Is it time for a leftwing version of Ukip?

Left Unity logoWith the traditional Labour-trade union relationship under strain and increasing disenchantment with Ed Miliband’s brand of socialism, is there space for a new workers’ party? asks The Guardian’s John Harris

Ever since the general election of 2010, British politics has been in a very curious state of flux. Public mistrust in politicians runs rampant. After one inconclusive contest, the idea that neither Labour nor the Tories will have a majority of seats in 2015 is now common currency. What will happen to the Lib Dems is uncertain: they will almost certainly be thumped at the ballot box, but could once again hold the balance of power. Next year sees both the Scottish referendum on independence, and the European elections that might see Ukip finishing first.

Which brings us to crafty old Nigel Farage: slightly diminished since his party’s watershed breakthrough earlier this year, but still breathing the mixed aroma of Rothmans and real ale down the Tories’ collective neck, and maintaining the sense that he may stand between David Cameron’s ambitions and Conservative success.

Leaving aside the battles between Labour and the Scottish National party (and, to be fair, its Welsh equivalent Plaid Cymru), one big assumption runs through the picture painted above: the idea that though the Tories are being menaced by a force on their own side of politics, Labour has managed to maintain its dominance of the left. There have been sporadic successes for such figures as the Green party’s Caroline Lucas and Respect’s George Galloway, and an upsurge in leftwing activism – but no real break with an iron rule of politics: that the electoral territory to the left of Labour is a desert.

syrizaposterAcross Europe, though, something is definitely up. In Greece, Syriza – AKA the Coalition of the Radical Left, or the Unitary Social Front – is now the second-largest party in parliament, and the main opposition. In the French presidential elections of 2012, the new Left Front’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon began the campaign on around 5% of the vote, and ended up more than doubling it. In Germany there is Die Linke (The Left), a rum coalition of hard-lefties and old East German communists founded in 2007, which scored nearly 12% of the vote at the last parliamentary elections. There are also thriving left parties in the Netherlands, Iceland, Denmark, Portugal and others: all part of the fallout from the 2008 crash and an ongoing revolt against political establishments.

Though it has taken a while, the UK left suddenly now seems to be experiencing its own rumbles of change. Over the summer, Ed Miliband announced the drastic reinvention of his party’s relationship with the trade unions, which he will try to sell to his audience on Tuesday at the Trades Union Congress in Bournemouth. The first response to his ideas came last week, when the 600,000-strong GMB said it would slash donations to the party by 90%.

This was widely interpreted as a ploy intended to push Miliband into rowing back on his plans, but some people read it slightly differently. One GMB source told the BBC that the move “could well be the beginning of the end” for the union’s relationship with Labour, and the hopes of those who dream of a new workers’ party – among them Bob Crow, leader of the transport union the RMT, who views the modern Labour party the way that vegans view McDonald’s – were therefore suddenly raised.

A few weeks before the GMB’s move, I interviewed the general secretary of Unite, Len McCluskey, whose huge union was at the centre of the controversy about candidate selection in Falkirk that first sparked Miliband’s reforms, and once again exploded over the weekend. Though he is broadly positive about what Miliband is trying to do, McCluskey talked more openly than ever about life beyond Labour, claiming that the party could be on the verge of a watershed debate and a possible split-off on its left, akin to the creation of the SDP in the early 1980s.

If the Tories won in 2015, he said, “I fear for the existence of the Labour party. None of us know what would happen after a defeat of that nature. And it won’t necessarily be the normal process of the leader stepping down, and a new leader taking over.” Could he rule out Unite walking away from the party? “I wouldn’t rule anything out,” he said. “In extraordinary times, extraordinary things happen.”

They certainly do – and now, a new political party is about to be born. Created by a gaggle of disillusioned lefties including the film director Ken Loach, Left Unity claims it already has the support of around 10,000 people. Its founding conference will take place in London on 30 November: its initial supporters include not just Loach, but the renowned “weird fiction” author China Mieville, and Roger Lloyd-Pack (AKA Trigger from Only Fools And Horses), as well as scores of activists and trade unionists. The people behind it say they support “a new political formation which rejects austerity and war, advocates a greater democratisation of our society and institutions, and poses a new way of organising everyday life.” Some of them are also talking about Labour facing “the threat of its own Ukip”.

