Category Archives: The left

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

Labour Left Alliance launch | Two roads

James Marshall argues that the Sheffield conference of the Labour left faces fundamental choices

The idea of establishing the Labour Left Alliance was first mooted last year. Why? Because of the obvious failure of Momentum. After Jon Lansman – sadly with the blessing of Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott – had carried out his anti-democratic coup, to all intents and purposes Momentum became the property – the plaything – of just one man.

Consequently, the left of the Labour Party has gropingly, hesitatingly, often falteringly, moved towards some kind of unity. The crucial question, of course, is what sort of unity?

The LLA boasts of having around two thousand signatures to its appeal and a growing list of affiliates and local branches. It is, of course, a work in progress. But it will be the Sheffield conference which will decide the basic character of the organisation. The agenda looks massively overloaded. Nonetheless, we must hope that sufficient time is allotted for serious debate. Without that we will probably get a sad repetition of past dead ends.

Essentially there are two models on offer vis-à-vis the aims and constitution. The first comes under the name of London LLA. It advocates a membership organisation and politics and structures befitting a left opposition in the Labour Party.

The other proposals come from Tees Valley Labour Left, Dulwich Labour Left, and the steering committee of Labour Against the Witchhunt (and Sheffield Labour Left). Differences between Tees, Dulwich and LAW SC/Sheffield are secondary and, from our viewpoint, politically unimportant. They amount to variations on a lowest-common-denominator theme. Unsurprisingly all of them are politically conservative and organisationally mimic the elaborate structures of the Labour Party.

Without doubt, the approach advocated by London is far superior.

Politically it is unashamedly bold. London wants to commit the LLA to “working class rule” and a transition to a stateless, moneyless society based on the celebrated principle, “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”

London also recognises the necessity of breaking with capitalism and its ecologically destructive cycle of production for the sake of production. Note, the International Panel on Climate Change warns that we have no more than a couple of decades before the world’s ecosystem experiences a series of devastating “tipping points”.

Unfortunately, the London comrades fluffed one of Marx’s most famous …. and surely urgently relevant conclusions. Hence we have: “1.2. Opposition to capitalism, imperialism, racism, militarism and the ecological degradation of the planet through the ruinous cycle of production for the sake of production or profit.”

There is no problem with opposition to capitalism, imperialism, racism and militarism. It is the “ecological degradation of the planet through the ruinous cycle of production for the sake of production or profit” which constitutes the problem.

Theoretically this formulation is illiterate. Production for the sake of production and profit are split apart, treated separately, counterposed. For the philistine this might amount to just two short words. But that is really, really stupid. It is like saying there is nothing important separating the biblical command “thou shalt not commit adultery” and the command “thou shalt commit adultery”. Only a single word separates the two. But a world of difference.

Marx should be read seriously and treated seriously. In Capital he logically began by defining the commodity. It is a use-value which also has exchange-value. He then painstakingly develops the category of exchange-value and eventually arrives at the equivalent form. Gold becomes money, the universal equivalent. From here he shifts from the formula C-M-C and reverses it with what we know from everyday capitalism: M-C-M.

Yet from the viewpoint of the capitalist this makes no sense whatsoever. Why engage in the trials and tribulations of production, why take the risks of having to find a buyer, when you end up with the same amount of money that you started out with?

No, the capitalist aims to realise a profit: M-C-M’. The capitalist ends with more money than they start with. According to their whims and fancies, the capitalist spends that augmented money on all manner of ‘how to spend it’ luxuries.

However, capitalism consists of many capitals. Competition forces the individual to plough the vast bulk of their profits back into production. Making bigger and bigger profits becomes a necessity in its own right. Production becomes a compulsion, driving the capitalist endlessly forward.

Hence we arrive at this passage in chapter 24:

Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets! … Therefore save, save, ie. reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplus-value, or surplus product into capital! Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake: by this formula classical political economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a single instant deceive itself over the birth-throes of wealth.

Making a profit appears perfectly rational. The worker goes to work in order to secure wages, so as to be able to secure the means of subsistence – food, clothing, housing, transport, etc. The capitalist lays out money to hire workers in order to make a profit, with which they are able to purchase luxury food, luxury clothing, luxury housing, luxury transport, etc. It would appear that all their material needs are more than satisfied.

Upon investigation, however, capitalism turns out to have an irrational rationale. Because of competition, the desire to make a profit becomes a necessity which, by its own logic, crashes through every social, every natural barrier. Workers are subject to constant and unremitting attack; their trade unions and political parties are controlled through numerous restrictive laws, neutered through corruption or simply overpowered using brute force.

Nature is pillaged, raped and used as a latrine. Ecological degradation is inevitable.

This has nothing to do with the evil intentions of individual capitalists. Capitalists prove not to be masters of their own system. No, they are merely personifications of capital. The system controls them. As such capitalists are subject to externally imposed laws of accumulation. They are compelled to accumulate for accumulation’s sake.

Clearly, therefore, the London formulation requires a little, but vital, cut.

Theoretically it only makes sense if it reads: “1.2. Opposition to capitalism, imperialism, racism, militarism and the ecological degradation of the planet through the ruinous cycle of production for the sake of production.” Fortunately, a number of comrades have submitted an amendment to that effect.

That problem aside, London understands the necessity of linking the future we strive to achieve with the immediate programme needed to bring it about. The battle for democracy must be won. Abolish the monarchy, the standing army and the House of Lords. Establish a single-chamber parliament and disestablish the Church of England. In the same spirit of extreme democracy London calls for proportional representation and annual elections (one of the central demands of the Chartist movement). In short, the “democratic republic”.

London is no less bold when it comes to the Labour Party. Conference must be sovereign. Labour MPs should no longer be self-serving career politicians. Towards that end, they must only take the average skilled workers’ wage. A principle enshrined by the 1871 Paris Commune. LLA must oppose the very idea of career politicians. Nor must LLA itself become a vehicle for aspiring career politicians. A real and present danger.

Moreover, MPs must be subject to automatic reselection. The Parliamentary Labour Party must be brought to heel. Subordinate the PLP to the national executive committee.

London not only envisages fighting for all pro-working class organisations to affiliate to the Labour Party: trade unions, political groups and campaigning organisations. The symbolic importance of equipping the Labour Party with a new clause four is also fully appreciated. Not, it should be emphasised, an attempt to raise, Lazarus-like, Sydney Webb’s Fabian clause four from its grave. Let it rot. No, instead, a clause four inspired by the teachings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

Another excellent set of proposals from London: the LLA’s annual conference must be the source of all authority. It decides policy, it elects a leadership. It can also change policy. It can also change the leadership. True, London allows for trade union and other such affiliates to the LLA. But their role is strictly limited. The LLA is envisaged as a membership organisation firmly controlled by the membership.

No less relevant, the constitution presented by London is not prescriptive. What officers are needed, what they are expected to do, the setting of membership fees, how big branches should be before being given an official imprimatur – all such details are all left open-ended. Besides being clear, simple and easy to grasp, London’s proposals have the great virtue of being mercifully short (690 words).

Long and limited

By contrast, what is on offer from Tees (1,870 words), Dulwich (1,550 words) and LAW SC (1,245 words), is long-winded and already nearing its sell by date – eg, “opposes the witch hunt against Jeremy Corbyn”. And Corbyn has had a dreadful record when it comes to the witch-hunt. Not only has he maintained a studied silence as his own comrades are thrown to the wolves. He has consistently sought to appease the witch-hunters.

The political aims are extraordinarily limited. There is opposition to austerity, the ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smear campaign, etc. Good, but hardly a transformative vision about what society we aspire to achieve. Capitalism, the state, wage-labour go without mention and therefore, albeit by absence, they are taken for granted, treated as natural. Nor does global warming, the climate emergency, the danger of ecological disaster rate a mention. Critics might talk of climate-change denial. Unfair surely, but the comrades are undoubtedly suffering from tunnel vision.

When it comes to the Labour Party itself, perspectives are no less limited. There is the call for democracy. Once again, however, the lack of vision is obvious. Eg, this formulation: LLA “both supports a left leadership against attacks by the right, and is independent and able to criticise our left wing leaders when necessary.”

“When necessary”! LLA must not content itself with the illusory programme of running capitalism in the interests of the working class. In effect that amounts to sub-reformism, in other words common or garden social liberalism. Yet that is exactly what “our left wing leaders” – Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Rebecca Long Bailey – have been advocating. For them the rule of the working class, the abolition of wage-slavery, a moneyless, stateless society, based on need, are foreign territory.

The LAW SC proposal – like those of Tees and Dulwich – in effect mirrors the Labour Party apparatus and its organisational fetishes. Inappropriate and totally myopic. Why should a left opposition in the Labour Party copy the elaborate federal structures, intricate rules, bureaucratic checks and balances and accept the ideological boundaries set by the contemporary Labour Party? Frankly though, this is the habitual approach of too much of the British left. It reveals an internalisation of the attitudes, assumptions and interests of the labour and trade union bureaucracy.

