Category Archives: The left

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

Salvaging the wreck?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The left

Rout on all fronts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fightback

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labour Party Marxists, The left

Sir Keir’s good week

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

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

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

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

Two anthems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Left response

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Demoralisation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

A ray of light

Momentum behaved despicably, while the CLPD was hardly any better, but there was a welcome upset. James Harvey examines the Labour left after the NEC elections

Over the ‘summer of discontent’ much of the focus of the left has been on the increasing tempo of the class struggle and the strike wave that looks set to continue into the autumn and well beyond.

Taken together with Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘statesmanlike’ neutrality on the strikes and attempts to slap down frontbenchers who offer solidarity by appearing on picket lines, it is no surprise that many have concluded that now is the time to abandon ship. Socialist Worker is far from alone in its ‘streets and strikes’ obsession. The Morning Star, The Socialist, even Socialist Appeal take a similar approach. But before ditching Labour as a site of struggle we ought to be clear about what is going on and what is still possible. It is not all doom and gloom.

A good place to take the political temperature amongst the party’s rank and file is the recent elections to the national executive committee. The bald voting figures show a further slight swing to the right, with the left losing, and the right gaining, one seat.[1] However, given the expulsions, suspensions and resignations since the last elections in 2020, this result had been widely expected. No, the major upset was the composition of the four leftwingers now on the NEC. Leading Momentum member Mish Rahman failed to get elected, while Jewish Voice for Labour’s Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi won the ninth place.[2]

This is all the more remarkable, given that Momentum’s new-old leadership not only failed to endorse Naomi, but actively attempted to undermine her, giving rise to a whispering campaign on social media which urged party members to treat her as an untouchable. The refusal to endorse her was dovetailed by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s geographically slanted voting advice. Ostensibly designed to maximise the left vote in a proportional representation election system, its recommendations were surely designed to reduce the vote of a ‘nationally’ based comrade like Naomi. So not only did Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi have to contend with the expected attacks from the right: she also faced sabotage from the so-called left as well.

What really distinguishes her, what really marks her out as controversial, dangerous even, is, of course, her brave opposition to the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt. That is why she is reviled, treated as toxic by the likes of the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Labour Movement. Nor does her position on trans rights, good or bad, have anything to do with the desperate attempt by Momentum and CLPD to treat her as a non-person. Typically, Momentum leadership’s response to Naomi’s heartening NEC victory was to ignore it. This shows just how low the official Labour left has sunk. They would, if they could, impose a regime where the only facts are Momentum-approved facts.

Momentum’s official response to the NEC elections, which actually saw them lose a seat, was, therefore, to celebrate a great triumph for ‘socialism’. But, of course, outside Momentum’s Orwellian bubble, what everyone was talking about was Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi.

However, while her 4,686 first-preference votes represent two fingers up to both the Labour right and the fake left, her election remains a ray of light in what is, overall, a rather dark picture. With the aid of trade union and affiliated society members Starmer has a comfortable majority on the NEC. Furthermore, the right dominates the Parliamentary Labour Party. The Socialist Campaign Group of MPs is largely neutered by its own timidity. Although Wimborne-Idrissi’s election gave the left in the Constituency Labour Parties something of a morale boost just weeks before Liverpool, what will surely be one of the most stage-managed conferences ever, the knives are already out for her.

The outraged reaction of the Jewish Labour Movement and the Board of Deputies to her election shows that moves may well be underway to oust her from the NEC, even expel her from the party. Needless to say, such Zionist outfits regard her election as unacceptable, an affront. After all, she is the ‘wrong kind of Jew’. She is an anti-Zionist Jew and, no less worse, a socialist to boot.

When it comes to removing her, much will depend on whether Starmer and the right feel the need to launch yet another symbolic attack on the left, yet another demonstration of Labour’s eminent suitability for government and abject loyalty to the US-dominated world order. Perhaps Starmer will stay his hand simply because the left is safely marginalised. Whatever happens, though, we can be assured, given their past record during the height of the ‘anti-Zionism equal anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt, that neither Momentum nor the SCG will lift a finger to defend Wimborne-Idrissi if she faces the usual trumped-up charges coming from Labour’s Victoria Street HQ. They will easily find ‘principled reasons’ to look the other way.

