The Party’s Over: An Open Letter to Owen Jones & The Labour Left
Harry Paterson responds to Owen Jones’ defence of the Labour Party with a critique of what it has become – originally posted on his blog. Please note that the author’s views do not necessarily reflect those of Left Unity or the people involved in the project.
No one, at least no one with even a semi-functioning intelligence, is under any illusions that the Labour party offers any substantive alternative to the Coalition’s unconditional class war; we know all too well exactly what kind of unprincipled, unscrupulous spivs dominate the party. Underneath them, though, are the hand-wringers, hypocrites and bleaters. You know the sort; they’ll tell you they’re as left as you are, that they’re socialist as well, comrade. Oh, the
y’re disgusted with Blue Labour. Of course they are. And they oppose the machine hacks with their hands on the party’s levers. Of course they do; sincere, committed and principled worthies, one and all. They can’t actually do too much, though, to rock the boat because, horror of horrors, why, that might let the Tories back in!
To even a quarter-wit, it’s plain that, for the first time in history, it genuinely, really, literally doesn’t matter whether the Tories get in or not. When both Blue Labour and the Tories are committed to the same polices, and more importantly, utterly wedded to neoliberalism as the only game in town, it doesn’t matter what name each party has, it’s a purely cosmetic matter. Where it counts, in terms of what these people do, well, that’s where it does matter. After all, if the Tories suddenly committed to overthrowing capitalism and ushering in a new dawn based upon a genuinely democratically planned economy, I’d vote for them. So would you if you’re any kind of a socialist. After all, what’s in a name, eh?
Equally, when a Labour Party wages imperialist war at America’s behest, introduces PFI, welfare ‘reforms’ that would have Thatch weeping with jealousy, deregulates the City, attacks strikers and, the latest shameful stunt, sits on their hands while the Tories introduce retrospective legislation to hammer the poor still further, well the reverse applies; I wouldn’t vote for such a party nor be a member of it. Why would you, if you have any sort of vaguely left pretensions?
Well Owen Jones has an argument as to why you should. You can read it here. If you can’t be bothered I’ll summarise for you. Owen, who I genuinely like, by the way, expounds his thesis with his usual passion and erudition but, ultimately, it boils down to this:-
1. Labour are marginally less worse than the Tories.
2. The extra-Labour left are a squabbling rag-tag of ultra-left sects dominated by warring sectarian nutters who couldn’t organise a revolution if the ruling class left the keys to Buckingham Palace at the reception of Transport House before they all fled the country.
3. Every attempt at building an alternative to Labour has failed therefore any future attempts will always fail.
4. Given that Labour already exists, then it’s easier and better trying to change that from within than starting from scratch outside.
5. It is organically linked to the working class via the trades unions.
1. Is simply untrue.
2. Is spot-on.
3. Is nonsense and ridiculous logic.
4. This has actually been an even bigger failure than the far left’s attempts to build an alternative! While every initiative has ultimately crashed and burned, there have been brief moments of great success and real, concrete achievements. You laugh? OK, the Anti-Poll Tax Federation that lead to the Scottish Socialist Party forming and having six MSPs. While Labour councils were jailing the poor for not paying Thatcher’s hated tax, Militant, along with others outside Labour, built the backbone of a working class movement that smashed it to pieces.
Labour, on the other hand, saw a million marching against Iraq and their ineffectual left still couldn’t pull their party leftwards with all that anger and popular support behind them (ironically, as I pointed out to Owen just this morning, all his own achievements in raising the standard of pro-working class politics have been achievedoutside the Labour party. His membership has played no part whatsoever in his rehabilitation of socialist ideas).
5. Is it, though? Is it really? In any mean
ingful sense anymore? I’d argue not. Trade union membership at an all-time low and a tiny island of clued-in, switched-on activists in an ocean of ripped-off, stitched-up, under-paid, disenfranchised, cynical, alienated, atomised workers most of whom don’t know and couldn’t care less that the sumptuously salaried bureaucrats who sell them out on a daily basis shovel tons of cash into the Labour Party’s coffers. That’s your ‘organic link.’ A link that is at breaking point, anyway, and lets be honest; the majority of trade union leaders are hand-in-glove with the Labour party leadership anyway. After all, they have their privileged life-styles to maintain.
