Category Archives: The left

Nationalism and internationalism, The left

Spineless response to the Ukraine war

Its response to the Ukraine war shows the official Labour ‘left’ is sinking ever further into the mire, writes James Harvey

Sir Keir Starmer is having a ‘good war’, but, then again, we would expect nothing less from this trusted servant of British imperialism and its American masters.

For months Sir Keir has been setting out his stall as an alternative prime minister and a safe, reliable pair of hands, who can be trusted to enter Downing Street and ‘govern’ in the interests of capitalism. Defence of Nato and the interests of US imperialism are central to the British state, and in his job application Starmer has made his support for this strategic status quo a central theme. Until last autumn this had something of a platonic character: true, it was politically and symbolically important in demonstrating loyalty to the state, and a good way of drawing a clear line between himself and his notoriously unreliable predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, but there was no immediate political crisis that necessitated a choice.

Then came Ukraine and Sir Keir relished his opportunity to trumpet his loyalty to Nato and show that, when called upon, he could take an even harder line than the most rightwing jingoists on the Tory back benches. Whether it was calling for even tougher sanctions or standing fully behind the Ukrainian state, Starmer was always on hand to provide the statesmanlike rhetoric and necessary support for the Nato line.[1] As war fever swept the House of Commons and the media, he enthusiastically joined in and, like the rest of the capitalist class, was willing to fight to the last Ukrainian in defence of western values and freedom against the Russian autocracy.

If Sir Keir acted his part to perfection, the official Labour left too has been playing its own rather ignominious role during this crisis. If truth is the first casualty of war, for the parliamentary left principled politics comes a very close second. Just when you thought what passes for a left wing in the Labour Party could not fall any lower, leading left MPs sink even further into the mire and prostrate themselves before the pro-imperialist leadership of Starmer.

Apart from the unashamedly pro-Nato Paul Mason, the openly pro-imperialist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, the confused Mandelites of Anti-Capitalist Resistance and the fellow-travellers of rightwing Ukrainian nationalism in the Ukrainian Solidarity Campaign, the dominant moods on the left are a species of social pacifism, reflected in the statements of the Stop the War Coalition. These oppose the war, criticise Nato expansion and urge diplomacy and negotiation as a solution to the crisis. In line with the popular-frontism of its leadership, they seek to build a mass movement in alliance with progressives and other bien pensants of the liberal bourgeoisie.[2] Hence, they stick to righteous indignation at the horrors of war and avoid the complexities of great-power politics. Above all, they do not link the struggle against war to the capitalist system that spawns it or pose a specifically independent working class politics that links fundamental questions of war, peace and the importance of fighting the real enemy – the ruling class at home.

It was to a statement of this type of social pacifism that 11 Labour MPs (plus Jeremy Corbyn and Claudia Webbe) added their names on the eve of the war – only to retract them when Starmer threatened to withdraw the whip or even possibly expel them from the party for daring to be even mildly critical of Nato![3] This was followed by an even more cowardly retreat, when John McDonnell and Diane Abbott pulled out of speaking at an StWC meeting following yet more reported threats from Starmer.[4] To compound McDonnell’s cowardice, it appears from reports that Starmer only said that “ the party would be looking closely at what was said about Nato and the war in Ukraine” rather than pronouncing an explicit anathema on McDonnell’s attendance per se. However, McDonnell has always been good at sniffing the wind and knew exactly what Starmer expected of him.[5]

Abbott went even further in her abject recantation and gave explicit backing to Nato as a “defensive alliance”. Having a debate around Nato strategy is one thing,” she said, but “attacking Nato is another. Everybody in the Labour Party supports a defensive alliance” (my emphasis).[6]

Sir Keir has made Stop the War a particularly symbolic and political target, and his attacks on this social-pacifist campaign have grown as the crisis has unfolded.[7] As he drove the point home and denounced even the muted critical politics of the Labour left, these bold leaders simply collapsed and grovelled at the leadership’s bidding.

Betrayal

This betrayal by what remains of the official Labour left is all the more stark because of the long histories of McDonnell and Abbott in opposition to Blair’s imperialist wars, and their personal connections with Jeremy Corbyn in those campaigns. In this instance the wounds and the sense of treachery truly are personal. Given McDonnell’s role in conniving at the witch-hunt and attempting to placate the Labour right during the Corbyn era, we should not be at all surprised by his abject surrender to Starmer and his vow of silence, when it comes to criticism of Nato and the strategy of the British state. Moreover, he continues to support the USC and thus give a ‘left’ cover to pro-Nato politics. So bold John is now effectively amongst the cheerleaders for greater support for the Ukrainian state and is laying the ground for even more direct intervention in the war. But, before we pass on to the bigger picture, let us consider McDonnell’s specific defence of his recantation of the StWC statement and withdrawal from the protest meeting. Beginning with the argument that “people are dying on the streets of Ukrainian cities”, McDonnell goes on to say:

This is not the time to be distracted by political arguments here. Now is the time to unite and do all we can to assist the people of Ukraine desperately seeking asylum and to do all we can to bring about peace. Nothing is more important at this time. Nothing should distract us from that. So I won’t feed into that distraction by going tonight.

I do think many Labour Party members will want clarity over the Labour Party’s attitude to attending demonstrations organised by Stop the War or by them jointly with other groups. My final comment is that, in the wider context of securing a socialist Labour government, and possibly inspired by my team Liverpool at Wembley at the weekend, I do believe it’s important for socialists to stay on the pitch for as long as it takes [my emphasis throughout].[8]

This rather brief statement reveals the utter bankruptcy and rotten core at the heart of the official Labour left, and the complete lack of any authentic or determined leadership amongst its MPs and trade union bureaucrats. As the official Labour left continues its demoralisation and disintegration, this is the type of compromising ‘leadership’ that remains behind to further disillusion and disorientate honest left activists. Now is not the time to be distracted by political arguments!

As if questions of war, peace, imperialism and great-power strategic rivalry are not issues for political argument which demand a socialist, working class response to the war in Ukraine. Rather than develop our own politics and make the voice of independent proletarian internationalism heard amidst the clamour of war, demands by the likes of McDonnell that we unite and do all we can for peace really mean that workers in each country are being asked to effectively line up behind their ruling class.

The reasons why McDonnell and co fail this vital test is not just moral cowardice or careerism, although they have their part in these betrayals of the official Labour left. At the root of these politics is the original sin of the Labour left since the early 20th century: namely compromise with capitalism and a lack of confidence that the working class can rise to the challenges of both war and peace, and overthrow capitalism internationally. The official Labour left’s road to socialism lies not through the conscious self-emancipation of the working class, but through the parliamentary road of “ socialist Labour governments” and gradual modifications of capitalism. Any hint of principled politics is jettisoned in subordination to that goal, which requires endless compromise with the pro-capitalist Labour right and constant retreat on even the semblance of socialist politics.

War and peace are fundamental questions for society and the working class internationally. Wars have historically exposed the nature of imperialist and great-power rivalry, and the reality of class society. The war in Ukraine is no exception, showing the strategic competition between the US hegemon and its Nato clients, and a regional power, Russia (and, behind it, a major challenger to US hegemony, China).

The voice of the left and independent working class politics is at its weakest since the 19th century, but that does not mean we must meekly surrender to capitalism and imperialism like the official Labour left. Our forces are as yet too weak to turn this colonial war by proxy into a civil war of workers against the bourgeoisie, but we must continue to adhere to that programme of independent working class action.