Jeremy Corbyn’s failure in 2019, the defeat of the hapless Rebecca Long-Bailey, the proscribing of ‘poisonous’ organisations such as Labour Against the Witchhunt, led some to conclude that Labour was dead. The Tories were undefeatable. The UK had a one-party system. Apparently Sir Keir’s sole concern was purging the left. He knew that getting into No10 was always impossible. Stupid then, even more stupid now.

Today Labour is well ahead in the polls, and, despite misconceived leftwing predictions, stands well placed to secure a majority government. It is true that a Labour government under Starmer would be the most rightwing in history. But Starmer’s openly pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist politics make him a very acceptable captain of the second eleven, as far as the British state and capitalist class are concerned. They would certainly be more than happy to support a Starmer government as a way to pacify, dampen down, tame an out of control strike wave and hold the line for British capitalism, if the situation required it.

Electorally, the Labour right’s triangulation strategy and keeping a distance from the trade unions carries the possibility that Labour could be ‘de-Labourised’ and become a British version of the American Democrats – an idea Tony Blair toyed with in the 1990s. Looking back at history, Blair always regretted the strange death of Gladstone’s Great Liberal Party and wanted to reunite Libism with Labism.

But, if there is a parting of ways between Labour and the trade unions, such a split could easily be initiated either by the Labour leadership or the trade union bureaucracy. We saw not a few disaffiliations under Blair: eg, RMT, BFAWU, FBU. However, the chances are that trade union officialdom will stick to the devil they know. Given a choice between Sir Keir and Liz Truss, they will go for Sir Keir.

This rather degraded relationship remains a key aspect of Labour’s characterisation as a bourgeois worker’s party, which maintains its roots in the working class through the organised workers in the trade unions. These roots also allow the class struggle to be reflected in the party and provide the structures which ensure the periodic spontaneous reproduction of a left, despite the dominance of the pro-capitalist leadership, which is organically attached to the state.

If the nature of Labour throws up a recurrent leftwing resurgence, politically these movements have historically remained limited and circumscribed by Labourism and the election of any Labour government, in the forlorn hope that Labour can be reclaimed and eventually there will be a left Labour government which introduces ‘socialism’.

This inability to break with Labourism is the original sin of both the Labour left and those comrades who seek to build Labour Party mark two parties outside of Labour. These projects, such as the Socialist Alliance, Respect, Socialist Labour Network and the now badly wounded Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, merely seek to reproduce Labour in both its political and organisational forms.

The more these Labour Party mark two comrades proclaim that ‘Labour is dead’, the more they actually do to keep Labourism alive. Our position of reforging Labour as a united front of all working class and socialist organisations is not a strategy to reclaim the Labour Party or reboot left‑reformist politics. Rather it is a strategy that seeks to drive out the right and win Labour to a Marxist programme under a Marxist leadership.

For that, though, we need a Communist Party.

[1]. labourlist.org/2022/09/results-released-in-nec-national-policy-forum-and-youth-wing-elections.

[2]. www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/statement/naomi-wimborne-idrissi-is-elected-to-labours-nec.

Momentum, The left

Under false colours

Jon Lansman’s departure and the advent of a new regime held out the promise of radical change. Clive Dean tells the sorry tale of bureaucratic control, missed opportunities and political cynicism

The process of ‘refounding Momentum’ that began with the departure of founder/chair/owner Jon Lansman has recently concluded with a raft of 17 organisational changes designed to ‘restore decision-making’ to members.[1]

However, these changes do not amount to rolling back the constitution imposed on the organisation in 2017 following Lansman’s coup. In particular there will be no representative democracy based on local groups, regions and delegate conferences. The changes leave in place the atomised online voting process for members’ involvement, where click-based choices provide no opportunity for real participation in meaningful debates.

