SOLD DOWN A PALE RED RIVER
by Mark Perryman
I grew up politically in the Thatcher years. The answer for anybody on the left through the 1980s and 1990s to the miseries we marched against – Trident and Cruise, the Falklands and Gulf wars, closing the pits and unemployment – was a Labour government.
We didn’t necessarily believe it would be heaven, but it would be surely better than 18 years of Conservatism.
And of course it has been better, but not by very much. Blair and Brown have marched Labour so far to the right that it has abandoned a huge chunk of those who believed in it as the alternative to the Tories.
We stood still in a space once called social democracy while Labour first embraced spin and managerialism as a tactic and organising principle. Then we watched as it used this to justify an illegal war and their own version of privatisation, PFI.
More than 200,000 party members left to be replaced by millionaire donors.
Blair and Brown have executed a historic defeat of the left. When 2 million people marched against the impending Iraq war in 2003 we thought we were on the verge of stopping it. But we failed, and with that failure came demobilisation. If 2 million couldn’t stop this rotten government what could?
Of course, we told ourselves, we’d won the argument – but we knew that what really mattered was stopping the war. The government refused to listen and apart from losing the odd seat to the Liberal Democrats and George Galloway’s stunning win in Bethnal Green, it has hardly suffered, has it? Tony Blair served his time out and retires with a tidy sinecure and a property portfolio.
Five years on from the war and the focus has shifted to a meltdown in global capitalism. But instead of opening up opportunities to the left we’re left gaping powerlessly at the rank stupidity of a system of unregulated greed.
We have sat in front of the TV watching the news as Trident has been replaced, a national rail system dismantled, hospitals and schools built – but in hock to the private sector thanks to PFI.
And now we have bank bail-outs worth billions as government spokespersons rush to the microphones to stress that they won’t be interfering in the banks’ affairs.
This is the retreat from politics, not the occupation of the centre ground Labour prides itself on achieving. So we’re left, grumpy old men and women, scribbling a blog on Cif, taking ourselves off to the cinema for a dose of Ken Loach or put Billy Bragg on our ipod and dream of what might have been.
And it’s not just people my age that are disillusioned. There’s a new generation of idealists, who thanks to war and tuition fees, see very few differences between the parties.
In every other European country there’s a party to the left of Labour. In Germany, former SPD finance minister Oskar Lafontaine’s Die Linke has achieved a nationwide electoral breakthrough.
In Holland the Socialist party is a significant force. In Portugal the Left Bloc has MPs and councillors. In France the left is fractious yet survives. In Italy Rifondazione has lost all its MPs but remains a powerful presence in local politics.
We used to blame not having proportional representation for the lack of such a party here – yet we have it now for European and London Assembly elections, and for a while at least in Scotland the six Scottish Socialist party MSPs proved what was possible.
And locally in Birmingham, Coventry, Tower Hamlets and Newham, Lewisham and Barrow, various left-of-Labour councillors have been elected too.
There must be tens, hundreds of thousands of people pissed off with Labour, who might vote Green or Lib-Dem but most of all we want to vote Left.
The hateful BNP has benefitted from disillusion with Labour and a crisis in working-class representation, with 55 councillors and on the verge of getting MPs and MEPs elected. Surely there must be more of us to the left of Labour’s rightward shift than the BNP’s recently-published list of 12,000 members.
I’m fed up with reading Polly Toynbee and the other Guardian columnists writing how they hope Gordon might do this or that, when we know he won’t. And I’m doubtful that Compass can achieve very much except a few column inches when there’s no mechanism left to entrench any change in Labour’s direction any more.
I don’t want to sit on my sofa moaning about where all the ideals have gone that brought me into politics to stand down Margaret and ended up with Tony and Gordon in her place. This pair have pulled off the biggest privatisation of the lot, of our ideals.
If there’s to be any kind of a progressive future its time we found a way, a conversation, a network, a culture to turn them into public property once again.
Mark Peryman hasn’t voted Labour since 2003 and has no intention of doing so again given the chance. Editor of Imagined Nation : England after Britain he is the co-founder of www.philosophyfootball.com
“taking ourselves off to the cinema for a dose of Ken Loach or put Billy Bragg on our ipod and dream of what might have been”.
Well, as a late thirty something cynical grumpy sceptical socialist feminist…neither Bragg nor Loach were part of my dreams of what might have been…
Anyway, aside from that “And I’m doubtful that Compass can achieve very much except a few column inches when there’s no mechanism left to entrench any change in Labour’s direction any more” but Compass are a politically volatile and unpredictable force. Where will they end up politically? You have a leadership that can be described as critical Brownites and who can trust Cruddas in which he goes. And what change can Compass achieve with this instability in their own political make-up.
It is also interesting that you leave out the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) maybe we aren’t as seen as shiny and glossy like the superficial Compass though the LRC has more political substance and direction…yes, it is about making inroads and alliances esp. at a time of economic crisis.
Comment by Louise — 26 November, 2008 @ 10:40 am
This is a head up your hind end article…..
Comment by Jim — 26 November, 2008 @ 10:46 am
Of course, there used to be a substantial party to the left of the Labour Party, whose influence in the working class and the trade unions kept Labour further left than it may otherwise have been.
That party was the Communist Party of Great Britain, and I’m curious whether this Mark Perryman is in any way related to the Euro Mark Perryman who helped destroy that party in the 80s, deploying many of the same arguments which the New Labour faction used within the Labour Party? If so, then I’m curious whether you’re just miffed that Labour hasn’t liquidated itself in the same way as the CPGB.
The Labour Party is still connected to the working class via the trade unions, and if there was any leftward shift in the class then that would be reflected in the Labour Party. The problem is that there is no such shift in the class. Your analysis would seem to be that “the left” (which you clearly conceive of as something separate from our class) can jump start something for which there is clearly no demand.
