Category Archives: The right

Time to counterattack

Gallery July 13, 2016

The Labour plotters are well organised, but weaker than they look. Jim Grant of Labour Party Marxists urges that we take the fight to them

[This article first appeared in Weekly Worker on Thursday July 7 – when Angela Eagle was dithering, hoping to launch her coup attempt with Jeremy Corbyn excluded. Now the Labour leader election is on, and the July 12 NEC meeting has, thankfully, put Corbyn on the ballot paper. Expect a dirty campaign. Will the courts be asked to reverse that decision? If Corbyn wins, expect the PLP rightwing majority to split from the party. Good riddance. We urge all socialists to join Labour, and fight, fight and fight again to democratise the party and transform it into a permanent united front of all sections of the working class.]

Christopher Clark’s extraordinary account of the background to World War I, The sleepwalkers, begins with the story of the violent overthrow of the Serbian king Alexandar in 1903:

Shortly after two o’clock on the morning of June 11 1903, 28 officers of the Serbian army approached the main entrance of the royal palace in Belgrade. After an exchange of fire, the sentries standing guard before the building were arrested and disarmed … Finding the king’s apartments barred by a pair of heavy oaken doors, the conspirators blew them open with a carton of dynamite. The charge was so strong that the doors were torn from their hinges and thrown across the antechamber inside, killing the royal adjutant behind them …

The [royal] couple were cut down in a hail of shots at point-blank range … An orgy of gratuitous violence followed. The corpses were stabbed with swords, torn with a bayonet, partially disembowelled and hacked with an axe, until they were mutilated beyond recognition.1

We bring this to readers’ attention not only to commend the book, which is an illuminating popular introduction to its subject, but to point out some of the essential features of a successful coup. One has to act swiftly and decisively, leaving no room for doubt. The outcome must be spectacular. Superior numbers must be ensured wherever the spilling of blood is likely. And, while coups are often foretold long in advance, it is a good idea to retain the element of surprise.

It is against the 1903 efforts of Dragutin Dimitrijević and his comrades that we must measure the more recent, peaceful coup attempts in British politics. For illustrative purposes, we include Michael Gove’s undoing of Boris Johnson’s prime ministerial ambitions; sure, Boris is formally no lower in the world than he was last Wednesday, but he was the Tory heir apparent for, at a conservative estimate, the whole period between last year’s general election and last week. In a few short hours, Gove put paid to that with a truly bewildering and highly effective piece of political chicanery, which has rather left the parliamentary Conservative Party looking like a monstrous conga-line of backstabbers. Who’s next?

Our real focus, of course, is the sustained assault on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. It at least has some of the features of a successful coup. For a start, the plotters are very well organised. Our minds are cast back to June 26; after Hilary Benn more or less demanded his own sacking, things took on a remarkable rhythm, almost turgid in its regularity; an hour would pass, and another junior shadow minister would resign. Each, individually, had weighed up their options and with an agonising cry of conscience, decided to resign exactly an hour after the previous one. A suspicious mind would suggest that they planned it that way.

The shadow cabinet crisis gave way to the vote of no confidence, which went more or less to plan, and since then the pressure on Corbyn to resign has been intense. The most significant element of this part of the offensive has been the aggressive dissemination of straightforward lies in the press – Corbyn is striking a deal with this person or that; John McDonnell is about to throw him to the wolves … When the outlandish scenarios outlined failed to come to pass, the lie is not admitted – the whole thing is written up as “Jeremy changed his mind at the last minute – doesn’t he know it is not leader-like to dither?”

The whole thing is almost reminiscent of the FBI’s Cointelpro tactics. Indeed, according to a relatively fresh-faced Corbynite news website, The Canary, the whole thing has been engineered by a couple of PR firms on behalf of the Fabian Society. This, on the whole, strikes us as a little too neat, but only inasmuch as the individuals cited can have only the most tenuous connection to Fabianism; we are dealing fundamentally with a well-organised clique.2

This is a detail, of course. The thing about conspiracies is that – contra 9/11 ‘truthers’ and the like – they are blindingly bloody obvious after about five minutes. Thus, the anti-Corbyn conspirators had to act fast, and so they did for about a day and a half.

And then … nothing.

Stale tactics

Angela Eagle, who seems to have registered the domain, angela4leader.org, two days before she supposedly lost confidence in the man she seeks to defenestrate, has become suddenly very coy. She was ready to stand – and then she wasn’t; something about Corbyn imminently standing down (one of the aforementioned pieces of made-up nonsense). She is now, magnanimously, giving Jeremy yet “more time” to do the right thing.

Yet it is looking less and less likely by the day. The plotters’ tactics have become stale. They have become so because Corbyn is confident that he will win any leadership election; and (presumably) no ‘private polling’ on the part of the plotters tells them any different. The one thing they cannot do, ironically, is actually challenge him. No doubt his standing is weaker now than it has been in recent history; but so is that of the plotters, suffering from the fact that blatant and deliberate sabotage is not a good look among those with even a homeopathic dose of party loyalty.

Things are worse even than that for the traitors. They are on two strict timetables. The first and more significant is that of Labour’s conferences. At the 2016 annual conference in September, the left will seek to ‘clarify’ the currently ambiguous rules over whether an incumbent leader is automatically on the ballot if challenged. There is a very good chance of success. There is also the small matter of the Chilcot inquiry: we cannot imagine the likes of Benn and Eagle, who voted for the disastrous imperialist adventure, are having a good time of it at the moment. (Alex Salmond of the Scottish National Party has proposed this as the main issue.)

The latest rumblings are that there are formal ‘peace talks’ going on; yet the small print is quite clear. There will be no immediate resignation. While Corbyn’s Parliamentary Labour Party enemies declare that broad support in the wider membership is not enough to save him, it is quite clear that the lack of broad support they enjoy in the wider party is enough to leave them in this embarrassing position. It is as if Dimitrijević and his cohorts had paused outside the royal bedchamber, on the brink of their victory, suddenly overcome by doubt – and stayed there for three weeks. I write at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the reader, which is to say, at some remove of time into the past. You may already be coming to terms with Corbyn’s grudging resignation. If you are, there is nothing to blame for it except his own personal weakness. If he is defeated, then defeat has been snatched from the jaws of victory.

