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Democracy and the Labour Party

It can still be done

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Mobilise to put Jeremy Corbyn on the ballot paper, urges Charles Gradnitzer of Labour Party Marxists

With only four days to go until the nominations for Labour leader close on June 15, it is vital that the left does its best to contact Labour Party MPs in order to get Jeremy Corbyn on the leadership ballot.
Anybody who has been following the leadership hustings, from the Fabian Society to the GMB union congress in Dublin, knows that Corbyn represents a real political trend within the Labour Party, enjoying huge support. It is a simple matter of democratic representation that his participation in the leadership debate be secured.
Moreover, we need to mobilise to get Corbyn on the ballot paper because he represents a line of political demarcation within Labour around which a socialist left could potentially coalesce. Corbyn is not simply the ‘most leftwing’ or ‘least worst’ candidate among a selection of Blairites and Brownites: he is an unashamed socialist. When asked at the Fabian Society hustings if socialism is alive, he did not fudge the answer, but noted the difference between statism and socialism, before concluding that we need to “defend the principle of ‘From each according to their abilities; to each according to their needs.’” Sadly this is something of a bold statement, not just in the Labour Party, but in many organisations on the left.
The demand for democratic representation of all political tendencies in the Labour Party in the leadership debate is not just a gimmick for the Labour left or supporters of Corbyn. Staunch Blairite Luke Akehurst has also called for Corbyn to be on the ballot.1 To his credit, Akehurst states that Corbyn represents a real political trend within the party and it would be undemocratic and divisive to exclude him.
Not every rightwing Labour Party journalist has been as confident to debate their ideas. Enter the Daily Telegraph’s Dan Hodges. The man who described the future of the Labour Party as “bleak” because Jim Murphy resigned has the temerity to accuse Corbyn and his “acolytes” of being in denial.2
In his article Hodges mocks Owen Jones for pointing out that Corbyn could turn things around in Scotland, dismissing such claims as being the same as a conspiracy theorist meticulously combing through video footage of 9/11 to find evidence of controlled demolition.
But Corbyn’s main problem in getting on the ballot paper is that many of the MPs who had been most likely to support him, such as Left Platform signatory Katy Clark, were Scottish Labour MPs who were wiped out in the last election. In fact five of the Left Platform signatories and one member of the Socialist Campaign Group lost their seats in Scotland. Combined with other leftwing, anti-austerity MPs, they would have been enough to put Corbyn on the ballot.
Even in Hodges’ own terms of simply winning elections by jettisoning all political principles for the sake of being in power, it does not make sense to elect his favoured candidate, Yvette Cooper, because to do so Labour would need Scotland. It was conceded by all sections of the party during the Scottish referendum that it would be impossible to win a parliamentary majority without the support of Scotland. With Scotland sending 56 Scottish National Party MPs to Westminster on May 7, it might appear to be very difficult to ever form a Labour majority government again. How, exactly, he plans to do this with candidates to the right of Miliband is anybody’s guess.
If Hodges thinks that the seats lost in Scotland can be won back by people who support austerity, Trident and Nato, then he is sorely mistaken. Corbyn is the only candidate who not only opposes these things, but has done so consistently since he was elected in the 1980s, earning him the title of most rebellious Labour MP.
Nominations
So far 14 MPs have nominated Corbyn: Jon Trickett, Clive Lewis, John McDonnell, Michael Meacher, Ronnie Campbell, Diane Abbott, Kelvin Hopkins, Richard Burgon, Dennis Skinner, Grahame Morris, Frank Field, Kate Osamor, Cat Smith and Corbyn himself.
There are a further 13 MPs who immediately spring to mind as potential leftwing supporters of Corbyn’s leadership bid. These MPs fall into three camps: the three remaining Socialist Campaign Group MPs, four signatories of the Left Platform, and six of the 10 newly elected MPs who wrote a letter calling for the end to austerity after the election.
The members of the Campaign Group who have not yet nominated Corbyn are: John Cryer, Ian Lavery and Ian Mearns. Both Lavery and Mearns have indicated they will nominate Burnham, but, given their common membership of the SCG with Jeremy Corbyn, they are the most likely of Burnham’s supporters to lend their nominations.
The signatories of the Left Platform who have not nominated Corbyn are Alan Meale, Ann Clwyd, Chris Williamson and Dave Anderson. Two of them, Meale and Anderson, have also indicated they will nominate Burnham, but could be persuaded to switch.
The newly elected anti-austerity MPs are Harry Harpham, Imran Hussain, Jo Stevens, Louise Haigh, Rachael Maskell and Rebecca Long Bailey. All except Hussain have indicated they will nominate Burnham. However, with 50-odd indicative nominations, he is already guaranteed to be on the ballot, and his anti-austerity supporters in the PLP ought to switch their nominations to the genuinely anti- austerity candidate.
If you are a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, or a signatory of the Left Platform or the anti-austerity letter, then it should be inconceivable to support any candidate other than Corbyn. Burnham, who bizarrely enjoys the support of the trade union bureaucracy and is widely regarded as the leftwing candidate, is nothing of the sort. As shadow health secretary he refused to reverse the privatisation that had already occurred under the Health and Social Care Act and refused to end the private finance initiative. More recently he has declined to oppose a benefits cap.
At a meeting of its executive on June 9, Unite agreed to lobby its remaining MPs to get Corbyn on the ballot, but even with their support this only brings Corbyn up to 27 nominations.
So it really is up to the left to convince MPs who have not yet done so to nominate Jeremy Corbyn.
Notes
1. http://labourlist.org/2015/06/why-jeremy-corbyn- should-be-on-the-leadership-ballot.
2. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general- election-2015/politics-blog/11654167/Jeremy- Corbyn-and-his-acolytes-are-simply-in-denial.html.

The right

Out come the Blairites

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

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

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

Aspirational

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

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

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

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

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

Scotland and Ukip

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

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

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

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

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

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

Left Platform

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The left

Wishful thinking rather than hard truth

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Stan Keable was at John McDonnell’s Labour Left Platform roundtable discussion on February 7

An air of desperation and self-deception hung over the 200 or so left activists, MPs and ‘policy experts’ gathered together in the big hall at the University of London Union at the invitation of leading left MP John McDonnell, under his Labour Left Platform umbrella. Simon Hewitt, a young member of the Labour Representation Committee’s Labour Briefing editorial board, expressed this desperation: “Labour will be dead in five years if we don’t sort ourselves out.”

The fragile nature of the lowest-common-denominator (ie, undemocratic) consensus type of left unity achieved was illustrated when former Lambeth anti-cuts councillor and Unite activist Kingsley Abrams announced that he had resigned his Labour Party membership and defected to the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in disgust. He had taken a stand against cuts on Lambeth Labour council in line with Unite policy, but Unite did not fight his suspension from the Labour group, which was now implementing cuts. The ‘emergency budget’ anti-austerity motion to Labour’s national policy forum had been voted down by the affiliated trade union delegates. And, to cap it off, Unite had just made a £1.5 million donation to Labour’s election fund, on top of its affiliation fees.

Comrade McDonnell remarked that he had handed the microphone to Kingsley because “several others have done the same” (eg, Warrington anti-cuts councillor, Unite activist and LRC national committee member Kevin Bennett also defected to Tusc recently), and, ominously, “we do talk about the philosophical question whether to be in or out of the Labour Party”. Since the meeting we have learned that RMT president Peter Pinkney has joined the Green Party and will be standing as a Green candidate for Redcar in the general election.1

Can the left persuade Labour’s front bench to adopt an alternative, anti-austerity economic programme, in the short time available before May 7? Or will Labour continue alienating good class-struggle fighters with its austerity-lite commitments, promising to make the working class carry on paying for capitalism’s crisis? Given the haemorrhaging of Labour votes to the Scottish National Party and the Greens, both posing to the left, against austerity and Trident, an absolute Labour majority now seems unlikely, but, with the Tories losing support to the UK Independence Party, Labour may well end up with the most MPs. Comrade McDonnell’s plan is to make the left into a coherent force which can then negotiate as a player in any post-election coalition negotiations.

