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Europe, Nationalism and internationalism

Europe and the politics of fraud

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John Fuller Carr examines the divisions that plague establishment politicians and takes to task the Labour Representation Committee for its cowardly, nationalist retreat

Europe continues to enrage, divide and confuse politicians of both the right and left. The present situation is easy to summarise. Under severe pressure from the United Kingdom Independence Party, David Cameron has committed the Tories to an in-out referendum, but not until after the 2015 general election. If returned to No10, he solemnly pledges to negotiate a root-and-branch reform of Britain’s relationship with Brussels. A forlorn hope. François Hollande crushingly informed him at their January 2014 summit, that renegotiating EU treaties “is not a priority for France”.1

Smelling blood, Nigel Farage says he will turn the May 2014 European election into a referendum against Bulgarian and Romanian migrants and continued EU membership. Worryingly, an Open Europe poll puts Ukip on 27% – significantly ahead of Labour (23%) and the Tories (21%).2 Meanwhile, Ed Miliband made a show of expressing contrition over the last Labour government getting it “wrong” over EU immigration. Prompting some Labour MPs – eg, Rochdale’s Simon Danczuk – to join the “send people back” campaign. Tom Harris (Glasgow South) even declared himself a member of the “Romaphobe club.”3

Clear direction

Establishment politicians find themselves confronted with a fundamental fault line. European integration has advanced qualitatively since the Treaty of Rome was signed by Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands in 1957. What was a mere customs union – born of the cold war – has become a German-dominated giant, embracing 500 million people and 28 countries, with free trade and the free movement of labour. It is the world’s biggest home market, with a combined GDP of about $17.2 trillion – as compared to $16.7 trillion for the US and $5.9 trillion for Japan.

Politically, however, the EU resembles something like the creaking Austro-Hungarian empire, which straddled 19th century Mitteleuropa. The EU is an amalgam of unevenly developed state units. But the direction is clear. Wider, in the form of candidates like Iceland, Serbia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Deeper, in the form of politico-legal institutions. The EU has a council of ministers, the European Commission, an elected parliament, a European Court of Justice … and then, of course, there is the euro: a currency which unites 18 countries.

Behind the integration lies a blood-drenched past. Twice in the 20th century Europe has been the cockpit of global conflict. Both times Europe was left devastated, exhausted and much reduced. World War I saw the collapse of the Russian, German and Austro- Hungarian autocracies. The main focus of world economic activity shifted from Europe to the Atlantic and America. Twenty-five years later, under the terms of the Yalta agreement, half the continent was incorporated into the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence and, through bureaucratic revolution, ‘sovietised’.

As to western Europe, it was shorn of the glories – and booty – of empire. Humiliatingly it had to rely on the US nuclear umbrella to counter the much exaggerated threat from the east. However, avoiding another internecine conflict and creating a bulwark against bureaucratic socialism drove the states of western Europe, in particular Federal Germany and France, towards an historic compromise.

There is, needless to say, another factor at work. Europe both cooperates and competes with the US and Japan. They might have smaller home markets, yet, due to an historically constituted nationality and an economically centralised territory, they are blessed with a single working class and a single political and business elite. Labour power, like every other commodity, can easily move and therefore be bought and sold anywhere within the US or Japan. Europe is divided not only by history, but culture. Commodities can freely circulate – but not the special commodity, labour-power. Language constitutes a material barrier, except for those with higher education (worst- paid labour being a not insubstantial exception). A multinational, and therefore fragmented, political and business elite constitutes a similar handicap. To be successful the EU must, as a minimum, therefore, forge a federal superstate, from where its transnationals can survive against the rising legion of foreign rivals.

The ongoing process of European integration has caused deep divisions in Britain. There were, in the late 1940s and early 50s, hubristic dreams of rebuilding the British empire. Suez 1956 put a stop to that. The US had unmistakably become top dog and would permit no imperial rivals. Barred from the Common Market in 1963 by de Gaulle’s veto, the British ruling class hung onto the conceit of being a major world power and actually managed to keep Europe divided through the European Free Trade Area. But that did not amount to a viable strategy. Britain eventually entered the European Economic Community in 1973 under Edward Heath’s Tory government (along with its Danish and Irish Efta allies). The unwritten agreement with Washington was that Britain would play the role of a US Trojan horse.

Apart from our far right around Roy Jenkins, the Labour Party was critical of the terms and conditions. Nonetheless in 1975 Harold Wilson’s government successfully fought a referendum on the issue of continued membership. The main opposition came from a Tony Benn-Enoch Powell popular front. Nevertheless, we remained officially uneasy about Europe till the leadership of John Smith and then the government of Tony Blair. A parallel shift occurred in the TUC with the appointment of John Monks.

New Labour and its coterie of middle class career politicians loyally and openly served the interests of the most competitive, most internationalised, sections of British capital. Despite his tack to the left, Ed Miliband and ‘One nation’ Labour does exactly the same.

Of the two main parties, it is the Tories who are organically split today. Though Cameron now calls for a “fundamental renegotiation” of Britain’s relationship with EU, everyone knows that, come his referendum, he will call for continued membership. That cannot be said of his revolting backbenchers. As with Ukip, his Poujardists articulate the xenophobic fears and prejudices of ‘middle England’ and uphold the interests of the least competitive sections of capital.

If the British establishment is divided, the groups, factions and sects of the left – Labour and non-Labour alike – have proved utterly incapable of providing anything like a serious alternative. In fact, the reformist and national socialist left adheres either to the most gullible or the most chauvinist positions on the EU.

Instinctively the national socialists recognise that European integration makes a mockery of their utopian British road to socialism. Take the No2EU election bloc – uniting the Socialist Party in England and Wales and the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain. It is virtually indistinguishable from the Tory right, Ukip and the British National Party. No2EU wants to save the pound sterling, restore British sovereignty and re-establish immigration controls to bar European incomers.

Naturally, when it comes to the likes of Peter Taaffe, Robert Griffiths, Bob Crow and Brian Denny, this is all done in the name of socialism … but it is the socialism of fools. The best that these advocates of “workers’ rights” could achieve is a British version of Stalinism – ie, state slavery – and that imposed onto a capitalistically advanced country fully integrated into the world economy. What costs the lives of millions in the 1930s could only but be repeated as a still greater tragedy.

Civilisation would not be advanced, but barbarically thrown back. And, unfortunately, where the CPB and SPEW have led, Socialist Resistance, Respect, the Alliance for Green Socialism, Scottish Socialist Party, Solidarity, etc, have followed – to the point of a horribly self- defeating common sense.

Of course, for Marxists, proletarian socialism – as the first stage or phase of communism – is international or it is nothing. There can be no socialism in one country, because capital, as a social relationship, exists not within the nation-state, but internationally, at the level of the global economy. Bureaucratic or national socialism just brings back all the old crap, albeit in different, highly contradictory forms. That is why as long ago as 1845 Marx and Engels emphatically rejected all localist schemes and insisted, on the contrary, that: “Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples ‘all at once’ and simultaneously.”4

LRC

Sadly, the leadership of the Labour Representation Committee seems to be readying itself to adopt an approach barely distinguishable from Taaffe and Griffiths. Having agreed a generally sound resolution on the EU in 2011, at its November 2013 AGM the LRC narrowly voted down a virtually identical motion in the name of “beginning” a debate on the EU. The manipulative hand of Graham Bash, Peter Firmin and co was clearly visible.

What were the politics of 2011? In contrast to the red-brown left, the LRC stood for “a Europe-wide working class response” to capitalism’s crisis. Instead of opposing “European capitalist integration”, the right answer is to “link up with other European workers in solidarity and struggle”. Moreover, those demanding withdrawal from the EU, or opposing British entry into the European single currency, were condemned for holding to “a British nationalist position”, a blunder “not altered” by tacking on a slogan like “Socialist United States of Europe”. Etc, etc.5

Now, in the name of “kicking the debate off”, we have Michael Calderbank of Brent CLP. Writing in Labour Briefing, he rightly takes to task those who have illusions in the progressive nature of the EU when it comes to labour legislation, social rights, etc … All are being “eroded and undermined”, he feigningly laments. Of course, what comrade Calderbank wants the LRC to do is to vote ‘no’ in Cameron’s referendum and bank everything on a British withdrawal.

