Trade unions

A year of strikes

We must go beyond Labourism. Kevin Bean assesses the upsurge in trade union action and its limitations

June 21 marked one year since the first RMT strike, which ushered in the highest level of industrial action for more than three decades. With 3.7 million working days lost through strikes from June 2022 to April 2023, according to official statistics, this is the highest number for any 11-month period since July 1989 to May 1990, when 4.8 million days were lost.[1]

With disputes and strikes involving workers in sectors ranging from the post office and the civil service through to the health service, schools, local government, universities and transport, it seemed to many commentators – whether in the left or the bourgeois media – that ‘the militant working class was back’. Tory ministers reprised the Thatcherite playbook and declared that they would not give in to union leaders such as Mick Lynch ‘holding the country to ransom’, as they supposedly did in the 1970s. They even tried to use the Ukraine war, with Lynch and co being Putin agents. But nor did that work.

The year of strikes has drawn widely differing groups of workers into action, some for the first time, such as the Royal College of Nursing. Although the disputes have different proximate causes and demands, the common element is the defence of wage levels and working conditions.

We should also not discount the way that employers have attempted to use the historical weakness of the organised working class to further undermine conditions and benefits, such as pensions and permanent contracts. The long-running pensions dispute in the universities and the attempts by the railway employers to worsen the conditions of drivers and other workers are examples of disputes which are just as much about a wider defence of jobs and conditions as attempts to ensure that wages keep pace with inflation.

Back to 1970s?

In terms of the size of the unions and the density of membership, the differences between the 1970s and today are so obvious as to hardly need stating. According to the latest government statistics, there are 6.5 million trade unionists in Britain – just over 22% of employees. This compares to the high point of union membership of 13.2 million – with a much smaller workforce – in 1979. The majority now are in the public sector (3.84 million) and tend to be older and more highly qualified or skilled than the ‘average’ worker.[2]

A combination of economic and social change since the 1970s, such as the decline in manufacturing and the rise of the service and public sectors, alongside a conscious (and successful) strategy of weakening the potential power of organised workers through anti-trade union legislation, has decisively changed both the terrain on which British trade unions operate and their organisational form. The power of the union bureaucracy has been greatly strengthened at the expense of the rank and file, especially the workplace representatives and shop stewards. These were important elements of rank-and-file power in the strikes of the post-war boom in the late 1940s-60s, which saw action to advance living standards, as well as during the more defensive strikes against attacks on wages and conditions in the 1970s.

The legal restrictions put in place since the 1980s and the reduced industrial power of the movement have not only reinforced the power of the trade union bureaucracy, but strengthened tendencies towards compromise and class collaboration which have long been the hallmark of British trade union leaders. Hence the string of below inflation settlements negotiated by trade union leaders ranging from the FBU’s Matt Wrack to the RCN’s Pat Cullen.

The labour bureaucracy – a combination of trade union officialdom, Labour career politicians and apparatchiks – has, of course, its own niche and privileged position in capitalist society. Even when speaking the language of class war, its sectional interests cause this stratum to act as the labour lieutenants of capital in policing the working class.

This can be seen with initiatives such as Enough Is Enough, where trade union leaders such as Mick Lynch, Dave Ward and Eddie Dempsey worked hand-in-hand with aspiring Labour careerists and local hacks in order to contain and divert anger into pointless rallies and demonstrations. Naturally, the politics were kept to the usual banal platitudes of ‘a real pay rise’, ‘decent housing for all’, ‘tax the rich’, etc, and no accountable, democratic, structures were built. So, while Enough is Enough provided plenty of opportunities for inflating already inflated egos, the whole thing, inevitably, fizzled out … along with other hopes of yesterday.

Momentum, the Socialist Campaign Group, Labour Representation Committee and Labour Left Alliance have likewise all withered on the vine in spite of, because of, the strike wave. Their politics have simply proven not fit for purpose.

Consciousness

If the trade union bureaucrats have been behaving true to form, what has been the impact of the year of strikes on the membership and wider working class? For both those taking part and the labour movement more generally, the strikes have both been a morale booster and raised class-consciousness, especially in disputes where the pay and conditions of the workers can be contrasted with the profits of the capitalists and the income of the senior managers.

Anyone who has taken part in a strike will tell you about the solidarity and sense of collective strength that is engendered by taking part in pickets, strike meetings and protests. Workers in dispute identify their enemies and friends and start to draw wider lessons about the nature of capitalist society. Reports in the left and even the bourgeois media provide plenty of examples of how industrial disputes can shift workers’ understanding of their place in the world.

This, however, does not proceed in a straight line and the hopes and expectations of some that the strike wave would produce a shift to the left and a rapid development of a revolutionary socialist consciousness have not borne fruit. Indeed, as shown in some trade union elections, the right has been strengthened. In Unison, for example, the Time for Real Change left group lost its NEC majority and the Socialist Party in England and Wales was reduced from four seats to just one (Hugo Pierre was elected from the Black Section).

The disputes themselves have been long drawn-out affairs, but the strikes have more been a day here and a day there. Also demands and struggles have been kept sectional, even when workers in a particular sector, such as the health service, are taking action over similar issues. The levels of coordination between unions at a national level have been minimal, although local groups of workers have attempted to build common action and demands in areas such as education, local government and the civil service. Most importantly, few of the disputes have truly resulted in victories, other than in some areas of transport and food production, where all-out strikes hit the employers’ profits and forced them to concede pay settlements in line with inflation. In other sectors, many of the settlements agreed by the union leaderships, even if trumpeted as victories, actually represent real wage cuts because they are quite a bit below the rate of inflation.

In response to these developments there is nothing wrong with calls from those on the left to build on the year of strikes and make attempts to overcome sectionalism by generalising the various struggles. But it is also important to undertake a sober assessment of where the movement might be heading and understand the limitations of strike action. After all, if a year of strikes has produced little in the way of tangible results, it is perfectly logical for trade union members, not just leaders, to look to the politics of moderation and the election of a Labour government headed by Sir Keir Starmer.

But some will never learn.

Alternatives

Take Socialist Worker; its whole raison d’être for decades has been the alchemy of spontaneity and turning the base metal of protests and strikes into socialist gold. At last, with big strikes happening, the picture was painted of Britain being on the cusp of a revolutionary situation rather than an altogether routine general election. Such economism entails either steering clear of high politics or, when there is high politics, there is tailism of the liberal bourgeoisie. But what is really important, in the meantime, is recruiting trade union militants to the confessional sect. Party Notes boasts of the SWP recruiting “well over 1,000 people since 2002” (June 19 2023). But, of course, few of them pay dues or attend meetings. Indeed it is a revolving door.

In a similar way Socialist Appeal – the British section of the International Marxist Tendency – also draws the wrong conclusions by overstating the impact of industrial disputes on class-consciousness. After the dreary years of auto-Labourism and pushing clause four socialism, albeit with a brief dalliance with Chavismo, the Scottish Socialist Party and other left nationalisms, they have suddenly discovered that they really are communists and that the crisis of capitalism internationally demands a new revolutionary leadership – now! The idea of entering into discussions with other groups with a view to forming an embryonic Communist Party, however, remains noticeably absent. Instead there is yet another attempt to build the confessional sect … this time by appealing  to revolutionary minded students (amongst whom communism is increasingly popular). The aim is to get a thousand members!

Socialist Appeal wants to, needs to, keep its recruits excited. Very excited. So what we have is the upturn in strikes painted, yet again, as a prelude to an acute social crisis and the outbreak of social revolution. The danger is, of course, that the false perspectives of today lead to burnout and demoralisation tomorrow.

