office. Then there was the joint letter of 57 prospective parliamentary candidates, Alan Johnson, Lisa Dugdale, Ed Miliband, etc. All played their pre-planned role in Operation Get Jeremy Corbyn. Crucially, there was, of course, the Parliamentary Labour Party and the 172-40 no confidence vote. The main blow. So there will definitely be a leadership contest.

Rules

Given this predictable outcome, it is clear that Jeremy Corbyn has been badly advised. From the beginning he had the majority of the PLP profoundly, implacably, irreconcilably set against him. He should have been told that in no uncertain terms. Instead, he had Seumas Milne’s widely over-optimistic spreadsheet. It showed just 85 MPs who could be considered “core group negatives” or “hostile”. Milne was providing misinformation. He put 19 MPs in Corbyn’s “core group”, while 56 were classified as “core group plus” and 71 as “neutral but not hostile”.1 Obviously, the 172-strong right were never reconciled to Corbyn’s stunning leadership victory in September 2015.

And Corbyn still remains hugely popular at a rank-and-file level. Opinion polls show that in no uncertain terms. He has also received the solid backing of Unite, GMB, Unison and other unions. Nevertheless, Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, promises a bruising contest. Here, at least, he is being honest. Expect, therefore, an unremitting anti-Corbyn media barrage. More ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smears. More suspensions. More exclusions. More accusations of intimidation. More so-called revelations about the left.

But will there be a contest? Everyone knows our rule B (ii) is ambiguous. That is why the left has understandably concentrated efforts on ensuring a rule change at this year’s Liverpool conference. Till then, however, doubt remains. Does a sitting leader automatically appear on the ballot paper? Do they have to pass the 20% nomination threshold of MPs and MEPs?

The national executive committee could well decide that Jeremy Corbyn, being the incumbent, should automatically be allowed to stand, if he so wishes. If that happens, then the chances are that the right’s ‘unity’ candidate will be soundly beaten. To prevent such a totally unacceptable outcome expect the right – maybe in the form of general secretary Iain McNicol – to take matters to the courts. Needless to say, the judicial system is no friend of the working class or the left. Remember the Taff Vale judgement (1901), the Osborne judgement (1909), the Viking, Laval, Rüffert and Luxembourg judgements (2007, 2008).

Huffington Post UK reports legal advice from Doughty Street Chambers. It concludes that B (ii) only applies to a “potential challenger”. The right, however, has “two rival legal opinions, suggesting that, because the current rules are ‘silent’ on the explicit need for nominations, he [Corbyn – JM] would indeed need nominations from MPs”.2 The precedent of Neil Kinnock securing the backing of numerous Labour MPs when faced with Tony Benn’s leadership bid in 1988 is frequently cited (Benn was trounced, picking up 11.4% to Kinnock’s 88.6%).

Hence, we can certainly imagine a leadership contest where the right’s ‘unity’ candidate is thrashed by Corbyn. What would the PLP majority do after that? On the other hand, it is quite conceivable that Corbyn fails to secure enough nominations and, thanks to a court judgement, there is only one runner – the ‘unity’ candidate of the right. What would the party’s affiliates, members and supporters then do?

A historic split is clearly on the cards.

Our best-case scenario is that Corbyn soundly beats the right’s ‘unity’ candidate. Maybe then, all the 172 rebel MPs will do us a favour: they go for another Social Democratic Party. Admittedly this is an outside possibility – political suicide is an unattractive prospect for most of the PLP. They remain acutely aware of the sorry fate of the SDP. Moreover, unlike the early 1980s, the political centre is not enjoying a sustained revival.3 At the last general election the Lib Dems were decimated. They remain marginalised and widely despised.

Given the punishing logic of the first-past-the-post election system, it is therefore unlikely that the PLP majority will do us that favour. No, probably the right will rely on the rule-based fact that as sitting MPs they are set to be the official Labour candidate in a November 2016 or February 2017 general election.

Also, well before that, expect the PLP to elect its own, unconstitutional, leader (ie, their leadership candidate). The result: two rival parties. A rightwing Labour Party with by far the biggest parliamentary presence. Then, on the other hand, a leftwing Labour Party with trade union support, but a much smaller number of MPs.

However, there is an obvious problem for the right. The Liverpool conference, or a special conference before that, can be expected to change the rules. Not only B (ii). New rules will surely be introduced subjecting all elected representatives, crucially MPs, to mandatory reselection. A welcome threat now coming from Len McCluskey and Unite, which we have every interest getting into the rule book.

Split

The well-timed resignations by members of the shadow cabinet need to be understood not, as claimed, as heavy-hearted responses to Corbyn’s “weak role” in the EU referendum, lack of “leadership skills”, etc. The right wants to split the Labour Party and establish an out-and-out bourgeois party on its ruins.

What should the left be doing under these unprecedented circumstances? As the right goes in for the kill, we must respond using all our energy and all the weapons at our disposal. Obviously Corbyn must be unconditionally, but critically, defended. Certainly this is no time to faint-heartedly opt out of “Labour’s internecine strife” (Owen Jones).4 Unite’s Len McCluskey has warned the right that a leadership election without Corbyn on the ballot paper will set the Labour Party “on course for a split”.5 However, that split should not come from the left. Instead, we should use our conference majority to change the rules and if necessary rerun the leadership election … with Corbyn on the ballot paper. If the right refuses to accept conference decisions the NEC should swiftly counter with expulsions.

Hence the Labour left has four immediate tasks.

Firstly, we should support demands for a special conference. Change the rules on the leadership election, lower the threshold, confirm that the incumbent is automatically on the ballot paper. Put in place rules stipulating that all elected representatives are subject to mandatory reselection. Abolish the compliance unit. Restore full membership rights to those cynically charged with anti-Semitism. Welcome in those good socialists who have been barred from membership because, mainly out of frustration, they supported the Greens, Left Unity or the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition at the last general election. Meanwhile, take full advantage of our current rules. The ‘trigger’ mechanism allows local party units, including both individual members and affiliated organisations, to “determine whether the constituency holds a full, open selection contest for its next candidate, in which other potential candidates are nominated, or reselects the sitting MP without such a contest”.6

Secondly, Momentum must be given momentum. That can only come about through democracy and the election of and right to recall all Momentum officials. Membership lists must be handed over to the local branches, so as to maximise mobilisation. That will facilitate a renewed drive to win all Corbyn supporters to become full individual Labour Party members. If they want to defend him, if they want to ensure that he stays true to his principles, if they want to transform the Labour Party, then the best thing that they can do is to get themselves a vote – not only when it comes to the leader, but when it comes to the NEC, the selection and re-selection of MPs, MEPs, councillors, etc. Card-carrying members can attend ward and constituency meetings and stand for officer positions.

Thirdly, within the affiliated trade unions we must fight to win many, many more to enrol. Just over 70,000 affiliated supporters voted in the 2015 leadership election. A tiny portion of what could be. There are well over four million who pay the political levy.7 Given that they can sign up to the Labour Party with no more than an online click, we really ought to have a million affiliated supporters as a minimum target figure.