As an aside, it is worth noting the objection Marxists have traditionally had to referendums. So-called direct democracy is a chimera in any complex society. Nuances have to be considered, likely consequences predicted and alternatives closely studied. That is why Marxists advocate indirect democracy: ie, the election of recallable representatives who are tasked with debating and deciding political positions and stratagems. Marx certainly denounced – and in no uncertain terms – Louis Bonaparte’s deployment of successive referendums to consolidate his dictatorship and excuse France’s imperial adventures.6

The wording of the referendum question is, of course, everything. Eg, to vote ‘no’ was to declare oneself opposed to democratic reforms; to vote ‘yes’ was to vote for despotism and war. Referendums bypass representative democracy, political parties and careful deliberation. Something not lost on Adolph Hitler. He managed to get a 90% mandate for his dictatorship on August 19 1934 – despite an almost unprecedented campaign of intimidation, there were millions of spoilt ballot papers.

Coloration

Inevitably, comrade Calderbank gives his endorsement of the ‘no’ campaign a socialistic coloration. Instead of “populist scapegoating” of migrants, he makes a seemingly bold call for “taking back power” and “taking control of our services and economies, on a local and national scale.”7 Does his formula amount to a post-referendum establishment of a workers’ state and the abolition of capitalism? Unlikely. Or is it an empty plea for the restoration of Keynesian economics and the politics of welfarism? Either way, the comrade says that “our membership of the EU” impedes his agenda, so “calling for a withdrawal from an international left perspective would be perfectly consistent”.8

When it comes to the LRC’s old position, the comrade dishonestly rejects any programme of fighting for a workers’ Europe as akin to banking on “adequately reforming” the “existing institutions” of the EU. An obvious non sequitur. Nevertheless, on the basis of this crude falsification, comrade Calderbank feels he can tell us what we all know. The EU is not very democratic … and he thinks it “extremely hard” to see how this can be changed.
The lack of imagination is as sad as it is palpable. Why those of us who want to take as our strategic point of departure not Britain, but the EU are supposed to believe in the reformability of the whole array of existing EU institutions remains to be established.

Apply his methodological approach to the British state. Over the last 30 years or so it has surely “eroded and undermined” the post-World War II consensus. Indeed, it is fair to say, successive British governments – Tory, Labour and Con-Dem – have been at the forefront of the neoliberal offensive both at home and in the EU. Should we therefore conclude with a call for the “dissolution” of Britain, as Welsh and Scottish nationalists do, or even a working class “withdrawal” from it?

Pitiably, comrade Calderbank unintentionally shows a naive faith in the institutions of the UK state: the monarchy, the House of Commons, the House of Lords, the judiciary, the presidential prime minister, MI5, the Church of England, the standing army, etc. Can they all be “adequately” reformed so as to pave the way for a workers’ Britain? Clearly, the implication in comrade Calderbank’s polemic is, yes, they can.

Russia

Interestingly, prior to the October Revolution of 1917, Lenin and the Bolsheviks confronted similar manifestations of national socialism. The tsarist empire was a vast prison house of nations. Nevertheless, while fighting for the right of self-determination up to and including secession, the overriding, central strategy was the cementing of the highest and most extensive workers’ unity throughout the tsarist empire – in order to overthrow the tsarist empire.

Unwittingly comrade Calderbank places himself in the camp of Joseph Pilsudski and his Polish Socialist Party. Formed in 1892, it adopted a national socialist programme for the reconstitution of an independent Poland – which had been all but partitioned out of existence at the 1815 Congress of Vienna between the the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. Rosa Luxemburg and Julian Marchlewski split with the PSP in 1893 over this perspective. Objective conditions, they rightly said, demanded the unity of workers – Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Georgians, Letts, etc – against the tsarist empire.

In defence of the past – in particular in defence of the welfare state and the post-World War II social democratic consensus – comrade Calderbank presents a programme that would at best weaken the EU. It would, however, also weaken the European working class movement if its strongest detachments forced upon their capitalists a policy of withdrawal – a road that would lead not to a national socialist paradise, but the hell of increased national exploitation and eventually counterrevolution.

Marxists do not look back fondly to the post-war social democratic settlement. No, our programme emphasises the positive advantages of the workers being organised into the largest, most centralised states. All the better to overthrow them and begin the advance to a communist society and the inspiring principle, ‘From each according to their ability; to each according to their needs’.

The working class can only but suffer one cruel defeat after another if it confines itself to the politics of defence. We in Labour Party Marxists therefore raise the perspective of the politics of the offensive. Hence we say, to the extent that the EU becomes a superstate, so must the advanced part of the working class organise itself into a single, pan- European party in order to overthrow it.
The EU is undoubtedly a reactionary anti-working class institution. Amongst consenting Marxists that hardly needs proving with statistics concerning spending limits and welfare cuts. The real question is what attitude we adopt towards it. LPM stands for extreme democracy under capitalism. Concretely that means fighting for the levelling up of wages, substantive equality for women, the abolition of the council of ministers, a parliament with full powers and an armed working class.

Without such an approach, talk of socialism in Britain or a socialist Europe is nothing but a fraud.

Notes

1. The Daily Telegraph January 31 2014.
2. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2331759/UKIP- set-European-poll-success-powers-ahead-Tories- Labour.html.
3 The Daily Telegraph November 27 2013.
4. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 5, Moscow 1976, p49. 5. LRC Resolutions booklet November 2011, p11.
6. See Marx’s The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) and The civil war in France (1871). Also there is Kautsky’s Parliamentarism, direct legislation and social democracy (1893).
7. Labour Briefing February 2014.
8. Labour Briefing February 2014.

Democracy and the Labour Party, Trade unions

Rearm working class with collective representation

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We need to do more than defend the union link as it exists, argues Paul Demarty

As can be seen from the Collins review, the trade union role in the Labour Party is not about to disappear. Of course, down the line there may be another change, and another, until finally union influence over Labour is quietly extinguished.

There are some on the left who eagerly anticipate this eventuality, stupidly imagining that the logical result will be for the unions to bring financial muscle and prestige to whatever no-hope pet project a given group happens to have (leaving aside those ultra-leftists who consider such matters irrelevant in any case). Of the rest – those who understand that the dissolution of the union link would be a historic defeat for the British working class, taking it from a faint shadow of political representation to no representation whatsoever – not a few, naturally, are to be found in the ranks of the Labour Party.

Last November’s AGM of the Labour Representation Committee voted to support the utterly ineffective Defend the Link campaign. Naturally the vote was uncontroversial. Labour Party Marxists, however, moved a second motion urging the LRC to go further and commit itself to transforming the link, overturning the legal right of individual union members to opt out of paying the political levy, and fighting more generally against state interference in the internal affairs of the workers’ movement. This motion, unfortunately, proved very controversial. For the record, Graham Bash, LRC treasurer, abstained and Pete Firmin, its political secretary, voted against. However, the LPM motion was comfortably defeated.

Right to scab

Behind this superficially tactical difference are two matters of principle. The first ought to be the most straightforward for any advocate of working class political action – the principle of binding collective action.

It was, in fact, put quite nicely at the LRC AGM by comrade Gary Heather, Islington North CLP, who criticised the individualism of “liberal philosophy” – this was based on an elitist notion that the masses should not get involved in politics. Attacks on the Labour-union link, comrade Heather correctly noted, are in fact attacks on the principle of mass political action, which for capitalist ideology amounts to mob rule.