In the Marxist tradition of ‘telling it like it is’, I have to say to comrade McDonnell that this wishful thinking is delusional. Unfortunately, if we are to change the world, we must first be truthful about where we are at. Our class is in a weak condition at present – confused, disorganised and disorientated; and so is the left itself. There is no quick fix for this condition, no short cut, no easy road to socialism. A protracted struggle must be undertaken to democratise and rebuild our movement and re-educate our class in socialist ideas and politics before it can deliver effective solidarity to anyone, let alone approach the question of taking state power away from the capitalist class.

Much more than a simple majority of MPs is required: socialism cannot be delivered from above by an enlightened elite. A genuinely socialist government in Britain (not a Miliband/Balls Labour government trying to run an imagined ethical capitalism) implementing its minimum programme of immediate measures in the interests of, and empowering, the working class, could not survive the inevitable counterrevolutionary efforts of capital, unless it was based on the active, conscious support of a substantial majority of working people. Nor could it last long on its own, if the workers’ movement in Europe had not also matured to a similar level, capable of delivering real solidarity action to a socialist government here, under attack.

Alternative

A notable lacuna in the left’s “alternative narrative” (comrade McDonnell’s words) was the omission of any demands for democratisation of the state. The three themes were austerity, rail nationalisation and trade union rights. It was left to the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory (promoted by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty) to proclaim, on its leaflet, the abolition of the monarchy and the Lords, a federal republic, and a worker’s wage for MPs. These demands may not be doorstep vote-winners today, but they are indispensable conditions for the working class to overpower capitalism.

Commendable though it is to attempt to bring the weak, divided, disorganised and rudderless Labour left into the same room – “the first time in a long while that all of the left organisations in the Labour Party have come together”, in comrade McDonnell’s words – this gathering was evidence, to any objective observer, of the palpable weakness of the left and of the workers’ movement as a whole, not our strength.2 As Aslef national organiser Simon Weller remarked, the speeches complaining about anti-working class coalition government policies amount to “preaching to the choir”. Privatisation of public transport has been going on for 40 years, he said – in other words, under Labour as well as Tory administrations. The question not being answered was, “How do we set about changing the Labour Party? – and it is not through the national policy forum!”

The key to developing an effective workers’ movement, and to transforming the party and the unions, is democracy – and democracy starts at home, in the organisations of the left. The ineffective, pretend unity of fudged consensus ‘decisions’ made without transparency, motions, debate and voting, will not do. We need organisational unity in action, based on freedom of discussion and acceptance of majority decisions.

Comrade McDonnell, opening the meeting, said: “People understand that they are being ripped off, and are desperate for a real Labour government”, but they are “not seeing a display of real Labour politics”. The purpose of the Left Platform, as stated on its website, is to “demonstrate practically what a Labour government could do in office”, and “to consolidate a common left policy platform that can give people hope”.3

But fostering hope in a Labour government under present realities means setting people up for disillusionment. History shows that Labour governments running capitalism undermine and disempower the workers’ movement, setting the scene for more rightwing Tory governments. The ‘official communist’ programme (Britain’s road to socialism) of a series of increasingly leftwing Labour administrations is a pipe dream. Our movement must be built in opposition to whatever capitalist government is in office, and the task of transforming the trade unions and the Labour Party into vehicles for socialism, of “breaking the stranglehold of the bureaucracy”, as Brent and Harrow LRC activist Steve Forrest put it, will be hindered by Labour taking government office. We need socialist MPs elected, to give a voice to the workers’ movement. But we need a Miliband Labour government like a hole in the head.

Unfortunately, sectarian divisions amongst the Labour left are every bit as alive as between the left groups outside the party. True, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy had signed up amongst the Labour Left Platform sponsors, and I spotted its secretary, Pete Wilsman, in the hall. But there was no sign of its leading light, Ken Livingstone, while Christine Shawcroft only ventured as near as the pavement in Malet Street, as the brave lone seller of the so-called ‘original’ Labour Briefing – in competition with the one produced by the LRC, whose sales team was out in force.4 Comrade McDonnell alluded to these difficulties when he commented that the event had “showed that we can work together”.

The next step, said comrade McDonnell in his summing up, is to “ask every Labour candidate” to support the Labour left’s “alternative narrative” of “what needs to be done”, which had been the achievement of the event. And we will reconvene in the first week after the general election to take the campaign forward, as that is the time, he claimed, when a new Labour government (if that is the result) will be most susceptible to pressure from the left.

Notes

1. See www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/rmt-union-president-im-standing-8598307.

2. See also Jon Lansman’s useful summary of what was said in each session, and his pertinent criticisms of the left: “While the Labour left continues to work in the amateurish manner described above, the right has little to fear” (www.leftfutures.org/2015/02/reflections-on-the-left-platform-meeting/#more-41075).

3. http://leftplatform.com.

4. When the 2012 AGM of the Labour Briefing magazine voted to merge with the LRC, Jenny Fisher, Christine Shawcroft, Richard Price and three others, instead of accepting the democratic decision, turned the merger into a split. They set up Labour Briefing Cooperative Limited and launched a rival magazine entitled the original Labour Briefing.

The left

Democratic organisation needed

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Stan Keable attended the January 17 meeting of Unison activists 

