Tag Archives: Campaign for Labour Party Democracy

Red Pages

Red Pages @ LP conference: Monday, September 25

Click here to download the September 25 issue of Red Pages in PDF format.

Articles in today’s issue:

  • Brexit: To debate or not to debate?
  • We need a positive vision for Europe, not a pro-business one
  • Protest against Iain McNicol
  • Labour First rally: all about Marxism
  • Conference Arrangements Committee: Death throes of the right
  • Success! NPF document on Israel/Palestine is amended

Brexit: To debate or not to debate?

Comrades should be wary of the ‘Labour Campaign for Free Movement’: many of its leading lights do notsupport the free movement of labour

If the anti-Semitism furore in the party has shown one thing, it illustrates that the developing fault lines between left and right in the party produce some strange configurations.

Conference has been seeing an odd debate/non-debate around Brexit. The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) and Momentum really did not want this thorny question discussed at conference and urged delegates not to choose the issue in Sunday’s priorities ballot. (This decides which ‘themes’ are allocated time for discussion).

The CLPD argued that, “it serves no purpose to debate the different views on Brexit at this stage. The NEC’s statement and the plenary session on Monday morning are quite enough at the moment. We should try and limit the damage the right can inflict upon conference”, as Barry Gray said at the CLPD fringe meeting on Saturday.

Ranged against them, you have the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (in formal terms, also on the left) who sided with none other than Labour First’s Luke Akehurst to urge delegates to vote in favour of a Brexit debate.

As a general principle, Marxists argue that organisations in the workers’ movement should be able to have frank and transparent discussions on any issue, even uncomfortable ones. Political differences should not be viewed as a problem per se. A thinking organisation will always have disputes, and it is almost always right to argue them out publicly.

We need to be concrete, however. Labour First and Akehurst wanted this issue discussed because they perceive Corbyn and the left are vulnerable on it. For instance, at the Labour First rally on Sunday, the CLP delegates in the audience were strongly urged to give their first vote in the priorities ballot to a debate on Brexit. Apart from any other considerations, it was given this importance by LF because Momentum is politically fractured on the issue, with deep disagreements between its “Stalinist” and “Trotskyist” factions. (LPM comrades who braved the wrath of the angry rightists at this gathering report that our organisation also warranted a few mentions from the platform. None complimentary – though we would have been mortally offended if any were, of course.)

So, the right has correctly identified Europe as one of Jeremy’s weak spots. While the Labour leader has been reasonably successful in simply standing back and giving the Tory government sufficient Brexit rope to hang itself, the Labour Party’s position is hardly coherent or convincing. Thus, Labour First, Progress and the whole rightwing gang in the party are jostling for a chance to attack Corbyn on the issue and show him up for the benefit of their allies in the yellow press. Concretely, therefore, the demand for a debate on Brexit is a rightwing tactic, another attempt to beat up Corbyn and his allies. 

Balance of forces

Thankfully, they have not succeeded: during Sunday’s priorities ballot, conference voted overwhelmingly to follow the advice given by CLPD and Momentum. Contemporary motions on Brexit will not be discussed, after that subject received 72,000 CLP votes. As a comparison: The NHS and housing received 187,000 votes each, social care 145,000 and the railways 120,000. This gives a useful snapshot of the balance of forces at this year’s conference. 

Mindful of this background, it may seem strange that an ostensibly left organisation like the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty should prioritise building a campaign (‘Labour Campaign for Free Movement’) that offers platforms to the likes of Tulip Siddiq (who in January resigned as a shadow minister following Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to impose a three-line whip on Labour MPs to vote in favour of triggering Article 50) and Clive Lewis MP, who has of course spoken out against free movement.

In response to Jeremy Corbyn stating publicly that he saw “no need” to curb immigration or impose more controls, Lewis said: “We have to acknowledge that free movement of labour hasn’t worked for a lot of people. It hasn’t worked for many of the people in this country, where they’ve been undercut, who feel insecure, who feel they’re not getting any of the benefits that immigration has clearly had in our economy.” 

Now, it would be foolish in the extreme to argue – in the manner of a sect like the Socialist Worker Party – that mass immigration always and everywhere brings unalloyed economic benefits and social harmony to indigenous working class communities. However, this in no way implies that we should oppose the right of working people to free movement; to be able to seek a life for themselves and their families in any part of the world they choose. 

Voluntary unity

The key is unity, won from below. We need to fight for the integration of migrants into the culture of struggle of a native working class (a reciprocal process of learning, of course), into common organisation and unity against our class enemies. 

This voluntary, combative unity is a million miles away from what the likes of Clive Lewis advocate when they call for obligatory union membership for migrant workers (as a precondition of their right to enter the country) to stop them “undercutting wages” – a proposal motivated, he admits, by his core concern to “have an impact on the number of people coming to this country”, to “make it more difficult for employers to bring people in” and thus to push companies to “begin to take people more often from this country”. Fairly bog-standard Brit nationalism masquerading as ‘internationalism’, in other words.

The very fact of the AWL’s involvement in the ‘Labour Campaign for Free Movement’ should set alarm bells ringing for Labour comrades. This is an organisation infamous for arguing against the right of Palestinian people to free movement – concretely the right to return to areas they were forcibly ejected from by the colonialist Israeli state.

Among their leaders are people who are happy to call themselves “Zionists” and this softness on reaction saw them support the purging of Jackie Walker as vice-chair of Momentum. Their ‘fellow traveller’ on the Labour Party NEC, Rhea Wholfson, voted to refer Jackie Walker’s case to Iain McNicol’s compliance unit – and happily speaks at meetings organised by the Jewish Labour Movement, an affiliate to the World Labour Zionist Movement, a loyal supporter of the state of Israel and home to many of those who have been so keen to save the Labour Party from its ‘unelectable’ leader.

This campaign needs to be given a very wide berth. As with every other issue and debate in the Labour Party these days, context is everything.

 

We need a positive vision for Europe, not a pro-business one

Keir Starmer has succeeded in getting the shadow cabinet to come out in favour of staying in the single market (though in an interview on the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning, Jeremy Corbyn seemed to backtrack somewhat from this again). Still, there remains a striking paradox. On Europe, Labour is articulating the interests of big capital. Not that big capital will reciprocate and back the Labour Party. It is, after all, led by Jeremy Corbyn: pro-trade union, pacifistic and a friend of all manner of unacceptable leftists.

For the sake of appearances, Keir Starmer pays lip service to the 2016 referendum result. There is no wish to alienate the minority of Labour voters who backed ‘leave’. More through luck than judgement, ambiguity served the party well during the general election campaign. The contradiction between Corbyn’s historical hostility towards the EU – now represented in the Commons by the Dennis Skinner-Kelvin Hopkins rump – and the mass of Labour’s pro-‘remain’ members and voters resulted in a fudge.

However, instead of getting embroiled in the argument about what is and what is not in the ‘national interest’ – eg, staying in the single market versus leaving the single market – Labour needs a class perspective. We should have no illusions in the European Union. It is a bosses’ club, it is by treaty committed to neoliberalism and it is by law anti-working class (note the European Court of Justice and its Viking, Laval and Rüffert judgements). But nor should we have any illusions in a so-called Lexit perspective.

On the contrary the EU should be seen as a site of struggle. We should aim to unite the working class in the EU in order to end the rule of capital and establish socialism on a continental scale. That would be the biggest contribution we can make to the global struggle for human liberation.

 

LPMers happily joined the 30 or so protestors outside Labour Party conference this morning to demand that general secretary Ian McNicol should resign (actually, he should be sacked!). Not only is McNicol responsible for the suspensions and expulsions of thousands of leftwing Labour Party members, he is also in the frame for attempts to sabotage Labour’s electoral challenge in June’s snap election. He and other right wingers were clearly hoping for a Labour result so dire that Jeremy Corbyn would have to fall on his sword. Thus, many CLPs were woefully under-resourced and a large number received not a single penny. (For example, Sheffield Hallam, where the pro-Corbyn left managed to oust Lib Dem luminary Nick Clegg and win the first ever Labour MP in the constituency, received precisely zip from either the region or HQ).

The rightwing response to the protest was predictable. Johanna Baxter expressed to conference her tremulous outrage at this protest and railed that a demo against “an employee of the party should not be allowed”. Deservedly, she was booed.

Of course, the issue wasn’t really Ian McNicol’s employment rights, but Baxter’s solidarity with his politics. Before she was booted off the NEC last year, she managed to use the then wafer-thin right wing majority on the NEC to push through changes to give Wales and Scotland two extra NEC seats. This was not prompted by democratic concerns around regional devolution. No, Baxter was confident that the vacancies would be filled by supporters of the right in the party.

Subsequently, of course, Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale has resigned and been replaced (temporarily) by leftwing deputy leader Alex Rowley. This produced a small left NEC majority. In turn, this was enough to push through the ‘Corbyn review’ and expand the CLP representation from six to nine, producing a leftwing majority on our leading body for the near future. Clearly, the right is in some pain. Happy days!
Labour First rally: all about Marxism

The crowd at the Labour First rally on Sunday afternoon was a pretty riled up bunch. Luke Akehurst and his mates are clearly feeling under pressure from left-wing delegates at this year’s Labour Party conference … and they are not handling the stress at all well. The chair launched an attack on LPM as “not real Labour” – unlike the rows of Tory-lite manikins in the hall, for whom genuine Labour principles are as expendable as autumn leaves. Furthermore, our very name is a “a contradiction in terms” – a short course in dialectics might clear up any confusion.

The ever-delightful John Mann MP scowled at our comrades, but didn’t deign to speak to them – presumably because there were no cameras nearby. However, he did prevail upon a minion to pick up a copy of the latest issue of Labour Party Marxists Bulletin.

Not surprisingly, given the general election result and Jeremy’s huge spike in popularity and profile, Luke Akehurst and his chums didn’t attack Corbyn directly. Instead, they concentrated their attacks on his supporters – the organised Corbynistas particularly. These were “Stalinists” who “fetishise military dictatorships” like Venezuela and Cuba. The June poll was run down, however – “We have even fewer seats than under Neil Kinnock”, Chris Leslie MP complained. He went on to illustrate his encyclopaedic ignorance of Marxism, which he dismissed as a “destructive, hate filled ideology”. In comments that must have shocked many in the audience, he also revealed that Marxism is “revolutionary” and wants to “overturn capitalism” (well spotted).

Akehurst suggested that the Labour Party should “purge the Anti-Semites” (for this, read “the left”) and “stand up to the bullies” (that is, “silence all criticism of the right”). Pretty classic -and pathetic – tactics of bureaucrats who are politically incapable of answering critics and are aware the game is moving away from them. For instance, in one of his more honest moments, Akehurst had to acknowledge that the right’s forces are now too weak to “stop the McDonnell amendment”.

