Category Archives: The left

Labour structures and programme, The left

Thesis on the general election 2017 and after

June 8 was a disaster for Theresa May and a triumph for Jeremy Corbyn. Marxists need to explain how it happened and map out how our labour movement can take further steps forward. 

1. The results of the June 8 general election were almost without exception excellent from our viewpoint. The Tory share of the vote was 42.4%. Humiliatingly though, they lost 13 seats. Labour’s share of the vote rose to 40% and saw it gain 30 seats. No less positive, the Scottish National Party suffered a significant setback. They are down by 21 seats. True, as we have long warned, there was an always present danger of a Tory rebirth north of the border. Ruth Davidson now has 13-strong group of Scottish MPs. But Labour is back too. Having been reduced to a single MP, Labour now holds seven seats in Scotland’s central belt. Those on the left who pathetically trail the SNP – eg, Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Resistance, Scottish Socialist Party, etc, and wanted to “make” June 8 an “independence election” – have had their answer. And in Wales, instead of the Tories gaining, it was Labour.

2. With good reason we can say that there is a return to two-party politics. Not that it ever really went away. Capitalism, the existence of two main classes, the first-past-the-post system, all tend to produce two great camps: one of capital, the other of labour.

3. What of the other parties? The Liberal Democrats were well placed to hoover up discontented remainers because of their manifesto promise to oppose Brexit and the offer of a second referendum. True, they gained four seats. However, their share of the vote fell to just 7.4%, an all-time low. An additional bonus: Nick Clegg lost in Sheffield Hallam – the final coda to the Cleggmania that swept the country just before the 2010 general election.

The UK Independence Party now looks to be heading the same direction as the British National Party. And it was not Stand Up To Racism that was responsible – Theresa May stole their programme. This helps to explain why the Tories could increase their overall total vote to 13.6 million. Nevertheless, especially in the north of England Labour too benefited from Ukip’s collapse. Northern Ireland’s politics are ever more polarised. The Democratic Unionist Party gained two seats, as did Sinn Féin. In parliamentary terms the official Ulster Unionist Party and the Social Democratic Labour Party suffered complete wipe-out.

4. Was June 8 a second EU referendum? Was it chiefly about Europe and Brexit? That is what pundits suggested when the general election was first called. And, obviously, that is what Theresa May and her Tory strategists intended. The same can be said of Paul Nuttall and Ukip, and Tim Farron and the Liberal Democrats. However, unless they could not help it, that was never going to be the case with Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. Their position on the EU was, and is, deliberately equivocal. They campaigned ‘remain’ in 2016, now they say they respect the 52%-48% ‘leave’ vote. Moreover, they want a Brexit that protects British jobs and British industries, while simultaneously making noises about reducing the flow of labour from abroad. A classic left-nationalist fudge.

5. Lord Ashcroft’s analysis of the general election is revealing. Six out of 10 of those who voted ‘leave’ in 2016 voted Tory this time. Only 25% of them voted Labour. Meanwhile, amongst ‘remainers’ 25% voted Tory, 51% Labour and 24% Liberal Democrat. In other words, in terms of electoral base the Conservative Party is solidly pro-Brexit, that of the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats is opposed to Brexit. Certainly, taken as a whole, this bloc has no wish to see a hard Brexit. That said, when it comes to reasons for voting, while Tory and Lib Dem voters rated Europe as their key issue, Labour voters were much more likely to be motivated by education spending, NHS cuts, student grants, poor housing, low wages and opposing foreign intervention. Given how well Labour actually did, certainly when it came to poll predictions, it is clear that June 8 was not a Brexit election.

6. Arguably June 8 was a generational election. The figures are startling. Of those aged 18-24, a massive 66% went with Labour, a mere 18% with the Tories. And this cohort came out in record numbers, many for the first time. But when it comes to the over-65s, the picture almost reverses: 58% Tory, only 23% Labour. What this reflects, however, is not a generational war: rather class retrogression – the proletarianisation, the de-petty-bourgeoisification of the younger generation. They might be attending university, or already have graduated. But they come out of full-time education burdened with huge debts, and then they can only secure precarious or comparatively low-paid jobs. As for the dream of home ownership, it is likely to remain just that: a dream. They have to stay with aged parents, pay exorbitant rents for tiny, often shared, flats. Sociologists insist on classifying them as middle class, but, of course, they are no such thing. They are working class. They have to get up in the morning and sell their labour-power. Even those who still aspire to make it into the middle class bitterly oppose the Tories, their austerity, their anti-migrant national chauvinism, their warmongering, their amorality and their worship of the market. Newly qualified teachers, junior doctors and young techies alike voted Labour in huge numbers. Corbyn excited them, inspired them, motivated them.

7. Ever since Jeremy Corbyn looked like he was going to win the Labour leadership contest in 2015, certainly since the Brexit vote and Theresa May as prime minister, Marxists arrived at five main conclusions. One, the Labour right would fight an unremitting civil war against Corbyn and the left; two, we had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to transform the Labour Party; three, there would be no hard Brexit; four, whatever May was saying about waiting till 2020 and the fixed-term parliament act, she would eat her words and call a snap election over Brexit; five, the Labour Party would come out of the general election badly defeated.

8. Like many, we were surprised by Labour’s strong showing. We expected that the ongoing attacks against Jeremy Corbyn by the pro-capitalist right in the Labour Party, aided by almost the entire bourgeois media, would lead to Labour receiving a trouncing in the ballot box. We feared a Tory landslide and that Labour reduced to a parliamentary rump would demoralise the hundreds of thousands who had joined or rejoined the Labour Party because of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. We warned that the strategic goal of transforming the Labour Party would, as a consequence, flounder. It seemed desirable to try and lower expectations in the short term with a view of securing the long-term goal. We are glad that our fears did not materialise.