Unison members must be wondering what happened to the superior strength, the greater protection against government attacks, that would result from the merging of three public-sector trade unions into one mega-union in 1993, when the National and Local Government Officers Association, the National Union of Public Employees and the Confederation of Health Service Employees joined forces. With almost 1.3 million members, Unison is second in size to Unite, whose 1.4 million members are mainly in the private sector, and twice as big as the next largest union, the GMB.
Today, however, faced with continual public-service cuts, job losses and increasing workloads, instead of feeling the strength of the union around them, Unison branches are, it seems, left to fight alone.
A privileged, unelected, overpaid and unaccountable bureaucratic caste enjoys the comforts of the union’s plush Euston Road offices, imploring lay activists to ‘recruit, recruit, recruit’, while giving little or no help to the embattled branches on the frontline of austerity. Speaker after speaker at the unexpectedly packed Reclaim the Union meeting (around 120 attended) in the Mechanics’ Institute in Manchester confirmed what it means to be a Unison branch secretary today: “loads of stress, no money and no support”, as Kirklees local government branch secretary and would-be left general secretary candidate Paul Holmes put it. Comrades gasped in shock and disbelief when Paul told us that incumbent general secretary Dave Prentis had turned down invitations to appear on the BBC’s Question time panel 17 times. We expect our gen sec to seize every opportunity to fight our corner.
The purpose of the meeting was to coordinate left nominations for Unison’s national executive council elections, which branches must submit before the February 20 deadline. In the first half of the meeting, left slates were agreed, or were in preparation, for each region and each service group (local government, health, education, water, police and justice, etc) as well as for ‘self-organised groups’ (unfortunately referred to as SOGs) of black and young members.
The process of adopting left slates of NEC candidates was carried on harmoniously, with chairperson Max Watson, convenor of the NEC left caucus, telling people to “get together in the break and sort it out”, wherever there were too many, or too few, candidates for the available seats. However, the “open discussion on the nature of the campaign: slogans, demands, etc” was totally unfit for purpose. Speakers were allowed two minutes each, so it was impossible to develop, or challenge, an idea adequately. No motions were proposed, so the campaign has no concrete policies. The level of unity achieved was simply the elimination of competition between left candidates, but with no explicit agreement at all about exactly what the campaign stands for.
Of course, everyone was against the coalition government, public- service cuts and austerity, and wanted a fighting, democratic union, instead of one suffocating under the “dead hand of the bureaucracy”, as one comrade put it. But democratising the union so that its officials are controlled by the membership, and winning rank-and- file support for a positive socialist programme, will require much more than an ephemeral election campaign to replace one set of bureaucrats by another. It will require the building of a membership organisation, where the politics and tactics of the campaign can be argued out openly and determined democratically, by voting – not left in the hands of the NEC left caucus to resolve elsewhere, after the meeting. The opportunity was missed to launch such an organisation.
Incidentally, I am still a member of Unison United Left, but it is evidently now defunct, and no-one even mentioned it. It was never able to achieve real unity of the left in Unison, after the Socialist Party in England and Wales withdrew in 2004 rather than subordinate itself to the larger Socialist Workers Party. Despite this UUL struggled on, at the time the SWP was engaged in its disastrous Respect popular front. However, it seems to have finally come to an end in 2013, when Marshajane Thompson and other feminists pulled out over the SWP’s handling of the rape allegations against ‘comrade Delta’.
They attempted to relaunch the Campaign for a Fighting and Democratic Unison1 left network based on the divisive ‘safe spaces’ principle: “What we won’t do is seek, jointly, to be the ‘leadership’ of the ‘left’ or ‘rank and file’ alongside those who can tolerate the treatment of women by the leadership of the SWP. We will not organise alongside nor devote any energy to promoting those who support the SWP Central Committee.” These are Marshajane Thompson’s words.2 Excluding what is still the largest group on the British left is not the best way to build left unity, which requires toleration of the views of others, alongside unity in action. Needless to say, no-one mentioned the CFDU either. It was stillborn – the most recent post on its website being October 28 2013.
Gen sec candidate
The second half of the meeting consisted of hustings for the single left general secretary candidate which everyone desired. Unlike the NEC elections, this is not urgent, as no timetable has been set, and the contest may take place late in 2015. Unfortunately, this was not explained at the start. Had the lack of urgency been made clear, and had an alternative timetable and procedure been proposed for adoption of a candidate, the meeting might have opted to postpone a decision. As it was, the meeting voted (68 for, 22 against, 24 abstentions) in favour of adopting a candidate by majority vote of those present. This would seem to indicate (roughly, of course) the presence of a solid group of 24 SPEW members or disciplined supporters, a non-aligned group of 22 or more who preferred delay, but were not acting under SPEW discipline, and a substantially larger bloc of SWPers, perhaps Labour left supporters and others who had come expecting a vote.
The three runners on offer were given 10 minutes each to present their case, followed by two-minute “questions” (or ‘contributions’) from the rest of us, and two minutes each for the prospective candidates to reply at the end. A frustrating experience, and the wrong way to approach the matter. Surely, agreed policies for the Reclaim the Union campaign should be adopted first, and then a candidate chosen who would promote those policies.
The prospective candidates were: Paul Holmes, a Labour Party member for 35 years (but “very angry”), who stood in 2010 as the candidate of the so-called ‘United Left’, coming third with 13% of the vote in a 14% turnout3; established leftwing front runner Roger Bannister of SPEW, who came second last time with a respectable 20%; and the SWP’s Karen Reissman, a first-timer.
In the 2005 and 2010 contests, the left had failed to agree on a single candidate – as may yet be the case this time – and Roger Bannister, although nominated by fewer branches than his ‘United Left’ rivals, had gained by far the biggest vote. He bluntly announced that he would stand again this time, no matter what this meeting decided, unless he was convinced (in other words, unless SPEW was convinced) that another left candidate stood a better chance of winning. SPEW’s Glen Kelly backed this up by announcing that their supporters would not participate in a selection vote, if one was taken at this time.
Needless to say, this did not go down well, and does not augur well for the prospects of uniting the left in Unison, which can only be based on voluntary, democratic unity – the acceptance of decisions by majority voting, not the “consensus” which SPEW speakers claimed to be seeking. One speaker asked if we really wanted a president like comrade Bannister, who puts two fingers up to democracy. Isn’t that what we are trying to overcome? Another speculated that SPEW had done a count, estimated that their candidate did not have majority support in the room, and then cynically announced they would not accept a vote.
Decision-making by “consensus” necessarily means behind-the- scenes negotiations (not transparent democracy) – in this case between the little ‘revolutionary’ bureaucrats of the two groups which currently dominate the Unison left: SPEW and the Socialist Workers Party. It excludes, disenfranchises, depoliticises and demobilises socialists who do not belong to these two groups and the mass of rank-and-file Unison members that must be organised into the Reclaim the Union campaign if it is to be effective – not as voting fodder to elect an alternative bureaucracy, but as active members with equal rights to determine the politics of the campaign. And to develop an ongoing struggle beyond a single round of elections. Promoting ‘revolutionary’ bureaucrats is an unconvincing and ineffective way of challenging the bigger Labourite bureaucrats in control of the union.
In his defence, comrade Bannister pointed out that SPEW had made it quite clear, throughout the preparatory discussions of the NEC left caucus which convened the meeting, that it did not want, and would not accept, a vote to select a single left candidate at this time. Such a vote had not been put on the agenda of the meeting, the actual wording being: “General secretary left candidate debate”. This agenda item, of course, contributed heavily to attracting the unexpectedly high attendance, and many comrades said that they had come expecting a vote to select a single left candidate.
But, whereas SPEW had instructed its members not to participate in any such vote, the SWP’s leaflet, A united left to meet the challenge, primed its members to force the issue – in the full knowledge that SPEW would not accept the result if it lost the vote: “We have to hold a measured debate today with the aim of reaching agreement on a united candidate.”
At the end of the hustings session, the votes were as follows: Roger Bannister – nil; Karen Reissman – 61; Paul Holmes – 15; abstentions – 41. So despite the total abstention by SPEW supporters, who will evidently not accept the result anyway, the SWP’s candidate gained an absolute majority of those present. Arguments made in her favour included that she is a woman like 84% of Unison members, and there has not yet been a woman gen sec; that she is a leading health service activist, and the fight to defend the NHS will be of key significance both in Unison’s general secretary election and in the general election.
Against comrade Reissman were those claiming that the SWP is toxic. In fact, not only is she an SWP activist, but, in the words of Labour left activist Jon Rogers, she “chaired the session of a conference of her discredited party, at which a victim of rape was denied a platform”.4
Cryptically, Paul Holmes said that he expects to see four candidates for the position of Unison general secretary, as there has been a “tear” in the union bureaucracy. So he is expecting the right wing to be divided this time, but he is also expecting the left to remain divided, fielding two rival candidates, as in the previous two elections. However, the election has not yet been called, so there is still time to put things right, as comrade Rogers suggests: “Neither Roger nor Paul indicated that they felt bound by this avoidable foolishness – and the ‘left’ (such as we are) will need to meet again at national delegate conference to try to take the decision which we should not have pretended to take today”.5
Notes
1. https://fightingdemocraticunison.wordpress. com. The original CFDU was one of the groups that came together to form the United Left in 2001.
2. www.workersliberty.org/story/2013/10/25/ workers-liberty-statement-split-unison-united-left: see comments after the article.
3. Incumbent ‘moderate’ gen sec Dave Prentis gained 67% in 2010, which means that less than 10% of those eligible to vote backed him.
4. http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/ one-step-forward-one-step-back.html.
5. Ibid.

The left

Not in the Weekly Worker

Gallery 5 Comments

Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists attended the AGM for Greater London 

Accountability was at a minimum at the Greater London Labour Representation Committee annual general meeting on December 13. Minutes were not available of the previous AGM, nor even of the previous meeting. There was no annual report of work, no reports from those who held posts during 2014, and no summary of facts and figures about membership and branches.

However, I understand that the Brent and Harrow branch is still holding weekly discussion meetings and is busy campaigning on housing issues, as well as mobilising people in protests against zero-hours employers. Although it was previously said that Brent and Harrow was the only functioning branch within London, I am pleased to note that Hackney branch has surfaced again: Jeremy Corbyn MP recently addressed a meeting there of nine on international issues – hopefully a step towards a more consistently active branch.

Greater London LRC itself is more like a branch of the organisation, rather than a regional committee of delegates from across London, as had been the aim back in 2010. Efforts to build a network of local branches failed: a number were formed, but quickly withered away. So the meetings still consist of individual members, not representatives.

Consequently, the AGM was in fact open to all LRC members in the Greater London area, who would have had a vote if they had turned up – but, given the low level of advanced publicity, many of them may have been unaware of the meeting, or may not have realised that it was open to them, rather than for delegates. The email circular did not explain this, and I never saw the meeting even mentioned on the Left Views Facebook page, nor on the London LRC email discussion list. In the event, there were 18 comrades present, if we include the single Young Labour activist who dropped in for part of the meeting.

Perhaps worst of all with respect to accountability, no report was given of the deliberations of the first national committee meeting since conference – despite the presence of several leading NC members: namely Graham Bash, Andrew Berry, Mick Brooks, Michael Calderbank, Simon Deville, Norrette Moore and Mike Phipps. Given the stressful battles over the election of London officers (see below), which occupied most of the three-hour meeting, one could be forgiven for thinking these comrades had turned out more for the purpose of preventing the election of LRC bête noire Graham Durham as London organiser and fellow oppositionist Judith Atkinson as London delegate to the NC than for building the LRC in London or advancing the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory, which conference voted to support.

