”The left has the difficult task of accepting and explaining to others that the old routes into the exercise of power and influence involving internal Labour Party mobilisations and manoeuvres have largely been closed down. We have to face up to the challenge of identifying and developing new routes into effective political activity.”
The endorsement of Gordon Brown for leader of the Labour Party in May could not have been more overwhelming, with 308 MPs nominating Brown, including rebels like Bob Marshall-Andrews. Left candidate, McDonnell, failed to achieve the support of even the soft left within the parliamentary party, nor the backing of any major union, and on the National Executive Committee (NEC), when a motion was moved to reduce the required number of nominations only two members voted for it.
Those of the neo-liberal right within Labour have irreversibly and structurally embedded their victory into the party’s DNA. The rules and constitution have been changed to eliminate the levers that the left used to exercise influence; the conference is a meaningless rally; the social composition of the membership has shifted hugely towards managerial types; the pro-business, pro-war policies mean few activists under thirty would look at the party as anything remotely progressive. Ward meetings are sparse and poorly attended, and the party apparatus is an empty shell in most of the country. Milbank prevents left candidates being selected and the reduced powers of local authorities have removed the base from which the left has in the past built support from the bottom up. The union link now exists more in form than in content. Whereas union branches used to send delegates to General Committee meetings (the old General Management Committees) in each Constituency Labour Party (CLP), this practice has almost disappeared; lay activists and even full-timers are much less likely to be Labour Party members than they ever were before. The only concession won by the affiliated unions was the sop of the Warwick agreement before the election, none of which polices have been implemented. And now they have relinquished their right to pose policy motions to conference.
The aspect of hope in the situation is that the Labour Party may have irrevocably been won for the right, but the political views of its electoral base have not followed and are now to the left of it. And some trade unions find themselves in the position of directly being the ideological opponents of neo-liberalism without the intermediate role of the Labour Party, for example with the GMB’s campaign over Private equity, or the RMT’s campaign for public ownership of the railways. What is more, in the Labour Party’s deputy leader ballot some 100,000 trade unionists voted for the centre left, Jon Cruddas. Compass, the organisation within the Labour Party associated with Jon Cruddas, produces a consistent left critique of New Labour, in both ideological and policy terms.
The major unions will not abandon the Labour Party, as there is no other viable option for them to pursue for influencing government. And as long as the Labour Party relies upon union funding, and the active support of TU officials during elections, the Party will retain the link, which in turn obscures the full extent to which Labour has become, in the words of Jon Cruddas and Jon Tricket: “a party that continues the neo-liberal revolution’”(New Statesman 6 December 2007).
The constructive legacy of the McDonnell campaign is a nucleus of activists who are less isolated and more motivated than they were before, reflected in the relatively buoyant conference of the Labour Representation Committee in November. There is an increased recognition, as John McDonnell puts it, that ‘the left needs to open itself to co-operation with progressive campaigns within our community, learning from them, treating them with mutual respect, rejecting any patronising or sectarian approach and, where needed, to serve as the catalyst to instigate and facilitate campaigning activity. Creativity is also needed to stimulate the analysis, debate and discussion of the ideas and principles which we may share in our wish to transform our society” (Morning Star 28 September 2007).
Outside the Labour Party the most significant left organisations are the Green Party and Respect. The Greens include a significant left wing, and the Marxist Derek Wall has twice won elections to represent the party as national speaker. The Green Left platform within the party is seeking to consolidate the gains that the left has made in terms of policy. There are very many impressive Green Party members at local and national level. However, the decentralised nature of the party has also allowed local Green councillors to go into coalition with Lib Dems and Tories; the electoralism of the Greens means they are not a party immediately attractive to campaigning activists; and the culture within the party is unappealing to trade unionists.
A much younger project than the Green Party, Respect – the Unity Coalition, hit the ground running and is the first English party to the left of Labour to win a seat in Westminster since 1945. Respect was also only 3,000 votes short of winning a second seat in parliament. It was the first time that the left had sunk deep roots among non-white disadvantaged inner city communities, with opposition to the Iraq war leading to many Muslims voting for Respect. In May 2006, Respect built on its success by winning 15 council seats in East London, and one in Birmingham. It has subsequently won council elections in Preston, Bolsover, and another seat in Birmingham
Yet for all this electoral success there were problems. Membership was shrinking not growing and a key layer of former Labour Party left-wingers who had been active in the Socialist Alliance (an earlier attempt at uniting England’s highly divided far-left) either never joined Respect or left it within the first two years. The national conferences in both 2004 and 2005 were marked by numerous independent socialists resigning afterwards, due to an intolerant atmosphere where any disagreement was shouted down. The decision of Galloway to enter the reality TV show Big Brother damaged Respect’s reputation, and exposed the weak relationship between Galloway and Respect national officers. Galloway’s judgement on that occasion was questionable, but his subsequent media exposure, (his Talksport radio show gets 750,000 listeners) has allowed him to reach a truly mass audience for socialist politics.