Conference Arrangements Committee:
Death throes of the right

The Conference Arrangements Committee reported two records: there have never been so many delegates at Labour Party conference – almost 1,200. And over 1,000 of these are first timers. Of course, that reflects the tremendous sea change within the party. But it also presents the left with a problem. We have the numbers, but we do not have the organisation yet to halt the undemocratic shenanigans by the right.

Take the CAC, which is still dominated by the old guard. Their report on Sunday morning provoked angry responses from conference floor. Two disputed issues should really have led to votes being taken to refer the report back; but the left was not organised enough to see this challenge through.

First was the CAC’s sneaky move to provide time for London mayor Sadiq Khan to address conference, although this is clearly not within the CAC’s remit. The NEC had previously decided not to allow any of the city mayors to speak, to give more space for delegates to contribute. Once the CAC had made its invitation public, the NEC caved in, presumably for fear of media ridicule and scathing headlines. If Khan uses his allotted time to undermine Corbyn or belittle the scale of the party’s achievement in June, then we trust delegates will not be shy about voicing disapproval.

The other issue is related to the CAC’s implementation of last year’s rule change to allow the partial reference back of National Policy Forum documents. Any delegate can now challenge part of the NPF’s (extremely long-winded) documents and demand that the issue is revisited by the body. Of course, if the chair is happy with a challenge, s/he will simply “ask conference if the reference back is agreed”, as it says in the CAC report.

However, if the chair is not happy about the issue in dispute, then it will be up the person chairing that session to decide if a vote is conducted by show of hands or by a card vote.

The difference between the two is crucial. The unions and other affiliates have 300 delegates at conference, the CLPs have sent 1,200. But in a card vote, the affiliates’ vote counts for 50% of the total vote, ditto the CLPs’ vote (which is then further divided according to how many members a CLP has). Roughly, a union delegate’s vote counts four times as much as the vote of a CLP delegate – and that can make all the difference in a dispute.

This chair’s discretion over the format of voting is within the current rules, but normal practice in recent years – when it comes to reference back of a CAC report, composite motions etc – has been to allow any delegate to make a call for a card vote, which the chair is then obliged accept.

This posed almost no problem in the Blairite period of the party: real disputes were absent from conference floor, which had become a tedious, stage-managed affair. The election of Jeremy Corbyn has changed all that. Last year, a huge row broke out at conference over the NEC’s “reform package” that snuck in two additional NEC seats for the leaders of Welsh and Scottish Labour. Delegates were on their feet, shouting “card vote, card vote” – but the chair simply refused and declared that the hand vote had “clearly won”. In a card vote, the result would have gone the other way, as the unions were firmly against the addition of two right wingers.

This shows how important it is for the left to show its muscle in every party arena – including the middle layers of the party bureaucracy, of which the CAC is a part. Yes, Momentum and CLPD successfully campaigned for two leftwingers, Billy Hayes and Seema Chandwani, to be elected onto the committee by direct ballot of the membership. But the CAC is made up of seven members, five of whom will be elected by other methods. Therefore, we are not entirely confident that the left will actually be running next year’s conference.

Success! NPF document on Israel/Palestine is amended

The National Policy Forum is a relic of the dark days of Blairism; a body Blair established to outsource the party’s policy-making. When it published its dire, 90-page annual report in June, Palestine campaigners quickly noticed a glaring omission. The 2017 election manifesto called for an end to Israel’s blockade, illegal occupation and settlements. But these basic democratic demands had been dropped from the NPF document, along with the pledge that “A Labour government will immediately recognise the state of Palestine”.

Had conference supported this document, it would have overridden the pledges in the manifesto, as conference is – at least on paper – the sovereign decision-making body of the party. This omission was no ‘oversight’. Campaigners went into overdrive; LPM joined others calling on delegates to refer back this section of the document.

But page 14 of yesterday’s Conference Arrangements Committee report includes, without explanation, this small paragraph:
“The following text, as agreed in the Labour Party Manifesto 2017, is now included in the National Policy Forum Annual Report 2017. On page 56, column 2, line 43, add:

‘There can be no military solution to this conflict and all sides must avoid taking action that would make peace harder to achieve. That means both an end to the blockade, occupation and settlements, and an end to rocket and terror attacks. Labour will continue to press for an immediate return to meaningful negotiations leading to a diplomatic resolution. A Labour government would immediately recognise the state of Palestine.’”

It is not the kind of programme we would write on the Middle East (there is clearly a tendency to equate the violence of the oppressor state Israel with the struggle of the oppressed Palestinian people – note the mention of “rocket attacks”). But a return to the original formulation is a victory against those (like the Jewish Labour Movement) who want us to take the side of the Israeli state. The fact that the JLM has perversely been given the ‘best practice award’ by Ian McNicol serves as a reminder of how well connected this organisation is to the party bureaucracy.
Anti-Semitism, Conference 2017, Democracy and the Labour Party, The left, The right

Humpty Dumpty and ‘anti-Semitism’

The Jewish Labour Movement claims its rule change has been adopted by the Labour Party NEC, Kat Gugino begs to differ

On September 18, The Guardian claimed that Corbyn would be “backing” a rule change to this year’s Labour Party conference, moved by the Jewish Labour Movement.1)The Guardian September 18 Lo and behold, on September 19, the Jewish Chronicle joyfully reported that the Labour Party’s national executive committee, meeting earlier in the day, “unanimously” passed the JLM’s proposal.2)www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/labour- executive-gives-backing-to-new-measures-on- antisemitism-1.444751 Leftwing NEC member Darren Williams, however, writes on social media that “we approved an NEC rule change on dealing with prejudiced views and behaviour that avoided the more draconian approach favoured by the Jewish Labour Movement”. So who is telling the truth?

Well, that depends on who you ask and what question you ask. Clearly, the JLM’s fingerprints are all over the NEC compromise formulation (see below for the full text). The Jewish Chronicle quotes in its article “a spokesman from Jeremy Corbyn” as saying: “Jeremy thanks all those involved with drafting this motion, including the Jewish Labour Movement and Shami Chakrabarti.”

It is true, however, that the original JLM motion was not accepted. Tony Greenstein, a frequent writer in the Weekly Worker, believes the new formulation might simply represent a “pyrrhic victory” for the JLM. And he is right that one of the key aspects of the original motion was rejected: the JLM wanted a “hate incident” to be “defined as something where the victim or anyone else think it was motivated by hostility or prejudice based on disability, race, religion, transgender identity, or sexual orientation” (our emphasis).

This was a rather clumsy attempt by the JLM to misuse the recommendations of the MacPherson report, established after the killing of Stephen Lawrence, which found the police to be “institutionally racist”. MacPherson recommended that when a victim or someone else perceives an attack or hate incident as racially motivated, then the police must record it as such.

In that sense, the JLM has failed in its outrageous attempt to enshrine in the party’s rules that the Labour Party is institutionally anti-Semitic! The NEC formulation enshrines the need for at least some kind of evidence: “any incident which in their view might reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility or prejudice”. The JLM also failed in their attempt to explicitly enshrine the disciplining of members for comments or actions made in “private”.

If successful, the motion would have handed Iain McNicol and the compliance unit a devastatingly effective witch-hunting app: members could have been explicitly punished on the basis of what others perceive to be their motivation for specific comments or actions, not what is was actually done or stated.

JLM threats

Take the following threat from the JLM that we have received via a bourgeois journalist. Lucy Fisher, senior political correspondent of The Times, wrote to us on September 18:

“I was hoping to talk to someone at Labour Party Marxists about your conference voting guide, which we propose to report on tomorrow. The Jewish Labour Movement has expressed concern about lines in the document such as:

“‘This is supported by the Jewish Labour Movement, which already tells you that you should oppose without even having to read it.’

“‘The motion starts from the premise that the party has an “anti-Semitism problem”, which is palpably untrue.’

“‘This motion puts anti-Semitism (and cleverly, Islamophobia and racism) above the right to express opinions.’

“The chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement [presumably Jeremy Newmark] has said the document provides ‘an indication of the scale of the problem’ of anti-Semitism in Labour and has called on Labour to establish who is involved in your group, take action to discipline those involved and remove any representative platform from the group at conference.”

As you would expect from a reporter who works for a newspaper hostile to the left, Lucy has forgotten the word “probably” in the first sentence and is quoting half-sentences from our guide – and those entirely out of context. Still, even then, anybody apart from Jeremy Newark will struggle to find anything “anti- Semitic” in the above sentences.

Had Newmark had his way, then the mere fact that he feels we are acting out of “hostility or prejudice” would have been enough to see LPM members sent to the compliance unit. As the NEC formulation stands, this will not be enough.

Thinking bad things

Of course, Newmark is right: we are hostile to the Jewish Labour Movement. The JLM is, of course, an affiliate to the World Labour Zionist Movement, a loyal supporter of the state of Israel and home to many of those who have been so keen to save the Labour Party from its ‘unelectable’ leader.

Unfortunately, we are seeing yet another compromise that has characterised much of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Clearly, Corbyn and his allies seem to believe that they can pacify saboteurs and achieve ‘party unity’ by giving ground on these sorts of issues. This is dangerously naive. The outcome of the Chakrabarti enquiry showed the opposite to be true. The witch-hunters’ appetite will grow in the eating.

The worst excesses of the JLM motion (which, worryingly, also successfully went through six CLPs) have been removed, yes. But the fact remains that the NEC – and Corbyn – now seem to accept, albeit implicitly, the premise that Labour does indeed have an anti-Semitism problem. That is palpably untrue. It clearly does have an anti-left witch-hunt problem, as the suspensions of Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein and others clearly demonstrate. No doubt there are a minuscule number of individual members who hold anti- Semitic views – most of whom you would expect to belong to the party right, by the way. Labour is not some chemically pure ideological sect of a few hundred acolytes. We are a mass movement and therefore, to varying levels, may find in our ranks trace elements of some irrational minority prejudices that exist in wider society. The party – or, more specifically, the Labour left – has no more of an institutional anti-Semitism ‘problem’ than we have a problem with paranoid notions that 9/11 was an inside job or that shape- shifting space lizards run the world.3)All genuine manifestations of the poison of anti- Semitism must be fought vigorously. However,
it accounts for a small very small percentage
of ‘hate crimes’ in this country. The House of Commons home affairs committee published an October 2016 report, ‘Anti-Semitism in the UK’, noting that anti-Semitic hate crimes, however defined, total 1.4% of all racially inspired attacks. In the first half of the year there had been a rise
of 11% in anti-Semitic incidents, compared with 2015. Numerically, this rise was from 500 to 557. However, 24% of the total – 133 incidents in all – were on social media. And social media accounted for 44 out of the increase of 57

Clearly, the huge scale of the ‘scandal’ that broke over members in 2016 (and still reverberates) is actually in inverse proportion to the real size of the problem itself. Even at the height of the feverish hunt for ‘anti-Semites’, the NEC only ‘identified’ and took action against a grand total of 18 members.4)Labour List May 4 2016 Quite a few (like MP Naz Shah) were fully reinstated. Others, like Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker, should be fully reinstated – nothing they said was even vaguely anti-Semitic.