Fourthly, every constituency, branch (ward) and other such basic units must be seized, revived and galvanised by the left. The right has done everything to make them cold, uninviting, bureaucratic and lifeless. The left must convince the sea of young new members, and the elder returnees, to attend meetings … and organise to drive out the right. Elect officers who defend the Corbyn leadership. Our constituency and branches can then be made into vibrant centres of organisation, education and action. As such they would be well placed to hold wayward councillors and MPs to account.

Long term

Organisationally and politically radical change must be put on the agenda. We need a sovereign conference. We need to subordinate MPs to the NEC. We also need to sweep away the undemocratic rules and structures put in place under Blair. The joint policy committee, the national policy forums, the whole horrible rigmarole must go at the earliest possible opportunity. Politically we need a new clause four and a programmatic commitment to working class rule and international socialism.

Labour is rightly proud of being a federal party. Therefore securing new affiliates ought to be a priority. The Fire Brigades Union has reaffiliated. Excellent. But what about the Rail, Maritime and Transport union? Let us win RMT militants to drop their misplaced support for Tusc. Instead affiliate to the Labour Party. And what about the National Union of Teachers? Why can’t we win them to affiliate? Surely we can … if we fight for hearts and minds.

Then there is the Public and Commercial Services union. Thankfully, Mark Serwotka, its leftwing general secretary, has at last come round to the idea. The main block to affiliation now comes in the form of opposition from the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party in England and Wales. True, PCS affiliation will run up against the Trades Disputes and Trade Union Act (1927), introduced by a vengeful Tory government in the aftermath of the general strike, whereby civil service unions were barred from affiliating to the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress. The Civil and Public Services Association – predecessor of PSC – reaffiliated to the TUC in 1946. Now, surely, it is time for the PCS to reaffiliate to the Labour Party.

True, when we in LPM moved a motion at the February 2015 AGM of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy calling for all trade unions to be encouraged to affiliate, we were met with the objection that for the PCS it would be illegal. However, as NEC member Christine Shawcroft, who was sitting next to me, said: “What does that matter?” Here comrade Shawcroft, a close ally of Corbyn, shows the exact right spirit. Force another change in the law.

Then there are the leftwing groups and parties. They too can be brought under our banner. Labour can become the common home of every socialist organisation, cooperative and trade union – the agreed goal of our founders.8 In other words, the Labour Party can become what Leon Trotsky called a permanent united front of the working class.

Yet, sadly, especially with those outside Labour, there has been a distinct lack of imagination. Instead of a banging on the door, there has been cowardly disengagement. An approach undoubtedly designed to preserve sectarian interests and brittle reputations.

Take the SWP. In an official statement the organisation off-handedly admitted that its much depleted band of followers “did not sign up to vote in the [Labour leadership] election”. Why did the comrades refuse to register as Labour Party supporters? Why did they stand aloof? After all, to have voted for Corbyn cost a mere £3 … and for levy-paying members of affiliated trade unions it was free. So why did the SWP refrain from giving Corbyn voting support? The statement pathetically explained. Corbyn faces “a firestorm of opposition” from the right. There are no more than 20 MPs “who really support Corbyn”. Etc, etc.9

What ought to be a challenge to throw oneself into an historic fight becomes an excuse to stay clear. Yet, having been torn by splits and divisions in the 1970s and then again in the 2010s, the SWP apparatus wants nothing to do with anything that carries even the whiff of factional strife. So there is the call for marches, protests and strikes … as counterpoised to the Labour Party, PLP battles and taking sides in a concentrated form of the class war. However, in rejecting any sort of front-line involvement in Labour’s civil war, the SWP stays true to its modern-day version of Bakuninism.

Then we have SPEW. Having categorically dismissed the Labour Party as an out and out capitalist party since the mid-1990s, it has been busily rowing … backwards. The old Militant logo was cosmetically placed on the masthead of The Socialist. Despite that, Peter Taaffe, SPEW’s founder-leader, steadfastly refuses to join the battle in the Labour Party. Instead he clings to Tusc as if it were a comfort blanket. If Tusc stood on something that resembled a Marxist programme, that would still be a strategic mistake. But what passes for Tusc’s programme is barely distinguishable form Corbynism. Yet, whereas Corbyn has a mass base, Tusc is organisationally and electorally a nothing.

Left Unity is essentially no different. As with SPEW and the SWP, members peeled away to join the Labour Party as individuals. Undaunted, LU is determined to carry on as a halfway house project that merely comments on developments in the Labour Party. A platonic form of politics.

We in Labour Party Marxists unapologetically take our programmatic lead from the CPGB. Having been demanding the right to affiliate since its foundation in 1920, today we simply demand that the CPGB ought to be accorded the same rights as the Cooperative Party, the Fabians, Christians on the Left, Scientists for Labour, etc.10 However, we also extend that demand to include the SWP, SPEW, LU and other such organisations.

Partymax

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

We in LPM say, let them live on 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, Diane Abbott should take the lead. That would give a considerable boost to our finances. Even if we leave out Labour’s 20 MEPs from the calculation, with 229 MPs it would amount to roughly £900,000 extra. 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 impose the partymax.

Given the Labour Party’s mass membership, affiliated trade unions and 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 to 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 mediums for transmitting short, sharp, clear messages. But, when it comes to complex ideas, debating principles and charting political strategies, they are worse than useless.

Relying on the favours of the capitalist press, radio and TV is a fool’s game. True, it worked splendidly for Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell. But, as 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 anti-Corbyn coup, when things really matter, we get hardly a look in. Indeed the capitalist press, radio and TV are integral to the anti-Corbyn coup. There were, of course, idiot voices to the contrary – those who wanted to court The Guardian, the Mirror, etc.12 But, frankly, we should have anticipated the lies, the bile, the mockery, the implacable opposition.

Once we had the Daily Herald. Now we have not a thing. Well, apart from the deadly-dull trade union house journals, the advertising sheets of the confessional sects and the Morning Star (which in reality is still under the control 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 such a paper free of charge should be considered and, naturally, everything should be put up on the web without pay walls or subscription charges. 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.

Leader

Of course, in the medium to long term we Marxists want the abolition of the Bonapartist post of leader. But these are extraordinary times and require extraordinary measures. Ed Miliband abolished the fleeting practice of having the PLP elect the shadow cabinet and understandably with the election of Corbyn the right touted the idea of a restoration. That would have left Corbyn without John McDonnell and Diane Abbott and utterly isolated in the shadow cabinet. Thankfully Corbyn’s early pronouncements favouring such an outcome were quickly rethought. He wisely opted to keep the dictatorial powers long favoured by past Labour leaders.

Nevertheless, equipped with his left-centre-right coalition, Corbyn could claim the moral high ground. He was reaching out to all sections of the party. Now, in terms of internal perceptions, it is the “hostile” and “core negative group” of MPs who, hopefully, will be squarely blamed for undertaking a completely cynical coup attempt against Corbyn, that, whatever the outcome, will surely badly damage Labour’s chances in a widely expected early general election. That plays well with traditional Labour activists. Normally, they do not take kindly to anyone damaging Labour’s chances at the polls. After all, for most of them, the be-all and end-all of politics is getting elected and re-elected … even if the manifesto promises little more than managing capitalism better than the Tories. A misplaced common sense that wide swathes of the Labour left, including Corbyn and McDonnell, have thoroughly internalised.

