Let’s give people hope

Now more than ever we need a real alternative, says Jim Jepps.

As the NHS is taken apart, as the Coalition comes for disability benefits, as climate change rolls on unabated, as Cameron announces we’re to have decades of war in north Africa – the future can seem bleak. It looks bleaker still if we think that Labour is all that unwillingly stands between us and the end of the welfare state.

It’s no wonder Labour have been unable to put up an opposition to the crisis in the NHS when they are complicit in the outsourcing, privatisation and PFI. Labour can’t voice opposition to Cameron’s military adventures when less than ten years ago they provoked this country’s largest ever demonstration by taking us into a bloody, illegal conflict.

If Labour won’t be the opposition then we will have to build it.

An unfilled space to the left

There is a gapping hole to the left of Labour, there has been for years. It has been the collective failure of the left that we have not filled it.

The early days of the Stop the War Coalition, or the united left parties in other European countries show that significant left-wing movements are possible in the 21st century and that they are worth building.

Socialists from different traditions can and do work with each other productively every week of the year – side by side in their unions, or in local campaigns. We need a left that consistently finds ways of working with others. Finding allies issue by issue, building working relationships, developing a political trust that rises above policy disagreements without fetishising organisational unity over working well together to achieve practical aims.

Left groups and the wider left

This is not about cobbling together existing left groups, total membership 5,000 tops but trying to find ways to engage with the hundreds of thousands who want to see a movement for change. They are just as much on the left as any member of a small grouping, even if they don’t always have the jargon that goes with it.

The early experience of the Socialist Alliance was that having many different groupescules in the organisation was extremely helpful. It helped create the idea of a collective effort because differences were both fraternal and public – but that is not an end in itself.

Left unity

Given the rather bitter history involved it comes as some surprise to me that there appears to be a new mood for unity on the left. More than that, there seems to be a real willingness to reassess old approaches and to put aside ancient enmities that have done little to advance our cause.

If this mood is anything more than a passing fancy then we should grab hold of it with both hands – but not be discouraged when we don’t always make headway. If we don’t persuade someone of our view today that does not make them a lifelong enemy, but a work in progress.

The basis of unity

We can all make lists of necessary conditions in order to unite with others – mine would be fighting climate change, war and austerity – but it’s a habit we need to break.  The one and only consideration should be – is there a willingness to work constructively with others on the left?

There’s not much use “uniting” with someone who formally agrees with everything you have to say but has no interest in actually working with you. Nor is there any reason to turn away those who are local organisers but who don’t particularly care about one of your core issues – let’s harness that talent.

Stable relationships

In any viable organisation people will think different things and expressing those differences is not a declaration of war. While we need politically effective organisations it’s not worth much if it falls to pieces after a year or two. We cannot consider building unity without considering how we keep it and what it’s for.

If we’re to learn from our brothers and sisters in Die Linke or Syriza then we need to accept that attracting the support of working people means having an ideologically looser model than the doctrinaire organisations that we’re used to.

I’d suggest we forget the models of the post-war hard left for a moment, and consider the kind of organisation that most of the millions of people in the UK who identify as left-wing would recognise as a natural way to organise.

• A focus on the work. Political debate is essential in determining direction and avoiding mistakes but it is not an end in itself. A successful organisation will be able to point to concrete successes that made a difference to working class people.
• The membership will be built from the bottom up. There is no substitute for activists at the heart of a campaign to save the local swimming pool and who know their neighbours. Activists are more than foot soldiers for national projects; their politics must be part of communities and work places.
• A member led democratic structure, where members decide policy and elect their leadership on an individual basis. This is what most people expect of a democratic structure and imposing “slate systems”, “vetoes” or a centralised command structure is a sure way to alienate the uninitiated.
• A right to disagree. Every stable political organisation of any size does not simply permit disagreement, they assume it will take place day in and day out. Forget “the right to permanent factions” it is simple democracy, and if people want to set up a left equivalent of the 1922 Committee or Progress then they can, obviously.

To cut a long story short – we have been paying the political price for a weak and disunited left for some years. There is a new willingness to come together on the left – let’s not squander it through inaction or kill it at birth with odd ideological conditions that no one outside the hard left would understand. People are frightened – let’s give them hope.