In truth, we are in Alice in Wonderland territory here – or rather, Humpty Dumpty’s corner of it and his fast and loose approach to semantics.5)“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
 Sections of the right of the party – with quite stomach-churning cynicism – have attempted to rebrand as ‘anti- Semitism’ even the discussion of some sensitive, but real facts of Zionism’s relationship with the early Nazi regime and the left’s critical stance on the Israeli state’s savage oppression of the Palestinian people.

The latter is a particularly smart move on behalf of the witch-hunters. With a few dishonourable exceptions,6)The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, for instance the Labour left is highly critical of the Israeli state’s ongoing colonial/expansionist oppression of the Palestinians and the appalling discrimination, displacement and denial of basic democratic rights that go with it. However, it is a crude and transparently false conclusion to draw from this that the left of the party wishes to see the poles of oppression simply reversed. There are different strategic approaches amongst comrades in solidarity with the Palestinian people (a single secular state, two viable state formations, etc). But a common theme of the left is the need for democratic consent of these two peoples to live side by side, sharing common, substantive democratic rights. In other words, the left in the party is overwhelmingly anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic. These two very distinct categories have been conflated for the most contemptible of reasons. In the struggle between the left and right for the soul of the party, ‘anti-Semitism’ has been “weaponised”, as Chris Williamson MP quite rightly put it.7)The Guardian September 18 It has proved to be a successful tool in the drawn-out campaign to destabilise Jeremy Corbyn. Historically, Corbyn has been an ardent supporter of Palestinian rights. Worryingly, we are not sure where he stands now. It is probably fair to say that his stance has become more ‘flexible’.

We sincerely hope he has not come around to the stance of the national policy forum. The NPF is recommending a document to this year’s conference that would dramatically change the party’s stance on the question of Israel/Palestine. The 2017 election manifesto called for an end to Israel’s blockade, illegal occupation and settlements. But these basic democratic demands have been dropped, along with the pledge that “A Labour government will immediately recognise the state of Palestine”.

We would urge delegates to vote to refer back the NPF international document.

Original rule change proposed by Jewish Labour Movement

Bury South, Chipping Barnet, Hertsmere, Jewish Labour Movement, Manchester Withington, Streatham, Warrington South, referencing: Chapter 2, Clause I, Section 8 Conditions of membership, Page 9.

After the first sentence add a new sentence: A member of the Party who uses anti-semitic, Islamophobic, racist language, sentiments, stereotypes or actions in public, private, online or offline, as determined by the NEC, shall be deemed to have engaged in conduct prejudicial to the Party.

Add at the end of the final sentence after “opinions”: except in instances involving antisemitism, Islamophobia or racism.

Insert new paragraph E: Where a member is responsible for a hate incident, being defined as something where the victim or anyone else think it was motivated by hostility or prejudice based on disability, race, religion, transgender identity, or sexual orientation, the NEC may have the right to impose the appropriate disciplinary options from the following options: [same as D]

New proposed section on ‘Conditions of Membership’ (Chapter 2, Clause 1, Section 8) new additions in [brackets]

No member of the Party shall engage in conduct which in the opinion of the NEC is prejudicial, or in any act which in the opinion of the NEC is grossly detrimental to the Party. [The NEC shall take account of any codes of conduct currently in force and shall regard any incident which in their view might reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility or prejudice based on age; disability; gender reassignment or identity; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; or sexual orientation as conduct prejudicial to the Party: these shall include but not be limited to incidents involving racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia or otherwise racist language, sentiments, stereotypes or actions, sexual harassment, bullying or any form of intimidation towards another person on the basis of a protected characteristic as determined by the NEC, wherever it occurs, as conduct prejudicial to the Party.] Any dispute as to whether a member is in breach of the provisions of this sub-clause shall be determined by the NCC in accordance with Chapter 1 Clause IX above and the disciplinary rules and guidelines in Chapter 6 below. Where appropriate the NCC shall have regard to involvement in financial support for the organisation and/or the activities of any organisation declared ineligible for affiliation to the Party under Chapter 1.II.5 or 3.C above; or to the candidature of the members in opposition to an officially endorsed Labour Party candidate or the support for such candidature. The NCC shall not have regard to the mere holding or expression of beliefs and opinions [, except in any instance inconsistent with the Party’s aims and values, agreed codes of conduct, or involving prejudice towards any protected characteristic.]

References

References
↑1 The Guardian September 18
↑2 www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/labour- executive-gives-backing-to-new-measures-on- antisemitism-1.444751
↑3 All genuine manifestations of the poison of anti- Semitism must be fought vigorously. However,
it accounts for a small very small percentage
of ‘hate crimes’ in this country. The House of Commons home affairs committee published an October 2016 report, ‘Anti-Semitism in the UK’, noting that anti-Semitic hate crimes, however defined, total 1.4% of all racially inspired attacks. In the first half of the year there had been a rise
of 11% in anti-Semitic incidents, compared with 2015. Numerically, this rise was from 500 to 557. However, 24% of the total – 133 incidents in all – were on social media. And social media accounted for 44 out of the increase of 57
↑4 Labour List May 4 2016
↑5 “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

↑6 The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, for instance
↑7 The Guardian September 18
Momentum, The left

Cohering the Labour left

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clause 4, Labour structures and programme

Three clause fours

Gallery

We not only need to subject MPs to mandatory reselection. We need new political principles

Understandably, clause four – agreed in 1918 and then rewritten under Tony Blair in 1995 – has totemic status for partisans both of Labour’s right and left. But should the left seek to raise the 1918 Lazarus? Or should we audaciously reach out for another future?

True, the 1918 clause four (part four) committed us:

To  secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

Mistakenly, this is often fondly remembered as a defining socialist moment. But when it was first drafted – amidst the slaughter of inter-imperialist war – the calculated aim of Sidney Webb, its Fabian author, was threefold.

Firstly, clause four socialism must be implicitly anti-Marxist. Webb well knew the history of the workers’ movement in Germany. Karl Marx famously mocked various passages in the Gotha programme (1875), not least those which declared that every worker should receive a “fair distribution of the proceeds of labour” and that “the proceeds of labour belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society”.1 Contradictory and vacuous, concluded Marx. What is fair? What about replaceming the means of production? What about the expansion of production? What about those unable to work? More than that, Marx explained these and other such woolly formulations as unneeded concessions to the followers of Ferdinand Lassalle. His Workers’ programme (1862) called for “an equal right to the undiminished proceeds of labour.” Obviously Webb wanted to give clause four a distinct Lassallian coloration not out of admiration for Lassalle, but because he wanted to distance the Labour Party from Marxism.

Secondly, by adopting clause four socialism, the Labour Party could both distinguish itself from the exhausted, divided and rapidly declining Liberal Party and please the trade union bureaucracy. Since the 1890s the TUC had been drawing up various wish lists of what ought to be nationalised; eg, rails, mines, electricity, liquor and land. Clause four socialism also usefully went along with the grain of Britain’s wartime experience. There was steadily expanding state intervention in the economy. Nationalisation was, as a result, widely identified with efficiency, modernisation and beating foreign rivals. It therefore appealed to technocratically minded elements amongst the middle classes.

Thirdly, clause four socialism could be used to divert the considerable rank-and -file sympathy that existed for the Russian Revolution into safe, peaceful and exclusively constitutional channels. That did not stop prime minister David Lloyd George from declaring, in his closing speech of the 1918 general election campaign, that the “Labour Party is being run by the extreme pacifist Bolshevik group”.2

Socialism

Almost needless to say, clause four was mainly for show. A red ribbon around what was the standing programme of social liberalism. Yet, even if it had been put into effect, clause four socialism remains stateist, elitist and antithetical to working class self-liberation. Capitalism without capitalists does not count amongst our goals. Railways, mines, land, electricity, etc, would pass into the hands of the British empire state.3 Capitalist owners are bought out. Eased into a comfortable retirement. But, as they vacate the field of production, a new class of state-appointed managers enters the fray. In terms of the division of labour they substitute for the capitalists. The mass of the population, meanwhile, remain exploited wage-slaves. They would be subject to the same hierarchical chain of command, the same lack of control, the same mind-numbing routine.

Marxism, by contrast, is based on an altogether different perspective. If it is to win its freedom, the working class must overthrow the existing state. But – and this is crucial – in so doing the proletariat “abolishes itself as a proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state”.4 Capitalist relations of production and the whole bureaucratic state apparatus are swept away. Every sphere of social life sees control exercised from below. All positions of command are elected or chosen by lot and are regularly rotated. Hierarchy is flattened. Alienation is overcome. What is produced and how it is produced radically alters too. Need, not exchange, is the ruling principle. And alone such an association of producers creates the benign conditions which allow for the full development of each and every individual.

Admittedly, the old clause four resulted from a far-reaching cultural shift. The Russian Revolution has already been mentioned. But there is also the 1867 Reform Act and the extension of the franchise, the considerable popularity of socialist propaganda, the growth of trade unions, the formation of the Labour Party and the horrors of World War I. Because of all this, and more, capitalism was widely considered abhorrent, outmoded and doomed. As a concomitant socialism became the common sense of the organised working class.

Of course, what the Fabians meant by socialism was a self-proclaimed extension of social liberalism. The Fabians would gradually expand social welfare provision and harness the commanding heights of the economy with a view to promoting the national interest.

In other words, the Fabians consciously sought to ameliorate the mounting contradictions between labour and capital and thus put off socialism. As Friedrich Engels damningly noted, “fear of revolution is their guiding principle”.5 And, needless to say, the years 1918-20 witnessed army mutinies, colonial uprisings, a massive strike wave and brutal Black and Tan oppression meted out in Ireland.

Interestingly, before 1918 attempts to commit the party to socialism met with mixed success. The 1900 founding conference rejected the “class war” ultimatum tabled by the Social Democratic Federation.6 Despite that, conference voted to support the “socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange”. The next year a socialistic motion moved by Bruce Glasier was defeated. In 1903 another socialistic motion fell; this time without debate. Two years later, conference passed a motion with the exact same wording. In 1907 the previous endorsement of socialism was overturned at the prompting of … Bruce Glasier. Despite that the same conference agreed to set the goal of “socialising the means of production, distribution and exchange”.7

The explanation for the seesawing doubtless lies with electoral expediency. While most in the party leadership considered themselves socialists of a kind, they were mortally afraid of losing out in the polls. What appeared acceptable to likely voters set their limits. So, instead of fearlessly presenting a bold socialist vision and building support on that basis, Sidney Webb, Arthur Henderson, Ramsay MacDonald and co chased the capricious vagaries of popularity. With the radicalisation of 1918-20, socialist declarations were considered a sure way of adding to Labour’s ranks in parliament.8 Forming a government was both a means and an end.