We must explain this constantly repeated pattern of behaviour in materialist terms. It cannot be put down to individual oddity, personal weakness or some congenital tendency to betray. The Labour Party, as presently constituted, is a bourgeois workers’ party. The Labour left is the natural home for trade union militants, socialist campaigners and those committed to working class liberation. But Labour’s position as the alternative party of government means that the Labour left is also a breeding ground for careerists who, slowly or swiftly, evolve to the right.

Common sense easily becomes that politics are about winning elections. Policies are put forward because they can be ‘sold’ to the electorate. Ultimately it is, of course, the press, the media, that decides what is sensible and what is to be dismissed as sectarian craziness. Anything that appears to get in the way of winning elections must therefore be avoided like the plague. Hence debate has to be restricted, bureaucratic controls imposed and awkward minorities sidelined or otherwise silenced.

Worryingly then, LAW SC insists that groups can only affiliate if they are “broad left” or represent “special interests”. Code for excluding what we might call ‘far left’ organisations. Tees LLA is explicit: members of “other socialist political parties” should be barred. Do we really want to impose our own version of the 1920s anti-communist bans and proscriptions? Dulwich even proposes a “conduct and compliance unit”. No, no, no. By contrast, London wants all good communists and socialists to join the Labour Party … and the LLA.

LAW’s proposals can be taken as the main object of criticism. Tees and Dulwich are just longer, more complex, variations on the same dismal theme.

To all intents and purposes LAW’s steering committee wants to see LLA as a two-tier, two-chamber organisation. Conference can pass whatever resolutions it wants. Meanwhile the organising committee – made up of delegates from all manner of local branches and political and trade union affiliates, does the actual business … and goes its own way. A recipe for confusion, conflict and failure.

In other words, conference is to be a talking shop. LAW proposes a cabinet, but one neither elected nor accountable to parliament (conference). London proposes no bifurcation, no split in the lines of authority. Conference must be sovereign l

The one to back

London LLA’s constitution provides the solid foundations we need. Apart from the silly formulation “or profit” in 1.2, it is theoretically sound, politically ambitious, concise and untainted by the pernicious politics of witch-hunting. Fortunately amendments have been submitted correcting the error. We urge delegates to reject attempts to composite, obscure and fudge. Compare the London proposal to those presented by the LAW steering committee, Tees and Dulwich. It is clear which one is the best

  1. Our aims and principles
    1. The Labour Left Alliance brings together organisations, groups and individuals with a view to pursuing these aims.
    2. Opposition to capitalism, imperialism, racism, militarism and the ecological degradation of the planet through the ruinous cycle of production for the sake of production or profit.
    3. The replacement of Labour’s existing clause four with a commitment to socialism as the rule of the working class. We envisage a democratically planned economy and moving towards a stateless, classless, moneyless society that embodies the principle, “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. Alone such benign conditions create the possibility of every individual fully realising their innate potentialities.
    4. Towards that end Labour should commit itself to achieving a democratic republic. The standing army, the monarchy, the House of Lords and the state sponsorship of the Church of England must go. We support a single-chamber parliament, proportional representation and annual elections. Labour needs to win the active backing of the majority of people and should seek to form a government only on this basis.
    5. We seek to achieve the full democratisation of the Labour Party. All MPs, MEPs and MSPs should be subject to automatic reselection. All elected Labour Party members should be expected to take no more than the average skilled worker’s wage. The Parliamentary Labour Party should be subordinated to the National Executive Committee.
    6. We support Labour as the federal party of the working class. All trade unions, cooperatives, socialist societies and leftwing groups and parties should be brought together in the Labour Party. Unity brings strength.
    7. We shall work with others internationally in pursuit of the aim of replacing capitalism with working class rule and socialism.
  2. Structure
    1. The Labour Left Alliance is a membership organisation. Members are required to accept our political aims and principles and pay an annual fee (to be set by the Organising Group).
    2. We believe in the free and open exchange of ideas and viewpoints. But, once the LLA has agreed a particular action, we seek to achieve the maximum unity. That cannot be imposed – it has to be won.
    3. We expect all LLA members to be in the Labour Party and encourage all those not already involved in local Labour Left groups to become active in one or help set one up. Our aim is to organise all members in local and regional LLA groups and branches. We also welcome, on all levels of the organisation, those who have been suspended or expelled as part of the witch-hunt against the left.
    4. LLA conference meets at least once a year. Conference will consist of either individual members or delegates (at a ratio to be decided by the Organising Group). Conference debates aims and principles, agrees political strategy, votes on motions and elects a leadership.
    5. If 30% of affiliated groups and branches or 30% of individual members so wish, there will be a special conference.
    6. Affiliated groups, LLA branches or any 10 LLA members can submit one motion and one amendment to conference.
  3. Organising Group
    1. The OG functions as the leadership of the LLA. The OG is elected at conference. Conference decides on the size and functions of the OG.
    2. The OG elects its own officers on the basis of immediate recallability. The OG can coopt members, given particular needs. While coopted members shall have speaking rights, they will have no voting rights.
    3. The OG should meet at least quarterly, in a face-to-face or an online meeting. It can also make decisions via email or other agreed communication channels by a simple majority of those voting within a given timeframe. It produces regular minutes/reports to LLA supporters. If possible, meetings should be scheduled well in advance (at least one month).
    4. The OG decides on the level of affiliation fees for groups and organisations and needs to approve all requests for affiliation.
    5. All decisions at all levels are made by a simple majority of those voting (excluding abstentions).
    6. The OG can set up working groups and sub-committees on any particular subject.
Democracy and the Labour Party, Inside the Labour Party, The left

Between a rock and a hard place

The candidates in the Labour leadership election reflect the self-inflicted defeat of the Labour left under Corbyn’s leadership, argues Carla Roberts

Six candidates have thrown their hat into the ring to become the next leader of the Labour Party, but we can safely presume that, in the end, it will be either Keir Starmer or Rebecca Long-Bailey. Clive Lewis and Emily Thornberry could well drop out, whereas Lisa Nandy may not even make it onto the ballot paper. Jess Phillips might have been the popular go-to person for the anti-Corbyn press looking for a nasty quote. But coming out, all guns blazing, in favour of ignoring the result of the Brexit referendum has ensured that most of the media have now turned against her. And she has no chance with the membership anyway. Barry Gardiner briefly “considered” throwing his hat into the ring, and we will have to see how he is positioning himself politically. While he was better on the anti-Semitism smear campaign than most MPs, he is also a member of Labour Friends of Israel and voted for the Iraq war.

Before we start, we should point out how poor all these candidates are. All of them are way to the right of what Jeremy Corbyn stood for in 2015. While Corbyn was a symbol of the victory of the left against all the odds, the current candidates, including Rebecca Long- Bailey, are the living embodiment of the defeat the left has now suffered.

The real sense of hope that hundreds of thousands of people felt after the 2015 election of Corbyn has all but evaporated – for now. By not standing up to the right, by appeasing them over and over again, Corbyn and the rest of the leadership helped to decimate and, crucially, depoliticise and demobilise the left in the party. Instructing Len McCluskey to use his Unite contingent at the 2018 Labour conference to vote against the democratic demand for mandatory reselection of all parliamentary candidates was, perhaps, the most vivid example of Corbyn’s political climbdown. But it was his decision not to tackle the ongoing anti-Semitism smear campaign which really damaged the left in the party. He stood silently by as one supporter after another was sacrificed – all in the vain hope that at some point, surely, enough concessions would have been made to stop the attacks. Needless to say, the opposite happened: for every step back by Corbyn and his allies, the right took two steps forward.

Eye on the prize

This was all justified by the need to ‘keep our eyes on the prize’ – ie, finally getting the keys to No10 Downing Street. We might have to sacrifice this or that political principle and we might have to pretend that anti-Semitism is a huge problem in the party – but at least we can convince enough rightwingers to stick with us. Then, once we’re in government, we can finally show what we’re really about.

That has been the recipe not just of Corbyn, John McDonnell and their inner circle – it is the long-standing ‘strategy’ of much of the organised Labour left: Momentum, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and Socialist Action have been the most blatant in applying this method, which the Labour Representation Committee and much of the rest of the Labour left are also guilty of, albeit to a lesser degree.

We have now seen where this recipe leads – to disaster. From this reformist perspective, we had the perfect leader with the near–perfect social democratic programme – and we still did not make it into government! And no, it wasn’t just Brexit wot did it. The fact that the leadership never stood up to the right in and outside the party meant that the entire established media were able to portray Corbyn and the bulk of the party as a bunch of deranged anti-Semites, racists and crazies. And it stuck – of course it did.

Unfortunately, Chris Williamson was the only MP who stood up against the witch-hunt and campaigned for the democratisation of the party. And we know how that ended for him. Every other Labour MP kept their mouth firmly shut. That includes Richard Burgon, who is running for deputy leader and is probably the best of the whole bunch of candidates. Like Ian Lavery, who briefly considered running for the top job, Burgon at least did not actively participate in the witch-hunt against Corbyn and the left – which is more than can be said of the six candidates for party leader.

That is probably one of the main reasons why Lavery could not gather the required 21 nominations from his fellow MPs. We fear that Burgon – despite, or maybe because of, his endorsement by John McDonnell – will also fail to jump that hurdle.

