What about the Labour Party … and Labour Party activists?
A contribution to the debate from Alan Story of Nottingham
I think some of the most important tactical and strategical issues that Left Unity will face for at least the next few years are the following:
a) how do we win over current activists in the Labour Party (LP)?
b) how do we at the local LU level relate to local LP organisations? (Obviously not a national LU priority at the moment! That is, I am certain ‘meet Kate Hudson’ is not an entry in Ed Miliband’s diary.)
c) what is our critique of the LP?
LU has been launched, following on from Ken Loach’s 16 March appeal, as a deliberate and serious project to build ‘a new political party of the Left.’ About the Labour Party, Ken wrote: ‘the Labour Party is not presenting a strong opposition to austerity and instead appears to have wholeheartedly adopted neo-liberal policy, advocating its own brand of austerity and privatisation.’
This is fine as a good starting point, but we obviously need to deepen our critique, as I am sure Ken would agree.
As to answering question a), b) and c), I start from the following assumptions:
1) Especially in some parts of the country, there are a number of ‘good’ and progressive people who still believe in, work for and vote for the LP. It is certainly true in Nottingham where I live. To simply ignore such people would be political suicide for LU.
2) A key way of winning over such people will be through our own greatly improved internal/external political practices compared to the LP. Many current LP supporters are justifiably upset by many aspects of its internal practice, such as the ‘we do the thinking’ and ‘you hand out leaflets’ attitude, various stitch-ups, packed meetings, and the careerist moves of many individual ‘Ed Milibands/Yvette Coopers in waiting’, the notion of ‘out of bounds’ topics, and the attitude that ‘saying anything negative about the LP plays into the hands of the bloody Tories’ and so on. Developing a radically different political culture will be an important LU task I think…and should bring results in time. (Former LP members in LU should be mindful of their own baggage.)
3) Second, our ideas themselves will be key. A fuller and more developed LU statement of unity awaits, but we have lots of terrain now on which we can provide an alternative approach to the crisis that will both appeal to many in our ‘target audience’ and will demarcate us from the LP and its ideology of neo-liberalism (A week or so ago, I suggested one: private rents on housing should only increase at the same rate as average increases in wages, i.e. private rents should be controlled. I sure other colleagues have many more suggestions.) And we can demarcate from Labour on many social/political issues as well. (I attended a Fabians Women’s’ meet the other night here in Notts: a key call from the platform was for ‘more women on corporate boards of directors.’ Not exactly a transformative working class demand for women … or men! )
4) We need to develop an alternative social and political culture to the dreary and dour internal life of the LP. Add your examples here and see the very interesting Mark Perryman blog and 56 responses at http://leftunity.org/the-cult-of-activism/
5) Local LU groups will be working with local LP groups in various local and likely national single-issue campaigns. But how will we respond in such campaigns when the energy tries to be directed to getting out the vote for the LP or supporting local LP councillor Sally/Sam Jones?
6) A final assumption: LU will NOT be engaging in entryist tactics in the LP, tried in the past and still used today by various Trotskyist groups.
7) Characterising the LP as bad ‘nationally’, but as positive locally (as one leading Alliance for Workers’ Liberty member just did on the Facebook page of the Notts Bed Tax group) is opportunism and the type of localism we should avoid. (See 6) above.)
But that still leaves many questions still unanswered such as:
1) how do we characterise the LP?
2) as socialists, what do we think are the ‘weak points’ of the LP and the terrain LP should be challenged on? This terrain is much wider than the weak campaign of LP against austerity I think. One important terrain is on international issues and on British nationalism (including the idea of ‘One Nationism’)
3) what is our theoretical critique of the LP and social democracy?