All the while, their old comrades in the Socialist Party in England and Wales, now under Peter Taaffe’s chosen heir and successor, Hannah Sell, doggedly push the totally stupid Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition project – trying to create a Labour Party mark 2. Clearly the elementary lessons of the real Labour Party founded in 1900, the Labour Party mark 1, have not been learnt. At best Labourism leads not to socialism, but governing capitalism in the interests of the working class … and, when that all goes wrong, to a Tory government.

Comrade Sell and, following the Socialist Alternative split, her much reduced band of followers, cannot quite understand why trade union officialdom insists on sticking with the Labour Party and the real prospect of a Labour government headed by Sir Keir Starmer, rather than throwing in their lot with Tusc. True, members of Labour’s front bench keep a studied distance from strikers and picket lines. They must appear responsible before the City, the capitalist media and Britain’s US master. But, and this is crucial, a Labour government can actually deliver concessions to trade union officialdom and will almost certainly be less overtly hostile to trade unions than the Tories. Better, then, reasons the average trade union general secretary, to persuade, to pressurise, to plead with a Labour minister, than engage with the toytown Labourism of the Tusc project.

Clueless, Tusc carries on carrying on and in ever smaller circles. The SWP has gone, RMT has gone, even Chris Williamson has gone. Tusc’s politics are, of course, thoroughly economistic; high politics are almost totally absent. Despite that, Tusc candidates get farcical votes … one or two percent. That would not matter particularly … at least to begin with, if the politics were principled – but they are not.

Then we have the fragments and sects of one who hanker after the big time by uniting in this or that broad front. There are plenty of them on offer: Left Unity, George Galloway’s Workers Party, Socialist Labour Network, Peace and Justice and whatever Ken Loach comes up with next. All useless. All absurd.

Probably, however, after the next general election and a Sir Keir Starmer government, things will change. The larger sections of the organised left will be looking towards an alternative to ‘vote Labour …but’.

The choice is clear: building yet another broad front, or something really serious: building a mass Communist Party.

[1]. www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/workplacedisputesandworkingconditions.

[2]. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1158789/Trade_Union_Membership_UK_1995-2022_Statistical_Bulletin.pdf.

Democracy and the Labour Party, Elections

Putting capital and careers first

Starmer’s purge of left candidates shows he is serious about governing ‘responsibly’, says Kevin Bean

Although much of the focus lately has been on the psycho-drama playing out amongst the Tories, on the other side of bourgeois politics Labour leaders have been giving some clear pointers about the shape of the next Labour government, should they win the next election.

If the opinion polls are to be believed, this seems increasingly likely and certainly most commentators and many Tories appear to think that within 18 months Sir Keir and his team will be seated around the cabinet table in Downing Street. It seems that, in this one aspect of bourgeois politics at least, the conventional wisdom that governments lose elections rather than oppositions winning them still appears to hold. Although Labour’s lead over the Tories could well narrow as the election campaign hots up, and there are a number of uncertainties which could impact on the actual result, such as new constituency boundaries, most recent polls point to a Labour majority, with some even suggesting a “landslide”.[1]

Another barometer will be the forthcoming by-elections caused by the resignations of Boris Johnson and Nigel Adams – probably followed by another in the autumn, when Nadine Dorries times her departure to cause maximum political embarrassment to Rishi Sunak. Although the unusual circumstances of the by-elections will probably encourage protest votes and so maximise an anti-government vote, which may benefit the Liberal Democrats, the Labour leadership will undoubtedly play up their successes and stress that the electoral momentum now lays with them.

It is important to remember that it is this electoral perspective which dominates the politics and the strategy of Sir Keir Starmer – shaping both his recent policy shifts and the continuing attacks on what remains of the Labour left. As a fully paid-up member of the British bourgeois political class, with a long record of loyal service in the law, Starmer has shown he will always act in the interests of the state, and of capitalism more generally. Reinforcing this image and reminding his main audience – the capitalist class in Washington and London, and their allies in the media – of his proven record as a reliable, safe pair of hands has been absolutely central to Sir Keir’s leadership from day one.

The Labour leadership has also carried out a charm offensive, targeted at the City and ‘the markets’, to dispel any lingering fears that a Labour government would be ‘fiscally irresponsible’ and would undermine the public finances by either raising taxes on the wealthy or borrowing extravagantly to fund its manifesto commitments. The Starmer project has generally been positively received by the key sections of the capitalist class, although, as ever, they want the Labour leader to go further in order to make the party even more ‘electable’ in their eyes.[2] So close has this relationship become that shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves rowed back last week on a major plank of Labour’s economic policy – the £28 billion ‘green prosperity plan’ – because of hints that it was unacceptable to ‘the markets’.[3]

Purgers

If Sir Keir’s main audience – the capitalist class – are more than happy to see him as prime minister (especially after the bizarre chaos and farcical musical chairs at the heart of the Tory government since 2017), his other audience – the electorate – seems less than impressed by what is on offer. The coming election is unlikely to set anyone on fire, so we can expect both lacklustre political campaigning and widespread apathy on the part of voters. Given this, one possible outcome could still be a Labour victory, but, rather than the predicted landslide, it could instead be a much more modest majority which, some commentators have suggested, would make a Starmer government potentially susceptible to pressure from left MPs.[4]

The model for this scenario is the role of the Labour parliamentary left during the late 1960s and 1970s and its ability to restrict some of the more anti-working class policies proposed by the Labour governments in this period. Whilst there are obvious and striking differences between that period and today – not least the considerable influence exercised by the ‘official’ CPGB over the Tribune group in parliament, the trade union left and rank and file activists in the CLPs – Starmer is not leaving anything to chance. He is getting his retaliation in first by ruthlessly purging the left during the candidate selection process.[5] Changes in constituency boundaries and thus the possibilities of ‘deselecting’ existing left MPs are also being used to weed out anyone deemed unreliable by the leadership, as the recent examples in Birkenhead, Merthyr Tydfil and Upper Cynon show. Reports also suggest that a similar stitch-up will be attempted to get acceptable candidates in place for the by‑elections caused by Johnson and co’s resignations.

After the Corbyn years, it seems to be a case of ‘never again’. The selection of candidates has been handed over to Matt Faulding and Matt Pound – with able assistance provided by NEC member Luke Akehurst. Faulding was once deputy director of the Blairite think tank Progress, while Pound used to run Labour First under Akehurst. These three are the Machiavellis of the Labour Party. Behind the scenes they are deciding the composition of the PLP in the next parliament.

Akehurst is a driven man. A fervent Zionist, he is a director of British Israeli Communication and We Believe in Israel. Combining stints with being a Hackney councillor, working for the Labour Party and the BBC and running Weber Shadwick, a global PR company, it is clear that he enjoys extraordinarily good connections … presumably including with Mossad, the CIA and MI5. But what really marks him out is his deep, enduring almost visceral animosity towards the left. The IHRA so-called definition of anti-Semitism has been a weapon wielded with the greatest passion. As a current NEC member – he topped the poll in 2022 – Akehurst, of course, chairs many of the panels which bar the objects of his hatred.

Naturally, Labour First is pro-Nato, pro-Israel, pro-nuclear weapons, pro-constitution and pro-Ukraine – so Paul Mason would find himself at home. Labour First is not just rightwing, it is militantly rightwing and considers the left an obstacle to achieving what it calls ‘Clause one socialism’; ie, a Labour government fit to serve capitalism and which puts good career politicians like themselves first. Labour as a broad based party has no place for the irresponsible, unpatriotic, left.

Right unite

Directly after the election of Sir Keir as party leader, Labour First combined with Progress to found Labour to Win, and under that umbrella they dominate the NEC politically and, naturally, promote their pals as parliamentary, assembly, mayoral, etc, candidates.