There is a massive pressure and temptation now to move the party to the right in order to finally become ‘electable’ again. This would, however, mean that we had learnt nothing from the last five years. In truth, the party hardly moved left at all. Yes, hundreds of thousands of new members joined since 2015. But most of them never participated in their local branch or CLP meetings. And, when they did, they were understandably shocked by how bureaucratic, dull and apolitical meetings are. Almost no structural democratic changes have taken place under Corbyn – he did not even dare to touch the now pro-capitalist clause four, which was rewritten by Tony Blair. The so-called Corbyn Review was nothing but a damp squib.

But these are exactly the issues that should be at the heart of our struggle: the democratisation of the party; restoring power to the members and making conference truly sovereign; and we should even discuss getting rid of the position of leader altogether. Instead, the party should have a truly democratic, accountable and transparent leadership. Wouldn’t it be nice, for example, if we could see minutes of national executive committee meetings?

Empowering the members is part and parcel of fighting for a genuine socialist government and working class power – not pursuing a strategy of trying to introduce socialism from above, one step at a time. The biggest problem with this strategy is simple: it does not actually work. Real socialism is the self-liberation of the working class, from below. Otherwise it quickly turns into its opposite.

What a set of candidates

Keir Starmer, the preferred candidate of the ‘moderates’ and Blairites, is posing, somewhat entertainingly, as the Corbyn continuity candidate, in a rather obvious attempt to attract some of the softer lefties. He says he supported the miners in 1984-85 (not many miners remember that one) and even used to be a Trot once. In 1986- 87 he wrote for the short-lived Socialist Alternatives magazine, mainly on trade union matters. Despite its affinity to the Pabloite tactic of deep entryism into mass Labour and communist parties (in anticipation of World War III), the basic character of the journal was closer to the reformism and the identity politics of the Eurocommunists. But have no doubt: this man is today’s Tony Blair.

No doubt, most of the organised left will come out for Rebecca Long-Bailey – bar, perhaps the wretched Alliance for Workers’ Liberty – who, we hear, are even considering support for Keir Starmer (though remainer Clive Lewis is no doubt on the AWL list too). But it is palpable how very little enthusiasm there has been for RLB among the party membership, despite her having been groomed for the position by John McDonnell and Momentum owner Jon Lansman for the last two years. It is easy to see why there is so much hesitation and scepticism about her: she has made a huge effort to distance herself from the left and to be seen as anything but the Corbyn continuity candidate.

There was her underwhelming article in The Guardian on December 29, in which she promised to pursue a policy of “progressive patriotism”. Presumably that was supposed to show that she will not be a US ‘special relationship’ puppet. But in the process she had to resort, rather pathetically, to claiming that the internationalism of the Lancashire cotton workers during the US civil war – the second revolution – was exactly the opposite. A rather entertaining article on The Struggle blog puts her right:

the boycott of southern cotton was not ‘patriotism’, but an act of internationalist working class solidarity with the workers in the northern states and the slaves held in chains in the south. To dress this up in a Union Jack is to disgrace the sacrifice – all too literal – of the Lancashire mill workers.

Then there is her promise that she would be prepared to press the nuclear button, albeit reluctantly: “If you have a deterrent, you have to be prepared to use it,” she told the BBC. “Any leader and any prime minister has to be clear that the security and the protection of the people that they represent comes first, above all else, and they would do anything it takes to ensure the people of this country are protected.”

Or you could, you know, campaign for nuclear disarmament. It used to be very popular on the Labour left to oppose the nuclear obliteration of large sections of humanity. Jeremy Corbyn was admittedly ‘hazy’ on the question and refused to continue to campaign for the abolition of Trident once he became leader. But he never went as far as to say that he would actually use nuclear weapons.

We are also less than impressed with RBL’s running mate – and flatmate – Angela Rayner. They seem to want to recreate the ‘dream team’ of Neil Kinnock and his deputy, Roy Hattersley, which ostensibly was supposed to unite the left and the ‘centre’ of the party – and, of course, ended with Kinnock turning against the left, expelling the Militant faction, etc. The civil war of the last five years has shown clearly that there cannot be any ‘unity’ with the right.

Worst of all though is RLB’s political weakness, when it comes to the witch- hunt in the party. In June 2019, she met with the vile witch-hunter, Stephane Savary of the so called Jewish Labour Movement, and agreed with the JLM that Chris Williamson should be expelled from the party.

She also agreed that anti-Semitism complaints should be handled by an “independent body”. That sounds ever so ‘progressive’, but is actually an absolutely disastrous suggestion. Who should decide if a Labour Party member should be expelled, suspended or otherwise disciplined? The Jewish Labour Movement, perhaps? Or the Jewish Leadership Council, made up chiefly of Tory supporters? Of course not. Members should be judged by their peers. It is an ongoing injustice that employees of the party, chiefly recruited by witch-hunter general Iain McNicol, are dealing with complaints and preparing disciplinary reports – reports which are then briefly discussed by the disciplinary panel of the NEC, often in less than five minutes per case. The legal and governance unit – formerly the compliance unit – should be abolished and replaced by an accountable body democratically elected by Labour members.

After that meeting, she tweeted that “any comments made by anyone linked to the Canary or any other publication, which are anti-Semitic, or perceived to be – I condemn” – exactly the line that the JLM has been pushing for years: if they perceive a comment to be anti-Semitic, then that’s what it is! Any kind of rational definition would go out of the window. A rule change along those lines was quite rightly rejected by the NEC, and then by conference, in 2018.

Left pressure

And RLB is hardly an experienced militant. In 2015, for example, having just been elected an MP, she had to ask a Zionist audience what the BDS movement was.

This makes it all the more important that the Labour left finally gets its act together and starts to put some real pressure from the left on the leadership. The only pressure in the last five years has come from the right – and it has showed. Uncritical support for RLB is even more misplaced and dangerous than the messiah cult we witnessed around Corbyn.

This leadership battle presents the left with an excellent opportunity to do so. Rebecca Long-Bailey has already ‘tweaked’ her campaign quite a bit since her Guardian article, perhaps recognising that members have been less than impressed with it.

Earlier this week, she declared on ITV News that she “would give Corbyn 10 out 10, because I respect him and I supported him all the way through”. Corbyn, incidentally, has “declined” to say how he will be voting in the leadership contest.1)Daily Telegraph January 8 We suspect that has more to do with his ongoing efforts to try and appear neutral than any political problem he might have with RLB.

In her official election platform, published in The Tribune on January 6, she discusses how the party “has been too close to the establishment we are meant to be taking on, whether cosying up to Rupert Murdoch or joining forces with David Cameron in the Better Together campaign in 2014”.

She also discusses the democratic deficit in today’s society and that “the people across these islands are sick of the British state’s distant and undemocratic institutions”. While discussing the need for “a vision for a new democracy”, she writes: “We must go to war with the political establishment, pledging a constitutional revolution that sweeps away the House of Lords, takes big money out of politics and radically shifts power away from Westminster.” Labour’s 2019 election programme talked, much more tamely, about ending “the hereditary principle in the House of Lords, and work to abolish the House of Lords in favour of Labour’s preferred option of an elected Senate of the Nations and Regions.”

That might still be what RLB means, but it does show she can shift. So let’s try and shift her! Before CLPs start nominating her to become leader of the Labour Party, members could, for example, ask RLB some of the following questions, each of which goes to the heart of today’s civil war in the Labour Party:

  • Will you campaign for Labour to support the boycott, disinvestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign?
  • Will you campaign for Labour to fight for the abolition of Trident and for unilateral nuclear disarmament?
  • Will you campaign for the mandatory reselection of all parliamentary candidates and the further empowerment of Labour members?
  • Will you issue an apology to Chris Williamson and ask him to rejoin the Labour Party?

References

References
↑1 Daily Telegraph January 8
Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

LRC and LLA: Recoiling from the challenge

Carla Roberts is puzzled by the decision of the Labour Representation Committee

The Labour Representation Committee has decided to withdraw from the Labour Left Alliance. As we understand it, this decision was reached at a meeting of its executive, but was far from unanimous. Graham Bash, for example, tells us he argued “strongly” against it.

In his article in last week’s Weekly Worker, he stated that “rebuilding the Labour left is a matter of extreme urgency”. Quite right. According to the LRC’s statement, however, launching the LLA in July 2019 – three and a half years after Jeremy Corbyn’s election – was “premature” and “a short cut”. We disagree. If anything, this launch has come very, very late – hopefully not too late.

Thanks to John McDonnell (who will remain president of the LRC despite his effective cooperation with the witch-hunters), there is now real pressure on Jeremy Corbyn to step down as Labour leader, should the party lose in the December 12 general election. Any candidate who wants to replace him will still require 10% of the votes of all MPs or MEPs. This remains a very difficult hurdle to clear for any leftwinger (not that there are that many). Sadly, in the hope of appeasing the right, Corbyn and his allies have refused to back measures that would help change the composition of the Parliamentary Labour Party – they instructed Len McCluskey to use his Unite block vote at the 2018 Labour conference to vote against the mandatory reselection of parliamentary candidates (aka ‘open selection’).