I’ve got a perpetual motion machine here mate, prime investment, it’ll sweep the world, just wait and see. Would you like to buy some shares?
Comment by Graham Day — 26 November, 2008 @ 10:55 am
I agree, Mark. But having framed the question, can’t you point us a little way towards the answer?
I can’t see a better way forward than hoping for/trying to help get a hung parliament after the next election. This should open politics up a fair bit.
Meanwhile to work as hard as possible within the Left to persuade it to drop the Old Left legacy of clinging on to First Past the Post and two party politics (and the dreams of a clear parliamentary working majority for socialism). Instead to embrace the fact that the left represents the views of perhaps 15-25% of the people who vote in this country, and so what we want is simply a fair chance to earn a fifth to a quarter of the MPs and the airtime on the media.
Whatever collaborative project you are imagining, it seems to me that green ideas and the thoroughly democratic Green Party needs to be completely part of it.
Comment by Strategist — 26 November, 2008 @ 10:56 am
Good article, agree with strategist as well, I would wouldn’t I?
We Greens have our faults as a party, our very democratic structure makes us operate a little slowly and some local parties are better than others, the best are where we have plenty of enthusiantic, usually new, often identifying themselves as socialists.
Comment by Green Socialist — 26 November, 2008 @ 11:10 am
I stopped voting Labour after 1997 when I saw how democratically emasculated the people of England had become thanks to NuLabour’s devolution settlement of Scotland and Wales.
30 years of solid support, for Harold Wilson, Callaghan, Michael Foot, Kinnock, Smith and for a time, Blair.
But not any more. I will never vote for them again - and what’s more, neither will any of my extended family. We were hard-wired socialists - and had been since my Granddad first went on the hunger marches to London in the 20’s and then stood for parliament as an independent socialist under the banner of ‘The man who cannot be bought’ in the 30’s.
We are now totally disillusioned at NuLabour’s ‘do anything to keep power’ antics. The devolution settlement - intended to box off their support in Wales and Scotland, their manipulations of parliamentary boundaries in order to favour their own candidates - everything. The control freakery infests everything - it even happens during the laughingly entitled ‘Prime Minister’s Questions’. It is now nowt more than half an hour of NuLab propaganda courtesy of the appalling chairmanship of Gorbals Mick. When was the last time Gordon Brown or his predecessor, Tony Blair were actually made to answer a question by the Speaker at PMQs?
Thanks to devolution, I and 50 million like me have no national vote, no national first minister, no national legislature. During the next year, my Mum will no doubt have to sell her semi to fund her residential care - when 200 miles up the M6, it is free. Ditto Prescription charges, ditto tuition fees, etc, etc.
NuLabour have turned the UK into a bloody basketcase of assymetric manipulation - Gordon Brown would - has sold the country down the river in order to keep his purile ego and his padded shoulders in number 10.
The sooner this shower are shown the door the better. The only future for England is self determination, either within Europe or without. Either way, the UK as a political entity is finished - and the responsibility for that lays squarlely on NuLabour’s shoulders.
Comment by Alfie the OK — 26 November, 2008 @ 11:30 am
I agree with the criticisms of Labour and I don’t support them either. What do people think about the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party?
What about the RMT-organised conference on working-class political representation in January?
Comment by Karl Stewart — 26 November, 2008 @ 11:50 am
#6 Does Brown really pad his shoulders?
Comment by Strategist — 26 November, 2008 @ 11:51 am
#7 Hi Karl. There is a distinct risk of repeating a debate we had previously - that I enjoyed, I hasten to add.
My question for you, do you envisage the NWP replacing Labour as one of the top two parties, as Labour did to the Liberals between the 1st & 2nd world wars, or do you see it taking its rightful place within a system of around 6-8 parties? (Or something else - overthrow of bourgeois democracy?)
Either way, what’s your best estimate of the time it will take for a NWP to (a) get set up (b) win its first local election (c) win its first MP (d) enter No.10?
Comment by Strategist — 26 November, 2008 @ 11:57 am
Hi Strategist,
Interesting questions mate:
How long would a workers’ party take to get set up?
Well, it really depends on how long it takes to win support from the parties of the non-Labour left - SWP,SP,CPB,Respect - that this is what we need and to commit to it.
A start could be made by these parties’ respective leaderships holding a serious, business-like meeting - not a rally - to discuss concrete proposals.
Perhaps an umbrella-type of electoral coalition under the electoral name of “Workers Party” could be the first step?
Also, serious trade union backing would represent a further significant step forward.
How long to win its first local election?
Respect and the SP - and the SWP in Preston I think? - have already got a small number of elected councillors, so I would say that a focus on local elections would be a sensible early objective and an achievable initial target.
How long to the first MP?
Respect already has one MP, with aims of two more at the next election. A workers’ party would, I would hope, start with a limited target of perhaps standing in a dozen or so carefully selected seats spread across the UK, concentrating resources there.
How long to enter number 10?
Way too far away in the distance to even speculate about, but even a small group of elected councillors/MPs would make a difference. And it could make even more of an impact outside Parliament, with meaningful support in the TU movement and across various solidarity, campaign movements.
But these are only my thoughts on the matter, surely lots of other people would have different ideas about how this could develop.
Comment by Karl Stewart — 26 November, 2008 @ 12:18 pm
Graham Day makes a useful point, which could well be extended. The rightward shift in the Labour Party’s centre of gravity (from Foot to Kinnock to Brown to Blair)was promoted and enabled by Marxism Today and the Eurocommunists. They may not like the outcome of the process, but they can hardly remove their fingerprints from the scene of the crime. In their own small way, they were part of that historic defeat of the left, which Mark now bemoans.
It would be nice, just once, to see Mark’s hyper-criticisms of the rest of the left focussed on his own tradition.
Comment by chjh — 26 November, 2008 @ 1:03 pm
#3 - The Labour Party is still connected to the working class via the trade unions, and if there was any leftward shift in the class then that would be reflected in the Labour Party.