Salman Shaheen

Salman Shaheen

“The GMB’s move was very shrewd, it was very useful,” says 28-year-old Salman Shaheen, a member of Left Unity’s national co-ordinating group, who has previously put in spells of activism for both the Greens and Respect, and has recently been punting around the Ukip comparison. “It’s saying: ‘If you’re not listening to us, we’ll reduce our funding accordingly, and maybe look at other campaigns.’ That’s not to say they’re going to throw that £1.1m they’ve taken away from Labour at a smaller leftwing party. Of course not: other parties need to prove themselves before they can attract that kind of backing. But we’re reaching out to the trade unions, and I hope we can attract union funding as time goes on.”

Now that Labour has vowed to “work within” George Osborne’s spending plans up to 2016 and grown fonder of the rhetoric of austerity, Shaheen talks about a “gravity swell” that could favour a new party. Though the Greens “are doing some great work out there”, he says it’s time for a force “with a more radical manifesto … I want to see a party standing up for old Labour values: a party by and for workers. And I don’t think we have that at the moment. So when Left Unity came along, I thought: ‘This is worth one more shot.'”

How does he feel about splitting the left vote – as happened when the SDP broke away from Labour in the early 80s – and thereby making the Tories’ lives much easier?

“The fact is, Labour is not offering us what we need,” he says. “If we want something different, we have to stand up and fight for it and build it. Otherwise we’re never going to have it.”

Even if you end up with a very nasty Tory government rather than a Labour administration that might have its faults but would surely be preferable?

“Yeah. The point has come where many people feel that that’s something they’re prepared to do.”

Alexis Tsipras and CND's Kate Hudson at the TUC

Alexis Tsipras and CND’s Kate Hudson at the TUC

Kate Hudson came to Left Unity after tumbling from the long-defunct Communist party, into the Labour party, on in turn to the Communist Party Of Britain, and from there to Respect – for whom she initially stood in last year’s Manchester Central byelection, before George Galloway’s views about Julian Assange and rape (“not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion,” he said, elegantly) pushed her out. She’s also the general secretary of CND. “The intention of Left Unity is to engage very widely with the British population, and to speak to people who’ve become disillusioned with Labour and no longer feel they have a political voice,” she tells me. “We’re not orientated towards seeking the support of already-existing left activists or people already involved in left groups, or even people who are primarily trade unionists. We want to get out to a new audience.”

Among the people who signed a recent letter to the Guardian publicising Left Unity’s first manoeuvres was the broadcaster, poet, children’s writer and education campaigner Michael Rosen, a veteran of the non-Labour left. “I got involved because those of us in this position have waited 50 years or more for Labour to rediscover some of the spirit of 1945, and it’s never happened,” he says. “And for those of us who have moved around various groups on the left … well, I think the time’s up for that as well in many respects – they seem to keep playing the same gramophone record. So this seemed like an interesting initiative, with people trying to say: ‘Well, there must be unity, and there must be some basic principles.’ It’s all to be thrashed out. It’s early days. But there are possibilities there.”

And is he comfortable with the idea of some kind of leftwing equivalent of Ukip? “No, not really. That’s Westminster talk. Ukip, by and large, are still banging a single issue and then using immigration as a lever to get votes. It’s very dangerous to sit around and talk about that. So, no, for various reasons, the left shouldn’t start talking like that.”

It may not need to. Just to prove that politics is getting ever more complicated at speed, a one-time founder of Ukip itself is now aiming at starting a party of the “centre-left”, committed not just to EU withdrawal and the repeal of the bedroom tax. New Deal is the brainchild of Alan Sked, the former LSE professor who now thinks Ukip has become unconscionably rightwing. At the weekend, he told the Sunday Times he would stand against Ed Miliband in his Doncaster seat, while another so-far-unnamed recruit would challenge Nick Clegg in Sheffield. On the face of it, this is not much for Labour to worry about; then again, that hasn’t stopped people before.