Unlike traitors such as John McDonnell, for the genuine partisans of socialist and internationalist politics the main enemy remains at home. In time of war there is no other position: here we stand – we can do no other

 

[1]. www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/08/zelenskiy-invokes-churchill-calls-on-uk-do-more-help-ukraine.

[2]. morningstaronline.co.uk/article/being-anti-war-does-not-make-us-apologists-enemy-or-anyone-else.

[3]. www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/24/labour-mps-drop-backing-for-statement-criticising-nato-after-starmer-warning.

[4]. www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/mar/02/john-mcdonnell-and-diane-abbott-pull-out-of-stop-the-war-rally.

[5]. labourlist.org/2022/03/exclusive-john-mcdonnell-will-not-attend-stop-the-war-event.

[6]. labourlist.org/2022/03/diane-abbott-we-could-even-support-stop-the-war-under-tony-blair.

[7]. www.newstatesman.com/comment/2022/03/by-repudiating-stop-the-war-keir-starmer-has-reclaimed-labours-true-history; www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/keir-starmer-says-stop-the-war-coalition-gives-help-to-authoritarians-like-putin.

[8]. labourlist.org/2022/03/exclusive-john-mcdonnell-will-not-attend-stop-the-war-event.

The left

Cosying up to Sir Keir

Derek James reports on the split in the Socialist Campaign Group and the prospects for the ‘insider’ strategy

Another day, another initiative on the Labour left. However, this time rather than a new ‘rank and file’ initiative, it seems that a group of 11 Campaign Group MPs and one member of the Scottish parliament are forming a new parliamentary caucus. Reports on social media and blogs like Labour List and Skwawkbox are still somewhat sketchy, but even at this early stage the main outlines of the project seem clear enough.[1]

In what seems to be a carefully planted leak, the group’s ‘strategy coordination document’ outlines the political and organisational basis of the new group, and its relationship to the current Labour leadership. Whilst much social media attention has been on its funding by a levy on MPs, proposals for a full-time staff member/researcher and ideas for more high-profile parliamentary interventions modelled on the US Democrats’ ‘Squad’, it is the broader political orientation of the as yet unnamed group that is of the greatest interest.

The putative group identifies itself, of course, as being on the left, but this is a ‘new left’, you understand. It is distinctly different from the old left represented by Corbyn and the socially reactionary elements of old-style Labourism, because it is “pushing the Labour leadership to do better on its economic approach, and social and environmental justice issues”.[2] We can surmise what this might mean by looking a little more closely at some of the names currently in the frame. They are said to include backbenchers Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Clive Lewis, Nadia Whittome, Rachel Maskell, Dawn Butler and Kim Johnson, along with frontbenchers Sam Tarry and Olivia Blake. Apparently other MPs were asked to get involved, such as Paula Barker, Beth Winter, Nav Mishra and Rachel Hopkins, but they declined for various reasons.[3] On the face of it this motley collection of very soft-left Labourites has little in common. Although they largely represent a new generation of post-Corbyn MPs – that is, people who were elected since 2015 – this group of careerists and opportunists come from different backgrounds and political positions.

Thus Clive Lewis, who is likely to be the leading figure if this project ever gets off the ground, has been a member of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and was a possible leadership candidate in 2020. Resigning from the shadow cabinet in 2017 over Labour’s support for triggering article 50 to leave the European Union, he is still strongly identified with the remainers.[4] Lewis has also made something of a name for himself amongst Labour activists by ‘campaigning’ for liberal approaches to race, immigration and asylum issues, and presenting the ‘Green New Deal’ as a radical alternative economic strategy. He is the very model of a modern, moderate, post-Corbyn ‘leftist’, who can get a good write-up in The Guardian and space in Tribune, alongside an undeserved reputation as a leftwinger in Constituency Labour Parties. Whilst others on the list, such as Nadia Whittome and Lloyd Russell-Moyle, share a similar pedigree on the soft left, some members of this putative caucus, including Kim Johnson and Dawn Butler, have their roots in other types of activism in local government, community groups and the trade unions.

Invertebrate

However, there is one trait that they all share to a greater or lesser extent – a refusal to publicly oppose the attacks on Corbyn and complete silence on the witch-hunt. If the response by the SCG in general to the onslaught of the Starmer leadership has been pathetically supine, then the record of this subset of individuals has been positively invertebrate. Despite their protestations of leftism, MPs like Nadia Whittome and Kim Johnson have joined in attacks on the left in their CLPs or discreetly worked with the party machine to undermine any challenges to the Starmer leadership.[5] This combination of political characteristics and individual careerism finds its nadir in the approach of the new caucus towards the leadership of Keir Starmer. This goes beyond the cowardice and compromise that is the hallmark of the ‘official left’ to complete capitulation.

Our bold ‘leftists’ can read as well as anyone and throughout their distinguished political careers have developed a very keen sense of the way the wind blows in the Labour Party. So the strategy outlined is one of tacking between what remains of the left amongst party activists and snuggling up to the Starmer leadership.

Alongside “conventional parliamentary tactics”, we are promised some really dramatic action to spice things up for their potential audience in the CLPs and “capture media attention”, such as “calling Boris Johnson a liar, actions involving dresscodes, knee in the chamber, etc”.[6] There is a fine heroic, historical tradition of working class tribunes using the platform that parliaments can provide to denounce the ruling class and mobilise a mass movement against capitalism. But what even these MPs admit are puerile parliamentary stunts are certainly not that!

While this publicity-seeking might catch the eye of the media and get a few headlines, their real attention is focused elsewhere on what, significantly, the new group defines as its “insider strategy”. These “tactical approaches” aim to put “pressure on Keir Starmer off and on his front bench” by “working alongside Starmer and trying to steer him rather than resist or remove him” (emphasis in original).[7] This strategy of surrender is couched in the fashionable language of “an alliance between GND (green new deal) and new/progressive economics”, representing little more than some warmed-over Keynesianism, elements of modern monetary theory and worthy green projects.[8] Like Labour’s 2019 election manifesto, this represents nothing more than a modified, regulated capitalism, albeit with a green-wash makeover. However, given what we have heard from the Labour leadership about its pro-business credentials, it is likely that even these timid, ‘progressive’ reforms will get short shrift from the oh so responsible shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves.[9]

It does not take a political genius to predict that this new group is unlikely to get very far. It clearly represents something of a split to the right by some elements in the rather quiescent and actually quite moribund SCG. At all levels of the party former leftists have moved on from keeping their heads down to now actively making their peace with the Starmer regime. This should not surprise us, given the experience we had throughout the witch-hunt when supposed leftist MPs and activists either stood mutely aside or – even worse – joined in the attacks on the genuine left in the Labour Party. This new initiative is really just the logical extension of that approach.

Will anyone be convinced by this ‘insider strategy’? Starmer and his allies will not be impressed. Although they already have enough useful idiots recruited from among former leftists who abandoned the cause, a few more are always handy. However, for all the fine talk of a new strategy, it will be the leadership that is calling the shots: all this new group will be doing is providing a mildly left cover for Starmer, while trying to persuade Labour activists to concentrate on the main issue: unite behind the leadership and focus on ‘getting rid of Johnson’.