More sharply still was it put by Trotsky, sarcastically commenting on Tory encroachments on the political levy shortly before the 1926 general strike. Union funding for Labour, even then, was what we would today call a ‘political football’; a decision by the law lords in 1909 (the infamous Osborne judgment) ruled that the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) – an ancestor to today’s Rail, Maritime and Transport union – was ultra vires in providing financial support on the part of its members t o the Labour Party. This ruling was overturned in 1913 by the Asquith government, but the right of workers to opt out was enshrined in law.

“The crux of the matter is, of course, that the workers’ organisations, by asserting their anti-Liberal, ‘despotic’, Bolshevik right of enforced collection of the political levy, are in effect fighting for the real and concrete, and not a metaphysical possibility of parliamentary representation for the workers; while the Conservatives and the Liberals, in upholding the principles of ‘personal freedom’, are in fact striving to disarm the workers materially, and thereby shackle them to the bourgeois parties,” Trotsky further writes.

“It is sufficient merely to take a look at the division of roles: the trade unions are for the unconditional right to the enforced collection of the political levy; the House of Exhumed Lords is for the unconditional banning of such extortion in the name of sacred personal freedom; finally the House of Commons forces a concession from the trade unions, which amounts in practice to a 10% refund [the number of workers who opted out – PD] to the principles of Liberalism.”1

From this perspective, it is quite clear: the ‘opt-out’ rule is just as much a violation of the principle of collective political action as Miliband’s ‘opt-in’ wheeze. Moreover, it is plainly the case that such encroachments strike at the very heart of working class politics. The bourgeoisie has the means of production, the repressive apparatus of the state, legions of paid persuaders and all manner of other means at its disposal with which to fight its corner. The working class, in the final analysis, has sheer weight of numbers on its side.

If those numbers are coordinated into conscious collective action, then no amount of yellow-press hacks, cops and slick politicians will save their bosses. Which is why the ‘other side’ are so very keen to make that more difficult. The right to opt out of the union political fund is the right to scab. So it has been since the days of the Osborne judgment.

It is depressing to see comrades on the Labour left shrinking from this perspective, given how utterly dependent their political projects are on the maintenance of the party’s link with organised labour. At the LRC AGM, where the argument was not the philistine one – that arguing for a better, more democratic union link was somehow incompatible with effective resistance to attempts to weaken or break that link – it was laughably timid.

One comrade suggested that getting rid of opting out would lead to a split in the union movement, because people would leave in disgust at handing money over to Labour (or whoever it happened to be). This was the argument of the scab Osborne himself! It completely internalises the degraded model of contemporary trade unionism as a sort of legal services provider to embattled individuals – or at best, ‘traditional’ apolitical unionism (which renders a political fund entirely redundant anyway).

If enforcing compliance with the political fund will cause a split in the union, the union is already split – just as much as a union needs to tackle old-fashioned blacklegs, it needs to enforce united political action. You do not accept the liberal (or even Tory!) prejudices of some union members as immutable. You destroy those prejudices. You win them over. That is the tradition of the working class movement – not liberal timidity.

Their law

The other serious aspect to this question is more insidious: the question of legal and state interference in the affairs of the workers’ movement as a whole.
It is a matter posed very well by the historic case of the Osborne judgment, although such interference is as old as workers’ organisations themselves. The argument of the law lords was that the ASRS was “a lawful society at common law”, and as such subject to legal restrictions on the demands it was entitled to put on its members. The jargon of the legal profession conceals what is from the point of view of any democrat a flagrant absurdity. The ASRS never asked to be a ‘lawful society’; its freedom of association is rendered moot by a decision of the courts which serves only to place arbitrary restrictions on its activity.

A more recent case exemplifies this problem even more sharply. Viva Palestina, George Galloway’s aid-to-Gaza initiative, never sought registration with the Charity Commission – but nevertheless, the latter unilaterally declared it to be a charity, and on that basis immediately sequestered its funds for breaking regulations pertaining to support for political causes!

Freedom of association is not a freebie that comes with bourgeois society. The “liberal philosophy” referred to by Gary Heather abhors the collective action of the masses for good reason, and seeks to undermine it at every turn. Allowing the bourgeois state to set the limits of working class organisation is a sure way to defeat; the judicialisation of industrial relations has closely tracked the deepening weakness of organised labour, and this is not a coincidence.

Astonishingly, even this aspect of the LPM motion was opposed by some. We were told that opposing state interference in union affairs was anti-working class – because, after all, we want unions to be subject to the minimum wage and health and safety legislation! Comrades, if you go down that road, we can all kiss goodbye to the pittance that is the minimum wage and patchy workplace protections altogether – because only effective working class action, in trade unions and ‘high’ politics, can get even such crumbs as those, and imagining somehow that bourgeois law is neutral in affairs of the class struggle is the surest way yet invented to disarm the class.

Notes

1. www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/britain/wibg/ ch07.htm.

Trade unions

Reject the Collins review

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Transforming the Labour Party remains a strategic necessity. Stan Keable, secretary of Labour Party Marxists, makes the case for genuine democracy

Talk about the demise of the Labour Party’s trade union link is greatly exaggerated. Those on the left who stand aloof from the party because its leadership is rightwing, or campaign for trade unions to disaffiliate, are running away from the fight for socialist politics within Labour and merely leaving the right in control. The deficiencies in the party are as old as the party itself

Lord Sainsbury’s Blairite protégés promoted by the Progress organisation will be disappointed that their political careers will continue to be tainted by association with the collective decision-making so essential to working class democracy. Stephen Bush, a “contributing editor to Progress”, describes the link as “a relationship that should never have started in the first place” and writes of “the party founders’ historic error in building a relationship with trade unions and not trade unionists”.1

Peter Taaffe’s Socialist Party in England and Wales – the ex-Militant Tendency majority who ran away from the fight to win the Labour Party to socialism – is unable to sustain its self-serving line that Labour has already been transformed into a purely bourgeois party, just because they are out of it. Labour’s death as any kind of workers’ party is now postponed for a further five years: “… if implemented, the Collins review will mean the destruction of the last remnants of the trade unions’ organised presence within the Labour Party … this will conclude the already advanced transformation of Labour into one more party of big business.”2 So the struggle in the party is not over? A pity you have given up the ghost, comrades.

After implementation of the Collins proposals, the unions will retain their 12 NEC seats and their 50% share of conference votes. Labour will remain a “bourgeois workers’ party” (Lenin’s famous description) – a product of the workers’ movement, but dominated by parliamentary leaders with pro-capitalist politics. Its bourgeois pole is dominant and its working class pole is subordinate, but that is nothing new. The trade union bureaucrats can sometimes prevent changes that do not suit them, but it is the Parliamentary Labour Party which rules, and the ‘leader’ who rules the PLP – and that is nothing new either. The PLP can safely ignore conference decisions – but that anti- democratic Labour ‘principle’ was formally endorsed as long ago as the 1907 party conference.

The proposed ‘democratisation’ of the party will leave the MPs, not the party, choosing candidates for leader and deputy leader, before the rest of us get to vote for a candidate not of our choice – again that is nothing new. The extensive patronage powers of the party leader to give away jobs is not mentioned by Collins, so the Führerprinzip will continue its corrupting influence: MPs’ loyalty goes to the leader, not the party – once more nothing new.

In short, there was no golden age of ‘real Labour’. Labourism was hobbled by capitalist politics from the beginning – Liberal Party politics, to be precise – along with a trade union movement dominated by a self-serving, privileged bureaucracy.3 However, this unfortunate situation is not inevitable.

The fight to democratise and rebuild our unions and our party, and transform them into effective instruments of working class struggle, is inseparable from the fight to win the active support of the working class majority for the socialist political programme. Without this, capitalism cannot be superseded positively. Those who claim that the party cannot possibly be transformed might just as well argue that those other mass organisations produced by our class, the trade unions, cannot be transformed, or that the working class cannot be won for socialism.

The party has been saddled with rightwing, pro-capitalist leaders, whether trade union bureaucrats or professional, careerist politicians, since the foundation of the original Labour Representation Committee in 1900. But there is no good reason why this must be so. It is certainly not because the right wing has such a good political programme for our class. Every Labour government to date has demoralised and weakened the workers’ movement and paved the way for the return of a Tory administration.