Outside the strongholds of East London, Birmingham and Preston, Respect attracted very few activists who were not also SWP members. Many had written Respect off, including myself. but Respect’s ability to hold a council seat in the Shadwell ward in Tower Hamlets in August, after a councillor had resigned, showed that the electoral base is sustainable. Respect has now split. With Galloway, the majority of the councillors and most independent activists on one side (Respect Renewal), and on the other side largely just the SWP, and very few others. Significantly, a number of new activists have now joined Respect Renewal. The precise details of the split have been thrashed out on the internet, but they follow a fairly critical, yet diplomatically worded, letter from George Galloway to the Respect National Council in August (see www.socialistunity.com/?p=726). The subsequent response by the SWP to that letter and resulting polarisation in Respect led to escalating tension and two rival conferences in November.
The immediate cause of the crisis was the realisation by Galloway that with the prospect of a snap general election, Respect had no candidates selected, no money in the bank and had lost half its members. These in themselves would have been sufficient reasons to doubt the competence of the National Secretary, but in addition John Rees had allegedly mishandled a potentially illegal foreign financial donation behind Galloway’s back, a matter that has now been referred to the Electoral Commission for investigation. The political reasons for the inertia and breakdown of relationships within Respect are more complex. The SWP’s theory of Respect being a ‘united front of a special type’ led it to try to build two organisations in parallel, the SWP and Respect. But when relating to wider campaigns, and in the unions, they wear their SWP hat. On demonstrations they carry Socialist Worker placards, they sell their own newspaper and blocked launching a Respect paper. They seek to recruit to the SWP, not Respect.
SWP theoretician Alex Callinicos argues “in such broad coalitions it is essential for revolutionaries to retain independent organisation in order to combine building the coalition with the objective that gives this work its meaning – the construction of a mass revolutionary party” (International Socialist Tendency, Bulletin 2, 2002). And John Rees has expressed his view of the SWP’s role very clearly: “In this project the socialists in Respect, who have the clearest understanding of the general situation in which we operate and the greatest organisational ability to create the alliances, have a crucial role to play. Where they are capable of engaging and leading the wider forces, Respect will succeed. If they fail, Respect will fail. There is too much at stake to allow this to happen, and too much to be won not to succeed’”(Socialist Worker 14 May 2005).
So there was a two-tier membership as the SWP built its own organisation but sought to play the decisive political role in guiding Respect. As John Rees admitted, the SWP believed there was too much at stake for them to fail to be the leading force within Respect, so other members of Respect who saw it as their main political project had to rotate around the SWP’s agenda. Non-SWP members of Respect believe that building Respect is worth doing in its own terms, and is not only worth doing as a step towards ‘the construction of a mass revolutionary party. Fundamentally the SWP had a different agenda to other Respect members. The part of Respect aligned with George Galloway has the main base of membership in East London and Birmingham, and viable groups in Manchester, Cambridge, Bristol and elsewhere. They will also retain the voter loyalty. So Respect is in a contradictory position of having strong local electoral bases, and a high national profile, without having a national organisation. Galloway is also a controversial figure, who is simultaneously probably more able than anyone else of building a loyal electoral base and a mass audience, but is not always popular among labour movement activists.
So socialists in England are dispersed over a mosaic of organisations: the Labour Party, The Greens and Respect, as well as smaller groups, and of course non-aligned activists. Each of these projects has sufficient weight to retain the loyalty of their own supporters, but none is strong enough to pull everyone else towards it. The task must therefore to be to seek some mutual support or at least non-aggression on the electoral front while simultaneously seeking collaborative practical work over campaigning issues, without organisational pre-conditions. In this way trust and confidence can be built, as well as exploring the scope for possible future convergence. Where local campaigning issues present themselves this is more straightforward, but elsewhere there needs to be some imagination about perhaps local publications or conferences, as well of course as work in the unions.
Andy Newman, lives in Swindon, is a member of Respect, and an Associate Member of the Respect Renewal National Council. He is also a National Steering Committee member of the Stop the War Coalition and runs the blogwww.socialistunity.com.