9. Our fears were understandable. In the couple of weeks before June 8 polling companies were reporting that, while the gap between the two main parties had narrowed, it was still considerable. ComRes gave the Tories a 12% lead (down from 21% when the election call was first made). ORB put the Tories at 44% and Labour 38%. On the day of the election, Lord Ashcroft produced estimates giving a Tory majority ranging from 52 to 96. Given past performance in by-elections and the recent round of council elections, such figures appeared quite likely. Labour was also plagued by a rightwing anti-Corbyn campaign that amounted to out-and-out sabotage. Labour MPs habitually briefed against Corbyn, staged coordinated resignations and regularly demanded his resignation. Rank-and-file leftwingers were subject to vile charges of anti-Semitism, intimidation and even assault. Thousands were expelled or suspended. While, of course, no rightwing Labour MP actually wanted to lose their seat, without exception they expected Labour to do badly. Therefore “working the tearooms” and the renewed preparation of leadership bids. Yvette Cooper and Chuka Umunna were widely touted. So was Clive Lewis (thanks to Owen Jones).

10. Terrified by the prospect of an increased Tory majority, Jon Cruddas, Clive Lewis, Helena Kennedy, Hilary Wainright, Tulip Siddiq, etc pleaded for Labour to stand aside for the Greens in Brighton Pavilion and the Isle of Wight. In line with this, Compass – a “leftwing” pressure group once aligned with the Labour Party, but now uniting “people across different political parties (and those with no party affiliation)” – promoted its ‘Progressive Alliance’. This popular front involved tactical voting and Labour, the Lib Dems, Plaid, the SNP, the Women’s Equality Party and the Greens getting together to “co-create a new politics”.

11. Of course, there was no increased Tory majority. Nor was there a ‘Progressive Alliance’. Thanks to Tory blundering, May’s cowardice, Corbyn’s wonderfully successful town and city rallies, his more than competent media performances, the alternative Labour machine in the form of Momentum and a huge army of individual members canvassing and campaigning, not least by Facebooking, Tweeting and Snapchatting, Labour did remarkably well.

12. Nevertheless, by all accounts, the Labour surge took place with the finishing line already in sight. The general election became really interesting only in the closing weeks. According to Lord Ashcroft’s post-election analysis, unlike the Tory vote, Labour’s took some time to firm up: 57% decided to vote Labour in the last month, 26% in the “last few days” of the campaign.

13. And there has been another significant influx into the party. Tens of thousands have joined. It should be said, moreover, that the majority of them stand instinctively, albeit vaguely, to the left. They soaked up Labour’s policies from the social ether … and gave them their own take. Tory propaganda also had its own, altogether unintended, effect. Corbyn was denounced as a communist, a Marxist, a friend of extremism, an advocate of class war. The Tories repeatedly showed old pictures of him standing alongside Gerry Adams; they repeatedly showed old pictures of him speaking in Trafalgar Square in opposition to the Iraq war.

14. This hugely expensive media and advertising campaign totally backfired. Nowadays many people, especially the young, are looking for an alternative to capitalism. They no longer fear socialism. They positively yearn for radical solutions … and they are looking to Jeremy Corbyn to deliver.

15. The Tories attacked Corbyn for suggesting some causal link between what has happened to Muslims in the Middle East over the last couple of decades and Manchester, London and other recent examples of home-grown Islamic terrorism. Well, there is a link. That is not to excuse the bombings, the car attacks, the stabbings. It is merely to state the obvious … and served to bring attention to Tory cuts in police numbers in pursuit of their austerity agenda.

Moreover, the electorate was usefully reminded by the Toriesthat Corbyn was one of the tiny minority of MPs who consistently stood against the imperial interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria … and the hell on earth they created. Not only has the ‘war on terror’ cost the lives of “as many as two million people” (Physicians for Social Responsibility). The conditions were created for al-Qa’eda, Ansar al-Sharia, al-Nusra, Islamic State, etc. As for Gerry Adams, British ministers now regularly meet and greet him. Sinn Féin is integral to the constitutional arrangement put in place by the 1998 Good Friday agreement. As for being pictured alongside Gerry Adams, Charles Windsor, Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and Tony Blair have all posed for the world’s cameras, smiled and duly shook hands with the great peacemaker.

16. The general election greatly diminished Theresa May. She is a shadow of her former self. Her remaining time as prime minister is surely limited. Already her trusted aides, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, have been forced to fall on their swords. Leading rivals retain their ministerial posts and have demanded one token concession after another. The “confidence and supply” deal with Arlene Foster and her Democratic Unionist Party is a recipe for weak and unstable government. May’s allies are sectarian, bigoted, eccentric, crazed … and unreliable. Expect MPs to be transported to the Commons by ambulance. Expect desperate government bribes. Expect by-election defeats. Indeed, so slim is the government’s legislative majority, so fractured are the Tories, that what will happen in the Brexit negotiations is extraordinarily unpredictable.

17. The Brussels bureaucracy, the EU 27 – crucially Germany and France – will play hard ball. British negotiators will be treated with contempt. After all, Theresa May did not get the mandate she asked for. She was rebuffed, thwarted and punished by the British electorate on June 8. True, the Great Repeal Bill that parallels Brexit could be presented to parliament as a one-line motion. Politically, however, that is impossible. Meanwhile the two-year clock is already ticking away. The March 2017 vote on article 50 saw to that. Therefore, with an unprecedented mass of legislation to steer through parliament, in all probability Brexit will simply grind to a halt. Tellingly, both president Emmanuel Macron and the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaüble, have recently put on record that the EU is “open” to a British change of heart.

18. Big business frets over the uncertainty. The June 23 2016 EU referendum came as a terrible shock for the core representatives of capital. Now they have the June 8 2017 general election. A double whammy. Note, Moody’s is already casting doubt over Britain’s stability and its Aa1 credit rating. Understandably, desperate voices are being raised calling for a “national unity government” made up of ministers from both main parties. Of course, as the Financial Times readily admits, in the “real world” it will not happen. Corbyn has no apparent appetite for a coalition and is obviously relishing the prospect of a decaying Conservative Party and outright victory in the next general election.

19. The fact of the matter is that Labour’s For the many, not the few manifesto, is only a tad to the left of Ed Miliband’s 2015 offering. Britain can be better promised a ban on “exploitative” zero-hours contracts, to “freeze energy bills”, “abolish non-dom status”, to “value” trade unions as an “essential force” in society, to “reduce tuition fees to £6,000” annually, invest in health and education, put in place a national rail body and encourage “public-sector operators”, build “at least” 200,000 homes, “cut the deficit every year”, “replace” the House of Lords with an elected “Senate of the Nations and Regions” and “build an economy that works for working people”.

