Category Archives: Labour Party Marxists

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

Salvaging the wreck?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labour Party Marxists, The left

Sir Keir’s good week

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

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

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

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

Two anthems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Left response

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Demoralisation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Democracy and the Labour Party, Labour structures and programme, Transform the Labour Party

Labour as a united front

Once all working class and socialist organisations were welcome – obviously no longer. James Marshall looks at the past, present and future

We are in the midst of a terrible witch-hunt – a witch-hunt fully backed by the Labour right, the capitalist media, the courts, the Israeli embassy and the forces of the deep state. Three examples:

  • Jeremy Corbyn was suspended from membership of the Parliamentary Labour Party in October 2020, thereby preventing him from standing as a Labour candidate in the next general election. Why? He dared tell the truth: “accusations” of anti-Semitism have been “dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media”.1 Constituency Labour Party chairs and secretaries who allowed debates on, or resolutions protesting against, his treatment faced suspension or expulsion.
  • Hundreds, if not thousands, have been purged, many charged with anti-Semitism, and predictably a hugely disproportionate percentage of them are Jewish: eg, Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein and Moshé Machover. Their real crime is opposing the Zionist colonial-settler state of Israel … and Labour’s pro-capitalist right wing.
  • The July 20 national executive committee banned Labour Against the Witchhunt, Resist, the Labour In Exile Network and Socialist Appeal. Anyone deemed a member or supporter of one of those proscribed organisations faces auto-expulsion. Amongst the first to fall foul of the new rule was celebrated film director Ken Loach. He refused to renounce support for LAW.

It is all too clear what Sir Keir Starmer and general secretary David Evans are up to. Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership victory in September 2015 owed much to historical accident; little or nothing to the strategic acumen, ideological hegemony and organisational strength of the official left. With his ill-judged resignation following the December 2019 general election and the resounding defeat suffered by the hapless Rebecca Long-Bailey in the April 2020 leadership contest, the Labour right has been firmly back in the saddle. The witch-hunt is no longer about undermining Corbyn, driving him into complicity, forcing him to sacrifice one friend and one ally after another and ensuring that he never enters No10 Downing Street as prime minister.

No, the witch-hunt is about Sir Keir demonstrating his unquestioning loyalty to the UK state and its international allies – crucially the US and its most important strategic asset in the Middle East. Bans, expulsions, character assassination and riding roughshod over basic democratic norms have a potent symbolic value. They show that Starmer is worthy of the establishment’s trust. That way, he hopes to ingratiate himself with the capitalist media, boost Labour’s poll ratings and calm the fears of the army top brass, MI5, the City and the US state department. If – and it is a big if – Brexit comes to be commonly regarded as a Boris Johnson-driven car crash, then Sir Keir has the distinct possibility of getting that summons to Buckingham Palace and being asked to form a government by her majesty the queen.

Class against class

Labour Party Marxists has actively joined with those many others fighting the suspension and expulsion of socialists, trade union activists and anti-Zionists. All of them, without exception, should be immediately reinstated. There is surely nothing uncontroversial about Marxists making such a demand. After all, what is going on inside the Labour Party is a clear and unmistakable manifestation of the class struggle.

What then should we make of those self-declared ‘leftwingers’ who have turned a blind eye, excused, complied with or even promoted the witch-hunt? Painful though it may be for many, the fact of the matter is that it was under the pro-Corbyn regime of Jennie Formby that Labour HQ ‘fast-tracked’ expulsions. ‘Denialism’ – ie, what Corbyn was charged with – first became a crime with general secretary Formby (denialism, in this context, being a refusal go along with the big lie that Labour has a widespread, politically significant problem with anti-Semitism).

Yet, as the witch-hunt ripped through the ranks of the Labour left, John McDonnell, Diane Abbott and the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs maintained a studied silence. None of them defended Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson, Pete Willsman or Marc Wadsworth. The principle, ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’, became an alien concept. The Guardian’s house-trained Owen Jones was little different. Nor did Momentum lift a finger. Indeed Jackie Walker was surgically removed as its vice-chair.

Then there is Dan Randall and the social-imperialist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty outfit. They might as well be paid agents of the foreign office. Perhaps, though, the most revolting of all is Robert Griffiths, leader of the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain. He actually wrote to the Labour Party’s witch-hunter-in-chief, Iain McNicol, asking him to name the names of any members of his who had entered the Labour Party “or engaged in any similar subterfuge”, so that “action can be taken against them”.2 Not to leave a shadow of doubt, Griffiths signed off: “With comradely regards”.

Exactly how Griffiths’ sorry excuse for a communist organisation arrived at its ban on Labour Party members joining the CPB and the ban on CPB members joining the Labour Party need not concern us here. Its roots, though, surely lie in the ‘official’ Communist Party of Great Britain and its turn to the cross-class politics of the popular front, sanctioned by the 7th Congress of the Communist International in 1935 under Stalin’s direct command.

Despite CPB claims to be the unbroken continuation of the CPGB going back to its foundation in 1920, nothing could be further from the truth. A fundamental break occurred. The same goes for the Labour Party.

Beginnings

From its beginning Labour was a federal party, which sought to unite all working class and socialist organisations. It was a united front of a special kind – special because, as with the soviets in Russia, unity was not tactical, fleeting or episodic. True, especially at first, political aims were decidedly limited.

JH Holmes, delegate of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, moved this historic resolution at the 1899 TUC:

That this Congress, having regard to its decisions in former years, and with a view to securing 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 above-named organisations as may be willing to take part to devise ways and means of securing the return of an increased number of labour members in the next parliament.3

His resolution was opposed by the miners’ union on the basis of impracticability, but found support from the dockers, the railway servants and shop assistants. After a long debate the resolution was narrowly carried by 546,000 votes to 434,000.

The TUC’s parliamentary committee oversaw the founding conference of the Labour Representation Committee in February 1900. The 129 delegates, representing around 500,000 members, finally agreed to establish a distinct Labour Party in parliament, with its own whips, policies, finances, etc.

An executive committee was also elected. It would prepare lists of candidates, administer funds and convene an annual conference. Besides affiliated trade unions, the newly formed NEC would also include socialist societies. In fact, they, the socialist societies, were allocated five out of the 12 NEC seats (one for the right-reformist Fabians, two for the centrist Independent Labour Party and two for the openly revolutionary Social Democratic Federation). Given the diminutive size of these socialist societies compared with the trade unions, it is obvious that they were treated with considerable generosity. Presumably their “advanced” views were highly regarded.4

For Keir Hardie the formation of the Labour Party marked something of a tactical retreat. He had long sought some kind of socialist party. However, to secure an alliance with the trade unions he and other ILPers were prepared to programmatically limit the Labour Party to nothing more than furthering working class interests by getting “men sympathetic with the aims and demands of the labour movement” into the House of Commons.5

SDF delegates proposed that the newly established Labour Party commit itself to the “class war and having as its ultimate object the socialisation of the means of production and exchange” – a formulation rejected by a large majority. In the main the trade unions were still Liberal politically. Unfortunately, as a result of this vote, the next annual conference of the SDF voted by 54 to 14 to withdraw from the Labour Party. Many SDF leaders came to bitterly “regret” this sectarian decision.6

As might be expected, this was part of a wider pattern. For example, faced with the great industrial unrest of 1910-14, Henry Hyndman, the SDF’s autocratic leader, rhetorically asked: “Can anything be imagined more foolish, more harmful, more – in the widest sense of the word – unsocial than a strike?”7

Of course, it is quite possible to actively support trade unions in their struggles over wages, conditions, etc, and to patiently and steadfastly advocate republican democracy and international socialism. Indeed without doing just that there can be no hope for a mass socialist party here in Britain.