Because, even if some phoney ‘deal’ is agreed that Corbyn will resign before such and such a date, those he seeks to placate will never be stronger than they are now. For by the time Corbyn is supposed to stand down – whenever that is – there will be one or more Labour Party conferences, at which there is the possibility that the position of the left within the party can become strengthened.

At this point, it is necessary to point out that this advantage is hardly likely to just drop into our laps. The left must first understand that it has a stronger position than the relentless barrage of fabricated media hype attests, and then grasp the opportunity to exploit that position. As usual, neither of these relatively simple tasks is the gimme it ought to be.

What would pressing the advantage look like? Let us imagine, as we said before, the Serbian regicides frozen in fear at the threshold of success. What would actually have become of them? Perhaps not the spectacular disembowelling they, in reality, put upon the king; but it would not have been pretty. That is the most important lesson for all plotters of coups – make sure you win, because, if you do not, a sensible ruler will not leave you the opportunity for a do-over in a year or two.

A sensible ruler; but here we are. Maoists, in the old days, used to talk of ‘two-line struggle’, and there is something similar going on in the Labour Party today: there is the line of conciliation, of peace talks, of ‘uniting against the Tories’ and what have you, and there is the line of war, of giving no quarter to the traitors, of deselection and expulsion for all who have participated in this brazen and cynical attempt to overthrow the democracy of the party. Regular readers will be unsurprised to find Labour Party Marxists in the latter camp, and Corbyn himself in the former.

The important question is where Momentum will fall, and beyond it the Labour left at large. The Momentum line so far seems to be Corbynite in the narrow sense: for abandoning these senseless ‘squabbles’ and getting on with fighting the main enemy; but reports from meetings of the Labour left are encouraging, in that they suggest that there is at least some constituency for more radical measures. The idea that unity is possible between principled socialists and pro-imperialist, pro-capitalist careerists like Hilary Benn and Angela Eagle is risible. Only the capitulation of the socialists, or the defeat of the right, will solve the dilemma.

Notes
1. C Clark The sleepwalkers London 2012, pp3-4.
2. www.thecanary.co/2016/06/28/truth-behind-labour-coup-really-began-manufactured-exclusive.

Democracy and the Labour Party, The right

Turn the tables on the right

Gallery June 30, 2016

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

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

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

Rules

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

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

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

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

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

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

A historic split is clearly on the cards.

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

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

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

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

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

Split

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

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

Hence the Labour left has four immediate tasks.

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

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

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

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

Long term

Whatever the particular scenario, the Labour Party must be reorganised from top to bottom. That should be our overriding aim – as opposed to trying to win the next general election by concocting some rotten compromise with the right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Partymax

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

A particularly potent weapon here is the demand that all our elected representatives should take only the average wage of a skilled worker. A principle upheld by the Paris Commune and the Bolshevik revolution. Even the Italian Communist Party under Enrico Berlinguer applied the ‘partymax’ in the 1970s. With the PCI’s huge parliamentary fraction this proved to be a vital source of funds.

Our MPs are on a basic £67,060 annual salary. On top of that they get around £12,000 in expenses and allowances, putting them on £79,060 (yet at present Labour MPs are only obliged to pay the annual £82 parliamentarian’s subscription fee to the party). Moreover, as leader of the official opposition, Jeremy Corbyn not only gets his MP’s salary: he is entitled to an additional £73,617.11

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

Given the Labour Party’s mass membership, affiliated trade unions and the huge challenges before us, we urgently need to reach out to all those who are disgusted by corrupt career politicians, all those who aspire to a better world, all those who have an objective interest in ending capitalism. Towards that end we must establish our own press, radio and TV. To state the obvious, tweeting and texting have severe limits. They are brilliant mediums for transmitting short, sharp, clear messages. But, when it comes to complex ideas, debating principles and charting political strategies, they are worse than useless.

Relying on the favours of the capitalist press, radio and TV is a fool’s game. True, it worked splendidly for Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell. But, as Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband found to their cost, to live by the mainstream media is to die by the mainstream media. No, to set the agenda we need our own full-spectrum alternative. The established media can be used, of course. But, as shown with the anti-Corbyn coup, when things really matter, we get hardly a look in. Indeed the capitalist press, radio and TV are integral to the anti-Corbyn coup. There were, of course, idiot voices to the contrary – those who wanted to court The Guardian, the Mirror, etc.12 But, frankly, we should have anticipated the lies, the bile, the mockery, the implacable opposition.

Once we had the Daily Herald. Now we have not a thing. Well, apart from the deadly-dull trade union house journals, the advertising sheets of the confessional sects and the Morning Star (which in reality is still under the control of unreconstructed Stalinites).

We should aim for an opinion-forming daily paper of the labour movement and seek out trade union, cooperative, crowd and other such sources of funding. And, to succeed, we have to be brave: iconoclastic viewpoints, difficult issues, two-way arguments must be included as a matter of course. The possibility of distributing such a paper free of charge should be considered and, naturally, everything should be put up on the web without pay walls or subscription charges. We should also launch a range of internet-based TV and radio stations. With the abundant riches of dedication, passion and ideas that exist on the left here in Britain and far beyond we can surely better the BBC, Al Jazeera, Russia Today and Sky.

Leader

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reclaim

So, the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership faces both an enemy within the PLP and an enemy within their own reformist ideology. They seriously seem to believe that socialism can be brought about piecemeal, through a series of left and ever lefter Labour governments. In reality, though, a Labour government committed to the existing state and the existing constitutional order produces not decisive steps in the direction of socialism, but attacks on the working class … and then the election of a Tory government.

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

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

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

Regarded from this, the only correct, point of view, the Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois party, because, although made up of workers, it is led by reactionaries, and the worst kind of reactionaries at that, who act quite in the spirit of the bourgeoisie. It is an organisation of the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically dupe the workers with the aid of the British Noskes and Scheidemanns [the executioners of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht].13

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

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

Anti-Semitism, The right

Anti-Semitic smears employed by the right

Gallery March 3, 2016

The Labour left must get better organised, argues Gary Toms of Labour Party Marxists

The right held onto its Young Labour seat on the national executive committee by just a single vote. The Momentum-backed candidate, James Elliot, lost out to ‘moderate’ Jasmin Beckett, who had received the support of the hard-right Labour First and Progress groups. The circumstances of this victory at the February 27-28 Scarborough conference have been hotly contested.