20. For the many promised to eliminate the “government’s deficit on day-to-day spending within five years”, “invest in cutting-edge” industries and to “upgrade our economy”, bring back into “public ownership” the rails, establish “publicly-owned water companies”, no new “private prisons”, “regain” control over “energy supply networks”, “review laws on trade union recognition”, “repeal the trade union act”, “ban zero-hour contracts”, a programme to build a “million new homes”, a Britain “for the many, not the few”, etc.

21. In other words a pro-worker Keynesianism that was tried, tested and failed in France with the 1981-83 socialist-communist government under president François Mitterrand. Having begun with the mildly leftwing policies of the common programme, which were presented as a step in the direction of socialism, Mitterand presided over the so-called tournant de la rigueur (austerity turn) two year later. Capital went on strike, inflation shot up and French competiveness slumped. The fate of the Syriza government in Greece should also stand as a warning.

22. That For the many is in fact Mitterandist lite did not stop the economistic left going into rhapsodic overdrive. The manifesto was welcomed as “a socialist platform”, “a programme which would help begin the socialist transformation of Britain”, etc.

23. However, there was nothing socialist about For the many. For orthodox Marxism socialism begins with a fundamental break with capitalism – socialism being, the rule of the working class and the transition to a classless, stateless, moneyless society. But For the many does not even adhere to a reformist socialism … which holds out the prospect of ending capitalism though introducing socialism in one country at a time through piecemeal legislative change.

24. For the many accepts capitalism, does not mention socialism, wants to reconcile antagonistic classes. In fact, for those willing to see, there are many tell-tale formulations in For the many designed to appease the pro-capitalist right in the Labour Party. No wonder after the shock of June 8 one MP after another has gone to TV and radio studios to sing its praises. The opening section of For the many includes the revealing statement that Labour “will support businesses”. Big capital is given the assurance that a Corbyn Labour government will keep corporation tax “among the lowest of the major economies”. And then there is the pledge to “put small business at the centre of our industrial strategy”. We are furthermore told that Corbyn and McDonnell will set a “target” for “eliminating” the deficit “within five years”.

25. Indeed, sadly, it is worth noting that For the manyinternalises many aspects of Thatcherism. Take the programme for building a million homes. Nine tenths of them are projected to be private. Only a tenth council and housing association. A Corbynite take on the Tory ideal of the property-owning democracy: a cynical attempt to undermine working class consciousness by getting mortgage slaves to imagine themselves as little capitalists.

26. Nato membership goes unquestioned and there is the boast that the last Labour government “consistently” spent above the 2% benchmark. Indeed it is claimed that the Tories are putting “Britain’s security at risk” by “shrinking the army to its smallest size since the Napoleonic wars”. We are also told that the “scrapping of Nimrod, HMS Ark Royal and the Harrier jump-jets have weakened our defences and cost British taxpayers millions”. Unlike the Labour 1983 manifesto, For the many commits Labour not to a “non-nuclear defence policy”, but renewing the Trident missile system. Bizarrely, this is proposed in the name of fulfilling Britain’s “obligations” under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. So building the next generation of SSBN submarines – together capable of obliterating 172 cities – is meant to be a step towards “a nuclear-free world”.

27. No genuine leftwinger, no genuine socialist, no genuine Marxist could possibly support For the many. Our motto remains: “For this system, not one man, not one penny” (Wilhelm Liebknecht speaking in the German Reichstag in 1871). The working class should, as a matter of elementary principle, oppose the standing army, not regret its reduced size. We are for a popular militia, not weapons of mass destruction.

28. Nor are socialists purveyors of the myth of Britain’s “long established democracy”. Britain’s quasi-democracy is in historic terms recently established. And every democratic advance has been won from below in the face of fierce opposition from above. Most male workers only got the vote in 1918. Women in the late 1920s. And, of course, the capitalist press, the media, the education system normally ensures that the electorate normally votes for safe, careerist, bribable candidates (eg, a clear majority of Labour’s 262 MPs elected on June 8). Moreover, the country is a monarchy, where the privy council, the secret service, the bureaucracy, the army high command and the judges can legally dispose of any unacceptable government. Yet For the many innocently proclaims that: “Democracy is founded upon the rule of law and judicial independence.” A classic liberal formulation. And, apart from calling for an elected second chamber, a “more federalised country” and a vague phrase about “inviting recommendations about extending democracy”, the existing constitutional order is accepted.

29. The same goes for capitalism. For the many believes that capitalism, the economic system, can be managed for the benefit of the many. It simply cannot be done. Capitalism is a system of exploitation based on the endless self-expansion of capital and generalised wage-slavery. Individual capitalists and top managers can have their dividends heavily taxed and their salaries capped. But capital has to expand through extracting surplus value from workers … without that capital will cease to be capital, stay as money, find its way abroad, etc. In fact, the “creation of wealth” is not, as For the many maintains, “a collective endeavour between workers, entrepreneurs, investors and government”. Wealth is created not by so-called entrepreneurs, not by investors, not by government. No, wealth is created by workers … and nature.

30. Past Labour leaders have promised much in opposition … but once in office they always side with the interests of capital … typically disguised with the coded phrase, used by For the many, of putting the “national interest first”. And in the “national interest” they keep down wage rises, attack irresponsible strikes and back British capitalists against their foreign rivals.

Therefore the real significance of For the many lies not in how leftwing it is. No, it encapsulates the political drift, the taming of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. Once they were left reformists; now they seem to have reconciled themselves to the existing constitutional order and system of capitalist exploitation. Obviously the same applies to the main writers of For the many – reportedly Andrew Fisher, a former darling of the LRC, and Seumas Milne, a former Straight Leftist.

31. However – and it cannot be stressed too strongly – for the ruling class, for the political, business and state establishment, Jeremy Corbyn remains totally unacceptable as a potential prime minister. His past statements on Marxism, the monarchy, Nato, nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union, Iraq, Zionism, Palestine, etc, rule him out as a safe option. No wonder, as soon as he was elected Labour leader, there were rumours of unnamed members of the army high command “not standing for” a Corbyn government and being prepared to take “direct action”. Prior to that, the normally sober Financial Times ominously warned that Corbyn’s leadership damages Britain’s “public life”.