There was, of course, the earlier Grassroots Momentum initiative, which was set up just after the Jon Lansman coup of January 10 2017. But it was underorganised and, crucially, allowed the witch-hunting Alliance for Workers’ Liberty to participate – no wonder it came to nothing. After all, AWL members had helped Lansman to boot Jackie Walker off the leadership of Momentum (just before they in turn were booted off). Important lessons have been learned from this disaster: the LLA founding statement crucially contains the principled positions that it “opposes attempts to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism” and that it supports “the democratic and national rights of the Palestinians” – both demands that the AWL social-imperialists would not support.

The rightwing campaign against Corbyn and his supporters has been raging for over three years, but there is still no viable organisation that can exercise any real pressure from the left, as the politically corrupt selection process of parliamentary candidates is clearly demonstrating. Since last week, we have heard about three more leftwingers who were removed from their local shortlist – just before the hustings meeting that was voting on the parliamentary candidate. In South West Norfolk, the selected Labour candidate, Matthew Collings, was suspended one day after his election. The ‘evidence’ presented is, as can be expected, laughable: it includes support for Chris Williamson and Labour Against the Witchhunt. However, decisions reached because of the party’s “need to exercise due diligence” cannot be challenged – an affront to democracy, clearly.

So, while this is very strange timing from the LRC (which released its statement one day after the general election was called), its decision does not come as a great surprise to those involved in the LLA. We understand that the LRC’s representatives on the LLA organising group (OG) have been somewhat reluctant to get involved in actually building the initiative, despite being one of the two principal organisations (along with LAW) that set up the LLA back in July.

LRC’s statement contains a good number of inaccuracies, while giving the impression that it was somehow in a minority within the LLA and therefore could not achieve all the many good things it wanted to. And it mainly blames Labour Against the Witchhunt. Readers should keep in mind, however, that LAW only has three representatives on the LLA OG (which had over 30 members). The LRC, on the other hand, had its three national reps, plus three more from local LRC groups that had affiliated. The three delegates from Red Labour are also close to the LRC. Clearly, they could have easily outvoted LAW’s representatives on any issue, had they so wished.

It seems to us that, in reality, the LLA has developed more quickly, more successfully and with a stronger forward ‘momentum’ than the comrades had envisaged or could keep up with. The LRC is a rather slow and inert organisation, with very few active members (just over 100 made it to the last AGM). It argues that the LLA should not move beyond the stage of a network and should, under no circumstances, elect any officers. The flaws of such an untransparent structure of ‘volunteers’ taking initiatives (or not) have, however, become increasingly obvious in recent weeks, as the pressure to elect officers has grown.

The LRC’s inertia has, of course, a political basis. The organisation used to act as entirely uncritical cheerleaders of the official Labour left. With the left now running the party leadership, the LRC has come under increasing pressure to criticise the many political retreats and the ever-expanding witch-hunt in the party. But it is clearly struggling with that role: it is used to defending Corbyn, McDonnell and co, rather than criticising them. The LRC looks to us like an organisation at an important political crossroads and it could dwindle into oblivion pretty quickly. That is not something we would celebrate.

What are their arguments?

  • The comrades write that for them it has been “crucial to win trade union support”. But when a couple of LLA members proposed a strategy that would, for a start, organise our supporters in the unions, they opposed it. No other effort to win unions to the LLA has been made by the LRC, we understand.
  • They write that the LRC argued for “the insertion into the LLA statement of the clause ‘supports and encourages struggles against austerity and all forms of oppression’. While this met no opposition, it has not been reflected in the political proposals of those LAW comrades involved in the LLA project, whose sole emphasis seems to be on internal party matters. We feel that this shuts down the wider potential and ambition originally envisaged.”

    Well, it is not called ‘Labour Against the Witchhunt’ for nothing, and it should therefore not come as a surprise that LAW would propose initiatives around trigger ballots, the selection process and the Chris Williamson case. The LRC, on the other hand, with its focus on “wider issues”, did not make any proposals at all – apart from inserting the above phrase.

  • The comrades criticise the fact that there has not been “space in the LLA to raise issues that should be the bedrock of Labour left organising – for example, whether solidarity with workers taking industrial action, international campaigns, opposition to climate change or defence of public services”.

    Now this is where things are getting a bit bizarre. We understand that LRC reps did not make a single proposal on any of those issues on the OG. Which seems to us would be the perfect “space” to make them. Or they could have used the three LLA Facebook groups in existence. In reality, LRC comrades have consistently argued against the LLA taking any positions on anything. They opposed LAW’s suggestion to discuss LLA’s political aims and campaigning priorities at the forthcoming conference, because the groups affiliated to the LLA “already have their own campaigns”.

  • They also charge “leading LAW comrades” of promoting “the formation of local LLA groups, rather than the – on paper – agreed approach of persuading existing, established and active local left organisations – whether Momentum, Labour Left or whatever – to affiliate.”

    We really struggle to see how that is a bad thing. Where the left in the Labour Party is not yet organised and therefore unable to efficiently and effectively organise in the party, clearly the point of a national Labour left is to support exactly the formation of such new groups?

  • Rather weirdly, they then claim that LAW representatives demanded that, in order to affiliate, unions would have to have a “minimum of members” who were “individual, signed-up LLA supporters”.

    Labour Against the Witchhunt has published its draft constitution for the LLA and this is what was proposed on this issue: “All national trade unions can appoint up to three representatives once they have paid the affiliation fee of £500/annum.” At no point has there been any other proposal, based on numbers of affiliated LLA supporters in a particular union. This claim by the LRC is just nonsense – based presumably on a serious misunderstanding.

  • Last but not least, we are told that the “emphasis” of LAW comrades is “that small left groups should be encouraged to affiliate to LLA, while questioning the affiliation of broader, genuine Labour left groups like Red Labour and Grassroots Black Left.”

    Here the comrades are being rather economical with the truth. We understand that LAW comrades raised the question as to why Marxist groups active in the Labour Party – for example Socialist Appeal, Labour Party Marxists or Red Flag – should be barred from the LLA (as demanded by the LRC), while groups like Red Labour, which barely exists even as an online endeavour, should unquestioningly be allocated three representatives on the OG. This was raised, discussed and then put aside within two days. Clearly, this is an issue that can be resolved at the LLA conference in February.

We repeat: it is a shame that the LRC has decided to jump ship, especially at this crucial time in the civil war and the witch-hunt. Many LRC members have expressed disagreement with this decision online and it is good to see that the departure has – so far – not harmed the LLA. It might actually help it to move forward at a quicker pace and allow it to set its sights far higher. In which case the LRC will hopefully come back on board soon.

Conference 2019, Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

One small step forward…

The Labour Left Alliance held its first national networking meeting in Brighton. Carla Roberts of Labour Party Marxists reports

Almost 100 people crammed into the first networking meeting of the Labour Left Alliance on September 25, which took place after the close of Labour Party conference in Brighton. Despite the fact that conference finished early, with Jeremy Corbyn’s speech having been moved one day forward because of the recalling of parliament, there clearly was a huge desire to find the way forward for this nascent organisation.

The meeting started with a useful discussion on this year’s conference, which can probably best be summed up as a ‘mixed bag’ from the left’s point of view: on the one hand, Jeremy Corbyn delivered a rousing speech, designed to please the much-neglected left in the party. We also saw conference voting for the free movement of people (though Dianne Abbot seems to have immediately backtracked on this and it remains to be seen if this policy makes it into the election programme), plus the disaffiliation of the rightwing Labour Students in the run up to conference, and we witnessed the first organised intervention of the LLA, calling for a protest against Tom Watson, who then cancelled his conference speech (more on that below).

On the other hand, there were also a number of setbacks and problems for the left:

LAW fringe conference 2019In the run-up to conference, a vicious campaign against the anti-witch-hunt left had led to the cancellation of various venues booked by Jewish Voice for Labour, Labour Against the Witchhunt and the Labour Representation Committee. However, in record time, comrades from the newly established Brighton Labour Left Alliance worked absolute miracles and booked the Rialto Theatre to allow some of the cancelled meetings to take place. They even worked out a programme of ‘Free Speech events’ that went beyond what was planned in the first place. Over three days, they managed to put on a range of exciting events, featuring Chris Williamson MP, Jackie Walker, Kerry Anne Mendoza and others. The venue of LAW’s main fringe event had to be kept secret, but, with almost 200 people attending, it was standing room only. The left showed that it will not be cowed or intimidated.

Conference itself saw a tightening of the disciplinary procedures, which gives the national executive committee the right to fast-track the expulsion of members accused of having been “inconsistent with the party’s aims and values, agreed codes of conduct, or involving prejudice towards any protected characteristic”. No doubt, the NEC hopes that this will finally put an end the ‘anti-Semitism crisis’ in the Labour Party, but many people at our meeting feared that this is likely to lead to exactly the opposite: “We expect there to be many more vexatious complaints being made by the right against Corbyn supporters”, as LAW’s Tina Werkmann put it. Also, as the NEC last year adopted the highly disputed definition of anti-Semitism published by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, we can expect to see a rise in allegations made against those who are critical of Israel, rather than guilty of any actual anti-Semitism.

Comrade Werkmann explained that only four members of the entire NEC had voted against the proposals: Darren Williams, Rachel Garnham, Yassamine Dar and Ann Henderson – all CLP delegates, who had been elected as part of the ‘left slate’ backed by the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance.