Unfortunately, I was unable, for personal reasons, to attend and report on the December NC meeting – its first since the November national conference. So, like most of the several hundred LRC members in Britain, I am in the dark about the alleged ‘complaints commission’ (or whatever its correct name is) set up by the NC to deal with disciplinary matters and the “bad behaviour”, which is supposedly “driving people away” from the organisation. Or whether the NC set about systematically allocating tasks to implement conference decisions – an acknowledged failure of the 2014 NC. The customary NC report of work was missing from national conference too.

The one thing which was reported from the December NC meeting was its decision to sponsor John McDonnell’s February 15 pre-general election conference of the Labour left, and to seek sponsorship from individuals and other organisations, such as the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, in order to give the call for Labour left unity around socialist policies the “broadest” possible basis. That is a self-defeating method, of course, as trying to get the party ‘centre’ on side in order to defeat the right wing necessarily means watering down a socialist programme.

As I said in discussion, we need socialist MPs to act as ‘tribunes of the people’ to give leadership to the coming mass struggles against capitalism, but a capitalist Labour government will be counterproductive for the struggle to rebuild the workers’ movement and to re-educate it in the politics of socialism. Our fight must be to end capitalism – which necessarily requires socialist organisation across Europe at the very least – not for tried, tested and failed Keynesian capitalism.

Very bad

I would like to thank all those comrades who have assured me that the bureaucratic “LRC culture” proposals put before conference by the NC, but ignominiously withdrawn before the vote, were “never about you, Stan”, and had not been intended to curb my reporting or my alleged “misrepresentation” – a baseless accusation which, needless to say, has never been substantiated or made specific. But neither has it been withdrawn. So, one must assume, Andrew Berry still believes that my report of the November NC meeting in Liverpool was a “deliberate attempt to undermine the LRC”. Perhaps the comrade doesn’t take his own words seriously, and believes such an irresponsible accusation can be irresponsibly forgotten.

If the clauses forbidding, on pain of expulsion, “wilfully misrepresenting the views of the LRC, its elected national bodies or officers,” etc were not aimed at curbing reporting of LRC meetings, perhaps they were aimed at excluding comrade Graham Durham – about whom some NC members continually complain in email and Facebook discussions. In that case, apart from being a proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut, the attempt to eliminate the opposition on the basis of generalised accusations of bad behaviour has spectacularly backfired. Graham has now been elected London organiser.

Although the censorship proposals were withdrawn, the desire for secrecy still festers. Some leading comrades still behave as if socialist politics are about secret, behind-closed-doors decisions by those who know best, rather than the transparency and openness necessary to draw the masses – or even the members – into our work. What else am I to think when, at the end of the London meeting, I was approached by Graham Bash and Mike Phipps and told, like a naughty child: “If any of this appears in the Weekly Worker that would be …” (pregnant pause while Mike considers what to say next) “…very bad”. So, thankfully, there was no actual threat of disciplinary action; but evidently Graham and Mike would like London LRC to be as secret and unaccountable as the first NC meeting. Why on earth? Both comrades are undoubtedly very hard working and self-sacrificing. Political secrecy undermines their effectiveness. I believe their opposition to openness is a self-inflicted wound.

Lack of honest reporting and commentary, about the discussions and decisions in the meetings of our leading bodies, is an important factor inhibiting the involvement of the LRC rank and file and the growth of the organisation. Comrade Lois from Hackney expressed her frustration at not being privy to the real political differences of opinion underlying the hostility that was evident during the election of officers at the London AGM. There was plenty of friction, she said, but the political arguments were not out in the open. So any newcomer, or someone like herself who had not been attending recently, could not fathom the underlying hostility. And, she added, “it always seems that only a small group makes the decisions”.

Elections

Although the email announcing the meeting set a deadline for nominations, this innovation was set aside by chairperson Judith Atkinson (with no objections), and nominations for all posts were invited from the floor. First to be elected was Judith herself, who was the only nominee for chairperson. A job-share was agreed between Graham Bash and Norrette Moore for the key job of London secretary, and it was agreed to drop the post of treasurer as superfluous – the London organisation does not normally handle money and has access to central funds when necessary.

When it came to the post of London organiser, there were two nominees: Graham Durham versus retiring 2014 organiser Steve Ballard. Comrade Durham asked that each candidate present their views before the vote, which chair Judy agreed, and – as in Labour Party councillor selections – we were invited to ask questions, so long as the same question was put to each candidate. It was all about aspirations for the future, as no-one could point to anything concrete that London LRC had done during the past year – and, obviously, comrade Ballard’s year in post had not made a difference to that. Comrade Durham, on the other hand, was able to point to the lively Brent and Harrow branch, which he had helped to build, and promised to promote active branches which will “campaign on the street against the coming destruction of adult social services and children’s services, and the record levels of cuts and closures coming this year, after the general election”. He added: “There should be at least 10 London branches, and 20 nationally.”

Then we had question time. Michael Calderbank kicked off, asking the candidates to “give an undertaking not to campaign against LRC policies” – to which Steve answered “No”, he could not give such an undertaking, while Graham simply said “Yes”. Norrette Moore, who has played the role of moderator of the LRC’s online discussion, asked if the candidates accepted her role. Both candidates replied negatively. Graham answered that she had refused to circulate details of specific campaigning actions which he had posted, and Steve said she should not have been placed in a position to make such decisions.

In turn, I asked two questions: “Are you a member of the Labour Party?” and “Do you agree that the LRC should campaign for all socialists to join the Labour Party in order to change it?” It emerged that not only is Steve not a member, but he regards the struggle to win socialist policies in the party as a lost cause, while Graham has been a member for 44 years and is committed to bringing socialists into the party: “I know many people who want to join the Labour Party, but will not come in so long as Tony Blair is still a member.”

From the candidates’ replies in these hustings, Graham Durham was clearly the best candidate for London organiser, in the interests of building the LRC and raising its profile. But the vote was tied at five each (with several abstentions), with several – not all – of the leading NC members desperately voting for comrade Ballard, simply to defeat comrade Durham at all costs. But Judy Atkinson resolved the tie in favour of comrade Durham by using the presiding chairperson’s casting vote – her second vote for comrade Durham. This controversial decision was upheld after Rail, Maritime and Transport union veteran (and now vice-chair) Carol Foster confirmed that this was standard practice in the RMT. A motion from Andrew Berry declaring “No confidence in Graham Durham” was declared “not competent” (after all, he had just been elected, and objections to his candidacy could have been made during the hustings session), and a motion from Simon Deville and Andrew Berry of “No confidence in the chair” was then defeated when the meeting voted 9-4 in favour of next business.

‘Next business’ was the election of two vice-chairs, for which there were three candidates. However, Steve Ballard decided to withdraw, after which Labour Briefing editorial board member Simon Deville and Brent and Harrow activist Carol Foster were unopposed.

Next came a surprising controversy over the election of London’s representative on the LRC NC. Chairperson Judy Atkinson claimed that she had been elected London rep at a previous meeting and was already in post until the next AGM; she therefore ruled that the post was not up for election. Whatever may have happened at a previous London meeting a couple of months ago (sorry, I do not know the facts), this was an intolerable infringement of democracy. Understandably, Michael Calderbank’s motion of “No confidence in the chair” succeeded this time, by eight votes to three, and vice-chair Carol Foster took over for the rest of the meeting. Andrew Berry was then elected NC rep by seven votes to Judy’s five, and comrade Keith Dunn was elected unopposed as deputy NC rep.

At the end of the meeting, the thorny procedural question – whether a vote of no confidence can unseat a chairperson permanently, or can only challenge the ruling in hand – remained unresolved. But Judy Atkinson was reinstated as London chairperson by six votes to five.

Frustrating as these shenanigans may be, nevertheless a difficult meeting resolved all issues through discussion and votes and, importantly, the acceptance of majority decisions – essential if the LRC is to survive and flourish.