32. Despite that – and again it cannot be stressed too strongly – the majority who voted Labour on June 8 did so not because of what For the many actually says, but because what they believe For the many says. Hence, while there is the strong probability that Corbyn and McDonnell will steer to the right, in the attempt to secure PLP unity and victory at the next general election, there is also the chance of transforming the Labour Party into a united front of a special kind and equipping it with the minimum-maximum programme of classical Marxism.

33. It is quite possible that the Tories will be doing their damnedest to avoid another general election in the short to medium term. Under these conditions our main emphasisshould not be demanding ‘Theresa May out’, etc. Just as David Cameron was smoothly replaced by Theresa May, the Tories will smoothly replace Theresa May with another leader. No, our main emphasis must be on transforming the Labour Party, defeating the right and democratising the entire labour movement from top to bottom.

34. If a Corbyn-led Labour Party wins a House of Commons majority and forms a government, we will defend it against attacks from the Labour right, the capitalist press, the City, big business, the secret state, etc. However, while it would be quite right to place specific demands on a Corbyn-led government, we need to bluntly state that a Corbyn-led government based on carrying out the For the many manifesto is not only to chase an illusion – the left-Keynesian illusion of a fair, just, equal capitalism: a Corbyn-led government based on For the many will be a capitalist government that, because of the exploitative inner logic of capitalism, will sooner rather than later attack the working class.

35. The danger is that this would demoralise Labour’s voter and activist base, put the Labour right firmly back in control and lead to yet another, even more reactionary, Tory government. However, that scenario can be avoided if the left, crucially the left in the Labour Party, commits itself, not to be a Corbyn fan club, but, instead, stands firmly on the principles and perspectives of working class rule, socialism and the transition to a stateless, moneyless, classless society. Of course, those principles and perspectives have to be given solid, well defined organisational form. The left needs to be reconstituted as an alternative Labour leadership and therefore an alternative government.

36. Under conditions of government, a thoroughly democratised Labour Party, a Labour Party that is open to the affiliation of all socialist organisations, a Labour Party that has been remade into a permanent united front of the working class, would deselect en masse wayward MPs, including a wayward Labour prime minister.

Democracy and the Labour Party, Elections, The left

Corbynistas in the House!

Below are the pro-Corbyn comrades we know of that were newly elected on June 8. Can any comrades out there add to our list? Please email office@labourpartymarxists.org.uk

  • Laura Pidcock in North West Durham
  • Jared O’Mara in Hallam
  • Chris Williamson in Derby North
  • Dan Carden in Liverpool Walton
  • Marsha de Cordova in Battersea
  • Lloyd Russell-Moyle in Brighton Kemptown
  • Emma Dent Coad in Kensington
  • Thelma Walker in Colne Valley
  • Karen Lee in Lincoln
  • Matt Rodda in Reading East
  • Hugh Gaffney in Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill
  • Danielle Rowley in Midlothian
  • David Drew in Stroud
Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

The left and the snap election: Total intellectual collapse

Theresa May’s snap election call brought forth no end of statements, editorials and rallying cries from every little group going. e details di er, but the overall picture is of dreary homogeneity. May has called the election because she is in a position of weakness. Never mind the polls: Jeremy Corbyn can lead Labour to victory. His policies are popular. All he needs to do is take a strong line on such-and-such an issue which is our group’s particular hobby-horse, and the great escape is on.

Take, for example, the Morning Star and its ebullient April 22 editorial. “When Theresa May says that the general election result is ‘not certain’ despite opinion polls giving the Tories a huge lead,” writes (presumably) editor Ben Chacko, “for once her words can be taken at face value.” May is bottling debates with the leaders of other parties because she is scared: after all, “many Labour policies are popular with the electorate”; better to concentrate “on flimsy pretexts such as parliamentary frustration of the ‘leave’ decision”. “Corbyn and his team have hit the ground running”, and “[May’s] lead may dwindle more quickly than expected.”

On closer inspection, Chacko does not seem sure – may dwindle more quickly than expected – how much more, and expected by whom? You know the polls are looking bad when this is the best the Star will do; anyone who got all their news from this grovelling daily could be forgiven for thinking that the last two years have consisted entirely of a single, continuous red tide of Labour success, and a statue of Jeremy was already on order for Parliament Square.

The final words of the editorial – “all labour movement activists need to give full backing to Corbyn, move beyond media obsessions with establishment obsessions and image and argue the case for a Labour victory” – at least nod to the problem, which is that the whole labour movement is not at all united in giving full backing to Corbyn, but instead riddled with saboteurs. All along, of course, the Star has acted as a mouthpiece for the leader’s office line of compromise, which is what has landed us here, with Labour’s electoral campaign beset constantly with outright and unchallenged sabotage.

Bold tendencies

The Star seems to think that Corbyn’s programme is acceptable in itself: abolishing grammar schools, raising the minimum wage and four entire new bank holidays – a cornucopia of socialist progress! Backsliding on Trident is, at least, regretted, although blamed on “an anonymous party official”.

Other groups, in the grand Trotskyist tradition of positioning oneself a meagre few seconds of arc to the left of the prevailing Stalinist wisdom, demand more. From the Socialist Party in England and Wales comes the call for a “bold socialist campaign” (The Socialist, April 25). Socialist Resistance cries out for a “radical left programme” (April 19). Socialist Appeal wants a “bold socialist alternative” (April 18) … and so on.

What counts as a socialist programme nowadays? SPEW provide some details, as comfortingly familiar as a pair of slippers – “renationalisation of [all] privatised public services”, and the banks, and the pharmaceutical industry, all of which should be “linked to the need for fundamental socialist change”. The last phrase sounds radical, but is actually entirely meaningless – linked how, comrades? When Theresa May ‘links’ such plans to the gulag, will that count? If the ‘link’ is so important, why not just demand Corbyn puts the actual transformation in his programme?

Remarkably, neither Resisting Socialism’s Alan Thornett nor the relevant issuers-of-statements of Socialist Appeal have anything much to say on the matter of “radical left” or “bold socialist” policies. Both, however, urge Corbyn to permit the Scottish nationalists their second referendum (and indeed both endorse a ‘yes’ vote, though neither say so in their election statements). Socialist Worker went further in an article prior to May’s election call, suggesting that Labour’s poll ratings could in part be repaired by “backing Scottish independence”.