However, the four other CLGA members representing CLP members on the NEC voted in favour of fast-track expulsions: Momentum owner Jon Lansman (no surprise there) and his hangers-on, Navendu Mishra (now selected as a prospective parliamentary candidate in the safe seat of Stockport), Huda Elmi and Claudia Webbe. The latter’s vote is perhaps the most worrying, as she is the current chair of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy – whose secretary, Pete Willsman, of course, remains suspended from the party (and the NEC) on utterly bogus charges!

No doubt, Willsman’s case (and those of Chris Williamson MP, Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker, etc) is exactly the reason why Lansman voted for these changes: there is no love lost between the Momentum owner, Willsman and many of the other veteran Corbyn supporters who have been witch-hunted and smeared, and Lansman is keen to get rid of Williamson and Willsman – he has openly said so, after all.

Conference also voted to dramatically reduce the input of Labour Party members into the Local Campaign Forums. LCFs bring together local party branches and are responsible for selecting Labour’s council candidates, while also giving members at least a chance to question their councillors (though they have not been accountable to members for a long time). They are now to be called ‘Local Government Forums’ and the composition will change quite dramatically. There will be three “sections”, made up of members of the local Labour group of councillors, CLPs and locally affiliated trade unions. While those sections might differ dramatically in size, they will have equal voting rights.

This rule change was snuck through conference as part of a number of proposals by the NEC that were supposed to ‘tidy up’ any outstanding issues from last year’s so-called ‘Party Democracy Review’. In reality, very few rules in the party have been democratised as part of this exercise – but many have been made worse. This no doubt reflects the pressure from the right and the unions on Labour HQ.

Many LCFs have been taken over by the left in the last two years, mirroring the slow but persistent growth and organisation of the left within Labour. In many areas, councillors have come under increasing pressure from the local members to reflect the changing nature of the party. Labour councillors have not only implemented the draconian cuts imposed by the Tory government, but have done so willingly and without even the hint of a fight-back. Many Labour-run councils have enthusiastically embraced outsourcing – ie, bringing cut-throat private companies in to take over services that the council used to provide. As these companies are based on the need to make a profit, they end up providing fewer and worse services, while charging more money for it. That is the basic logic of capitalism.

Worryingly, both these rule changes were submitted by the NEC and were only presented to delegates (as part of a 225-page report by the conference arrangements committee) a few hours before they were meant to be voting on them. There is clearly a huge democratic deficit when it comes to conference, and especially many first-time delegates at our LLA meeting reported feeling utterly confused and overwhelmed by this experience. We discussed setting up a working group that could help to better prepare delegates for next year’s conference and to help LLA members get to grips with the party’s rule book. We also discussed the need for the LLA to prepare some decent rule changes from the left that CLPs could adopt for next year’s conference.

What to do about the unions?

The meeting also discussed the huge and very visible divide at conference between the union block and the CLP delegates. The tightening of the disciplinary rules, for example, was – very encouragingly – rejected by a majority of CLP delegates. But an overwhelming majority of the unions voted in favour. Ditto when it came to the efforts to re-establish the old clause four, abolished by Tony Blair: a majority of delegates from CLPs voted yes – but the rule change was defeated by the affiliates.

There were in fact a number of occasions when, for example, a clear majority of people in the hall raised their hand in favour of a motion, but then the chair ruled that the vote had in fact been lost. This was down to the fact that the party’s affiliates’ vote counts for 50% of the entire vote at conference – even though there are far fewer delegates from the affiliated unions and socialist societies present. This led to huge dissatisfaction among particularly first-time CLP delegates, who felt that they were being disenfranchised.

Unsurprisingly, a number of speakers at our LLA networking meeting therefore raised how important it is to democratise the unions and their input into party conference as well as the Labour Party more generally. Some comrades in the room volunteered to produce a draft campaigning strategy on what is a huge issue.

After this discussion, Lee Rock (a representative of Sheffield Labour Left on the LLA organising committee) gave a very useful report about the current state of the Labour Left Alliance. Over 1,400 individuals have now signed up to the appeal (“when we launched the appeal, we were hoping to have 1,000 by conference”) and over 20 LLA local groups have affiliated, with another dozen or so being currently set up. In addition, LLA is supported by four national organisations: LAW, LRC, Red Labour and the Campaign for Chris Williamson. The LLA organising group has grown to over 30 members, which, according to comrade Rock, “can make it very difficult to come to decisions”. In his presentation, he raised the need for the organisation to have elected officers with clearly defined roles.

This was a theme that was reflected in the next session: how the LLA should move forward. Three discussion papers had been drafted and circulated to all LLA signatories in the run-up to our meeting and were dealt with at some length:

Kevin Bean of Merseyside Labour Left Alliance spoke on the proposal coming from LAW, Sheffield Labour Left and Merseyside LLA itself, which argues that the LLA should swiftly move to a “more accountable structure”, with a constitution and elected officers. “The tyranny of structurelessness is very dangerous,” he warned. “There are always some people in charge – but without proper structures, elections and accountability, we cannot hold them to account.”

Cathy Augustine outlined the proposal of the Labour Representation Committee that the LLA “should remain a network for the time being and without any elected officers”. She thought that “the current system of volunteers taking on various aspects of the work functions well”.

Tony Greenstein, a member of the newly established Brighton Labour Left Alliance, admitted that his proposal was more of a “stream of consciousness” born out of the desire to move forward quickly. He suggested that the LLA should swiftly establish a membership structure and start employing a part-time worker to move the organisation forward.

In the somewhat unfocused discussion, most people seem to support the need for better and more democratic structures. Glyn Secker of the affiliated Dulwich Labour Left (and secretary of Jewish Voice for Labour) argued that we should adopt a “clear and short constitution as soon as possible”. JVL had got off the ground within a few short months, but we had to act quickly to “counter the attacks by the right”. LAW’s chair, Jackie Walker, suggested that we need structures, but could, for example, do without a permanent chair and vice-chair: “Why don’t we simply pull a name from a hat?” That suggestion would only work, of course, if the person is up to speed with all the arguments, motions and amendments that have been submitted.

Tom Watson walkout

The most bizarre intervention was made by Andrew Berry of the LRC. In his three minutes, he solely argued against a comrade who had earlier congratulated the LLA on its hastily produced leaflet, ‘Shun Tom Watson’.

Shun Tom Watson 3This leaflet explained that a number of delegations were planning to walk out during Watson’s speech, while others were planning to sing “Oh Jeremy Corbyn”. (As an aside, Unite delegates were apparently intending to ‘sit on their hands’ – a rather lame tactic, which, as one sarky commentator at conference put it, “sounds like it could be a Monty Python sketch”.) A WhatsApp group with over 60 people from various delegations and left groups swiftly sprang up during conference and worked closely together to plan for the action. Almost 1,000 copies of a quickly produced LLA leaflet were handed out to delegates and visitors by LLA supporters – and the reception was overwhelmingly positive. Funnily enough, the only negative reaction came from members of (how to say this nicely?) longer established groups on the Labour left, who angrily told us, “unless we can win this, we should not organise such stupid stunts”. Self-defeating attitude or what?

In any case, when the CAC reorganised the conference agenda after the recall of parliament, it moved Tom Watson from Tuesday to Wednesday and offered him the opportunity to close conference. But we have been told by a journalist that at the Tuesday morning press conference Labour’s press officer, James Schneider, let slip that Watson was literally begging the CAC to take him off the agenda altogether, because he did not fancy much being left alone in the conference hall with a bunch of hostile lefties.

The Metro, which has a reach of 3.65 million readers, reported it this way: “Tom Watson has pulled the plug on his proposed speech at the Labour Party conference after reports that activists were planning to stage a huge walk-out.” Next to the article, they published the whole LLA leaflet. Watson later announced in the Jewish Chronicle: “I was going to attack Corbyn’s failure to address anti-Semitism in my Labour conference speech.”

TUESDAY 2019 PDFFrom our interaction with delegates and observers (LPM comrades handed out the LLA leaflet and our daily Red Pages bulletin with a similar front page), we believe that such a speech would have gone down at conference like the proverbial fart in a space suit. We have no doubt that many of those who were a bit wary about walking out might have changed their mind if they had witnessed such an attack from the platform. So it seems a no-brainer that we should celebrate such an early success for the LLA, even if the Metro might have simplified the issue a bit.

However, Andrew Berry thought we were “fooling ourselves if we think this has anything at all to do with the LLA or its leaflet” (which he opposed). With this negative attitude we will never build anything worthwhile.

Of course, this was only a networking meeting without any decision-making authority, but it was an important start to discuss the way forward for the LLA. We also heard proposals:

  • To hold a proper, decision-making LLA launch conference in early 2020 (this is now being planned).
  • To set up a working group that helps to prepare for next year’s conference, produces guidelines for (new) delegates and draws up a number of useful rule changes for CLPs. There was also a suggestion that the left has to make sure it books a ‘safe space’, where it can hold events without having the meetings cancelled or disrupted by pro-Zionists and rightwingers.
  • To approach all prospective Labour Party candidates with the simple question, ‘Will you support Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister?’ and then publish their answers to help comrades decide which candidates they should be campaigning for. Not a bad idea, in our view.