However, the “hostile” and “core negative group” of Labour MPs have the full backing of the capitalist media, the City of London, the military-industrial complex, special branch, MI5 and their American cousins. Corbyn’s much publicised admiration for Karl Marx, his campaigning against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, opposition to US-led imperialist wars, call to junk Trident and nuclear weapons, his commitment to increase the tax taken from transnational corporations, the banks and the mega rich, his Platonic republicanism, even his timid mumbling of the royal anthem mark him out as completely unacceptable.

Of course, there was always the danger that the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership would have their agenda set for them by their futile attempt to maintain PLP unity. Put another way, in what was a coalition cabinet, it was always the right that set the limits and therefore determined the political programme. Why? Because they were always prepared to walk. That is what Lord Charlie Faulkner made clear over the EU, nuclear weapons, the monarchy, etc. The decision by Corbyn to kiss the hand of Elizabeth Windsor, though not to kneel, in order to gain access to the privy council was therefore highly symbolic.

Staying silent, abandoning principles or putting them on the backburner in an attempt to placate the right was never a good strategy. We saw that with John McDonnell’s pusillanimous statements on Ireland, Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to defend the victims of the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt. Now there is the call from the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership to have a “sensible” discussion on immigration. After the EU referendum McDonnell says we are no longer obliged to defend the principle of the right of people to free movement (he was disgracefully backed by Unite’s gemerald secretary, Len McCluskey). Such a course may court the working class EU exiters. But it demobilises, demoralises and drains away Corbyn’s mass support.

Reclaim

Tactically, Marxists are right to concentrate fire on the 172 “core negative group” of “hostile” MPs. ‘Blairites out’, should be the common slogan on the left. The majority of Labour affiliates, members and supporters still trust the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership. Now, however, they have to be presented with a programme that decisively breaks with their conciliations, compromises and concessions. Everyone on the left will have an instinctive loathing of all those seeking to oust Jeremy Corbyn, who support US imperialism, who follow the lead of Progress, Labour First, etc. Therefore our call is to turn the tables. Purge the right and transform the Labour Party.

An assessment which retains its essential purchase. But the PLP is now two parties. One is a 172-strong bourgeois party. The other is a 40-strong potential workers’ party. However, the potential workers’ party has every chance of keeping the loyalty of the affiliated trade unions, the leftwing mass membership, the working class electoral base, etc. With Corbyn’s election in September came the chance to transform the Labour Party by attacking the right both from below and above. It was never going to be easy and not easy it has proved. But that chance still remains before us. Hence, we must ensure that Corbyn is re-elected and the right is humiliatingly defeated. Then we can regrow the PLP, not as the master, but as the servant of the labour movement. That prospect genuinely sends shivers of fear throughout the bourgeois establishment. No wonder the PLP right, the Mirror, the Sun and now David Cameron are united in wanting Jeremy Corbyn to throw in the towel and resign. The last thing they want is a democratic election with Corbyn as a candidate.

Notes
1. The Guardian March 23 2016.
2. www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jeremy-corbyn-legal-advice-automatically-on-ballot-leadership-challenge_uk_577003cfe4b0d2571149d42a.
3. From a 2.5% historic low point the Liberal Party saw a revival in the 1970s, which saw it win 19.3% of the popular vote in the February 1974 general election.
4. https://medium.com/@OwenJones84/my-thoughts-on-the-plight-of-labour-38413229f88#.13swc959x.
5. The Guardian June 26 2016.
6. www.grassrootslabour.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=200:how-labours-trigger-works&catid=43:forum&Itemid=60.
7. D Pryer Trade union political funds and levy House of Commons briefing paper No00593, August 8 2013, p8.
8. At the 1899 TUC, JH Holmes, a delegate of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, moved this resolution: “That this congress, having regard to its decisions in former years, and with a view to securing a better representation of the interests of labour in the House of Commons, hereby instructs the parliamentary committee to invite the cooperation of all cooperative, socialistic, trade unions and other working class organisations to jointly cooperate on lines mutually agreed upon, in convening a special congress of representatives from such of the above-named organisations as may be willing to take part to devise ways and means for securing the return of an increased number of labour members to the next parliament” (www.unionhistory.info/timeline/1880_14_Narr_Display.php?Where=NarTitle+contains+%27The+Labour+Party%27+AND+DesPurpose+contains+%27WebDisplay%27).
9. Socialist Worker September 8 2015.
10. www.labour.org.uk/pages/affiliated-organisations.
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leader_of_the_Opposition_(United_Kingdom).
12. Eg, Owen Jones The Guardian September 16 2015.
13. VI Lenin CW Vol 31, Moscow 1977, pp257-58.

Anti-Semitism

Anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism

Gallery June 3, 2016

Submission by Labour Party Marxists to the Shami Chakrabarti inquiry into anti-Semitism and other forms of racism in the Labour Party.

There is a well organised, well financed, utterly cynical, anti-left witch-hunt going on. Supporters of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and Socialist Appeal have been targeted. But it is the synthetic hysteria generated over ‘anti-Semitism’ that has claimed by far the most victims. Obviously, this is part of the attempt to undermine Jeremy Corbyn. However, there is a bigger picture.

Read the Israeli press. It is clear that there is the coming together of two distinct offensives. The first has been going on long before anyone thought of Corbyn becoming leader of the Labour Party. For those coordinating pro-Israel, pro-Zionist propaganda, a few cracks had started to appear in the edifice. This is noticeable mainly, but not only, in the United States – which is, of course, the main arena for the pro-Zionists – but here in Britain too. There has been a shift in public opinion regarding Israeli policy and the conflict in the Middle East and the legitimacy of Israel as a colonising-settler state.

Take, for example, the ongoing primary campaign for US president. Its most encouraging feature is that, of all the serious candidates, the one who is attracting the most support amongst the broad left – especially among young people, including and especially among young Jewish people – and who happens to be Jewish, is the only one who refused an invitation to address the main pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac).

Besides running as a socialist and gaining huge support, Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who has talked about the rights of the Palestinian people. He has not gone as far as we would like, but in the US context his success has been a potential game-changer. Opinion polls show he has gained support both amongst Muslims and Jews, especially the young.

The campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions has played a crucial role. When the BDS campaign was in its infancy there was some discussion about whether it could actually overthrow the Zionist regime – just as some people thought a boycott of South Africa could overthrow apartheid. Of course, direct analogies between South Africa and Israel are misleading, because they represent two different modes of colonisation. That said, while sanctions might help to produce favourable subjective conditions, those who think they are going to overthrow any such regime that way are clearly deluding themselves.

The BDS campaign has though mobilised public opinion. Its advantage is that in CLPs, trade unions and professional organisations, in colleges and universities, there are people campaigning for BDS and this has provoked a very useful debate about the whole Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What is particularly notable among the BDS activists is the overrepresentation of young Jewish people.

That is very worrying for the Zionists. And if you read the Israeli press it is clear that there is a determination to take measures to halt the erosion of the legitimacy of the Zionist state and the move to brand anti-Zionism as the “new anti-Semitism”. This was happening well before there was even a hint that Jeremy Corbyn could become Labour leader. Of course, his overwhelming victory has added to Zionist worries. For the first time ever a leader of the main opposition party in Britain is on record as championing the Palestinian people.