 

Witch-hunts and expulsions

Threat of witch-hunt averted

Gallery

Stan Keable reports on the Labour Representation Committee’s November 8 annual conference (this article first appeared in Weekly Worker No1034, November 13 2014)

Thankfully, the “thoroughly bureaucratic, intolerant and dangerous” proposal1 put before the Labour Representation Committee’s annual conference was pulled at the last minute.

Michael Calderbank, on behalf of the LRC’s national committee, agreed to remit the ‘LRC culture’ section of the NC statement that had been presented to the conference in Friends House. This, amongst other things, threatened to “suspend or terminate” the membership of individuals, affiliates or local LRC groups that are guilty of “wilfully misrepresenting the views of the LRC, its elected national bodies or officers, whether to other LRC members or the wider public, by any means” (item (c)).

So neither the ‘LRC culture’ section, proposed by the NC, nor the Labour Party Marxists amendment to it was voted on. This amendment would have deleted all but the first two paragraphs, and listed examples of “bureaucratic tendencies” which “we must guard against” in order to defend freedom of discussion and the “open, inclusive and mutually supportive atmosphere” which the NC statement claimed to defend.

Moving the section, comrade Calderbank had reminded us that the first priority is “getting the politics right” and stated, quite rightly, that “the culture of the organisation is important too”. Debate is essential “within a shared viewpoint”. I agree. Interestingly, he explicitly upheld the right to heckle, praising comrade Walter Wolfgang of Labour CND – who was present – and had been manhandled out of the 2005 Labour Party conference for heckling Jack Straw over the invasion of Iraq. As James Marshall wrote recently, heckling is a “time-honoured way for the weak to challenge the power of the strong”.2

Accepting the right to heckle was not the view of all, however. Communication Workers Union activist Gary Heather, who had been chair of Greater London LRC for a number of years, “reluctantly” supported the NC’s proposal, and was “disappointed that it was necessary”. He could not “see why heckling is necessary”. Likewise Susan Press, who had “chaired the worst meetings of the national committee, where people were shouting each other down” (I believe this must refer to the notorious April 2012 NC row, which broke up in disarray, and was never minuted). She said: “Heckling is not acceptable in any shape or form. It is the last refuge of those who have no rational argument.”

I would ask comrades Press and Heather to reconsider this one-sided, negative, fixed view of heckling, evidently born of bad experiences. A heckle can be a quick way of contributing to a debate without wasting time, whether in support of a speaker or critical of what they are saying, and is not always and inevitably disruptive of the discussion.

Of course, heckling might sometimes be unacceptably disruptive – the chair should intervene when appropriate – or it might be off-putting for a particular speaker, who is certainly entitled to say ‘No heckling, please’. But a blanket ban would be overkill, and accusing those who do not want such a ban of being in favour of disruption, as some do, is inaccurate and unfair.

Bad behaviour

Explaining why the NC had found it necessary to make its proposals, comrade Calderbank surprised me by referring to “bad behaviour” in the Workers Revolutionary Party and Socialist Workers Party. Both of them, he said, had “covered up bad behaviour” – something the LCR must not do, if it is to be a ‘non-sectarian’ organisation, free from the deficiencies of the ‘sectarian’ left. The reference to the SWP is, of course, its cover-up and mishandling of the ‘comrade Delta’ rape accusation.

Comrade Calderbank here spectacularly misses the point of the SWP’s deficiencies in respect of the Delta case, in my view. The SWP did not have a policy of tolerating rape – or sexual abuse or discrimination: quite the opposite. It did, however – and still does – run an extremely bureaucratic regime – by which I mean a regime which restricts debate to such an extent that anyone expressing a dissident viewpoint soon finds themselves subject to a silencing order or even summary expulsion. It is precisely the outlawing of free speech, and the forbidding of public criticism, that creates fertile conditions for cover-ups by a ruling or dominating bureaucracy. It is precisely the open reporting of NC meetings, and Labour Briefing editorial board meetings, which can help to guard against bureaucratic cover-ups and keep our leadership accountable.

“A lot of nonsense” has been written about the NC proposals, said comrade Calderbank, and assured us that the NC was not “preparing for a witch-hunt” – but, there was “no place in the LRC for sectarian activity”. Not very reassuring. Now “sectarian activity” must certainly be a very bad thing, not to be tolerated, but in case anyone wondered what he meant by “sectarian”, he went on: “Telling lies to discredit the LRC or to build their sect” might help to sell “sectarian gossip sheets …”

Having been explicitly accused of “misrepresentation” in “a deliberate attempt to undermine the LRC” in my report of the October NC meeting3 (an irresponsible accusation not backed up by any explicit quote, nor by ‘putting the record straight’ with a public reply), I cannot avoid the conclusion that he was talking about my article, and the “sectarian gossip sheet” was a reference to the Weekly Worker. Item (c), quoted above, in the NC’s “examples” of behaviour which the LRC will “refuse to tolerate”, fits perfectly with comrade Calderbank’s hopelessly, if unintentionally, sectarian phrases.

Nevertheless, in moving Labour Party Marxists’ amendment, I accepted comrade Calderbank’s, and the NC’s, good intentions. But, I said, “the best of intentions can lead to the worst of outcomes”. They do not intend a witch-hunt, and they do not want to be expelling people – they just want comrades to toe the line and obey their interpretation of acceptable behaviour. Sorry, comrades, no thanks. The inclusive and tolerant atmosphere we all yearn for must, above all, be tolerant of the free expression of minority views (within a shared socialist viewpoint, of course). It goes without saying that violence or the threat of violence should not be tolerated, but the NC proposals are “superfluous” in this regard, I said.

In the discussion, comrade John Moloney also asserted that the proposals were superfluous. Points (c), (d) and (e) (“wilfully misrepresenting” etc, “disruptive behaviour” etc, and “bringing the LRC into disrepute”) were “totally subjective”, while “expulsion for violence or threats of violence don’t need new rules”, he argued. And points (a) and (b) (“physical, sexual or verbal abuse, attacks or harassment”; and “discrimination or abuse on the grounds of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, or religion/belief”), he said, “we do anyway”.

Graham Durham said the NC proposals were “politically motivated”. “The class wants to fight”, he said. “This is a motion to expel those who want to fight.” And the alternative NC slate led by comrade Durham, in their flyer, said: “We support the right of socialist political groups and individuals to have freedom of discussion in the LRC and are opposed to any attempts to introduce codes to allow exclusion or expulsion.”

John McDonnell MP, unusually, intervened in the debate to correct an assertion by comrade Durham that the origin of the NC’s concerns about LRC culture had been an incident in a meeting in a House of Commons committee room, where he had been accused of supporting the “fascist” government in Kiev – but, as he had explained at the time, he had been misquoted, and had never said that he supported the Kiev government (leaving aside whether it is fascist). The misrepresentation had been resolved immediately, in that meeting. In fact, explained comrade McDonnell, the ‘LRC culture’ proposals arose in response to bad behaviour at NC meetings at which he had been absent, due to ill-health.

Any instance of “disruptive”, “threatening” or “bullying” behaviour should, likewise, be dealt with at the time, and not stored up as a perpetual complaint against those you disagree with. The “worst” behaviour was undoubtedly at the April 2012 NC meeting (which I did not attend), and I do not envy Susan Press the extremely difficult task of trying to keep order as chair of that meeting. I understand it broke up in disarray and, as minutes of the meeting were never distributed, I have never seen a proper report of what happened. So we are left with mutual recriminations and vague, unsubstantiated allegations and generalisations. After two and a half years, it is futile to attempt retrospective disciplinary action by inventing an inappropriate catch-all code – which is what the NC’s proposals amounted to.

In the conference itself – despite sharp political “attacks”, difficult moments of heckling, individuals occasionally speaking over or ignoring the chair, sometimes continuing speaking after being told to stop – all these instances were handled with reasonable discretion at the time. The organisation showed itself tolerant of debate, and thankfully did not give way to the few philistine voices wailing against “wasting time” on debate, or complaining about “sectarian divisions” – read ‘political debate’.

Left ‘pressure’

Last year I reported a one-third drop in attendance at the annual conference – it was down to a little over 100 in 2013. This year, however, I am pleased to report no reduction in attendance, with approximately 110 comrades packed into the small hall at London’s Friends House. Perhaps we have passed a low point, and can now start to grow. In any case, tolerance of minority views, debate and majority decisions is the way forward. United action requires that minorities be heard – or else why should they join, and why should they stay?