A pro-active approach is certainly better than the empty calls for ‘unity’ we have heard from the ‘moderates’ or the self-defeating view that, unless we “win”, we should not even try to fight

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

CLPD AGM: Follow my leader

Whatever happened to the democratic exchange of ideas? William Sarsfield reports on the CLPD’s March 9 AGM

There were good things to take from this year’s annual general meeting of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy in Birmingham’s Council House. The 200 or so attendance was excellent. The fighting mood was encouraging. There is confidence about the next round of elections in the party.

The problem is the impoverished political perspective of the CLPD’s leading lights – sadly something shared with most left organisations, inside Labour and out. A problem encapsulated by the twin track policy they seek to impose.

First, that support for Jeremy Corbyn (and, by implication, other core left leaders around him, including John McDonnell) must be uncritical, if it is to have any operative content. This position was put with useful bluntness in the opening lines of the executive’s motion 1 (which we never got the chance to discuss – see below). It called on comrades to give “Full support to the party leader at all times”.

Farcically, I did hear some comrades trying to pass this off as a call for the membership to constitute itself as a sort of political comfort blanket for Corbyn – a collective cuddle from the rank and file. Certainly, there is no argument that he has taken some very unpleasant personal kickings from the capitalist media and the treacherous majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party. This ‘explanation’ is desperate, however. Clearly, we were being counselled to provide uncritical and unconditional support to Corbyn and the political concessions he makes – the measures he judges necessary to pursue the chimera of a pacified PLP right.

A couple of amendments to this terrible formulation were submitted, one emphasising that support for Corbyn should be predicated on his working within the remit of conference decisions and the other, politically much better amendment, which made support for Corbyn conditional on him fighting for “the thorough democratisation of the Labour Party and society” and emphasising the basic right for members to “criticise him when and where necessary – for example, over his silence when it comes to the witch-hunt against his supporters in the Labour Party”. A debate on this would have been very useful and, no doubt, would have revealed some serious differences. Precisely for this reason, the organisers ensured that there was no time to have this key issue aired at all.

Second, the mantra came from the top table, as well as the floor, that the only priority that mattered was the achievement of a “Labour Party government led by Jeremy Corbyn” – no caveats about the political content of that government’s programme, the compromises it might offer to pacify the right wing, its room to provide meaningful gains for the working class, etc. In the absence of a debate on these themes, the conference’s discussions around this mantra of the ‘next Labour government’ became both apolitical and ahistorical. It was almost as if we have enforced on ourselves a sort of voluntary amnesia, where we forget the actual history of past Labour governments – their attacks on our class, authoritarian restrictions on democratic rights, support for brutal imperialist wars, etc.

The bulk of the day’s proceedings were taken up with reports from the CLPD’s various working groups. These were of widely varying degrees of political nous and quality, it must be said. For instance, the women’s group presented an interesting feedback on its impressive record of work, even though I felt that its orientation was very ‘bureaucracy-centric’. There was too much emphasis on structural/legalistic initiatives as avenues towards women’s liberation rather than the question of struggle and the role of the working class. The comrades spoke of increasing “diversity” and the problems of “low-income” women. I was put in mind of the Women Against Pit Closures movement in 1984-85: their energy, anger and brilliantly innovative methods of struggle and solidarity. Surely that should be a model for us as socialists, rather than the route to women’s freedom being through ‘breaking glass ceilings’ and shimmying up the corporate ladder?

Councillor Yasmine Dar was billed to speak “on national executive committee goings-on”. Instead, the comrade delivered a very high-tempo, slightly garbled contribution, the bulk of which consisted of telling us that she and other left comrades on the governing body were there not to “put forward our views – we put forward your views”. In fact “Our responses are your responses,” she told us at one point. Quite how she or any other leftwinger on the NEC could aggregate the views of the couple of hundred in Birmingham – let alone the hundreds of thousands in the party at large – remains a mystery to me.

Best speech

By far the best speech of the day was the last, made by Stephen Marks, a Jewish Voice for Labour comrade from Oxford, who was co-reporting from the national constitutional committee (which deals with all disciplinary matters that the NEC feels it cannot resolve).1)Stephen Marks was (ostensibly) the bone of contention that caused the 2018 bust up between Momentum and the CLPD when – under their mutual flag of convenience, the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance – they fell out pretty spectacularly about the composition of the their slate for the NCC. Momentum’s owner, Jon Lansman, opined that “’the Jewish community’ with not tolerate a JVL representative” – ie, Stephen Marks.While the comrade explained that he was constrained by some legal considerations, he certainly was not constrained by politeness. He spoke with real passion and anger about the witch-hunt in the party. He ripped into the existing procedures as not fit for purpose; called for a “no leaks” stricture to be rigorously imposed on the right wing of the PLP – weasels who go scuttling to the press with privileged information (my words, not his); he was nearly drowned out by cheers when he stated that Tom Watson should be told to “shut up”; and – most important of all, in my view – called for comrades to formulate an “independent position to Corbyn and McDonnell” on key issues like this.

Undoubtedly, it was a stirring way to end proceedings, but the point was that we had not even touched on the key business we needed to debate and decide on – the secretary’s report and the policy motions. Throughout, the various chairs bumped other things up the agenda, in front of these two key items. This toxic culture of regarding debates and public differences between comrades – even if the divisions are sharp and heated at times – is anti-democratic to its core. It is a crippling weakness that comrades suffer from.

At the start of the afternoon session we were advised by the chair that the executive committee (largely the same as the 2018 version, I believe) had met and produced a feeble motion of mealy-mouthed ‘support’ for Chris Williamson MP. This reads:

1. CLPD exposes all forms of anti-Semitism and racism.

2. CLPD notes the personal statement from Chris Williamson MP.

3. CLPD does not believe Chris Williamson MP should be expelled from the Labour Party.

4. CLPD will circulate the statement at

bit.ly/dontexpelchriswilliamson.3

Err, that’s it …

I have no doubt that, if conference had been allowed the time and space to amend this pathetic ‘solidarity’ message, we would have ended up with a far angrier, harder position being adopted. By the same token, I am sure that if the comrades in Birmingham had also been able discuss the motion calling for critical distance from Corbyn – let alone the icon-smashing call for a new, Marxist influenced clause four – there would have been outrage, sharp exchanges and hard lines drawn between different positions.

In other words, the CLPD’s executive committee seemed determined to starve us of the meat and drink of politics l

It cannot be right to support someone regardless of whether they are right or wrong

Stephen Marks of JVL hammered the witchhunt and called for politics independent of both Corbyn and McDonnell

References

References
↑1 Stephen Marks was (ostensibly) the bone of contention that caused the 2018 bust up between Momentum and the CLPD when – under their mutual flag of convenience, the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance – they fell out pretty spectacularly about the composition of the their slate for the NCC. Momentum’s owner, Jon Lansman, opined that “’the Jewish community’ with not tolerate a JVL representative” – ie, Stephen Marks.
Democracy and the Labour Party, The left, The right

TIG: Getting trigger happy

What does the formation of the so-called Independent Group and the suspension of Chris Williamson tell us about the balance of forces? William Sarsfield gives his view

The Independent Group (TIG) has the potential to grow, despite its initial small numbers, its chaotic launch and the absence of policy. Over the coming weeks and months, we can expect money to flow its way, major news outlets to corral behind it and further defections from the venal majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party, who have attempted unsuccessfully to thwart and derail the leadership of Corbyn from day one.

TIG currently stands at around 8% in some opinion polls – not huge, but not statistically insignificant either. Moreover, we hear murmurs from Chuka Umunna that up to a third of Labour MPs have expressed some sympathy for the venture. Others may well be in political solidarity in the abstract, but are holding back for fear of the damage a split from Labour may do to their own parliamentary careers.

That said, it is worthwhile underlining just how poor this launch was. Despite the obvious fact that this small splinter from Labour (plus its even smaller Tory cohort) had been quite some time coming, there has been glaring lack of basic spadework. So, despite its relatively long gestation period, there are no books, pamphlets, recruitment videos that let us into the Weltanschauung of these intrepid mould-breakers. Indeed, journalists at the group’s launch reported it was a struggle to find coherent ideas strung together coming from the individual TIGers, let alone the group as a collective.

This underlines that this new organisation has little in the way of political gravitas. It is responsive, short-termist and very much of the political moment – specifically, Brexit; the ‘anti-Semitism contagion’ that apparently continues to rip through Labour’s ranks; and the intensely uncomfortable fact of who the current Labour leader is – his history, links, his ‘unpatriotic’ baggage, etc. For the three Tory TIGers – Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen – the key issue was obviously Brexit, of course.

The response from the Labour leadership has once again been extremely disappointing. Publicly, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have bent over backwards to conciliate – and not just by jumping onto the ‘second referendum’ bandwagon. There has been talk of not enough support offered to Luciana Berger MP – effectively putting two fingers up to the rank and file of her Constituency Labour Party, Wavertree, who were threatened with suspension by Labour deputy leader Tom Watson for having the temerity to discuss two motions of no-confidence in the woman.