It is possible that some left activists might be persuaded to go along with the politics of this putative split from the SCG. In the wake of the defeat and disintegration of the Corbyn movement, the failure of the official left to offer any sort of lead has disorientated and demoralised many. So some might clutch at these straws of bizarre parliamentary stunts and making your peace with the leadership for want of anything else. But if they do they will surely find themselves simply acting as bit-part players, mere voting fodder supporting the careers of political opportunists.

The politics of this new group, however, point to something more fundamental than just individual failings and venal parliamentary ambitions. This tendency towards compromise is inherent in the Labour left: it is an original sin that flows from their focus on achieving ‘socialism’ through the election of a left Labour government, which in turn is predicated on the necessity of unity with and political surrender to the pro-capitalist Labour right. The whole history of the official Labour left is made up of these types of compromise, which end up ultimately as major betrayals and defeats for the working class.

In its timidity and complete surrender to Starmer, the politics of this new group of MPs is just the latest iteration of this thoroughly discredited and putrid tradition

[1]. labourlist.org/2022/02/revealed-new-left-group-sparks-debate-over-divisions-among-left-mps: skwawkbox.org/2022/01/29/exclusive-new-left-socialist-campaign-group-mps-form-new-separate-eco-group.

[2]. skwawkbox.org/2022/01/29/exclusive-new-left-socialist-campaign-group-mps-form-new-separate-eco-group.

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

[4]. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-bill-latest-clive-lewis-resigns-jeremy-corbyn-labour-party-three-line-whip-brexit-bill-norwich-a7570416.html.

[5]. ‘Careerism on the Mersey’ Weekly Worker March 11 2021: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1338/careerism-on-the-mersey.

[6]. skwawkbox.org/2022/01/29/exclusive-new-left-socialist-campaign-group-mps-form-new-separate-eco-group.

[7]. Ibid.

[8]. Ibid.

[9]. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60068222.

The left

A rapidly sinking ship

Clive Dean reports on an organisation in sharp decline, politically at sea and now lacking any strategic perspective

At its height just 82 people attended the zoom call for the AGM of the Labour Representation Committee, held last Saturday
February 5. Far less than would attend the ‘normal’ face-to-face meetings in London’s Conway Hall. But nowadays it is dangerous to even appear on the same computer screen as those who have been expelled … and spies from Labour’s Victoria Street HQ were undoubtedly recording and readying new lists of those to be ‘investigated’. The AGM had been postponed from October last year, presumably in part out of fear of the witch-hunters, but also due to the pandemic and toll that has taken in terms of human resources.

There was a full agenda, but, thankfully, the non-appearance of billed guests Apsana Begum MP and Unison president Paul Holmes allowed some space for questions and debate. Exactly what the LRC leadership ‘normally’ seeks to avoid by packing the agenda to the rafters.

Having said that, potential time was still taken up by the rally-style guest speakers – Neda Abu Zant from Palestine and John Lister from SOS NHS. Then there were the constitutional amendments and policy motions to consider, but these contained nothing at all controversial, just tidying up the rules, affiliating to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and updating policy on housing, local government cuts and open selections.

An emergency motion on the Russia/Ukraine tension would have been in order, given the imminent threat of war and the LRC’s affiliation to the pro-imperialist cat’s paw, the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign. It draws an equals sign between “western imperialism” and “Russian imperialism” but gives the game away by championing “Ukrainian self-determination”. Nato expansionism and the Russian question within Ukraine is brushed over. But no, the nearest we got to a contentious vote was on the proposal to open up the zoom chat feature (lost 29:25).

Time given over for questions and debate featured in the morning session, both following Jeremy Corbyn (originally billed as a panel speaker) and around the LRC executive’s political statement. These were by far the most interesting, well, to be honest, the least boring, parts of the proceedings, so I will concentrate on the issues that came up.

Jeremy Corbyn’s contribution contained some unexpected points – he began by expressing his solidarity with those who have been suspended and expelled from the Labour Party. Does that include those witch-hunted under his watch? He asked the question, “Did we make mistakes while I was party leader”, and replied, “Yes, plenty”. He defended his efforts to mobilise the 400,000 who joined the party during that period and his attempts to transform the party into a campaigning organisation.

He lamely criticised the current party leadership for concentrating on suspensions and expulsions rather than organising against the Tories. He mentioned the tension over the Russia/Ukraine border, but went no further than calling for peace (perhaps he was aware of tensions within the LRC). He did, though, alert us to the non-danger of Boris Johnson attempting a Falklands-style engagement to save his failing premiership.

Ask Jeremy

Chairing, Matt Wrack asked for questions for Jeremy – not something I’ve encountered before!

Tina Werkmann was first to seize the opportunity and asked him to elaborate on the mistakes. Agreeing with his assessment that anti-Semitism in the Labour Party had been overstated for political reasons, she asked if he agreed that calling for zero-tolerance of anti-Semitism was a mistake, and that education was a better response. She also asked if it would have been better to face down the right in the Parliamentary Labour Party rather than compromising, as the right were part of a class war against the Labour left.

Nick Wrack also thought it was important to look at what went wrong. For him the key issues were the failure to mobilise the mass membership and the retreat from open selections. Looking forward, he considered it vital for the left to be clear on the questions of “What is socialism?” and “How do we get there?” Managing capitalism was not the answer: the profit system had to be abolished.

Other contributors steered clear of ‘mistakes’, though Alison McGarry thought that a Corbyn victory in 2019 would have faced a coup, something the left was totally ill-prepared to rebuff, she said.

Some of Corbyn’s responses were illuminating – apparently he is preparing a book about his time as leader, which will include self-criticism. He told us that at his first prime minister’s questions he was aware that in the PLP seated behind him he had the support of barely 15 MPs. While his leadership was able to garner strong support using social media, dealing with the mainstream media had been a big failing. As if the mainstream media was ever going to come over to support a Corbyn-led government. Corbyn agreed that discussing ‘what socialism means’ is important, and his Peace and Justice Project will be inviting everyone on the left to contribute 500 words on this subject – not exactly a recipe for clarity.

Unfit

Amazingly, the LRC executive’s political statement was exactly the same document that was due to be presented back in October, with a small appendix added that covered the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban take-over. Hence some of it was painfully out of date. For example, the pledges to build support for Cop26 events in Glasgow. The slogan for the AGM was ‘building the resistance’, and this seems to be the ‘positive’ course for the LRC projected within the statement. In fact, the LRC’s old strategy of backing left MPs and getting Labour into office as the road to socialism has been completely exposed as utterly illusory. Indeed the LRC has no answer about how to fight the ongoing anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism witch-hunt. Hence, in the absence of anything approaching a viable strategy the LRC leadership clutches at “the trade unions, climate change protests, Black Lives Matter, in solidarity with the Palestinian people, defending asylum seekers and migrants, resisting violence against women or discrimination against disabled people, fighting Universal Credit and the cut in its uplift, parts of the mutual aid movement and many more”.

In moving the statement, Graham Bash sounded the alarm for the LRC, which, along with the rest of the Labour left, had failed to stop the witch-hunt. He rightly agued that the Starmer purge was class war, and that over 200,000 members had already left the party. He urged those remaining not to give up and noted that alternative electoral ventures usually failed miserably. He urged the LRC to rise to the “challenges” – tailing existing protest movements? Otherwise the LRC was no longer fit for purpose – which is clearly already the case.