Momentum emerged in 2015 from Jeremy Corbyn’s successful leadership campaign. By 2016, when I joined, there was talk of 20,000 members organised in local groups all over the country. In my local group, meetings attracted 20-30 people – both members and some frightened political opponents. We held policy debates and organised left slates for elections within the Constituency Labour Party. Later that year I attended a regional meeting of Momentum, where delegates from a dozen active local groups exchanged experiences and established comradely connections for future campaigns. Like many regions we used the Loomio platform to collaborate and develop coordinated interventions.

There was an air of confidence within the Labour left at that time. Preparations were well in hand for the first Momentum delegate conference and leadership elections in early 2017. Then on October 28 2016 Jon Lansman staged his coup, using the steering committee to cancel a meeting of the body it was subordinate to, the executive committee.[2]

With the full support of Jeremy Corbyn and others in the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs he went on to cancel all the preparations for the conference and then introduced a new constitution, abolishing the regions and downgrading the role of local groups. Lansman used a members’ survey to claim endorsement for his new constitution, ensuring he kept control of his private property. Naturally, the dynamism and enthusiasm of Momentum quickly drained away, along with the members and the local groups.

Momentum became just another lifeless campaign, with all decisions taken at the top, and, despite the veneer of digital democracy, a membership reduced to the role of canvassing fodder. The oh-so-close general election result in 2017 obscured the decline, but with the 2019 election disaster, followed by Sir Keir’s victory as Labour’s leader, Momentum needed a serious overhaul.

Forward

In May 2020 Lansman announced his departure and the overhaul began. Things had got so bad that the rest of the existing leadership decided a new image was required. Their slate for the June 2020 elections to the national coordinating group (NCG – Momentum’s leading committee) adopted the brand, ‘Momentum Renewal’, and promised changes. But instead the fresher faces on the new ‘Forward Momentum’ slate won all 20 seats in the members’ ballot.[3] The old guard had to make do with the remaining 14 NGC seats, elected or appointed by other routes.

The Forward Momentum pitch picked up on some of the grievances within the organisation:

Too many decisions have been made in back rooms, unwanted candidates have been imposed on local groups, and bold socialist strategy has been abandoned, often for no strategy at all. Momentum is failing because of this. Members have left in droves and trust in the organisation is at an all-time low. We are standing to change this.[4]

The process of meetings and consultations seemed to drag on for ages, but by May this year the refounding proposals were ready to be voted on by the membership – online, of course. Yes, there were 17 subjects where a choice was required, sometimes with three or four options, and very brief technical ‘supporting arguments’ to clarify the wording. But, having gone through each vote, and selecting the most radical in terms of member participation, you were left at the end with the distinct feeling that nothing fundamental would come of it all, that really it was just about tinkering with the details.

To illustrate, the topic of the first vote was ‘A Momentum convention’. This was the nearest we would be offered to a sovereign annual national delegate conference. There were four options here:

  1. A convention of all members every two years to debate and vote on campaigning priorities;
  2. As 1, but with delegates rather than all members;
  3. An online convention of all members, but with voting deferred until later to allow offline members to participate;
  4. No convention – existing routes to influence Momentum policy would remain.

The result for this vote was a win for option 1, with 41% support. We were not told how many members voted for it, or how much support the other options received.

Briefly, other decisions included:

  • Allowing members to decide who Momentum endorses in leader/deputy leader elections (backing Angela Rayner rather than Richard Burgon for deputy leader did not go down well).
  • The re-introduction of the regional level of organisation – though this is very much for ‘coordinating’ and ‘helping’ rather than decision-making.
  • Providing a formal framework for Momentum local groups, including many requirements and standards they have to meet – thus providing a convenient stick to use against troublesome opposition: “Local Momentum groups that do not meet these standards will be transitioned to ‘Groups in recess’”!
  • Momentum endorsement of candidates in selection processes to be decided by local groups. This seems obvious but caused a few rows during the Lansman era.
  • Also included are some requirements for MP/councillor accountability – absolutely a good idea, but hard to enforce, I think.
  • Single transferable vote rather than ‘first past the post’ in NCG elections, which ironically should prevent a repeat of the 2020 result referred to above!
  • Finally an attempt to ensure that all members are nominally in a group, even when they are miles from a functioning local organisation.