The SWP version of this is useful as an extreme point of the sheer madness of this method. If Jeremy Corbyn came out tomorrow with a statement backing Scottish independence, the immediate response would likely be a unilateral declaration of independence of the Scottish Labour Party. Theresa May would gladly cash the blank cheque, and denounce Labour on the basis of English chauvinism. Labour would be crucified both sides of the border.

We need to be clear about the point of all this. If it were a matter of principle to support Scottish independence, then that might be a sacrifice worth making. But Socialist Worker sells it not as a sacrifice at all, but as a sure means of victory; and likewise do SA and SR sell their milder versions of the same as a promising electoral gambit; and so also does SPEW claim that wide nationalisation is the royal road to popularity … This logic is so common on the far left that it barely passes notice, but under the circumstances we must insist that it is nonsensical; for it consists of utterly marginal forces in society imagining that their particular combination of shibboleths already possesses enormous mass support which has somehow heretofore gone unnoticed.

A particular case of this syndrome is Brexit, where our comrades are at sixes and sevens, having taken entirely different lines on the matter. Thornett demands that Labour “present an alternative to the hard Brexit being planned by May, including the retention of free movement in the event of access the single market [sic – presumably this should be ‘losing access to the single market’ – PD]”. In similar mood the ultra-remoaners of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty call “for opposition to the Tories’ Brexit plans, for defence of free movement and migrants’ rights, for remaining in the single market” – otherwise “Labour will go into the election echoing, or scarcely contesting, the Tories’ main message” (April 18). Equal and opposite are the left Brexiteers of the Morning Star and SPEW.

Both sides argue that a clear line on Brexit is fundamental to success – their line. And for both sides the argument is substantially negative, in that choosing the opposite line is an error. For the AWL, a firm perspective for Brexit will leave Labour indistinguishable from the Tories; for The Socialist a ‘soft’ Brexit or ‘remain’ position would alienate “workers who voted for Brexit [who] did so primarily because they were in revolt against all the misery they have suffered over the last decade”. The problem is that they are both right: if Corbyn drifts towards the remainers, he will be torn apart for being ‘out of touch’ with ‘ordinary people’, in his ‘cosmopolitan elite bubble’. If he hardens on Brexit, the pace of Blairite sabotage will be accelerated, and he will be lambasted for losing control of his party.

In short, the game is rigged, and all this ‘tactical advice’ from well-meaning lefts is utterly facile. It reveals the serried ranks of Britain’s Marxists as what they are, which is to say, merely pale echoes of Labourism. What has Corbyn been up to, after all, if not casting around for wizard wheezes and gimmicks to shore up his short-term popularity? The Corbyn office’s strategy has been to give all the ground asked of them on issues of ‘high politics’, and fight purely on a platform of modest economic reforms. The result is that he and his allies refuse to confront the actual arrangement of power against him, leading to the present situation, where he must fight a general election under constant assault from his own side. The far left does not seriously confront this problem, merely recommending a different slate of gimmicks.

We live in strange times, and it may be that there is a startling reversal before June 8. Yet that is in many respects besides the point. The left so fears defeat that it refuses to even think it possible, insisting that May could come unstuck, or isn’t as strong as she looks, or whatever other comforting delusions are available. But, on the basis of all currently available evidence, the left will not wake up on June 9 with a friend in Number 10. What then, comrades? Do we go back to our papers, and write in sadness that everything would have been different if Corbyn had promised to nationalise Pfizer under democratic workers’ control? Or do we fight to purge the labour movement of traitors and build it into a social force that can withstand the attacks of the bosses’ media?

We would hope for a renewed commitment to the latter. Yet we must admit it is probably a more forlorn hope than the most dewy-eyed Corbynite expresses for June’s election. The Morning Star and its Communist Party of Britain are incapable of political lines that seriously oppose the left wing of the bureaucracy; SPEW prefers to obey the orders of the RMT union rather than actually get involved in the Labour Party struggle; the SWP actively discourages its members and periphery from engaging in such internal struggles; the AWL involves itself, but often on the wrong side; Socialist Appeal has fallen so utterly into flighty eclecticism and millenarian crisis-mongering that we cannot be sure when their attention will stray elsewhere; and Resisting Socialism is reduced to hopeless liberal philistinism, and will abandon Labour as soon as they deem something else sufficiently attractive to ‘the youth’ they (and, these days, most of us) so conspicuously lack.

Thus the paradox of the situation: the greatest opportunity the left has had in a generation coincides with its political nadir.

Momentum, The left

Cohering the Labour left

Carla Roberts of Labour Party Marxists reports on the first meeting of the Grassroots Momentum steering committee on April 22 in London

This was a surprisingly positive and constructive meeting. Surprising for a number of reasons. Firstly, the committee was elected exactly six weeks previously at Grassroots Momentum’s first, fractious conference on March 11. And if “a week is a long time in politics”, these six weeks certainly felt like an eternity. Not a single decision has been made and the only thing the majority of committee members had agreed on was to oppose the proposal to intervene at the Momentum ‘conference’ on March 25 with our own leaflet. The rest of the email communications were concerned with an argument over the length of our lunch break (30 minutes, since you ask) and if there should be a pooled fare system (no).

Secondly, Momentum itself is disappearing down the plughole with ever-increasing speed, which naturally has an impact on the left within it. Momentum meetings are becoming smaller and smaller. The demobilisation and depoliticisation of Momentum branches that followed Jon Lansman’s January 10 coup has become even worse in the last 10 days. As if most sensible people on the left weren’t disillusioned enough about Labour’s grim chances at the polls, they then received an email from Team Momentum telling them to stand down.

Yes, there are strict electoral rules and laws on election spending (as a bunch of Tory Party MPs has recently found). But to demand that Momentum branches effectively stop meeting in such a heightened political period – because “public meetings” could be seen as Labour Party campaigning – is adding to the sense of demoralisation. The right continues to fight dirty and with every trick they have, but Momentum is concerned about sticking to the letter of the law. Another trap Corbyn has stepped into, unfortunately.