DIAMAT IS DOUBLEPLUS GOOD!
Comment by Inigo Montoya — 26 November, 2008 @ 1:14 pm
chjh,
What I know of the whole “eurocommunist” idea is I wouldn’t agree with it, but it’s simplistic to say those views all gained expression in new Labour.
Some of that thinking was a reaction to the straightjacket of “democratic centralism,” some of it was an expression of the need to think about issues of sexuality, equalities etc and some of it has found expression in the “green” movement in many respects, so it didn’t all go into “new Labour,” although it’s true that some of it did.
What we need now is to build a workers’ party that can include within it the very best of marxism, but also a lot of this thinking, as well as the best traditions of early English socialism - all under the essential principle that the working clas becomes the ruling class.
Comment by Karl Stewart — 26 November, 2008 @ 4:16 pm
And to Inigo,
Yes, the trade unions currently give money to Labour and a left-moving centre of political gravity will, to a certain extent, find expression within the parties of capitalism - Labour included - but so what?
What we need is a part of the working class.
Comment by Karl Stewart — 26 November, 2008 @ 4:18 pm
#10 Cheers Karl for your answers to my questions.
According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Alliance_(England) the SWP joined the old Socialist Alliance in 1999, and as a result the Socialist Party walked out of it in 2001. Meanwhile in 2003 the SWP dissolved the Socialist Alliance and helped set up Respect, which the Socialist Party and CPB then refused to join. None of which bodes well for setting up a new Workers Party unless everyone agrees that the current crisis demands stronger efforts to unite.
Meanwhile, you left one of my questions unanswered, which is an important one for me: “do you envisage the NWP replacing Labour as one of the top two parties, as Labour did to the Liberals between the 1st & 2nd world wars, or do you see it taking its rightful place within a system of around 6-8 parties?”
Comment by Strategist — 26 November, 2008 @ 4:58 pm
The CNWP is not intended to be a Socialist Alliance Mark 2 i.e. an amalgamation of existing Left organisations. That’s the point - to avoid that mistake being made again. Much of the impetus for a new workers party will have to come from unions. Hopefully, the RMT conference in January will be part of the impetus for this.
Strategist, the way you put it, the SP left the SA because the SWP joined it. The SP left when the SWP manoeuvred to control the organisation for its own ends. The SP didn’t join Respect because of grave misgivings (subsequently borne out by events) about the lack of class-based socialist politics underpinning it.
Comment by Doug — 26 November, 2008 @ 5:10 pm
Sorry I missed your last question
Will the Workers Party replace Labour?
Well, who knows? Obviously I hope a worker’ party gets off the ground and becomes a significant force, but as for replacing Labour - like your question about whether it will enter number 10, it’s too far way to speculate really mate.
Will a workers’ party take its place among 6-8 other parties? Again, we’ll see won’t we? I can’t really answer without attempting to predict the future.
The challenge for us is to get this party going in the first place - and the rest will be a question for the future really won’t it? It’s up to all of us to do the best we can.On your other points about the Socialist Alliance, I wasn’t involved in it, but maybe others can respond to that better than I could.
I was in SLP and I think we failed for two main reasons. Firstly, we failed to relate to the rest of the left - to engage them in any meaningful way.
And secondly, we presented ourselves as the Labour Party Mark II rather than as something different.
My hope is that thje new workers’ party - if it does get off the ground - will committ to the idea that the working class becomes the ruling class, rather than just to being a slightly more left-wing Labour Party,
Comment by Karl Stewart — 26 November, 2008 @ 5:12 pm
Actually, the SP left when the Socialist Alliance conference voted for one-member-one-vote as the decision-making basis for the Alliance. Every other left group, and the majority of independents, backed the decision. It was independents who led the charge on the issue, as the SP’s alternative federal consitution gave them no voice at all.
Comment by chjh — 26 November, 2008 @ 5:15 pm
#18 “the SP left when the Socialist Alliance conference voted for one-member-one-vote as the decision-making basis for the Alliance”
Thanks for that, chjh. Can you remember what decision-making basis the SP wanted?
Comment by Strategist — 26 November, 2008 @ 5:21 pm
#18 sorry, missed that you already mentioned a “federal constitution”. How would this have worked?
Comment by Strategist — 26 November, 2008 @ 5:22 pm
chjh,
You criticise Mark for his past and you have a go at Doug for his view of what happened to your Socialist Alliance - fair enough - but what do you think we should do NOW?
Do you support the new workers’ party idea?
Are you going to the January conference on working-class political representation?
Comment by Karl Stewart — 26 November, 2008 @ 5:37 pm
I see the question as:
“Do you want a new workers’ party? Or are you happy with capitalism?
Comment by Karl Stewart — 26 November, 2008 @ 6:00 pm
But the CPGB was reborn in the wonderful shape of the Weekly Worker, (aka “twenty kooks and spooks”). They are waiting to hear from you, and receive all your organisation’s internal documents for prompt publication.
Comment by Cynical observer — 26 November, 2008 @ 6:32 pm
The sad news arrives that the SWP Central Committee voted by 10 votes to two to remove John Rees from the Central Committee this morning. There will now be much weeping and wailing all over a very small part of Hackney, followed by seven days of official mourning.
Comment by stop the witchhunt — 26 November, 2008 @ 6:46 pm
It is a simplistic misreading to argue that the marxism Today argument led to new labour.
Marxism Today was arguing (often in unnecesarily obscure language) that the left had failed to come to terms with the challenge of the changing nature of modern society, and needed to recalibrate itself. To create a new political coalition.
This is distinct fro the new Labour project becasue the MT coalition was always proposed as one where left wing political ideas had hegemony; whereas new labour grasped the idea of a coalition, but bowed their knee to Thatcherism. Not all coalitions are the same.
In evitably this became entwined with the politics of the CPGB, and what we might recognise an international crisis of offical communism, that had an inherent internal battle between the necessary task of coming to terms with Stalinism.