More than that, Labour to Win is attempting to “fundamentally reshape” the culture and politics of the Labour Party. Take that to be something like completing the Blairite counterrevolution, delabourising Labour, repairing the split in liberalism.

Sadly, Sir Keir, Labour to Win, Akehurst, Faulding, Pound and the Labour right are having it easy – because of the supine nature of the official Labour left. During the Corbyn period there was a willingness to sacrifice leftwingers to appease the pro-capitalist right in the PLP. This resulted in waves of suspensions and expulsions. Perhaps more importantly, it provided the ideological ground for Starmer’s current purge by conceding what should have not been conceded: the big lie that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

The record of the official left in the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs in collaborating with the witch-hunt and generally keeping their heads down does not inspire us with confidence that they would do very much to resist Starmer’s pro-capitalist agenda, even if the parliamentary arithmetic were to give, say, 30 determined MPs a greatly enhanced leverage.

Starmer can probably rest easy on that score, although it seems he is taking no chances when it comes to parliamentary or other selection contests. In the new north-east region mayoral constituency, Labour’s long list excludes current Labour mayor for North Tyneside, Jamie Driscoll – a pretty mild municipal socialist who supports the IHRA and whose only crimes are to be tagged ‘the last Corbynista in office’ and to appear at an arts event in a Newcastle theatre with that ‘non-person’ Ken Loach.

It is possible that the SCG really is keeping its powder dry and waiting for the day when it can call the shots in parliament. Perhaps its MPs are secretly a very disciplined and highly organised group who are only awaiting the right moment to strike and sound the clarion call for socialist politics. We all may yet be surprised, but, if their record and narrow Labourist politics tells us anything, I would not hold my breath!

[1]. www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/07/labour-landslide-election-victory-poll-keir-starmer-rishi-sunak-conservatives-constituency-boundaries.

[2]. www.ft.com/content/fbc55e2c-6757-4270-af87-88fd39425cb9; www.economist.com/leaders/2023/04/27/is-keir-starmer-ready-for-office.

[3]. www.cityam.com/economic-stability-must-come-first-labours-reeves-backtracks-on-28bn-green-prosperity-plan.

[4]. www.thetimes.co.uk/article/starmers-quiet-purge-of-his-would-be-mps-cwnm8xspf.

[5]. unherd.com/2023/06/starmer-will-regret-purging-the-left.

Democracy and the Labour Party, Elections

Witch-hunt grows

While some on the disorientated left will support ‘anyone but Labour’, writes Carla Roberts, Momentum and what remains of the official Labour left beg Sir Keir for unity

Labour did well in the local elections – but not well enough to avoid the potential of a hung parliament at the next general election. For John McDonnell this presents a golden opportunity to once again bang on about the need for Labour to become – you guessed it – “a broad church”, where “there is respect for a whole range of views across the political spectrum within the Labour Party”.[1] He rather amusingly describes how “young left radical MPs have appeal across the board. If we don’t use that resource, we lose the opportunity of mobilising some of the key votes”.

Who are those mysterious ‘young left radical MPs’ that he wants to see on the front benches? Well, there is Nadia Whittome (fellow traveller of the pro-imperialist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty), the tame Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the middle-of-the-road Olivia Blake and – last not least – Zarah Sultana. The latter is the only one of this bunch who could be described as potentially radical – but Realpolitik in parliament has certainly made her a very quiet warrior. All of these ‘radical’ MPs are members of the so-called Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs – which has still not managed to put out a statement in support of its own Diane Abbott, now suspended from the party. Clearly, none of them fancy ending up next to Diane Abbott or Jeremy Corbyn. Better to keep heads down then.

From a careerist point of view, this is entirely understandable: the swift disciplinary action taken against Abbott for her admittedly extraordinarily stupid letter to The Observer shows that Sir Keir continues to be on the warpath against the left. Politically of course, the despicable opportunism of the SCG is exactly what has put the left in the position it is today – entirely defeated. Instead of at least trying to take on the right, the official Labour left has tried to appease it, begging for forgiveness for the entirely fake ‘mass anti-Semitism problem’ of the party. It is now so weak that Starmer can pick the remaining ‘left’ MPs off one by one, without little or no opposition.

Royalism

Last week’s coronation stressed this fact once again – not only did the Labour Party’s official social media outlets sycophantically declare that “Labour celebrates the coronation of His Majesty The King”, while crying “God save His Majesty The King”; we were also reminded that the anti-monarchy group, Republic, is part of Labour’s new blacklist of 12 organisations that Constituency Labour Parties have been banned from affiliating to “without approval from the NEC”, since “To do so would breach party rules.”

The email goes on to list the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Stop the War Coalition, London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, Jewish Voice for Labour, Somalis for Labour, Sikhs for Labour, All African Women’s Group, Health Campaigns Together, the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group, the Peace and Justice Project – and Republic (more on the latter below).[2]

This list clearly contains a few innocent bystanders who are being hit by ‘friendly fire’, so to speak. It is chiefly Jewish Voice for Labour and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign that had to be dealt with, because they continue to be a thorn in Starmer’s side by challenging the big lie that ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’. As both contain large number of Jewish members, Starmer probably felt that he could not simply add them to the growing list of organisations that have been proscribed outright, which means that members, sympathisers or anyone liking one of their Facebook posts are automatically expelled: he could and would have been accused of anti-Semitism (something that JVL has pointed out many times). This blacklist is a more ‘elegant’ weapon.

Though the other groups on the list are mostly quite harmless they do have a symbolic value. Stop the War Coalition, for example, stands for social-pacifism in the midst of a Nato proxy war in Ukraine that is supported just as much by His Majesty’s loyal opposition as his government … and it is only a step, a logical one, from suspending branches affiliated to StWC to expelling MPs speaking on StWC platforms, signing petitions or acting as sponsors. Having CLPs sign up to Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project would, of course, be a minor embarrassment for Starmer, but if Corbyn stands as an independent it sets the stage for witch-hunting anyone who dares to leaflet, canvas, post or even speak in his support.

Labour CND and Abortion Rights, are, of course, run by the shadowy Socialist Action sect, which also effectively steers the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. It might strike some as curious that, just like Momentum, they have both been left off any blacklist … so far.

Localism

The Guardian quotes a “Momentum source”, who says that the organisation “is making a ‘strategic’ retreat to local government, focusing less on the parliamentary party and more on a ‘growing appetite for change and ambition in local communities’.” According to the article, Momentum also wants to “focus on renewing a broader alliance of the left and soft left within Labour”. If Whittome and Blake are the “left”, we shudder to imagine which MPs they might consider on the “soft left”.

Momentum is, of course, picking up on the fact that most leftwingers have now left the Labour Party, with some celebrating ‘anyone but Labour’ candidates winning seats in the local elections (or even standing against Labour). The political confusion on the left following the defeat of the Corbyn movement is so immense that it matters not that most of these candidates stood on a localist programme which can only aspire to the heights of ‘motherhood and apple pie’.

Mandy Clare – former leading lady of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy before jumping ship to join Chris Williamson in the Socialist Labour Party – has won a council seat as part of the ‘Winsford Salt of the Earth’ group – which has campaigned on the slogan, “People before politics”. It has taken control of the local town council, wiping out Labour.[3] Let us see what ‘non-political’ things our ‘Salt of the Earth’ friends do with their clear majority.

Jo Bird, the well-known former JVL member and a supporter of Labour Against the Witchhunt, has won a seat in the Wirral council on the Green ticket (she now wears only green clothes instead of red ones!). She is one of many former Labour members who have joined the Green Party, especially in the wake of Corbyn’s suspension from the Parliamentary Labour Party. This is, sadly, an indication of the lack of appreciation on the ‘left’ of the Green Party’s role as a pro-capitalist, pro-business organisation.