At least 15 members joined in the discussion, though many were oblivious to the stark warnings from comrade Bash, and some were totally off beam. Predictably there were voices calling for a new non-Marxist broad left to bring together all the left groups within Labour, united around ‘a dozen points we all agree on’. Ironically such unprincipled unity can only encourage further demoralisation and disintegration – because it is bound to fail. Others endorsed the suggestion to divert efforts into supporting broad movements outside the party – again a route away from socialist politics. Many gave examples of the crisis of democracy within the party and how it is damaging the prospects for left candidates. But throughout there was an undercurrent of despair, summed up when Nick Wrack asked “What is the LRC for?”

In reply to the discussion, comrade Bash declared that this time the fight within Labour was different, and the party we know may not survive. On supporting those standing against Labour he recalled backing Ken Livingstone and Dave Nellist in earlier struggles, and would support Corbyn should he be forced to stand outside Labour. His blunt answer to the question “What is the way forward?” was that he didn’t know – the struggle will provide the answers. Surely a declaration of strategic bankruptcy.

No contest

The unhealthy spirit of hopelessness also affected other areas of the AGM. Nobody felt the need to question the treasurer’s report, despite an ominous loan for £5,000 which appeared to be funding an ‘organiser’. The 18 officers and the new executive committee were all elected unopposed, though nominations for some posts were only received on the day, and at least one post remains unfilled. Only five of the candidates deigned to submit a personal statement, so perhaps it is just as well there were no votes. A look at the attendance record for the retiring executive reveals that at least one third of them had resigned part-way through their period in office.

A new editorial board was elected for the LRC’s ‘monthly’ journal, Labour Briefing. But there was no comment on its non-appearance since September, and no update on the email received in November, advising members: “We are pausing production while we re-organise and hopefully relaunch.” The talk is that when the relaunch comes it won’t be printed anymore, but will be just another one of those worthy but largely pointless online publications, that no one organises to support and very few go to the bother of reading.

When it ‘normally’ appears, Labour Briefing proclaims that “The LRC is a democratic, socialist body working to transform the Labour Party into an organisation that reflects all sections of the working class.” A thoroughly dubious formulation. No, we should seek to drive away, overthrow, the labour and trade union bureaucracy, not reflect, let alone promote, their narrow sectional interests and self-serving careers. But that is exactly what the LRC has been all about, and look how it has ended. Failure, complete and abject failure.

The left

Will ye no come back?

Amidst rumours of Jeremy Corbyn being set to launch a new party, Derek James asks why so many on the left are still in thrall to Corbynism

We can gauge the current state of the Labour left by the reaction, over the last few weeks, to rumours that Jeremy Corbyn was about to launch a new party. The response on social media was overwhelmingly positive, with many activists warmly welcoming the supposed initiative. One writer in the Morning Star spoke for many when she bemoaned the loss of energy, creativity and hope amongst the Labour left that followed Corbyn’s defeat and the election of Keir Starmer. Supporting the idea of a new party, Chelly Ryan argued that the possibility of any fight within Labour was now over:

The prospect of building slowly from within the Labour Party is now entirely defunct. We don’t have time for slow movement-building. And we don’t have the heart for it either. We are all spent from five years of internal warfare, defending one of, if not the, best leader the Labour Party ever had, from sabotage by the PLP and party staff.

… Starmer is sitting there, rubbing his hands in arrogant glee, knowing all he has to do is not cock up too badly and his time will come. And when it does, he will claim it was his purge of Corbyn and the “hard” left that won it. Then it will be business as usual. Fuscia Labour will tweak the status quo but they won’t change it dramatically This revolving door of not much changing can only be challenged by a new party and that new party has to be headed by Jeremy Corbyn. [1]

For these comrades Corbyn still remains the prince over the water, the rightful leader who, they hope, will one day return to claim his own and lead his followers to victory. He is, they say, the most unifying and inspiring figure we have had for generations, with the political weight and credibility to “light that spark” the left so urgently needs to revive.[2] Similar hopes are entertained elsewhere. Former left Labour MP Chris Williamson’s organisation – Resist: movement for a people’s party – welcomed the possible move, as did those who have always seen Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project as the nucleus of a new party-in-waiting.[3] However, before everyone gets too excited, it seems that the rumours were just that – rumours. It appears that the source of the stories were a number of articles in the right-wing media and briefings from sources close to the Labour leadership.[4] Whether these speculations were part of a deep-laid  Machiavellian plot to force the Labour left’s hand into formally breaking with the party, a simple misreading of yet another fairly innocuous Peace and Justice Project initiative, or a distorted echo of  the party bureaucracy’s plans to select a new parliamentary candidate for Islington North, remains to be seen.[5] However, it is the left’s rather excited response to the  reports that is the important issue here.

The reaction to this ‘news’ by comrades like Chelly Ryan shows that many are still clutching at straws and hoping that the Starmerite tide can be turned. This is illusory for two reasons. Firstly, such hopes fail to really account for the political  failure of the ‘Corbyn project’ and the treacherous role that the Corbyn leadership played in appeasing the pro-capitalist Labour right during the anti-Semitism smear campaign against the left. Remember that the purges and witch-hunt began under Corbyn, who not only stood idly by when genuine socialists were expelled, but, along with John McDonnell, was quite willing to throw long-standing comrades and close allies under the bus in what proved to be an ultimately fruitless attempt to preserve their position. Not only was it a cowardly response to the attacks from the Labour right and the capitalist media, but it actually proved to be worse than useless as it only further demoralised and weakened the Labour left. Let’s have no more illusions – this particular prince and his politics should remain firmly over the water. Corbyn’s rotten strategy of appeasement does not deserve a second outing, and his warmed-over Keynesianism and limited tinkering do not at all constitute a real socialist alternative to capitalism.

The second fallacy is that the rank and file of the Corbyn movement can be easily recalled to the colours and that the clock can be turned back to 2017 or 2018. Many comrades on the Labour left talk as if the 150,000 or so who have quit since Starmer took over are just waiting behind the lines in reserve, ready to be called back into the battle. Unfortunately, this is not the case at all. This left has scattered to the winds: some have joined single issue protest campaigns or now focus their attention on trade union militancy, others have joined one of the confessional sects, but the vast majority have simply dropped out of politics altogether, disillusioned with the abject failure of the Corbyn project.

Yet many on the left cling to the idea that some kind of revival of these politics of the past is not only possible but is actually desirable. Some examples of this misplaced optimism were on display at what was, in effect, the foundation meeting of the Socialist Labour Network (LAW and LIEN) on January 14. Regular readers will remember that this group has emerged following the liquidation of Labour Against the Witchhunt through its merger with the Labour in Exile Network. The main impetus behind the new group appears to be an attempt to rally the confused and disoriented forces  and begin some kind of fightback. But despite the righteous indignation and the opposition to what has happened in the Labour Party since the election of Starmer, the initial meeting of this new grouping shows that it lacks coherence and a unifying strategy. The basic division within the SLN is between those comrades who still orientate towards the Labour Party and those who believe that it is now both possible and necessary to build some new project primarily outside of Labour. While the new group has yet to agree its aims (that will be the first task of the newly elected steering group), both the composition of that committee and the discussion on January 14 shows that this is a fundamental, if as yet implicit, faultline.