It may seem a paradox, but objectively the TIG departure reflects the growing strength of the left in the party. The Labour right views the past three-plus years of Corbyn’s leadership as a disaster. Frustration levels have mounted, as every ploy to get rid of this turbulent priest have come to naught.

Early on, we had the plotting of the unctuous Hilary Benn to organise mass resignations from the shadow cabinet following the EU referendum, which came to nothing. Then the wretched Margaret Hodge and sidekick Ann Coffey (a founding member of TIG, of course) tabled a motion of no confidence in the Labour leader in June 2016 – again over his performance in the EU campaign. It was carried by the PLP by 172 votes to 40, but, when it came to the membership, Corbyn was re-elected with an increased majority.

Below

For Camilla Cavendish – a former advisor to Cameron and now a Financial Times columnist – the establishment of TIG is to be warmly welcomed, primarily as it precipitates the disintegration of the rigid, class-based political architecture of the two-party system. This is regarded as an especially necessary corrective, given what she sees as the appalling rise of runaway ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘bullying’ in today’s Labour Party. Despite this all this, she huffs with an impressive degree of faux incomprehension that Corbyn still has the temerity to make “claims” to have the membership on his side.

Of course, there have also been (partially successful) attempts to tame Corbyn – a stratagem that sporadically ran alongside the ‘anti-Semitism’ provocation. All too frequently, both Corbyn and McDonnell have buckled under this pressure and made important – and totally unprincipled – concessions to the right. The latest example being, of course, the suspension of left Labour MP Chris Williamson. After putting up some token resistance Corbyn caved in to the demands of the Labour Parliamentary Committee (made up of 3 Labour peers, five senior Labour MPs, Tom Watson and John Cryer, chair of the PLP). Meeting on the Wednesday afternoon it unanimously demanded his scalp.

However, the right wing of the PLP will now calculate, correctly, that the real danger emanates not from the leader’s office, but from below, in the form of an overwhelmingly pro-Corbyn left in the CLPs, invested with new powers to hold their MPs to account and challenge their assumed right to a ‘job for life’. Specifically, delegates scored an important, if partial, democratic victory at last year’s Labour conference in Liverpool, which enhanced the ability of members to pursue successful trigger ballots to replace sitting MPs. Constituency parties now have far more leeway to call their recalcitrant rightwing MPs to order and get shot of them if needed. The simplified and more democratic provision of trigger ballots could well turn out to be the biggest recruiting tool for TIG, as more MPs jump before they are pushed.

The threat of deselection was clearly the deciding factor for some of the TIG founders … and it is a nightmare scenario that will be playing on the minds many rightwing MPs still parked on the Labour benches. The hoi-polloi – the chumps who should be content with knocking on doors and handing out the leaflets – now have the potential to put an end to the glittering careers of these professional politicians. The nerve of it!

Inevitably, there are qualifications to this good news. It would not be a shock if the central Labour apparatus – in keeping with the quite wretched conciliatory culture promoted by Corbyn and McDonnell – put pressure on local CLPs to drop trigger ballots aimed at replacing local rightist MPs. According to The Guardian, “Labour could delay the start of deselection battles that party sources fear may prompt further resignations.” After all, “We don’t want to further antagonise” (February 26).

For an indicator of the way the political wind blows on this, we must wait for the appearance of a document outlining how and when the newly reformed trigger ballot provisions can be fired up in local CLPs. General secretary Jennie Formby was commissioned at Labour’s January 22 national executive committee meeting to produce a ‘trigger ballot manual’, with the recommendation that it is produced in short order. NEC member Darren Williams confirmed that this was supposed to be published in February. The delay is worrying.

The overwhelming majority of active Labour Party members are now quite clearly to the left and – although there has been a worrying lack of detail from the central apparatus around Jennie Formby – these new provisions are at least somewhere in the pipeline. Across the country, groups of eager left CLP members are keen to get cracking. So, we anticipate more ‘centrists’ bailing out or being given the heave-ho by their members – either way, fingers crossed that their days are numbered …

The key problem for the Labour left is that this objective strength on the ground has yet to translate into a coherent form as a united, national organisation with an ambitious political programme – not simply to purge the existing pro-capitalist right, but for the root-and-branch remaking of the Labour Party, the abolition of the bans and proscriptions on working class organisations, and the radical refounding of Labour as a genuine party of the working class, influenced by the world view of Marxism.

This fight is still hampered not simply by the left’s lack of vision, but also by the fact that Momentum (for the moment) still ‘squats’ the space where a fighting organisation ought to operate. Undoubtedly, Momentum’s lustre faded pretty damn quick and recent scab comments from the organisation’s CEO – Jon Lansman – will no doubt further disillusion many members, if not the few who rely on the organisation for employment. Disillusionment is not a mobilising force, however. (As numerous comrades have commented, Momentum itself is essentially an online mobilising tool these days, as well as a flag of convenience for Lansman to run up when he wants to spout crap.)

Left organisation

The Labour left needs to build a national organisation which embodies a political independence from the current leadership of our party, not simply forms of organisational autonomy as the vast majority of the existing left organisations in Labour restrict themselves to. Perforce, such an organisation would be an open, multi-tendency alliance. Thus, transparency and democracy would be vital components (as it should be in all working class formations) and this culture would demand an explicit statement of our aims and clear perspectives on how to fight the battle. This would find expression in our attitude to Corbyn, McDonnell and their team – we offer them support to the extent that they fight for the interests of our class as a whole; we would criticise and censure them when they renege on that duty.

As an aside, Labour Party Marxists supporters are putting forward exactly such an amendment to the AGM of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. Motion 1 – the “work programme” put forward by CLPD secretary Pete Willsman – states: “Full support to the party leader at all times.” This is a crass and misguided approach that smacks of religion. Instead, we think this should be changed to: “We will defend Jeremy Corbyn from any further coups and acts of sabotage. We will support him where he fights for the thorough democratisation of the Labour Party and wider society. But we will also criticise him when and where necessary – for example, over his silence when it comes to the witch-hunt against his supporters in the Labour Party.”

Meanwhile, and paradoxically, Emily Thornberry has launched the most vociferous attack on TIG, telling a Labour rally that she would “rather die” than leave the party, that the quitters are “cuddling up to the Tories” and if they ever found the courage to stand in a by-election, Labour would “crush” them. This might be little more than an exercise in positioning – a chance for Thornberry, the Zionist, to buff up her left street-fighting credentials, perhaps. We can make educated guesses, but we really do not know ….

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

LRC conference: Witch-hunt defied and condemned

David Shearer of Labour Party Marxists reports on another conference dominated by top table speakers and characterised by choked debates

On February 9 comrades gathered in London for he annual conference of the Labour Representation Committee – 127 attended, according to the organisers.

Unfortunately, however, the time allocated to actual debate was totally inadequate – there were far too many platform speakers, who were all given much more time than ordinary LRC members. This only served to reinforce the notion shared by many on the LRC left – what today is the purpose of this organisation and where is it going?

Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, referred in his opening remarks from the chair to the “huge political crisis” we are facing over Brexit and said that the election of Jeremy Corbyn had meant that there is now a greater need for the left to organise. He then welcomed the main speaker – shadow chancellor John McDonnell, one of the LRC’s founders in 2004.

McDonnell referred to the original objectives of the LRC “when we set it up” – in other words, “how to achieve socialism in this country”. During the leadership of Tony Blair many were asking whether Labour was “still a vehicle” – its membership was at most 150,000 and the trade unions were “almost an embarrassment”. There was a “real feeling” about whether the Labour Party could be “retrieved”, according to McDonnell. But he then went on to say that it was always a question of how to “reconstruct” Labour – “leaving was never on the agenda” and it had to be “refounded from within”.

This was, of course, rather disingenuous. The name of the new organisation says it all – the original Labour Representation Committee was set up in 1900 with the specific aim of forming a new working class party, and establishing a Labour Party mark two was considered to be at the very least a strong possibility while Blair was firmly at the helm.

However, the “foundations” for retrieving the Labour Party had, according to McDonnell, been “laid by the LRC” since its creation 15 years ago. The discussions that took place then within the LRC will hopefully soon be “represented by [reflected in?] a Labour government” and “people here should be proud of that achievement”, he said.

McDonnell went on to talk about what the presumably “refounded” Labour Party would do if it was elected. It would “democratise our economy” and reinstate trade union and employment rights by “scrapping the anti-union laws introduced by the last Tory government”. (By contrast the main document presented by the LRC executive – a statement headed ‘Preparing our movement for the struggles ahead’ – declared that Labour should be “committed to scrapping the anti-union laws – not just the most recent ones, but Thatcher’s too”. Similarly a successful FBU motion demanded the repeal of “all anti-union laws introduced by Thatcher and Major, as well as Cameron”.)

McDonnell went on to talk about the unions’ role in the running of capitalism – in the newly “renationalised sectors” they would be represented on the board. Meanwhile, Labour would “introduce a fair taxation system to fund the public service we need” and “make sure we have a fair and decent society” – not to mention an “ethical foreign policy”: never again would British troops be involved in overseas occupations, heclaimed. But for him these proposals for a fairer capitalism could be summarised by the “possibility of a Labour government implementing a socialist programme”.