Nonetheless, the SDF is too often casually dismissed by historians. Eg, Henry Pelling describes it as “a rather weedy growth in the political garden”.8 True, its Marxism was typically crude and, with Hyndman, mixed with more than a tinge of anti-Semitism. For him the Boer war was instigated by “Jew financial cliques and their hangers-on”.9 Yet the SDF was “the first modern socialist organisation of national importance” in Britain.10

Karl Marx disliked it, Fredrick Engels despaired of it, William Morris, John Burns, Tom Mann and Edward Aveling split from it. But the SDF survived. The various breakaways – eg, the Socialist League, the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the Socialist Labour Party – either disappeared, remained utterly impotent or could manage little more than regional influence. Meanwhile, the SDF continued as the “major representative” of what passed for Marxism in this country till 1911, when it merged with a range of local socialist societies to become the British Socialist Party.11

The first conference of the newly formed BSP voted, by an overwhelming majority, to “seek direct and independent affiliation” to the Second International.12 In other words, not through the Labour Party-dominated British section of the Second International. Despite that, however, the BSP began to overcome its Labour-phobia. Leading figures, such as Henry Hyndman, J Hunter Watts and Dan Irving, eventually came round to affiliation. That was vindication for Zelda Kahan and the internationalist left. Withdrawal from the Labour Party, she argued, had been a profound mistake. Outside the Labour Party the BSP was seen as hostile, fault-finding and antagonistic. Inside, the BSP would get a wider hearing and win over the “best” rank-and-file forces.13 Affiliation to the Labour Party was agreed, albeit by a relatively narrow majority. Efforts then began to put that into effect. The formal application for affiliation was submitted in June 1914. And in 1916 – things having been considerably delayed due to the outbreak of World War I – the BSP gained entry into the Labour Party. Almost simultaneously, in Easter 1916, the BSP in effect expelled the pro-war right wing. Hyndman went off to form his National Socialist Party.

Communist affiliation

The October revolution found militant and unstinting support in the BSP. A number of its émigré comrades from Russia returned home and took up important positions in the Soviet government. Bolshevik publications were soon being translated into English: eg, Lenin’s State and revolution. Money too flowed in.

The Leeds conference of the BSP in 1918 enthusiastically declared its solidarity with the Bolsheviks and a wish to emulate their methods and achievements. And under the influence of Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukharin, etc, the BSP adopted a much more active, much more agitational role in the Labour Party and the trade unions. In the words of Fred Shaw, instead of standing aloof from the “existing organisations” of the working class, “win them for Marxism”.14

Needless to say, the BSP constituted the main body that went towards the historic formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain over July 31-August 1 1920. Given BSP affiliation four years earlier, and the fact that in 1918 the Labour Party introduced individual membership, there can be no doubt that the bulk of CPGBers were card-carrying Labour Party members. Dual membership was therefore the norm, as with the Fabians and ILP.

However, instead of simply informing Arthur Henderson, Labour’s secretary, that the BSP had changed its name, the CPGB, following Lenin’s advice, applied for affiliation. Lenin thought the CPGB was in a win-win situation. If affiliation was accepted, this would open up the Labour Party rank and file to communist influence. If affiliation was rejected, this would expose Labour leaders for what they really were: “the worst kind of reactionaries”.15

With 20:20 foresight it would probably have been better for the CPGB to have presented itself merely as the continuation of the BSP. True, that would have tested to the limits the CPGB’s own unity. Its First Congress had a surprisingly large minority opposed to Labour Party affiliation: eg, the Communist Unity Group.

Nevertheless, securing a divorce is undoubtedly far harder than turning down a would-be suitor. The Labour leadership would have had to expel a renamed existing affiliate rather than reject a brand new prospective affiliate. Note, the BSP was allowed to affiliate in 1916, despite its long established commitment to Marxism, and, as far as I know, there were no moves to expel the BSP because of its newly adopted opposition to the ongoing inter-imperialist war – a position shared, of course, by Keir Hardie, Ramsay MacDonald and the centrist ILP.

After World War I and the 1917 Russian Revolution, however, Labour’s grandees were determined to distance themselves from Bolshevism. The revolution had put terror into the soul of the bourgeoisie. Their system was mortal. In defence of their system of exploitation they reinvented capitalism as ‘democracy’, while the communists, in defence of the isolated Soviet republic, championed ‘dictatorship’. A strategic blunder. A gift. Arthur Henderson therefore replied to the CPGB’s first application for affiliation by counterposing democracy and dictatorship. The principles of the communists do not accord with those of the Labour Party, he flatly declared. To which the CPGB responded by pointing out that:

… it understood the Labour Party to be so catholic in composition and constitution that it could admit to its ranks all sections of the working class movement that accept the broad principle of independent working class political action, at the same time granting them freedom to propagate their own particular views as to the policy the Labour Party should pursue and the tactics it should adopt.16

A good many local Labour Parties, particularly in London, forthrightly rejected Henderson’s characterisation of the CPGB as, in effect, mad, bad and dangerous to know. Nonetheless, Labour’s apparatus experienced no difficulty in marshalling crushing majorities. Eg, in June 1921 there was an overwhelming 4,115,000 to 224,000 conference vote against CPGB affiliation.

A minority Labour government was now a real prospect. Towards that end Labour had to be made acceptable to the Liberal Party, the capitalist press, the army high command, the City and George V. Britain and its vast empire of exploitation, pillage and extermination would be safe in Labour hands. That was the essential message that the Labour and trade union bureaucracy wanted to convey by rejecting the CPGB.

Lenin had, in 1908, optimistically called Labour the “first step towards socialism and towards a class policy”.17 As it was, Labour took one step forward in 1900 and one step back with its support for British imperialism in World War I … and still another step back with its refusal to accept communist affiliation. The united front of the working class was thereby disunited. The Labour Party dishonestly continued to call itself by that name, but in reality Labour was sabotaged as a party going towards socialism and a class policy. It continues, of course, but akin to soviets without Bolsheviks: soviets subordinated to the capitalist state; soviets as a career ladder for colourless, clueless, professional politicians.

Bans and defiance

Not that the CPGB could be easily seen off. Affiliation might have been rejected, but there remained dual membership. In 1922, two CPGB members won parliamentary seats as Labour candidates: JT Walton Newbold (Motherwell and Wishaw) and Shapurji Saklatvala (Battersea North).

Subsequently, Labour’s NEC was forced to temporarily drop its attempt to bar CPGB members from being elected as annual conference delegates. The June 26-29 1923 Labour conference had 36 CPGB members as delegates, “as against six at Edinburgh” the previous year.18 Incidentally, the 1923 conference once again rejected CPGB affiliation, this time by a narrower 2,880,000 to 366,000 margin.