The Unite union has called for an inquiry after it was revealed that Jasmin Beckett won her slender majority on the back of a foul Facebook and Twitter campaign against her rival. Beckett had suggested: “Get a few people tweeting saying, ‘Shocked my union GMB are supporting James Elliott, who is anti-Semitic’?” The national secretary of Labour Students, Josh Woolas, advised: “Needs to look like a genuine complaint about racism and not a smear campaign!” (Morning Star February 26). The full exchange between Beckett and her supporters has since been published anonymously on Twitter.

This was an attempt to link James Elliot to accusations levelled at the Oxford University Labour Club by its former co-chair, Alex Chalmers. His resignation came following the OULC’s announcement of support for Israeli Apartheid Week (and, of course, comrade Elliot is an ex-Oxford student). The Labour Party has since opened an inquiry (it is still unpublished, though its impartiality has been called into question, not least because it was conducted by Michael Rubin, a Progress partisan). The fact of the matter is that the OULC is simply committed to solidarity with the Palestinian people – not to demonising Jews. Nonetheless, the ridiculous accusations of anti-Semitism levelled by Alex Chalmers have been presented by McCarthyite journalists, such as Dan Hodges, as if they were simply facts (see ‘Is the Labour Party’s problem with racism beyond repair?’ The Daily Telegraph February 29).

Doubtless there are a tiny number of individuals within the left milieu who hold anti-Semitic views and obviously such people have no place within our movement. However, anyone expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people automatically faces charges of anti-Semitism. An accusation which comes from people who are determined to support Israel despite its dispossession of millions of Palestinians, despite its occupation of the West Bank and despite its readying itself for another bout of ethnic cleansing.

‘Intimidation’

As well as the smear campaign conducted by Beckett and co, there are other complaints. Apparently she falsely presented herself to some voters as being linked to Momentum. Despite the tiny margin of her victory, calls for a recount were rejected by returning officer Stephen Donnelly (who, according to Jon Lansman, is a “recruiting sergeant for Progress”).1

Predictably there were accusations from the right of “intimidation” and “bullying” by the left and the unions. One delegate, Charlotte, a Unite shop steward, posted a picture of herself having a telephone conversation as ‘evidence’ of such behaviour. Unite official Zac Harvey had asked to see her ballot paper so as to check that she was abiding by her union mandate. Rightwing Labour MPs – eg, John Mann – and the bourgeois press, from The Guardian rightwards, have subsequently mounted a campaign for Young Labour to be made into a “safe space” (for Labour First and Progress).

It is worth mentioning that a week before the Young Labour conference, Momentum-backed candidates had won every seat on the youth wing’s national committee, a sure sign of the resurgence of the left – for the first time in 30 years. Given this, it is more than a pity that the Young Labour rep on the NEC remains a rightwinger. So Scarborough was a missed opportunity for Momentum (hopefully comrade Elliot will be lodging an appeal).

While the right urges the membership to ‘unite against the Tories’, it does everything to undermine the Jeremy Corbyn leadership and attack the left (seeking the expulsion of socialists with links to the far left, etc). The shrill condemnation of Momentum by rightwing MPs, their Labour First co-thinkers and the mainstream media is part of an ongoing civil war, even if the Parliamentary Labour Party right is not yet prepared to launch an open leadership bid at the moment – Corbyn is far too popular within the labour movement (even more so than when he was elected leader).

Against the machinations of the right our best response is organisation. Momentum needs cohesion and a clear orientation towards transforming the party through carrying out a democratic revolution. The right is not a legitimate trend in the labour movement. They are class enemies and ought to be driven out.

Notes

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

Democracy and the Labour Party, The right

Something for everyone

Gallery January 29, 2016

Readers of Margaret Beckett’s report on the general election defeat see only what they want to see – and miss the big picture, argues Jim Grant of Labour Party Marxists

It can sometimes seem nowadays that the Labour Party is divided into two internally united and violently opposed camps – the left and the right, with the suitability of the party’s new leader as the issue of principle on which they are divided.

In fact, the upper echelons of Labour have always contained a morass of centrists: grey people who worship government office above all else, and will pull behind those who promise it. It so happens that those promises are most compellingly made by the right in ‘normal’ times (we shall see why later), and so we find such people most often under the right’s magnanimous care. They include former rightwingers left behind, somewhat bewildered, by the aggressive Toryward trajectory of the Blair years; high-profile and basically apolitical ‘safe pairs of hands’ (Jack Straw, say); and a rump of also-rans and sometimes-weres.

Among the latter, we might name Margaret Beckett. Beckett picked up a few front-line roles in the Blair years, becoming Britain’s first female foreign secretary, for those who keep track of that kind of thing. Yet she has been quiet for the last few years, after being sidelined by Brown. She got back in the news last year as one of the “morons” who nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership; but by that time, presumably, she was already compiling her most recent ticket to the front pages – a 36-page report on how Labour can have been so blindsided by defeat last May – on the say-so of interim leader Harriet Harman.

As befitting her political profile, Beckett has produced a report regarded as most amenable by, well, almost everyone. The left will be reassured that Ed Miliband’s periodic ‘left turns’ produced his team’s most popular policies – a freeze on energy prices, the mansion tax, the gentlest nudges against the corrupt bonanza of privatised rail transport. The right will find their catch-words in there too, in Labour’s failure to make the case for its economic competence, and its failure to close the gap with the Tories over touchy subjects like immigration. Stephen Bush rather acidly notes on the New Statesman website:

A failure to win trust on “issues of connection” – ie, welfare and immigration – is blamed in part for the defeat, but whether that involves a harsher tone or “winning the argument” for either high immigration, higher social security or both is left unclear. Labour divides into four quarters on this … None of these groups can say with any honesty that the Beckett report provides them with any clarity as to which approach to pursue.1

Quite apart from giving warring camps within Labour something new to squabble over, Beckett’s report has been met with the usual potluck of cherry-picking and outright mendacity from the press. We were right all along, they say: nobody “trusted” Labour on the economy, nobody “trusted” Labour on immigration, and nobody could see Ed Miliband as prime ministerial material – you know: his teeth, his bacon sandwiches, etc.