Thirdly, the GM steering committee is made up of a lot of people who – how to put this nicely – really hate each others’ guts. The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (which has six members and supporters on the SC) have played a deeply disgusting role in the entirely fabricated ‘anti-Semitism scandal’ in the Labour Party, joining into the witch-hunt of Ken Livingstone and, of course, Jackie Walker, who also sits on the GM committee (and also has about half a dozen allies there).

Considering all these factors, I expected a rather fractious, ill-tempered meeting with very little outcome. But I guess we can thank Theresa May for focusing our minds. The snap election, plus the fact that Momentum is playing dead, have actually opened up a space on the left of the Labour Party.

Under the experienced chairmanship of Matt Wrack (leader of the Fire Brigade’s Union), the meeting started with a frank and open assessment of the current situation and the general election. There was a healthy sense of realism evident. Everybody in the room agreed that Labour’s chances of winning the election were pretty slim. To the committee’s credit, nobody voiced the moronic idea peddled by the likes of the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party that Theresa May has called this election because of a weakness of the Tory Party. Matt Wrack for example admitted to being “quite demoralised when I heard about the election”, because clearly Theresa May has called it for one reason and one reason alone: to crush the Labour Party and increase the Tory majority, aided by the entire media establishment.

Speaker after speaker bemoaned the fact that the right wing in the Labour Party continues with its assault on Corbyn and his leadership. Worse, Corbyn continues to let them to get away with it in the vague hope of ‘party unity’. Clearly, the right has not signed up to any truce, as can be witnessed by the dozen or so MPs who have said they would rather not stand again than run under a Corbyn leadership.

John Woodcock MP took the biscuit when he pronounced that he “will not countenance ever voting to make Jeremy Corbyn Britain’s prime minister”.4 In our view, Woodcock should be expelled, along with Tom Watson, Ian McNicol and, of course, good old Tony Blair. Blair has come out the woodwork to call for a “tactical” vote against Labour Party candidates who support Brexit – an offence that would have seen a left-winger expelled immediately by the NEC’s rigged compliance unit. But instead of cleansing the party of its saboteurs, the NEC has decided to prevent Labour Party members from having any say over the choosing of parliamentary candidates – which is of course part of the civil war against the left.

Graham Bash (a member of the Labour Representation Committee) was perhaps the most ‘officially optimistic’ speaker on the day. He thought that “we need to fight to win and we need to give a really positive message. We should say that we can win against the odds. We should not spread demoralisation and fear. Because the cost of failure will be huge and the left will face a carnival of reaction.”

True, of course, it would be pointless to start any fight in order to lose. But other speakers pointed to the fact that “demoralisation” will be equally widespread (or worse) if we pretend that we, for example, just need to point to Corbyn’s “10 pledges” (as committee member Jan Pollock suggested) and hope that it will win Labour the elections. Because it will not.

Most on the steering committee thought that the Labour Party would manage to close the current gap in the polls somewhat come June 8 (difficult not to), but that the Tories would very likely win. Which would of course lead to the next leadership challenge, probably fronted by Yvette Cooper, who has done nothing to dispel those rumours. In this situation, “we must convince Corbyn not to give in, not to step down, but hold on and continue to fight to transform the Labour Party”, said Matt Wrack, to the visible agreement of the meeting.

“Any candidate who is not Corbyn or McDonnell will be a defeat for the left”, comrade Wrack added – though some people later questioned if McDonnell really is still a reliable ally. There aren’t just his various U-turns and cringing apologies – some in the room also have not forgiven him for breaking his promise to send a video message to GM’s launch conference. Clearly, that hope was a bit naive. After all, the Corbyn team (which includes McDonnell) had sanctioned the Lansman coup. Why would he then support an organisation that was founded in opposition to that coup? My guess is that McDonnell nodded his head politely when the request was put to him, but never intended to fulfil it.

In any case, most seemed agreed on the need to continue to support Corbyn and McDonnell when they’re being attacked – but to criticise them when they are attacking socialist principles or continuing to try and appease the Labour right.

The meeting went on to decide a couple of concrete actions:

1. GM will publish a weekly email and launch a website, which will “do what Momentum does not do”, as one speaker put it. The intention is, for example, to publish good, political scripts for phone banking sessions; give people ideas on running stalls; working with other campaigns and encouraging Momentum members to go beyond the official Labour canvassing tactic of simply surveying voting intentions and instead have actual political discussions with people on the doorstep. There has been a suggestion that the website should feature comments on disputed issues like Labour’s apparently “united” climb down over immigration. We have to see if that will be picked up by the small team running the website and email bulletin.

2. GM will organise a post-election conference of the ‘Labour left’ on June 17 (or a week later). The idea is to use this meeting to fight against the likely disillusionment of the Labour left post June 8 and to convey the message that – no matter what the outcome of the elections – the key task remains: to transform the Labour Party to make it fit for purpose.

Detailed plans for the day have yet to be finalised, but the general idea is to have a smaller ‘strategy meeting’ during the day and a bigger rally in the late afternoon. Of course, those details are the place where the devil likes to hide and the preliminary discussions of the seven comrades planning the event have shown a fair amount of disagreements on how to move forward.

  • Should the strategy meeting allow motions to be heard? Or encourage groups to bring general position papers on the future of the Labour Party (that are not up for voting)? Should we invite both? Or should there be a general statement instead? Who is going to prepare it? Will we allow a proper discussion on any amendments?
  • Should only “big names” on the Labour left (LRC, Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and Red Labour) be officially invited? Or should we also include smaller groups like Red Flag, Labour Party Marxists, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Nick Wrack’s Labour Socialist Network, etc? All of them are of course centrally involved in GM and its steering committee.
  • What about Momentum branches? Should only those groups ‘affiliated’ to GM be allowed to send representatives? Or do we want to encourage those in branches with pro-Lansman majorities to come along? How many per branch?

All of these issues are still being discussed. It is no doubt a good idea to get the Labour left together in the same room. Even better if we can actually discuss what we think is the right strategy for transforming the Labour Party. An excellent initiative, in our view. But it should be transparent, politically honest and prepared to openly say what needs to be done to transform the Labour Party in a meaningful way – primarily, to take on the right. Corbyn is being undermined, briefed against and belittled by his ‘colleagues’ every step of the way. Unless we take on the saboteurs, the left will lose this fight and with it the best political opportunity it has had for many decades.