Here the supporting arguments were revealing. We learnt that “Only a very small percentage of Momentum members are currently organised in local groups”; and “Very few Momentum members fall in the catchment area for a local Momentum group (approximately less than five percent)”. My logical deduction from these two statements is that Momentum is now a collection of dispersed individuals rather than an organised political force.

Today

On June 13 Momentum will open nominations for this year’s NCG elections, with voting beginning on June 28. So far two slates are known to be standing: last time’s winners are now branded as ‘Your Momentum’, and they are being challenged by ‘Momentum Organisers’. Hopefully we will be able to report on some real political differences during the campaign.

The turnout in 2020 was 8,580. Given that the last two years have been dominated by Starmer’s reign of terror against the Labour left, we should expect a much smaller involvement this time. Indeed many groups that share Momentum’s terrain are struggling to survive. Momentum’s insistence on Labour Party membership will not help here either, given the large number of activists who have either been expelled or hounded out of the party, with hardly a whimper of protest from Momentum.

Where Momentum is still having an impact is in its promotion of The World Transformed – the major Labour left fringe umbrella that accompanies the annual party conference. Last year at Brighton it hosted 120 events, and it is now gearing up for Liverpool in September this year. Momentum also provides training courses for its membership, to enable them to function better as organisers within the milieu of protest politics, and to oil the career paths of would-be councillors and MPs (though maybe having Momentum on your CV could be an impediment just now!). In this educational activity Momentum is partnered (organisationally and financially) by the Berlin-based Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Indeed Deborah Hermanns, who was elected to the NCG in 2020, is listed as an employee at the London office of the RLF.

The RLF functions as a vehicle for the German Left Party (Die Linke) to receive millions of euros from the German state. With this funding it promotes political research and education activities around the world – it has offices in over 20 countries. The link between Momentum and the RLF is a cosy fit politically – left reformism with a radical edge of anti-racism, feminism, pacifism and climate justice, so Momentum is a fortunate beneficiary here.

However, for genuine Marxists such a relationship would be problematic. First, we pride ourselves on our financial and political independence. In our movement there are too many examples of revolutionary politics being abandoned by parties which became dependent on direct or indirect government funding, whatever the government. Second, the legacy of Rosa Luxemburg projected by the RLF – ‘democratic socialism’, coupled with identity politics – is in complete contrast to the real Rosa Luxemburg: a communist revolutionary who fought against opportunism in the German Social Democratic Party, and an ally of Lenin who was committed to spreading the Bolshevik revolution beyond Russia to the heart of European capitalism.

Dare I suggest a session on ‘Rosa Luxembourg, the party and proletarian revolution’ for this year’s The World Transformed?

[1]. labourlist.org/2022/05/momentum-unveils-democratic-changes-passed-in-refounding-process.

[2]. See ‘Sole director wants to dispense with representative democracy’ Weekly Worker November 3 2016: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1129/sole-director-wants-to-dispense-with-representativ.

[3]. labourlist.org/2020/07/victory-for-forward-momentum-candidates-as-lansman-steps-down.

[4]. labourlist.org/2020/06/forward-momentum-our-bold-vision-for-change-a-plan-to-rebuild-momentum.

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

Don’t mention Jeremy

The NEC is now dominated by the right and arrogantly rides roughshod over rules not to its liking. Clive Dean ridicules the debilitating illusions of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy

On May 16 the Labour Party selected Simon Lightwood as candidate for the forthcoming Wakefield by-election, caused by the resignation of disgraced Tory MP, Imran Khan.

However, just before the vote between the two shortlisted Starmerite hopefuls, the 16-strong Constituency Labour Party executive resigned en masse and led a walkout from the selection meeting. This was in protest at the way the process had been rigged to exclude any meaningful involvement of local members, contrary to party rules.