No NC report was presented to conference, and no membership figures or list of current affiliates were given. But comrade McDonnell candidly reported the views of some affiliates, who have said, “We can’t send delegates, because you don’t do anything”. Sussex LRC, with a record of effective organisation, public meetings and campaigning rivalled only by Brent and Harrow, submitted an emergency motion to “restructure” the NC, which NC member Clare Wadey described as “too large at 67 members, or inquorate” and her admission that “it has been totally ineffective” was not challenged. Political secretary Pete Firmin confirmed that “everyone agrees” that the NC needs to be restructured, but “the question is how to do it”. And, on that basis, conference voted to remit the Sussex proposal to the new NC.

Guest speaker Matt Wrack of the Fire Brigades Union brought “greetings from the TUC general council”, and said that to get rid of this coalition government the only alternative is a Labour government – “but we need to have a discussion about that”. He contended that “Toning down the rhetoric to get Labour elected is a disastrous route” and was very critical of the trade unions’ role in the Labour Party. After a unanimous anti-austerity vote at the TUC congress in September, almost all union delegates at the national policy forum had voted down an “emergency budget” resolution. Instead of posing “austerity lite” against “austerity armageddon”, we need a “socialist renaissance”. He commented: “People are prepared to fight, but do not think the organised left is the answer.”

Disagreement over our assessment of the state of the workers’ movement was brought out in the hustings session, where two of the three rival candidates for the post of political secretary presented their cases. In the event, Pete Firmin was elected with 59 votes to Graham Durham’s 21, while Louise Reece, who did not speak, received 12 votes. Comrade Durham’s oft-repeated charge that Pete Firmin and the LRC leadership are pessimistic and defeatist, while the working class is itching to fight if only it is given a lead, was countered by comrade Firmin’s sober assessment that the “bad state of the movement is reflected in the bad state of the LRC” – the sort of honesty that is necessary to face up to, and remedy, the weaknesses of the organisation and the workers’ movement as a whole. Self-deception does not help at all.

Vicky Morris of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty moved the successful motion, ‘Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory’. This commits the LRC to “advocate a Labour government as the best outcome of the May 2015 election” and to “advocate a Labour vote, at the same time as advancing working class measures as demands for the labour movement to press upon the Labour leaders …” Comrade Morris said that Labour had adopted policies to abolish the bedroom tax and repeal the Social Care Act as a result of pressure, and such pressure could achieve similar results with respect to a Labour government in office. Assessing the “condition of labour movement forces”, she said that the “direness of the Labour Party reflects and feeds back onto the direness of the trade unions, which, in turn, reflects and feeds back onto the direness of the socialist left”. In these circumstances, she argued, “there is no realistic alternative to voting Labour and the election of Labour government”.

The NC statement, moved by comrade McDonnell and adopted by conference with minor amendments (apart from the ‘LRC culture’ section, of course), offered a similar perspective: “Our task is to campaign for the Labour leadership to represent the interests of the working class by offering a real alternative to austerity in the form of socialist policies.” Left MPs, said comrade McDonnell, must resist the attempted rightwing coup against Ed Miliband: “The first meeting of the LRC NC must set about the task of bringing together left MPs and councillors on a socialist platform, so they can become a distinct socialist element influencing the Labour government after the May general election.” The election may produce a small Labour majority – in which case we must ensure “the socialist left is a distinct element in the coalition of forces behind the Labour government”. Labour may be simply the biggest party, in which case we must argue against a coalition with other parties, and for a minority Labour government to “enact policies in the interests of the working class”.

Comrade McDonnell welcomed the Greater London LRC amendment to the NC statement, under which “the LRC will prioritise support for Labour candidates that support LRC policies”. This is an improvement on the AWL’s call for an across-the-board Labour vote, and sensibly allows us to direct our limited forces in support of leftwing and socialist candidates.

Notes

1. See http://labourpartymarxists.org.uk/the-culture-we-need-comes-with-thorns.

2. Ibid.

3. ‘Inclusivity and intolerance’ Weekly Worker October 9; and http://labourpartymarxists.org.uk/lrc-inclusivity-and-intolerance.

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

The culture we need comes with thorns

Gallery 1 Comment

The Labour Representation Committee is in danger of adopting a thoroughly bureaucratic, intolerant and dangerous approach to what are legitimate political differences. James Marshall calls for free speech, openness and democracy

Socialism can only be the act of self-liberation for the great majority by the great majority. Therefore it follows that the working class cannot be approached or treated like little children, who are incapable of handling anything beyond the simplest propositions. If socialism is ever to be realised, the overwhelming majority of the population – ie, the working class – needs the truth in all its complexity. One of Marxism’s fundamental tasks is to tell it like it is.

Great revolutions of the past – England 1642, America 1776 and France 1789 – were carried out in the interests of an exploiting minority. If wider sections were to be mobilised, used as a social battering ram, that necessitated hiding real aims, concocting elaborate subterfuges and unleashing intoxicating enthusiasms.

The workers’ revolution – the communist revolution – is different. It requires the fullest democracy, active control from below and therefore transparency when it comes to political decision-making, both within our own movement and in state affairs. Without that there can only be hollow pretence, disappointment and failure.

Appearance and essence interpenetrate. Never exactly correspond though. So discovering the truth sometimes requires a long, hard, difficult struggle. Things can get bitter. Even with mathematics, biology, geology and physics that is the case. Established reputations, vested interests, those occupying well rewarded official positions, the conservatively minded – all conduct a stubborn rearguard action. They do everything in their power to sideline, block and silence bearers of dangerous insights and concepts. Baruch Spinoza, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, William Harvey, William Paley, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Stephen Jay Gould all faced campaigns of disinformation, ridicule and non-publication, if not outright persecution.

That being the case with the natural sciences, it is perfectly understandable that campaigns of disinformation, ridicule and non-publication, if not outright persecution, are magnified a thousandfold when it comes to Marxism. Why should that be so? The answer is obvious. Marxism is unequalled in revolutionary ambition and yet is soberly realistic. Marxism threatens the monarchy, the judiciary, the secret state, the military and the labour bureaucracy. Marxism is against the market and promises to end forever the power of capital and its gilded hangers-on.

Despite being no more than 5% of the population, the bourgeoisie begins with a great advantage. The dominant ideas of society are the spontaneously generated ideas of the bourgeoisie. Exploitation is uniquely concealed behind what Marxists call commodity fetishism. Wage-slavery, unemployment, money, profit are all considered perfectly natural. Capitalists themselves are often admiringly believed when they boast that they are society’s wealth creators. Marxism therefore has to hack through a thicket of common sense.

But there is more confronting us than that. Much more. Leave aside the police, army, MI5 and special branch. Marxism faces ideological opposition in the form of the many and various paid persuaders. Career politicians and church divines, TV pundits and newspaper columnists, university historians and evolutionary psychologists manufacture and disseminate a floodtide of half truths, diversionary nonsense and cynical lies about Marxism.

Inevitably, this, together with the actuality and seeming naturalism of capitalist society, colours and distorts the views of many who sincerely consider themselves to be good socialists, committed internationalists and devoted partisans of the working class.

Hence the struggle to unite the working class against capitalism is predicated on winning the battle of ideas within the working class movement itself. And not only against overt anti-Marxism – Labourism, left nationalism and narrow trade unionism. What passes itself off as Marxism, but is patently not Marxism, must be combated too. Stalinism, Maoism, Eurocommunism, Shachtmanism, Healyism and Cliffism being glaring examples.

So Marxism can only unite the working class by conducting a protracted – sometimes aggressive, sometimes destructive, sometimes upsetting, but always edifying – struggle to establish what is truthful and what is untruthful.

Gagging

What political culture best suits the struggle for the truth? A political culture, where, within the parameters of our basic principles, questioning is the norm, where serious study, thought and debate are encouraged.

Yet, as we all know, the advanced part of the working class is disorganised into numerous leftwing sects, fake fronts, halfway-house projects and unprincipled campaigns. Mostly there is nothing even remotely resembling democracy or serious debate. Too often minorities are gagged, critics threatened with disciplinary measures and public dissent branded as treason.