And so the Zionists and all their allies decided to target Corbyn. Accidentally or not, the current Israeli ambassador to London is a certain Mark Regev, who has in the past justified genocide. Regev is hardly a normal diplomat – he is a propagandist by trade. The campaign of branding people anti-Semites has merged with the efforts of those who have no particular pro-Israel sentiments, but are looking for ways to attack the Labour left.

So there is now a coalition between, on the one side, people worried about the rise in support for the Palestinian cause and those determined to discredit Corbyn and the Labour left for that reason; and, on the other, people like the vile blogger, Guido Fawkes, whose real name is Paul Staines – a rightwinger who would do anything to discredit Corbyn and the Labour left. He is using anti-Semitism smears for opportunistic reasons, not because he really cares one way or the other about Israel/Palestine.

Four examples

So what have they come up with in regard to the accusations of anti-Semitism? A few essentially trivial examples and some non-examples. Most of what has been publicised in the press fall into the latter category. Let us deal with four examples – all have been widely publicised in the media.

First Naz Shah, one of the 2015 generation of new Labour MPs. Some years ago she shared a graphic of Israel superimposed on the United States. This was accompanied with the ironic strap that the Israel-Palestine conflict would be resolved if Israel could be relocated somewhere in the US deep mid-west. This image originated in the United States and was, obviously, a satirical comment on Washington’s unstinting support for Israel – Norman Finkelstein, the well-known Jewish, anti-Zionist professor, prominently featured it on his website. And yet the image was supposed to reveal some kind of anti-Semitism. Anybody who thinks that this was anything but a piece of satire should have their head examined.

Obviously nobody was seriously suggesting that Israel should be physically relocated. But, despite that, it was claimed that the implication was that the entire Israeli population are to be ‘transported’ to the US, just as the Jews had been transported to Auschwitz. So the image must be anti-Semitic. In fact this is the sort of joke that is very popular in Israel, as well as in the US, because it says a lot about the relationship between the imperial sponsor and its client state.

Then there is Tony Greenstein, a member of the Jewish Socialists Group and the Labour Party, and an inveterate anti-Zionist blogger. One of the charges against him is that he wrote an article titled ‘Israeli policy is to wait for the remaining holocaust survivors to die’. This was deemed a terrible accusation by the Labour Party’s opaque Compliance Unit and presumably clear evidence of anti-Semitism. It is, of course, a terrible accusation, but exactly the same charge is made in Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper. It ran a piece, ‘Israel is waiting for its holocaust survivors to die’. It is undoubtedly true that the Israeli state is parsimonious in the extreme when it comes to providing benefits to holocaust survivors. Thousands live in dire poverty, forced to choose between heat and food. Israel has, of course, received billions of euros in reparations from the German state. But it has preferred to spend the money on the holocaust industry – memorials, propaganda and well-paid sinecures – rather than on holocaust survivors.

Next there is an example – not from the Labour Party, but from the left more generally – of the president of the National Union of Students, Malia Bouattia, who co-authored an article five years ago saying that Birmingham University is “something of a Zionist outpost”. If we said, rightly or wrongly, that University College London is ‘something of a ‘leftist outpost’, so what? Of course, if you believe that ‘Zionist’ is a synonym for ‘Jewish’, then perhaps that does not sound good. But that is a Zionist conflation and there is no indication that this is what Malia Bouattia meant – her whole history contradicts such an assumption.

Finally Ken Livingstone. Speaking in defence of Naz Shah, on BBC London’s Vanessa Feltz show, he said that Hitler “supported Zionism until he went mad”. This is certainly inaccurate and Livingstone would have been well advised to have done a little more basic research. However, the point he was making is essentially correct.

Of course, he got the date wrong. Hitler was not in power in 1932. But, yes, when the Nazis did come to power, in 1933, they pursued a policy which, with this or that proviso, “supported Zionism.”

Drop talk of Zionism?

How should the left react under such circumstances? Jon Lansman, chair of Momentum, urges us to drop the “counterproductive slogan” of Zionism. Criticising this or that concrete action by the Israeli government is perfectly legitimate – but not Zionism. Comrade Lansman says we should not alienate those who might otherwise agree with us on austerity, combating inequality, etc.

Dropping all mention of Zionism just does not work. Even the Zionists accept that Israeli policy on this, that or the other can be criticised. Eg, Israel’s continuing occupation and colonisation of the West Bank. But why does Israel persist with this policy? It has been condemned by Barack Obama and John Kerry. The same goes for David Cameron. The settlements are illegal, constitute an obstacle to peace, etc. So why does Israel do it? How can you explain it?

It can only be explained by the fact that expansion and colonisation are integral to Zionism. Understand that and you understand that there is nothing strange about what Israel is doing. It is not as if expansion and colonisation were a policy confined to the current government of Binyamin Netanyahu. It has been carried out by all Israeli governments since 1967 and it took place within the former borders – the so-called ‘green line’ – before 1967. There has been an ongoing policy of Zionist colonisation from the very beginning.

You cannot explain why Israel is continuing with a policy that is not winning it any friends without mentioning Zionism. On the contrary, far from dropping all mention of Zionism and retreating in the face of the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign, we should go onto the offensive and be aggressive: Zionism must be fearlessly attacked.

And we can also attack Zionism precisely because of its collusion and collaboration with anti-Semitism, including up to a point with Nazi Germany. We should not respond to the witch-hunt by refusing to defend Ken Livingstone and confining ourselves to anodyne platitudes: “We stand against racism, including anti-Semitism” (Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Owen Jones, Liz Davies, etc). In effect this is to accept that anti-Semitism is actually a problem on the left. While, of course, we oppose all manifestations of anti-Semitism, the fact is that today those on the left who propagate a version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion carry no weight and are without any intellectual foundation. They are oddities who exist on the fringes of the fringe.

Given that the Labour Party tolerates, even promotes, the so-called Jewish Labour Movement, things must be put in their proper perspective. Rebranded in 2004, JLM is the successor organisation of Poale Zion, a nationalist organisation which affiliated to the Labour Party in 1920. JLM is, in fact, not open to all Jewish members of the Labour Party. It only accepts Zionists.

Amongst its key aims is to promote the “centrality of Israel in Jewish life”. It defines Zionism not as a colonial-settler project, but the “national liberation movement of the Jewish people”. Despite this travesty, it is still an official Labour Party affiliate (it is also affiliated to the World Labour Zionist Organisation and the World Zionist Organisation).

For our part, we agree with the Labour movement conference on Palestine in 1984 (Jeremy Corbyn was amongst the sponsors). It denounced Zionism and called for a campaign for the “disaffiliation of Poale Zion from the Labour Party.”
That Baroness Royall proposes to put JLM in charge of policing ‘anti-Semitic’ attitudes in the Labour Party must be rejected outright. The fact of the matter is that JLM, Labour Friends of Israel and fraternal relations with the Israeli Labor Party are a real problem. They are certainly not part of the solution.