A rule change was passed at the Labour conference last September that requires a majority of local representatives on the panel selecting the shortlist for a parliamentary by-election. However, as in the three previous by-elections, this rule has been ignored by the party’s national executive committee, with just a single local voice allowed on the panel of five.[1]

You might think this arrogant disregard for the rules by the NEC would deter those claiming to be on the party’s ‘left’ from placing their hopes in further tinkering rule changes, but far from it. A recent email to members of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (entitled ‘Justice for Jeremy – should be the priority at annual conference!’) is urging its members to promote a rule change through their CLPs. This particular change is intended to allow Jeremy Corbyn to stand as an official Labour candidate in the next general election, even though he has been suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party precisely to prevent him from standing.

To achieve this trick requires some legalese in wording. The rule being changed currently begins: “If a CLP is represented in parliament by a member of the PLP …”; and is followed by sub-clauses detailing the processes for trigger ballots and reselection. The proposed new wording reads:

If a CLP is represented in parliament by either a member of the PLP or by a member of the Labour Party who has not had their membership rights to stand in internal selections to represent the party as a publicly elected representative suspended under the provisions of chapters 1, 2 or 6 of this rule book …

… then a further sub-clause is added to nullify any selection rushed through before this year’s conference in an effort to beat the rule change. The whole thing is a blatant contrivance to allow Jeremy Corbyn to keep his Islington North seat despite the machinations of Starmer and the PLP. After all, though he remains suspended from the PLP, he was reinstated as a Labour Party member in November 2020 after a 19-day suspension. But this rule change has a novel extra hurdle to clear. The CLPD provides guidance on how to move it within your CLP.

It points out:

Under the draconian restrictions on free speech that have been imposed on official Labour Party meetings it is not permitted to mention Jeremy Corbyn or discuss why he should be treated fairly by the party. This is a result of the extraordinary instructions that the general secretary has issued.

CLPD strongly advises Jeremy’s name should not be mentioned in any Labour Party meeting (branch or CLP) in connection with this rule change. It is not necessary to mention him in official meetings in order to explain the need for the rule book to be democratised in this way.

Pantomime

If the movers are unable to articulate the real purpose of the rule change in their speeches, then presumably they will have to use some other creative method to get the message across. It will be interesting to see how many CLPs manage to successfully submit this rule change before the deadline on June 17.

Then the real fun will begin. First it will need to be accepted as a valid rule change by the conference arrangements committee. In recent years this body has been tolerant of controversial proposals, correctly leaving it to conference to pass or reject them. However, there is no left majority here, so no guarantee it will reach conference floor. If it does, then no doubt it will be strongly opposed by the NEC (which now has a significant rightwing majority). That does not automatically mean it will fall – the NEC opposed the successful ‘by-election selections’ rule change referred to above. But every other CLP rule change fell last year.

There is a good chance that the majority of delegates representing CLPs will vote for it, but its real fate will be decided by trade union block votes. Here the horse-trading behind closed doors comes into play. Even if you have it in black and white, passed by your union’s full policy conference, there is nothing to stop the delegation to conference voting the other way as part of a bigger deal brokered by the general secretary.

But say, despite everything, the left has a good conference and the rule change is passed. What should we expect? Well, the NEC could easily get around it, as it has been doing with the ‘by-elections selections’ rule. Here it simply ‘determined’ that it was ‘inexpertly drafted’ and required NEC guidance to ‘clarify’ it. This guidance effectively turned it on its head, giving the NEC, instead of the local CLPs, a majority on the selection panels.

A more likely outcome is that the NEC will simply suspend Jeremy Corbyn over some other issue – perhaps something he has said criticising Nato during the war in Ukraine could form the basis of a complaint – and suspensions in the Labour Party can drag on for years. Whatever happens, the current balance of forces in Labour points to another defeat for the left, and no Jeremy on the ballot paper.

Clearly this whole pantomime is not the correct way for the Labour left to regroup and begin a fightback following the devastating defeats of the last two and a half years. The Corbyn period provided the left with the opportunity to put its strategy and tactics to the test, but they were found to be wanting. This is not the time for ‘back to business as usual’, as groups like the CLPD maintain: it is time to question everything, especially what socialism means, and what needs to change in the Labour Party to bring it about. The CLPD as an organisation is unworthy of its name. The changes it promotes just tinker around the edges of the rule book, and any ‘left’ victory it might win is dependent on a coalition with the right wing – and we have seen where that leads.