Conferences are designed to be little more than rallies. Instead of being forums where members gather as equals, they are dominated by worthy and not so worthy platform speakers. Such a culture stultifies. The end result can only be a downwards spiral of splits, frustration and a demoralising loss of support.

It might appear encouraging therefore to read the Labour Representation Committee’s National Committee statement to the November 8 conference. Section three, the section dealing with “culture”, says it is committed to “preserve freedom of political debate” within LRC “meetings and activities”.1 However these fine words are mocked, insulted, flatly contradicted by the clauses that follow.

Clause A. LRC refuses to tolerate “physical, sexual or verbal abuse, attacks or harassment”. Needless to say, no-one in the LRC advocates physical or sexual assaults. Such acts are, rightly, against the law and carry heavy penalties. What about verbal abuse, attacks or harassment? It all sounds beastly, crass, something to be rejected outright. Yet, I somehow suspect that rightwing members of the Labour Party – eg, Blairite MPs, Progress councillors and Brewer’s Green functionaries – regard the trenchant speeches of LRC members in constituencies, policy forums and the annual conference as abuse, as harassment. Should acceptance of cuts, austerity, anti-union laws, imperialist wars, Nato, immigration controls, Trident, etc, go unattacked? Obviously not … and our comrades do attack. To do anything else is to betray the working class and the cause of socialism.

What about clause B? LRC refuses to tolerate “discrimination or abuse on the grounds of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability or religion/belief.”2 No socialist could possibly object to opposing “discrimination or abuse” on the grounds of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and disability.

But should “religion/belief” be included here? Let us begin therefore by separating belief from religion. Belief can be commonplace and well founded – I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. Belief can be delusional – I believe I am Jesus of the second coming. Belief can also be factually incorrect and politically unacceptable. Eg, EU migrants are responsible for unemployment, the shortage of affordable housing and growing NHS queues.

What about religion? Nowadays, not least in a country like Britain, religion is a choice. It is a world view which comes with a socially established package of texts, doctrines and practices. Of course, no Marxist wants to discriminate against or abuse religious people. But we do want to end subservience to the religious hierarchy and win the widest masses to the struggle for socialism.

The fact of the matter is that religion is a fantastic reflection of earthly realities. Religion is the self-degradation of the human being. Religion is the obfuscation of class society and class exploitation. That is why Marx was so angry when the German social democrats included freedom of religion in their Gotha programme (1875). That formula was perfectly acceptable when it came to the state. But the workers’ party should, on the contrary, seek to “liberate the conscience from the witchery of religion”.3

Terminate

However, the really worrying stuff comes with clauses C, D and E. The NC threatens to “suspend or terminate” the membership of individuals, affiliates or local LRC groups who are guilty of:

(C) Wilfully misrepresenting the views of the LRC, its elected national bodies or officers, whether to other LRC members or the wider public, by any means; including but not limited to word of mouth, in writing, in printed publications, or online via electronic or digital communications or other social media.

(D) Threatening or disruptive behaviour at LRC meetings whether public or private, or at events of campaigns officially supported by the LRC.

(E) Bringing the LRC into disrepute.4

Almost certainly these clauses are intended to deal with the LRC’s two most notable dissidents: NC member Graham Durham and Labour Briefing editorial board member Stan Keable. But they are also possibly designed to exclude troublesome LRC affiliates: namely Labour Party Marxists, Brent LRC, Communist Students, the Communist Party of Great Britain and Socialist Fight. Others who might be targeted are the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and the New Communist Party.

What have comrades Durham and Keable done to provoke the NC into proposing such draconian measures? In the case of comrade Durham it seems it is his insistence on loudly and unapologetically lambasting what he considers to be wrong-headed decisions. Eg, affiliation to the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign. An organisation that basically supports the indivisible unity of Ukraine and therefore opposes Russian-speaking breakaways. Comrade Durham wants the LRC to affiliate instead to Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine.

He also occasionally throws in a heckle or two at LRC meetings and conferences. A time-honoured way for the weak to challenge the power of the strong. In Homer’s Iliad the common soldier, Thersites, dared heckle Agamemnon, the high king of the Greeks (he was, as a result, savagely beaten by Odysseus).5 In more recent times there was, of course, Walter Wolfgang, an LRC member. At the age of 82 he was hauled out of the 2005 Labour Party conference because he heckled Jack Straw over the Iraq war. If the LRC NC gets its way heckling is to be deemed “threatening or disruptive” behaviour and therefore an expulsion offence.

What about comrade Keable? He has publicly reported NC and EB meetings.6 NC meetings, it ought to be stressed, are open to all LRC members. Yet because comrade Keable’s plain speaking is not to the liking of some easily offended souls, he has been accused of “wilful misrepresentation” and therefore bringing the LRC into “disrepute”. “Wilful misrepresentation” is a piece of cod legalese borrowed from contract law. What it amounts to in our context, though, is nothing more than a crude attempt to silence an inconvenient voice. No-one can seriously consider what comrade Keable wrote as an attempt to fool, rob or cheat. In other words, the NC’s “wilful misrepresentation” is comrade Keable’s honest opinion.

It is significant therefore that the facts that he supposedly misrepresented are entirely unspecified. Instead of replying to comrade Keable, instead of ‘putting the record straight’, the NC has turned to the methods of popes, kings and bureaucrats. Fear of the truth results in the claim to privileged information, the need to speak without the inhibition of public reporting, the insistence that the only version should be the official version.

For the record, the Labour Party’s national executive committee considers it entirely unproblematic to have regular public reports of its closed meetings. Though they are somewhat anodyne, Ann Black and Christine Shawcroft both publish monthly blogs on its votes and proceedings.7

Comrade Keable’s real offence seems to be that he quoted John McDonnell, LRC chair, to the effect that the November 8 AGM will be “make or break” for the organisation.8 He also reported that the EB of Labour Briefing, the official journal of the LRC, admits that it faces an “emergency” when it comes to personnel, finances, support, etc. If reporting this brings the LRC into “disrepute”, then it is a classic case of shooting the messenger.

Reporting meetings should be the norm. It was with the Bolsheviks. Lenin published detailed, often highly polemical accounts of congresses, conferences, editorial boards and central committees. Eg, in 1903-04, there was ‘Second congress of the RSDLP’, One step forward, two steps back, ‘Second congress of the League of Russian revolutionary social democracy abroad’, A letter to a comrade on our organisational tasks, etc. A model which ought to be emulated.

Sectarianism

The NC maintains that the “purpose” of the LRC is to “unite a broad section of the British left in pursuit of agreed socialist objectives”.9 But, while claiming to “respect the right of everyone to argue for their beliefs”, the NC seems intent on purging the awkward squad and leaving the LRC as a useless centre-left husk.

Hence in the NC’s ‘non-sectarian’ sectarian phraseology: the LRC is “not an appropriate place for any member or group to engage in sectarian activities”.10 And, therefore, any minority tempted to continue advocating their own, “sectarian”, course of action will find themselves excluded.

We in the LPM are presumably expected to refrain from advocating Marxism and transforming the Labour Party into a permanent united front of the working class. Socialist Fight from advocating its version of Trotsky’s anti-imperialism. The AWL from advocating a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine. The NCP from advocating its juche version of Stalinism. Etc, etc.

Meanwhile, of course, the Graham Bash-Pete Firmin-Mike Phipps triumvirate continues with its bankrupt auto-Labourism, the narrow-minded, left Labourite objections to the European Union, the utterly weird notion that Ed Miliband and the existing shadow cabinet should be “leading” the Scottish independence and Ukip “revolt”.11

Arguably, the triumvirate are attempting to explain away their own palpable failings by shifting the blame. The Labour left is historically at a low point. It has not grown, as most of us expected. Numerically it has shrunk. So has the LRC (down by around a third). But this is not because of comrades Durham and Keable. Not because LPM members report meetings, not because LPM, Communist Students and Socialist Fight repeatedly raise political differences and criticise those with whom they disagree.

The triumvirate say that such “sectarianism” has no place in the LRC. Frankly, that amounts to an attempt to delegitimise Marxism in the LRC. That is the effective content of clauses A-E.

Lenin tellingly remarked that throughout the “civilised world the teachings of Marx evoke the utmost hostility and hatred of all bourgeois science (both official and liberal), which regards Marxism as a kind of ‘pernicious sect’”.12 Yet neither now nor in the future will we be demanding special measures to protect our sensibilities – some ‘right’ not to be attacked or misrepresented. As a principle we stand for free speech.