And, the more McDonnell, like others before him, abandons any notion of working class state power, the more he resorts to vague terms – his favourite being ‘solidarity’. For instance, we need to “base our movement on class solidarity”, he said, building upon those “relations of solidarity right across Europe” – apparently that was what Labour’s policy on Brexit was all about.

web-Rebecca-Gordon-BInterestingly, questions from the floor came from a number of comrades who had been targeted, or connected to those targeted, by the Labour bureaucracy in the ongoing ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt (in relation to which McDonnell claimed the leadership had “implemented reforms”). The vice-chair of South Thanet Constituency Labour Party complained bitterly about the national executive “blocking our candidate”, Rebecca Gordon- Nesbitt. He urged the leadership to “do something urgently” – otherwise the “whole project will collapse”.

Also posing a question was Deborah Hobson, this time about Marc Wadsworth, who was expelled for daring to publicly criticise Ruth Smeeth MP (although he did not know she is Jewish, she accused him of anti-Semitism!). Comrade Hobson asked whether the Chakrabarti recommendations about due process for Labour’s disciplinary procedure would be implemented any time soon.

After some pointed heckling from the front rows, comrade Wrack agreed to call Jackie Walker to speak – she confirmed that her own disciplinary hearing over allegations of anti- Semitism would finally take place on March 26 (she has been suspended for well over two years). In the meantime, she said, people have been “calling me out as an anti-Semite” (which she vigorously denies, of course, being Jewish herself), and publicly insisting she should be expelled. Such people have been “saying outrageous things without censure”.

In response to these points, McDonnell stated vaguely that he wanted to “express my support” to the comrades of South Thanet and promised, in relation to the disciplinary process, to check with the NEC to “see how far they’ve got” in implementing Chakrabarti. As for comrade Walker, he would raise the question of abuse “with the general secretary and with Jeremy”, but he had great confidence in the “new system” that Jennie Formby was “putting in”. That was as far as his “solidarity” with these comrades went.

In fact it was the Tories he was referring to when he declared: “No matter what they throw at us, if we stand together in solidarity we can fight back.” He concluded that we will soon have “a socialist in No10” (and hopefully No11, he added). It just shows “how far we’ve come” – and “this organisation has made a major contribution”.

This exaggeration of the LRC’s role seemed to go down well with a number of comrades and unfortunately McDonnell’s statements received a warm response from some quarters.

Statement

Eventually we got down to the motions and amendments that had been tabled. Introducing the LRC executive’s ‘Preparing our movement for the struggles ahead’ was political secretary Mick Brooks, who stated that if Corbyn was elected the “capitalist establishment” would do all it could to “neuter” him. But there was no mention, either by him or in the statement, of actual measures that might be undertaken: for instance, the possibility of Corbyn being sidelined altogether and someone else being summoned by the queen to head a national government.

While the statement contained a basically correct assessment of the witch-hunt and the weaponisation of anti-Semitism, the same cannot be said for Labour’s For the many, not the few election manifesto. While this was “far from being a socialist programme”, read the statement, it nevertheless “represented a huge step forward” and “addressed many of the issues facing us”. On Brexit, while the LRC “supports the free movement of people” and is “opposed to immigration controls”, it also “stands four-square behind our leadership’s proven strategy in fighting against ‘no deal’ and for a general election”.

In his speech comrade Brooks called For the many an “eye-opener to millions”. He also noted that unnamed people, instead of “going on the offensive” against the witch-hunt, were apologising for unfounded allegations of anti-Semitism. While Jennie Formby was a “great improvement” over former general secretary Iain McNicol, we still “have to be critical” of the Labour establishment.

Because the McDonnell session had overrun by almost half an hour, the movers of amendments were now restricted to three minutes. First up was Tony Greenstein, introducing the attempt by Labour Against the Witchhunt to insert a little more precision and backbone into the section of the statement dealing with the rightwing assault against anti-Zionists and leftwingers within Labour. Comrade Greenstein – himself expelled basically for ‘being rude’ online, thus “bringing the party into disrepute” (he had originally been accused of anti-Semitism, of course) – stressed that it was a big mistake not to “stand up against the weaponisation of anti-Semitism”. He thought that the LRC executive statement on this was “totally inadequate”, even though he agreed with Labour Briefing editor Graham Bash’s passionate speech about the “fake allegations used to divide the left”.

But the amendment was opposed by the LRC leadership. Jon Rogers, a prominent Unison activist said he was “uncomfortable” about LAW’s reference to “low-level anti- Semitism” within Labour, interpreting this as somehow playing down our opposition to anti-Semitism when it actually occurs. Where LAW advocates education and the role of joint struggle, perhaps comrade Rogers is an advocate of ‘zero tolerance’ and therefore rules that allow the expulsion of members for what amounts to trivial reasons.

However, the LRC executive did support a separate LAW motion which totally opposed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism. Moving the motion, Tina Werkmann pointed out that the IHRA definition was “an attempt to redefine anti-Semitism”, so that it now means “criticism of Israel”. Now that it has been adopted by Labour’s NEC, it is “a question of time” before it is used to discipline comrades making legitimate criticism of the Israeli state, she said. For his part, another LAW comrade, Stan Keable,warnedthatitmightevenfind reflection in legislation – that is why we must “reject” the IHRA “in its entirety”.

This was largely in tune with the views of those present, including most of the executive, and the motion was overwhelmingly carried, although the LAW amendment was defeated on a show of hands.

Debate

The afternoon session began with comrade Wrack vacating the chair in favour of Deborah Hobson. Before that, the FBU general secretary reminded conference that his union had been the only one to support the principle of open selection for parliamentary candidates at the 2018 Labour conference (as a result of union block votes that principle – overwhelmingly favoured by CLP delegates – was defeated). He thought that the mobilisation of “a huge mass movement” would be required in support of a Corbyn government – but, while this was “an opportunity of a lifetime”, we “must be better organised”.

The conference then went on to ‘discuss’ several other motions – I use the word ‘discuss’ advisedly, because the number of speakers was severely curtailed to one in favour and one against – after which the mover was granted a few seconds to reply!

This was more than a pity, because there was a lot to debate. For example, there was a controversial motion on transgender rights – a topic that arouses passion both from those who believe that any individual must be able to declare their own gender and those who state that it should not be a matter of self-identification. The pro-trans motion was carried – with, of course, very little light shed on the differences.

Then there was the motion from Labour Party Marxists. This called for a “socialist clause four” – in other words, the replacement of the 1995 Blairite statement of aims not by the original 1918 version, but one that proposed actual, genuine socialism.

Moving the motion, John Bridge stated that while it had been right to defend the old clause four against the Blairites, now that Corbyn is Labour leader it is wrong to defend the Fabianism of Sidney Webb. We can be far bolder. The old clause four did not envisage abolishing wage labour, nor did it envisage a classless society. The old clause four was, in fact, nationalist and managerial. Rather than idealising “capitalism without capitalists”, Labour needs a “radical, anti-capitalistclause four”.

However, some comrades wanted the pre-Blair version reinstated, while, for his part, Pete Firmin, a leading member of the LRC, seemed to imply that the whole debate was a waste of time – rather we need a commitment on actual policies, he contended.

In the 10 seconds comrade Bridge was granted to reply to this Bernsteinism (the movement is everything, the aim is nothing), he pointed out that, rather obviously, we need both a full range of policies and a clear statement of objectives and final aims. Though it won a third of the votes, the motion was defeated.

The reason why discussion on all these motions was so severely restricted was that, apart from the time accorded to platform speakers, the executive wanted the conference to fully consider its own proposal for the unity of the left within the party. It was noticeable that the executive’s ‘Appeal to the Labour left’ (rather like John McDonnell) did not set out the specific aim of defeating and finally ridding the party of the pro- capitalist right. Rather it was a case of creating a “movement supportive of, but independent of, the leadership”. The left needs to be “a vibrant, organised and strategic partner to that leadership”.

In this session Rebecca Gordon- Nesbitt herself spoke from the floor. She talked of how fake accusations of anti-Semitism, are being used to “get rid of a democratically selected candidate”. She was in favour of a specifically “socialist Parliamentary Labour Party”.

It was clear that Momentum now enjoys very little support amongst LRC partisans – its total lack of democracy has ensured that most militants have written it off as a vehicle for Labour’s socialist left, while Jon Lansman’s actual support for false accusations of anti-Semitism has left him discredited and widely despised. Replying to the debate, Ben Sellers, of Red Labour, stated that it was not a question of “setting up a rival group”, but rather of creating an organisation that, unlike Momentum, could actually unite the Labour left effectively.

However, for what purpose such unity was required (apart from giving support to the leadership) was not outlined. As I have pointed out, nowhere does the LRC declare that the pro-capitalist right has no place within the party, nor does it wish to specify exactly what it means by socialism and the type of organisation needed to fight for it.

So what is the purpose of the LRC? Despite McDonnell’s denials, it was originally formed at the very least to consider the possibility of creating a replacement Labour Party. But, now that this has been completely abandoned, surely those who say they are Marxists need to organise themselves as Marxists. Or, like McDonnell, have they now been won over completely to placing hopes in a nicer, fairer capitalism?