It is not that the Labour right deserves to win, but the Labour left deserves to lose – so long as it prioritises short-term vote-winning and the return of a Labour government above the long-term struggle to win active majority support for working class socialism. Yes, we need to elect socialist MPs, to act as tribunes of the people, as the voice of those in struggle. But we need an Ed Miliband government attempting to establish a “responsible capitalism” like a hole in the head.

If and when the left becomes strong in the party, the capitalist media can be relied upon to pull out all the stops to make Labour ’unelectable’, and the careerists of the Labour right can be expected to jump ship, as they did in the 1980s. Good riddance! Better still, we should drive out the pro-capitalist politicians as class enemies within our movement, starting with those who collaborate with the present Tory-led coalition government.

Socialist strategy towards Labour should not be entryism, seeking to split the left away at an opportune moment. That would leave the party in the hands of the right. No, our aim must be to win the party for working class liberation, for socialist politics, for Marxism, and kick out the pro- capitalist right. Rebuilding and re-educating our movement and our class from its present politically weak condition must be done in opposition to a capitalist government of any stripe, not in servile loyalty to ‘our’ capitalist government.

Rubber stamp

Lord Ray Collins’s final report, endorsed by Labour’s national executive committee on February 4, will be rubber-stamped by the March 1 two-hour special ‘conference’ with the backing of delegates representing the three largest affiliated unions: Unite, GMB and Unison.4 No amendments will be allowed. Only one vote will be taken: ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Months of behind-the-scenes negotiations between top trade union bureaucrats, on one side, and Ed Miliband and his apparatchiks and would-be capitalist ministers, on the other, reportedly described by an unnamed shadow cabinet member as a “rollercoaster”, have predictably produced a rotten compromise which reflects the present balance of forces.5 The outcome leaves the trade union link intact, but weakened, and is correctly characterised by Socialist Appeal – the ex-Militant Tendency minority who opted to stay in the party – as a mere “rejigging of internal party procedures”.6

Nevertheless, the Collins proposals, Ed Miliband claims, are “the biggest changes to who can become involved in the Labour Party since probably its formation”.7 So what are these changes?

Firstly, the three-part electoral college for leader and deputy leader elections – one third each for CLPs, affiliates and PLP – is abolished, so that only individuals can vote, and all votes count equally, whether cast by an MP, a party member, an affiliated supporter or a registered supporter (see below). No longer will some individuals have multiple votes – one as a party member, another as a trade union levy-payer, a third as a member of an affiliated socialist society, for example. But this desperate attempt to appease the rightwing press and appear democratic comes with an old formula. The PLP gets to choose the candidates. So the ‘one member, one vote’ election in the party is preceded by MPs voting to select a short list of candidates.

In the few days before the February 4 NEC meeting, the threshold percentage of MPs required to get nominated was knocked down by the trade union side from Collins’s original 25% to 20% – which Miliband announced in his January 31 Guardian interview – and then to the 15% endorsed by the NEC. So some hard bargaining took place. But it produced a rotten compromise, which leaves the PLP in effective charge of the party – a far cry from the democracy we need.

Secondly, when the five-year transition period is complete, affiliation fees will only be accepted by the party from individual levy- payers who have opted in. At present, all affiliated levy-payers get a vote in party leader and deputy leader elections. From the end of 2014, onlythose levy-payers will be eligible to vote who have chosen to become “affiliated supporters” (at no extra cost), confirmed their allegiance to (unspecified) “Labour values” and linked up with a local party organisation in a constituency where they are on the electoral register. Those who “opt in” but do not become affiliated supporters will be disenfranchised.

Alongside the full party member and the affiliated supporter, there will be a new, or rather an amended, category of “registered supporter”. They too must affirm their “Labour values”, appear on the electoral register and be linked to their local CLP. They have no other rights than voting in a leader and deputy leader election, and in a “closed primary”, should one be organised. Leader elections may be few and far between, and the only closed primary planned so far is to select Labour’s candidate for London mayor in 2015. If I read Collins correctly, registered supporters must sign up afresh and pay a £3 admin fee each time they wish to get a vote in a party election. Whether his ‘bait’ of occasional voting rights will draw new blood towards the party, as Miliband hopes, remains very doubtful. The previous category of “supporters”, who paid no fee, but were promised voting rights if their number rose to 50,000, only reached 20,000 and has now been junked.

Miliband had told The Guardian that he “would look at the structure of conference in the future”, but the offending words about reviewing the number of trade union NEC seats and the percentage of conference vote had been removed from the final document.7
Unite is linking its regional political committees and political activists with the largest workplace branches to encourage its members to tick the necessary boxes to become affiliated supporters and move on from that to full party membership. The current Labour membership is about 186,000, equal to no more than 13% of Unite’s.

All this means that if trade unionists get busy, affiliated supporters and new recruits could transform the largely hollowed out Constituency Labour Parties and help swing the party radically to the left.

Notes

1. ‘Harry Potter and the question of party reform’, February 4: www.progressonline.org. uk/2014/02/04/harry-potter-and-the-question-of- party-reform.
2. www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/797/18123.
3. Keir Hardie’s 1892 election manifesto, when he was elected to the Commons for the first time as MP for South West Ham, declared: “I have all my life given an independent support to the Liberal Party … I am in agreement with the present programme of the Liberal Party.”
4. http://s.bsd.net/labouruk/default/page/file/ a84a677f479406989c_pom6b5w60.pdf.
5. The Guardian February 4.
6. Socialist Appeal February 5.
7. Interview in The Guardian January 31.

Trade unions

Labour: Everything to play for

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The fight for the soul of the Labour Party has only just begun. Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists reports on the Collins review

Trade union influence: still there but weakened

Expectations of the demise of the Labour Party’s trade union link are greatly exaggerated. Those on the left who stand aloof from the party because its leadership is rightwing, or campaign for trade unions to disaffiliate, are running away from the fight for socialist politics in the party and merely leaving the right in control. The deficiencies in the party are as old as the party itself.

Lord Sainsbury’s Blairite protégés promoted by the Progress organisation will be disappointed that their political careers will continue to be tainted by association with the collective decision-making so essential to working class democracy. Stephen Bush, a “contributing editor to Progress”, describes the link as “a relationship that should never have started in the first place” and writes of “the party founders’ historic error in building a relationship with trade unions and not trade unionists”.

Peter Taaffe’s Socialist Party in England and Wales – the ex-Militant Tendency majority who ran away from the fight to win the Labour Party to socialism – is unable to sustain its self-serving line that Labour has already been transformed into a purely bourgeois party, just because they are out of it. Labour’s death as any kind of workers’ party is now postponed for a further five years: “… if implemented, the Collins review will mean the destruction of the last remnants of the trade unions’ organised presence within the Labour Party … this will conclude the already advanced transformation of Labour into one more party of big business.”2 So the struggle in the party is not over? A pity you have given up the ghost, comrades.

After implementation of the Collins proposals, the unions will retain their 12 NEC seats and their 50% share of conference votes. Labour will remain a “bourgeois workers’ party” (Lenin’s famous description) – a product of the workers’ movement, but dominated by parliamentary leaders with pro-capitalist politics. Its bourgeois pole is dominant and its working class pole is subordinate, but that is nothing new. The trade union bureaucrats can sometimes prevent changes that do not suit them, but it is the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) which rules, and the ‘leader’ who rules the PLP – and that is nothing new either. The PLP can safely ignore conference decisions – but that anti-democratic Labour ‘principle’ was formally endorsed as long ago as the 1907 party conference.

The proposed ‘democratisation’ of the party will leave the MPs, not the party, choosing the candidates for leader and deputy leader, before the rest of us get to vote for a candidate not of our choice – again that is nothing new. The extensive patronage powers of the party leader to give away jobs is not mentioned by Collins, so the Führerprinzip will continue its corrupting influence: MPs’ loyalty goes to the leader, not the party – once more nothing new.