We might also take issue with Alan Gibbons, who, together with Sam Gorst (another former supporter of LAW) and Lucy Williams (who has not been known for her leftwing politics), won council seats as Liverpool Community Independents. As a former CLP secretary of Liverpool Walton, Gibbons was known for keeping his mouth firmly shut during the witch-hunt of the Corbyn years and refused to speak out (or even table motions) in support of the Wavertree Four, who were expelled on fake anti-Semitism charges. When he was the leading member of Momentum’s national constitutional committee on the Forward Momentum ticket, he refused to stand in solidarity with those expelled over the anti-Semitism smears and only criticised the suspensions of those who were victims of the ‘second’ wave of the witch-hunt, after Corbyn’s defeat. And, when he himself was finally expelled, he had to, of course, leave Momentum because of the witch-hunting rule he himself had continued to enforce! He now says he left Momentum because it was becoming ‘ineffective’! The man is clearly no hero of the left.

Of course, socialists and communists engage in local politics. But without a UK-wide, mass Marxist party of the working class that can effectively tackle bigger issues and engage coherently with national and international politics, such local ‘leftwing’ councillors are likely to end up focussing on issues that do not go much beyond the ‘litter-picking and dog-poo’ category. Even the much-celebrated ‘Preston project’, while useful in some respects, suffers by necessity from severe limitations.

Republic

The inclusion of Republic in Labour’s blacklist deserves a closer look. It is rather puzzling, seeing as it is hardly a radical organisation or one which has caused Sir Keir any problems whatsoever. Perhaps he is trying to overcompensate for his former republican views by stressing his monarchist credentials – which is rather tricky when there are video clips out there of him calling for the abolition of the monarchy.[4]

In the wake of the coronation, Republic happily reports a massive growth in membership and donations. No doubt fuelled by the heavy-handed approach of the police, which arrested almost a dozen Republic organisers (as well as at least one royalist bystander), the group’s membership has almost doubled from 5,000 to about 9,000 in a few days, with donations of over £100,000 coming in.[5]

The fact that Republic has a chief executive, Graham Smith, and no democratic structure shows what kind of organisation it is – more like a charity. Its website has a cross in the patriotic colours of the Union Jack. Tame campaigners like citizen Smith might have learnt a sharp political lesson over the police arrests of them and other anti-monarchist protesters, but the group’s programme is very limited indeed, focussing its critique on the cost of the monarchy and replacing the king with a president, as in the US and France – ie, an elected monarch – while leaving pretty much the rest of the state and the capitalist mode of production untouched. If The Guardian were to launch a party, it would look like Republic.

Nevertheless, its recently published short statement on ‘Why we protest’ is interesting.[6] It starts, sickeningly enough, with the platitude that “This great country of ours is full of creativity, potential and possibility” and that democracy is important “in creating a prosperous and fair society”. Capitalism would just work a lot better without the preposterously expensive and irrational monarchy, you see.

However, the next sentence is interesting: “The campaign for a republic is about democratic reform, democratic principles and ridding the country of an institution that serves itself and those in power – the few, not the many” (my emphasis). Now where have we heard that one before? It is, of course, based on Percy Shelley’s poem, ‘The mask of anarchy’, but has gained immense popularity by its use by a certain Jeremy Corbyn in Labour’s 2017 and 2019 election manifestos. Perhaps this explains the inclusion of Republic in Labour’s ‘naughty list’.

[1]. The Guardian May 15.

[2]. The Guardian May 4.

[3]. www.northwichguardian.co.uk/news/23503873.winsford-salt-earth-takes-control-town-council.

[4]. www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1389273/keir-starmer-news-labour-party-royal-family-latest-abolish-the-monarchy-uk-vn.

[5]. The Guardian May 14.

[6]. www.republic.org.uk/why_we_protest.

Elections

On course for №10

Labour had a good night, the Tories a horrible one. But, asks Kevin Bean, should we aim for a Labour Party mark 2 or should we aim for something higher, something far more useful?

The May 3 local elections in England generally went as expected, with Labour making big gains both in seats and the number of councils it controls. Yes, the Lib Dems did relatively well, so did the Greens, but what interests us here is the coming general election and who will be the next prime minister. That is much more important than who will implement cuts and closures at a local level.

The outcome of the local election was fully in line with the opinion poll lead that Labour has built up in the last 18 months and suggests that Labour under Sir Keir is on course to win the next general election. Although he routinely warns his people not to be complacent, it is clear that the Labour leader believes his political strategy is working and that he expects to get that invitation from Charles Windsor to form a government sometime in 2024 or early 2025.

In this Sir Keir is probably correct. Despite the usual caveats and warnings from the pollsters and political analysts about how far trends in this year’s local elections in England could follow through into a general election throughout the country, the story of Labour gains and Tory losses does seem set to continue. Although the elections did not include Scotland, Wales, London and many areas of England, the pattern does seem clear, with Labour regaining support in areas of the north and the Midlands, where it had lost out to the Tories in 2019 – whilst also making gains in the south, such as in Medway and Swindon. If repeated across the country, this could well produce a Labour majority, although its size remains unclear.

While doubts about the extent of a Labour victory have raised the possibility of a hung parliament or some form of coalition, formal or otherwise, this seems unduly cautious – or perhaps part of a political strategy by Conservative supporters to flag up the possibilities of a minority government and a ‘coalition of chaos’ resulting from Labour advances at the polls. So, as per the normal conventions of parliamentary and electoral politics, Sir Keir is justified in having his moment of glory and enjoying Tory discomfort about the failure of Rishi Sunak to restore Tory fortunes.

It seems that on all sides the political course is set fair for the next 18 months or so: despite predictable calls for the return of Boris Johnson or tax cuts from the Tory right, Sunak’s ‘sensible’ strategy of ‘sound management’ and ‘stability’ will continue, while Starmer will also carry on doing something of the same by demonstrating to both the ruling class and the electorate that he, too, is a safe pair of hands who can be trusted with the affairs of the nation. After the alarums and excursions of the last few years, for both the Tory and Labour leadership it is boring ‘competence’ and ‘safety first’ all round.

If the campaigning and results point to the broad patterns of politics up to the general election, there are a number of features that might be emphasised. Starmer is right to warn about complacency: for all the talk of Labour’s ‘triumph’, the results show a widespread anti-Tory mood rather than a positive endorsement of Sir Keir’s politics. Labour’s share of the poll did not actually increase and Tory losses in parts of the south resulted from their voters switching to the Liberal Democrats and Greens. Leaving aside any ‘natural laws of political science’ that posit voter hostility to governments in their mid-term, the cost-of-living crisis, the bleak economic outlook and the housing crisis facing both renters and mortgage-holders alike would suggest significant losses for the Tories, irrespective of the alternative posed by opposition parties. So, rather than any positive endorsement of the main opposition party, that is what happened in these elections.

But the low turnout and the rather underwhelming response of the electorate will not deter Sir Keir from his chosen path. He will continue his cautious way, stirring up apathy and dampening down any expectations of radical change. The Labour leader’s two main audiences are the bourgeoisie and the largely mythical ‘centre ground’, and it is to these targets that he will continue to appeal, as the general election gets closer.

The arguments of the official Labour left that Starmer was so obsessed with ‘factionalism’ and smashing what remains of the Corbynista rump that he preferred to risk electoral defeat rather than ‘unite’ the party are wide of the mark. What is actually central to his electoral strategy is creating the widest distance between yesterday’s Labour Party and today’s, establishing his credentials with the state and the capitalist class generally, and so confirming that Labour is an acceptable second eleven once again. His ‘transformation’ of the Labour Party seems to have paid off handsomely for him.