Nonetheless, the general election in December 1923 saw CPGBers Ellen Wilkinson (Ashton-under-Lyne), Shapurji Saklatvala (Battersea North), M Philips Price (Gloucester), William Paul (Manchester Rusholme) and Joe Vaughan (Bethnal Green SW) stand as official Labour candidates, while Alec Geddes (Greenock) and Aitken Ferguson (Glasgow Kelvingrove) were unofficial Labour candidates, there being no official Labour candidate in either constituency. Walton Newbold (Motherwell) and Willie Gallacher (Dundee) alone stood as CPGB candidates. Despite a considerable increase in the overall communist vote, none were elected.19

A ban on CPGB members standing as Labour Party candidates swiftly followed. Yet, though Labour Party organisations were instructed not to support CPGB candidates, this was met with defiance – not the fawning compliance nowadays personified by the miserable Robert Griffiths. In the run-up to the October 1924 general election, Battersea North Labour Party overwhelmingly endorsed Shapurji Saklatvala, Joe Vaughan was unanimously endorsed by Bethnal Green SW CLP and William Paul similarly by the Rusholme CLP executive committee. And Saklatvala was once again elected as an MP.

The 1924 Labour Party conference decision against CPGB members continuing with dual membership was reaffirmed in 1925. And, going further, trade unions were “asked not to nominate communists as delegates to Labour organisations”. In response, in December 1925, the National Left Wing Movement was formed. Its stated aim was not only to oppose bans on communists: it also sought to hold together disaffiliated CLPs. Basically a model which today’s LIEN seeks to emulate.

The NLWM insisted it had no wish or thought of superseding the Labour Party, but, instead, it sought to advance the generally held aspirations of Labour’s leftwing militants. In this it was considerably boosted by the newly established Sunday Worker. Despite being initiated, funded and edited by the CPGB, the Sunday Worker served as the authoritative voice of the NLWM. At its height it achieved a circulation of 100,000. The NLWM’s 1925 founding conference had nearly 100 Labour Party organisations sending delegates.

Following the defeat of the 1926 General Strike, the Labour apparatus and trade union bureaucracy wanted the movement to draw the conclusion that the only way to make progress would be through cooperating with the capitalist class in the national interest – Mondism. As a direct concomitant of this miserable class-collaborationism there was a renewed drive to exclude communists. Yet, despite these assaults on the Labour Party’s founding principles, at the end of 1926 the CPGB could report that 1,544 of its 7,900 members were still individual members of the Labour Party.

The struggle proved particularly sharp in London. In the capital city around half of the CPGB’s membership were active in their CLPs. And despite claiming that it was the communists who were “splitting the movement”, the labour leadership palpably strove to do just that. Battersea CLP was disaffiliated because it dared to back Saklatvala and refused to bar CPGB members. Similar measures were taken against Bethnal Green CLP, where the communist ex-mayor, Joe Vaughan, was held in particularly high regard.

Yet the Labour leadership’s campaign of disaffiliation and expulsion remorselessly ground on. The NLWM therefore found itself considerably weakened in terms of official Labour Party structures. Hence at its second annual conference in 1927 there were delegates from only 54 local Labour Parties and other Labour groups (representing a total of 150,000 individual party members). Militant union leaders, such as the miners’ AJ Cook, supported the conference.

However, external factors came into play – negatively. With the counterrevolution within the revolution in the Soviet Union, the CPGB was, in many ways willingly, reduced to being a slave of Stalin’s foreign policy. The CPGB’s attitude towards the Labour Party correspondingly wildly zigged and zagged. During the so-called ‘third period’ leaders such as Harry Pollitt and Rajani Palme Dutt denounced the Labour Party as nothing but “a third capitalist party” (shades of Peter Taaffe and Hannah Sell and their Socialist Party in England and Wales).20

As an integral part of this madness, in 1929 the Sunday Worker was closed down and the NLWM was wound up. In effect the CPGB returned to its SDF roots. Ralph Miliband comments that the CPGB’s so-called new line “brought it to the nadir of its influence”.21

Third period left sectarianism could only but spur on the Labour right’s witch-hunt. In 1930 there came the first proscribed list. Members of a whole variety of organisations became ineligible for individual membership of the Labour Party, and CLPs were instructed not to affiliate to proscribed organisations. Needless to say, most of them were associated in some way or another with the CPGB.

Latest round

What began as a witch-hunt against the CPGB in the 1920s nowadays not only includes LAW, LIEN and Socialist Appeal. There is the catch-all ban on “racist, abusive or foul language, abuse against women, homophobia or anti-Semitism at meetings, on social media or in any other context”. The Victoria Street thought-police can, at a whim, expel anyone. Members live in fear. They silence themselves. They keep their heads down. They fret, worry and sometimes experience profound mental distress over nothing more than past Zoom appearances, social media posts, likes and dislikes. Naturally, often they simply despair, and leave in disgust. They scatter to the four winds and turn to social dust.

However, there is a growing fightback. Twelve NEC members have declared the ban on the four proscribed groups “unfair”.22 The SCG even summed up the courage to organise a statement, signed by 20 Labour MPs and five Labour peers, urging that Ken Loach be reinstated as a member.23 In a similar fashion a range of groups have united as Defend the Left to oppose the bans and proscriptions – whatever the many political faults and inadequacies, a positive development. Even better, there are those now committed to the “refoundation of Labour as a united front of a special kind open to all socialist and working class organisations” (LAW).24

Here a really valuable lesson has been learnt. Yes, comrades, to fight against the witch-hunt we need a clear vision of what we are fighting for. The struggle continues.

  1. The Independent October 29 2020.↩︎
  2. Morning Star August 12 2016↩︎
  3. BC Roberts The Trade Union Congress 1868-1921 London 1958, p166.↩︎
  4. Ibid p167.↩︎
  5. Quoted in R Miliband Parliamentary socialism London 1960, p17.↩︎
  6. M Crick The history of the Social Democratic Federation Keel 1994, p97.↩︎
  7. Ibid p230↩︎
  8. H Pelling Origins of the Labour Party Oxford 1976, p172.↩︎
  9. M Crick The history of the Social Democratic Federation Keel 1994, p159.↩︎
  10. Ibid p8.↩︎
  11. Ibid p8.↩︎
  12. Ibid p8.↩︎
  13. Ibid p248.↩︎
  14. Quoted in M Crick The history of the Social Democratic Federation Keel 1994, p281.↩︎
  15. VI Lenin CW Vol 31, Moscow 1977, p258.↩︎
  16. Quoted in J Klugmann History of the Communist Party of Great Britain Vol 1, London 1968, p168.↩︎
  17. VI Lenin CW Vol 15, Moscow 1977, pp234-35.↩︎
  18. JT Murphy, ‘The Labour Party conference’ Communist Review August 1923, Vol 4, No4: www.marxists.org/archive/murphy-jt/1923/08/labour_conf.htm↩︎
  19. J Klugmann History of the Communist Party of Great Britain Vol 1, London 1968, pp361-62.↩︎
  20. N Branson History of the Communist Party of Great Britain 1927-1941 London 1985, p5.↩︎
  21. R Miliband Parliamentary socialism London 1960, p153.↩︎
  22. labourlist.org/2021/09/labour-implementing-ban-on-groups-in-unfair-way-say-12-nec-members.↩︎
  23. labourlist.org/2021/08/socialist-campaign-group-of-mps-urges-labour-to-reinstate-ken-loach.↩︎
  24. www.labouragainstthewitchhunt.org.↩︎
Labour Party Marxists

Coups, putsches and revolutions

Not only real, but counterfactual history too, can provide valuable political insights. Derek James reports on the Spring Communist University, held over the long bank holiday weekend of April 30-May 3

Organised by the CPGB and Labour Party Marxists, Spring 2021 CU, was designed, in part, to cast a sharp light on the momentous January 6 events in Washington. Titled ‘Coups, putsches and revolutions’, its aim was, though, designed not just to assess what exactly happened with Donald Trump, Capitol Hill, the boogaloos, the DC police and the servile GOP establishment, but to provide a much wider picture, so that we can draw operative conclusions when it comes to our own revolutionary practice in the future.