Added to all that, though, is the matter of individual principle and personal responsibility. I stand by the premise that while ever you are a member of the Labour party, while ever you pay dues then you have no right to bleat to the rest of us about the actions of your party. They are your actions, too. You are part of the problem, not part of the solution. No organisation can exist without the support, even passive, of its members and every so-called socialist that stays inside the party, whether they like it or not, must bear some responsibility for what their party does to the rest of us. Let us be clear; the choice between Labour and the Tories is the choice between a bullet between the eyes or slow death by suffocation while the murderer weeps over the pillow he’s holding down on your face, all the while weeping that he’s sorry but, just like Thatcher, there is no alternative.
The absence of a viable alternative outside of Labour is no excuse for aiding and abetting the Tories which, as we all know, is what Labour does and, by logical extension, is what you do, too. We used to call this class treachery but it seems the rules are different if Labour’s doing the betraying.
If you stood by your much-vaunted socialist principles, you’d join us and help build that alternative. Trade Union and Socialist Coalition, Independent Socialist Network, Peoples’ Assemblies, Scottish Socialist Party and any number of other grassroots initiatives. Flawed, yes. Imperfect and undoubtedly weak but not all, in any way, dominated by cranky warring Trots but filled with people who are sick to the back teeth of being trodden on. The people your party claims to represent but, instead, actively betrays.
Don’t be part of the problem, be part of the solution. Join us. It won’t be easy, it won’t be quick but we have to start somewhere. Join us and be able to look your kids in the eye when they ask, “What did you do in the class war, mum and dad?”
“I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don’t want, and get it”
– Eugene Debs
13 comments
13 responses to “The Party’s Over: An Open Letter to Owen Jones & The Labour Left”
Left Unity is active in movements and campaigns across the left, working to create an alternative to the main political parties.
About Left Unity
Read our manifesto
Left Unity is a member of the European Left Party. 
Read the European Left Manifesto
ACTIVIST CALENDAR
Events and protests from around the movement, and local Left Unity meetings.
Wednesday 17th September: Trump not Welcome
National Demonstration against Trump’s state visit
More events »
GET UPDATES
Sign up to the Left Unity email newsletter.
CAMPAIGNING MATERIALS
Get the latest Left Unity resources.
I’m not, and have never been, a member of the Labour party, but I have to say that this seems like a textbook example of how not to have a productive debate with the Labour left about the best way to advance the class struggle. It’s tone is sarcastic and sneering, and there are repeated suggestions that anyone not sharing the author’s view is not just wrong but stupid.
Having said that, in the absence of a serious, credible socialist organisation for the Labour left to move to, I doubt even a more respectful and comradely article would convince anyone. Such an organisation might have emerged from the Socialist Alliance, but despite hopeful beginnings, the organisation had serious shortcomings and was rather destroyed by them. Look what happened when some serious-minded Labour leftwingers left the party and joined the Socialist Alliance: http://www.mikemarqusee.com/?p=1360
Little wonder the Labour left isn’t rushing to join TUSC (if it even could, which it can’t as TUSC doesn’t have individual membership). Any left unity project must start by demonstrating that it can have a decent, collaborative and democratic internal culture – not sure this article augurs well on that front.
Completely agree with James. And as another one who’s never been a Labour member, regardless of how misguided you might think they are, there are still people fighting against neoliberalism in the Labour Party. I know lots of them. They’ve been spectacularly unsuccessful of course, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. I’m passionately for Left unity – in fact, I think it’s unite or die time for the political Left – but one of the biggest stumbling blocks is people reducing what is authentically ‘left’ to their own position. Marxists have to tolerate people who aren’t Marxists and vice versa. What’s needed just as much as Left unity as Left tolerance – we need an alliance of everyone opposed to neoliberalism, taking in old-style pre-Blair social democrats, greens, communists, anarchists, and, most crucially of all, a lot of people who haven’t been that politically active before now.
“Any left unity project must start by demonstrating that it can have a decent, collaborative and democratic internal culture – not sure this article augurs well on that front.”
I agree with those sentiments. I signed up today to help build Left Unity in Bristol, but this kind of article is likely to make that harder, not easier. Calling ourselves Left Unity then comprehensively putting the boot into the Labour Left and the Green Left is not a good idea!