In short, there was no golden age of ‘real Labour’. Labourism was hobbled by capitalist politics from the beginning – Liberal Party politics, to be precise3 – along with a trade union movement dominated by a self-serving, privileged bureaucracy. However, this unfortunate situation is not inevitable.

The fight to democratise and rebuild our unions and our party, and transform them into effective instruments of working class struggle, is inseparable from the fight to win the active support of the working class majority for the socialist political programme. Without this, capitalism cannot be superseded positively. Those who claim that the party cannot possibly be transformed might just as well argue that those other mass organisations produced by our class, the trade unions, cannot be transformed, or that the working class cannot be won for socialism.

The party has been saddled with rightwing, pro-capitalist leaders, whether trade union bureaucrats or professional careerist politicians, since the foundation of the original Labour Representation Committee in 1900. But there is no good reason why this must be so. It is certainly not because the right wing has such a good political programme for our class. Every Labour government to date has demoralised and weakened the workers’ movement and paved the way for the return of a Tory government.

It is not that the Labour right deserves to win, but the Labour left deserves to lose – so long as it prioritises short-term vote-winning and the return of a Labour government above the long-term struggle to win active majority support for working class socialism. Yes, we need to elect socialist MPs, to act as tribunes of the people, as the voice of those in struggle. But we need an Ed Miliband government attempting to establish a “responsible capitalism” like a hole in the head.

If and when the left becomes strong in the party, the capitalist media can be relied upon to pull out all the stops to make Labour ’unelectable’, and the careerists of the Labour right can be expected to jump ship, as they did in the 1980s. Good riddance! Better still, we should drive out the pro-capitalist politicians as class enemies within our movement, starting with those who collaborate with the present Tory-led coalition government.

Socialist strategy towards Labour should not be entryism, seeking to split the left away at an opportune moment. That would leave the party in the hands of the right. No, our aim must be to win the party for working class liberation, for socialist politics, for Marxism, and kick out the pro-capitalist right. Rebuilding and re-educating our movement and our class from its present politically weak condition must be done in opposition to a capitalist government of any stripe, not in servile loyalty to ‘our’ capitalist government.

Collins

Lord Ray Collins’s final report,4 endorsed by Labour’s national executive committee on February 4, will be rubber-stamped by the party’s March 1 two-hour special ‘conference’ with the backing of delegates representing the three largest affiliated unions: Unite, GMB and Unison. No amendments will be allowed. Only one vote will be taken: ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The annual conferences, with their potential for rank-and-file rebellion, have been successfully by-passed.

Months of behind-the-scenes negotiations between trade union bureaucrats, on one side, and Ed Miliband and his apparatchiks and would-be capitalist ministers, on the other, reportedly described by an unnamed shadow cabinet member as a “rollercoaster”,5 have predictably produced a rotten compromise which reflects the present balance of forces in the party. The outcome leaves the trade union link intact, but weakened, and is correctly characterised by Socialist Appeal – the ex-Militant Tendency minority who opted to stay in the party – as a mere “rejigging of internal party procedures”.6

Nevertheless, the Collins proposals, Ed Miliband claims, are “the biggest changes to who can become involved in the Labour Party since probably its formation.7 So what are these changes?

Firstly, the three-part electoral college for leader and deputy leader elections – one third each for CLPs, affiliates and PLP – is abolished, so that only individuals can vote, and all votes count equally, whether cast by an MP, a party member, an affiliated supporter or a registered supporter (see below). No longer will some individuals have multiple votes – one as a party member, another as a trade union levy-payer, a third as a member of an affiliated socialist society, for example. But this much vaunted ‘democratisation’ is marred by the fact that the PLP gets to choose the candidates. So the Omov election in the party is preceded by MPs voting to select a short list of candidates.

In the few days before the February 4 NEC meeting, the threshold percentage of MPs required to get nominated was knocked down by the trade union side from Collins’s original 25% to 20% – which Miliband announced in his January 31 Guardian interview – and then to the 15% endorsed by the NEC. So some hard bargaining took place. But it produced a rotten compromise, which leaves the PLP in charge of the party – a far cry from the democracy we need.

Secondly, when the five-year transition period is complete, affiliation fees will only be accepted by the party from individual levy-payers who have opted into affiliation. At present, all affiliated levy-payers get a vote in party leader and deputy leader elections. From the end of 2014, only those levy-payers will be eligible to vote who have chosen to become “affiliated supporters” (at no extra cost), confirmed their allegiance to (unspecified) “Labour values” and linked up with a local party organisation in a constituency where they are on the electoral register. Those who “opt in” to the affiliated levy but do not bother to become affiliated supporters will be disenfranchised.

Alongside the full party member and the affiliated supporter, there will be a new, or rather an amended, category of “registered supporter”. They too must affirm their “Labour values”, appear on the electoral register and be linked to their local CLP. They have no other rights than voting in a leader and deputy leader election, and in a “closed primary”, should one be organised. Leader elections may be few and far between, and the only closed primary planned so far is to select Labour’s candidate for London mayor in 2015. If I read Collins correctly, registered supporters must sign up afresh and pay a £3 admin fee each time they wish to get a vote in a party election. Whether his ‘bait’ of occasional voting rights will draw new blood towards the party, as Miliband hopes, remains very doubtful. The previous category of “supporters”, who paid no fee, but were promised voting rights if their number rose to 50,000, only reached 20,000 and has now been junked.

Only two NEC members, Christine Shawcroft and Dennis Skinner, voted against the Collins report on February 4, and one of the six Unite delegates, Martin Meyer, abstained. Afterwards, on February 13, the Unite executive council met and endorsed the proposals. Miliband had told The Guardian that he “would look at the structure of conference in the future”, but the offending words about reviewing the number of trade union NEC seats and the percentage of conference vote had been removed from the final document.

Unite is linking its regional political committees and political activists with the largest workplace branches to encourage its members to tick the necessary boxes to become affiliated supporters and move on from that to full party membership. The current Labour Party membership is about 186,000, equal to about 13% of Unite members alone.

All this means that if trade unionists get busy, affiliated supporters and new recruits could substantially outnumber existing party members, demolishing the argument that the union share of conference votes and NEC seats should be reduced. So take courage, comrades: the fight is not over. We have everything to play for.

Notes

1. ‘Harry Potter and the question of party reform’, February 4: www.progressonline.org.uk/2014/02/04/harry-potter-and-the-question-of-party-reform. 2. www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/797/18123. 3. Keir Hardie’s 1892 election manifesto, when he was elected to the Commons for the first time as MP for South West Ham, declared: “I have all my life given an independent support to the Liberal Party … I am in agreement with the present programme of the Liberal Party.” 4.http://s.bsd.net/labouruk/default/page/file/a84a677f479406989c_pom6b5w60.pdf. 5. The Guardian February 4. 6. Socialist Appeal February 5. 7. Interview in The Guardian January 31.

Democracy and the Labour Party

Labour: Democracy versus patronage

Gallery

The stench of leader loyalty hangs over the Collins proposals to ‘mend’ Labour’s trade union link, writes Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists

Lord Collins’s proposals, to be put before delegates to Labour’s March 1 special conference, will not end the party’s trade union link, as the Blairite Progress faction would like, but they are the thin end of the wedge, and should be rejected outright. They have nothing to do with transforming Labour into a genuine party of the working class, for socialism rather than the illusion of ‘responsible capitalism’.

Where we need to break the domination of the union and party bureaucracy over the workers’ movement, Collins’s proposals are a rotten compromise made behind our backs – leaving the bureaucracies in control. Effective defence of the link requires a thoroughgoing democratisation and politicisation of both party and unions, and a fight to win all trade unions and all socialist organisations to affiliate to the party, making Labour a permanent united front of the whole class.