Speakers came from three continents, and there were participants from Britain, the Netherlands, Ireland, the United States and a whole number of other countries besides. There was, too, a wide range of leftwing opinions and factional alignments in contention. From our point of view, all very welcome. We positively seek to promote internationalism, frank and honest debate on the left and, of course, the unity that is only possible on the solid foundations provided by a principled Marxist minimum-maximum programme.

David Broder began the series of talks with ‘Mussolini’s march on Rome – glorious myth and sordid reality’. As he headed the world’s first expressly fascist regime, the study of Benito Mussolini’s rise to power is an important starting point for our understanding of the nature of fascism, and raises the question of how far we can define what happened in October 1922 as a coup. David outlined the main events leading up to the ‘March on Rome’ and how the fascist movement could be described as heading a “preventative counterrevolution” to deal with the challenge that the militant Italian working class movement posed to capitalism and the constitutional order. He argued that the fascists were not simply an instrument of capital, but constituted a middle class reaction which had its own dynamics.

Basing himself on this movement of the petty bourgeoisie, Mussolini was able to act as an interlocutor and a political broker between the movement and the liberal political elite, the state and the Catholic church. The March on Rome was in no way a ‘revolution’, but rather a piece of theatre – part of a process of political manoeuvres and negotiations between liberal politicians and Mussolini, which resulted in a coalition government in which the fascists were a minority. Comrade Broder argued that the consolidation of a fascist regime was drawn out throughout the 1920s and, although it resulted from a top-down process of integration which moulded existing state structures into a new order, its conservative economic policies and wage compression made it clear that Mussolini ruled on behalf of capital.

The resulting questions and discussion covered a wide range of issues, which also came up in other debates over the weekend. A key theme in this opening session was the nature of the working class movement during the ‘Red Years’ (1920-21) and the impact that the development of the Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I) had on the ruling class assessment of the threat of revolution in 1922. Comrades asked why the PCd’I had failed to mobilise any effective response to fascism and discussed the impact of the Communist International’s intervention on the development of the party’s strategy. It was clear that communists internationally were faced with a new phenomenon in the form of fascism, and this was reflected in the shifting assessments of the possibilities of both revolution and fascist counterrevolution in Italy.

Furthermore, the formation of the PCd’I was coterminous with the emergence of fascism, while the debate within the international communist movement on the united front was at an early stage in 1922. For many comrades this raised the significant distinction between the united front and the popular front, and the ways in which communists should work to mobilise the labour movement against fascism and win the working class for socialist revolution were also important topics in the discussion. The issues of class, party and leadership, which were so clearly posed by the development of fascism and the consolidation of Mussolini’s regime, were of central importance and would re-emerge elsewhere in the revolutions and counterrevolutions of the 20th century.

In the following session Kevin Bean considered whether Hitler’s November 1923 ‘beer hall putsch’ was a ‘dress rehearsal for 1933’. He outlined the history of the ‘national socialist’ Nazi Party and its early development in the turbulent period of revolution and counterrevolution in Germany in the aftermath of World War I. In particular he described how the beer hall putsch illustrated the petty-bourgeois composition of the Nazi movement and its relationship with elements of the state and the ruling class. In tracing the political, social and economic dynamics that enabled the Nazis to grow into a mass movement and a significant electoral force following the 1929 great depression, comrade Bean showed how the crisis had a major impact in radicalising the petty bourgeoisie. He stressed that, whilst the Nazis had developed “autonomously” and were not simply instruments of capitalist rule, key sections of the state and the army, along with conservative and reactionary politicians, saw Adolf Hitler and his movement as useful allies to be deployed against the left and the working class. As with Mussolini, Hitler’s assumption of power as chancellor was not a ‘revolution’, but rather represented a political manoeuvre, in which German capitalism helped the Nazis to gain control of the state and launch a concentrated counterrevolutionary assault on the organisations of the working class. While the traditional bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties were eventually all abolished, the fundamental economic structures of capitalism remained untouched.

The relationship between Nazism and big business was a major theme in the subsequent discussion, along with the related question of how close Germany was to socialist revolution in this period. Attention was paid by comrades to the analysis and strategy that the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) adopted to combat the Nazis. The KPD’S so-called ‘third period’ strategy, its description of social democrats as ‘social fascists’ and the party’s failure to build an effective united front of working class organisations to fight Nazism were important topics in the discussion.

Many comrades were clear that it was the function of Nazism as a counterrevolutionary movement and its relationship with capitalism that we should stress. Above all, there was general agreement that the contemporary insights of Trotsky and his description of fascism as the mobilisation of the petty bourgeoisie into a movement – a “battering ram” – that can smash the labour movement in order to maintain the rule of monopoly capital, were useful guides, both in analysing the reasons for the defeat of the German workers’ movement in 1933, and for understanding the function such movements might play again in the future. Given the widespread tendency by many on the left to indiscriminately label all authoritarian governments and rightwing politics as ‘fascist’, this theoretical and historical clarity is vital if we are ever going to move beyond the politics of slogans and ahistorical labels.

Kornilov to Trump

The talk by Lars T Lih, on ‘How the August 1917 Kornilov coup was defeated’, discussed one of the turning points during the Russian Revolution. Lars reconsidered the widely accepted account of the attempted coup by the ex-tsarist general, and the way in which it was defeated, by taking a fresh look at the contemporary evidence and assessments of the attempted coup. He focused on the key concept of power (vlast, in Russian) in the politics of the revolution, and how conflicts about the class nature of ‘the vlast’ played out in different approaches to the army. Lavr Kornilov and the provisional government wanted to restore the old discipline, and that meant getting rid of soldiers’ soviets, long political debates and demands for the election of officers. The Bolsheviks wanted exactly the opposite.

Lars went on to look at how the defeat of the coup strengthened the left in general, and the Bolsheviks in particular. The generally accepted view on the left – reinforced by the accounts of Leon Trotsky and John Reed – was that the Bolsheviks had taken the lead in mobilising workers and soldiers to resist Kornilov and to undermine the coup by fraternising with his troops, and that this success had boosted the Bolsheviks after the low point of the July Days, when they had been driven underground, and proved to be the beginning of a sustained surge in support that culminated in the October revolution.

Lars was unsure that the Bolsheviks, as such, played the leading role, although he agreed that the soviets, where the Bolsheviks were strong, were the vital agencies for mobilising support to counter Kornilov. For Lars, the important results of the Kornilov affair were the strengthening of ‘anti-agreementism’ and the further undermining of support for Aleksandr Kerensky and his government. For the Bolsheviks, the soviets had come back to life and proved that they constituted a real and effective vlast that could now govern Russia and carry out the demands of the working class and peasants.