Blair

Nevertheless, the Blairising of clause four in 1995 was hugely symbolic. The ground had been laid by the Eurocommunists and their Marxism Today journal. Socialism was declared dead and buried, the working class a shrinking minority. Only if Labour accepted capitalism and reached out to the middle classes would it have a future. Neil Kinnock, John Smith and finally Tony Blair dragged the party ever further to the right. Out went the commitment to unilateral disarmament, out went the commitment to comprehensive education, out went the commitment to full employment, out went the commitment to repeal the Tories’ anti-trade union laws, out went the commitment to “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”.

By sacrificing the old clause four in the full glare of publicity Blair and his New Labour clique sought to appease the establishment, the City, the Murdoch empire, the global plutocracy. Capitalism would be absolutely safe in their hands. A New Labour government could be relied upon not even to pay lip service to a British version of state capitalism. Leftwingers such as Tony Benn, Dennis Skinner, Diane Abbott and Ken Livingstone protested, trade union leaders grumbled, but the April 1995 special conference voted by 65% in favour of Blair’s clause four.

Needless to say, his version is stuffed full of managerial guff and classless nonsense. Just what one would expect from the architect of New Labour. After all, one of Blair’s big ideas was to replace ‘socialism’ with ‘social-ism’. Another was communitarianism. But, of course, the media glowed with admiration. Crucially, Rupert Murdoch agreed to unleash his attack dogs. Within a few months John Major was almost universally derided as a total incompetent heading a sleaze-mired government.

Riding high in the opinion polls, Blair inaugurated a series of internal ‘reforms’. Conference was gutted. No longer could it debate issues, vote on policy or embarrass the leadership in front of the media. Instead the whole thing became a rubberstamping exercise. Then there were the tightly controlled policy forums, focus groups and the staffing of the party machine with eager young careerists (most on temporary contracts). Blair thereby asserted himself over the National Executive Committee … considerably reducing its effectiveness in the process.

Class lines

Demands for a return of the old clause four are perfectly understandable. But why go back to a Fabian past? Instead we surely need to persuade members and affiliates to take up the LPM’s pithy, implicitly Marxist alternative:

1. Labour is the federal party of the working class. We strive to bring all trade unions, cooperatives, socialist societies and leftwing groups and parties under our banner. We believe that unity brings strength.

2. Labour is committed to replacing the rule of capital with the rule of the working class. Socialism introduces a democratically planned economy, ends the ecologically ruinous cycle of production for the sake of production and moves towards a stateless, classless, moneyless society that embodies the principle, “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. Alone such benign conditions create the possibility of every individual fully realising their innate potentialities.

3. Towards that end Labour commits itself to achieving a democratic republic. The standing army, the monarchy, the House of Lords and the state sponsorship of the Church of England must go. We support a single-chamber parliament, proportional representation and annual elections.

4. Labour seeks to win the active backing of the majority of people and to form a government on this basis.

5. We shall work with others, in particular in the European Union, in pursuit of the aim of replacing capitalism with working class rule and socialism l
Notes
1 K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 24, London 1989, p83.
2 Quoted in R Miliband Parliamentary socialism London 1973, p64n.
3 The Fabians supported a civilising British empire. In their own words, the white dominions should be given self-government. However, “for the lower breeds” there should be a “benevolent bureaucracy” of British civil servants and military officials guiding them to “adulthood” (G Foote The Labour Party’s political thought London 1985, pp29-30).
4 K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 25, London 1987, p267.
5 K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 50, New York 2004, p83.
6 Though it had two guaranteed seats on the LRC’s leading body, the SDF disaffiliated in August 1901.
7 See RT McKenzie British political parties London 1963, pp465-71.
8 Labour gained 15 seats in the December 1918 general election, making it the fourth largest party in parliament after the Bonar Law Tories, Lloyd George’s Coalition Liberals and Sinn Fein. It had a total of 57 MPs.

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

Two years to take control

Gallery

The bureaucratic right is still running the show, but by 2017 all that could change, says Charles Gradnitzer of Labour Party Marxists.

Conference was a mixed bag this year; it was slightly more democratic than in previous years and noticeably less stage-managed. A regional organiser joked to me over a few drinks that those doing his job could relax this year, because the new leadership was not getting them to stitch up votes, so at least Jeremy Corbyn is upholding his promise of running a more democratic party.

Though comrade Corbyn won the leadership election on a massive 76% turnout, this was not reflected in the election for the conference arrangements committee, where Labour First’s last-minute candidates – former Eastenders actor Mike Cashman and former GMTV presenter Gloria De Piero – were elected on a much lower (less than 40%) turnout.

In May, Labour First pulled Tulip Siddiq and Ruth Smeeth as their candidates for the CAC in favour of De Piero and Cashman. De Piero sent out an email to all CLP secretaries at the beginning of June and within two months the slate managed to rack up nearly 140 nominations. In comparison Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance candidates Katy Clark and Jon Lansman received only 93 and 66 nominations respectively, even though they had been campaigning since February.

Gloria De Piero should not have been eligible to stand. In 2014 a rule change was passed which meant that when the Labour Party is in opposition members of the shadow cabinet are ineligible to stand for the constituency section of the CAC (Rulebook 2015: chapter 4, clause III, section B, subsection i). However, the term used in the rule change was “parliamentary committee”, which previously referred to members of the shadow cabinet, but now refers to the backbench liaison committee and so Gloria De Piero’s nomination was accepted.

Although many of us feared the worst, Labour First’s control of the CAC was not a complete disaster. The ‘four and four’ rule was properly observed, whereby there are four contemporary subjects chosen by the unions and four from the constituency delegates tabled for debate.

Of the 103 contemporary motions submitted to conference from constituencies, 68 made it to the priorities ballot and 35 were deemed not contemporary. This is in contrast to 2014, when around half were ruled out in this way. While more contemporary motions made it through this year, the CAC recommended that all the motions submitted on Trident were not contemporary, although some of them made it through on appeal and Trident itself went to the priorities ballot.

But the CAC had one more trick up its sleeve to exclude Trident from debate. Normally one would expect mental health and the NHS to be grouped together under the subject heading Health and social care, as they have been for the past several years, but the CAC decided they were two different subjects this year – obviously so as to maximise the pool of potential subject headings in the priorities ballot and prevent Trident from being debated. This was made more infuriating by the fact that only one CLP, Nottingham South, had actually submitted a motion on mental health, which led to the bizarre spectacle of a motion being debated with only one proposer and no seconder.

Though more contemporary motions were accepted this year, the same cannot be said of rule changes. Nine rule changes submitted by 17 constituencies were ruled out of order. The only one that was not was the Labour First rule change submitted by Colne Valley and Huddersfield CLPs.

Two were ruled out of order on particularly dubious grounds: the first would have allowed conference to refer back sections of the national policy forum documents and the second would have allowed Constituency Labour Parties to submit both a rule change and a contemporary motion.

The first was important, as it would have returned some sovereign powers to conference over Labour Party policy, which were taken away during the Blair years after the Partnership into power ‘consultation’. The national policy forum meets to consider submissions from the policy commissions. The NPF then presents a report to conference, which is almost always accepted unanimously without being read and forms the rolling programme of the Labour Party. Currently conference either accepts or rejects these documents in toto, which makes it impossible to remove bad policy from the documents by moving reference back of particular sections.

These rule changes were deemed out of order because of the three-year rule, which states that “when party conference has made a decision on a constitutional amendment, no resolution to amend the constitution or rules of the party having the same or a similar primary objective shall appear on the agenda of the three following annual party conferences” (2015 Rulebook: chapter 3, clause III, section 3, subsection B).

.The three-year rule was successfully amended in 2014 to add in the ‘no primary objective’ proviso to stop precisely this sort of vague interpretation of the rule book. In any case that point is moot, as Refounding Labour was voted on in 2011, four conferences before this one, not three.

Saturday saw the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s ‘Conference lift-off’ fringe. At this meeting Jon Lansman urged people to support the CLPD emergency motion on Syria, which sought to undermine the contemporary motion from Labour First by requiring any intervention in Syria to have a mandate from the United Nations. Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists pointed out that the motion did not really oppose intervention, but simply placed conditions on it. Lansman retorted that the motion de facto ruled out intervention and had been drafted to ensure the widest possible support.

Sunday

On the first day of conference an amusing addition to the raft of leafleters outside conference was Luke Akehurst and friends, who were distributing the Labour First bulletin. This featured the baffling headline, “Unite and fight the Tories – but say no to rule fixes”. Labour Party Marxists commends Comrade Akehurst for braving the scorching Brighton sun to puzzle delegates with his non-sequiturs.

Conference started with Harry Donaldson (GMB) moving the CAC report, after which delegates from Islington North and Mid-Bedfordshire CLPs took to the rostrum to refer the report back to the CAC on the grounds that the rule changes were unfairly ruled out of order. A point of order was also made that the chair – Jim Kennedy (Ucatt) – should take each reference-back separately. Yet again the chair chose to ignore procedure and took a vote on the CAC report as a whole. A card vote was called, but in the end the report was narrowly accepted by 57% to 43%.

In the priorities ballot Trident, masquerading under the name Britain’s defence capability, was not selected. Trident was edged out both because Health and social care had been split into two, as explained above, and because of the Becta/Musicians Union motion on the BBC licence fee, which was supported by the GMB precisely to stop the debate on Trident taking place.

Proving that many journalists do not know how a ballot works, this was reported in the news as 93% of conference voting to “reject” a debate on Trident, but if this is the case 93% of conference also voted to reject a debate on mental health, given that it came down to less than 1% between the two.

Monday

On Monday the CLPD’s Gary Heather was beaten onto the national constitutional committee by incumbent Judith Blake. The NCC deals with disciplinary hearings, so it is important for the left to win. Not so much to “purge” rightwingers, as media darling Simon Danczuk MP suggested, but for the left to protect itself when the inevitable rightwing backlash occurs.

Monday also saw the trade union section of the NEC elected. This year Community – the union that rightwing members of Labour Students join (and not because they fancy a career in the steel industry) – lost its place and the more radical and leftwing Bakers Union (BFAWU) saw their candidate, Pauline McCarthy, elected.

Progress complained that this was unfair, given the news of the Redcar steel plant liquidation – which seems a little cynical, as its members seem to have no problem crossing picket lines, particularly when it comes to delivering lectures on the life of Friedrich Engels.

Unfortunately Aslef ’s Tosh McDonald did not make it onto the NEC. Tosh, whose golden locks had Keith Vaz perennially referring to him as ‘Richard Branson’ from the chair, would have made a strong leftwing addition to the NEC.

Eight rule changes were voted on, two of which were quite important.

The first was Labour First’s proposal, which would have expanded the constituency section of the NEC from six members to 11, with each representing a region in England, plus one from Wales and one from Scotland. In order to preserve gender balance this rule change allowed the NEC to determine which regions would have to nominate women on a rolling basis. This was an attempt by Labour First to stitch up the NEC in its favour and change its composition to give CLPs parity with the unions. The rule change was defeated by 85% to 15%, with the unions block-voting 98% against.