Although, under the proposals, trade unions at present affiliated will retain their 12 guaranteed seats on the national executive committee and their 50% vote at conference, as insisted upon by Unite in its December submission to Collins, the five-year transition to ‘opting in’ will do its work of culling the affiliated membership (and affiliation fees), setting the scene for a further undermining of the collective political input of trade unionists.

The proposal is that, from the end of 2014, new union members who wish to have part of their union dues paid to the party will have to opt in, rather than being automatically affiliated with the right to opt out. Existing Labour Link members will have to opt in within five years if they wish to continue paying the political levy to Labour. Then, those affiliated members who wish to participate in Labour Party matters can choose to be “associate members” of the party, and get to vote in party leader and deputy leader elections, among other things. Levy payers who do not choose to become associate party members will lose their present right to vote. Significantly, the party will have direct contact with the associate members, not via their trade union as at present.

According to Jon Lansman, proposals “seen as the basis for … agreement between Ed Miliband and the trade unions” were circulated for discussion by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. The CLPD proposals involved “Meeting Ed Miliband’s aspiration” to impose individual opting in to affiliated membership, and “Meeting trade union aspirations for a continuing collective voice in the affairs of the party they founded, and sustainable levels of voting and representation.”1However a February 3 blog comment by CLPD secretary Peter Willsman clearly condemns the opting in system:

“In 1927, as a vindictive response to the General Strike, the Tories brought in opting in, in order to weaken the Labour Party and undermine the influence within the LP of the organised working class. In 1946 the Labour government repealed this anti-working class legislation. The Tories have always wanted to bring it back and, no doubt, so have many in the misnomer organisation which calls itself ‘Progress’. Sadly, what is being proposed is closer to the Tories in 1927 than Labour in 1946. CLPD will be sending a critique to CLPs, with suggestions (to be sent to Ed) that would make the proposals less of a gift for ‘Progress’. But, if the sham ‘consultation’ is anything to go by, Ed has a tin ear.”2

In my view, the right to opt out of the union’s political fund is a legally imposed right to scab, which should be overthrown, along with all anti-trade union laws.

The whole process of the Collins review has been an insult to democracy, to rank-and-file party members and trade unionists, and to the NEC. After 13 years of tolerating the packing of constituency selection meetings by Progress, a shadowy rightwing organisation heavily funded by Lord Sainsbury, Ed Miliband used the Tory media frenzy over Unite’s mobilisation of trade unionists in Falkirk to announce his project to refashion the party – without first consulting the NEC, which had to play catch-up. Then, instead of submitting concrete proposals to annual conference, the “spring conference” was announced to pre-date and circumvent the annual autumn trade union conferences, removing their opportunity to debate the proposals and submit their own alternatives.

Collins, in his “interim report”, then invited submissions along the lines of ‘How do you think we can fulfil Ed’s vision?’, up to the Christmas Eve deadline, after which he could cherry-pick the suggestions he (or Miliband) prefers. Party organisations and affiliates met for collective discussion, but with no concrete proposals before them which they could amend. When the Collins report was finally circulated to the NEC immediately before its February 4 meeting, it did not even contain a summary of the content of the submissions. What did the party tell Collins? We do not know.

So why don’t NEC members speak out against this travesty of democracy? Jon Lansman explains:

“If you follow LabourList, you will have seen in recent days arguments from front-benchers on right and left who are privately unhappy about key aspects of the Collins proposals as to why you should nevertheless back them. Be not persuaded by the arguments ritually presented by those who depend on the patronage of the leader! This is not free expression! This is merely a requirement of their position.”3

So there is another item for the CLPD to tack on to its list of demands aimed at democratising the party: Abolish the post of leader, and let us apply some republican democracy to the party: eg, all officials electable and recallable; all officials on a skilled worker’s wage.

Notes

1. ‘Labour’s reshuffle – and what it means for party reform’ Left FuturesOctober 8: www.leftfu­tures.org/2013/10/labours-reshuffle-and-what-it-means-for-party-reform.

2. ‘Seven reasons to be wary of the Collins pro­posals’ Left FuturesFebruary 3: www.leftfutures.org/2014/02/seven-reasons-to-be-wary-of-the-collins-proposals. 

3. Ibid.

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

Class unity requires left unity

Gallery

Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists looks at Andrew Murray’s rejection of the new LU party

Ed Miliband
Ed Miliband: next Labour government will not advance class struggle
Among the left strategies considered by the CPGB’s Mike Macnair shortly before Left Unity’s founding conference was “Fordism”, named after Michael Ford’s polemic on Left Unity’s website arguing for socialists to work patiently in the Labour Party rather than form a new party outside Labour.

Comrade Macnair wrote:

“Michael Ford” – a pseudonym for a “senior figure in the labour and trade union movement” – has written a critique of the Left Unity project in a two-part article, ‘Left Unity’s modest flutter’, available on LU’s website. The author is pretty clearly (from the content of the article) an ‘official communist’, and widely rumoured to be a Morning Star/Communist Party of Britain supporter who holds an appointed position in a trade union headquarters.

The article in effect lays out the working orientation of the Morning Star/CPB, which is held much more widely among Labour and trade union left officials than the formal size of the CPB would make it appear. The project is essentially of moving Labour slightly to the left, through alliance with ‘official lefts’ in the unions and the parliamentary Labour Party. At the same time, the Ford article also displays, in passing comments, that lurking within this is a ‘party concept’ of the sect type shared by the SWP.1

‘Michael Ford’ was indeed a pseudonym understandably adopted temporarily by the CPB’s Andrew Murray to avoid bringing down even more opprobrium on the Unite union, his employer. Comrade Murray came out publicly as the author on November 27 in a House of Commons committee room.

The meeting, chaired by John McDonnell MP, was organised by Red Pepper magazine under the title ‘Ralph Miliband and the politics of class’ – for the dual purpose of launching the 50th edition of the annualSocialist Register, subtitled ‘Registering class’2 and commemorating the political life of the socialist and Marxist father of the present leader of her majesty’s loyal opposition. Needless to say, neither ‘red Ed’ nor his brother, David, showed any interest in the meeting. Their father, Ralph Miliband (1924-94), was a founding editor of Socialist Register, along with John Saville (1916-2009).

In a footnote to his Socialist Register contribution, ‘Left unity or class unity? – working class politics in Britain’, comrade Murray explained how the article began life as Michael Ford’s ‘Left Unity’s modest flutter’:

This essay has evolved out of a polemic written against the ‘Left Unity’ project in Britain in spring 2013. The original text was published at http://21centurymanifesto.wordpress.com and it was republished, to its credit, by Left Unity itself at www.leftunity.org. The original was published pseudonymously in order to avoid the union, Unite, which I serve as chief of staff, being dragged into any public controversy on the issue at the time. At the time of writing (July 2013) the plan appeared to be to convert Left Unity into a new Left Party as of November 2013.3

While Ford’s polemic has “evolved” into Murray’s essay, his basic positions stand. Left Unity, he says, “fails to seriously address the issue of the Labour Party and working class support for it; ignores the failure of previous new left parties and indeed the real state of the contemporary left … and draws a causal connection between economic crisis and socialist politics which is at best questionable.” All sound criticisms, in my view, of the wishful thinkers of the Left Party Platform majority and leadership of Left Unity, who imagine they can win mass working class allegiance by challenging New Labour with old Labour politics, and tackle capitalism without winning the working class majority to Marxism.

Failures

Murray’s strategy of “reconstituting the working class”, in contrast, runs through building and channelling resistance to “the Tory-Liberal coalition’s policies of social misery” into yet another ‘next Labour government’ – ‘ignoring the failure of previous Labour governments’, to paraphrase Murray’s criticism of LU. As I pointed out at the November 27 meeting, the workers’ movement needs a Miliband Labour government managing capitalism like it needs a hole in the head.