[On this point, I do NOT suggest that local LU groups should be turned into socialist/ Marxist reading groups. But I disagree with the authors of some recent blogs who suggest we should avoid reading class socialist/Marxist works. One of the best critiques of the LP (The State in Capitalist Society, 1969) was written by the Marxist Ralph Miliband. (See bibliography at the end of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Miliband ). Pick up a copy at your library or you can buy a copy for a few quid at, apologies for the commercial promo, Abe Books http://www.abebooks.co.uk/. It is not a question of LU members avoiding theory or ideology; rather it a question of which ones we embrace.]
4) can the LP be reformed, and if not, why not?
Thoughts? Reactions?
Being a member of /supporter of the LP is not part of my own personal political history, but I think I am in an LU exception on this point. What convinced you that the LP had no clothes and that we need an LU?
22 comments
22 responses to “What about the Labour Party … and Labour Party activists?”
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The Labour Party has to be addressed. But similar problems are faced with the Greens and with the SNP in Scotland. We face the problem that Tory voters face with UKIP: how do we address the fact that many who would prefer to vote Left Unity will fear that first-past-the-post means that voting for the party they most want increases the odds of ending up with the one they least want. UKIP have worked out how to exploit divisions inside the Tory Party. Left Unity has to adopt a similarly pragmatic attitude towards Labour voters. They most certainly are not, by and large, the same as Tory, Lib Dem or UKIP voters. The continued existance of the trade union link serves as a transmission belt for cash, votes, prestige and hope of a left revival. Left Unity has to accept that and make common cause with the decent members inside Labour who will engage constructively in extra-parliamentary action, support workers in struggle, defend all victims of oppression. Our tone toward the failings of such comrades has to be one of ‘more in sorrow than in anger’. Owen Jones et al makes the case for similar policies to at least part of what Left Unity wants, and he is an antidote to the pro-capitalist austerity etc that passes as fair comment in all the broadcast media. To the extent he is allowed to chip away at the prejudices of the Thatcherites and Blairites, he contributes to a more favorable political climate within which class unity and left unity is possible. This can’t be ignored. We need to retweet and applaud progressive rhetoric regardless of whether it comes from Owen Jones, Carolyn Lucas, George Galloway, Dave Nellist or Ken Loach. While Labour’s existing trade union link is a one way transmission belt that delivers zilch for the working class, until this umblical cord is finally broken illusions (at the very least) in a potential left revival has to be accepted. The second cornerstone of Labour was the commitment it took on in the wake of the Russian Revolution to common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. This has to be key for Left Unity. We don’t need to insist on any timescale for the expropriation of the expropriators. Lenin didn’t want the October 1917 revolution to abolish private property in the means of production at the stroke of a pen. If a majority government shouldn’t do it, then Left Unity can hardly make it a priority when it has yet to secure a single vote or register in the opinion polls. That said, Left Unity has to prioritise its anti-capialist agenda: capitalism is fueled by unpaid labour stolen from wage slaves. Resistance to profits is under all circumstances legitimate. You can’t control what yo don’t own. Tories and Labour want to nationalise losses and privatise banks etc. That is theft from the public purse. Left Unity can tap into such popular ideas to the extent that Labour voters vote for us not because they expect us to form a majority government any time soon but in order to send a message to the political establishment. Just as Nigel Farage’s successes have shifted all capitalist parties to the right, votes for Left Unity can shift the political centre of gravity to the left. And that is something that most Labour voters would be very happy to help us with. If, that is, we want to engage in a constructive dialogue with such Labour voters, rather than to dismiss them as no better than Tory, Lib Dem or UKIP voters.
I agree.
I agree again Tom!
I understand & respect why the question is being posed ,but with LU still finding its own political identity & direction worrying about the Labour Party or any other party for that matter is i would of thought somewhat down the agenda .
Once structures political direction & how LU conducts itself both locally,regionally & nationally are bedded in radicals of other parties or indeed of none will seek to find out both who LU are & what they offer in terms of political values & direction .
Having seen many contributions elsewhere its clear LU is a project thats work in progress & until that job of work is complete ,LU might be in a position to begin to attract people .