The CLPD will not call for the kind of democracy we need to transform the Labour Party into a genuine workers’ party. It is even against introducing democracy into the left itself. At its AGM earlier this year, questions were asked about its role in the secretive Centre Left Grassroots Alliance (CLGA) and the way it imposed left candidates for internal party elections. The top-table reply was that the CLGA would not be expanded if it meant including left groups where some members had been expelled from Labour. And there was no chance of any transparency, because the groups that made up the CLGA were sovereign organisations and anyway there was no need to change things: the current set-up was delivering.

In order to make real progress, the Labour left requires its victories in the party to be accompanied by the destruction of the fortresses of the right – the party bureaucracy and domination by the PLP. This means defeating that part of the party that is loyal to the British state and US imperialism. Such an approach has to be based on the ideas of class struggle, the ideas of Marxism. Anything else will just take us further down the Corbyn sinkhole.

[1].  labourlist.org/2022/05/exclusive-labour-accused-of-breaching-rules-in-wakefield-candidate-selection.

The left

Dead not resting

James Harvey looks at the origins, politics and ultimate demise of Labour Briefing

The news that Labour Briefing has ceased publication, in both physical and online format, marks in many ways the end of an era for the Labour left.

Founded in 1980 as a “bulletin board for Labour Party activists”, the journal was a product of the growth of the left in the party’s ranks in the late 1970s and early 1980s.[1] Although Labour Briefing did have something of a national profile, its main base was in the London left and amongst those activists who would become prominent in the municipal politics of the Greater London Council in the Livingstone period. The politics of this current grew out of Trotskyism – either in the form of organised groups such as the Chartist minority or various ex-members of the various groups.[2] By its own lights, Labour Briefing reflected these differences and made a virtue out of eclecticism. As Chris Knight, one of the journal’s founders, puts it, “instead of propagating a particular ideology, we acted on the basis that class unity comes first and information is power”.[3]

However, behind this ostensible pluralism Labour Briefing was tied body and soul to the Labour Party and thus left reformism, which continues to reflect the wider ‘common sense’ politics of important sections of the Labour left up to the present day. In the 1980s this produced a municipal strategy of confronting the Thatcher government and supporting Bennite left reformism during Labour’s internal battles, whilst during the Blairite counterrevolution of the 1990s and 2000s it meant hunkering down and hoping for better days to come again.

Thus in 2012 Labour Briefing was ‘transferred’ to the Labour Representation Committee – a Labour left group formed around John McDonnell.[4] This gave rise to a split led by former Labour NEC member Christine Shawcroft. The politics behind this bust-up are thoroughly obscure and mixed with personality clashes. Despite brave attempts to have a full and honest debate, both sides preferred to listen to the latest witterrings of Owen Jones. The minority, having lost the vote by a pretty sizable margin, went on to produce their very own version of Labour Briefing – the so-called original Labour Briefing.[5] Somewhat bizarrely the minority blamed the CPGB for the split – we had two comrades at the meeting!

Of course, the LRC presented itself as the potential nucleus of a revived Labour Party, should the Blairite project completely overwhelm Labourism and sever the party’s links with the trade unions. In practice, the LRC was simply a vehicle for the dwindling careerist ambitions of left councillors and would-be councillors, combined with acting as a lifeboat for beleaguered activists trying to keep what remained of the Labour left together.

However, the election of Jeremy Corbyn and the influx of a new mass left membership, combined with the return of a layer of former left activists to the colours, would have been expected to provide both Labour Briefing and the LRC with something of a fillip. Given Corbyn’s personal and political links with both Labour Briefing and the political milieu from which it emerged, to the comrades on the editorial board it must have seemed that, following his election as Labour leader, their day had indeed finally come.[6] Strangely, it didn’t. The LRC membership remained static and nothing could prepare them for the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt, which began, of course under Corbyn’s leadership, and continued even after Jennie Formby took over as general secretary.