As with Tony Blair in the run-up to the 1997 general election, Sir Keir has worked hard to positively guard against any enthusiasm about the prospect of the next Labour government. Unlike 2017, and to a lesser extent 2019, there is no possibility of a ‘crisis of expectations’ for the bourgeoisie to fret and worry over with Sir Keir. Boring is reassuring.

Pro-business

The next Labour government looks set to be the most rightwing and most openly pro-capitalist in history. Starmer and his leading shadow ministers have constantly flagged up a ‘pro-business’ agenda and reassured the City and the capitalist class that there will be no dangerous experiments or straying from the established consensus, whether at home or abroad. Whether it is ‘reforming’ the national health service, law and order, dealing with ‘excessive’ trade union demands, implementing ‘responsible’ fiscal and public spending strategies or supporting Nato’s proxy war in Ukraine, Starmer’s government can be relied upon to do the right thing, as far as British capital is concerned.

Although Labour will benefit from the general anti-Tory mood and hopes of some concessions on living standards and democratic rights, from what we know about the state of British and global capitalism the incoming Labour government has very little room for manoeuvre. So the ‘spirit of 2025’ will not echo the ‘spirit of 1945’. If anything, Sir Keir’s government will be closer in spirit to the dismal 1924 and 1929 governments of Ramsay MacDonald.

Such a prospect has led many on the left to argue that, because Starmer has shifted Labour much further to the right than Blair ever attempted and, in so doing, has effectively ‘de-Labourised’ the party, it can no longer be described in the classic formulation as a bourgeois workers’ party. While that outcome is possible, if Starmer continues on his present course, so long as the organised working class – crucially in the form of the big trade unions – remains affiliated, and it retains its mass working class electoral base, whatever the overtly pro-capitalist nature of its leadership, it still has the contradictory character of precisely a bourgeois workers’ party, which it has had since almost its inception.

Although currently hardly featuring in terms of initiative at the moment, the trade union link does at least raise the possibility that in the future there will be a revival of the Labour left. At the moment though, the trade unions, despite the rash of strikes and ongoing pay disputes, have been content to leave high politics to Sir Keir and his shadow front bench. Unite, GMB, Unison, RCN, PCS, NEU, RMT, Aslef, etc, have largely confined themselves to the narrow trade union-type politics one would expect from a self-interested bureaucratic caste … but serious rank-and-file organisation and pressure could bring about dramatic change. It is, of course, an open question.

So what are the options and possibilities open for the left? Firstly, it is clear that the official Labour left – whether in the form of the misnamed Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, the Labour Representation Committee, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy or what remains now of Momentum – has been safely neutered. Membership has declined massively – indeed in the case of the LRC it now more or less exists in name only. Momentum activity, where there is any, consists of a few dozy apparatchiks giving election advice, plaintively asking for suggestions and boasting about how x, y and z ‘leftwinger’ got under the radar of the Blackfriars Road HQ and became councillors in the May 4 landslide. That is what passes for hope.

In light of this, the elections also underlined once again that putative attempts to establish a Labour Party mark 2 to replace the actual existing Labour Party mark 1, have proved stillborn. Tusc, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, stood quite a number of candidates, but generally recorded a very low percentage vote. On average 2%-3% – the normal level of statistical error. Of course, that is not the main point. No, it is the piss-poor politics of Tusc that are the problem. What we have is the narrow politics of trade unionism: opposition to pay cuts, the call for house building, reducing the energy consumption of schools, etc. In and of themselves, all perfectly worthy and supportable. But nothing, not a thing, on Nato’s proxy war, the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords or the fight for republican democracy and socialism.

Undaunted, Hannah Sell, general secretary of the Socialist Party in England and Wales, Tusc’s principal sponsor, continues to call for trade unions to disaffiliate from Labour (Socialism Today May 3 2023). As if the lesson of the brief years of the Corbyn leadership was that things would have gone swingingly if only Len McCluskey’s Unite had followed the example of RMT and PCS. The idea of Sharon Graham’s Unite disaffiliating from the Labour Party is not inconceivable. But to what effect? Sir Keir might actually be perfectly happy with such a move. We might finally see the de-Labourisation of Labour and a return to Lib-Labism – the two-capitalist-party system of the 19th century.  Hardly a step forward in historic terms.

But would a disaffiliated Unite throw its weight into Tusc and, if it did, what would be the political effect? It would surely be, once again, the trade unionist politics of the working class: ie, the “bourgeois politics of the working class” (VI Lenin What is to be done?). Again, hardly a step forward in historic terms.

Wherever the forces of the left develop in the next few years (more likely to be outside Labour rather than inside), the issue of programme and party will remain the central question. So, while we would undoubtedly support Jeremy Corbyn if he stood as a non-Labour Party candidate in Islington North, there should be no illusions that this would constitute a real step forward for the working class. Naturally, we oppose Sir Keir’s ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ purge, which went on entirely unopposed under Corbyn till he himself, inevitably, fell victim. Nor do we give any truck to auto-Labourism.

But life demands more. We have had enough of halfway houses, lowest common denominators and the senile disorder of broad frontism. Respect, the Socialist Labour Party, Left Unity and Tusc each provided, at best, a site of struggle, but in reality they were barriers to what is really needed: a mass Communist Party committed to a programme of republican democracy and the global supersession of capitalism.

Without such a party, without such a programme, there is the risk that a generalised nuclear exchange or runaway global warming will, in the not too distant future, see what passes for human civilisation give way to an almost unimaginable barbarism.

Witch-hunts and expulsions

Race, prejudice and stupidity

Diane Abbott’s version of identity politics has proved to be a gift for Sir Keir and his drive to complete the marginalisation of the left, argues Kevin Bean

Amidst all the blabber and prattle surrounding Diane Abbott’s suspension from the Parliamentary Labour Party one thing is blindingly obvious – it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism or her tunnel-vision ideas about racism. No, withdrawing the whip from Diane Abbott is just the latest round in Sir Keir Starmer’s campaign to show the ruling class that he really is a man they can trust – and to remind the woefully misnamed Socialist Campaign Group just who is in charge in the Labour Party.

Abbott’s letter to The Observer highlighted what she sees as a distinction between racism and prejudice, and the argument that, while “many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice … they are not all their lives subject to racism” (April 23). She went on to cite Jews, Irish and traveller people.

Making matters worse, she put the claim of black uniqueness in historical terms, citing apartheid South Africa and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It is undoubtably true that the trans-Atlantic slave trade and apartheid in South Africa were ideologically justified on the basis of biological racism. However, the same can be said of the oppression of Irish Catholics by the British colonial authorities, and Jews, above all under the Hitler regime. Indeed, Ireland was radically depopulated through famine, imperial neglect and mass emigration, and the Nazis exterminated between four and eight million Jews – not least by putting genocide on an industrial basis.

As for today’s Romany gypsies and Irish travellers, while they appear to Abbott as just another type of white people, the fact remains that, when it comes to poverty, educational attainment, imprisonment, health, life expectancy, mental illness and other such criteria, it is clear that they face far more than mere prejudice. In fact, they are subject to overt racism by politicians, the media and the police.

In reducing racism to simply a question of skin colour, Abbott drew on the very same ideas of a hierarchy of racism that her letter was ostensibly designed to counter. Seemingly equating ‘prejudice’ experienced by redheads with the persecution of Jewish people under conditions of feudal decay in tsarist Russia and petty bourgeois counterrevolution in capitalist Germany, is, of course, stupid beyond stupid. But then that is Diane Abbott for you.