I would argue that the conclusion we should draw is quite the opposite, had the ideas of marxism today prevailed, then we would have been spared the experience of New Labour.
Comment by Andy Newman — 26 November, 2008 @ 8:21 pm
“It would be nice, just once, to see Mark’s hyper-criticisms of the rest of the left focussed on his own tradition.” cjh
Only too happy to oblige. The historic defeat of the left inflicted by Blair and Brown is one shared by all sections and traditions of the left. The tiny British end of the Eurocommunist tradition had already imploded in the early 1990s with the dissolution of the CPGB and the final issue of Marxism Today. The Euros fragemented, and it is true some became cheerleaders for new Labour tho’ most didnt and in 1998 a special one-off issue of Marxism Today on new Labour was produced with a cover pic of Blair and the headline ‘Wrong’. We were shrilly denounced by wide sections of the left for being premature in our judgement, sadly we were simply prescient. Astonishingly this special issue sold 20,000 copies and had to be reprinted twice.
The wider self-criticism I would admit to is that this tradition, of a critical and creative marxism, has singularly failed to extend and deepen this critique through the Blair/Brown years. The reasons are broadly the same as this wider defeat of the left. The dawning disapppintment of the early Blair years, the upsurge of activity against the war followed by demobilisation and demoralisation when we failed to stop it. Fragmentation, dissolution in the face of no obvious break from Labour.
How we turn this juggernaut of despair around goodness only knows. Tho the voluntarist nonsense that an economic crisis is opening up opportunities for the Left is one myth I could do without. Those opportunities will only occur should we find ways to engage with that mass of people who have given up on Labour and seek some kind of broadly social-democratic space for their ideals. The outside left should carefully consider why it has singularly failed to create any such space while asking itself how on earth the BNp ended up on the other hand with 12,000 members, 55 councillors, on the verge of getting MPs and MEPs. Does the UK political spectrum really have space for the Far Right but not the outside left?
Mark P
Comment by Mark P — 26 November, 2008 @ 8:28 pm
(Posts 2 and 23) Membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain was 4,000 at foundation and down to 2,500 a year later. By the 1926 General Strike it was up to 10,730, down to 2,555 in 1930 and up to 17,756 by the outbreak of war in 1939.
In 1941 it was 22,783 and by 1942 it was 56,000. Down to 38,5709 in 1947 it went up to 40,161 in 1949 and down to 35,24 in 1951. The drop in membership in 1956/57 was wiped out by 1963 when membership reached 34,281.
From then it declined to 20,638 in 1978, to 12,711 in 1985 and after a period of ‘eurocommunist’ leadership and purges, schism and split it was under 5,000.
By way of contrast the cyberspace ‘CPGB’ has rarely enjoyed a membership much greater in numbers than the size of its ‘provsional central committee’.
Comment by Anonymous — 26 November, 2008 @ 8:30 pm
As far as I remember the Socialist Party wanted the SA to give affiliates (meaning themselves) a veto over any decision making process. This was reflected in their ultimatist approach to the alliance - shortly before that the SP had demanded that they be allocated their chosen constituencies (possibly 22 of them)in which it was understood that both the candidate and campaign would be controlled by them with no input from other activists. It was either that or they wouldn’t participate in the alliance.
And Mark Perryman didn’t grow up politically in the Thatcher years. As far as I’m concerned his finest hour was in October 79 when he dragged loads of people out of a Madness gig to break up a National Front picket of a Tony Cliff meeting in Hull. It was all down after that
Comment by Geoff Collier — 26 November, 2008 @ 8:35 pm
It strikes me that apart from the electoral system, the hard left (for want of a better term) in Britain has two main problems - a plethora of Leninist sects that are incapable of working honestly with each other or anyone else, and a lamentable tendency to regroup around “charismatic” leaders with feet of clay. I am sure that by now the “wild”, non-aligned, non-doctrinaire leftists out there must outnumber all the build-the-party-sell-the-paper types. The question is - can we get organised without wasting all our time and energy dealing with tedious factionalists?
Comment by Francis King — 26 November, 2008 @ 9:29 pm
All very pessimistic and backward looking. Have you all given up hope?
Comment by Karl Stewart — 26 November, 2008 @ 10:03 pm
You don’t have to delve too far into the history of socialism to realise that most dawns tend to be false ones. So while I, for one, haven’t given up hope, I have given up belief, certainty and faith. As you get older, you have to give things up for the good of your health, mental and physical…
Comment by Francis King — 26 November, 2008 @ 10:13 pm
#28 The SWP position, supported by others who had great hopes the Socialist Alliance would move towards a fully -fledged party, wanted to move to one person one vote in important matters such as selection of candidates. This way, it was argued, many more people would join the Socialist Alliance as it would no longer be a carve up between the organised groups.
The Socialist Party, on the other hand, thought they would be done over by the SWP’s superior numbers. In particular, they said that they could not put themselves in a position where Dave Nellist, for example, might be deselected by a small group of SWP members in Coventry.
At the time it seemed to some it was impossible the SWP would be so stupid as to do something like that. It also showed the SP’s vulnerability if they thought that in their strongest area the SWP could outnumber them.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the arguments at the time, it was cavalier, to put it mildly, to push the SP out of the Socialist Alliance by forcing the one person one vote through, especially as the SWP leadership lost interest in the Socialist Alliance not long after.
Comment by setting the record straight — 26 November, 2008 @ 10:26 pm
Two things leap out at me from this strand.
Doug @ 16 says “The CNWP is not intended to be a Socialist Alliance Mark 2 i.e. an amalgamation of existing Left organisations.” In the real world that conception becomes one well organised, relatively big current dominating a looser group of activists. Been there. Done that. It’s crap. Pretending the rest of the left does not exist or is just stupid is an apolitical dead end.