Peter………..
Peter:
Actually I am NOT in favour of having to wait until all of the work of building LU is done centrally.
My vision of LU is that it is a group which will be built BOTH from the bottom up and the top down. LU activists out in the shires can get to work now — in at least a partial way — and positive experiences at the base can be used to strengthen the whole group. Processes that occur at the base can help LU to build LU’s identity and direction. Some boldness, not passively waiting for LU HQ,is needed!
It’s just, what you put your energy into it, the Labour Party could be claimed for the Left, with persistence, it is just where the workers and people are going and how far to left, you would like to go, the more to the left you go, it becomes a one – party state ! :-) ! ….
I really enjoyed reading your post Alan, and I couldn’t agree more with your opening statement. I too believe dealing with Labour, locally, regionally and nationally will be central to Left Unity’s work over the next few years, especially with a general election looming.
In essence, Labour’s abandonment, betrayal, weakness, cowardice and manipulation of working class people has been responsible for how activists have worked in Doncaster over the last three years. Why? For we were one of the first towns in Britain to see our libraries come under attack and close. The campaign which included the help and support of Alan Gibbons, lasted for over two years, we weathered winter days to collect over 15, 000 signatures to force the council to publicly debate the issue; the campaign made it on to a Tony Benn Platform with over 320 people attending the meeting; it made the local and national media. Cut a long and painful story short, we lost 14 libraries and by “we”, I mean 14 villages lost their library. The local labour party campaign to save libraries was woeful at its best.
After three Tory governments and three New Labour governments, Doncaster children live with high levels of poverty, abuse and neglect. It doesn’t take a genius to see that poverty and inequality lead to difficulties in the home, classroom and community. Schools witness this on a daily basis. Staff see children coming to school unfed, unwashed, tired and sad. I’m not going to say unloved because that wouldn’t be true.
The truth is when Thatcher shut down the pits and Labour subsequently went along with some of the further closures in 1993, today’s Doncaster, is both their legacy and responsibility.
Now of course, it would be only fair to say that Yes, NL’s Sure Start programme helped; Yes, more nursery places helped; Yes, more public sector jobs for women helped. But at the same time, wages were decreasing, working hours were increasing and bullying at work was becoming institutionalised. The bad outweighed the good, the negative overruled the positive. This is the real truth of the so called good times under New Labour.
What we have now in towns like Doncaster, is the breakdown in physical and practical support for labour. Families and individuals no longer canvass for labour as a rite of passage or put up posters in their windows saying “vote labour”. However, the question of voting for labour in elections is still something plausible to think about for many and Mcklusky’s recent campaign in UNITE, whose central argument is “we can reclaim the labour party” was and still is appealing to some genuine working class activists. This for me though, doesn’t mean voting Labour is always the right thing to do and nor is backing a good trade union leader who gives Labour’s Ed Miliband millions. It’s wrong and It needs to stop, especially the latter.
You see, if anti cuts campaigners in Doncaster had ignored the anti cuts candidates and voted labour in the recent mayoral election, would the labour group know that people are disgusted/outraged at their national austerity backed policies and inability to save a few low costing libraries. No, they wouldn’t.
If we were all to abandon our anti cuts work in our community and join the labour party, would we really be able to move the labour party to the left? – Well I ask those who have joined and attended your local labour party have you changed anything? From the recent outburst by Miliband to Mclsuky, I don’t see it. But more importantly I don’t see UNISON branches across the country, who are heavily controlled by their local labour group, standing up for any job, any service or indeed any one on the scale that is needed.
In a town like Doncaster the local and regional labour group/members should be screaming from the roof tops at the destruction of thousands of lives. If they aren’t now, when are they going to start. And if they aren’t I beg those individuals who have joined the labour party for all the right reasons to join in with the most progressive members of their communities and fight. I think you can do both, fight from the outside and from the inside. My fear is that supporting the labour party and supporting any labour party candidate will be more important than fighting the cuts with non labour party colleagues. I’ve just witnessed this during the UNITE election and I believe it’s a warning to us about what will happen as the general election comes closer. Nationally the party will say don’t rock the boat , wait for the election and history will repeat itself from 1997.