Connection

We should take the side of the Board of Deputies of British Jews – not the current one, but the Board of Deputies of 100 years ago! It put out some very pertinent statements about Zionism and its connection with anti-Semitism. When the negotiations on the 1917 Balfour Declaration were taking place, a prominent member of the Board of Deputies, Lucien Wolf, wrote:

I understand … that the Zionists do not merely propose to form and establish a Jewish nationality in Palestine, but that they claim all the Jews as forming at the present moment a separate and dispossessed nationality, for which it is necessary to find an organic political centre, because they are and must always be aliens in the lands in which they now dwell, and, more especially, because it is “an absolute self-delusion” to believe that any Jew can be at once “English by nationality and Jewish by faith”.

I have spent most of my life in combating these very doctrines, when presented to me in the form of anti-Semitism, and I can only regard them as the more dangerous when they come to me in the guise of Zionism. They constitute a capitulation to our enemies, which has absolutely no justification in history, ethnology or the facts of everyday life, and if they were admitted by the Jewish people as a whole, the result would only be that the terrible situation of our co-religionists in Russia and Romania would become the common lot of Jewry throughout the world.1

About the same time, Alexander Montefiore, president of the Board of Deputies, and Claude, his brother, who was president of the closely associated Anglo-Jewish Association, wrote a letter to The Times. They stated that the “establishment of a Jewish nationality in Palestine, founded on the theory of Jewish homelessness, must have the effect throughout the world of stamping the Jews as strangers in their native lands and of undermining their hard-won positions as citizens and nationals of those lands”.2

They pointed out that the theories of political Zionism undermined the religious basis of Jewry, to which the only alternative would be “a secular Jewish nationality, recruited on some loose and obscure principle of race and of ethnographic peculiarity”.

They went on:

But this would not be Jewish in any spiritual sense, and its establishment in Palestine would be a denial of all the ideals and hopes by which the survival of Jewish life in that country commends itself to the Jewish conscience and Jewish sympathy. On these grounds the Conjoint Committee of the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association deprecates earnestly the national proposals of the Zionists.

The second part in the Zionist programme which has aroused the misgivings of the Conjoint Committee is the proposal to invest the Jewish settlers [in Palestine] with certain special rights in excess of those enjoyed by the rest of the population …

In all the countries in which Jews live the principle of equal rights for all religious denominations is vital to them. Were they to set an example in Palestine of disregarding this principle, they would convict themselves of having appealed to it for purely selfish motives. In the countries in which they are still struggling for equal rights they would find themselves hopelessly compromised … The proposal is the more inadmissible because the Jews are and probably long will remain a minority of the population of Palestine, and might involve them in the bitterest feuds with their neighbours of other races and religions, which would severely retard their progress and find deplorable echoes throughout the orient.3

This turned out to be highly prophetic.

Nazi collaboration

Let us turn now to the Zionist-Nazi connection. In fact it sounds more shocking than it is, because we are talking about the early days of the Nazi regime. Today the holocaust is taught in schools, so people may know that the policy of extermination of Jews actually started officially in January 1942, when a Nazi conference was convened in Wannsee under the chairmanship of Reinhard Heydrich. Heydrich was second in command to Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS.

The minutes of this conference are actually online and in them a change in policy towards the Jews, ratified by the Führer, was declared. Although it is phrased euphemistically, it is clear that what was being talked about was both deportation to the east and extermination.

This change occurred following the attack on the Soviet Union, when the Nazis felt they had to find different ways of dealing with the ‘Jewish problem’. Until that time the official policy was for the exclusion of the Jews from political and civic life, for separation and for emigration. Quite naturally the Zionist leadership thought this set of policies was similar to those of other anti-Semitic regimes – which it was – and the Zionist approach was not peculiar to the Nazi regime. The founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, had pointed out that anti-Semitic regimes would be allies, because they wanted to get rid of the Jews, while the Zionists wanted to rid them of the Jews. That was the common interest.

In 1934 the German rabbi, Joachim Prinz, published a book entitled Wir Juden (We, the Jews), in which he welcomed the Nazi regime. That regime wanted to separate Jews from non-Jews and prevent assimilation – as did the Zionists.
So the Zionists made overtures to the Nazi regime. How did the Nazis respond? Here are two relevant quotations. The first is from the introduction to the Nuremberg laws, the racist legislation introduced in Nazi Germany in 1935. This extract was still present in the 1939 edition, from which we shall quote:

If the Jews had a state of their own, in which the bulk of their people were at home, the Jewish question could already be considered solved today … The ardent Zionists of all people have objected least of all to the basic ideas of the Nuremberg laws, because they know that these laws are the only correct solution for the Jewish people too …4

Heydrich himself wrote the following in an article for the SS house journal Das Schwarze Korps in September 1935:

National socialism has no intention of attacking the Jewish people in any way. On the contrary, the recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood, and not as a religious one, leads the German government to guarantee the racial separateness of this community without any limitations. The government finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement within Jewry itself, so-called Zionism, with its recognition of the solidarity of Jewry throughout the world and the rejection of all assimilationist ideas. On this basis, Germany undertakes measures that will surely play a significant role in the future in the handling of the Jewish problem around the world.5

In other words, a friendly mention of Zionism, indicating an area of basic agreement it shared with Nazism.

Of course, looking back at all this, it seems all the more sinister, since we know that the story ended with the gas chambers a few years later. This overlap is an indictment of Zionism, but the actual collaboration between the two was not such an exceptional thing, when you accept that the Zionists were faced with the reality of an anti-Semitic regime.

Incidentally, half of what Ken Livingstone said is not that far from the caricature peddled by Netanyahu last year in his speech to delegates attending the 37th World Zionist Organisation’s congress in Jerusalem. According to Netanyahu, “Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews” until he met the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, in 1941. Netanyahu claimed that “Al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here’.”

Of course, the allegation that the idea of extermination originated with the grand mufti has been rejected with contempt by serious historians, but Netanyahu was at least correct in saying that emigration, not extermination, was indeed Nazi policy until the winter of 1941-42.

To repeat: we must go on the counterattack against the current slurs. It is correct to expose Zionism as a movement based on both settler-colonisation and collusion with anti-Semitism. We do not apologise for saying this. If you throw the sharks bloodied meat, they will only come back for more. At the moment the left is apologising far too much, in the hope that the right will let up.

They will not stop until they succeed in their aim of deposing Jeremy Corbyn and returning the Labour Party to slavishly supporting US policy in the Middle East.

Notes
1. Reproduced in B Destani (ed) The Zionist movement and the foundation of Israel 1839-1972 Cambridge 2004, Vol 1, p727.
2. The Times May 24 1917.
3. See www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message55570/pg1.
4. See M Machover and M Offenberg Zionism and its scarecrows London 1978, p38, which directly quotes Die Nurnberger Gesetze. See also F Nicosia The Third Reich and the Palestine question London 1985, p53; and FR Nicosia Zionism and anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany Cambridge 2008, p108.The latter cites a 1935 article by Bernhard Lohsener in the Nazi journal Reichsverwaltungsblatt.
5. Das Schwarze Korps September 26 1935.

http://labourpartymarxists.org.uk/motion-labour-party-anti-semitism-smear-and-witch-hunt/

LPM publications

Anti-Semitism

MOTION: Labour Party ‘anti-semitism’ smear and witch hunt:

Gallery May 24, 2016

Model Motion promoted by Labour Party Marxists:

Labour Party ‘anti-semitism’ smear and witch hunt:

This branch/CLP/Conference

Rejects the Zionist concept of so-called ‘new anti-Semitism’. There is no basis for equating political criticism of the state of Israel with anti-Jewish racism. It is right to condemn the political ideology of Zionism and the ongoing colonisation of Palestinian land.