In recent years, challenges to Labour have been a regular feature of UK elections, but never really amounted to much, thanks partly to the far left’s apparent belief in an age-old socialist maxim: why have one party when 59 will suffice? In 2001, the electorate was offered the chance to support the Socialist Alliance, who managed to bag a titanic 0.2% of the vote. Four years later, a challenge to Labour was mounted by the Respect Coalition, who got George Galloway elected in east London and come second in three other seats – but split in 2007, when Galloway fell out with the Socialist Workers party. Respect carried on – but went through another convulsion, when Galloway’s comments about Julian Assange and the nature of rape led to yet another split.

Elsewhere, there are a multitude of parties: the enduring SWP (recently torn apart by its own rape scandal), the Socialist Party, the Communist Party of Britain, the Socialist Labour party (founded and led by former miners’ leader Arthur Scargill), the Alliance for Green Socialism, and more. Following the fate of these groups can feel a bit like an eccentric game rather than anything political: it might be a good laugh, but it doesn’t actually count for much.

Left Unity claims to be aiming higher, but it is not the only organisation hoping to bring the non-Labour left together and give Miliband a fright. Since 2010, members of the SWP, the Socialist Party, the Scottish group Solidarity and scores of trade unionists have been involved in the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), whose modest highpoint thus far came in 2012, when the Trotskyist political veteran Tony Mulhearn stood to be mayor of Liverpool and got 4,792 votes: a mere 4.86% of the total poll, but enough to beat both the Tories and Ukip. Its nadir arrived in February this year at the Eastleigh byelection, when a candidate called Daz Proctor got 62 votes, finishing two places behind a candidate representing something called Elvis Loves Pets.

There are plenty of people from trade unions involved in TUSC (indeed, insiders claim that TUSC candidates have been helped by donations from local branches of big unions affiliated to Labour). At next year’s local elections, they are aiming to field around 400 candidates. The idea that this skeletal organisation might be the foundation of some ambitious new party, though, seems doubtful. “We’re not saying that TUSC is the finished formula, by a long shot,” says its national agent, Clive Heemskerk. “We could just be a herald of what’s to come. If there was a serious move by big trade unions to form their own party, we’d welcome that. But in lieu of that, there are still battles for us to fight.”

Their struggle is your struggle too!

Their struggle is your struggle too!

One person who isn’t nearly so cautious is the RMT leader Bob Crow, a member of TUSC’s national steering committee. To nobody’s great surprise, his union was expelled from the Labour party in 2004, after some of its Scottish branches affiliated themselves to the far-left Scottish Socialist party. Since then, the RMT has given money to a handful of parties on the non-Labour left, as well as establishing what an RMT spokesman calls “close political working relationships” with Plaid Cymru, the SNP and the Greens.

Now, Crow has responded to Miliband’s plans for the Labour-trade union relationship and the discontent they have sparked by loudly encouraging other unions to start working towards a new party, a call he has been in the habit of making for several years. Some people at the top of the big unions tend to respond to such talk with groans rather than serious interest. As they see it, even if such unions as the GMB finally split with Labour, the chances of them founding a new party remain slim. But, not entirely surprisingly, Crow is sticking to his guns.

“Over 100 years ago, my union and most unions supported the Liberal party, and they were told: ‘You’ve got to stay in the Liberal party and turn it around,'” he tells me. “They broke with that and formed the Independent Labour party, because the Liberals weren’t representing people that were working, unemployed, and in social deprivation. They set up the Labour party. And I think, 100 years later, what trade unions are realising is that the three main parties all support privatisation, all support anti-trade union laws, and all support, from time to time, illegal wars around the world.”

Miliband’s recent moves on Syria, it seems, have not counted for much at all. So when does Crow think a New Workers’ party might materialise?

“I don’t think it’s imminent, like next week. I think what it is, at the end of the day, you can’t just go out and say, ‘I’m forming a new party.’ People are saying to themselves, they’re not getting value for money from the Labour party … I think, eventually, people will turn around and say, ‘Well hang on a minute – no one’s representing our class of people.’ And they’ll come together and say, there ought to be a new political party – a new party of working people, unemployed, pensioners. All the people not being represented, but the majority of people in this country. That’s the significance of it. They’ll come together and form a political party that fights on behalf of working-class people.”

What does he make of Left Unity? “Well, it’s another group of people. Good luck to ’em. But there’s not enough people on the left to start having two or three campaigns. There needs to be one party, speaking on behalf of workers.”