What happened within hours of her ludicrous letter appearing in The Observer followed a pattern with which we have become all too familiar since the big lie of ‘anti-Semitism’ was first used some eight years ago to undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and smear the Labour left. The usual suspects from the Labour right, aided by the supposed spokespeople for the ‘Jewish community’ and rightwing media commentators, all quickly jumped in to denounce yet another example of anti-Semitism from a leading Labour leftwinger and demand firm action from the party’s leadership.

Labour renegade Lord John Mann, former Labour MP and returning traitor Luciana Berger, and long-time witch-hunter Margaret Hodge MP were amongst the first out of the blocks. However, there was no need for them to worry. Sir Keir recognised an opportunity when it was presented on a plate and he took no time in rounding on Abbott. Here was his chance to further marginalise what remains of the parliamentary Labour left.

Big lie

It is important to remind ourselves why the pro-capitalists in the Labour Party weaponised anti-Semitism in their fight against the Corbyn leadership and why they continue to use this vile smear against the left.

This goes beyond simply utilising the moral opprobrium that comes with accusations of racism and the equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. For Starmer, demonstrating his loyalty to the political and economic status quo means, first and foremost, showing that he is committed to ‘the west’: that is, the continued dominance of the US as the world hegemon and the strengthening of the Nato alliance in Europe. Support for Israel, the US’s most reliable client and ally in the Middle East, is also an important element of that strategy, whilst also acting as a key political marker at home.

If the accusations of anti-Semitism and faux outrage in the media from the likes of Times columnist Melanie Phillips or Tory ministers were predictable, so too was the rather muted response of Abbott’s supporters in the official Labour left. This is pretty much in line with how all the supposed ‘left’ MPs, Abbott included, have conducted themselves throughout the witch-hunt. They bow, scrape and keep their heads firmly down … in the hope of saving their miserable parliamentary careers.

Once the storm broke, Abbott even rushed to denounce herself. She was sorry for the anguish caused, for the offence. Though her letter was sent twice to The Observer, Abbott made the claim that it was the “wrong draft” – all in the hope of placating Starmer.

Believe the wrong draft claim if you wish – bizarrely, there are those on the left who are defending what Abbott wrote but is now apologising for.

A similarly apologetic line was adopted by John McDonnell – now the only leading Corbynite who retains the Labour whip:

… those now sitting in judgement of her have the generosity of spirit to acknowledge that for decades she has been at the forefront of campaigning against racism and has endured so much herself. Hopefully we can all learn from this.

These apologies and retreats in the face of a clear political attack are nothing new and merely repeat the appeasement and political weakness that typified Jeremy Corbyn when he was leader. In failing to stand up to the big lie campaign of the pro-capitalist right and their friends in the media, Corbyn simply increased the confidence of his enemies in the PLP. Moreover, by allowing thousands of left activists to be expelled, he sawed off the very branch on which his own leadership depended.

The stranglehold that Starmer and his apparatchiks now have over the party machine and the way they effortlessly purge such figures as Corbyn, Livingstone and Abbott shows how totally worthless and counterproductive the official left’s ‘strategy’ has proven to be. Indeed the pathetic state of the official Labour left and the toothless ‘threat’ it now poses is perhaps illustrated by the rather patronising tone of some of the reactions of the Labour right to Abbott’s letter. Shadow minister Pat McFadden and Blairite commentator John McTernan have suggested Diane Abbott’s apology was indeed ‘genuine’ and that perhaps the Labour leadership should be more understanding and forgive and forget her transgression.

Obnoxious

Given present conditions it is undoubtably right to defend Diane Abbott from this latest attack by Sir Keir. After all, if she has been stupid – and she has – her sins pale in comparison with the Labour right and the vast majority of the PLP. They are pro-Nato, pro-Israel, pro-nuclear weapons and pro-capitalist to boot.

In calling for Abbott’s reinstatement we are simply defending the limited space that remains in the Labour Party where leftwing ideas can be voiced, promoted and debated. In that context we most certainly denounce her utterly confused – and frankly obnoxious – identity politics. Her comments on the racist oppression and persecution of Jewish people are historically ignorant and border on the unhinged. Reducing racism to a question of skin colour and stressing ‘blackness’ as a primary distinction is rooted in the same essentialism she attacks as a privileging hierarchy of racism. As expressed in her Observer letter, this is a politics of competitive victimhood, in which one ethnic or identity group who claim that they are more oppressed than others now demand recognition for both past and present persecution.

Communists are opposed to all forms of oppression and stand with the oppressed against persecution and discrimination. But that resistance to oppression and the defence of the persecuted is not the same as identity politics or demands for the recognition of victim status by the bourgeois state or capitalism more generally. Instead of a particularist, essentialist and ahistorical politics of identity, Marxists advance working class politics and the struggle for universal emancipation. Like so many on the contemporary left, Abbott defines oppression in the simplistic and reductive language of identity rather than class.

For example, British police forces systemically discriminate against young black males through racial profiling, yes, but this is because of street crime which is often associated with being at the bottom end of the economic pile. Fraud in the City, blackmail threats of litigation by the ultra-rich, advertising hoaxes, phone scamming operations, indeed the straightforward rackets of everyday business involve robbery on an infinitely greater scale, but they hardly concern the police. What matters to them is not so much the law, rather it is order. What young black males experience today poor young Jewish and Irish males experienced in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Locating these types of persecution in capitalist society itself rather than in an ahistorical essentialist understanding of identity points the finger directly at the real nature of oppression and how the working class movement can begin to fight against it. Identity politics of the type espoused so confusingly by Diane Abbott in her letter only serves to further obscure the causes of oppression and so prevent the development of the only form of universalist politics that can overcome both oppression and exploitation – the politics of the working class.

Democracy and the Labour Party

Driving a dead man out

 

Kevin Bean asks what lies behind Sir Keir and the NEC barring Jeremy Corbyn from standing as an official Labour candidate in Islington North

The motion passed by Labour’s national executive committee at its March 28 meeting, barring Jeremy Corbyn from standing as a Labour candidate in Islington North, was perhaps the most unsurprising political event of the year. The only real question was, what took Sir Keir and his allies so long to finally pronounce an anathema that had been flagged up since Corbyn lost the Labour whip in November 2020?

Given the way that Sir Keir and the Labour right have consolidated their hold and continued their attacks on party democracy since then, it was only a matter of time before Corbyn would finally get the boot. In the days that followed there was the inevitable media speculation about whether he would go quietly and accept the ban, or instead stand as an independent against the officially endorsed Labour candidate. Although Corbyn himself was keeping his counsel, there were plenty of others who were prepared to offer advice on what he should do.

Much of the speculation suggested that, should he stand, Corbyn would have a good chance of retaining his seat against an official Labour candidate. He has a strong base in the local Constituency Labour Party and would probably have enough supporters on the ground to mount an effective electoral campaign: the officers of Islington North CLP rejected the NEC’s “undue interference” and argued that local party members should “select their candidates for every election”.[1] Corbyn is widely regarded as a good constituency MP and, while the importance of the ‘personal vote’ can be overstated, it could be a key factor in a closely contested election. Moreover, the precedents of ‘rebel candidates’, such as Ken Livingstone and George Galloway, successfully winning against the Labour machine seem to stand in Corbyn’s favour.[2]

Let us suppose he does stand. What will the impact of his campaign be in the wider political context? True, he will be the focus of some attention in the media. He will draw left activists from all over London and beyond to fight for him, clearly giving whatever Starmerite clone they put against him a run for their money. If any individual candidate could mount a successful electoral challenge against Sir Keir’s Labour, it is Jeremy Corbyn. However, the key word here is individual. Despite being the figurehead for many on the Labour left, Corbyn has made no serious attempt to organise that support or build a political alternative to the pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist Labour right. His Peace and Justice Priject remains a well-meaning, but nebulous ‘campaign’ of rallies and press releases – not the militant, organised, political alternative the left is crying out for. While many still pin their hopes on him and believe that a challenge to the official Labour candidate could galvanise a wider resurgence and be the catalyst for some new party or movement, this increasingly seems unlikely.