The second was an NEC rule change, which expanded the leadership nomination process to the European Parliamentary Party. This means that any leadership candidate now needs 15% of the PLP and the EPLP to nominate them and any challenger to an incumbent leader needs 20%, so any challenger to Jeremy Corbyn now needs 50 Labour Party MPs or MEPs to nominate them rather than 46.

Tuesday

Tuesday saw the NEC statement on the railways passed. The NEC statement went one step further than Miliband’s policy of setting up a public operator to bid for rail franchises, instead promising to bring private franchises back into public ownership when they expire and accelerating the process using break clauses.

Tuesday also saw conference debate the vital issue of the BBC being responsible for free licence fees for the over-75s. It is obviously essential issues like these that the Labour Party really ought to be debating rather than trivial questions, such as the £100 billion doomsday device sitting off the coast of Scotland.

Though Trident was not debated, it did get an honourable mention in the leader’s speech. Comrade Corbyn said that he did not believe that spending £100 billion on nuclear weapons was the right way forward, that Britain should honour its obligations under the Non- Proliferation Treaty, but he also sought to protect jobs in the defence industry in order to reassure the GMB. This can likely be taken to mean that defence workers should be redeployed to socially useful industries. Corbyn also claimed that his victory was a mandate from the party for such a position.

Wednesday

Wednesday saw the motion on the refugee crisis debated. Twenty-two CLPs had submitted motions on the refugee crisis, and the bureaucracy – proving that it has a sense of humour – cobbled together a confusing, War and peace-length composite. There was also the completely redundant motion on the NHS, which was almost identical to the composites that have been passed every year since the beginning of the decade. In fact the motion was almost identical to the NPF final year policy document passed in 2014, not to mention the 2015 manifesto, from which entire paragraphs appear to have been lifted verbatim.

Emergency resolutions on Colombia and Syria were also debated. Both motions passed, which means that it is now Labour Party policy to oppose intervention in Syria unless there is a UN mandate to bomb only Islamic State targets, which is unlikely to happen. While Labour Party Marxists would have rather seen a more explicitly anti-war and anti-imperialist motion passed, this victory is still to be welcomed.

What now?

It is clear that if conference is to be more democratic the left needs to win the two constituency places on the conference arrangements committee, which will be up for election again in 2017. This will mean that conference will be able to debate rule changes and the priorities ballot will not be stitched up by the right to stop contentious issues like Trident being debated.

This is important because, although Corbyn has a mandate from the party, he is vehemently opposed by the Parliamentary Labour Party, who would like to get rid of him as soon as they can. We need to be able to pass rule changes that give conference more teeth, so that it can debate leftwing contemporary resolutions to give Corbyn a mandate that the PLP cannot ignore and block any rightwing policy coming from the national policy forum.

If the left does take the CAC in 2017, then rule changes can be submitted and tabled for the 2018 conference. Most importantly we must get rid of trigger ballots in favour of mandatory reselection. The current trigger ballot system is almost identical to Augusto Pinochet’s referenda and acts as a barrier to the party finding and electing new talent.

It is worth mentioning that the left (CLGA) won 25 seats on the NPF, as did the right (Labour First), along with five unaligned candidates. This means that the left performed no better than average in these elections and cannot really stop the NPF from producing the drivel we saw in 2014 – which led directly to the ‘Controls on immigration’ mugs and that ghastly plinth.

However, though the left is far from ready, it is beginning to get its act together. The 50,000-plus people who have flooded into the party since Corbyn’s victory did not do so because they were enthused by the Liz Kendall campaign. They joined to support the new leader. The left must mobilise to provide concrete, democratic structures for them to get involved in.

_____

 

Inside the Labour Party, Labour structures and programme

Recruit, win new affiliates, transform (updated)

Gallery

Jeremy Corbyn’s election presents the left with a historic opportunity. James Marshall outlines a programme of immediate action and long-term strategic goals (this is a slightly updated version of an earlier article)

At the well publicised prompting of Peter Mandelson, Charles Clarke, David Blunkett and above all Tony Blair, the hard right has already launched what will be a protracted, bitter, no-holds-barred struggle to put an end to the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. Blair’s ‘Alice in wonderland’ opinion piece in The Observer had nothing to do with the former prime minister trying to swing votes in the closing two weeks of the leadership contest.1 Comrade Corbyn had already won. No, its purpose was perfectly clear. Rally the Blairites and their corporate, state and international allies … and declare war.

Given the punishing logic of the first-past-the-post election system, it is unlikely that the hard right will go for a breakaway. Minor parties tend to suffer “significant under-representation” at a national level.2 Another Social Democratic Party is therefore an outside possibility. But, unlike the early 1980s, the political centre is not enjoying a sustained revival.3 At the last general election the Liberal Democrats were decimated. They remain marginalised and loathed. It is probably true that “more than two” Labour MPs are considering defection, either to the Tories or the Lib Dems. Nonetheless, political suicide remains an unattractive proposition for most Blairites.4 Their constituents would turf them out at the first opportunity. Instead of the glories of high office, it will be the musty corridors of the House of Lords. Knowing that, the right will therefore stay firmly put and fight hard … until we send them packing.

The well-timed announcement by leading members of the right that they would refuse seats in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet needs to be understood as an act of civil war. Yvette Cooper, Chuka Umunna, Tristram Hunt, Emma Reynolds, Liz Kendall, Shabana Mahmood, Mary Creagh, Jamie Reid, Chris Leslie and Rachel Reeves have in effect constituted themselves a shadow-shadow cabinet. This parliamentary gang of 10 are still members of the Labour Party, but, obviously, they do not share the same values as the mass of Labour members.

In that context, Corbyn is absolutely right to maintain the leader’s ‘hire and fire’ prerogative. After all, he faces not just 10 rebels. No, it is more like 110. We Marxists want the abolition of the Bonarpartist post of leader. But these are extraordinary times and require extraordinary measures. The idea of having the PLP elect the shadow cabinet was being touted by the right. Thankfully Corbyn’s early pronouncements on this subject were rethought. He wisely opted to keep the dictatorial powers long favoured by past Labour leaders.

Appointing the shadow chancellor was always going to be a litmus test. The more timid members of Corbyn’s inner circle were reportedly urging him to go for someone from the centre. Instead he chose John McDonnell. Excellent. So there is in effect a Corbyn-McDonnell leadership.

Offering shadow cabinet seats to the likes of Andy Burnham, Hilary Benn, Angela Eagle, Lucy Powell, Lord Falconer, Rosie Winterton and Chris Byrant was always going to happen. Corbyn is a natural conciliator. And the fact of the matter is that there are simply not enough leftwingers in parliament. Unless, that is, Corbyn went for a pocket-sized shadow cabinet and appointed talents from outside parliament. That is what we LPMers advocated.

Nevertheless, equipped with his left-centre-right coalition, Corbyn can claim the moral high ground. He is reaching out to all sections of the party. Meanwhile, in terms of internal perceptions, it is the hard right that will be blamed for starting the civil war. That will play well with traditional Labour loyalists. They do not take kindly to anyone damaging Labour’s chances at the polls. After all, for most Labour councillors and would-be councillors, most Labour MPs and would-be MPs, the be-all and end-all of politics is getting into office … even if the manifesto promises nothing more than managing capitalism better than the Tories. A misplaced common sense that wide swathes of the Labour left, including Corbyn and McDonnell, have thoroughly internalised.

However, the hard right will have the full backing of the capitalist media, the City of London, the military-industrial complex, special branch, MI5 and their American cousins. Corbyn’s much publicised admiration for Karl Marx, his campaigning against US-led imperialist wars, his opposition to Nato, Trident and nuclear weapons, his commitment to increase the tax take from transnational corporations, the banks and the mega rich, his republicanism – even his refusal to sing the national anthem at St Paul’s – mark him out as completely unacceptable.

Of course, the distinct danger is that the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership will have their agenda set for them by the need to maintain PLP unity. Put another way, in what is a coalition cabinet, it will be the right that sets the limits and therefore determines the political programme. Why? Because they are quite prepared to walk. That is what Burnham has indicated over Nato and nuclear weapons. The decision by Corbyn to kneel before Elizabeth Windsor and accept a place on her privy council is therefore more than a symbolic gesture.

Watering down, abandoning, putting principles onto the backburner in an attempt to placate the right, if it continues to happen, will prove fatal. Such a course will demobilise, demoralise and drain away Corbyn’s mass base in and out of the party.

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

Tactically, Marxists will, for the moment, concentrate their fire on the hard right in the shadow cabinet. ‘Blairites out’ should be the common slogan of the left. The mass of Labour members trust the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership, but they have an instinctive distrust for those who support the Progress outfit, those allied with Lord David Sainsbury and the gang of ten, those who vote for welfare cuts, those who want British forces to join the bombing of Syria. Clearly the Blairites are closer in mind and spirit to the Tories than Labour’s members, supporters and affiliates. An obvious target, therefore, is Tony Blair’s old flatmate and co-thinker, Lord Charlie Falconer. He has already threatened to quit over the EU referendum.

Immediate

The left in the Labour Party faces three immediate tasks.

Firstly, there must be a concerted drive to win registered supporters to become full individual members. There are now well over 100,000 of them. If they want to bolster Corbyn’s position, if they want to ensure that he stays true to his principles, if they want to transform the Labour Party, then the best thing they can do is to get themselves a vote when it comes to the national executive committee, the selection and reselection of MPs, MEPs, councillors, etc. Card-carrying members can also attend ward and constituency meetings and themselves stand for officer positions.

Secondly, within the affiliated trade unions we must fight to win many, many more to enrol. Just over 70,000 affiliated supporters voted in the leadership election. A tiny portion of what could be. There are 4,414,929 who pay the political levy.5 Given that they can sign up to the Labour Party with no more than a click, we really ought to have a million affiliated supporters as a minimum target.

Thirdly, the constituency, branch (ward) and other such basic units must be revived and galvanised. Everything should be done to encourage new members, and returnees, to attend meetings and elect officers who oppose austerity and want to support the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership. Labour’s constituency and branches can be made into vibrant centres of organisation, education and action. As such they would be well placed to hold wayward councillors and MPs to account. They could also spearhead a mass campaign to get local people onto the electoral register. The electoral commission reports that nationally “approximately 7.5 million individuals are not registered”.6 Most are “Labour-inclined.”7

Reorganise

As the hard right begins its civil war, the left must respond with a combination of intimidation, constitutional changes and reselection. Those proven to be in the pay of big business, those sabotaging our election campaigns, those who vote with the Tories on austerity, war, housing benefits, migration or so-called humanitarian interventions, must be hauled up before the NEC. If MPs refuse to abide by party discipline, they must be warned that they face expulsion. If that results in a smaller PLP in the short term, that is a price well worth paying.