Thus findings on the popularity of Miliband’s anaemically leftwing policy platforms are, of course, ignored. It does not fit into the prevailing narrative of ‘economic trust’, though we note that this phrase can mean an awful lot of things, depending on who you ask and how. Democratic primary voters in America, for example, ‘trust’ the reformist-socialist, Bernie Sanders, over Hillary Clinton on economic matters – presumably meaning that they trust him to actually make Wall Street bankers’ lives a little more difficult, rather than just huff and puff a little under pressure (however naive this trust actually is).

The bigger lie, however, is a sneakier one. All these problems have one thing in common (alongside their vagueness and artificiality): they are all matters of perception. Yet they are being presented as if the Labour Party’s fate last May was entirely in its own hands. Miliband could have been more ‘prime ministerial’. ‘Economic trust’ could have been restored.

But this is not how political perceptions work. There is another agent in the process that has a big impact on how policies, politicians and so forth are perceived. This agent is, of course, the very same media currently crowing about their correctness.

Believing their lies

So to return to ‘economic trust’ for a moment – the claim, again, is that the Labour Party was not able to shake the perception that it was at fault for creating the post-2007 mess. This is a truly fantastical notion at face value. There was a global financial crisis, for heaven’s sake. Britain was not one island of disorder in a calm ocean of prosperity. Yet this absurd accusation was hurled about by Tory frontbenchers as if it were self-evident. Given that they did so, it would be quite simple for the lowliest hack on a national newspaper to demonstrate how risible the line was every time it was trotted out.

This, obviously, did not happen – even The Guardian and the like were often too busy aiding Blairite manoeuvres against Miliband to point this out with much force. Most other papers repeated such horseshit in every other editorial. What is true of ‘economic trust’ is true also of the immigration issue, and most especially the doomsday scenario of a Labour-Scottish National Party coalition government – Rupert Murdoch played a devilishly clever game by having his papers simultaneously support the SNP in Scotland and whip up chauvinist hysteria against them in England. The crowing of the Mail, Times and company thus amounts to the following statement: ‘Labour lost the election because people believed the lies we told them repeatedly over the course of five years.’ Any Labour politician who repeats any of these question-begging non-explanations for Labour’s defeat is thereby exposed as a traitor and an enemy agent.

For what this whole rigmarole amounts to is nothing short of a protection racket – in fact it is worse. The mafia will take your money in return for not burning down your restaurant; if you pay, they will at least keep to their end of the bargain. When it comes to the press, however, they will demand genuflection before their interests, and in return they might choose not to ridicule you at some later date. Those who urge Labour to make the necessary payments can promise nothing, and if it does not work the prescription will be the same: give more ground, bend the knee further, still with no guarantee, or even reasonable expectation, of success.

Our centrists will, of course, be concerned that this is the only game in town – even if the house always wins. Indeed, it is – at the moment. We in Labour Party Marxists are often ridiculed for not encouraging the formation of ‘left governments’ under conditions where they will lead to disappointment, and many of these same critical comrades were holding their noses and voting for Miliband in May. Yet what if Beckett’s report had been unnecessary, and Ed had triumphed (with or without nationalist support)? Where would we be now?

Stuck with an unpopular Labour PM in pell-mell retreat, obviously enough. That energy price freeze would not have made it to Christmas. The Tories would not be in government, but they would transparently be a government in waiting, no doubt with someone worse than Cameron in charge. And at the grassroots? Would we have a 400,000-strong Labour Party, replenished overwhelmingly with leftwing recruits?

The point of this digression is simple: for the working class under a bourgeois political regime, the pursuit of government at all costs drags politics as a whole to the right. This is why we find the likes of Margaret Beckett more comfortable with Tony Blair than Jeremy Corbyn – Blair’s promises of power have a truer ring to them, what with Rupert Murdoch singing backing vocals and everything.

We need to escape from this bind, and that means changing the rules. We do not need a Labour government in 2020 nearly as much as we need an effective opposition now. Many Labour left groupings, from the likes of the marginal Labour Representation Committee, through Momentum, up to Corbyn’s inner circle itself, like to talk about making Labour into a great mass movement again. That is a correct impulse. The trouble is that they invariably fail to see that this aim is in contradiction with the exclusive veneration of getting into government, and even more sharply the belief that any Labour government is better than any Tory government. Look at the threadbare state in which the Labour Party was left by Blair and Brown – that is where 13 years of ‘sensible’ government gets you.

If, on the other hand, we become an effective opposition – that is, one that stands for an alternative form of society, for the rule of the working class – then we can change the rules l

Notes

1. www.newstatesman.com/politics/elections/2016/01/beckett-report-wont-help-labour-win-next-election.

Democracy and the Labour Party, The right

Fear of a Corbyn victory

Gallery July 16, 2015 1 Comment

Surging support for Corbyn is terrifying both the media and the right of the party, writes Charles Gradnitzer of Labour Party Marxists