Rejects the recent ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign prompted by the Israeli establishment and carried out by the mass media, the Tory Party and the Labour right. The claim that anti-Semitism – ie, anti-Jewish racism – is rife in the Labour Party, particularly in the left wing of the Labour Party, is simply untrue.

Calls for the immediate lifting of all of the suspensions and expulsions from Labour Party membership in any way connected to the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign. That includes Ken Livingstone, Tony Greenstein, Gerry Downing and numerous other supporters of the Palestinian cause.

Calls for disciplinary proceedings to be instigated against John Mann MP. He publicly attacked Labour NEC member Ken Livingstone in front of TV cameras, calling him a “disgusting Nazi apologist”. An accusation, of course, without foundation. Mann’s attack played a key role in stepping up the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign and could only but damage Labour’s chances in the May elections. Presumably the aim is to create the conditions for the removal of Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

Condemns the willing collaboration of the Labour Party’s Compliance Unit and the Labour Party general secretary, Ian McNicol, in the witch-hunt. They have been more than ready to accept at face value obviously false and malicious complaints of anti-Semitism.

Condemns the lack of due process in the suspensions and expulsions of Labour Party members. The failure to apply the principles of natural justice brings the Labour Party into disrepute.

Calls for the abolition of the Labour Party Compliance Unit and for the establishment of democratic, transparent disciplinary procedures which follow the principles of natural justice, and in which disciplinary decisions are made by elected representatives, not by paid officials.

Rejects the Zionist concept of so-called ‘new anti-semitism’, which conflates anti-Jewish racism with political criticism of the state of Israel and its ongoing colonisation of Palestinian land, and with criticism of the political ideology of Zionism.

__________

The left

CLPD – Advancing but taking heavy casualties

Gallery March 26, 2016 1 Comment

The Labour right is doing all in its power to retain control and exclude opponents. Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists reports on the AGM of the CLPD

Summing up at the end of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s March 19 annual general meeting in London’s Conway Hall, chair Lizzy Ali reminded us of the “anti-Jeremy plotters” active in the Labour Party, and that we have “many expellees to support”.

Anyone experiencing difficulties with their application to join the party, or having problems with their membership, were urged to contact one of the three national executive members present – Ann Black, Christine Shawcroft and Pete Willsman – who would take up their case. Christine related how she had been “trampled in the rush” at a regional Party meeting, where she had offered to help comrades with membership problems – at least 30 came forward. She asked: “The question is, is this an organised witch-hunt? We need to gather information from all regions, to see if there is a pattern.”

A group of Corbynistas from one Constituency Labour Party told the meeting how they had been suddenly suspended from membership, just in time to be excluded from an important decision-making meeting – a notorious bureaucratic tactic of the right. When they are later reinstated with ‘no case to answer’, no doubt, it will be too late, and anti-Corbyn CLP officers will be entrenched for another year. When the comrades said the CLPD seemed to be taking this outrage lying down, Pete Willsman let rip with a torrent of invective against the right. “We have been struggling for 20 years against Blairite rule. They cheated. They even broke into ballot boxes. They have a culture of cheating. They are crooks. Labour First is organised in every trade union, in every constituency – a continuation of the anti-democratic organisation set up by Frank Chapple.”

The infamous ‘compliance unit’, according to Ann Black, is not to blame for the glut of challenges to membership. Decisions are made by NEC panels, she said: “Blaming the compliance unit is like blaming the ticket collector for a late train.” The unit is a section of party staff which handles such complaints. They had told Christine Shawcroft that they forward membership complaints to the relevant CLP, and if it has no objection to the membership of someone who has been suspended, then the compliance unit has no objection either and the member is reinstated. Christine Shawcroft has requested a report on how many membership challenges are in hand. However, the obvious question remains, she said: “If they are not coming from the individual’s CLP, where are the allegations coming from?”

CLPD youth convenor Dominic Curran reported that the left is now “in charge of Young Labour for the first time in 30 years”, following the victory of Momentum’s youth and students slate in the election of the YL national committee. The downside of this happy victory, however, is that the turnout was a measly 3.5%. John Chamberlain of Labour Party Marxists asked why the NEC had not rejected the dubious election as Young Labour delegate to the Party’s NEC of Blairite candidate Jasmin Beckett, who had scraped in by one electronic vote after a contrived smear campaign had labelled her opponent, Momentum’s James Elliott, an anti-Semite. A recount had been refused by the returning officer, Progress recruiter Stephen Donnelly, and formal complaints were made by Unite and others.1

Our three NEC members explained how the executive, instead of rejecting the election of a candidate who had clearly violated the code of conduct for elections, had kicked the issue into the long grass, allowing Beckett to retain her seat. So much for the idea that the NEC majority is now “leftwing”. All complaints around the YL election, along with the outrageous charges of anti-Semitism made against the Oxford University Labour Club for its stand against Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians, have been referred to an “enquiry” under Baroness Jan Royall – who, Ann Black reminded us, worked for Neil Kinnock and is a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel. Labour Party ‘enquiries’ can last years, and may never reach a conclusion.

Michael Calderbank added his concern that many delegates to the Young Labour conference in Scarborough had been “priced out of attending” because of a failure to provide travel costs. And Pete Willsman explained: “There are no procedures for the enquiry. Write to the party’s general secretary, and send copies to me or Ann.”

CLPD role

Surprisingly perhaps, the massive intake of new members, young and old, since Corbyn’s election as leader became a possibility, has had minimal impact on the CLPD – as with the Labour Representation Committee. (Incidentally, the customary team of sellers of the LRC’s version of Labour Briefing were nowhere to be seen, while ‘the original’ Labour Briefing published by Christine Shawcroft’s Labour Briefing Cooperative had its own table.)

Attendance at the AGM barely reached the usual 80 almost entirely elderly, well known faces. Thirty-six new members joined during 2015 and, after allowing for a few who passed away, individual membership reached 270 at year end. However, another 34 have joined so far during the early part of 2016, so perhaps substantial reinforcements are on their way. (At its peak in the mid-1980s, individual membership reached only about 1,100.) There are also affiliated organisations, including CLPs, Branch LPs and 13 trade unions, so individual membership figures only tell part of the story.

The CLPD’s main role is to promote rule changes to democratise the party – a frustrating process, as rule change proposals from CLPs are subject to a one-year delay. There are seven rule changes already on the agenda of Labour’s 2016 conference, but those submitted by the current deadline of June 24 will only be considered at the 2017 annual conference. The NEC, on the other hand, can submit last-minute rule changes for immediate consideration by conference.

So the CLPD is campaigning for one particular change to be put to conference by the NEC – to “Clarify the rules for electing leader to avoid the party being involved in legal battles”. The purpose is to make explicit that, if a leader or deputy leader contest is triggered, the incumbent will automatically have a place on the ballot paper.