Meanwhile, we should take full advantage of our current rules. The ‘trigger’ mechanism allows local party units, including both individual members and affiliated organisations, “to determine whether the constituency holds a full open selection contest for its next candidate, in which other potential candidates are nominated or reselects the sitting MP without such a contest.”8 Ironically, if it happens, David Cameron’s proposed reduction in the number of MPs from 650 to 600, and the expected boundary changes, due to be announced in October 2018, could prove to be a golden opportunity. We should deselect hard-right MPs and democratically select tried and trusted leftwing replacements.

Obviously, the party must be reorganised from top to bottom. A special conference – eg, in spring 2016 – should be called by the NEC with a view to radically overhauling the constitution and rules and undertaking an across-the-board political reorientation. We need a new clause four, we need a sovereign conference, we need to be able to easily reselect MPs, MEPs and councillors. We also need to sweep away the undemocratic rules and structures put in place under Blair. The joint policy committee, the national policy forums – the whole horrible rigmarole – should be swept away at the earliest possible opportunity.

Clearly, it is going to take time to change the political make-up of the PLP and subordinate it to the wishes of the membership. But with force of numbers, tactical flexibility and ruthless determination it can be done.

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

Our MPs are now on a basic £67,060 annual salary. On top of that they get around £12,000 in expenses and allowances, putting them on £79,060 (yet at present Labour MPs are only obliged to pay the £82 parliamentarian’s subscription rate). And, as leader of the official opposition, Jeremy Corbyn has just got himself a £6,000 pay rise.9

We in the LPM say, let them keep the average skilled workers’ wage – say £40,000 (plus legitimate expenses). However, they should hand the balance over to the party. That would give a considerable boost to our finances. Even if we leave out our 20 MEPs from the calculation, it would amount to roughly £900,000 extra. Anyway, whatever our finances, there is a basic principle. Our representatives ought to live like ordinary workers, not pampered members of the upper middle class. So, yes, let us impose the partymax.

In the three days following Corbyn’s election, 30,000 joined the party.10 Many more should be expected. But we need to reach out to all those who are disgusted by corrupt career politicians, all those who aspire for a better world, all those who have an objective interest in ending capitalism. To do that we need to establish our own mass media.

Much to the chagrin of the fourth estate, comrade Corbyn has shown his “contempt” for the capitalist press, radio and TV. Relying on their favours worked splendidly for Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell. But our newly elected leader will get nothing but mockery, hatchet jobs and implacable opposition. While there will doubtless be an attempt to court The Guardian and the Mirror group, Corbyn’s turning to the social media is understandable and very much to be welcomed. However, as is obvious, tweeting and texting have severe limits. They are brilliant mediums for transmitting short, sharp, clear messages. But, when it comes to complex ideas, debating principles and charting political strategies, they are next to useless.

To set the agenda, however, we must shun those siren voices urging us to engage with the “unpersuaded” by relying on the existing “mainstream media”.11 As Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband found to their cost, to live by the mainstream media is to die by the mainstream media. No, we need our own full-spectrum alternative.

Once we had the Daily Herald. Now we have nothing. Well, apart from the deadly-dull trade union house journals, the advertising sheets of the confessional sects and the Morning Star (which in reality is still under the grip of unreconstructed Stalinites). No, we should aim for an opinion-forming daily paper of the labour movement and seek out trade union, cooperative, crowd and other such sources of funding. And, to succeed, we have to be brave: iconoclastic viewpoints, difficult issues, two-way arguments, must be included as a matter of course. The possibility of distributing it free of charge should be considered and, naturally, everything should be put up on the web without page limits or paywalls. We should also seriously consider internet-based TV and radio stations. With the riches of dedication, passion and ideas that exist on the left, we can surely better the BBC, Al Jazeera, Russia Today and Sky.

Branding good people as ‘infiltrators’ because, mainly out of frustration, they supported the Greens, Tusc or Left Unity, at the last general election, does nothing to advance the socialist cause in the Labour Party. Such a jaundiced response smacks of cold-war bans and proscriptions. We should be proud of being a federal party. Therefore securing new affiliates ought to be at the top of our agenda. I am sure the FBU and RMT will soon be back. But what of PCS and NUT? Why can’t we win them to affiliate? Surely we can … if we fight for hearts and minds. Then there are the leftwing groups and parties. They too can be brought under our banner. Labour can become the common home of every socialist organisation, cooperative and trade union – the agreed goal of our founders.12 In other words, we can become what Trotsky called a permanent united front of the working class.

Yet sadly, so far, in terms of those outside Labour, apart from the CPGB, there has been a distinct lack of imagination. Instead of a banging on the door, there is a cowardly disengagement. An approach designed to preserve sectarian interests and brittle reputations.

Showing his profundity, his prostration before Scottish nationalism, his unconscious English nationalism, the media darling, Tariq Ali, assesses Corbyn’s victory as “England coming to life again”.13 In that same blinkered spirit he privileges protest politics as against parliamentary politics. Of course, comrade Ali is one of those freelance socialists, a typical dilettante. The idea of actively engaging in our civil war does not seem to occur to him nowadays.

The same goes for Charlie Kimber, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. Our Charlie boasts that he, and his much reduced band of followers, did not take up the opportunity of registering as Labour Party supporters. Why did they stand aloof? After all, a Corbyn vote cost a mere £3 … and for levy-paying members of affiliated trade unions it was gratis. So why did the SWP refrain from giving Corbyn voting support? Comrade Kimber pathetically explains.

The right is set to begin a firestorm. The PLP is dominated by the right. Corbyn has the active support of no more than 20 MPs. Tom Watson is a Brownite. Lord Mandelson is advising protracted war. The trade unions are dominated by a self-serving bureaucracy. There will be internal struggles and attempts to introduce constitutional and programmatic changes.

What ought to be a challenge to join the fight becomes an excuse to stay clear.

Having been torn by splits and divisions in the 1970s and then again in the 2010s, the SWP apparatus wants nothing to do with anything that carries even the whiff of factional strife. So, as with Tariqi Ali, there is the call for marches, protests and strikes … as counterposed to the Labour Party, PLP battles and taking sides in a concentrated form of the class war.14 In other words, in rejecting any sort of active involvement in Labour’s civil war, the SWP stays true to its modern-day version of Bakuninism.

Then we have the Socialist Party in England and Wales. Having categorically dismissed the Labour Party as an out-and-out capitalist party since the mid-1990s, it has been busily rowing … backwards. The old Militant logo has now been cosmetically placed on the masthead of The Socialist. Nevertheless, while Peter Taaffe, SPEW’s founder-leader, is a proven dunderhead, he at least has the good sense to borrow a vital element of the LPM programme. Hence we find him saying this:

“Even today a few remnants of [Labour’s original] federal constitution remain, with some MPs standing on behalf of the Cooperative Party under the Labour Party umbrella. Why couldn’t that be extended to allow anti-austerity parties and campaigns to join with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party as affiliates, while maintaining their own independent identity, just as the ILP and John Maclean’s British Socialist Party were able to do in the first 20 years of the party?”

Leave aside the historical blunders. The BSP was never John Maclean’s. A hero of the internationalist left during World War I, he ended up, however, as a sad, totally isolated figure, advocating left Scottish nationalism. True, the BSP did affiliate to the Labour Party … in 1916. And, of course, the BSP was by far the largest component body which helped found the CPGB in August 1920 … whose applications for Labour Party affiliation were consistently rejected. That despite very considerable grassroots support in the unions and CLPs. As for the Independent Labour Party, its special conference voted to disaffiliate from the Labour Party … in 1932.15 In other words, between ILP affiliation and disaffiliation there was not two, but three decades.

Despite such quibbles, comrade Taaffe’s call for SPEW to affiliate to the Labour Party is very much to be welcomed. Nevertheless, showing his political acumen, there is the promise that his ridiculous Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition will continue to stand against Labour candidates. A blundering approach supported by Nick Wrack’s so-called Independent Socialist Network (along with the SWP, Tusc’s only other political affiliate).

If Tusc candidates stood on something that resembled a Marxist programme, that would be tactically inadvisable under present circumstances. But what passes for Tusc’s programme is barely distinguishable form Corbynism. Despite that, whereas the Corbyn Labour Party will get mass votes, even with many questionable candidates, Tusc will hardly register. Its votes are uniformly homeopathic.

Left Unity seems to me to be essentially no different. And, as with SPEW and the SWP, members are peeling away to join the Labour Party as individuals. I have been told of a 20% cancellation of standing orders. Left Unity is clearly doomed if it tries to continue as a halfway house project. Unless it votes for the motions of its Communist Platform at its November 21-22 conference, Left Unity will soon begin to fall apart.

We Labour Party Marxist unapologetically take our programmatic lead from the CPGB. Having been demanding the right to affiliate since 1920, today the CPGB ought to be accorded the same rights as the Cooperative Party, the Fabians, Christians on the Left, the Jewish Labour Movement, Scientists for Labour, etc.16 However, we extend that demand to include the SWP, SPEW, Socialist Appeal, Left Unity and other such organisations.

Then there are the trade unions. Those who have disaffiliated or been expelled must be brought back into the fold. In other words the FBU and the RMT. They actively supported the Corbyn campaign … from the outside. So, comrades, now do the same, much more effectively, from the inside. But what about those unions which have never had an organised relationship with us? Regrettably, Mark Serwotka, PSC general secretary, was one of those turned away in the Harriet Harman-organised purge. But, instead of impotently complaining about it on Twitter, he should turn the tables on the outgoing Blairite apparatus by bringing in his entire membership. Mark, fight to get PCS to affiliate.

I heard him interviewed on BBC Radio 4 on this. He enthusiastically supported Corbyn’s September 15 speech at the TUC. However, he excused himself from getting the PCS to affiliate. Apparently it has been illegal for civil servant trade unions to affiliate to the Labour Party since 1927.

When we moved a motion to the effect that all trade unions should affiliate to the Labour Party at the February 2015 AGM of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, we met with exactly that sort of legalistic objection. However, as NEC member Christine Shawcroft, who was sitting next to me, said: “What does that matter?” Here comrade Shawcroft, a close ally of Corbyn, shows the exact right spirit of defiance. Comrade Serwotka and other leaders of non-affiliated trade unions should take her lead. Laws can be defied, laws can be changed. The key, however, is to win the PCS’s membership to the idea of affiliation. It would be great if the 2016 PCS annual conference was addressed by Jeremy Corbyn and had a raft of branch motions calling for the union to affiliate to the Labour Party.

Reclaiming

Real Marxists, not fake Marxists, have never talked of reclaiming Labour. It has never been ours in the sense of being a “political weapon for the workers’ movement”. No, despite the electoral base and trade union affiliations, our party has been dominated throughout its entire history by career politicians and trade union bureaucrats. A distinct social stratum which in the last analysis serves not the interests of the working class, but the continuation of capitalist exploitation.