Does that imply that we Marxists are coldly indifferent about what is being published in the press and broadcast on radio and TV under the name of free speech? Obviously not. Using all our strength, we actively engage in the battle of ideas in order to win the mass of the population to socialism. We oppose everything which divides and therefore weakens the working class: religious hatred, sexism, homophobia, national chauvinism, trade union sectionalism, opportunism, etc. But not by prohibitions. Not by suppressing debate. Our weapon is criticism.

Censorship

Karl Marx himself, it can usefully be pointed out, was a lifelong opponent of censorship. Even as a young man, in 1842, he can be found passionately arguing in favour of unrestricted freedom of the press against the Prussian state and its censors: “Whenever one form of freedom is rejected, freedom in general is rejected,” he defiantly wrote.13

Marx conducted an heroic struggle, first as one of the main contributors and subsequently as editor of the Cologne-based newspaper, Rheinische Zeitung – the Prussian state imposed double and then triple censorship. Finally, in March 1843 the authorities closed it down.

Magnanimously, the Prussian king announced that censorship would “not prevent serious and modest investigation of the truth”. Serious! Modest! Such loaded words bring to mind Jack Straw’s injunction not “to insult or be gratuitously offensive” during the storm over the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. Ditto, Charles Clarke’s Terrorism Act (2006), which, in the name of defending the “values of freedom and liberty”, made it illegal to “glorify terrorism”. Ditto, the NC’s strictures against “Wilfully misrepresenting the views of the LRC, its elected national bodies or officers, whether to other LRC members or the wider public.” All have the whiff of censorship.

In reply to the Prussian authorities Marx elegantly disposed of the cant:

Is it not the first duty of the seeker after truth to aim directly at the truth, without looking to the right or left? Will I not forget the essence of the matter, if I am obliged not to forget to state it in the prescribed form.14

No writer can discover the truth if placed in a bureaucratic straitjacket. Nor did Marx want anyone telling him what words to use:

You marvel at the delightful variety, the inexhaustible riches of nature. You do not ask the rose to smell like the violet, but must the richest of all, the spirit, exist in only one variety? I am audacious, but the law commands that my style be modest. Grey, all grey, is the sole, the rightful colour of freedom … the official colour!15

Marx claimed the right to treat the ludicrous seriously and the serious ludicrously. The truth can never be what a government commands. The state bureaucracy is not interested in the truth, only in safeguarding and extending the power and glory of the state bureaucracy: something which goes hand in hand with endemic suspicion, requirements to be responsible and a pathological fear of public exposure. Thought must therefore be manacled, placed behind high walls and guarded by prison warders.

During those times – the 1840s – Marx took delight in showing how the servile deputies of the Prussian diet (parliament) sought to put a stop to the regular reporting of their proceedings. They obviously regarded their debates as a private matter and of no business of the mass of the population (rather like the Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Party in England and Wales and the LRC’s NC).

When journalists daringly lifted the veil, they were accused of irresponsible behaviour and treated as spies who had revealed vital secrets. Members of the diet could no longer uninhibitedly express themselves. They felt constrained when they knew that some untrustworthy stranger would be publishing their unguarded words. Indeed that was the case.

And over the years, as parliamentary reporting became an established norm, as the democratic space in society has inch by inch been extended, professional politicians have perfected the art of lying, deception and double-talk.

Hence, Marx’s glowing description of the Paris Commune serves as a damning criticism of both 19th century parliaments and those on the left today who exhibit the exact same morbid fear of openness: “the Commune did not pretend to infallibility, the invariable attribute of all governments of the old stamp. It published its doings and sayings, it initiated the public into all its shortcomings.”16

Obviously, free speech comes with some unpleasant consequences. All decent people feel disgust for the bile and filth that pours out from the pages of the Daily Mail and The Sun. The same goes for the well-researched apologetics of David Irving. Notoriously, he used his considerable talents as a historian to belittle or deny the Nazi holocaust.

But the last thing we should do is call for censorship and bans. On the contrary, there must be freedom, even for sick, daft and crazy ideas. The long-term interests of the workers’ movement demands it. Marx tellingly writes:

Keep in mind that you could not enjoy the advantages of a free press without tolerating its inconveniences. You could not pluck the rose without its thorns! And what do you lose in losing a free press? A free press is the omnipresent open eye of the popular spirit … It is the merciless confessional that a people makes to itself, and it is well known that confession has the power to redeem. It is the intellectual mirror in which a people beholds itself, and self-examination is the first condition of wisdom?17

What of religion? In 1842 Marx was fearlessly campaigning against the Prussian state’s legal protection of the Christian faith from “frivolous” and “hostile” attack. Such little phrases were nothing but gagging devices. Replying to the censors, Marx went to the heart of the matter: “Religion can only be attacked in a hostile or a frivolous way: there is no third way”.18

Of course, he never thought that freedom of expression was a perfect thing in itself, some kind of be-all and end-all. Free speech is not the same as general freedom. But it is surely one of its preconditions. Free speech allows us to cast a sharp light on what lies under the surface of events and what is kept hidden away by inveterate bureaucrats and place-holders. Thereby we educate ourselves.

In that spirit we urge LRC members and affiliates to vote for our amendment to section three of the NC statement (see below) and to cast your vote for Stan Keable for the NC and EB (see election addresses below).

Notes

1 . http://l-r-c.org.uk/files/NC_statement_2014.pdf.
2 . http://l-r-c.org.uk/files/NC_statement_2014.pdf.
3 . K Marx and F Engels CW 24 Vol London 1989, p98.
4 . http://l-r-c.org.uk/files/NC_statement_2014.pdf.
5 . Bk 2, vs 211-277, see http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Iliad2.htm#_Toc239244709.
6 . Weekly Worker September 9 and October 9 2014.
7 . See http://www.labourblogs.com/public-blog/annblack and http://www.christineshawcroft.co.uk/nec.
8 . Weekly Worker September 9 2014.
9 . http://l-r-c.org.uk/files/NC_statement_2014.pdf.
10. http://l-r-c.org.uk/files/NC_statement_2014.pdf.
11. Labour Briefing November 2014.
12. VI Lenin CW Vol 19 Moscow 1977, p23.
13. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 1, London 1975, p181.
14. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 1, London 1975, p111.
15. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 1, London 1975, p112.
16. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 22, Moscow 1986, p340.
17. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 1, London 1975, pp164-65.
18. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 1, London 1975, pp117.

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Amendment to national committee statement

Section 3. LRC Culture:

Delete all after para 2 and insert:

To safeguard and deepen this political culture, we must guard against bureaucratic tendencies. Examples include:
A. Equating heckling, strong opinions and political criticisms with verbal abuse, attacks or harassment.
B. Regarding reporting NC and EB meetings as treachery. Reporting is essential to democracy, encourages political debate and collective education.
C. Anathematising minority political viewpoints. Like women, youth, disabled, etc, political minorities make a valued contribution, including in our NC and EB.
D. Censorship: minority viewpoints must find fair expression in Labour Briefing.
E. Sectarian ‘anti-sectarianism’. Exclusion of members, LRC groups, factions or affiliates for supposedly sectarian views.

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Vote for Stan Keable
National Committee (Section B, individual members)
Stan Keable July 2014Having attended NC meetings regularly during the past year as an observer, and previously as reserve delegate representing Greater London LRC, I will continue attending, whether as an NC member or observer – and continue reporting NC meetings publicly. I believe such reporting essential to involve the whole membership in the life and democracy of the organisation, and its ability to attract new forces.
My Marxist politics may be a minority view, but I believe minorities should be fairly represented in the leadership of socialist organisations.
I am Unison branch delegate to Hammersmith CLP, and Secretary of Labour Party Marxists.

Labour Briefing 
Editorial Board
As a coopted member of Labour Briefing editorial board, I have attended almost all EB meetings, worked hard on the production and distribution of the journal, and reported NC and EB meetings publicly at labourpartymarxists.org.uk and in the Weekly Worker, and will continue to do so.
I believe the pages of our own journal should report the affairs of our leading committees – essential to educating and organising members and attracting new forces.

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