So, If Left Unity is to mean anything in my town, it has to understand the importance of getting back our libraries. We now have a Labour elected Mayor and a labour majority cabinet, so you can imagine what people from the campaign are thinking. ” Re open our Libraries.” We’ll even go as far as to say, “Re open our libraries please.” But without a shadow of a doubt we want those 14 libraries back open.
Louise:
And I enjoyed reading your post as well. Very informative!
I have a serious (but also slightly cheeky) suggestion:
before too long e.g. sometime in 2013 or early 2014, why don’t we hold a regional LU event of some type in Doncaster? Not only is it the constituency of E. Miliband, but Google Maps tells me Doncaster is only 23 miles from Sheffield, 26 miles from Scunthorpe, 33 miles from Leeds, 57 miles from Nottingham, and 70 from Manchester.
We’ve been thinking about this for a while, leeds, hull and scunthorpe are already up for it. I think Doncaster is important for two reasons. 1) we have been battered by the cuts worst than most 2) Ed Miliband seems to ignore this fact.
I can’t see the point of being a Labour MP and leader of the party if you can’t help lead a mass campaign to save that towns libraries?
It only makes sense if you think cuts have to be made and you are scared that if Doncaster saves all their libraries, other towns up and down the country will ask you to save theirs and you cant because you believe cuts have to be made. So you keep your head down, ignore what’s happening and hope the people you are abandoning will still vote for you.
So yes, I think Doncaster is very important for our politics. It’s why we have been building left unity in doncaster for over two years.
Louise:
We have another Notts LU meet next week and I will raise the ‘on to Doncaster’ flag there. As I said, Notts is only an hour away from the land of Robin Hood.
I talked with people in the labour party, they told me they do not care about the poor as they never get out of bed and vote, they told me the labour party is more interested in swing voters and middle class lefties, like teachers and stuff.
I went to a fabian meeting and they ended up talking about buying flats to rent out, to immigrants, and foreign homes in spain and greece.
Labour is not representative of the poor, thus left unity has a gap to fill.
If anyone can get out of bed before 1030am
As the author puts it entryism has been tried and has not succeeded. It is looking increasingly unlikely to succeed in the future.
Moving forward, one contrast LU can make with the current political parties is a clear, well though out and detailed manifesto. In the 1980’s all parties had this. Then with the rise of Blairism, manifestos became aspirational commentary (including those on the left). Thus if there is clarity of ideas, people will start to rally around the LU banner. Or if not at least shift the centre of gravity of the debate.
I understand Alan that of course local groups will at the grassroots attempt to campaign & work within their respective local communities . There will however be many who will want more political flesh on the bones before giving due consideration to coming across from any party ,or indeed many who have never been in any party at all .
I respectfully find it strange that people seem to believe that Labour is the only fertile area that LU needs to attract its support from ,its welcome mat is one that should be surely broader than that ?.
Of course local activity will & must continue & that will aid attracting people ,there will be many (like it or not) who will be observing direction & values over the coming months before making any political moves of any discription .
People change their gas & electricity providers far more than they EVER change their political party,getting people to move or change is never an overnight event ,its a personal often a singular trigger point event that makes it occur . I have been around in politics for many years & that is MY personal experience . I respect that others may see things differently & that is healthy it makes for good mature political debate .
The big political advantage (at the moment) is austerity is an agenda that both lab & tory are wedded to ,its how long people within a “so called” progressive party (lab) are prepared to tolerate being linked to cuts agenda mark 2 .
LU has the potential to attract but as i have said its still a “work in progress”.
Peter………….