Assistant secretary Barry Gray explained that there are “huge business interests” which not only want to prevent a Corbyn-type anti-austerity government in 2020: “they don’t want an anti-austerity opposition”. The Corbyn-McDonnell leadership has already succeeded in stopping the tax-credit cuts, and “now the Tory government has lost a minister” (referring to the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith). “Ever since Corbyn became the front-runner, the right has been talking about a coup. They know they cannot win a democratic election in the Labour Party, so they are intent on an undemocratic coup.”

John McTernan, previously Blair’s political advisor, is leading the attack, said comrade Gray. The right have obtained legal advice that, if a leader ballot is triggered, “the high court would insist on a 20% threshold for Jeremy. This is the only threat to Jeremy’s leadership,” he added. “The right will fight this.”

Secretary Pete Willsman moved his ‘omnibus’ motion, re-iterating the various – and many – campaigning objectives: to “increase party democracy”, “increase annual conference democracy”, “regain conference sovereignty in relation to policy” and, interestingly, remove “the sole right of MPs to trigger a leadership election”. Of course, one of LPM’s long-term objectives for party democracy is abolition of the post of leader and the system of patronage which goes with it, but not at present – not while Corbyn is under siege in a hostile PLP. Comrade Willsman’s motion commits the CLPD to tackling the “lack of accountability to local parties of councillors and MPs”, which results from the “undermining” of local government committees and constituency general committees (CGCs consist of delegates from party branches and local affiliated trade union and socialist groups).

The CLPD does not limit its work to rule changes, but also organises “a range of contemporary motions for CLPs, etc, to submit to annual conference”. But Pete Willsman advised CLPs, given the choice between submitting a rule change or a contemporary motion: “Contemporary motions end up in the bin – rule changes last a hundred years.”

According to his motion, the CLPD now has “nearly 30 comrades” on the national policy forum, along with several on the joint policy committee, which is the NPF’s leading body. But, comrade Willsman complained, individuals promoted by the CLPD cannot be relied upon when it comes to a vote. In a similar vein, Christine Shawcroft reported that the Labour Party NEC supposedly now has a leftwing majority – but she is “still waiting to see evidence of this”.

The amendment from Labour Party Marxists to motion 5 aimed at removing the bureaucratic exclusion of organised communists from party membership. Clause II (5), which had been inserted into Labour’s constitution in 1944, reads:

“Political organisations not affiliated or associated under a national agreement with the party, having their own programme, principles and policy for distinctive and separate propaganda, or possessing branches in the constituencies, or engaged in the promotion of parliamentary or local government candidates, or having allegiance to any political organisation situated abroad, shall be ineligible for affiliation to the party.”2

These provisions destroyed the traditional character of the Labour Party as a federation of trade unions and socialist societies. They would have disqualified all the original socialist societies which helped to form the Labour Party. The Independent Labour Party, the Social Democratic Federation, the Fabian Society, all undertook some or all of these activities.

Described as “well intentioned” by executive committee member Richard Price, the LPM amendment was remitted to the CLPD executive. Hopefully, this will lead to a well drafted rule change proposal, so that – as I argued from the rostrum – socialists and socialist organisations of all stripes will be able to join the Labour Party’s umbrella, the only condition being that they do not stand candidates against Labour.

Democracy

A highlight of the AGM was the speech on “party-union relations after Jeremy’s victory” by Matt Wrack, Fire Brigades Union general secretary. The FBU had been affiliated to Labour from 1927 until 2004, when its conference wanted out after being vilified by Labour government politicians during the 2002-03 pay dispute. But in exile the FBU had built a strong parliamentary group – Labour only, unlike some unions, he said – including John and Jeremy, who had “always stood side by side with us”. He had a photo of John and Jeremy on the 1977 FBU picket line: “We don’t forget.”

The FBU is coming back into the party “for public services, for public ownership and for party democracy”, he said. “The supreme party body must be annual conference, with the leadership accountable to conference.” When Matt’s renewed individual Labour membership was reported, he said, Labour First’s Luke Akehurst foolishly tweeted: “Another Trot who should have remained expelled.”

Corbyn’s director of strategy and communications, Seumas Milne, made a “surprise appearance” at the AGM, reassuring us (or perhaps himself) that only a small minority of Labour MPs are hoping for a poor result in the May 5 elections so as to weaken the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership, while the majority “want to make it work”. Nevertheless, he correctly pointed to the “symbiosis between some in the Labour Party and elements of the media and the establishment”. We must counter this, using social media to “isolate those who want to create a feeling of confusion and failure”.

Notes

1 . See www.leftfutures.org/2016/02/young-labour-in-left-landslide-but-chaos-manipulation-smears-mar-nec-election.

2 . www.labourcounts.com/constitution.htm.

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Thin end of the wedge

Gallery March 26, 2016

We must oppose the expulsion of Gerry Downing, but fight to expose his political errors, argues Jim Grant

On February 20, I attended the special general meeting of the Labour Representation Committee.

It was far from my first LRC general meeting, and the form was getting familiar. I was struck when we were treated to our annual John McDonnell boilerplate speech from the top table by the fact that things, in the standard dialectical fashion, can be terribly familiar and also completely different at the same time. We had heard that speech before as the defiant cry of a lone voice in the enemy camp; but now, it was the voice of the shadow chancellor, a fixture of television and radio, albeit still surrounded by foes.

Something similar can now be said about Gerry Downing, also among those present on February 20 and at LRC gatherings passim ad infinitum. A perennial orthodox Trotskyist gadfly, Gerry’s political journey has taken him from the cultish Workers Revolutionary Party, through several of its posthumous fragments, into the Mandelite International Socialist Group (today’s Socialist Resistance) and out again, and around the houses a little more before washing up with his own micro-group, Socialist Fight, whose operative strategy has been obedience to the letter and spirit of Trotsky’s ‘French turn’ – enter the social democratic parties in order to take the best fighters into the revolutionary party when they inevitably split under inclement historical conditions.

Gerry’s brand of Trotskyism has now become national news. During the Labour leadership campaign he was expelled, as central office desperately tried to reduce Jeremy Corbyn’s vote by purging every last individual who, by an elastic interpretation of Labour’s onerous rules, could be excluded. He was readmitted to the party shortly afterwards, in what is becoming a recurring pattern. Last week, however, Gerry found himself the subject of a feverish exchange on the Commons floor, when David Cameron himself cited his opinions on September 11 and Islamic State in order to smear Corbyn. By the time Gerry reported for a grilling on Andrew Neil’s Politics show the next day, he was outside the fold again.

He found old Brillo Pad in unusually accommodating form. We sometimes wonder if Neil’s middle name is ‘If you’ll just let me finish …’, such is the vigour of his sub-Paxmanite shtick. Yet he treated comrade Downing firmly but fairly, putting a whole series of his outrageous views to him and allowing him good time, by televisual standards, to respond. The argument that the 9/11 bombers “can never be condemned”? We must understand, before we condemn – 9/11 was a response to American incursion on their lands. “Critical support and tactical military assistance” to (among others) Islamic State? The point, Andrew, is that US imperialism must be sent packing from the Middle East.