One reason is that Corbyn’s comrades on the official Labour left will not rally around any banner he is likely to raise in Islington North. True, a handful of left MPs, such as Diane Abbott, have tentatively raised their heads above the parapet to bemoan the way Labour has “shot itself in the foot”, and complain that “there is no good reason to block Jeremy Corbyn as a Labour candidate”.[3] Similarly, the Socialist Campaign Group of left Labour MPs, along with Momentum, have added their own muted responses about the terrible injustice that had been done to the former leader.[4]

But, for all the expressions of sympathy, the official Labour left remains the Labour left: that is, a political trend whose entire raison d’être is grounded in Labourism and the strategy of achieving ‘socialism’ through the election of a Labour government. Even discounting their own career aspirations and personal interests, the leaders of this official left are an integral part of the political and organisational structures of the labour bureaucracy. For them there is no life outside Labour and that is where they will stay. For all their protests and warm words, they will not be following Jeremy Corbyn into the wilderness any time soon (unless Sir Keir has plans otherwise). So, even if he retains his seat, this is one king who will not be returning from over the water to reclaim his throne.

Keeping mum

A more important issue, in the short term at least, is why Sir Keir has chosen to finally purge Corbyn at this point. After all, Corbyn poses no political threat to Starmer, while the toothless organised Labour left, such as the SCG, Momentum, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and the Labour Representation Committee, have shown that they are utterly useless. The cowardice and vacillation of the SCG was exemplified by the way some of their MPs withdrew support from a wishy-washy pacifist Stop the War Campaign statement and by their almost total silence over the whole of last year about Nato’s proxy war in Ukraine. So, whatever the motive, Sir Keir is not acting out of fear and a sense of danger emanating from this quarter.

The explanations advanced by the official Labour left themselves do little to really explain Sir Keir’s decision. As if to hide their own impotence and failure, they profess injured innocence and lay claim to genuine Labour loyalism. The CLPD, for example, blames it all on ‘factionalism’ and the leadership’s failure to recognise that Labour is a ‘broad church’. They call for unity and a focus on the main task of preparing for the general election and the next Labour government, not unnecessary in-fighting and spurious claims against decent comrades.[5]

In a similar Labour-loyalist vein, left member of the NEC Jess Barnard describes the decision to block Corbyn as “dishonest, undemocratic, unwise”.[6] Right on two counts there, Jess – but unwise? No, Sir Keir knows exactly what he is doing, and the reaction of Barnard, the CLPD, Momentum and the rest of the unity-mongers of the official Labour left shows that they do not have a clue about what is going on. This failure to recognise a civil war when in the midst of it is not simply a failure of understanding, but flows from the very compromise and capitulation inherent in their politics.

Sir Keir is not ‘unwise’. Along with the bulk of the Parliamentary Labour Party and the rest of the Labour machine, he is a servant of the bourgeoisie working in the interests of capitalism and the state. As leaders of a bourgeois workers’ party, those who head Labour have historically played that role and, given his career background and political trajectory within the state legal machine, it is one that Sir Keir plays to perfection.

The purging of Corbyn may be part of a cunning triangulation election strategy designed to win back allegedly ‘patriotic left’ voters in the red wall who defected to the Tories in 2019, but Sir Keir’s real audience is the capitalist class itself, above all in Washington.[7] He needs to reassure them that he is not only a safe pair of hands and a reliable ally at home and abroad, but that in any future Labour government the influence of the left will be non-existent. After the ‘horrors’ of the Corbyn era and the renewed militancy of the working class in the current strike wave, Starmer has to continue to demonstrate that he can be ruthless in purging the left and standing up to the trade unions.

Loyalty

Some comrades might object that Sir Keir has long proved his loyalty to capitalism, just as the Labour left has long shown its reluctance to fight for the working class. Why bother with Jeremy Corbyn, yesterday’s man, when he is a busted flush? Why waste time bullying the official Labour left into utter submission, when they stood idly by during the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ purge? For one thing, symbolism is still important in politics and the Labour leadership understands the need to continually remind both the capitalist class and the official Labour left of how things stand.

Also important in determining the timing of Sir Keir’s NEC resolution are the electoral dynamics. Although Labour still enjoys a comfortable lead in the opinion polls, there has been some slippage in recent weeks and an overwhelming Labour victory in the next general election looks less certain.[8] While it is still most likely that Labour will have a clear working majority, other possibilities, such as a much narrower majority or even a hung parliament, cannot be ruled out. Not only may this explain Sir Keir’s decision to lay down the law at the NEC, but it has also fuelled speculation about the strategy of the SCG and the official left. Are they keeping their powder dry for now, staying on board and so getting into position to exploit a tight parliamentary situation, should it occur after the next election?[9] Shades of the Callaghan government in the 1970s, anyone?

Likewise, trade union leaders might also exploit any perceived weakness in the parliamentary position facing a future Starmer government to extract concessions for their members and the union bureaucracy. Picture John McDonnell and his white cat plotting the future course of events. Not very likely, is it? All very Machiavellian and too clever by half! However, whether it is the possible parliamentary manoeuvres of the SCG or the clientelist deal-making of the trade union bureaucracy, these tactics merely seek to obtain crumbs from the table: they are about small concessions and sectional benefits, not the militant working class politics and the principled programme our movement needs.

[1]. labouroutlook.org/2023/03/28/islington-north-clp-rejects-necs-undue-interference-as-corbyn-blocked-as-candidate.

[2]. www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/02/why-the-odds-are-stacked-against-jeremy-corbyn-the-outsider-labour.

[3]. morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/labour-has-shot-itself-in-the-foot-over-corbyn.

[4]. morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/corbyn-slams-ban-from-standing-again-part-broader-assault-democracy.

[5]. www.clpd.org.uk.

[6]. tribunemag.co.uk/2023/03/starmers-purge-dishonest-undemocratic-unwise.

[7]. labourlist.org/2023/04/labours-pitch-to-these-two-key-voter-groups-will-be-crucial-to-election-victory.

[8]. www.politics.co.uk/reference/latest-opinion-polls.

[9]. www.thetimes.co.uk/article/keir-starmer-is-still-vulnerable-to-a-corbynite-comeback-fszmc6jf3.

Nationalism and internationalism

Silent and supine

Kevin Bean looks at the shameful official left and the split between Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell over the Ukraine war

The total collapse of the official Labour left has been an established fact for some time now. Sir Keir Starmer and the openly pro-capitalist Labour right’s ideological and political control is unquestioned.

Few blink an eye when notorious defectors like former MPs Luciana Berger and Mike Gapes are welcomed back with open arms and given yet another platform to repeat their lies about the ‘anti-Semitism’ of the left. Whether it be meekly tailing behind the Tories on the war in Ukraine or talking tough on small boats and migration policy, Labour has moved decisively to the right, revealing its true role as British capitalism’s reliable second eleven.

The Labour right’s absolute control over the party machine is demonstrated almost weekly by the imposition of leadership loyalists as election candidates and the continued expulsions and purges of Constituency Labour Parties. It is hardly news any more when a CLP is overruled and a safe leadership clone is installed as the Labour candidate. However, the future of Jeremy Corbyn as MP for Islington North still has some potential to be something of a cause célèbre: Starmer has made it clear that Corbyn will not be a Labour candidate in the next election. Rumours continue to circulate that he will stand as an independent and many hope that by doing so he can act as a rallying point for the scattered and demoralised left, and perhaps even provide the launchpad for a new left party.