Beyond the insistence that any new force will have to grow out of the unions, exactly what Crow has in mind is unclear. These are still early days, perhaps. But his basic conviction is obvious: despite the failure of all those previous attempts, Britain is due a new party of the left, and sooner or later, it will get one. “It will happen,” he says. “When it’s ready to happen, it will.”


17 comments

17 responses to “Is it time for a leftwing version of Ukip?”

  1. David Ellis says:

    Bob Crowes realaunched stalinist outfit can have the title UKIP of the Left and they are more than welcome to it. If they ever got into power we would all be screwed. We must eschew this title with all our might.

    I think if we adopt the unique and uniquely principled position that we are not opposed to the EU in principle but wish to see its founding treaties renegotiated in accordance with socialist principles but that in the mean time we would not enact any of its anti working class edicts LU would be on to electoral gold. Of course to emphasise our position is principled rather than opportunist demagogy we would have to make it clear that in any in out referendum we could not possibly vote positively for the neo liberal principles currently tearing the EU apart.

  2. mark anthony france says:

    Chris… This reposting of a John Harris article from the Guardian is a good use of this LU Website – and I don’t see any problem posting the article with it’s original title from the Guardian.
    John Harris is generally very sympathetic to the Left and we should be grateful for any media coverage that the Left Unity initiative can get. The comparison with UKIP is more about LU’s potential role in relation to the Labour Party as an electoral challenge from the left. It may be ‘lazy’ Journalism but it is not a slur on our politics and we do not need to be defensive about being compared to UKIP.
    The article explains clearly that a new and confusing period in politics is opening up and seems to present a very accurate assessment of the forces on the left of politics and in the Trade Unions movement which are breaking with the Labour Party.

  3. Mark Perryman says:

    Blimey what a depressing response to a largely excellent article.

    ‘UKIp of the Left’ is an easy to understand shorthand compared to the outdated jargon posturing that has been clogging up this site of late and putting so many of us whatever Left Unity might become.

    UKiP have from outside the mainstream decisively shufted the politucal debate to the right.

    They focus on one, popular, issue and buld a position around that.

    They prioritise EU elections that run under PR favour small parties.

    They have a leafer who is a brilliant comunicator and appears quite unlike most politicians.

    Now… how about a party to Labour’s left, decisively shifting the debate leftwards, capable of winnng elections under PR, able to comunicate its ideas in a popular way.

    I know, almost impossible to imagine. But thats what a ‘UKiP of the Left’ would look like, anythng that doesn’t isn’t worth the time and effort bothering with.

    Mark P

    • Quite right Mark, that’s exactly what Ken was getting at I think when he first used that analogy and why I think it is effective. It has nothing to do with our policies on Europe or immigration, both of which I’m pro.

    • John Penney says:

      Unfortunately “UKIP of the Left” is a completely inappropriate metaphor. What are the key features of UKIP’s rise ?

      1. able to “ride the wave” of simplistic reactionary anti immigrant and anti EU hysteria already created by the capitalist mass media, as part of their usual “divide and rule” racist/petty nationalist propaganda output.

      2.UKIP is essentially a non-fascist populist Far Right party , full of disaffected Tories (and quite a few disaffected ex BNP members) , only trying to build its electoral base on the two key, connected, policy “planks” of anti immigration and petty anti EU nationalism. It makes no attempt to build a campaigning local organisational base, or a mass membership base. It is an opportunist “protest vote” party, actually more interested in pushing the Tories to the right than in establishing itself as a really long term party with a fully fleshed out policy portfolio.

      3. UKIP is packed out with cynical old (usually golf club habitué reactionary Tory used car dealer types – and ex BNPers) political opportunists , riding the UKIP wave for all its worth as a source of personal enrichment. Scandal after scandal about its local candidates merely reinforces the truth of this assertion.

      4. UKIP , being a superficial ideas and sympathetic press publicity driven party can base its national appeal heavily on the “cheeky chappie” used car dealer seedy charisma of Nigel Farage – “the saloon bar character who isn’t afraid to say it like it is ” (ie a cheerful bigot) .