It was Neil and his researchers who managed to dig up the most damning evidence, however, which was and remains fellow SF member Ian Donovan’s writing on ‘the Jewish question’. Comrade Ian has unfortunately collapsed into anti-Semitism in the last couple of years; he has developed a theory that US support for Israel can be explained by the fact that the Jews form a transnational “semi-nation”, and that a preponderance of them among the wealthiest Americans has led them to become the “vanguard” of the imperialist bourgeoisie. (It was after this collapse that Ian found a welcoming home in SF.)

And so Gerry was left defending this rubbish on the BBC. Neil was able to drop comparisons to Hitler and the Protocols of the elders of Zion; and despite Gerry’s protestations of ‘materialism’, the charge sticks better than it really should to a leftwinger.

Gerry’s anti-imperialism is, needless to say, confused in the extreme. The confusion stems from exactly where Gerry says it does: Leon Trotsky’s policy of critical support to anti-imperialist nationalist forces – most notably Haile Selassie in Ethiopia during the Italian invasion – and his argument that, instead of joining the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang in the 1920s, the communists ought to have fought separately but alongside them against the Japanese. This policy ultimately stems from the anti-imperialist united front advocated by the early Comintern.

The trouble is that Trotsky’s judgments were straightforwardly incorrect, and Gerry’s later ones also wrong for much the same reasons. Selassie was a British client; Trotsky’s support effectively meant supporting British imperialism against Italian imperialism. (His vigorous pursuit of this policy inside the British labour movement was thus particularly misguided.) As for China, it is difficult to see how the communists could have suffered less except by fighting the KMT and the Japanese, as they ended up doing anyway.

Likewise with, say, Islamic State – after all, who are they, really? A bunch of disaffected ex-Ba’athists, funded lavishly by factions of the Gulf monarchies. They are ‘anti-imperialist’ only in the most limited sense that they are clients of regimes that are in turn clients of the US, albeit of elements within those regimes least susceptible to the direct discipline of the US. In general, we find in the chaos of the Middle East numerous examples of allegiances spinning on a sixpence; never before has arbitrary ‘critical support’ of ‘anti-imperialist’ forces been such a hostage to fortune.

Defeat the right

It is nevertheless not so much in spite of his worsening political errors as because of them that we oppose Gerry Downing’s expulsion from the Labour Party. Every wedge needs a thin end, and by remaining wedded to the moralistic anti-imperialism of his Trotskyist extraction, with the additional seasoning of Ian Donovan’s ‘theories’ about Jews, Gerry has made just such a thin end of himself.

We do not get to pick and choose the terrain of every battle, however. Gerry’s expulsion is part of a wider project on the part of the Labour right and their cronies in the yellow press to delegitimise the left, not least by equating our opposition to Zionism and the ongoing Israeli colonial-settler project with anti-Semitism. Let us get things in perspective: despite the ravings of Simon Schama, Dan Hodges and the like, the Labour Party’s biggest problem is not that it is riddled with anti-Semites. (Even within their specific corner of the far left, Gerry and Ian are oddities.) It is that it is bound tightly to British imperialism.

A great many sitting Labour MPs voted for Blair’s war in Iraq, a course of action that has led to uncounted deaths and the rise of IS. We know what is going on – these people, with real blood on their hands, would like to use comrade Gerry as a cheap way to buttress their moral credentials. We are not prepared to let them. His notions about the proper conduct of anti-imperialist struggle are risible, and must be exposed as such (and indeed stand exposed as such). But we do not consider the Labour Party’s shadowy compliance unit, or David Cameron, or Andrew Neil, fit to judge such political subtleties.

Mutatis mutandis, take Jill Mountford. The comrade is a member of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, an organisation whose equivocations on the question of imperialism are – from our point of view – quite inexcusable. There has been more than one political formation in which the AWL has been the least healthy element and which would have benefited, were the AWL to be shown the door. Plainly, the Labour Party is not such an organisation. The priority now is to fight for a space for avowedly working class socialist politics as it actually is inside the Labour Party. That includes the AWL, but by the same token it includes crankier outfits like Socialist Fight. We do not suspend, for a moment, our polemical fire against them; but we recognise that they are our opponents, and not our enemies.

If these expulsions stand, who is next? The organisation formerly known as Workers Power has spent much polemical energy on defending the pro-Russian areas of east Ukraine against the ‘fascist Kiev government’, for instance. It is another, similar error: yet more Trotskyists bigging up the anti-imperialist credentials of reactionaries, whose opinions on gays and – who knows? – Jews might not play very well in the British public gallery. Organisations of the left are not under fire because their anti-imperialism is crude and moralistic, but because they are anti-imperialist.

When the Labour Party is cleansed of warmongers, city shills and cabs-for-hire, there will be time enough to deal with people whose anti-imperialism leads them to idiotic political conclusions; and with those, like the AWL, whose horror of the latter leads them to worse errors in the opposite direction. Hopefully the comrades will learn along the way. Until then, we deny the right of the Labour right to police the left tout court – no exceptions.

The left

CLPD AGM, Saturday March 19, Conway Hall

Gallery March 17, 2016

CLPD AGM, Saturday March 19 2016
11:30am, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL.

Labour Party Marxists urges its members and supporters to attend the AGM of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy.

Membership of CLPD is open to Labour Party members. If you are not a member already, you can join at the door. Individuals £20; unwaged and low-waged (under £8,000) £5; young members under 27 £3. (And members can bring friends to the AGM as participating observers.)

Further info about CLPD:
www.clpd.org.uk and www.grassrootslabour.net and www.leftfutures.org.
____________________________________________________________

Amendment to Resolution 5, proposed by Stan Keable:

At end of Resolution 5, INSERT:

The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy commits itself to returning the Labour Party to its organisational principles of federalism and inclusiveness. We must again become the umbrella organisation for all trade unions, socialist groups and pro-working class partisans.

It is quite correct to maintain rules barring from membership those promoting parliamentary or local candidates standing against the Labour Party. However, this should not be applied to the distant past or indiscriminately. For example, sitting councilors and other activists standing against Labour candidates committed to supporting imperialist adventures or imposing government cuts, etc, ought to be treated sympathetically.

Moreover, there should be no place in the Labour Party fof rules prohibiting organisations – and members of organisations – which have their own “programme, principles and policy, or distinctive and separate propaganda, or possessing branches in the constituencies”.

Such rules must be done away with or radically reformulated.

The CDLP will campaign for these ends and promote suitable resolutions to Party conference.
____________________________________________________________

LPM Broadsheet No8

An issue of LPM Broadsheet is being produced in time for the CLPD AGM, and for distribution locally to friends and contacts and at your CLP and Momentum events. The broadsheet is a free handout, and depends on your donations. Collect copies on Saturday, or send your contact details (name, address, phone and email address) stating how many copies you would like – preferably with a donation towards production costs and postage.

Your financial support is needed – please pay into the LPM bank account:
Sort Code 30-96-26, Account 22097060,
or send cheques payable to ‘LPM’ to: LPM, BCM Box 8932, London WC1N 3XX.

secretary@labourpartymarxists.org.uk
07817 379568
www.labourpartymarxists.org.uk

Refound Labour as a permanent united front of the working class