Peter:
You have written: ‘ I respectfully find it strange that people seem to believe that Labour is the only fertile area that LU needs to attract its support from ,its welcome mat is one that should be surely broader than that ?.’
I never suggested that Labour is the ‘ONLY fertile area’ from which LU ‘needs to attract its support from.’ But I do think it is ONE area, among many others.
Nor am not suggesting the process will happen overnight. I am 65 years old and have been involved in three countries since 1962 when, as a 15-year-old rebel, I pounded a left-wing election sign into my parent’s lawn…much to their horror!
Why worry about Labour? If it was still a socialist party then Left Unity wouldn’t be needed or see the light of day. The aim surely is to replace the Labour Party and become the party of the people that Labour once was.
Alan. I thought you were homing in on labour given the heading of the debate was….. What about the Labour Party & Labour activists .
Peter:
Thanks for your post.
Apologies if the head mislead you. Yes, Labour was ONE of the terrains I think we will attract people from. But there are many others.
So I hope we can agree on this point.
And I am very glad you did NOT go on to quote back at me from some some book I wrote 15 years ago. I must say that the sectarian noise and the fighting of personal battles of yester-year on one other current blog is getting very tiresome. Why don’t some of these lads get out there and get to work organising?
quite agree.
Hi Alan.
Nothing to apologise for, mature political debate is a healthy thing . I take your point entirely ,seems as if some are taking a “do not encroach upon my kingdom” approach .
Many people/organisations want to maintain the status quo,which is the reason why they still survive ,but also never progress/move forward,as they take a protectionist approach towards embracing LU as it moves forward & attempts to develop.
You wrote a book 15 yrs ago ? did not realise i was verbally jousting with a J.R. Hartley !! .
Regards Peter………….
the thing missing in this discussion is the voters. the assumption that a new left party would exist to push labour to the left is a flawed one. firstly as that leaves the party with no identity other than as a pressure group and makes it particularly easy for labour to win any voters back from it with cosmetic changes, secondly because we have just had a new social attitudes survey citing a shift to the right amongst labour voters on welfare issues. the point from this is we first need to shift the voters to the left before the parties will follow. just seven years ago the torys were campaigning on green issues because they saw it as a way of winning over left wing voters what right wing party would feel they had to that now none of them as the voters have shifted right.
Dear JQ Mark:
Actually, if we are to build a party, I think it needs to be a party of a new type…or certainly different from the Tories, Lib Dems, Labour, UKIP and so on.
They are essentially electoral machines. We need to be a campaigning party; running candidates for elections might only be one of many activities.
To slightly paraphrase what you have written, ‘we first need to shift the people to the left before the parties will follow.’
And actually I am not concerned whether any of the above parties move to the left and I have not ‘signed on’ to move Labour to the left…and that wasn’t in Ken Loach’s appeal.
The shifting we in LU need to work on is something that will be done TOGETHER with the British people, listening to their issues, learning from their experiences and working from the bottom up. And we also need to work with other campaigning groups.
Of course any serious party does need national direction, but there will not likely be a national LU convention for some months and I STRONGLY believe local LU groups should NOT wait to get active in organising until then. Or at least that’s what I will be advocating here in Nottingham. There are PLENTY of local issues —often closely linked to national issues — for us to work on right now. And I am sure there are many in your area as well.
In any event, a national election won’t likely occur until 2015 (though who knows what the Tory little-Englander rump is up to these days.) We need to hold LU events in cities like Doncaster long before 2015.
A minor correction, I believe the AWL are in the Labour Representation Committee, (you do not necessarily have to be a Labour party member to be in the LRC). The LRC is quite a lot to the left of Labour. I’m wouldn’t assume LU is to the left of the LRC, its more complicated than that.
By the way, I wouldn’t worry too much about being lectured by the AWL, they have a questionable approach to opposing wars, or should I say, not opposing some wars, (the majority of the LRC do oppose war and imperialism). The Labour party supported the intervention in Libya, the LRC opposed it.