On July 5 Unite the Union announced that its executive committee had voted to advise members to give Jeremy Corbyn their first preference in the leadership contest.
One can imagine the head- scratching that must have occurred at Unite’s EC meeting: do we back the candidate who supports our policies or do we back Scott Tracy’s doppelganger who was booed by all of our members at the union hustings? Decisions, decisions.
Unite follows other affiliated unions, such as Aslef and Bfawu, in giving their support to the Corbyn campaign. Unaffiliated unions like the FBU and RMT are also backing him, although in their case it will be a little more difficult, as their members can only sign up as registered supporters rather than affiliated supporters, which will cost them £3 instead of being free. The RMT was disaffiliated by the Labour Party in 2004 for allowing individual branches to support the Scottish Socialist Party and, though it continued to send in its affiliation cheques, this money was rejected.
There are also rumours that the GMB will endorse Corbyn,1 but it has yet to announce this decision. Unison appears to be sitting on the fence nationally, though individual branches have passed sometimes unanimous motions of support for his leadership bid and are active in rallying support.
With the weight of the unions behind him, his enormous grassroots support, his popularity at every hustings and months to go before the election takes place, Corbyn is in a position to seriously challenge for the leadership. Luke Akehurst predicts that Corbyn could win on first preferences, only to lose on transfers from supporters of the other candidates, who are hell-bent on preventing a leftwinger being elected.2
Attacks
With his campaign gathering momentum, even the liberal The Guardian has begun to panic – senior editor Michael White wrote: “Unite gets carried away over Jeremy Corbyn.”3 For his part, Jon Craig, chief political correspondent of Sky News, wrote that the “Labour leadership race sinks deeper into farce”.4
Joining the media hacks were the usual suspects from the Labour right. Jonathan Reynolds MP tweeted: “… if Jeremy was leader the Tories would win a majority of at least a 100, and possibly more”. John Mann MP wrote that Corbyn’s support signalled Labour’s “desire never to win again”.5 In the Daily Mail one unnamed “senior Labour MP” promised to throw himself under a bus, should Corbyn win the contest.6 One can only hope.
Of course, no media campaign against Corbyn would be complete without the Eustonite warmongers accusing him of being a crypto-Islamist and anti-Semite, with their desperate ‘guilt by association’ arguments. Nick Cohen calls him “Hezbollah’s man in London”,7 rehashing Alan Johnson’s argument that Corbyn is a totally unsupportable fascist because his opposition to Zionist settler-colonialism has led him speak on platforms alongside Islamists.
Cohen goes on to argue that Corbyn supports “goose-stepping Shia militias slaughtering Sunni Muslims”. While Cohen’s new found support for Sunnis is heart-warming, it is somewhat at odds with his continuing defence and support for the Iraq war, which killed at least half a million people and featured US-backed Shia death squads ethnically cleansing Sunnis in Baghdad (an acceptable price for toppling Saddam Hussein, according to Cohen8).
The attacks from the Eustonites, started by Alan Johnson on James Bloodworth’s Left Foot Forward website, have now found their way into the mainstream media. With the Daily Mail and other sites now hosting a video, for which Johnson originally provided the link, of Corbyn referring to Hezbollah and Hamas as “friends”.
Tactical voting
Labour First, the secretive rightwing group within the Labour Party run by Luke Akehurst,9 sent out an email stating:
“We clearly do not share Jeremy Corbyn’s politics and believe these would destroy Labour’s chances of electability. We would therefore encourage supporters of Andy, Yvette and Liz to transfer votes to each other at CLP nomination meetings so that as few CLPs as possible make supporting nominations for Jeremy.”10
This campaign to use transfers to ensure that Corbyn does not win the leadership demonstrates, as I previously noted, that he “represents a line of political demarcation within Labour”11: he has turned the leadership contest into a straight-up battle between a resurgent left and the right that has dominated the party for decades.
Although the Unite NEC is advising members to give Corbyn their first preference, you cannot expect Unite to take a sensible decision without ruining it in some way: it also made the decision to advise members to give Andy Burnham their second preference. This is the man who supports the benefits cap, favours deficit reduction against the advice of such leftwing organisations as the International Monetary Fund, and claims that we need to celebrate the “wealth-creators” and “entrepreneurs”. This led to the Daily Mail claiming that Unite advised members to give Burnham their second preference to avoid “making him look like he is a union stooge”.12
That is a difficult allegation to sustain in any case, given that he has appointed Katie Myler – the director and senior consultant at Burson-Marsteller from 2010 to 2015 – as his communications director. Burston-Marsteller’s clients include Ineos, the company that owns the Grangemouth oil refinery, which was shut down temporarily by Ineos after a long-running dispute with Unite. It was only reopened after the union agreed to a three-year strike freeze, a three-year pay freeze, massive pension ‘reforms’ and the abolition of full-time union convenors.
Ineos then hounded Stephen Deans, who had served as the Unite convenor at Grangemouth for 25 years, out of his job. The Blairite think-tank, Progress, along with their friends in the rightwing press, ran a vicious campaign against Deans and Unite, claiming they had attempted to rig the Falkirk parliamentary selection. Unite was eventually cleared by an internal Labour Party investigation and a separate one conducted by the police, but not before the smear campaign led the Labour Party to hold a special conference, resulting in the weakening of the historic link between the party and the unions.
Burnham, just like Kendall and Cooper, does not represent the interests of Unite in any way. Unite members should not give him their second preference and the Unite NEC should rescind its decision to give Burnham any support at all.
Supporting nominations
Constituency Labour Parties will be holding their ‘supporting nomination’ meetings until July 31. Any member or affiliated trade unionist is entitled to attend them, and there is no freeze-date in place to stop recent members/ supporters from attending or voting. The guidance from Labour HQ recommends that these be all-member meetings, but they could be held as delegate-based general council meetings in less democratic CLPs that would like to stitch up the nomination process.
At the time of writing, Corbyn has already secured supporting nominations from 34 CLPs and, with many more yet to hold their meetings, this support could grow further, so it is important for the left to attend them to make the case for Corbyn and win as many supporting nominations as possible.
As Andy Burnham wrote in a recent email to members, “Your local party’s nomination could easily swing on just one or two votes – please don’t miss your chance to play a potentially huge role in deciding the future of our party.”
Notes
1. See www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ labour/11717428/Unite-and-GMB-join-forces-to-back-Jeremy-Corbyn-to-teach-party-a-lesson.html. 2. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/la-bour/11720055/Jeremy-Corbyn-is-a-close-second-in-Labour-leadership-race.html.
3. www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/06/unite-jeremy-corbyn-labour-leadership.
4. http://news.sky.com/story/1513709/labour-leadership-race-sinks-deeper-into-farce.
5. https://twitter.com/johnmannmp/sta-tus/610403164714627072.
6. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3126320/Crazy-decision-include-hard-left-socialist-Jeremy- Corbyn-Labour-leadership-contest-sparks-furious-backlash.html.
7. https://twitter.com/NickCohen4/sta-tus/618391575786299392.
8. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/03/10-years-right-invaded-iraq.
9. www.leftfutures.org/2012/02/the-labour-right-and-democracy.
10. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33504201.11. ‘It can still be done’ Weekly Worker June 6 2015.
12. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3150016/Boost-Jeremy-Corbyn-giant-Unite-union-backs- hard-left-candidate-Labour-leader.html.

The right

Out come the Blairites

Gallery May 16, 2015

As the results rolled in the ghosts of New Labour began to rise. Charles Gradnitzer of Labour Party Marxists reports

Since the general election there has been a constant barrage of rightwing Labour figures talking about the party’s failure to address middle class ‘aspiration’ and include ‘wealth-creators’ in its programme as part of a last-ditch effort to elect another Blairite leader and shift the party back to the right.

It is telling that these people have nothing to say about the electoral catastrophe in Scotland, the effect this has had on the English electorate, and the successes of the Left Platform MPs who publicly stood against austerity and won, some being returned to parliament with increased majorities. The rightwing Progress group is dead – one of its fringe meetings at the last Labour conference attracted only 15 people. Yet its spirit lives on.