The discussion that followed his talk turned on both the specific and general aspects of Bolshevik tactics during the crisis. What were the political implications of the Bolsheviks’ united front strategy against Kornilov, and how applicable is it today? Some comrades made a distinction between political and military support and saw the Bolshevik approach as taking the form of a bloc with Kerensky and the provisional government against Kornilov. However, others suggested that, as war is the continuation of politics by other means, military support is political support in its most concentrated form. Thus, Bolshevik statements that they did not support the provisional government, and acted solely in defence of the soviets against the landlord-bourgeois reaction represented by Kornilov, should be taken seriously – not casually dismissed in service of unprincipled backing for various reactionary ‘third world’ regimes and movements.

Alongside this was the Bolshevik strategy of arming the working class and splitting the army rank and file away from the officers and the high command. This was key to the Bolshevik seizure of power, and today’s left should likewise take the issue of the army seriously if it wanted to build a movement to successfully overthrow the capitalist state. It was also clear from both Lars’ account and the responses that the study of revolutionary history is vitally important – not as a simplified ‘authorised version’, but rather as a subject for constant research and re-examination following a close, accurate reading of the primary evidence.

Alexander Gallus, from the American magazine Cosmonaut, led the discussion on ‘Left responses to the events of January 6’. He began by outlining some of the different positions on the left in the United States on what most saw as an attack on democracy, but found it hard to clearly define its character as an attempted coup. The two poles of the varying responses, he suggested, were provided by Left Voice and the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA). There are those who see the storming of the Capitol as somehow representing working class anger against the political and economic system. Therefore there should be no siding with bourgeois liberals in condemning the attack. Others argue that Hitler had come to the USA and, that, therefore, we had to support Joe Biden to save democracy from an existential threat.

Alexander traced the origins of the attack to Donald Trump’s capture of the Republican Party and his constant questioning of the legitimacy of a Biden election victory. The protest was disorganised and, having wound up his followers, Trump departed the scene and denied all responsibility. Comrade Gallus went on to look at the wider political implications of January 6 and the first months of the Biden presidency for the development of the left in the US. The immediate task for the left, he said, should be to focus on raising working class awareness and class-consciousness by calling for the political independence of the labour movement, rather than remaining tied to the Democrats.

In the following discussion a number of comrades from the US offered a range of perspectives, both on January 6 and the long-term strategy for the left. There were differing assessments of the coup attempt, but most comrades argued that it was part of a strategy to create chaos in an attempt to change the outcome of the presidential election. Given Donald Trump’s position as head of state and commander-in-chief, this was a serious action – a self-coup that had some of the characteristics of Louis Napoleon’s 18th Brumaire, one American comrade argued. All were agreed that these dramatic events were very significant and showed the uncertainty and instability at the heart of the world hegemon.

As might be expected, the future of the Democratic Party was central to the debate. Some contributions looked at the early stages of Biden’s presidency and what his present neo-Keynesianism told us about the orientation of the US capitalist class and its relationship with the Democrats. Was it possible to develop a clear political differentiation between bourgeois politicians and the left by working within the party and standing on a Democratic ballot? One response rejected this argument and suggested that instead the left must make a savage critique of the Democrats and go for a clean break. Above all, demands for political independence should not be limited to simply calling for a ‘Labor Party’, but should instead focus on building a revolutionary Marxist party and a programme committed to the real transformation of the US.

Middle East

‘The August 1953 coup against Mohammad Mossadegh – the CIA’s first Middle Eastern coup’, a talk given by Yassamine Mather, looked at the role of the US and Britain in overthrowing the elected prime minister in Iran. Yassamine provided a detailed background to the history of British and later American interventions in Iran, focusing both on oil and diplomatic interests, as well as explaining the close relationship between the ruling Pahlavi dynasty and British imperialism. The nationalisation of the British-owned oil industry in 1950 raised tensions between Iran and the British and formed the immediate backdrop to the coup. According to official documents released in the last 10 years, the CIA and its British counterpart, MI6, cooperated in 1953, using local agents to spread disinformation and build tension within the country. Significantly they also attempted to press the shah to dismiss Mossadegh and reverse his policies.

Whilst the shah dithered, Mossadegh seized the initiative after hearing rumours of a coup and mobilised the army to protect his position in Tehran. Despite appearing to have the upper hand, events then moved quickly against him, following a pattern of US intervention that would become familiar over the next 50 years. Local gangs, religious leaders and a wide range of ‘dirty tricks’ were used to encourage division, violence and disorder to undermine Mossadegh’s government over a four-day period in August 1953.

The CIA also persuaded policymakers of the necessity for intervention by stressing the threat to western interests posed by the ‘official communist’ Tudeh party. Troops from a rural background and loyal to the shah entered Tehran to ‘restore order’ and the US client, general Fazlollah Zahedi, was declared prime minister. This was followed by executions and thousands of arrests, which crushed the opposition and consolidated the shah’s regime.

Comrade Mather stressed that these events took place in the context of the cold war and long-standing diplomatic rivalries between imperialist powers, and later the Soviet Union, for control of Iran. She argued that the overthrow of Mossadegh’s regime helped shape Iranian politics in the years that followed and reinforced an existing hostility to foreign intervention in Iranian affairs. Above all, the coup against Mossadegh provided a model for US policy in organising future coups ‘on the cheap’ – without the direct intervention of American troops and all the bother of openly controlling a country.

In the discussion comrades looked at both the specific history and politics of Iran, and the wider issue of neo-colonialism and the cold war. There was a particular focus on the nature of imperialism and its historical origins.

Esen Uslu’s outline of ‘Turkey 1980 – the nature and the significance of the generals’ coup’ began by giving us a very detailed account of the role of the army in Turkish politics and society in the 20th century. He explained the importance of the army in the nation-building project following the end of World War I and the disintegration of the Ottoman empire, and the ways in which capitalism was developed to sustain the power and role of the army. Given Turkey’s membership of Nato and its pivotal role during the cold war, the significance of the Turkish army as a political force increased in the post-1945 period, alongside the development of a military-industrial complex within the country. Comrade Uslu also stressed the importance of wider Turkish economic development, which not only resulted in the growth of an urban working class and a decline in the rural-based population, but also saw militant protests and revolutionary politics emerge in the 1960s.

In response to this growing opposition, the right launched the ‘Grey Wolves’ campaign of violence against the left and the working class movement, which only intensified the tensions and polarisation in society. The September 12 1980 coup aimed to restore order and further modernise the Turkish economy and society under the aegis of the army as the embodiment of the nation. Turkey was opened up to foreign capital, and state controls over key areas of economic life were lifted. This was combined with the repression of the opposition by the generals, who detained over 100,000 political prisoners in an attempt to stabilise the regime.

Esen also discussed the development of the Communist Party of Turkey and its record. He argued that its version of proletarian internationalism was not really related to the other struggles going on in the region: it saw the world and its neighbours through the prism of the USSR and its state interests. However, given the diplomatic support the USSR gave to the generals’ regime for its own strategic purposes, the party’s leadership was clearly in a bind and failed to adequately respond to the crisis: the result was that critics of the leadership who wanted a more determined opposition were expelled.