”The left has the difficult task of accepting and explaining to others that the old routes into the exercise of power and influence involving internal Labour Party mobilisations and manoeuvres have largely been closed down. We have to face up to the challenge of identifying and developing new routes into effective political activity.”
The endorsement of Gordon Brown for leader of the Labour Party in May could not have been more overwhelming, with 308 MPs nominating Brown, including rebels like Bob Marshall-Andrews. Left candidate, McDonnell, failed to achieve the support of even the soft left within the parliamentary party, nor the backing of any major union, and on the National Executive Committee (NEC), when a motion was moved to reduce the required number of nominations only two members voted for it.
Those of the neo-liberal right within Labour have irreversibly and structurally embedded their victory into the party’s DNA. The rules and constitution have been changed to eliminate the levers that the left used to exercise influence; the conference is a meaningless rally; the social composition of the membership has shifted hugely towards managerial types; the pro-business, pro-war policies mean few activists under thirty would look at the party as anything remotely progressive. Ward meetings are sparse and poorly attended, and the party apparatus is an empty shell in most of the country. Milbank prevents left candidates being selected and the reduced powers of local authorities have removed the base from which the left has in the past built support from the bottom up. The union link now exists more in form than in content. Whereas union branches used to send delegates to General Committee meetings (the old General Management Committees) in each Constituency Labour Party (CLP), this practice has almost disappeared; lay activists and even full-timers are much less likely to be Labour Party members than they ever were before. The only concession won by the affiliated unions was the sop of the Warwick agreement before the election, none of which polices have been implemented. And now they have relinquished their right to pose policy motions to conference.
The aspect of hope in the situation is that the Labour Party may have irrevocably been won for the right, but the political views of its electoral base have not followed and are now to the left of it. And some trade unions find themselves in the position of directly being the ideological opponents of neo-liberalism without the intermediate role of the Labour Party, for example with the GMB’s campaign over Private equity, or the RMT’s campaign for public ownership of the railways. What is more, in the Labour Party’s deputy leader ballot some 100,000 trade unionists voted for the centre left, Jon Cruddas. Compass, the organisation within the Labour Party associated with Jon Cruddas, produces a consistent left critique of New Labour, in both ideological and policy terms.
The major unions will not abandon the Labour Party, as there is no other viable option for them to pursue for influencing government. And as long as the Labour Party relies upon union funding, and the active support of TU officials during elections, the Party will retain the link, which in turn obscures the full extent to which Labour has become, in the words of Jon Cruddas and Jon Tricket: “a party that continues the neo-liberal revolution’”(New Statesman 6 December 2007).
The constructive legacy of the McDonnell campaign is a nucleus of activists who are less isolated and more motivated than they were before, reflected in the relatively buoyant conference of the Labour Representation Committee in November. There is an increased recognition, as John McDonnell puts it, that ‘the left needs to open itself to co-operation with progressive campaigns within our community, learning from them, treating them with mutual respect, rejecting any patronising or sectarian approach and, where needed, to serve as the catalyst to instigate and facilitate campaigning activity. Creativity is also needed to stimulate the analysis, debate and discussion of the ideas and principles which we may share in our wish to transform our society” (Morning Star 28 September 2007).
Outside the Labour Party the most significant left organisations are the Green Party and Respect. The Greens include a significant left wing, and the Marxist Derek Wall has twice won elections to represent the party as national speaker. The Green Left platform within the party is seeking to consolidate the gains that the left has made in terms of policy. There are very many impressive Green Party members at local and national level. However, the decentralised nature of the party has also allowed local Green councillors to go into coalition with Lib Dems and Tories; the electoralism of the Greens means they are not a party immediately attractive to campaigning activists; and the culture within the party is unappealing to trade unionists.
A much younger project than the Green Party, Respect – the Unity Coalition, hit the ground running and is the first English party to the left of Labour to win a seat in Westminster since 1945. Respect was also only 3,000 votes short of winning a second seat in parliament. It was the first time that the left had sunk deep roots among non-white disadvantaged inner city communities, with opposition to the Iraq war leading to many Muslims voting for Respect. In May 2006, Respect built on its success by winning 15 council seats in East London, and one in Birmingham. It has subsequently won council elections in Preston, Bolsover, and another seat in Birmingham
Yet for all this electoral success there were problems. Membership was shrinking not growing and a key layer of former Labour Party left-wingers who had been active in the Socialist Alliance (an earlier attempt at uniting England’s highly divided far-left) either never joined Respect or left it within the first two years. The national conferences in both 2004 and 2005 were marked by numerous independent socialists resigning afterwards, due to an intolerant atmosphere where any disagreement was shouted down. The decision of Galloway to enter the reality TV show Big Brother damaged Respect’s reputation, and exposed the weak relationship between Galloway and Respect national officers. Galloway’s judgement on that occasion was questionable, but his subsequent media exposure, (his Talksport radio show gets 750,000 listeners) has allowed him to reach a truly mass audience for socialist politics.