Such a government would demoralise and demobilise our movement and, as before, lead back to an even more rightwing Tory government. Yes, we need socialists in parliament, but as tribunes of the people’s struggles, not as administrators of capitalism’s austerity. There is no concrete reason why the Labour Party cannot be won to socialist politics and the anti-working class, pro-capitalism right wing driven out. No doubt they will split anyway if the left gains ground – as they did before to form the Social Democratic Party in 1981, which went on to merge with the Liberals. The struggle to reconstitute the working class must be carried on in opposition to capitalist governments of any stripe, not in support of the wars and austerity programmes of our rulers, until our class is strong enough to take over.

Interestingly, Murray himself is extremely doubtful about the possible benefits of a Labour administration: “No-one … can confidently assert that it is likely that a 2015 Labour government will master the economic crisis in the interests of ordinary people …” But he very tentatively expresses false hopes that it might inadvertently aid the reconstitution of the working class: “… such a government could certainly generate – even in spite of itself – an arena of struggle over its direction which could bring benefits in itself in terms of strengthening the movement, and could create circumstances for the working class to recover a measure of confidence.” I am sorry to remind readers that there is no evidence for such a pipe dream.

Murray is also doubtful as to whether the fight to win the party for working class interests can be won. “It is certainly possible that the working class movement will learn through experience, over the next few years (and probably not much longer either way), that the struggle to ‘reclaim Labour’ is not going to work.” Perhaps the working class will fail to develop sufficient “‘social weight’ to sustain its own political project”, in which case socialists must “redouble their efforts” and, after “a definite period of unchallenged bourgeois political domination”, a “new mass socialist party, resting on a serious and durable foundation” may eventually be built. Or perhaps, on the other hand, “the effort will be thwarted by establishment manoeuvres, with what has been termed the ‘Blairite undead’, supported by a frightened elite, obstructing democratic and constitutional efforts to transform Labour which might have otherwise succeeded. … Under those circumstances, the creation of a new class party might be higher up the agenda.”

Worryingly, Murray’s hedging of bets corresponds to similar mixed messages from trade union bureaucrats Len McCluskey (Unite) and Paul Kenny (GMB), who have threatened to disaffiliate or limit trade union funding of the party if Labour’s front bench does not modify its policies from neoliberal austerity to Keynesian capitalism. Whatever Murray’s subjective wishes, such disaffiliation is more likely to depoliticise the working class than form the basis of a new socialist party. And support made conditional on minor modifications to party policy is the opposite of the extreme democracy the working class needs in order to rebuild its own movement and master society.

Murray quite correctly underlines that, although trade unions “cannot be the agency for establishing socialism”, nevertheless they are “the essential arena for reconstituting the working class, which is the only such agency”. But he puts forward no proposals for democratising the unions, for asserting rank-and-file control of the leadership, just as he says nothing about democratising the Labour Party. In the unions, he argues for the “overdue development of purposeful leadership” and “above all the re-emergence of … self-reliant, politically oriented activists at all levels”. Quite right. But these attributes are a by-product of the fight for the independent politics of the working class – instead of tailing pro-capitalist political careerists – and for democratisation of our organisations: freedom of discussion; election and recallability of officials; and a worker’s wage for our full-time representatives, so they are in it to serve, not to dominate.

The newly formed Left Unity party (LU’s founding conference was on November 30, after publication of Murray’s essay in Socialist Register 2014), Murray argues, “risks being an impediment to socialists actually making the most of present opportunities for working class reconstruction and advance” – meaning, of course, “the People’s Assembly movement, uniting unions and community campaigns against poverty and welfare cuts … alongside trade unions willing to fight back in the workplace”. Although he charges LU with the sin of prioritising “a chimerical ‘left unity’ over class unity”, it is actually Murray, not LU, who is posing one against the other. Unity of the left is, self-evidently, one of the essential conditions for the reconstitution of the class. Not bureaucratic unity, in which minorities are silenced, but democratic unity – freedom of discussion, unity in action – in which minority views are heard, differences understood and lessons learned.

New ‘vanguard’

For Marxists, it is axiomatic that theory and practice go together. In Murray’s case, unfortunately, theory is accommodating to practice, at least with respect to the party question. As a member of the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain and a self-described Stalinist, one might expect him to proclaim the unique leading role of the ‘official communist’ party to which he belongs. Instead he offers us a new concept: a “vanguard of a new type”, consisting of the three forces “united in the leadership of the Stop the War Coalition”, and now the People’s Assembly – namely his own CPB, Counterfire and Socialist Action, plus “the Labour left being additionally central”.

These are “all from different 20th-century traditions”. Their unity is “one not presupposing total ideological homogeneity – or even the ‘party’ in the sense which Marx and Engels used the term in 1848”:

These socialists do not agree, or even attempt to agree, about everything, have discrete organisational affiliations and do not subject themselves to a discipline more severe than respect for commonly arrived at decisions and comradely loyalty. The objective is unity for purposeful intervention on the key issues of the time – anti-imperialism, opposing the social calamity of austerity economics – and for building rooted movements for change, re-establishing the basis for mass socialist politics, while tolerating diversity of opinion about … the long-term prospects of the Labour Party.

So, to lead the working class struggle, instead of ‘left unity’ meaning democratic unity in a mass workers’ party organised around Marxist political programme to supersede world capitalism, Murray has lowered his sights to a much more limited horizon – a small group of sects coming to a bureaucratic consensus in order to lead “movements for change” on “key issues of the time”. And whoever dissents from the agreed consensus of these ‘leaders’ is obviously being divisive. Eg, Ken Loach’s “notably sectarian intervention” at the People’s Assembly. To turn the PA into an anti- Labour movement, Murray writes, “is a route to undermining its potential as an instrument of the necessary class reconstruction which can be the only underpinning of any advance”. So much for “tolerating diversity of opinion”!

The central aim of transforming the Labour Party into “an instrument for working class advance and international socialism” can only be achieved if the trade unions on which the party is based are also transformed, and this will require “the closest unity of the left inside and outside the party”.4 If the new Left Unity party is serious about overcoming capitalism, it will have to join the struggle to transform Labour. Similarly, if the Labour Representation Committee is serious about its constitutional aim of encouraging “all socialists outside the Labour Party … to join or rejoin the Labour Party”, it will have to take seriously, and encourage, all genuine steps towards left unity outside Labour as well as inside.

Notes

1. ‘Left Unity’s contradictory aspirations’ Weekly Worker supplement, November 28 2013. The original two-part Michael Ford article is athttp:// leftunity.org/left-unitys-modest-flutter; and http://leftunity.org/left-unitys-modest-flutter-2.

2. L Panitch, G Albo and V Chibber (eds) Socialist Register 2014Monthly Review Press.

3. Socialist Register 2014 p286. Murray helpfully gives a number of references to relevant articles in previous editions of Socialist Register: Ken Coates’s ‘Socialists and the Labour Party’ (1973); Ralph Miliband’s ‘Moving on’ (1976); Duncan Hallas’s ‘How can we move on?’ (1977); Leo Panitch’s ‘Socialists and the Labour Party: a reap­praisal’ (1979).

4. www.labourpartymarxists.org.uk/aims.

The left

LRC: Surviving, but still shrinking

Gallery

Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists reports on the annual conference of the Labour Representation Committee

There were slightly more than 100 comrades attending the November 23 annual conference of the Labour Representation Committee in London’s Conway Hall. That is down by a third compared with last year. Bad news for what is an umbrella organisation of the pro-Labour Party left, but surely reflective of the general state of the left in Britain.

Ed Miliband is “inching to the left”, with his promises to freeze energy prices and repeal the bedroom tax, and his successful blocking of so-called liberal military intervention in Syria. And though this has undoubtedly increased Labour’s poll ratings and made the election of a Labour government in May 2015 seem credible, it has not resulted in any increased organisational strength of the Labour left, which continues to shrink.

There have been particular problems with the LRC. Both joint national secretaries elected in November 2013, Andrew Fisher and Pete Firmin, resigned their positions a few months later. National organiser, Lizzie Woods, resigned from the organisation after a row at the April national committee. A meeting which has never been authoritatively reported. Her replacement, Ben Sellers, lasted only a couple of months before he followed suit, resigning from the LRC to join Red Labour.