Whatever Corbyn’s individual decision about his parliamentary future, this hopeful focus on him has more than a little of wishful thinking about it. He does have a strong local following and by all accounts is a good constituency MP who might win against an official candidate, especially if she/he is a typical Starmerite with all the political personality and principle of a cardboard cut-out. But what happens then? Where do Corbyn and, more importantly, the left in general go after that? Given his record as Labour leader, we already know the answer to that question. Far too many people are still prepared to make excuses for the retreats, the compromises and the downright betrayals carried out by the Corbyn leadership. In conceding to the right on the big lie that equated the left with anti-Semitism, and in his willingness to sacrifice even his long-standing comrades to appease the pro-capitalist right, Corbyn revealed the vacillation and the lack of political principle that are the true face of the official Labour left.

These are not simply personal failings or lack of political courage, but are rooted in the sub-left reformism of Corbyn, McDonnell and company. If your politics are based on achieving ‘socialism’ through the election of a series of radical Labour governments, preserving Labour as a political instrument is paramount. Keeping this broad church together inevitably means the left has to make concessions to the pro-capitalist right: at whatever political cost, the politics of the Labour left historically has been subordinated to that of the Labour right and will continue to be so. As long as we fail to understand and explain that fundamental relationship between the Labour left and right, illusions in the capacity of the official left will only continue to demobilise and demoralise those activists who still maintain some residual faith in Corbyn and Corbynism.

Although there is now considerable personal and political distance between Corbyn and his former comrades in the Socialist Campaign Group, this fundamental commitment to Labour as presently constituted unites them and, as we have seen in practice, becomes an unconditional and uncritical Labour loyalism.

Nato ‘socialists’

If you want to see how this is now playing out, just look at how the official Labour left is responding to the war in Ukraine. It all began with the pitiful capitulation by the leading members of the SCG to the threats of the Starmer leadership. Remember how last year they withdrew their public support for a very weak, pacifistic Stop the War statement and pulled out of speaking at a rally?[1] That set the pattern for the months that followed.

While Corbyn has continued to publicly campaign and express his pacifist opposition to the war, his former comrades in the SCG have either remained eerily silent or taken a very different road altogether.[2] Despite claiming that both he and Corbyn are fighting for peace, John McDonnell has lined up solidly behind Nato and supported the imperialist war effort in Ukraine. Using the bogus language of ‘self-determination’, McDonnell has joined in the warmongering by supporting the sending of arms to Ukraine.[3] He and the rest of the Nato ‘socialists’ in the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign have adopted an openly social-imperialist position similar to that of Starmer and the rest of the leadership.

The USC has murky origins in a CIA-backed organisation set up during the latter stage of the cold war in the 1980s. Throughout the proxy war in Ukraine between the United States plus its allies and Russia, the USC has acted as an agent of imperialism in the working class movement, consciously obscuring the role of Nato and dressing up an aggressive war in the rhetoric of internationalism.[4] Along with its outriders in ‘left’ groups, such as the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and Anticapitalist Resistance, the leadership of the tame, official Labour left is playing a disgraceful part in politically disarming the workers’ movement and laying the ground for further disasters and betrayals.[5]

If you want to see where this leads, just consider the growing acceptance in the bourgeois media and amongst its political representatives that a major war involving the great powers is increasingly likely, if not inevitable. It is not just Marxists who locate the war in Ukraine in wider geopolitical terms as ultimately part of the US policy of containment directed towards China. Commentators in The Times, Financial Times and The Economist, for example, routinely speak of the implications of this strategy and the possibilities of a third world war over Taiwan.[6] Conservative peer Danny Finkelstein has even gone so far as to tell us we must be prepared to accept a nuclear war as a real strategic option![7]

If you want to see how the Labour leadership joins in the chorus, just look at this week’s Commons debate on the future direction of British foreign policy.[8] This discussion considered an updating of the Integrated Review, which outlines the main strategic aims of the British state and comes in the week when the consummation of the agreement of the US-UK-Australia ‘security pact’ (Aukus) marks a further ratcheting up of great-power rivalry.[9]

It will come as no surprise to hear Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, slavishly echo the Tories and boast that ‘defence’ spending was higher in percentage terms under the last Labour government that it is now under the Tories.[10] He performed well in the House, as did the other usual suspects on the Labour right eager to show to the bourgeoisie that the madness of the Corbyn period was well and truly past, and that Labour could now be relied on to pursue foreign and defence policies in the interests of both British and US imperialism. Given the historical record of the Labour Party and Labour governments from the time of World War I, this was no great shock either.

Missing in action

However, in this debate the tame Labour left was just as bad – remaining largely silent and raising no serious objections to the Tories or the line of the Labour leadership (although one SCG member did manage to ask a question about the BBC World Service!). Given the position that the SCG has adopted on the Ukraine war, this is no great surprise either: when it comes to voicing opposition to the foreign policy of British imperialism, they are very much missing in action here as well.

In the coming period questions of foreign policy – above all, the key issues of war and peace – will assume even greater political importance. Far from being the esoteric preserve of academic specialists or armchair strategists, as Nato’s proxy war in Ukraine and the energy crisis in Europe have shown, the foreign polices of the great powers have a direct impact on the lives of the working class.

Marxists have always argued for a distinctive working class approach to foreign policy and have campaigned for demands that reflect the interests of the working class internationally, not those of the capitalists, the diplomats and the generals. World War I and the split in the Second International in 1914 marked a decisive division in the working class movement, as the social-imperialist leaders rallied behind their own ruling classes and sent millions into the horrific slaughter of the trenches.

Obviously the current fissures within the official Labour left over Ukraine – primarily between the social-pacifism of Jeremy Corbyn and the Stop the War Coalition and the social-imperialism of John McDonnell and the Nato fellow travellers – do not have the same world-historical importance as the German Social Democratic Party’s vote for war credits in 1914. Jeremy Corbyn is nothing compared to Karl Liebknecht or Rosa Luxemburg: he is not even a centrist such as Karl Kautsky. No, he stands fully in the social-pacifist tradition of Keir Hardie, Ramsay MacDonald and George Lansbury. Banal phrases about peace, justice and disarmament cover for the complete absence of any meaningful strategy for socialism.

[1]. labourlist.org/2022/02/11-labour-mps-pull-signatures-from-stop-the-war-statement-after-whip-request; labourpartymarxists.org.uk/2022/03/11/spineless-response-to-the-ukraine-war.

[2]. development.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/saturday-join-us-morning-star-conference.

[3]. labourhub.org.uk/2023/02/21/the-ukrainian-question-for-socialists.

[4]. ‘A toxic operation’ Weekly Worker March 24 2022: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1388/a-toxic-operation; see also www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-solidarity-conference-lse-john-mcdonnell-nadia-whittome-labour.

[5]. www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/26/labour-left-breaks-with-jeremy-corbyn-over-sending-weapons-to-ukraine.

[6]. www.economist.com/leaders/2023/03/09/how-to-avoid-war-over-taiwan.

[7]. www.thetimes.co.uk/article/we-need-to-start-talking-about-nuclear-war-crlrkf9bg.

[8]. hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2023-03-13/debates/81D79779-FBFC-4780-92DF-15FCFC986FEA/IntegratedReviewRefresh.

[9]. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/aukus-submarine-nuclear-china-ssn-b2300256.html.

[10]. hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2023-03-13/debates/81D79779-FBFC-4780-92DF-15FCFC986FEA/IntegratedReviewRefresh.

Refound Labour as a permanent united front of the working class

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