      None of these features relate to the principled , “in it for the long haul” , genuinely radical mass membership-based, party of the Left we have to build – with NO supporting wave of day in , day out, supportive propaganda from a sympathetic press. Our party has to be rooted in the everyday anti austerity struggles of ordinary people, in the communities and the workplaces – constantly having to challenge the “hegemonic consensus” of Austerity and the capitalist status quo . Particularly the petty nationalism and racism which underpins the strange “soft neo-fascism/Far Right Tory reaction fusion ” which is the UKIP political “offer”.

      So in fact the only meaningful connection between what we need to build and what the meteoric UKIP political advance represents is that we too hope to build a large, electorally successful political party, very quickly. Not enough of a similarity to justify us being sympathetic to the term “UKIP of the Left” though is it ?

    • Alan Story says:

      I agree with what Mark Perryman has written….and his criticisms of John P. and David E.
      For a mainstream press article, it could have been a lot worse and the pieces give some helpful background to a mainstream audience on the current state of political play.
      My adult son, who is not a active leftie, passed on the link to me, said he thought it was a pretty interesting piece, adding ‘ Left Unity is coming up in the world.’ Enough said it my view after what was, in fact, a ‘coming out’ article on Left Unity ( or the first I have read.)
      PS: There was too much emphasis in the piece on the question of running for elections, but that’s part of a wider over-emphasis within the British left.

  4. David Ellis says:

    It is easy to understand alright Mark. It is short for swivel eyed loons. Now the petit bourgeois might be attracted to such types in times of crisis but working people are not. They want a radical rational programme for the transition to socialism that can save them and society as a whole from the collapse of the capitalist economy. You can go around calling yourself Nigel Farage if you like but do not lumber Left Unity with the insult of being the UKIP of the Left. The only people who will be happy with that will be New Labour.

  5. David Ellis says:

    I am pretty sure that this is a campaign by those who want Left Unity to be in principle opposed to the EU and known as such in preparation for merger with Bob Crowe and his NoToEU mob.

  6. Mark Perryman says:

    John and David both wilfully and purposely spectactularly miss the point, for their own ends.

    This is entirely typical of a brand of leftism apparent in Left Unity who have a real problem with the idea of a popular, progressive politics.

    The shorthand of ‘UKiP of the Left’ is nothing to do with their reactionary politics, including on Europe. Neither John Harris in his piece nor in my response do we make any such suggestion.

    Rather it is understanding how and why a polulism of the Left could drag the mainstream leftwards, compete to win in elections run under PR, communicate with a mass audience by bursting the Westminster bubble.

    All this has bee achieved by UKiP from the Outside Right, the question is how could this be achieved from the Outside Left.

    Mark P

    • John Penney says:

      Au contraire Mark, the critics of approvingly applying the “UKIP of the Left” label to the Left Unity project haven’t “missed the point” at all. The core underlying nature of the UKIP project is short term political opportunism. In UKIP’s case this is based on right wing petty nationalist and racist populism. Its mirror image, “Left populism” can be exampled by, for instance, the “stack em high, and sell em cheap” nice sounding radical rag bag of policies offered by The Green Party – or even by much of the Lib Dem electoral “offer”, prior to their lurch rightwards as soon as the entered the Coalition. Unfortunately this “Left populism”, like the “Right populism” of UKIP – (fortunately in that case), dissolves and disintegrates as soon as these opportunist populist parties actually have to face up to implementing them.

      The task facing Left Unity, if it wants to build a long term, principled, mass working class party, with the ability to win significant electoral support, requires an approach which actually has nothing in common with the opportunist, “surfing the waves of press hysteria” , which has driven UKIP’s electoral advance.

      Unfortunately there is a blatantly clear “Leftish/ populist electoral opportunist strand” within the Left Unity project mix which , if dominant, will simply build up yet again the hopes of working people for a party with genuine radical socialist political staying power and commitment – only to crush these hopes again through betrayals of the “Brighton Council, Green Party fiasco” kind as soon as it achieves any positions of power.

  7. Adrian says:

    I believe that Left Unity definitely should have a eurosceptic platform. Euroscepticism is a popular trend around Europe and in every far-left party. Withdrawal from the EU is, in my opinion, a step towards the emancipation of the British working class. A left wing populist rhetoric might be powerful in getting more votes than UKIP.