This begs the question as to why we should place such emphasis on the LRC and CLPD. They’ve been around a while, that’s true. But so has cancer. At least one person on the conference arrangements committee wants to make the staging of a conference dependent on the active participating of those groups.

But the CLPD – just like Momentum – has consciously decided to support Corbyn without any criticism. It has given up the fight for mandatory selection. It shows no interest in taking on the right in the party. The recent CLPD AGM voted against condemning Jon Lansman’s coup in Momentum. Why would they want to get involved in an event initiated by GM, an organisation that was founded in opposition to the coup?

We don’t know what the LRC leadership thinks about anything at the moment – maybe even they don’t – but it is probably safe to assume it is along similar lines to those of the CLPD. After all, they have now closed shop and will re-open only after the June 8 election.

The politics of Red Labour are another matter entirely. This group exists only online and does not really have any identifiable politics, as it is made up of people from a variety of political backgrounds. Clearly, while we should invite those organisations to participate in our conference, we should not subordinate ourselves to them or their politics. In particular the CLPD’s ‘strategy’ towards the Labour Party is fatally flawed. And even if the CLPD and LRC agreed to sponsor the conference (very doubtful), it begs the question if they would actually do anything with any motions or statements agreed there. It would simply be empty posturing, not the beginning of a real campaign to consciously and actively transform the Labour Party. So what’s the point?

The left, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Trotspotting: a field guide

Gallery

Tom Watson is worried about ‘infiltrators’: Jim Grant of Labour Party Marxists is less than impressed with his conspiracy theories

“I was first taught to spot a Trot at 50 yards in 1965 by Mr Bert Ramelson, Yorkshire industrial organiser of the Communist Party,” Jack Straw wrote in a briefly infamous letter to the Independent1. It is a matter of some regret that Straw never passed any tips on to Tom Watson, deputy leader of the Labour Party.

In the raging civil war over Labour’s future, Watson is playing a most particular role. He is, of course, a partisan of the right, according to the current polarisation, albeit historically a muscular centrist and Brownite. Yet his role is to present a lawyerly facade; he is the ‘responsible’ guy who does what he does for the good of the party. Frankly, it was a threadbare outfit even when he became deputy, and it is even scantier now. Loyalty to the party means, so far as Watson and his like are concerned, hostility to the left. For all his ‘fixer’ credentials, Watson has screwed this one up royally: all his backroom manoeuvres, all his ‘talks’ and press briefings, and where has it gotten his colleagues? Merely back to exactly where they were last year: staring down the barrel of another humiliating defeat at the hands of ordinary members.

It is perhaps that which explains the sheer desperation of Watson’s behaviour recently – and, to return to Straw’s Stalinoid missive to the Indy, the desperation of his ‘dossier’ of evidence concerning far-left infiltration.2

Rather inevitably, given the return to public consciousness of the 2003 invasion of Iraq since the Chilcot report was published, Watson’s evidence has acquired the ‘dodgy dossier’ soubriquet; and there are certain similarities between it and the notorious ‘evidence’ of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction presented to the press and parliament in September 2002. Principally, there is the fact that much of it is simply false, deliberately or otherwise; and of the rest, everything is presented in an entirely misleading light.

Rogues’ gallery

So who are the nefarious Trots steamrollering into the Labour Party? At the top of the list – inexplicably, given that they might be the smallest of the lot – is Red Flag. Watson and his valiant team of hurried Googlers have managed to work out that RF is the continuation of Workers Power. The comrades are guilty of – shock, horror! – distributing a model motion against the manoeuvres of the parliamentary party against the leadership.

Next is Labour Party Marxists – in Watson’s view, a “project” of the CPGB, which is in turn a “Trotskyist party” (it is neither Trotskyist, nor a Party; but the distinctions probably appear theological to the intrepid Trotspotters of Brewers’ Green, for whom no doubt Maoists are Trotskyists for present purposes too, and also our handful of confused old left-communist friends who find themselves today with Labour Party cards … ). Our great crime? Arguing for global proletarian revolution, for wholesale purging of the right, for winning Labour to a full revolutionary Marxist programme? Er, no: we support reselection of MPs (something already allowed for, to some extent, in the party’s rules … ) All the rest, we thereby conclude, must be just fine by brother Watson, which is certainly a pleasant surprise! Elsewhere, Watson & co are horrified to discover our call for more people to join the unions, and more union members to engage in the life of Labour; old Tom wants none of that rubbish. The unions are quite large enough for him (especially, no doubt, as most of them are behind the leadership).

Next up is the Alliance for Workers Liberty, which is ‘guilty’ of much the same sort of stuff, so we will not belabour the point: much outrage, of course, is dedicated to AWL comrade Jill Mountford’s senior position in Momentum. Mountford was suspended from Labour membership; it is obviously quite unacceptable to Watson that Momentum does not allow Labour’s blatantly compromised Compliance Unit to determine its membership requirements. It is also worth noting that it is hardly the case that Labour is suddenly flooded with AWL members, even adjusting for the group’s size: most of those to have fallen foul of disciplinary proceedings have been Labour members for years. Their membership can hardly be blamed on Jeremy Corbyn.

Stupidity

The three groups aforementioned, though all tiny compared to the massive influx of new members, at least have the virtue of operating within it.

Tom Watson wants to go further, however. We can see why: there’s simply not enough Trots on that list for even the most gullible idiot to consider it an invasion. Add us all up, and there is probably a numerically greater scourge of 9/11 truthers to worry about. There is a wider Trotskyoid fringe in the Labour left that Watson could have mentioned, of course, but most of these people – like AWL members – have been hanging around for a long old time. It is still not enough.

Thus he insists on trying to rope in the two largest Trotskyist organisations in Britain – we speak of the Socialist Party in England and Wales, and the Socialist Workers Party. At this point, Watson’s document descends entirely into stupidity. For both these organisations have refused to urge people to join the Labour Party.

Thus the ‘evidence’ against SPEW, which amounts in the first instance to the fact that they claimed to help organise a few Momentum meetings, and secondly that a motion passed at Unite’s policy conference in favour of mandatory reselection was moved by a SPEW member. What, does Watson want SPEW members out of Unite now? Does Unite not get to decide its own policy? Is it not a greater concern for greaseball careerists like Watson that people were willing to vote for it?