These issues were taken up in the discussion, along with the question of how far the coup could be accurately described as ‘fascist’. Comrades pointed to the size and militant nature of the working class movement, and how, despite that, the general’s coup all but destroyed the Turkish, as opposed to the Kurdish, left. Comrade Uslu agreed that ‘fascism’ should not be used as a catch-all term and that revolution was impossible without splitting the army.

The discussion also considered recent developments following president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s defeat of an attempted coup by dissident army units. Has the army finally been tamed? Esen thought not. There is, after all, the ongoing war against the Kurds and Turkey’s wider strategic ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean, north Africa and in the Turkic-speaking regions to the east. The possibilities of conflict in all these regions and the impact of this instability on the working class movement were also raised as being important factors in the immediate future.

Finishing off the sessions on military coups, Joel Beinin talked about ‘The Egyptian coup d’état of July 3 2013’. Again, this was a very detailed, informative account, which gave a clear picture of the role of the army in Egyptian society from the 1950s and the nature of the various movements and protests in the period before the 2013 coup. Joel detailed the relationship that the army had to the various elites in Egyptian society, as well as their relationship with the US. He outlined the protests against the Mubarak regime in 2011, explaining that the various strands, such as the movement amongst the youth, the protests against police repression and the demands from the intelligentsia for democracy, had little regular contact with the working class – which developed a rapidly increasing willingness to protest and strike over its own, largely economic, demands during this period.

The events of January 25, which overthrew president Hosni Mubarak, were, comrade Beinin argued, “half revolution, half coup”, with the army ‘joining’ the uprising and assuming power through the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces – which remained in control until the inauguration of Mohamed Morsi as president in June 2012. Morsi was the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood – the only organised group with a national profile and coherent structure in a position to mount any real challenge to army dominance. Conflict between the elected president and the army culminated in a popular campaign for his recall, organised covertly by the army and military intelligence and supported by the Saudi and United Arab Emirates regimes.

Tensions mounted, as large-scale demonstrations – crucially those in Cairo’s Tahrir Square – demanded that Morsi resign in June 2013. The army stepped in, using the familiar arguments about ‘restoring order’, and deposed the president. The coup drew in a range of support from the independent trade unions, feminists, leftists, liberals and Salafi Islamists. Those opposed to the army’s overthrow of the elected president included, of course, the Muslim Brotherhood and regional powers such as Turkey, but not the left. The coup was met with demonstrations by the Brotherhood, which in turn faced severe repression and brutal violence by the army.

During his discussion of the post-coup period, comrade Beinin looked at the role of the US and its support for the Egyptian army. He also discussed the role, social composition and politics of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Another important issue was the position adopted by the left, both in Egypt itself and internationally. What should our position be towards a reactionary movement like the Muslim Brotherhood and how should we react to the overthrow of an elected president like Morsi by the army? Surely, the left ought to be able to oppose the army and yet not support the Brotherhood. Surely, the left could defend a revolutionary situation and the democratic space that had been gained after the fall of Mubarak, against what was the army’s restorationist coup.

The political gymnastics undertaken by the Socialist Workers Party in Britain and its Egyptian co-thinkers in the Revolutionary Socialist group showed the ideological and political bankruptcy of many on the left. It seemed to the comrades taking part in the discussion that this would continue to be a recurring pattern in the absence of a working class party that could generalise and unite the various protests around a coherent programme as a force for socialist revolution and transformation – not only in Egypt, but throughout the Middle East. Interestingly, comrade Beinin, a member of the Democratic Socialists in the USA, refused to advocate a party. It is, apparently, a failed model … Egyptian workers will find their own way forward. True, in part … but sooner or later Egyptian workers will of necessity form themselves into a party (not this or that confessional sect).

Napoleon to Trump

Mike Macnair’s discussion of ‘Louis Bonaparte’s 1851 self-coup: the army, universal suffrage and referenda’ took us back to one of the seminal works of Marxism, which still has a great deal to say to us about how we can understand coups and the role of the state during a political crisis and a revolutionary period. Mike began with an account of events in France following the February 1848 revolution and the suppression of the French workers’ movement during ‘June Days’. He explained the dynamics of the revolutionary period and showed how, in the aftermath of this repression, the ‘alliance’ between the working class and the republican middle class was shattered.

One of the results of the revolution was a new constitution, which granted manhood suffrage and a government headed by a directly elected executive president. The ‘Party of Order’ in the national assembly had hoped to elect a president – general Louis-Eugène Cavaignac, the butcher of the June Days – who could ‘save society from anarchy’, but it was Louis Napoleon Bonaparte who was elected in a landslide. In building support and consolidating his power, Bonaparte utilised latent nostalgia for the glories of the Napoleonic period, but also presented himself as both a man of the left and a supporter of the Catholic church, as the occasion suited.

Comrade Macnair discussed Bonaparte’s strategy after his election and the way in which he was able to manoeuvre and manipulate the divisions in the assembly and the Party of Order, alongside a media campaign to spread fake news. By placing the assembly in the wrong because they wanted to restrict male suffrage, he gained the advantage, which allowed him to move against his opponents in December 1851. His ‘18th Brumaire’ entailed bringing loyal troops into Paris and arresting leading members of the assembly. He followed this up with a plebiscite, which gave him a 92% vote in favour of extending his term in office – and a further consolidation of his power in November 1852, which saw the re-establishment of the empire – this time confirmed by a 96% majority in a referendum.

Mike concluded by looking at the role of plebiscites and manhood suffrage in legitimating the coup, together with the significance of Marx’s analysis of the character of Bonapartism. He argued that Marx’s writing on this is still taken seriously by many bourgeois historians and commentators, but that does not mean that we should treat his work as an infallible text, to be learnt and repeated ad nauseum as ‘holy writ’. Thus, he argued, we should read Marx critically as a stimulus to analysis, not simply as a form of citation grazing or the confirmation of ‘orthodoxy’.

These points helped to frame a lively discussion on the nature of Marx’s analysis of Bonapartism and the state, and how far his ‘predictions’ had been borne out by later developments in France. It also provoked a discussion on the role of referenda in bourgeois politics and what the attitude of Marxists should be towards them – especially where they are an accepted part of a constitutional system. The experience of the Brexit referendum in Britain came into the discussion, as did the classical Marxist opposition to referendums as instruments to frame political debate, weaken party politics and split the working class along artificial lines.

The penultimate session was the presentation by Daniel Lazare on ‘The nature and global significance of January 6’. Daniel’s wide-ranging opening looked at the changes in the international situation and the increasing instability, both within and between states, following the 2008 financial crash and the period of ‘endless wars’. It was in this context of political crisis and uncertainty, comrade Lazare argued, that the ruling class was faced with growing discontent and constitutional malfunctioning. Thus the emergence of populist reaction. He drew attention to the particular difficulties experienced by the US, Britain and France.

Daniel rested his case on a close analysis of the situation in the US and the political stasis that results from what he described as a pre-modern constitution, which binds a 21st century society to the dictates of the 18th century ‘founding fathers’. Focusing on the events of January 6, comrade Lazare argued that Trump aimed to create chaos and use the resulting confusion to overturn the results of the election, declare a state of emergency and so remain in office. It was a serious attempt at a coup, he believed, and cannot be easily dismissed as a comic opera. As regular readers of the Weekly Worker will know, comrade Lazare has defined the political divisions as akin to a civil war and he developed this argument during his introduction to the discussion by reference to the growth of white militia groups and the Black Lives Matter protests, and the carrying of the battle by Republicans to restrict voting rights into even more states. There may be a period of temporary calm under Biden, he argued, but he believed the structural causes of this crisis of governance cannot be easily wished away. There was every reason to believe that the political and economic crisis would only intensify in the years to come.