Speaking in the context of the need for the newly formed CPGB to affiliate to the Labour Party, Lenin said this:

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

“Regarded from this, the only correct, point of view, the Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois party, because, although made up of workers, it is led by reactionaries, and the worst kind of reactionaries at that, who act quite in the spirit of the bourgeoisie. It is an organisation of the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically dupe the workers with the aid of the British Noskes and Scheidemanns.17”

Despite all the subsequent changes, this assessment retains its essential purchase. Labour is still a “bourgeois workers’ party”. However, with Corbyn’s election as leader, things have become more complex. Labour has become a chimera. Instead of a twofold contradiction, we have a threefold one. The left dominates both the top and the bottom of the party.

That gives us the possibility of attacking the rightwing domination of the middle – the councillors, the apparatus, the PLP – from below and above. No wonder the more astute minds of the bourgeois commentariat can be found expressing deep concern about what will happen to their neoliberal consensus.

Notes

1. The Observer August 30 2015.
2. A Blais (Ed) To keep or to change first past the post? Oxford 2008, p66.
3. From a 2.5% historic low point in 1951, the Liberal Party saw a revival in the 1970s, which saw it win 19.3% of the popular vote in the February 1974 general election.
4. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34305994.
5. D Pryer Trade union political funds and levy House of Commons briefing paper No00593, August 8 2013, p8.
6. The Guardian February 24 2015.
7. The Guardian July 2 2015.
8. www.grassrootslabour.net/index.php?option=
com_content&view=article&id=200:how-labours-trigger-works&catid=43:forum&
Itemid=60.
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaries_of_Members_of_the_United_Kingdom_Parliament.
10. International Business Times September 15 2015.
11. Eg, Owen Jones, The Guardian September 16 2015 and Roy Greenslade, The Guardian September 14 2015. Chris Boffy, online special advisor to the last Labour government, has also been bitterly complaining about Corbyn’s supposed lack of a media strategy – see The Drum September 15 2015.
12. At the 1899 TUC, JH Holmes, a delegate of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, moved this resolution:
“That this congress, having regard to its decisions in former years, and with a view to securing a better representation of the interests of labour in the House of Commons, hereby instructs the parliamentary committee to invite the cooperation of all cooperative, socialistic trade unions and other working class organisations to jointly cooperate on lines mutually agreed upon, in convening a special congress of representatives from such of the above named organisations as may be willing to take part, to devise ways and means for securing the return of an increased number of labour members to the next parliament” (www.unionhistory.info/timeline/1880_14_Narr_Display.php?Where=NarTitle+contains+%27
The+Labour+Party%27+AND+DesPurpose+contains+%27WebDisplay%27).
13. The Independent September 12 2015.
14. Socialist Worker September 8 2015.
15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Labour_Party#The_ILP_and_Labour_Party_government_.281922.E2.80.9331.29.
16. www.labour.org.uk/pages/affiliated-organisations.
17. VI Lenin CW Vol 31 Moscow 1977, pp257-58.

Alternative clause four proposed by LPM

Objectives

1. Labour is the federal party of the working class. We strive to bring all trade unions, cooperatives, socialist societies and leftwing groups and parties under our banner. We believe that unity brings strength.

2. Labour is committed to replacing the rule of capital with the rule of the working class. Socialism introduces a democratically planned economy, ends the ecologically ruinous cycle of production for the sake of production and moves towards a stateless, classless, moneyless society that embodies the principle “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. Alone such benign conditions create the possibility of every individual fully realising their innate potentialities.

3. Towards that end Labour commits itself to achieving a democratic republic. The standing army, the monarchy, the House of Lords and the state sponsorship of the Church of England must go. We support a single chamber parliament, proportional representation and annual elections.

4. Labour seeks to win the active backing of the majority of people and forming a government on this basis.

5. We shall work with others, in particular in the European Union, in pursuit of the aim of replacing capitalism with working class rule and socialism.

Inside the Labour Party, Labour structures and programme

Recruit, win new affiliates, transform

Gallery

Jeremy Corbyn’s election presents the left with a historic opportunity. James Marshall of Labour Party Marxists outlines a programme of immediate action and long-term strategic goals

First the background. Once Jeremy Corbyn got past the gatekeepers of the Parliamentary Labour Party and made it onto the ballot he was always going to be the winner. There are millions out there who are angry, who, no matter how vaguely, want a better world, who feel alienated from and unrepresented by the pro-austerity Labour right. They found their weapon in the person of comrade Corbyn.

Already, even in the early stages, pollsters had him way out in front: eg, on 53%. And, of course, on the very last day, on August 12, when people had their final opportunity to sign up and vote in the leadership contest, the Labour Party’s computer system crashed. It was obvious why. Corbyn supporters were desperately trying to register. So the 59.5% vote came as no surprise to me. Frankly, I was expecting something a little over 60%.

Anyway, there can be no doubting the scale of Corbyn’s victory. He ended miles ahead of Andy Burnham (19%), Yvette Cooper (17%) and Liz Kendall (4.5%). And the fact that Tom Watson, the Brownite deputy leader, only won after three rounds means comrade Corbyn possesses immense authority. So fuck Watson’s doubts over Trident, etc. Our Jeremy gained a crushing first-round mandate in all three categories: registered supporters: 83.8%; affiliates: 57.6%; individual members: 49.6%. To rebel against Corbyn is to rebel against these figures.

Despite that, at the well publicised prompting of Peter Mandelson, Charles Clarke, David Blunkett and above all Tony Blair, the hard right have already launched what will be a protracted, bitter, no-holds-barred struggle to overturn the September 12 result. Blair’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ opinion piece in The Observer had nothing to do with the former prime minister trying to swing votes in the closing two weeks of the leadership campaign.1 Corbyn had already won. No, its purpose was perfectly clear. Rally the Blairites and their corporate, state and international allies … and declare war.

As I have argued, under present circumstances it is unlikely that the hard right will go for a breakaway. Another Social Democratic Party is an outside possibility. But, unlike the early 1980s, the centre ground is not on the up. At the last general election the Lib Dems were decimated. They remain marginalised and loathed. Hence the Blairites have nowhere to go except the government benches. Being dedicated careerists, they are hardly attracted to that – their constituents would turf them out at the first opportunity. Instead of the glories of high office it would be a suicide jump. Knowing that probable outcome, most of the right will therefore stay put and fight hard … until we send them packing.

The announcement by leading members of the right that they would refuse seats in comrade Corbyn’s shadow cabinet needs to be understood as an act of civil war. Yvette Cooper, Chuka Umunna, Tristram Hunt, Emma Reynolds, Liz Kendall, Shabana Mahmood, Mary Creagh, Jamie Reid, Chris Leslie and Rachael Reeves have in effect constituted themselves a shadow, shadow cabinet. Obviously this parliamentary gang of 10 do not share the same values as the mass of Labour members.

In that context, Corbyn is absolutely right to maintain the power to hire and fire. After all, he faces not just 10 rebels, No, it is more like 100. We Marxists want the abolition of the Bonapartist position of leader.

But these are extraordinary times and require extraordinary measures. The idea of having the PLP electing the shadow cabinet was being touted by the right. But thankfully Corbyn thought twice about his early pronouncements on this subject. Instead he wisely opted to keep the dictatorial approach long favoured by past Labour leaders.

Appointing the shadow chancellor was a litmus test. Many timid leftists as well as members of Corbyn’s inner circle were reportedly urging him to opt for someone from the centre. Instead he chose John McDonnell. Excellent. So there is in effect a Corbyn-McDonnell leadership.

Offering shadow cabinet seats to the likes of Andy Burnham, Hilary Benn, Angela Eagle, Lucy Powell, Lord Falconer, Rosie Winterton and Chris Bryant was always going to happen. Corbyn is a natural conciliator. And the fact of the matter is that there are simply not enough leftwingers in parliament. Unless, that is, Corbyn went for a pocket-sized shadow cabinet and appointed shadow ministers from outside parliament. That is what we LPMers advocated.

Nevertheless, equipped with his left-centre-right coalition, Corbyn can claim the moral high ground. He is reaching out to all sections of the party. Meanwhile, in terms of internal perceptions, it is the hard right that will be blamed for starting the civil war. That will play badly with traditional Labour loyalists. They do not take kindly to anyone damaging Labour’s chances at the polls. After all, for most Labour councillors and would-be Labour councillors, most Labour MPs and would-be Labour MPs, the be-all and end-all of politics is getting into office, no matter what the programme.

However, the hard right will have the full backing of the capitalist media, the City of London, the military-industrial complex and the secret state. And Corbyn’s much publicised admiration for Karl Marx, his campaigning against US-led imperialist wars, his opposition to Nato, Trident and nuclear weapons, his commitment to increase the tax take from transnational corporations, the banks and the mega-rich, his republicanism – even his refusal to sing the royal anthem at St Paul’s – mark him out as completely unacceptable for Labour’s hard right and the business and state establishment.

Of course, the distinct danger is that the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership will have their agenda set for them by the need to maintain PLP unity. Put another way, in what is a coalition cabinet, it will be the right that sets the limits and therefore determines the political programme. Why? Because they are quite prepared to walk. That is what Burnham has indicated over Nato and nuclear weapons. The decision by Corbyn to kneel before Elizabeth Windsor and accept a place on her privy council is therefore more than a symbolic gesture.

Watering down, abandoning, putting principles onto the backburner in an attempt to placate the right, if it continues to happen, will prove fatal. Such a course will demobilise, demoralise and drain away Corbyn’s mass base in and out of the party.

Hence the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership faces both an enemy within the PLP and an enemy within the shadow cabinet. That is why Marxists will, at the first politically appropriate moment, be agitating for the removal of rightwingers from the shadow cabinet. An obvious target being Tony Blair’s old flatmate and co-thinker, Lord Charlie Falconer. He has already threatened to quit over the EU referendum.

Immediate

The left in the Labour Party faces three immediate tasks.

Firstly, there must be a concerted drive to win registered supporters to become full individual members. There are now well over 100,000 of them. If they want to bolster Corbyn’s position, if they want to ensure that he stays true to his principles, then the best thing that they can do is to get themselves a vote when it comes to the national executive committee, the selection and reselection of MPs, MEPs, councillors, etc. Card-carrying members can also attend ward and constituency meetings and vote for officer positions.

Secondly, within the affiliated trade unions we must fight to win many, many more to enrol as Labour supporters. Just over 70,000 affiliated supporters voted in the leadership election. A tiny portion of what it could be. There are 4,414,929 who pay the political levy.2 Given that they can sign up to the Labour Party at no more than a click of a button, we really ought to have a million affiliate supporters as a minimum target.