Neither Corbyn nor McDonnell raised a peep of protest. All they did was appease, appease and appease again. To its credit Labour Briefing did fight back against the witch-hunt. To its discredit Labour Briefing refused to denounce the treachery of Corbyn, McDonnell and co. The dream was always of getting Corbyn into No10 and McDonnell into No11.

Whatever the specific and immediate reasons for the demise of Labour Briefing, its political trajectory from the 1980s reflects that of the official Labour left as a whole. Following the 2019 general election and the acceleration of the witch-hunt under Sir Keir, the official left fell into demoralisation and decay. The surrender of the official left in the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, the business-as-usual passivity of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, the gutting of Momentum and the failure of broad left outfits such as the Labour Left Alliance illustrate the depth of the crisis now facing what remains of the Labour left. There has been initiative after initiative. All have come to nothing.

Necessity

The demise of Labour Briefing reflects the failure of the Labour left to develop the politics and strategy needed to mount any kind of fightback. We in Labour Party Marxists have long argued that the sorry fate of the official Labour left is not simply about individual betrayal and careerism (although these characteristics play an undoubted role), but rather can be found in the fundamental premises of the official left’s politics and its understanding of the nature of the Labour Party.

Throughout its history Labour Briefing argued that ‘transitional politics’ were the way to develop the socialist consciousness of the working class and that demands predicated on the election of a left Labour government were key in that process. Although framed in the insurrectionary language of ‘Labour take the power’ (with its self-conscious echoes of Lenin’s ‘All power to the soviets!’), this differed little in form from the usual Labour left reformism and electoral politics found in the old CPGB’s British road to socialism or the pages of Militant in the 1980s.

Whilst the politics of Labour Briefing from the beginning recognised the pro-capitalist nature of the Labour right and the roadblock that this leadership presents for socialists, they failed to even challenge, let alone break with, the reformism of the Labour left. Their politics remained essentially confined within the framework of Labourism and so continued to suffer the fate of the Labour left as a whole. Whether tail-ending the municipal left in the 1980s or excusing Corbyn’s retreats in the face of the Labour right in the late 2010s, Labour Briefing often provided a left cover for further accommodation and concessions. The result was that in the aftermath of the Corbyn moment, like others on the Labour left, the supporters of Labour Briefing could offer no real explanation of what went wrong – beyond Corbyn’s tactical misjudgements or some mild criticisms of his personal and political failings.

To really come to terms with the failure of Corbynism would have required a thorough rejection of their previous positions and developing instead a truly militant stance: namely that Labour cannot be understood as a ready-made instrument for the socialist transformation of society and that the self-emancipation of the working class requires revolutionary consciousness, not so-called transitional reformism.

It is not enough to simply note the passing of Labour Briefing and think of its demise as the end of a song. The type of politics it espoused and the illusions it fostered have deep roots in the workers’ movement: the closure of a journal does not liquidate the politics which it embodied. The left reformism of Labour Briefing and its like on the Labour left is a real barrier, which must be overcome if we are to develop a programme and build a party that can lead the working class to power.

Moreover, the spurious eclecticism and speculative discussion with which Labour Briefing identified itself are luxuries we cannot afford. Not developing clear and definite positions is criminally irresponsible for Marxists and amounts to an apolitical betrayal of the cause of the working class.

Given the growing threats of war and the serious political and economic crises that face the working class internationally, reforging authentic, militant, working class politics is not a choice, but an urgent necessity.

[1]. labourbriefing.org/blog/about.

[2]. The history of the British far left in this period – especially of the groups that entered the Labour Party – still remains to be written. Militant received considerable attention at the time, but there were other currents which also influenced the Labour left in this period and have been overlooked in the standard accounts.

[3]. labourbriefing.org/blog/about.

[4]. After the transfer, the editorial board of Labour Briefing was elected by LRC members, although Graham Bash and other founder members remained the driving force behind the journal.

[5]. This version of the journal still continues to be produced. See LB Archive – Labour Briefing Co-operative: labourbriefingcooperative.net/lb-archive.

[6]. By way of illustrating this relationship, the Labour Briefing website has a 1980s picture of Graham Bash and Jeremy Corbyn together at a demonstration: labourbriefing.org/blog/about.