During the discussion these issues were taken up by a number of comrades, who agreed that January 6 was a serious coup attempt and that this showed the extent of the divisions within the American ruling class. However, given that the state – especially the army and the key bureaucratic elements – were clearly opposed to Trump, the chances of the coup succeeding were limited. Some comrades also took issue with Daniel’s claims about the pre-modern nature of the US constitution. However, at least when it comes to the future, there was agreement between comrade Lazare and ourselves that Marxists in the US need to fight to abolish the presidency, the Senate, state rights, the Supreme Court and the standing army. There has to be a new, democratic constitution.

Comrade Lazare wound up by arguing that the US faced a profound existential crisis and was increasingly dysfunctional.

Our strategy

The final session was opened by Jack Conrad on ‘Why prime minister Jeremy Corbyn would have faced a coup and how we can defeat counterrevolution’. Jack looked at the emergence of the Corbyn movement and the series of challenges his leadership faced from the Labour right and their friends in the armed forces, the secret state and the media. This required a detailed account of the politics of the last six years, but comrade Conrad concentrated on the nature of the politics of the Labour left and the reasons why the ruling class was so vicious in its attacks on Corbyn. He argued that Corbyn’s leadership was both the perfect opportunity for the Labour’s official left to demonstrate the ‘correctness’ of its strategy to achieve socialism though parliamentary gradualism and a tragic demonstration of the utopian nature of left reformism.

Jack indulged in a counter-factual thought experiment, imagining an alternative reality in which Labour had resoundingly won the December 2019 general election. What would the reaction of the ruling class be to such an extraordinary event? Comrade Conrad posited a number of constitutional options that were open to the bourgeoisie – such as the queen appointing an alternative prime minister from the Labour right, who could command a majority in the Commons. This was a perfectly constitutional process, although for a long time it had not been needed. Other options were also available, Jack continued, ranging from an organised run on the pound and a ‘strategy of tension’ to sap the will of a Corbyn-led government, through to more direct methods using the organs of the state, such as the army, intelligence services and the police, if push came to shove. The bloody experience of Chile on September 11 1973 showed what can be done against a timid left-reformist government.

The thought experiment continued with Jack suggesting that the election of a Corbyn government, even with its very limited ‘bourgeois socialist’ programme, had already produced a bourgeois fear of a crisis of expectations amongst the working class. Faced with this possibility, what would have happened? Jack ended his ‘what if’ counterfactual by suggesting that the official left’s binding commitment to a Labour government as the only way to implement a step-by-step programme of ‘socialism’ would produce a political disaster and calamitous defeat for the working class.

How would a Corbyn government and the official left have reacted to the inevitable pushback by Mike Pompeo, the Labour right, the Tories, the secret state, the media and the capitalist class? As they are not serious about challenging the constitution or the nature of state power, they would only lead our movement into a deadly trap. The historical experience of the Bolsheviks shows how we must seriously prepare for power by explaining to the working class the nature of the state and how we must undermine its counterrevolutionary power by splitting the army and winning its rank and file to the side of the revolution.

As was to be expected, comrade Conrad’s talk prompted a wide-ranging discussion on the nature of revolutionary strategy in Britain and the way in which Marxists should orientate towards Labour. Issues raised included the perspective of transforming Labour into a ‘united front of a special kind’, the relationship between the cycles and phases of economic and political struggle, and the dominant place that the ‘crisis of expectations’ occupies in the strategy of the contemporary left.

Jack summarised both the session and the Spring Communist University as a whole by arguing that political rearmament and education, such as we are undertaking, are essential if we are to arm the working class, win the movement to Marxism and build a revolutionary party that alone can see the back of capitalism.

Anti-Semitism, Labour Party Marxists

Communist Forum goes online

Along with just about every other public meeting, our weekly London Communist Forum at the Calthorpe Arms on Sunday evenings, organised by the CPGB and Labour Party Marxists, has had to be cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the good news is that we will continue meeting on Skype for as long as the pandemic crisis lasts.

Every Sunday, 5pm, from March 22, until further notice: Political report from CPGB Provisional Central Committee, followed by open discussion.

If you wish to take part, please email your Skype name to Stan Keable at secretary@labourpartymarxists.org.uk. On receiving confirmation from him, please add his Skype name, ‘stan.keable’, to your list of contacts.

Our study of Abram Leon’s ‘The Jewish question – a Marxist interpretation’ will be postponed until face-to-face meetings are resumed.)

Organised by CPGB: www.cpgb.org.uk and Labour Party Marxists: www.labourpartymarxists.org.uk.

Transform the Labour Party

Labour leadership | Twenty-two theses

What should be the attitude of Marxists to the Labour leadership contest?

1. Our attitude towards the Jeremy Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party was worked out in advance: that is, well before his actual election, and with far greater foresight, and with far greater worth and precision than any other campaign, committee, group or party on the left.

2. We are committed to the complete transformation of the Labour Party, forging it into a permanent united front of the working class and equipping it with solid Marxist principles and a tried and tested Marxist leadership. Such a perspective can only be realised with a mass Communist Party. Needless to say, we envisage once again opening up the Labour Party to the affiliation of leftwing groups and parties – crucially the affiliation of the CPGB.

3. Whatever the rightwing media claimed, Corbyn is not, and never was, a Marxist. He was and remains a sincere, but dithering, left reformist. His Straight Leftist advisors proved to be a source of weakness, not strength. The common sense of ‘official communism’ is to bring on board, to placate, to tack to the right. A proven recipe for defeat.

4. We never expected the election of a Corbyn-led Labour government. There was, though, an outside possibility of such a scenario. Such a government would not have been able to deliver the very modest promises contained in It’s time for real change, the December 2019 election manifesto. The Corbyn leadership was committed to reversing austerity, increasing the economic role of the state, repealing some anti-trade union laws and introducing some minor constitutional reforms. At best that amounted to an illusory attempt to run British capitalism in the interests of the working class. Meanwhile, in the name of It’s time for real change, wage-slavery would continue, Britain would remain a monarchy, subject to judge-made law, one of the ‘Five Eyes’, a core imperialist power, a member of Nato and armed with US-controlled nuclear weapons. To call such a programme ‘socialist’ is to violate the commonly accepted language of the left.

5. If by chance a Corbyn government had happened, we predicted there would have been a run on the pound, sabotage by the Labour right, a constitutional coup, an army mutiny, a US ‘push back’, etc. Given the continued hold of constitutionalism, narrow trade unionism and ephemeral protest politics, resistance would surely have proved feeble and ineffective, and ended in a demoralising defeat.