Outside the strongholds of East London, Birmingham and Preston, Respect attracted very few activists who were not also SWP members. Many had written Respect off, including myself. but Respect’s ability to hold a council seat in the Shadwell ward in Tower Hamlets in August, after a councillor had resigned, showed that the electoral base is sustainable. Respect has now split. With Galloway, the majority of the councillors and most independent activists on one side (Respect Renewal), and on the other side largely just the SWP, and very few others. Significantly, a number of new activists have now joined Respect Renewal. The precise details of the split have been thrashed out on the internet, but they follow a fairly critical, yet diplomatically worded, letter from George Galloway to the Respect National Council in August (see www.socialistunity.com/?p=726). The subsequent response by the SWP to that letter and resulting polarisation in Respect led to escalating tension and two rival conferences in November.
The immediate cause of the crisis was the realisation by Galloway that with the prospect of a snap general election, Respect had no candidates selected, no money in the bank and had lost half its members. These in themselves would have been sufficient reasons to doubt the competence of the National Secretary, but in addition John Rees had allegedly mishandled a potentially illegal foreign financial donation behind Galloway’s back, a matter that has now been referred to the Electoral Commission for investigation. The political reasons for the inertia and breakdown of relationships within Respect are more complex. The SWP’s theory of Respect being a ‘united front of a special type’ led it to try to build two organisations in parallel, the SWP and Respect. But when relating to wider campaigns, and in the unions, they wear their SWP hat. On demonstrations they carry Socialist Worker placards, they sell their own newspaper and blocked launching a Respect paper. They seek to recruit to the SWP, not Respect.
SWP theoretician Alex Callinicos argues “in such broad coalitions it is essential for revolutionaries to retain independent organisation in order to combine building the coalition with the objective that gives this work its meaning – the construction of a mass revolutionary party” (International Socialist Tendency, Bulletin 2, 2002). And John Rees has expressed his view of the SWP’s role very clearly: “In this project the socialists in Respect, who have the clearest understanding of the general situation in which we operate and the greatest organisational ability to create the alliances, have a crucial role to play. Where they are capable of engaging and leading the wider forces, Respect will succeed. If they fail, Respect will fail. There is too much at stake to allow this to happen, and too much to be won not to succeed’”(Socialist Worker 14 May 2005).
So there was a two-tier membership as the SWP built its own organisation but sought to play the decisive political role in guiding Respect. As John Rees admitted, the SWP believed there was too much at stake for them to fail to be the leading force within Respect, so other members of Respect who saw it as their main political project had to rotate around the SWP’s agenda. Non-SWP members of Respect believe that building Respect is worth doing in its own terms, and is not only worth doing as a step towards ‘the construction of a mass revolutionary party. Fundamentally the SWP had a different agenda to other Respect members. The part of Respect aligned with George Galloway has the main base of membership in East London and Birmingham, and viable groups in Manchester, Cambridge, Bristol and elsewhere. They will also retain the voter loyalty. So Respect is in a contradictory position of having strong local electoral bases, and a high national profile, without having a national organisation. Galloway is also a controversial figure, who is simultaneously probably more able than anyone else of building a loyal electoral base and a mass audience, but is not always popular among labour movement activists.
So socialists in England are dispersed over a mosaic of organisations: the Labour Party, The Greens and Respect, as well as smaller groups, and of course non-aligned activists. Each of these projects has sufficient weight to retain the loyalty of their own supporters, but none is strong enough to pull everyone else towards it. The task must therefore to be to seek some mutual support or at least non-aggression on the electoral front while simultaneously seeking collaborative practical work over campaigning issues, without organisational pre-conditions. In this way trust and confidence can be built, as well as exploring the scope for possible future convergence. Where local campaigning issues present themselves this is more straightforward, but elsewhere there needs to be some imagination about perhaps local publications or conferences, as well of course as work in the unions.
Andy Newman, lives in Swindon, is a member of Respect, and an Associate Member of the Respect Renewal National Council. He is also a National Steering Committee member of the Stop the War Coalition and runs the blog www.socialistunity.com.