I agree with the comments regards to the original post. I am part of the Labour left and a member of the Labour Representation Committee. Unfortunately I found the tone towards Labour lefties as patronising and sneering. This does not bode well for left unity.
I believe we need to build alliances, campaigns and unity but this article fails to reach out to Labour lefties, who, incidentally, don’t identify with war mongering or indulge in demonising “benefit scroungers”… !!!! It may have escaped the comrade’s attention but there has been a plugging away at these issues. Plus the tireless work MPs like Jeremy Corbyn, Katy Clark and John McDonnell have also done. Does this mean nothing? Articles like these do nothing to inspire working together.
James has expressed pretty much how I felt on reading this article. In terms of building ‘Left Unity’ this is particularly unhelpful and I sincerely hope that this is not representative of Left Unity supporters. If it is then the project is doomed to repeat the dismal failures of the past. It is patronising to those who are fighting inside the Labour Party, not even necessarily as they see it as a vehicle for change, but recognise it as a party that masses of working class people identify as ‘their party’, whether we like it or not. It certainly does not pass for analysis or a particularly sophisticated critique.
As someone who is on the fringes and hoping for something different, it doesn’t inspire confidence. The Labour Party cannot be bypassed or ignored in any project that wants to build ‘Left Unity’ and those that are members either by party or through trade union affiliation do not deserve to be written off in such a manner.
And as a pedants note, it was John Major who introduced PFI, not Labour (although they did expand it dramatically)!
Stiofan, spot on, couldn’t agree more.
‘To even a quarter-wit, it’s plain that, for the first time in history, it genuinely, really, literally doesn’t matter whether the Tories get in or not’……Really??!??!!!?
There’s a huge disconnect between the tone of this article and the ‘About’ section of this site, where it says for example this:
“The need for cooperation amongst those forces which seek to bring change to our society is vital, to enable us to overcome the obstacles of the first-past-the-post electoral system. The need for unity is paramount… We need to open a dialogue of the left, as a matter of urgency…”
Genuine Labour Lefts can be won to a new party of the left over time – but not by haranguing them as class traitors and idiots. Dialogue is impossible without mutual respect.
I would welcome clarification as to whether this article represents one individual’s view, or a developing position within Left Unity…
Left Unity is a space for debate Jay – there is no ‘position’ – only discussion. What the organisation develops into will be democratically decided by those that are a part of it.
I’m pleased to hear it Guy. I would point out however that an article prominently positioned on the website of a new-ish initiative like ours may well be taken to be representative of at least some current within it…
Perhaps it might be worth clarifying if it’s just individual views being posted to provoke discussion at the moment – particularly if those views are likely to piss off a lot of potential supporters and/or future allies?
I am a little relieved to hear that as I shared the same fears as Jay. I found it pretty deflating to read such a dismal article and the fact that it had a position of prominence on the website did make me despair. It would probably be helpful to have a disclaimer attached to state that it is not the view of Left Unity etc.
Maybe some editorial judgement should have been exercised as I am sure people aren’t going to be out off by a ‘critique’ of the Labour left, but this looks like something that have been written by an angry 6th former and can’t see how it helps discussion or debate.
I think there are one or two overly sensitive souls on this thread. ‘Sneery’ etc might well be a valid criticism but while our class is getting absolutely hammered I’m a little tired of mealy-mouthed Labour party members who profess to oppose what their party does but in reality sustains and supports it by their continued membership and financial contributions.
I’m perfectly willing to accept my somewhat truculent manner is an unappealing hang-over of my history in the sectarian snake-pit of the Brit far left, but, equally, let’s not be afraid of calling a spade a spade eh?
Things in this particular kitchen are gonna get a lot more heated before we transform it into the kind of society to which we all (presumably?) aspire?
Sometimes people simply need to pick a side and it’s way past the time Blue Labour was any friend of the working class. Given that, should all those who support and sustain a party that attacks us on every front, not be called to account for themselves?
Tough love, people ;-)
I should also add that this piece wasn’t penned for this site in mind. *I* was approached by the site admin for permission to republish it here.
If the circumstances demand it, I can play well with others :-D