How exactly these divisions will play out remains to be seen. For example, what will be the response of those members who are in effect Labour left loyalists to election candidates who stand against Labour? On past experience, some of the leading members will want to support the next electoral outings of, say, George Galloway or his ilk, or advocate that trade unions disaffiliate from Labour, while others still hope that Labour can be saved by the revival of Corbynism. Perhaps such minor ‘tactical’ problems and political differences can be temporarily papered over, but the real issue of the direction of this type of project cannot be ignored by the principled and serious left.

A significant and leading minority of the leadership of the SLN claim to be Marxist. Yet, rather than advocating a Marxist programme that seeks to replace capitalism by building a Communist Party and a conscious movement for the self-emancipation of the working class, these comrades play at being left reformists, proposing instead the ‘transitional’ economistic politics of the half-way house. Arguing that such timid, essentially reformist politics can build a bridge to the masses, they see the new network as a way to gradually win the Labour left to Marxism. However, when push comes to shove on significant matters of programme, this approach badly falls down and our bold ‘Marxists’ stick to the commonplace reformist banalities of the Labour election manifesto or the Fabian certainties of the    old Clause Four.

These concessions to Labourism and compromises with reformism may ensure that the SLN limps on for a few months or so, but both its internal dynamics and the state of the wider left do not augur well for its long-term future. Instead of pretending that the Corbyn movement was the zenith of real left politics, the authentic, militant left needs to settle accounts with the past and completely break from what is now  clearly a project whose time has passed. Corbynism is dead, but the struggle for principled Marxist politics and a revolutionary programme continues l

[1]. morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/why-im-hoping-corbyn-launches-new-party.

[2]. morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/why-im-hoping-corbyn-launches-new-party.

[3]. creatingsocialism.org/resist-welcomes-rumoured-new-corbyn-party.

[4]. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10386125/Jeremy-Corbyn-launch-new-Peace-Justice-Party-losing-Labour-whip.html; www.newstatesman.com/politics/labour/2022/01/why-a-new-left-party-led-by-jeremy-corbyn-is-a-bad-idea.

[5]. www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/01/09/jeremy-corbyn-could-establish-party-hopes-fade-reinstated-labour; leftfootforward.org/2022/01/tory-press-stirs-speculation-that-jeremy-corbyn-is-considering-launching-new-party; www.facebook.com/TheCorbynProject; www.islingtongazette.co.uk/news/local-council/jeremy-corbyn-islington-mp-could-face-labour-challenge-8616308.

The left

Shuffling further to right

Derek James assesses Sir Keir’s new shadow cabinet, the cowardice of the official left and the danger of both Corbyn and McDonnell being expelled

While Keir Starmer’s reshuffle of his shadow cabinet was surrounded by the usual political speculation and gossip about who was in and who was out, the re-emergence of a number of figures from the Blair era is significant in showing the direction that Starmer is going.

It also shows how tightly he now controls both the Parliamentary Labour Party and the party machine – that and the weakness and demoralisation of the Labour left at all levels. Cat Smith – former Socialist Campaign Group member and shadow minister for democracy and young people – presumably jumped before being pushed. She was the last ‘leftwinger’ on Labour’s front bench. Clearly, though, Sir Keir’s whole approach, and not only when it comes to the shadow cabinet, is designed to win the next election.

Arguments coming from not a few that Starmer is so fixated on rooting out the Labour left that he is prepared to destroy the party and risk yet another electoral defeat are plainly nonsensical. As a dedicated careerist, Sir Keir understands that his route to Downing Street can only be achieved with the support of the bourgeoisie and its media. He must prove that he is a safe pair of hands that can provide a reliable alternative government when the first eleven, the Tories, are no longer able to do the job. Hence his pledge, once safely elected as Labour leader, to continue the attacks on the left under the guise of rooting out the so-called scourge of anti-Semitism. Hence his eagerness to ritualistically sacrifice Jeremy Corbyn. Hence his reshuffle. All designed to show Sir Keir’s hostility to any hint of socialism and prove his commitment to the Atlanticist consensus and support for Israel, US imperialism’s most important asset in the Middle East.

The reshuffle moves the Labour leadership still further to the right: given her role in the Blair government and acceptance of the Cameron government’s austerity strategy after 2010, the presence of Yvette Cooper alone would justify that description. However, high-profile appointments, such as David Lammy as shadow foreign secretary and Wes Streeting at health, confirm the shift. Then there is Jonathan Reynolds taking over the business brief from Ed Miliband. While the latter made some vague and clearly unacceptable suggestions about ‘public control’ of energy supply, Reynolds is on record as supporting ‘market-led solutions’ to the energy crisis. Lisa Nandy is now shadowing Michael Gove on the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda. She has clearly read the Blue Labour playbook and argues that Labour must position itself as a “patriotic and responsible” party to win back the ‘red wall’ voters who deserted the party during the Corbyn period.

The return of Blairite veterans and the complete takeover by the right was warmly welcomed by many media commentators and added to the momentum Starmer gained following his fawningly pro-business, ever so grown-up speech to the November conference of the Confederation of British Industry – which was positively contrasted with Johnson’s incoherent Peppa Pig ramblings. The continuing headlines about sleaze, government incompetence over Afghanistan, outright lies about Christmas parties and the tearful resignation of Allegra Stratton have all helped to boost Labour in the polls. A Labour government can no longer be discounted, that is for sure.

The carefully calculated snub Sir Keir administered to his deputy, Angela Rayner, in announcing the reshuffle at the same time as she gave a major speech only goes to show the commanding position that the Labour leader now enjoys. As a directly elected deputy, Rayner cannot be removed, but she can be sidelined and humiliated, as the occasion requires. From Starmer’s point of view, the politics behind this are relatively simple. She is yet another symbolic target, who offers an opportunity to prove both his domination of the party and his electoral credibility.

Others, however, see her differently. In a series of interviews and media interventions Rayner has played up her background and life story to position herself as the voice (quite literally) of the Labour heartlands and the working class. In reality she is a former trade union bureaucrat and political opportunist of the first water, using her union contacts to climb the greasy pole and to quickly abandon the Corbyn project when the tide turned. She is so blatant a careerist that even the most gullible party member should be able to see through her rather threadbare act.

But no! Even if they are not really taken in, some on the left claim to see her as some type of leftwinger, perhaps mistaking her demotic rhetoric and personal spat with Starmer for principled opposition and socialist politics. If they genuinely do see her in this light, it just shows how far the Labour left has degenerated politically – and if they are only pretending, it truly reveals how desperate and opportunist the official left has become.

Demoralisation

The official left, in the form of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs and the leadership of Momentum, have cut a sorry figure throughout the witch-hunt. Their policy of compromise and keeping heads down has not only been unprincipled: it has proved to be singularly ineffective. Their pathetic little careers are what really matters to them.

Given the complete abdication of leadership from the official left, the mood amongst its rank and file in the Constituency Labour Parties is one of demoralisation and confusion. As we have reported on several occasions in the last few months, the organised left does not know which way to turn in the face of the witch-hunt. In fact, with ever more comrades being expelled, with nothing approaching an agreed common strategy, it is going in all sorts of contradictory directions.