The punchline to Tom’s tour of the British far left is the SWP. Surely not? “SWP sets up training course to infiltrate Labour”, screams the sub-headline. You can imagine the embarrassment at Weekly Worker towers, dear reader! We have been keeping close tabs on the SWP for decades; how can we have missed such a major change of course? Except, of course, that the truth is the exact opposite: the link Watson helpfully provides brings us to a list of articles in SWP publications, all of which urge readers not to join the Labour Party.3 It is as if some neo-Nazi had a headline along the lines of ‘Finally, proof that the holocaust never happened’, and then linked readers to Raul Hilberg’s Destruction of the European Jews.

There will no doubt be some who think this comparison a little gauche. Alas! What else do we have before us than a conspiracy theory quite as absurd? At least holocaust deniers, 9/11 truthers, birthers and anti-vaxxers actually believe the nonsense they peddle – which Watson surely cannot. How thick does he think his audience is?

Tom’s friends

Come to think of it, who does he think his audience is?

The memo was ostensibly for the information of Jeremy Corbyn and his ‘people’, but they are surely quite aware of the limited extent, such as it is, of Trotskyists coming to the Labour Party. Perhaps it is a last ditch appeal to wavering voters in the Labour leadership poll, suggesting that the voice they hear telling them to vote for Corbyn is the same voice that shrilly hawks them a copy of Socialist Worker outside the tube on a Saturday morning … but can there be any waverers at all?

Let us advance another, more likely hypothesis: Tom’s dossier has the same purpose as Tony Blair’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ intervention in last year’s Leader contest: that is, to raise a standard for the troops on his side. It will yield an infusion of publicity from the yellow press. It will rally the despondent among the Progress youth, and give them another absurdity to hurl at opposing forces in CLP meetings. It will remind them, like a good fighting song, of the justice of their cause and the perfidy of their enemies.

From the point of view of the ‘Trots’ – or, indeed, of anyone with an attention span north of ten seconds – such accusations as are contained therein are richly amusing. For what is the picture painted? That “they”, the Trots, are playing silly buggers, taking things over by stealth, fighting dirty, lying about their true intentions and political outlook. Remind you of anyone?

Here is the situation as it is, not as Tom Watson would like you to think it. There is an electoral contest going on, between Jeremy Corbyn, a more-or-less principled, run-of-the-mill Labour leftist of some years standing, and Owen Smith, whose politics are entirely undistinguished, and is running on the basis that he is not Jeremy Corbyn. Smith, in other words, is deliberately obfuscating his politics, since it is plain to him that he would not win on the basis that he was a jolly competent paid lobbyist for Pfizer. His supporters routinely manufacture scurrilous accusations – of physical intimidation, anti-Semitism, misogyny – against the supporters of his opponent. Those of his supporters on the National Executive Committee – including Watson – attempted to keep Corbyn off the ballot entirely, and – when that failed – aggressively gerrymandered the contest.

Now, some number among them whisper that – quelle surprise – they will not accept the result of the election if, as looks nigh on inevitable, Corbyn is returned as leader; they will instead attempt to seize the Labour Party’s name, assets and status as Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition. This may be a serious threat, or perhaps merely more mind games; either which way, the sense of entitlement is breathtaking, as is the hypocrisy of Watson, the arch-manipulator, fishing around for reds under his bed. In truth, more than 200,000 people have joined the Labour party in the last year and a half. We doubt there are 200,000 Trotskyists in the world.

Trot want?

Is there any truth to Watson’s ‘dossier’?

Well, there always is – somewhere. There certainly are some number of far-leftists in the Labour Party, and some smaller number more than there were prior to last summer. Even those who have not joined up, like SPEW, who insist on maintaining a pseudo-Labourite electoral profile even under the new conditions, will vent forth about their ‘support’ for Jeremy, which must nevertheless come from ‘outside’ … We ‘Trots’ are not so daft as not to recognise helpful movement in the Overton window.

There is another thing, which is more deeply ironic. The most immediate effect of little curveballs like Watson’s dossier is to put the Corbyn camp on the defensive (‘no, we’re not Trots, honest!’). This attitude leads to desperate attempts to be doing something, which means tacitly accepting the justice of the right’s hysterical accusations. The clearest recent example is the ‘anti-Semitism’ panic, but there have been depressingly many. Where the Corbyn inner circle go, Momentum’s unaccountable leadership clique is sure to follow – nothing must be allowed that would embarrass the leadership, and thus people are leant on to obey Jeremy’s call for a “kinder politics” (ie, do not criticise the right, do not pursue political struggle against them, and so on).

This attitude greatly benefits two groups: the first, naturally, is the right. The second is … the ‘Trots’.

For, if the official leadership of the Labour left is paralysed by timidity – if it is unable to meet even the instinctive understanding of angry Corbyn-supporting Labour members without patronising and demobilising them – then who will? We expect that more than a few will have a positive appreciation of Lev Davidovich Bronstein.

Who will provide you a model motion to get rid of your traitor MP, and pack them off to their panic room? The Trots. Who will call for militant countermeasures against any further coup attempts by the right – the occupation of party premises whose fate lies before some judge, for example? The Trots. (We would like to stress, parenthetically, that local Labour organisations ought to plan for such action starting now – the right may well be desperate enough to try something of this kind.)

Who will urge street stalls, picketing, fighting for policy at conference, setting up papers, initiative at the rank and file, rather than damping down enthusiasm wherever possible? Who will dare to suggest that you think further ahead than the next general election, or even the current Labour leader, who will need replacing at some time or another? Who will give you permission not to be held hostage by the right, and by extension Rupert Murdoch? The Trots, the Trots, the Trots!

Long may Tom Watson, and his perverse co-conspirators in the Momentum leadership, continue to do us such favours l

Notes

1. November 16, 2004.

2. https://www.scribd.com/document/320882857/Far-Left-Entryism-Dossier-Tom-Watson

3. http://swp.org.uk/education/main#corbyn

The left

CLPD – Advancing but taking heavy casualties

Gallery 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLPD role

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Democracy

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

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

Thin end of the wedge

Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Defeat the right

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

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

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

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

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

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