Mark’s blues are grounded in what’s happening in the real world but that sort of despair leads only to the bottle. Neo-liberalism has suffered a major ideological defeat. We are in the early stages of a deep recession and the Arctic ice sheet may be gone within five years. That’s why it still makes sense to carry on with the time consuming and torturous work of trying to build a big political organisation to fight with. I’ve plumped for Respect but my hunch is that the radical left will look quite different by next Christmas after all sorts of reconfigurations.
Let’s not give up just yet.
Comment by Liam — 26 November, 2008 @ 11:09 pm
I think the demoralisation in this thread is indicative of the outlook of certain sections of the left who hold their hopes in electoralism rather than with the actual conditions we find ourselves in. For a socialist to claim that since the huge anti-war demo things have gone downhill even further is rather worrying. The left has grown gradually but steadily in the unions. Workers are taking more industrial action. Neo-liberalism has suffered a decisive blow. The left in Europe is experiencing a resurgence.
The main reason this hasn’t happened in the UK is because of the over reliance on the Labour Party to deliver reforms. Despite the failure of Labour to deliver reforms in the 70’s parts of the left still look to it or some form of it to bring about reform via capitalist democracy. The fact that Labour governments and the TU bureaucracy colluded in the 70’s to manage the system rather than deliver socialism paved the way for Thatcher and the ideology of neo-liberalism. New Labour continued that program in an effort to remain electable.
If the left in Labour hadn’t compromised and the TU bureaucracy hadn’t bottled it then perhaps the damage done by Thatcherism wouldn’t have persisted and Labour wouldn’t have adopted her neo-liberal politics. We are trying to rebuild the left under these conditions and after years of betrayal by Labour it’s no wonder workers aren’t flocking to the left…just yet…
For certain sections of the left, the focus on electoralism is the basis of the weakness of their politics and the reason for their dismal outlook. Thankfully, socialists have never relied entirely on votes to build the left.
While I would like to see the left work together electorially it is not the primary way to rebuild the left. We can benefit from working in a number of areas either together or separately. It’s pointless bewailing the state of the left until it fits our terms and conditions. Much better to accept the situation and get on with organising.
In the current political climate there are many opportunities for us to build upon the changes that have already occurred. It can’t always be onward and upward. The situation certainly isn’t as dire as some here believe and portray. If there is no level of optimism from activists even in the worst of situations (and we’re nowhere near that yet) then how are we going to encourage anyone to join us in the struggle?
Comment by Ray — 26 November, 2008 @ 11:32 pm
#32. “Whatever the rights and wrongs of the arguments at the time, it was cavalier, to put it mildly, to push the SP out of the Socialist Alliance by forcing the one person one vote through, especially as the SWP leadership lost interest in the Socialist Alliance not long after.”
No one pushed the SP out of the Socialist Alliance. They left of their own free will. I was at the 2001 Socialist Alliance conference. As I recall one of the most surreal aspects of the conference was that many SP members who had been previously uninvolved signed up as members in the morning just so that they could walk out in the afternoon!!!
The reasons for the SP walking out of the Socialist Alliance were purely sectarian in that they were not prepeared to remain part of a political formation that they could no longer dominate politically.
The SWP walked out of Respect last year for precisely the same reason.
And then of course there remains the question of how the SP and SWP behaved in Scotland.
Comment by Patrick Scott — 26 November, 2008 @ 11:40 pm
#33 Liam “my hunch is that the radical left will look quite different by next Christmas after all sorts of reconfigurations.”
Can we tempt you to share what you think could happen in the next 13 months?
Comment by Strategist — 27 November, 2008 @ 12:01 am
“The SWP walked out of Respect last year for precisely the same reason.”
A correction:
Galloway walked out of Respect last year for precisely the same reason.
Comment by Ray — 27 November, 2008 @ 12:33 am
#37: and where is the Respect that Galloway walked out of? Oh yes, that’s right, it’s got Galloway and Yaqoob as its most high profile members. So is there another Respect that Galloway walked out of? No. It there isn’t. There isn’t even a former Respect National Secretary playing any kind of significant political role anymore.
Comment by Nemesis — 27 November, 2008 @ 12:50 am
Regarding the Alliance one memeber one vote and a federalist conception, I am not aware of the specifics regarding the SP but there is some merit to a federalist approach.
Alliances, especially of the hard left tend to bring together forces which are both of different sizes and with little trust between them.
If securing the rights of minority groups through a federalist framework ensures they remain part of the broader alliance then this seems to me to be justified.
Of course individual members naturally are skeptical of these sort of arrangements but it seems like every time a proposal to move away from a federalist approach is pushed it is the larger party formation that pushes it.
There is no point setting up a powerfull binding democratic structure when the constituents are not going to live by the decisions and just walk out. You can win a vote with 60% and the other 40 leave, you just get a smaller coalition.
One approach that could work is one person one vote but set a very high standard for voting on policy or constitutional matters, make it 66% of 75%.
But of course these sort of things can only work if the hard left groups don’t do stupid things like try and roll each other for preselection and adopt a winner takes all attitude.
Comment by Kieran — 27 November, 2008 @ 12:53 am
“#37: and where is the Respect that Galloway walked out of? Oh yes, that’s right, it’s got Galloway and Yaqoob as its most high profile members. So is there another Respect that Galloway walked out of? No. It there isn’t. There isn’t even a former Respect National Secretary playing any kind of significant political role anymore.”
Are you talking about Renewal whose leading figures support New Labour in elections and witch hunt social workers? You’re welcome to this rightward moving carcass you call Respect. If the stink of your politics doesn’t put people off it’ll be the decaying support for your facsimile of Respect. Well done and good luck! It fits your nasty sectarian politics like a glove, Nemesis.