Aspirational

On May 11 David Miliband gave an interview to the BBC in which he blamed the failure of Labour to secure a majority on its unwillingness to appeal to “aspirational” middle class voters.1 This was a clear attempt to smear the left by rolling out the ‘sensible’ brother ‘Red Ed’ stabbed in the back in order to lead the Labour Party to electoral ruin. There was no other reason to interview David Miliband. Once he lost the leadership election, he resigned as an MP, abandoning his constituents, to earn six figures in America – perversely as the CEO of a charity dedicated to helping the victims of the very war he voted for in 2003.

On May 10, Peter Mandelson put it more bluntly, claiming that Labour had spent too much time saying the poor “hate the rich, ignoring completely the vast swathes of the population who exist in between.”2 On the same day Chuka Umunna spelled out exactly what was meant by an “aspirational voter” when he said: “there was not enough of an aspirational offer there … I don’t think you can argue you are pro-business if you are always beating up on the terms and conditions of the people who make business work.3 But the most sick-making comment came from Ben Bradshaw, when he said Labour must “celebrate our entrepreneurs and wealth-creators and not leave the impression they are part of the problem.”4

Ben Bradshaw’s statement is both perverse and ironic. The “entrepreneurs” and the “wealth-creators” – or rather capital and the capitalists – are exactly the problem. It is widely accepted, even by the bourgeoisie itself, that the global economic crisis and recession was set in motion by the US subprime mortgage crisis. Moreover, the capitalist class is the problem because it violently perpetuates and maintains the very economic system that exploits the majority, all the while demanding that the working class pay for the crises that are intrinsic to capitalism itself.

It is ironic because Labour really has distanced itself from the actual “wealth-creators” – the working class – by repeatedly attacking the trade unions, weakening the union link and announcing that it would continue to punish workers with austerity, in a desperate attempt to court the capitalist class. On May 11 Mandelson spoke of the trade unions’ “abuse and inappropriate” influence over the Labour Party.5 It was the unions themselves that voted to loosen the historic link with the Labour Party in 2014. However, in a sense Mandelson is right when he claims the unions abuse their influence in the Labour Party, but this is not in the interests of the left or the working class. Instead union officials act as the enforcers of the right’s hegemony.

It is clear what the Blairites mean when they talk about appealing to “middle class aspiration” and “wealth-creators” – they are talking about capital. They want to finish their project of transforming Labour into a bourgeois party, ridding it of “trade union influence” and hoping working class voters will have nowhere else to turn.

Scotland and Ukip

The Blairites’ silence over the electoral wipeout in Scotland is telling. Scottish Labour’s credibility as a party that could represent the working class was seriously undermined by its engagement in the cross-class Better Together campaign in the run-up to the September 2014 referendum.

Labour was unable or unwilling to attack the Tories. In the August referendum debate between Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond, Darling was unable to respond to allegations that Labour were “in bed with the Tories” because they were. It also allowed Salmond to attack Labour from the left, promising to save the NHS and stop the welfare cuts if Scotland voted ‘yes’. It was during this time that Labour began to be known in Scotland as the ‘red Tories’. For the most part this moniker was probably well deserved, although in the case of Katy Clark and other the signatories of the Left Platform it was clearly untrue.

Another enormous mistake was the election of Jim Murphy as leader of Scottish Labour. This man is an unreconstructed Blairite. During his time as president of the National Union of Students he had one vice-president unconstitutionally suspended for simply attending Campaign for Free Education meetings, which opposed Labour’s introduction of tuition fees. His behaviour as NUS president was so bad there was even an early day motion submitted by Labour Party MPs condemning his “dictatorial” behaviour. The EDM was amended by Alex Salmond.6

Salmond and the rest of Scotland know exactly who and what Jim Murphy is and quite rightly found his claims that he would “end austerity in Scotland” absolutely risible. If he would not even oppose Labour policy when he was supposed to be representing the interests of students, how could he ever represent the interests of the Scottish working class?

With the SNP landslide an absolute certainty, the Conservatives mobilised a section of the electorate against Labour with well-alliterated scaremongering about an SNP-Labour “coalition of chaos” that would “break up and bankrupt Britain”.7 This mobilisation is reflected in Labour’s failure to capitalise on the Liberal Democrat collapse by taking marginal seats from the Tories. In many of them the Lib Dem collapse saw a swing to the UK Independence Party, whose national-chauvinist rhetoric Labour proved incapable of countering. Labour’s anti-Ukip campaigning was couched in purely bourgeois terms about the economic benefits of EU membership and the net contribution of immigrants to the British economy.

Even when the party attempted to produce a policy that sounded as though it vaguely championed working class interests, such as the ban on “exploitative agencies”, it still engaged in fear-mongering about foreigners stealing jobs and suppressing wages. But for the most part it tried to out-Ukip Ukip, selling “Controls on immigration” mugs for a fiver on the Labour website. Mugs with which the totally delusional Ed Balls promised to toast a Labour victory.

Left Platform

The success of the anti-austerity Left Platform Labour MPs in the election should give everybody pause for thought. Barring the Scottish signatories of the statement, who were doomed to failure thanks to the Better Together campaign, 92% of the platform’s sitting MPs were re-elected.

John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn, Ian Mearns, Michael Meacher, Ian Lavery, Grahame Morris, and Kelvin Hopkins all secured majorities comfortably above 50% – Corbyn, McDonnell and Morris won more than 60%. John Cryer, an initial signatory of the platform, enjoyed a 15% swing, which secured him a 58% majority. For his part, Chris Williamson failed to win his seat by just 41 votes, but he did manage a 3.5% swing to Labour.

The Left Platform reconvened on May 12 to discuss what to do next. John McDonnell told the meeting that the next queen’s speech would be the most reactionary the country had ever seen. He also pointed out that there would be no left candidate in the leadership election, given that a candidate now needs to be nominated by 35 MPs. An “unrealistic proposition” – especially now that the number of MPs that the Weekly Worker considered worthy of critical support has been reduced to just 15. With there being no possibility for a left candidate, comrade McDonnell, both in the meeting and in an article for The Guardian, argued that Labour needed to “return to being a social movement aiming to transform our society” and “link up with the many other progressive social movements that people are increasingly forming”.8

At the same meeting Ted Knight argued: “We’ve been marching. We’ve had the politics of protest and we’ve got a Tory government! We need to get people together – not to exchange horror stories, but to discuss how to take control of the economy, how to change society.” The problem, however, lies in transforming such rhetoric into concrete proposals and a concrete strategy.