For example, the Labour Left for Socialism initiative – ie, the Chatham House left – has run out of steam and is effectively dead, while Labour Against the Witchhunt has been liquidated into yet another grouping which has a definite trajectory away from the fight in the Labour Party and into the useless, ineffective and utterly ridiculous territory of Corbynism without Corbyn. But whether it is in the Labour Party or out of the Labour Party, the left is incapable of learning from its repeated failures. It remains trapped in Labourism.

All this was on display at Expulsion Rebellion – an online meeting held on Sunday December 5 to celebrate those members who had been expelled or suspended. Chaired by Crispin Flintoff of Labour Grassroots, the event had an upbeat feel with speeches by purged comrades, along with video clips, poetry and songs. Speakers outlined their various experiences of the witch-hunt and some offered their perspectives on the way forward.

For Graham Bash, the purge of the left was a form of class war inside Labour, carried out by a leadership that feared the membership more than the Tories. He argued that this was the greatest crisis the Labour left has faced in the entire history of the Labour Party – no exaggeration. Instead of advocating giving up on Labour, he called on comrades to stay and fight. There were still more socialists within Labour, he said, than outside. This, of course, depends on what defines a socialist, but it is certainly the case that Labour remains a party with a mass working class base in terms of members, trade union affiliates and voters. Correctly, comrade Bash stressed that there was no hierarchy of those expelled and suspended, that it was vital to stand by and speak up for not only Jeremy Corbyn, but all victims of the witch-hunt, including, by implication, those thrown under the bus when Corbyn was Labour leader and Jennie Formby was general secretary.

Similar points were made by Pam Fitzpatrick and two members of Jewish Voice for Labour, Leah Levane and Richard Kuper. They also conclusively nailed the Starmer leadership’s lies about anti-Semitism and exposed the Kafkaesque situation, where expelling Jewish members was described as ‘dealing with anti-Semitism’ in the party! However, whilst there was a degree of unity in opposition to the injustices of the witch-hunt, no speakers proposed a clear way forward. Expelled Labour councillor Jo Bird, for example, expressed her relief at being purged and suggested the totally futile strategy that other councillors in her position should stand for re-election as independents and thus build a grassroots campaign. Such an approach represents a political dead-end, a recipe for individualistic gestures, and has no chance whatsoever of long-term success.

As to the meeting overall, while it is good to be defiant and positive in the face of Starmer’s purge, we need much more than speeches of solidarity – we need a militant strategy and a clear alternative to seeking unity with the pro-capitalist leadership of the Labour Party. Many who attended this meeting, along with others who were part of the wider Corbyn movement, still look to the official left to provide some kind of fighting lead.

So it was with some anticipation that the meeting awaited the messages received from Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. When they were read out by the chair, the disappointment was palpable. Corbyn restated his commitment to Labour principles and his own continued membership of the party. His focus was on the need for party unity to fight the Tories. Likewise, John McDonnell reiterated his original statement in support of Graham Bash, but there was no explanation of why the witch-hunt was being carried out and no calls for solidarity with all those who have been expelled. Corbyn and McDonnell probably hope that they said enough to reassure the rank-and-file left that they remain on their side, whilst at the same time saying nothing that would justify action against them from the party machine.

What happens next remains to be seen. It is, though, far from impossible that Sir Keir and the Victoria Street apparatus will see an opportunity to prove themselves to their masters yet again by expelling both Corbyn and McDonnell. After all, they sent messages of support to a meeting ‘celebrating’ the contributions of people who have been expelled. Nowadays a heinous crime.

The left, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Merging into a cul-de-sac

Derek James argues that this is no time to give up on the fight against the witch-hunt. Nor will the attempt to form an amorphous socialist movement get anywhere

The decision to close down Labour Against the Witchhunt represents a step backwards in the fight against the Labour leadership’s attacks on party democracy and freedom of speech.

The proscribing of four organisations, the expulsion of long-standing leftwinger Graham Bash and the return of open Blairites to the shadow cabinet are just the most recent examples of how the right’s offensive is being intensified. Unfortunately, at a time when Keir Starmer and the party bureaucracy are stepping up their attacks on the left, the so-called merger of LAW and the Labour In Exile Network is likely to produce a total much less than the sum of its two parts. So, just when the need for a determined fightback by the left has never been greater, the possibility of it actually happening seems less likely!

The LAW all-members’ meeting on Saturday November 27 was presented with two sharply opposed motions that posed very different perspectives about the future direction of the campaign. The first, submitted by Tony Greenstein and Esther Giles, called for the merger of the two groups. It took as its starting point the argument made by Ken Loach that “democracy was dead in the Labour Party” and that there is now a political vacuum which presents the biggest challenge to the left in a generation. Quoting directly from comrade Loach, the motion said:

… we do need a new political movement, across the whole left, inside the Labour Party and outside; it’s got to be ready to become a party when the time is right … Otherwise we fragment … At this critical moment, when you have this mass of people just driven out of the party, where are they going to go? If we miss this opportunity, it is a very black outlook.

After calling for a merger – or a “consolidation”, as comrade Greenstein described it – the motion went on to define its strategy as one of working or joining forces with other “like-minded organisations, including the Labour Left Alliance, Labour Representation Committee, Resist and Defend the Left”. Significantly a section of the original motion was deleted. This would have committed the merged group to:

both fighting the witch-hunt in the Labour Party and the politics of Starmer and bringing together socialists both inside and outside the Labour Party to build a socialist movement [and seeking] to work with grassroots mass movements such as over climate change (XR) and racism (BLM).

It was deleted as a result of an amendment moved by a leading member of LIEN, Norman Thomas.

The second motion, moved by LPM supporters Stan Keable and Andrew Kirkland, opposed the merger of LAW and LIEN, and argued that the focus of our campaign should remain on Labour and not the formation of a new group outside the party. The motion located the witch-hunt and the continuing battle inside Labour in a wider political context, by arguing that “reasserting rightwing domination of the Labour Party is of great importance to the UK establishment in guaranteeing the loyalty of its alternative capitalist government to the US world hegemon and its ally, Israel”.

The motion rejected the view that the struggle against the Labour witch-hunt is over, and that LAW has outlived its usefulness. Comrades Keable and Kirkland believed that the merger of LAW and LIEN would not only liquidate LAW, but would add to the widespread demoralisation and disorientation that already exists on the Labour left. Far from giving up on this fight, the motion stated that LAW still has a specific job to do in fighting the ongoing witch-hunt.

Thus it outlined a concrete set of campaigning proposals, such as intervening in all layers of the Labour Party and continuing to campaign at a grassroots level: working to build opposition to bans and proscriptions in the trade unions; winning the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, Momentum, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, etc to adopt a militant and unambiguous stance against the witch-hunt; deepening links with those outside the Labour Party who are being subjected to the bogus ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smear campaign – pro-Palestine activists, academics, students, trade unionists, journalists, writers, artists, comics, film-makers, etc – and joining together with those internationally who are fighting back against the witch-hunt: eg, in the US, Germany, the Netherlands and France.

Consolidation?

Although both motions were moved, the meeting agreed by 49 to 41 to only vote on motion 1. Thus, if motion 1 was agreed, motion 2 would then automatically fall. In the event, it was indeed motion 1 favouring the merger that eventually passed with 47 votes in favour, 27 against and 12 recorded abstentions – although, with some 100 members present online, another 14 participants did not record a vote.