Comment by Ray — 27 November, 2008 @ 1:53 am
#40 Oh so bitter Ray. Could you tell us why the SWP CC has sacked your erstwhile leader John Rees who engineered the SWP/Respect debacle with his fellow Central Committee members. If not on this thread, then maybe the one now set up to discuss this phenomenon. And which social worker has Respect been witch-hunting? That’s a new one on me. You get sadder and nastier, the more your justification for the madly sectarian behaviour of the SWP has come unstuck.
Comment by truth and reconciliation — 27 November, 2008 @ 2:52 am
The politics represented by Ray, of scornful sneeting at other left wingers who are not quite so left wing as the SWP has very little to do with the historical tradition of the SWP’s politics, who always used to try to avoid that trap, and find common ground to work with people.
Comment by Andy Newman — 27 November, 2008 @ 9:48 am
In reply to Kieran at #39 - the people who were keeenest on the idea of on-member-one-vote were independents inside the Socialist Alliance, who had no effective voice inside the SP’s proposed constitution.
The sticking point for the SP was that they wanted a veto. Their constitution gave each left group a veto at national level, and a veto inside each branch to each group with more than a certain number of members.
You’re right to say that there’s no point in a democratic structure if people are just going to walk out, but this ignore the fact that by the time of the conference the SP were halfway out of the door. In Hackney, for instance, they had already stood a candidate of their own against an SA candidate in a council byelection, having (decisively) lost the vote at an SA meeting.
And no-one was ever planning to deselect Dave Nellist, and at the time the SP never claimed that. There was a discussion about Dave Nellist’s position as chair of the SA, but it was independents who were challenging him, not the SWP.
Comment by chjh — 27 November, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
Chjh is wrong on the above, and I can only assume maliciously and mendaciously wrong.
The “charge” for one member one vote was not led by independents in the Socialist Alliance. It was led by the SWP, although they used the ISG (at that point still its reliable auxiliary) and a handful of tame independents to front it. All of those independents have since been chewed up and spat out by the SWP when they at some point later had the temerity to disagree with the SWP about something.
The largest group of independents voted for neither the SWP’s centralised constitution nor the Socialist Party’s federal proposal but for another federal proposal put forward by a few independents. That proposal was also acceptable to the Socialist Party, which gave it’s second preference vote to it. To portray the SWP’s decision - and it was entirely the SWP’s decision - as something forced upon them by the clamour of independent members of the SA is quite simply a lie.
A second lie is contained in the claim that the Socialist Party’s preferred constitution would have denied independent members a voice. In fact it would have given the same rights to ad hoc groups of independent members that it gave to the formal left groups and the numbers bar was deliberately set low enough for that provision to actually be useful.
However, that’s getting off the point because the Socialist Party had made it very clear both in the run up to the conference and at the conference itself that any of the various constitutional options that protected the rights of minorities, including even an amended version of the SWP’s constitution would be acceptable to it. The only constitutional option that it would not accept was the unrestrained majority rule option that the SWP was pushing.
We should when discussing this be very clear that back in those days, when the SWP was larger than it is now and the SP was smaller than it is now, unrestrained majority rule meant simply that the SWP had the right to make all decisions for the alliance. That isn’t an alliance in any meaningful sense of the term. It would be the subordination of other members and group to the (rapidly changing) whims of the SWP.
The Socialist Party at the time argued that the alliance only had value as a place where the left could work together respectfully and which could be the “outline of an outline” of a new working class party. As the private property of the SWP it had neither value nor any useful future. And sure enough, the SWP proceeded to prove their point by first running their version of the alliance into the ground and then winding it up. Groups of workers would not join an “alliance” which simply meant subordinating themselves to the SWP.
Comment by Irish Mark P — 27 November, 2008 @ 2:46 pm
BTW I was going to publish my review of Peter Taafe’s new book about the SWP tooday, but given the news about JOhn Rees and discussion that has entailed I will delay slightly.
Comment by Andy Newman — 27 November, 2008 @ 2:51 pm
One thing is very clear from the above posts - cobbling together “alliances” of Leninist sects is doomed to failure. A few months of cohabitation and a lifetime of recrimination. A genuinely new force on the left will stand a chance of survival only if our current Leninist groups either stay out, or honestly dissolve their parties and papers into the new organisation. Their political assumptions and organisational practices have wrecked every new initiative so far, and I’m sure that give half a chance they’ll wreck the next one, too.
Comment by Francis King — 27 November, 2008 @ 3:02 pm
Andy, out of selfish curiousity I’d encourage you not to wait. For some reason my copy of the book hasn’t arrived yet, and the Irish SP doesn’t have any, so I have no idea what’s actually in the book.
Comment by Irish Mark P — 27 November, 2008 @ 3:23 pm
#44 Mendacious and malicious? Marvellous!
Interestingly, in his very long reply Mark P doesn’t attempt to deny my assertion that the SP were halfway out of the door of the SA, nor does he try to refute the fact that by this point the SP had already stood against an SA candidate in Hackney.
In the Hackney branch (the largest in the SA), the argument for one-member-one-vote was very definitely led by independents. Of course the SWP were in favour of it – the alternative was an undemocratic constitution which would have given a minority a veto.
It is true that the SP’s constitution did allow people not in a left group some sort of voice if they jumped through the appropriate hoops. What it didn’t do was allow someone who was simply an individual member to have a meaningful voice. It’s also true that the SP made it clear that they would walk if the majority position prevailed, and this may have swung some votes.
The largest group organised group of independents may have voted for the halfway house position - the largest number of people who were not members of any group voted for one-member-one-vote. As did every other left group. And after all, why would you not? How do you democratically stop every member having an equal say?
Incidentally, I don’t think it’s true that the SP is much bigger now that it was then, nor that the SWP is much smaller.
Comment by chjh — 27 November, 2008 @ 4:20 pm
Yes, both mendacious and malicious.