Notes

1. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32697212.

2. www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/10/miliband-made-terrible-mistake-in-ditching-new-labour-says-mandelson.

3. www.ft.com/cms/s/2/6ffcde0c-f6fd-11e4-99aa-00144feab7de.html.

4. www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/09/alan-johnson-labour-aspirational-voters-tony-blair.

5. www.itv.com/news/update/2015-05-10/mandelson-labour-must-end-unhealthy-unions-dependence.

6. www.parliament.uk/edm/1995-96/991.

7. www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/17/david-cameron-labour-snp-coalition-of-chaos.

8. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/12/forget-leadership-contest-new-labour-roots-social-movement-supporters-save-party.

The right

Progress: Capitalism’s Trojan horse

Gallery October 15, 2012

Attacks on Progress should be welcomed, but should the left vote for Aslef’s rule change? Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists looks at the issues

Lord Sainsbury: main backer

Pledging, on day one of the Labour Party conference, to “kick the New Labour cuckoo out of our nest”,1 Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, Labour’s biggest affiliated trade union and biggest financial backer, declared war – on behalf of the trade union bureaucracy – against the party’s pro-capitalist Trojan horse inside the party, Progress.

He was backed up by the leaders of the second and third biggest affiliated unions – Dave Prentis of Unison and the GMB’s Paul Kenny, and by a rule-change resolution from leftwing train drivers’ union Aslef, which Kenny told the GMB conference in June “will outlaw Progress as part of the Labour Party – and long overdue it is”. He added: “This is about an organisation funded by external vested interests, who seek to gain influence over candidate selection and in internal elections.”

The Aslef motion, however, like all rule-change proposals not backed by the party’s national executive committee, will only come before Labour conference next year.

McCluskey further upped the stakes by saying Unite would be prepared to end its affiliation if it decided it was no longer being listened to: “The Labour Party has no god-given right to exist. The Labour Party can only exist if it is the voice of ordinary working people and in particular of organised labour.”

Though this sounds admirably leftwing, what is really at issue is the power of the trade union bureaucracy, as opposed to those who would turn the Labour Party into a British version of the US Democratic Party. Of course, it was the trade union bureaucracy, an inherently conservative social caste, which made the Labour Party an electoral runner at the start of the 20th century. The big unions switched their support from the Liberals and opted instead for the newly formed party of Kier Hardie and Arthur Henderson. While the trade union bureaucracy has traditionally provided most of the Labour Party’s funds, they have often used their block votes and organisational muscle to hold the party to the right and defeat leftwing critics.

That was overtly the case until Tony Blair, who managed to remove the old clause four, turn the annual conference into a media circus, get the backing of the Murdoch empire and secure significant donations from the super-rich, big business and media celebs. For a time it looked as if he was going to delabourise the Labour Party. So what we are seeing is a rearguard action by the trade union bureaucracy.

For the “Blairite dead”, as McCluskey called them, electoral success is everything; class struggle is old hat. For careerists, on the other hand, gaining office is what it is all about. Their self-justifying claim is that Labour in office can deliver fairness and protect the poor and vulnerable – but fighting for our rights disqualifies us from their benevolence. They see the trade union link, along with strikes and demonstrations, as a vote loser.

Although their candidate, David Miliband, was narrowly defeated, crucially by the votes of trade unionists, in the 2010 leadership election, the Blairites are far from “dead”, and remain a threat to the traditional role of the trade union barons in the party. With swathes of MPs, many of them in the shadow cabinet, the ‘project’ is busily renewing itself. And, through Progress, they are having considerable success – in the selection of council and parliamentary candidates and in setting the agenda for Labour’s “priorities in government”. Progress is extraordinarily well financed, thanks to the largesse of Lord Sainsbury (see below). Claiming to be merely “a journal which organises events”, its mentoring, web of well connected contacts, ability to shoo people in as interns and research assistants, and the production of a wide range of well researched policy papers gives the budding careerist everything they need for success.

Dossier

It was back in February that the attack on Progress began in earnest, with the circulation to all Constituency Labour Party secretaries of an anonymous dossier: ‘A report into the constitution, structure, activities and funding of Progress’.2

This dossier informed CLPs that a company called Progress Limited was created in 1994, and is controlled not by shareholders, but by its guarantors, whose names are “unavailable for public inspection”. So “we do not know who owns or controls the private company”. Its first director, appointed by the guarantors in 1995, was Derek Draper – at the time a researcher for New Labour’s ‘third man’ (after Blair and Brown), Peter Mandelson. Because Progress consists “wholly or mainly” of members of a registered political party, it is legally obliged by the electoral commission to report all donations of £7,500 or more. As a result the dossier was able to reveal the £250,000 per year donated by Lord Sainsbury since 2001, which he raised to £260,000 in 2010.

“Vesting power of political activities … to a democratically constituted membership structure,” the report concludes, “appears entirely absent.” Members of Progress receive its journal and discounted access to events, the report says, but have no democratic say in the organisation – more like being a member of a fitness club than a political organisation. When, in January 2012, Progress announced a range of new officers, there was “no evidence of a notice of poll, nomination period, electoral procedure, or publication of result, as would be expected in a democratic organisation”. Unrepentant ex-New Labour minister Stephen Twigg replaced coalition collaborator Alan Milburn (David Cameron’s social mobility tsar) as honorary president, and ex-Liberal Democrat and ex-New Labour minister Lord Andrew Adonis became chairperson.

Unfortunately, the anonymous dossier looked for technical rather than political means to defeat Progress, suggesting the expulsion of Militant as a model. “The last time the NEC considered the matter of non-affiliated organisations operating within our party was during the battle to expel the Militant Tendency, when the NEC determined to set up a ‘register of non-affiliated groups to be recognised and allowed to operate within the party’.” So in place of the old list of proscribed organisations, the NEC now has a ‘legitimate affiliates’ list. “The terms of eligibility are revealing – groups had to be open and democratic, should not be allowed to operate their own internal discipline, and could not be associated with any international organisation not supported by Labour or the Socialist International. Where an organisation was unable to meet these criteria, they were to be given a three-month period to put their house in order.”