6. The results of the December 2019 general election were no surprise. Opinion polls always showed a clear Tory lead. Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings skilfully played the election as being about ‘Getting Brexit done’. The Brexit Party’s support crumbled and predictably went over to the Tories. Labour lost votes in the north and the Midlands. Labour’s share of the poll was greater than in 2010 and 2015. Nonetheless, compared with 2017, it dropped by 8%. A shaft of light amidst the gloom: Labour won by far the biggest share of the 18-24-year-old vote. The Tory vote increased by just 1% – enough though, given the ‘first past the post’ system, to give them a commanding 80-strong majority in the House of Commons. We should expect Brexit negotiations to drag on for years. It is unlikely, however, to become the kind of issue it was between June 2016 and December 2019: we saw huge mobilisations on both sides, the fall of prime ministers, repeated government defeats in parliament and the purging and splitting of parties.

7. Meanwhile, we should expect legislation against trade union action on the rails, moves to outlaw local councils supporting BDS and maybe official regulations characterising anti-Zionism as violating official anti-racism, closely associated with terrorist tendencies and therefore notifiable to the Prevent bureaucracy. War in the Middle East, especially if it involves Israel, can only but increase the intensity and scope of the ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smear campaign. Anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism could easily fall into the net too. To a large extent this is the result of the hugely successful international campaign to label as anti-Semitic anything critical of Israel – a campaign that has been most thoroughly and visibly implemented in Britain’s Labour movement. But it is also bearing fruit in Germany (where the BDS movement has been declared anti-Semitic), France and the US presidential race.

8. Labour’s results in December 2019 were in parliamentary terms on a par with 1935. Except, of course, in 1935 Labour faced a national government. It should also be added that in 1935 Labour’s share of the vote increased. In some ways the 2019 vote should have been expected in 2017. The reasons for the comparatively good results in 2017 can be guessed at: (a) propaganda directed against Jeremy Corbyn (eg, he is a Marxist, pro-terrorist, part of the metropolitan elite) proved largely ineffective; (b) Corbyn genuinely inspired some sections of the population: he appeared to many, especially younger, voters as a ‘man on a white horse’; (c) Brexit was not the overriding issue it was to become.

9. Boris Johnson swept to power in the Tory Party with the promise to deliver on the 2016 referendum result. He subsequently showed a ruthlessness utterly alien to the dithering Jeremy Corbyn. Labour’s step-by-step adoption of a hard ‘remain’ position, its call for a second referendum, the humiliating parliamentary defeats inflicted upon the May government, crucially with the help of Labour MPs – none of that was going to retain Brexiteer voters. Quite the opposite. They felt cheated, betrayed, by a Labour Party pledged to uphold the referendum result. For many of them Brexit served as a substitute for class politics. Needless to say, like Scottish nationalism, Brexit is a form of bourgeois politics. The same, of course, goes for ‘remain’. Hence the working class has been unnecessarily split and placed under the influence of either ‘remain’ or ‘leave’ demagogues. Labour should have rejected David Cameron’s referendum from the start. It should have organised an active boycott. Labour should reject referendums as a matter of principle and develop a positive vision for European unity.

10. Labour’s poor performance in 2019 is not only explained by Brexit. Because of the ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ campaign, because of the constant attacks from the Labour right, because of wall-to-wall media hostility, Jeremy Corbyn became a highly unpopular figure amongst many traditional Labour voters. But to have expected anything else would have been naive. The Labour right openly represents capitalist interests. The same goes for the mainstream media. Without a powerful alternative mass media in the hands of the labour movement, Corbyn was forced to undergo trial by the bourgeois establishment’s newspapers and radio and TV stations. He was never likely to win.

11. Would adopting a Lexit position have won the election for Labour? Hardly. What would have been retained in the north and the Midlands would have been lost in London. Nor would Labour have won the general election if Corbyn had opposed the witch-hunt, organised open-air rallies, called for a general strike against austerity, etc, etc. All such nostrums are illusory. Of course, his silence over the witch-hunt amounted to complicity. But opposing the witch-hunt could well have produced a rebellion amongst his Campaign Group allies. Look at the disgraceful role of John McDonnell, Jon Lansman’s Momentum, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Owen Jones, etc. In other words, the odds were always heavily stacked against a Corbyn-led government.

12. That was not the case with internal Labour Party rules and structures. Whereas Tony Blair carried out a (counter) revolution, tinkering change is all that Corbyn managed to achieve. That need not have been the case. With a stronger, more determined, politically clear-sighted left, there could have been a Corbynite revolution.

13. Criminally, significant sections of the left stayed clear of the struggle in the Labour Party. They were content to comment from the sidelines. Even worse, there were those – most notably, the Socialist Party in England and Wales – who actively opposed the affiliation of left-dominated trade unions to the Labour Party. A criminally irresponsible stance.

14. The Tories caught the Labour Party in a trap. First by getting Labour to front the ‘Better Together’ campaign in the 2014 Scottish referendum. That lost Labour Scotland, where there remains just one Labour MP. Second, by getting Labour to accept the legitimacy of the 2016 EU referendum. That lost Labour swathes of seats in the Midlands and the north.

15. The reformist left – and not only in the Labour Party – has suffered a body blow. With Jeremy Corbyn they had their ideal leader, with John McDonnell they had their ideal shadow chancellor, with For the many, not the few and then It’s time for real change they had their ideal manifesto. And yet Labour went down to a bad defeat.

16. The reformist left in the Labour Party has always been committed to the ‘next Labour government’. The danger is that many Labour members will conclude: (a) that Labour can never be changed (and therefore drop out of active politics); or (b) that the fight for social change lies not in permanent organisations and patient education, but in ephemeral street protests and economic strikes; or (c) that there needs to be a safe, acceptable, suitably centrist leader who can reach out to the Labour right, unite the party and ‘rewin the trust’ of the so-called Jewish community. Paradoxically, that almost certainly means purging the left, almost certainly using the ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ big lie.

17. Those wedded to the ‘next Labour government’ perspective are doubtless well intentioned. But it is not a road to socialism. It is the road to the right and the next Tory government.

18. Our task is to fully empower the Labour Party’s mass membership, open eyes as to the hopeless nature of the reformist left and bring about circumstances whereby the Labour Party is thoroughly purged of the pro-capitalist right and the leadership is won by real, not supposed, Marxists.

19. That is why we strive in the here and now to equip the Labour left with the perspective of thoroughly democratising the Labour Party and politically refounding it. The Labour left needs to commit itself to replacing the existing clause four – but not with the old, 1918, Fabian clause four, as championed by the so-called Marxists of Socialist Appeal. On the contrary, what is needed is a genuinely Marxist clause four, as formulated by Labour Party Marxists.

20. Not that we should boycott the Labour leadership and deputy leadership elections, because none of the candidates are Marxists or even remotely principled. Eg, none of them has opposed the witch-hunt. We should give a critical vote to the main left candidates for leader and deputy leader and vote ‘lesser evil’ for the other candidates. We vote with no illusions. The chances are that even the ‘continuity’ candidates, if they get their way, would take up the mantel of Neil Kinnock.

21. That is why we support the organisation of a left opposition. However, perspectives of uniting with others on the Labour left on a lowest-common-denominator basis – eg, merely restoring ‑the practice of automatic reselection of MPs, or merely opposing austerity, Trident renewal, etc – are the politics of the broad front, which lead nowhere positive.

22. We have no principled objection to Marxists in the Labour Party working in such formations. But we put the fight for our own programme and organisational principles above diplomatic tweaking, give-and-take compromises and rotten deals. We accept the possibility of being in a minority. That is preferable to putting our programme and organisational principles onto the back burner l

Now there are just three: vote RBL as the lesser evil