    • John Collingwood says:

      If you are really concerned with emancipation, then withdrawal from the ‘special relationship’ with the USA would be a much better deal. That way we might even regain enough self respect to take on the Europeans as equals.

  8. jonno says:

    “If you are really concerned with emancipation, then withdrawal from the ‘special relationship’ with the USA would be a much better deal. That way we might even regain enough self respect to take on the Europeans as equals.”

    Again the left is reactive rather than pro-active, negotiations for a EU/US Free Trade Agreement which will open the U.K to all U.S products and services including every aspect of healthcare is well underway, neo-liberal economy, haven’t seen anything yet is this comes in.

    • John Collingwood says:

      Very good point. We need to be in there arguing against this stuff. On our own the voice would be weak.

  9. Dave Parks says:

    UKIP of the Left? A horrible phrase but I understand the sense of it. A minority party that has a breakthrough which has an effect on the political landscape. I think people who use this phrase tend to have an assumption that UKIP’s rise was sudden.

    UKIP was formed in 1993. For the first decade it’s electoral results were pretty derisory and this being despite its agenda being promoted by a vociferous wing of the Tory Party and a significant section of the press.

    Anyway – we should not get carried away with ourselves. On the timescale of UKIP and without the wind behind us (support from press and section of the establishment) we should be looking maybe at a twenty year time frame. So perhaps 2033 before Left Unity could expect to be as successful electorally using the UKIP analogy.

    The problem with populism is that by definition it appeals to what is already popular. I would suggest that we need to be doing is putting across a critique of capitalism which is perhaps out of favour currently i.e. socialism. Perhaps if we keep putting a socialist message across for a period of 20 years we can build something far better than mere Left populism.

  10. Stuart King says:

    Absolutely agree with John Penney. Those pushing the “UKIP of the Left” analogy like Salmon Shaheen and Mark Perryman are trying to push the failed Respect model of politics onto Left Unity and convince us that dumping the “old socialism” and replacing it with a bit of populist radicalism is the way to make the big breakthrough.

    One thing we should have learned from the Socialist Alliance (and Respect debacle) is that you have to build a new party with deep roots in the community and working class. You will only win the hundreds of thousands of trade unionists who vote Labour, and the millions of others, by leading their struggles day in day out. Showing your party is not just a will of the wisp but that its militants are always there at the forefront of their fights – in estates, schools, workplaces. For that you need a fighting strategy and socialist answers to the big problems of society. And as Dave Parks says you need a long term plan to popularise and explain socialism again in a mass way – to educate, agitate, organise.

    There are no shortcuts. UKIP cuts with the reactionary grain – anti immigrant, nationalist anti-Europe – and is supported by a mass circulation right wing press. We have to cut against the grain, have no media or mass press support, much more difficult and necessarily long term. The intellectuals are always attracted to shiny new things and quick results, a “UKIP of the Left”. We need stamina and staying power.

  11. Miguel Martinez says:

    I know UKIP has made a major impression on politics but it is not a reference point for those joining Left Unity in terms of how to ‘jar’ the political landscape. If Left Unity is about Euro-Sceptic politics than that misses the point. if its about rattling Labour that also misses the point. For some of us Left Unity is about forging a space which captures the radical democratic and socialist traditions of Britain that the Labour Pary left behind and that in many cases the Labour Party never engaged with. Left Unity is not a blip, a sore, and something to shake the mainstream right wing social democratic left. Yes it should do that too, but this is not about one or two issue politics. This is about bringing the traditions of struggle, counter culture, autonomy, and community into a new political discourse. It is about linking the fight against the state with the fight within it as in the support of the welfare state. It’s about the Diggers, Tom Mann, the anti fascist struggle on Cable Street, the 68 movement, the community and women’s struggles of the Miner Strikes, the fight against university fees which the Labour Party sabotaged, anti imperialism, CND, …… Okay so you think this is another list of what we want? No! It is a call for a a party that refers back to those traditions and shows this country that there is a lineage of struggle and cultural intervention which is not in the DNA of the Labour Party – a Labour Party that has turned it’s back on Benn. What it is I am saying is that we are building something which is richer and the UKIP reference in these discussions is not always helpful. Left Unity is something deeper we are building, even with the creative tensions within it.


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