Both in moving the motion to merge and during the subsequent debate, the supporters of liquidating LAW argued that the current attacks on the left were “unprecedented” and that there was no real possibility of continuing the fight in Labour. Trade unions are breaking their links with the party and a slow “one-sided split” was underway. Comrade Greenstein said that there was little that LAW could do to resist the witch-hunt and that the immediate task was to build a socialist movement that could keep together the 150,000 party members who had left Labour since Starmer had become leader. In due course, when the time is right, he suggested, this would lead to the formation of a new party. But what sort of party and programme are we offered?

Here the real political weaknesses of the merger project were revealed. Although some of the comrades supporting this new initiative self-define as Marxists, all that they could offer us was yet another warmed-up halfway house or a Labour Party mark two. This oh-so-new project is in fact based on Labour’s 2017 and 2019 general election manifestoes, whose timid, managed capitalism is impossible to dignify even with the title ‘left reformism’, much less ‘socialism’. When the essentially pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist nature of these manifestoes was pointed out, all these comrades could do was to warn us not to scare the horses – the Labour left would be frightened off by too radical a project! Take it easy! Gently does it!

The transition towards socialist consciousness is a gradual one, we are told, showing that our rather Fabian Trotskyist comrades really lack confidence in winning the working class to the cause of socialist revolution. Instead, in this new organisation we can be sure that these ‘Marxists’ will hide their revolutionary light under a bushel and play the part of loyal Corbynites, whose only aim is to return to the glory days before the 2019 election defeat: no socialist politics or Marxist programme here, you understand; just an attempt to revive the Corbyn moment and its inchoate slogans, albeit this time sans Corbyn.

However, when reminded that the recent history of the left is littered with many such attempts to build broad fronts, such as the Scottish Socialist Party, Respect and Left Unity, and that all they produced were futile political cul-de-sacs, we are assured by these comrades that this time everything will be different. What justifies such confident hope after this often bitter story of the left’s political failure? Why, it is the experience of ‘the Corbyn movement’ itself and the belief that the missing 150,000 members can be quickly recalled to the colours by the new broad socialist movement that will emerge from the “consolidation” of LIEN and LAW.

While we wish the comrades well, it is not only past attempts to unite disparate elements in halfway-house projects that fail to inspire confidence about the future of this new initiative – which means, in effect, the absorption of LAW by LIEN. The plain fact is that the Corbyn moment has passed and no amount of ghost dancing is going to bring it back. The 150,000 lost members are not sitting around waiting for a call to arms to join a new initiative. They will not be so easily scooped up. Some have joined the numerous small groups outside the Labour Party, such as Chris Williamson’s Resist; others have turned their attention to renewed activity in the trade unions or thrown themselves into activism and protest politics, such as XR; while many more have simply given up – disillusioned by the dismal failure of the Labour left and its leaders.

Disgrace

The leaders of the official, licensed left in the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs and Momentum have compromised and surrendered to the Labour right all along the line. They are a disgrace, having squandered opportunity after opportunity to advance the politics of the left in the party. They have been prepared to throw good comrades under the bus and join in the attack, as socialist militants are smeared with false accusations of anti-Semitism.

The continued failure of Corbyn, McDonnell et al to rally the left in the face of the witch-hunt has only added to the demoralisation of the left, which is now in a full, disorganised retreat. Attendance at meetings has fallen dramatically and there is a widespread pessimism in many Constituency Labour Parties. Indeed, many left activists are keeping their heads down and their powder dry, hoping for better times ahead somewhere in the distant future, and only breaking cover to take part in Twitter storms and sporadic conference rebellions against the leadership.

In this period of defeat, it is essential to keep a cool, strategic head. Despair is no help whatsoever. If the comrades were proposing an organisation, a movement, which had half a chance of leading to a serious Marxist party, it would be another matter. Meanwhile, it is clear that the fight in the Labour Party is far from over. Like the trade unions it remains a vital site of struggle.

Despite the seriousness of the current witch-hunt and the dire position in which the left now finds itself, the present situation is part of a wider pattern. Just look at the history of recurring witch-hunts against the left from the 1920s onwards. Bans and proscriptions, expulsions and suspensions are nothing new.

Neither is the bourgeois nature of the party’s leadership and pro-capitalist right, irrespective of their individual social backgrounds. Who can tell me that trade union leaders turned Labour politicians like Jimmy Thomas and Ernie Bevin did not further the interests of capitalism within the workers’ movement? Many comrades in the 1990s argued that Tony Blair’s apparent total victory meant that Labour had become a completely bourgeois party. In the main the various halfway house projects and ‘new workers’ parties’ that developed in this period were predicated on that assessment, yet failed to break through – even when they watered down their ‘Marxism’ and presented themselves as the real inheritors of the ‘old Labour’ tradition.

The politics of the Labour leadership from the foundation of the party have always been bourgeois, in that they seek to integrate the working class into capitalism and the constitutional status quo. Given the party’s origins as a sectional representative of ‘labour’ and a party of the trade unions, which attempts to bargain with the ruling class, the development of this type of limited politics, focused on obtaining concessions within the framework of capitalism, was inevitable. The absorption of individual Labour leaders into the ruling class and the creation of Labour as an acceptable alternative party of government from the 1920s were simply a corollary of this structural process of incorporation.

Starmer and Blair are particularly egregious examples of this, but, in their acceptance of capitalism and the rules of the political game, they are just the same as earlier Labour leaders. Characterising the leaderships of Blair and Starmer as somehow uniquely ‘bourgeois’ not only obscures the historical nature of the Labour Party, but also sows illusions in those Labour leaders, like Jeremy Corbyn, who use left rhetoric to cover their compromises with capitalism.

However, whilst Labour retains the affiliation of significant trade unions, maintains an electoral base amongst working class voters and remains a potential focus for those who define themselves as socialists, it still can be seen as a bourgeois workers’ party. So, despite and perhaps because of the witch-hunt, Labour under Keir Starmer is far from dead: it remains a bourgeois workers’ party that the ruling class are determined to keep under their control and thus it is still an important site of struggle for socialists.

History repeating

Our critique of the as-yet-unnamed merger project is both political and strategic. The leadership of LIEN includes comrades who are uncritical supporters of Corbyn, do not understand his treacherous role and will not countenance a word said against him, whilst others who support the merger are openly and correctly critical of Corbyn’s surrender to the right during the witch-hunt. Hardly a recipe for harmony.

Likewise, there are similar political fault lines about the strategic direction of the new group. Whilst for many the merger is simply a case of huddling together in a cold and hostile political environment or continuing the headless-chicken ‘politics’ of ‘action, action, action’, others have a more clearly defined aim. Although it appears that, in arguing that the new initiative should work or join forces with other “like-minded organisations”, options are being kept open. In practice the general line of travel into a new broad-front grouping and political dead-end outside the Labour Party is clearly signposted. The two lines of ‘action’ and ‘fusion’ are, of course, not incompatible and can easily coexist and cooperate within one organisation for a certain period. But, taken as a whole, they do not make for long-term political coherence and a clear organisational strategy.

Our opposition to the liquidation of LAW and our call to keep its focus on Labour is not the result of any blind Labour loyalism or of clinging onto the routine certainties of party membership and activity. LPM recognises both the historical and contemporary place of the Labour Party in British society and working class politics. It also understands that this position is not immutably fixed for all time and that it could change in the future: like other social democratic parties in Europe, it could undergo a process of decline and Pasokification. The electoral collapse of Labour in Scotland and the undermining of the ‘red wall’ is a warning of how that might happen in Britain as a whole.