From 1996 to 2006, says the dossier, the media reported Progress as a “Blairite think-tank”, but from 2010 it “underwent a transition from loyalty to the leader to providing a platform for supporters of ‘New Labour’ against the new leader”: ie, against Ed Miliband. So, instead of condemning the New Labour politics of Progress, the dossier attacks it for becoming that evil thing, a faction: “Progress has transformed itself into a factional body that self-identifies with New Labour and as such has its own ideology, policies, candidates and campaigns.”

The anonymous authors are here displaying their own bureaucratic propensities. They do not recognise a leadership faction as such. So New Labour control-freakery was okay when it demanded “loyalty to the leader”, presumably with their backing. “Whilst this form of organisation is distasteful” – god forbid that party members should organise freely around their own ideas (eg, Marxism and the supersession of capitalism) – “we would be foolish to believe that similar organisations do not operate at the fringes of our party. The key difference … is that those organisations do not have the funding available to Progress …” Yes, massive business funding is “distasteful” in a workers’ party. After all, who pays the piper calls the tune.

The dossier ends with the recommendation that the NEC should set up “an inquiry into the organisation and activities of Progress” and “must consider amending the rules of the party to place constitutional requirements upon members associations in matters of fundraising, governance and discipline”. In other words, an administrative fix for a political problem, in a way that strengthens the bureaucracy’s control over the rank and file. Unfortunately, Aslef’s rule-change proposal fits the bill.

Defending Progress on February 21, Robert Philpot admitted on its website that there was a democratic deficit. Progress “never claimed that membership of the organisation bestows rights other than to receive the magazine and attend our events”, he stated. “We are a magazine which organises events, like the New Statesman,” he proclaimed, with tactical nous. “There has been no change in Progress’s purpose since its creation. The organisation was established to promote the modernisation of the Labour Party and the election or re-election of Labour governments: something we continue to vigorously support.”3

Legitimacy

The attack on Progress was continued by Michael Meacher in theNew Statesman (March 15), repeating everything in the anonymous dossier, including its factual errors and implied condemnation of factions of all hues. He accused Progress of “crossing the red line of legitimacy” from being a political campaigning body to “a party within a party”.

In June, the GMB conference carried a resolution against Progress, entitled ‘Maintaining unity in the Labour Party’, which highlighted its immense business funding and sponsorship and pointed out that “the November 2001 edition of Progress magazine sought to undermine Ken Livingstone’s campaign for London mayor”. The resolution also “noted” that Progress “argued that Labour’s front bench needed to support cuts and wage restraint” – thus “Progress advances the strategy of accepting the Tory arguments for public spending cuts.”4

Unison’s Dave Prentis emphasised his dislike of factions, more than of rightwing politics: “Progress seems like a party within a party. Our affiliation is to the Labour Party. We don’t expect an organisation to be able to grow within it.”5 Ed Miliband’s riposte should be noted, and we should hold him to it with respect to left views and organisations: “We should be a party open to ideas, open to organisations and open to people that want to be part of it, not excluding people or closing it down.”6 But unfortunately he was defending the free expression of anti-working class politics within the party.

McCluskey accepted Miliband’s argument, undermining Kenny’s and Prentis’s hard line (but he has now rejoined them with his ‘Kick the cuckoo out’ slogan). The furore, McCluskey said, was due to “the amount of money being ploughed in”. However, “I would be concerned about banning any group. It is a dangerous route to go down”.7

Progress, for its part, denies having any policies – it simply wants to get Labour into government. But its promotion of New Labour is announced proudly on its website: “Progress is the New Labour pressure group which aims to promote radical and progressive politics for the 21st century.”8 And its business-sponsored events give plenty of scope for ideas which weaken trade union influence and undermine working class party membership. In his speech to the Progress rally at Labour’s conference, president Stephen Twigg called for building “Labour supporters’ networks in constituencies up and down the country. If we can get hundreds and thousands of Labour supporters signed up, we strengthen our relationship with local communities. And we should then look to reform our party to give supporters a bigger say – perhaps starting with the London mayoral selection for 2016.”9

This contempt for the right of members to democratically control the party is beautifully illustrated in an angry blog comment by a Progress supporter: “… does coughing up £40 a year [membership fee] entitle anyone to special privileges [ie, members’ rights] over the party to influence policy?”10

In response to the demand for “acceptable standards of democracy, governance and transparency”, Progress has tried to clean up its undemocratic image. It held an election! A “strategy board” was elected in September, consisting of four members chosen by each section – members, councillors and parliamentarians: 425 members and 86 councillors voted, but the parliamentarians were “uncontested”.11 Trouble is, the elected board does not run the show – it meets just three times a year to “approve” decisions made by the organisation’s directors. And it is allowed one “representative on any interview panel constituted to appoint a new director of Progress”.12In short this is sham democracy.

Pre-split

Progress, it seems obvious, is a pre-split formation. For all its supporters’ proclaimed single-minded devotion to getting Labour elected, their real interest is getting themselves into government. Their chief financial backer, David Sainsbury, was New Labour’s chief backer, donating £18.5 million to the party between 1996 and 2008, but when Miliband won the leader election the donations dried up. During the 13 years of New Labour government, he was the longest serving minister.

But Sainsbury has a fickle history. If (when) the fight against austerity produces a stronger Labour left, we should not be surprised to see Sainsbury and Progress ditch Labour and split to the right, as he has done before. After joining Labour in the 1960s, he was one of the 100 signatories of the infamous 1981 ‘Limehouse declaration’, which led to David Owen’s Social Democratic Party, a rightwing split because of “the drift towards extremism in the Labour Party” and because “a handful of trade union leaders can now dictate the choice of a future prime minister”.13

When, after the 1987 general election, the SDP merged with the Liberal Party to form the Liberal Democrats, Sainsbury and David Owen created the “continuing” SDP, which was wound up in 1990. With Labour already committed to neoliberalism by Blair, Sainsbury rejoined in 1996, becoming a key player in Blair’s team. A year later, Blair made him a lord. Nothing to do with his money, of course.

The Aslef rule-change proposal is the wrong way to tackle Progress. A capitalist Trojan horse should have no place in a genuine workers’ party and Progress should be opposed on that basis.