Thirdly, the constituency, branch (ward) and other such basic units must be revived and galvanised. Everything should be done to encourage new members and returnees to attend meetings and elect officers who oppose austerity and want to support the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership. Labour’s constituency and branches can be made into local centres of organisation, education and action. As such they would be well placed to conduct a mass campaign to get local people onto the electoral register. The election commission estimates that nationally “approximately 7.5 million individuals are not registered”.3

Reorganise

As the hard right begins its civil war, the left must respond with a combination of disciplinary threats, constitutional changes and reselection measures. Those in the pay of big business, those sabotaging Labour election campaigns, those who vote with the Tories on austerity, war or migration, must be hauled up before the NEC. If MPs refuse to abide by party discipline, the whip must be withdrawn. We should democratically select and promote trustworthy replacement candidates. If that results in a smaller PLP in the short term, that is a price well worth paying.

Obviously, the party must be reorganised from top to bottom. A special conference – ie, in spring 2016 – should be called by the NEC with a view to radically overhauling the constitution and rules, and undertaking an across-the-board political reorientation. We need a new clause four, we need a sovereign conference, we need to be able to easily reselect MPs, MEPs and councillors. We also need to sweep away the undemocratic rules and structures put in place by Blair. The joint policy committee, the national policy forums – the whole horrible rigmarole should go.

Clearly it is going to take time to transform the PLP and subordinate it to the wishes of the membership. But with a combination of threat, reselection and rule change it can be done.

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

Our MPs are now on a basic £67,060 annual salary. On top of that, they get around £12,000 in expenses and allowances, putting them on just under £80,000 (yet at present they are only obliged to pay the £82 parliamentarians’ subscription rate). And as leader of the official opposition Jeremy Corbyn has just got himself a £6,000 pay rise.4

We in the LPM say, let them keep the average skilled workers’ wage: say £40,000 (plus legitimate expenses). They should, however, hand the balance over to the party. That would give a considerable boost to our finances. Even if we leave out MEPs from the calculation, it would amount to a roughly £900,000 extra. Anyway, whatever our finances, there is a basic principle. Our representatives ought to live like ordinary workers, not pampered members of the upper middle class. So, yes, let us impose the partymax.

In the three days following Corbyn’s election 30,000 joined the party.5 Many more should be expected. But we need to reach out to all those who are disgusted by corrupt career politicians, all those who aspire for a better world, all those who have an objective interest in ending capitalism. To do that we need to establish our own mass media.

Much to the chagrin of the fourth estate, comrade Corbyn has shown his “contempt” for the capitalist press, radio and TV.6 Relying on them worked splendidly for Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell. But our newly elected leader will get nothing but mockery, hatchet-jobs and implacable opposition. While there will doubtless be an attempt to court The Guardian and the Mirror group, his turning to the social media is understandable and very much to be welcomed. However, tweeting, texting and blogging has severe limits. They are brilliant at transmitting short, sharp and clear messages. But, when it comes to complex ideas, debating principles and charting political strategies, they are worse than useless. To set the agenda we need our own full-range media.
Once we had the Daily Herald. Now we have nothing. Well, apart from the deadly dull Morning Star (which in reality is still in the hands of unreconstructed Stalinites).

We should aim for an opinion- forming daily paper of the labour movement and seek out trade union, cooperative, crowd and other such sources of funding. However, we need to be brave: iconoclastic viewpoints, difficult issues, arguments, must be included as a matter of course. We should also consider internet-based TV and radio stations. With the riches of dedication, talent and ideas that exist on the left, we can surely better the BBC, Al Jazeera and Sky.

Branding people as ‘infiltrators’ because, mainly out of frustration, they supported the Greens, Left Unity or the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in the last general election does nothing to advance the socialist cause in the Labour Party. Such a jaundiced response smacks of the cold-war bans and proscriptions. We should be proud of being a federal party. Therefore securing new affiliates ought to be at the top of our agenda. Indeed we should actively seek to bring every leftwing group or party under our banner. Labour needs to become the common home of every socialist organisation, cooperative and trade union – the agreed goal of our founders.7 In other words, a permanent united front.

Yet sadly, so far, apart from the CPGB, there has been a distinct lack of imagination from those outside Labour. Instead of a banging on the door, there is a cowardly disengagement. A runaway approach designed to preserve sectarian interests and reputations.

Showing his profundity, his prostration before Scottish nationalism, his unconscious English nationalism, the media darling, Tariq Ali, assesses Corbyn’s victory as “England coming to life again”.8 In that same blinkered spirit, he privileges protest politics, as against parliamentary politics. Of course, comrade Ali is one of those freelance socialists: a typical dilettante. The idea of actively engaging in our civil war does not seem to occur to him nowadays.

The same goes for Charlie Kimber, national secretary of the Socialist Worker Party. Our Charlie boasts that he, and his much reduced band of followers, did not take up the opportunity of registering as Labour Party supporters. Why do they impotently stand aloof? After all, a Corbyn vote cost a mere £3 … and for levy-paying members of affiliated trade unions it was gratis. So why did the SWP refrain from giving Corbyn voting support? Comrade Kimber pathetically explains.

The right is set to trigger a firestorm. The PLP is dominated by the right. Corbyn has the active support of no more than 20 MPs. Tom Watson is a Brownite. Lord Mandelson is advising a protracted war. The trade unions are dominated by a self-serving bureaucracy. There will be internal struggles and attempts to introduce constitutional and programmatic changes.9

What ought to be a challenge to join the fight becomes an excuse to opt out.

Having been torn by splits and divisions in the 1970s and then again in the 2010s, the SWP apparatus wants nothing to do with anything that carries even the whiff of factional strife. So, as with Tariq Ali, there is the call for marches, protests and strikes … as counterposed to the Labour Party, PLP battles and taking sides in a concentrated form of the class war. In other words, the SWP stays true to its modern-day version of Bakuninism.

Then we have the Socialist Party in England and Wales. Having wrongly classified, dismissed, the Labour Party as an out-and-out capitalist party since the mid-1990s, it is busily rowing … backwards. The old Militant marker has been cosmetically introduced onto the masthead of The Socialist. Despite that, the politics remain idiotic. Peter Taaffe expects Corbyn to come to him and his floundering Labour Party mark II project otherwise known as Tusc. Showing the same sort of myopic vision as comrade Kimber, SPEW informs us that Tusc will stand against Labour candidates in the next round of council elections. A blundering stance supported by Nick Wrack’s Independent Socialist Network (along with SPEW and the SWP a Tusc
affiliate).

If Tusc stood on something that resembled a Marxist programme, that would be tactically inadvisable under present circumstances. But what passes for Tusc’s programme is barely distinguishable from Corbynism. Despite that, whereas the Corbyn Labour Party will get mass votes, even with many questionable candidates, Tusc will hardly register. Its votes are uniformly homeopathic.

Left Unity, seems to me to be essentially no different. And, as with SPEW and the SWP, LU members are peeling away to join the Labour Party as individuals. Obviously this project, as with all halfway house attempts to recreate the Labour Party, is doomed. Unless it votes for the motions of its Communist Platform, Left Unity has no future.

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

Then there are the trade unions. Those who have disaffiliated or been expelled must be brought back into the fold. In other words the Fire Brigades Union and the Rail, Maritime and Transport union. They actively supported the Corbyn campaign … from the outside. So, comrades, now do the same, much more effectively, from the inside.

The same goes for unions which have never had an organised relationship with us. Regrettably, Mark Serwotka, Public and Commercial Services union general secretary, was one of those turned away in the Harriet Harman-organised purge. But, instead of impotently complaining about it on Twitter, he should turn the tables on the Blairite apparatus by bringing in his entire membership. Mark, fight to get PCS to affiliate.

I heard him interviewed on BBC Radio 4 on this. He enthusiastically supported Corbyn’s September 15 speech at the TUC. However, he excused himself from getting the PCS affiliated. Apparently it has been illegal for civil servant trade unions to affiliate to the Labour Party since 1927.

When we moved a motion to the effect that all trade union should affiliate to the Labour Party at the last AGM of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, we met with exactly that sort of legalistic objections. However, as NEC member Christine Shawcroft, who was sitting next to me, said, “What does that matter?” Here comrade Shawcroft, a close ally of Corbyn, shows the exact right spirit of defiance. Comrade Serwotka and other leaders of non-affiliated trade unions should take her lead. Laws can be defied, laws can be changed. They key, however, it is win the PCS’s membership to want to affiliate. It would be great if the 2016 annual conference was addressed by Jeremy Corbyn and had a raft of branch motions calling for the union to affiliate to the Labour Party.

Reclaiming

Real Marxists, not fake Marxists, have never talked of reclaiming Labour. It has never been ours in the sense of being a “political weapon for the workers’ movement”. No, despite the electoral base and trade union affiliations, our party has been dominated throughout its entire history by career politicians and trade union bureaucrats. A distinct social stratum, which in the last analysis serves not the interests of the working class, but the continuation of capitalist exploitation.

Speaking in the context of the need for the newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain to affiliate to the Labour Party, Lenin said this:

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

“Regarded from this, the only correct, point of view, the Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois party, because, although made up of workers, it is led by reactionaries, and the worst kind of reactionaries at that, who act quite in the spirit of the bourgeoisie. It is an organisation of the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically dupe the workers with the aid of the British Noskes and Scheidemanns.”11

Despite all the subsequent changes, this assessment retains its essential purchase. Labour is still a “bourgeois workers’ party”. However, with Corbyn’s election as leader, things have become more complex. Labour has become a chimera. Instead of a twofold contradiction, we have a threefold contradiction. The left dominates both the top and bottom of the party.

That gives us the possibility of attacking the rightwing domination of the middle – the councillors, the apparatus, the PLP – from below and above. No wonder the more astute minds of the bourgeois commentariat can be found expressing deep concern about what will happen to their neoliberal consensus.

Notes

1. The Observer August 30 2015.
2. D Pryer Trade union political funds and levy House of Commons briefing paper No00593, August 8 2013, p8.
3. The Guardian February 24 2015.
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaries_of_ Members_of_the_United_Kingdom_Parliament.
5. International Business Times September 15 2015.
6. See Roy Greenslade in The Guardian September 14 2015. Chris Boffy, online special advisor to the last Labour government, has also been bitterly complaining about Corbyn’s supposed lack of a media strategy – see The Drum September 15 2015.
7.At the 1899 TUC, JH Holmes, a delegate of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants moved this resolution:
“That this congress, having regard to its decisions in former years, and with a view to securing a better representation of the
interests of labour in the House of Commons, hereby instructs the parliamentary committee to invite the cooperation of all cooperative, socialistic, trade unions, and other working class organisations to jointly cooperate on lines mutually agreed upon, in convening a special congress of representatives from such of the above-named organisations as may be willing
to take part to devise ways and means for securing the return of an increased number of labour members to the next parliament.” (www. unionhistory.info/timeline/1880_14_Narr_Display. hp?Where=NarTitle+contains+%27The+Labour+ Party%27+AND+DesPurpose+contains +%27WebDisplay%27).
8. The Independent September 12 2015.
9. Socialist Worker September 8 2015.
10. www.labour.org.uk/pages/affiliated- organisations.
11. VI Lenin CW Vol 31 Moscow 1977, pp257-58.