However, Labour is not dead yet. Just as the obituaries pronounced in the 1990s were proven to be premature by the unexpected development of the Corbyn movement and the growth of a mass left in the party, so the continued witch-hunt shows that for the ruling class and their collaborators on the Labour right the party remains too valuable a tool to be abandoned to the left and working class militants. If the ruling class thinks the battle is still worth fighting, then so must we.

LPM has a serious strategic orientation towards Labour. We call not for the abandonment of the party, but its refounding as a united front of a special kind, open to affiliation by all working class and socialist organisations. We recognise that Labour is not a ready-made instrument for achieving socialism: that requires a party armed with a Marxist programme of working class self-emancipation, as opposed to electoralism and participation in bourgeois governments. The development of such a party and such a programme is absolutely essential. This is not a Labour Party mark two, or a broad-left party with a Marxist vanguard.

The left

Time for a Rethink

Derek James rounds on John McDonnell for his pusillanimity and the official left for its silence over the expulsion of Graham Bash

News that veteran Labour left activist Graham Bash has been expelled by Labour for supporting Labour Against the Witchhunt had been long expected and was met with a predictable and entirely justified wave of protest from the left.[1] The fact that a Labour member of over 50 years standing, editor of Labour Briefing and a leading figure in organisations such as the Labour Representation Committee and Jewish Voice for Labour could be expelled for the ‘offence’ of signing a LAW petition before it was proscribed is Kafkaesque – but sadly not at all unusual nowadays.

That this form of retrospective charge, which runs counter to any democratic principles or sense of natural justice, can be so widely used by the Labour bureaucracy shows just how firm a grip they now have. While the usual suspects on the left vigorously protested about the expulsion of comrade Bash, the other usual suspects who claim to be on the left – the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, for example – kept to their now customary vow of silence. However, one valiant member of the SCG, John McDonnell, a long-time comrade did manage to tweet about his treatment:

I’ve known and campaigned alongside Graham Bash for over 40 years. He is one of the finest socialists I have met. I do not believe it can be just to expel someone from the Labour Party based upon actions or associations with an organisation before it has been proscribed.[2]

Given their political association within the London left in the late 1970s, and more recently through the LRC and Labour Briefing, for which McDonnell once wrote a regular column, these comforting words are the least that he could do for an old comrade – but they are not nearly enough. It might seem churlish to criticise this gesture of support: after all, given the vehemence of these attacks on the left should we not be grateful for even this rather lukewarm expression of solidarity?

No, we should not! This type of hand-wringing ‘support’ is simply not good enough, given the scale of the witch-hunt we now face. Leaving John McDonnell’s personal feelings aside, his tweet is not only woefully inadequate in defending comrade Bash, but is worse than useless in fighting back politically against the attacks of the Labour leadership. The type of statement McDonnell should have made would not simply have defended Graham Bash’s character and political reputation, nor would it merely raise a query about the ‘justice’ of the charges and procedure of his expulsion. What we need is more than a muted ‘condemnation’: the situation demands a political defence of party democracy and free speech and a real explanation of why Keir Starmer and the right are using trumped-up accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ against the left.

However, as the last five years have shown, what the situation requires and what we get from the leaders of the official left are two very different things. Thus, John McDonnell’s rather tardy apologia on behalf of comrade Bash runs very much true to form in its oh so faint criticism of his expulsion. It also sheds light on the political duplicity and slavish compromises with the Labour right that characterise the politics of the official Labour left. So, McDonnell is concerned about the shabby treatment of his erstwhile comrade and rails, albeit sotto voce, against the terrible injustice that has been done to him. Comrade Bash is one of the finest socialists John McDonnell has ever met, so he tells us, and we agree that the expelled comrade is a genuine socialist who has been grotesquely smeared. But Graham Bash is not alone in facing persecution by the right: many other Jewish socialists are currently being attacked in this way. The question is: aren’t these and other leftwing comrades equally worthy of McDonnell’s support? Why the silence about the thousands of others who have been expelled? Are they not also ‘fine socialists’ who have been treated unjustly? Why no outcry about the reintroduction of bans and proscriptions?

The answer is that McDonnell is rather selective in whom he offers support to and who he is prepared to sacrifice when the right demands it. In conceding to the right that the left does have some form of anti-Semitism problem, as he did recently in Solidarity, the paper of the pro-witch-hunt Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, he is simply preparing the ground for yet more attacks and expulsions.[3] He ceded similar ground to the Labour right during the Corbyn leadership that only acted to undermine the left and embolden the witch-hunters.[4]

In this period he perfected an ability to speak out of both sides of his mouth at the same time. So, when activists were pushing to deselect rightwing anti-Corbyn MPs, McDonnell equivocated, offering a degree of public support for party democracy and the accountability of MPs to their Constituency Labour Parties, whilst at the same time privately urging restraint and attempting to broker compromise at every turn. John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn both acted behind the scenes to hold back the left in the CLPs. McDonnell in particular traded upon his left reputation in the CLPs: he was very active in personally persuading them that it was clever strategy not to move against rightwing MPs in a vain hope that such concessions would buy peace and secure the cooperation of the Parliamentary Labour Party. We all know how well that worked and where it ended up, don’t we?

Pointing out the contradictions and the failures of this strategy, and the disastrous role of the official left since 2015, is not simply point-scoring or a personal attack on McDonnell. Rather the failure of the Labour left – both during the Corbyn leadership and since – has not even been really discussed, much less understood, by the left. We know how those on the official left like McDonnell failed and continue to fail, both in taking the fight to the right and in really defending leftwingers like Graham Bash. For all his fine words, John McDonnell is quite willing to throw even his closest comrades under the bus.

This is not simply a flaw in his character or a personal betrayal. The fault lies not in the stars, but in the politics and the strategy of the official left and its inherent Labourism. Put simply, the sole strategy of this ‘left’ is to pursue ‘socialism’ (in reality a managed and reformed capitalism) through the election of a series of Labour governments and utilising the existing state to bring about the ‘transformation’ of society. Such a ‘strategy’ places a premium on the continued existence of Labour as an electoral force and a potential government and is in turn quite fundamentally predicated – in fact and ‘theory’ – on the essential unity of the left with the Labour right.

Maintaining that unity as a matter of course necessitates that the Labour left must make concessions and thus make itself completely subservient to the pro-capitalist right. The whole history of the left has been one of subordination to capitalism, the existing constitutional order and the Labour lieutenants of capital on the Labour right. Corbynism was no exception to that rule, as its failure and continued disintegration shows. However, until we understand these inherent historical and political flaws, and why it produces a completely useless strategy, the Labour left will continue to remain enchained by both its own politics and its trust in duplicitous ‘left’ MPs like John McDonnell.

Sadly those who fail to learn from their mistakes will be doomed to repeat them .

Notes

[1] www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2021/11/07/graham-bash-tells-the-canary-the-labour-witch-hunt-will-not-stop-until-it-guts-the-party.

[2] twitter.com/johnmcdonnellMP/status/1456923121215320070.

[3] www.workersliberty.org/index.php/story/2021-10-19/trade-union-struggle-and-political-struggle-interview-john-mcdonnell.

[4] www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-45035341.