I didn’t bother dealing with your point about the Hackney candidate because it wasn’t important to this discussion. If you think it matters though, you should at least try to put it in its correct context. That is, that a group of more than a dozen Hackney shopstewards had decided to stand a stand a candidate in the council election. Because that candidate was an SP member, the SWP led local SA took the extremely sectarian line of insisting on standing an SA candidate against them.
This was during a period when the SWP were arguing - entirely seriously although it seems laughable in retrospect - that the Socialist Alliance had established itself as the channel through which left wing electoral opposition to Blair would flow. Consequently they pushed the alliance to take a “stand under our banner or we’ll stand against you” approach to groups of workers who were interested in standing against New Labour. This happened in Hackney, it happened on a larger scale against the Campaign Against Tube Privatisation and it happened a little later when tenant activists in Southwark decided to stand.
That whole issue was an example of the SWP’s extreme arrogance and yes, that sectarian approach to other groups of workers certainly did raise doubts in the minds of the Socialist Party and others about the usefulness of an SWP controlled “alliance”.
It may well be that some independents in Hackney supported the SWP takeover of the Alliance, but nationally that was not the case and it was not the case at the conference. Neither did all of the other left groups vote for the SWP constitution. You are simply factually wrong about this.
The SWP constitution got just over half of the vote and was supported by the SWP, its then adjunct the ISG and a handful of tame independents. There were then five other options. The Socialist Party’s option came second, followed by another federal option put forward by independents and also supported by the AWL. Then there were three other options put forward by the CPGB, the RDG and Workers Power. The option that received the most support from independents - by some distance - was the federal option that came third with around a hundred votes.
So no, the SWP’s constitution was not supported by most independents or even a large minority of them. And it was not supported by all of the other left groups. In fact only the ISG supported it. It’s tiresome to have to go into this level of detail, but as you seem determined to continue peddling the same falsehoods, it’s sadly necessary.
It is little short of hilarious to see a supporter of the SWP claim that a constitution which gave the SWP absolute and total control over the Socialist Alliance somehow gave more power to independents than an option which would have given even smallish ad hoc groups of independents the power to force the alliance to take into account their concerns. Truly up is down and black is white in the world of SWP apologists.
However, the relative merits of the SP’s proposal aren’t particularly significant in the context of the Socialist Party’s walkout, as the SP made it clear that it would stay in the alliance under any constitution that protected the rights of minorities - ie under any of the constitutions proposed except an unamended version of the SWP option (and perhaps the CPGB one, I’m not sure on that detail). The SP’s own preferred option was never a take it or leave it proposal. When the SWP rammed through its constituion, the group of Labour Independent councillors in Preston left the alliance as did Red Action.
Finally, I’m not sure what you mean by “much” in your last sentence. The Socialist Party is visibly larger than it was in 2001. The SWP is visibly smaller. That isn’t really open to doubt although the degree to which the two organisations have changed size is.
Comment by Irish Mark P — 27 November, 2008 @ 4:50 pm
Brown’s been playing a very long game, but there’s no need to worry.
It’s only a matter of time before the entire cabinet is taken over by all the ex-IMG, CPGB and closet Marxists in it.
———————————————————————————–
Alistair Darling (IMG)
The Milliband Brothers (sons of Ralph)
Alan Johnson (CPGB)
ex cabinet member Alan Milburn (IMG)
Comment by prianikoff — 27 November, 2008 @ 5:30 pm
#25 - Andy, dear comrade, I’m all for having this discussion about a way forward, but it should not be based on a wholesale misunderstanding or rewriting of history.
Those of us who lived and battled through the real CPGB (not the cynical parody which has hijacked the name today) could never accept your contention that the Marxism Today/Eurocommunist faction aimed to build a coalition ‘where left wing political ideas had hegemony’. Or that, unlike New Labour, the MTD project did not involve ‘bowing the knee’ to ‘Thatcherism’. Or that this phase of the inner-party struggle in the CPGB was part of the necessary task of ‘coming to terms with Stalinism’.
Who has fed you this tripe and - more to the point - why have you swallowed and then regurgitated it at #25 above?
In my experience and that of many others, the Eurocommunists (for want of a better short-hand term) persistently and aggressively attacked the very notion that the primary characteristic of modern society was its division into classes, and that class struggle was the only way to abolish it. Even those of us who understood and practiced the need for the working class to forge alliances were unceasingly attacked as ‘class reductionists’ by the Euros for retaining a class perspective . Emphasis on a continuing and central role for trade unions and industrial militancy led to us being characterised as ‘narrow’ and ‘economistic’. Far from seeking to build a coalition under the hegemony of left wing ideas, the Euros sought only alliances to the right of the Labour left. Indeed, Benn, Scargill, Livingstone and others of their ilk were frequently criticised within the CPGB as ’sectarian’ and - a favourite of MTD long before the term was taken up by the BBC and the tabloids - the ‘hard left’. Obviously, anyone further left was totally beyond the pale. The Liberals and Sir Alfred Sherman were infinitely more acceptable than any 1980s equivalent of John McDonnell and Bob Crow, never mind of Lindsey German or Geroge Galloway.
During the miners strike, Scargill was relentlessly attacked by the Euros at internal party meetings for ‘mindless militancy’ and the rest of it. The CPGB revisionist leadership which had invited the Euros into their ranks published many more leaflets and brochures attacking the Morning Star (the only pro-strike daily paper) than supporting the NUM during the dispute.
I remember the endless arguments with Euros who were proposing incomes policies, supporting the EEC, disparaging policies for public ownership, opposing solidarity industrial action with the miners and Wapping printers etc.
On the strategic level, they tried to reinterpret the CPGB’s perspective of a broad democratic alliance led by the working class, aimed against state-monopoly capitalism, as a broad alliance of ‘new social forces’ (they had just discovered women, students, black people and youth), not led by anyone at all, against ‘Thatcherism’.
Those leading women and black activists (eg. Marj Mayo, Liz Wilson, Mary Davis, Trevor Carter) who persisted in linking women’s and black liberation with class society and Marxism were systematically excluded from the party’s official intellectual life.