Perhaps that is why the AGM was not presented with an annual report from the national committee or financial and membership reports either. Earlier in the year, individual paid-up membership was reported as about a thousand, but it should be remembered that the LRC also has significant organisational affiliates, including six national trade unions (Aslef, BFAWU, CWU, FBU, NUM and RMT), numerous trade union branches and regions, constituency and branch Labour Parties, Welsh Labour Grassroots, Campaign for Socialism (Scotland), and a variety of communist and socialist organisations.

The merger between LRC and Labour Briefing in 2012, making Briefing the journal of the LRC, has so far produced remarkably little change in the publication. The editorial board, of which I have been a coopted member for the past year, has so far declined to carry a report of each national committee meeting, on the spurious grounds that such a report would be “boring”. Consequently it is difficult for LRC members and Briefing readers to take ownership of the project, being ill-informed about the state of the organisation and of the discussions and decisions taking place on the national committee.

Apart from a couple of articles encouraging local branch-building by Ben Sellers as national organiser before he resigned, and the consistent campaigning of Sussex LRC, there has been little information about the hoped-for mushrooming of local LRC branches. The LRC remains primarily an annual conference and a national committee.

The officer problem which caused such a crisis in 2013 has been ostensibly resolved by dividing the tasks of the previous secretary post between four elected officers: political secretary, membership secretary, web manager and administrator. This has enabled Pete Firmin, who resigned mid-term as national secretary because the workload was too much for one person, to accept the post of political secretary.

As I have argued at NC meetings (they are normally open for all LRC members to attend), while sharing out the work is sensible and necessary, the organisation remains vulnerable to crisis when one or more of its annually elected officers chooses to resign mid-term, whether through personal circumstances or political change of heart. A better, more flexible solution would be to have officers elected by the national committee, making them accountable to it and easily replaceable at any time. Instead of having posts prescribed by the constitution and rules, tasks should be allocated flexibly as circumstances change. So far this rational, democratic solution has been rejected.

Moving the national committee statement entitled ‘Alternatives to austerity. Defend the welfare state. Defend the union link’, LRC chair John McDonnell MP argued that “we must build campaigns to make issues safe for the Labour Party to campaign on. They will only do that when they see there are votes involved,” he said. In an oblique reference to the failure of the Socialist Alliance, the hopeless ‘old Labour’ projects of Respect, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition and No2EU, and the confusion of Left Unity, which holds its founding conference this Saturday, he regretted that “no left alternative” has emerged. “People are still voting Labour,” he said. “We must nourish struggles within the party by building struggles outside.”

Two activists from the Boycott Welfare campaign, Clive and Robert, gave a moving contribution from the platform as guest speakers. Unemployed people and benefit claimants are clearly being badly maltreated by the system. Half a million have been already denied benefits under the workfare system, they reported.

The other platform speakers were the columnist Owen Jones and Mark Serwotka of the Public and Commercial Services union. Comrade Jones gave us his usual fare: rousing condemnation of the iniquities of the Tory-Lib Dem government and the promise that the left is winning the argument when it comes to public opinion. As for comrade Serwotka, he would not waste time repeating “how bad it is”. We need to talk about “what we’re going to do about it”. He noted that all the mainstream parties agree on the politics of austerity. “A Labour government in 2015 on its current outlook will be useless,” he said. Nevertheless “it does matter who wins”. Alongside coordinated industrial action, we need coordinated political action. “We need to discuss how to build a movement that can pressure the Labour Party and shift British politics massively to the left. Either Labour will be forced left or we will sweep them aside.”

This raises the necessity of PCS affiliation to Labour. Why should we have to “pressure” Labour, as if from outside, in order to shift the politics of our own party? Why not simply exercise our democratic rights within it? Instead of “sweeping Labour aside”, why not sweep the pro-capitalism, anti-working class, pro-austerity right wing out of our party?

Guest speaker Philippe Marlière of the Front de Gauche (Left Front) described how Nicolas Sarkozy, the “French Thatcher”, was “stopped by the voters” after 12 months, only to have the Socialist Party’s François Hollande break all his promises and continue austerity. He alerted us to the transatlantic trade agreement about to be signed between the EU and the US which, in the name of growth, will actually mean a massive loss of workers’ rights and ecological safeguards.

Jeremy Corbyn MP tilted at the illusions of those who have a rosy picture of Labour’s 1945 government. Its record was contradictory, he said. Alongside its undoubted social achievements, its foreign policy included not only the independence of India, but also the partition. It participated in the formation of Nato, and in 1949 Clement Attlee secretly authorised the spending of £200 million on nuclear weapons without consulting parliament.

Motions

Perhaps the most important issue confronting the LRC is the threat by Miliband to weaken the link between the Labour Party and affiliated trade unions. And conference heard Andrew Berry from Unison, Maria Exall of the CWU and Ian Hudson of the bakers’ union (BFAWU) robustly defending collective decision-making. Yet motion 5 from Labour Party Marxists, which sought “the end of individual ‘opting out’ of trade union political funds”, was voted down by a two-thirds majority. Sadly that majority included the LRC’s political secretary Pete Firmin, though Graham Bash, the de facto editor of Briefing, abstained. Those opposing us offered a variety of spurious reasons why collective decision-making and solidarity should not apply in the workers’ movement when it comes to politics. Eg, individual rights need to be respected, that or we endanger the precious unity of Britain’s trade union movement. A combination of nonsense and being in thrall to the status quo.

Moving the motion, I pointed out that a deal was being hatched behind the scenes between the bureaucracies of the party and of the trade union movement. A deal that would be rubber-stamped at the March 1 special conference. This view was underlined when Walter Wolfgang informed us that the special conference is programmed to last only two hours.

The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s motion 13, ‘Internationalist campaign in the European elections’, was, surprisingly, the only motion to which amendments were moved. This was the first conference at which amendments were permitted and incorporated into the pre-conference timetable, following a rule change proposed by Communist Students at the 2012 AGM.

Two amendments were moved, including the one from Labour Party Marxists. Moved by Patrick Smith of Hull LRC, this sought to carry out what had been decided in 2011, but not implemented: ie, “to initiate a short statement setting out our position and circulate it around Britain and Europe for signatures”. It also called for the LRC to channel its resources, during the coming EU election campaign, into organising “as much support as practicable for Labour candidates supporting our statement”. This should be done in preference to illogically advocating a blanket Labour vote when most Labour candidates will surely be following a version of British nationalist politics, arguing how “Britain’s interests” can best be served within the EU.

The internationalist policy adopted by the LRC conference in 2011 was sound. Motion 15, ‘Against British nationalism – for a workers’ united Europe’, stated: “That demanding withdrawal from the EU, or opposing British entry into the European single currency, is a British nationalist position which misidentifies the enemy as ‘Europe’ rather than the ruling class. This is not altered by tacking on a slogan like ‘Socialist United States of Europe’.”

In 2013, however, the Brent and Harrow LRC amendment was carried, deleting clause two of the motion: “That advocating withdrawal from the EU or anything like that undermines this fight [against British nationalism]. Britain withdrawing from Europe would not benefit workers in Britain and would almost certainly boost nationalism.” The successful amendment leaves the rest of the motion intact, but adds the promise of “an extensive debate” in the event of an in-out referendum. Jam tomorrow.

Working class internationalism favours maximum working class unity, the maximum merging of peoples, except only where temporary separation is necessary in order to restore trust. British withdrawal from the EU, or the withdrawal of any EU state, carries the reactionary logic of separate development and ‘national interests’ in place of common class interests.

The LRC is facing backwards on Europe, despite its pious declarations “to oppose British nationalism”, for a “Socialist United Europe”, a “European constituent assembly” and a “European workers’ government” – all proclaimed in the same motion, alongside this latest refusal to recognise that advocating withdrawal means nationalism.