To say anything positive about the Soviet Union or other socialist states meant instant branding as a ‘Tankie’, regardless of positions taken on the Stalin period, Kruschev’s revelations or on the 1968 intervention in Czechoslovakia (which I have always opposed). This was no ‘coming to terms with Stalinism’, least of all by the Euros who called for and achieved by far the biggest purge in the CPGB’s history, involving the wholesale shut-down of elected congresses and committees, and the mass expulsion of those who did not agree with their creeping destruction of the party.
And by the way, Andy, an article like your recent posting on the GDR - with its positive assessments of aspects of that society - would never have stood a chance of publication in MTD or 7 Days. But you would have been instantly marked down as a Stalinist, Tankie and Straight Left factionalist (no evidence required), to be kept out of all positions in the party.
MTD and the Euros regarded the working class - redefined as the blue-collar proletariat for this occasion only - as a shrinking and increasingly atomised, powerless section of society. ‘Thatcherism’, on the other hand, was treated with awe. Any idea that Thatcher could be brought down by popular struggle (Poll Tax anyone?) or that Labour could ever again win a General Election without the Liberals (it’s the allegedly shrinking working class, you see) was comprehensively rubbished inside the CPGB. If anyone bowed the knee to far right Toryism and monopoly capitalism, it was MTD and the Eurocommunists with their class collaborationism and their denigration of militant trade unionism.
Asking the right questions, and pointing to deficiencies within the labour movement and the left is one thing. And the Euros had a monopoly of neither. But doing so in order to deny the reality and the potential of class struggle is something else entirely. Add in defeatism (always dressed up as ‘realism’ of course) and class collaborationism (dressed up as ‘modernism’, ‘new thinking’ for ‘new times’, naturally) and you have something of no value to socialists or Communists.
Had the ideas of MTD prevailed, would we have been spared the experience of New Labour, as Andy claims?
Hardly, because they did prevail - inside the Labour Party. Much of what I hear from Mandelson, Brown, Milburn, Blair and the rest bears a very strong resemblance to the arguemnts put forward in MTD and by the Eurocommunists back then (although consistently not by all of them, nor by many who misguidedly followed the McLennan ‘leadership’). I heard it with my own ears and read it with my own eyes on hundreds of occasions in the old CPGB, and no number of denials by the few politically active (ex-) Eurocommunists today can erase that.
Where those Euro ideas prevailed within the CPGB, what were the results? The end of the Party’s leading role in the Broad Left which built and led a mass students movement in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s (the Euros took over the CPGB students committee and steered us away from the alliance with the LP left and into one with the Liberal Students). Then the collapse of student organisation, followed soon after by the disintegration of the YCL, taken over by the Euros and their exciting new non-class ideas. Their takeover of the CPGB led within a few years to the whole Party’s liquidation. And just look at the rubbish being published by Lawrence & Wishart, long under Euro control, if you want to see where their ideas end up when they prevail.
Had the Eurocommunists succeeded in their campaign against the Morning Star, that too would have died almost 20 years ago. And all for what? They couldn’t even keep Marxism Today alive, despite huge subventions from Party funds.
Mark Perryman can engage in all the ‘Woe are we!’ bletherings he wants. But I don’t remember him in the CPGB fighting for class and socialist politics, for alliances on the left and so on. On the contrary, he was one of the most vociferous in denouncing those who did.
Comment by Communist survivor — 27 November, 2008 @ 8:43 pm
Communist Survivor.
Yu ask who has been feednf me these sieas, well myself really.
The time you describe I was reading both sides of the dispute, MT and the star.
Largely the description of the events you give chimes with my own recollection. When at #25 above I said: “Inevitably this became entwined with the politics of the CPGB, and what we might recognise an international crisis of offical communism, that had an inherent internal battle between the necessary task of coming to terms with Stalinism.”
This was not meant by me to imply that MT were heroic opponents of stalinism, and the more traditonal parts of the CP were incorrigible. I am sure that many of us remember the disgraceful undemocratic manouevres of the MT supporters at that time, the shameful failure by some to support the mners, and the blethering about macho picket lines.
What i meant is that if you take a look in hindsight at the body of idea that MT were arguing in that period then it stands up rather well; and the over-riding thesis that the left needed to construct a new coalition to replace those parts fo tradiational labourism that had been overtaen by changes in society remains relevent.
But the vehicle around which those ideas were beig promoted was an increasingluy liquidationist tendency in an increasingly dysfunctional and fationalised party. MT were guilty of many of the Stalisit organisation methods, as you describe, and I am sure that in a polarised factional atmosphere what often happens is that each side in a faction fight end up becomming the caractature that the other side describes.
The fact remains that the body of ideas argued by MT in that period are not the same as the ideas that motivated New Labour, although there was overlap. My essential argument here is that New Labour succeeded because they convinced the centre grouond in the party that there was no alternative if labour was to win election again, and the left (Scargill, Benn, et al) were not at that time arguing an electoraly credible strategy for the party.
had the left been able to dveelop an credible alternatve model of an election winning coalition, then we woudl have been spared new Labour. Part of the reason that such ideas could not be developed was that the proposition essentially became distorted through being the contested factional ground in the CPGB - that meant that the thesis that MT was arguing became polarised more to the right, and those parts of the CP who may have been sympathetic to a more left wing and less antagonistic version of the same argument were repulsed away and had no input into it.
The reason I take the position I do on this, is that currently there is a real danger of the left being so scared by the boogie man of MT, that they reject the opportunities that the current situation is presenting. NOt all arguments about trying to change the left to be better suited to the modern world lead to New labour, and there is an essentialy sectarian tendency to compare everyone in the labour and progressive movement to the langauge and norms of Labour Party circa arouund 1983, and dismiss anyone outside of that bubble.
Comment by Andy Newman — 27 November, 2008 @ 10:26 pm