Searching for the Left

eddie — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:25:00 +0000

Faced with a Labour government which is resolutely set on ensconcing itself as a centre right nationalist party, it is time for the left to start making new connections.

Compared with its counterparts in Continental Europe, the organised left in Britain has been unusually stable. Founded in the late nineteenth century, twenty or thirty years before the British Labour Party, most European socialist parties underwent at least three great convulsions in the twentieth century: they were split by the Bolshevik Revolution, driven underground by fascist dictators and reinvented after the collapse of Communism. In this sense these parties have a history written into them, which acknowledges that the world can change and that political formations are not immutable. Even now, the map of the European left is shifting, with realignments under way in both Germany and Italy. Britain, however, remains an exception to the European norm. Here the left has revolved around a single political formation, the Labour Party, which has been largely untouched by any of the convulsions, partly because of its late formation and partly out of simple contingency.

The mirror image to Labour’s stable position on the left is that of the Conservatives on the right. For almost a century, Great Britain has been a two-party state in which power alternates between left and right. Indeed, if one substitutes Liberal for Labour, this system has dominated British politics since the mists of time. The first-past-the-post voting system has reduced other parties to electoral impotence, whilst the ‘broad church’ posture of the two main parties has neutralised, if not absorbed, the extremes on either side.

The current national political scene might, superficially, suggest that this two-party system remains in full flower. However, this is not the case. The high point of two-party dominance was in 1951 when Labour and Conservatives between them polled 98 per cent of a popular vote of over 80 per cent of the electorate. Since then there has been a slow but steady erosion of their position. In 1966, the Labour/Conservative vote totalled 90 per cent of the total, taking 97.8 per cent of the seats on a 72.9 per cent turnout, whilst comparable figures in 2005 were 67.5 per cent, 85 per cent and 61.4 per cent. Two stark conclusions follow. First, it is now possible for a party to obtain a clear parliamentary majority with the votes of little more than one-fifth of the adult population. Second, the gap between the aggregate share of the vote of the two main parties and their share of seats won has grown significantly. The stability of the two-party system has become precarious.

In a parallel development, the broad-church nature of both parties has also diminished. The Labour Party shows this more obviously, with its socialist left component reduced in both numbers and influence to humiliating obscurity, but the Conservative Party has also become much narrower in its political spectrum, both to the left (where Labour has hoovered up any spare ‘wets’) and to the right, where both the BNP and UKIP have taken over. Again the effect is to destabilise the two-party system.

The great political achievement of the Blair/Brown regime has been to impose the policies of neo-liberal Thatcherism on the Labour Party whilst retaining electoral power.(1) I want to take this as read and to focus on the current political problem faced by the new leader, Gordon Brown: how to manage the shift in political position required to cement Labour as the dominant electoral force in Britain. In particular, I want to consider three ways in which the political base of Labour has moved, and the implications of this for the left. These concern, respectively, the diminished strength of British trade unions, the decline of the socialist tradition and the hollowing out of the British state.

The shifting context for Brown

Historically, trade unions have played a more prominent role in the British labour movement than in Continental Europe, where their support has been welcome, but not decisive, for the parties of the left. They have performed two distinct functions: as a politicising agent within the working class, and as a prop for the Labour Party leadership, which, for most of its history, has been to the right of most of its members. These roles have often been contradictory, but until the last two decades most of the left, both inside and outside the Labour Party, has argued that the ruling right wing could be defeated if grass roots trade union members were properly mobilised. In the mid-1960s, this was a realistic prospect and was, indeed, pursued with some success; forty years on, it has vanished. The unions are, numerically, much diminished. Their previous grip on large parts of the private sector has all but disappeared and continues to decline, whilst their membership is ageing. Union density is now amongst the lowest in Europe. This is a long-term trend which began in the Thatcher years, but has continued unabated throughout the whole period since 1997.

That this is a tragedy for British workers is undoubted. However, the political implications of this long-term decline have yet to be assimilated – at least on the left, for it is clear that Brown and Blair had long taken them on board. Nowadays, the unions do little more than service their dwindling band of members and their support for Labour’s leaders is largely undiminished, unchecked by countervailing pressure from below. Hence, any left project which involves attempting to shift the unions to the left has effectively disappeared. If anything, the political issue has reversed; the left now needs to find ways to assist unions to recover something of their previous vigour.

The second shift in context is more subtle but, in its way, more important. In the mid-1960s, the Labour left held on to a broad moral and intellectual hegemony both inside the Party and also outside in the wider left. This ascendancy was based around ‘socialism’ as it was then understood. In Eley’s words:

For roughly a century between the 1860s and the 1960s, the socialist tradition exercised a long-lasting hegemony over the Left’s effective presence … If the Left was always larger than socialism…socialist parties also remained at their indispensable core.(2)

Eley writes of the European left. In Britain, much of the membership of the Labour Party plus that of the Communist Party was the essential socialist core of that broader left.

In 2008, this central hegemony of socialism as the normal language of the left and as a sheet-anchor on the ultimate practice of Labour’s leaders has disintegrated.
Again in Eley’s words:

Socialist languages of politics, socialist models of organising the economy, socialist projections of the good society, socialist ideas in general have all been catastrophically delegitimized … Socialist ideas now have a more embattled and less legitimate place in the public discourse than one might ever have anticipated even two decades before (ibid).

I am not arguing that this is a good thing; I am simply stating a fact about the place which socialism now has in political discourse even on the left. It has no pull, even a residual one, on the Labour leadership, who are now evidently free to pursue whatever policy seems most fi tting their own designs; and it has little attraction within a wider activist left. Yet, and this is something that becomes startlingly obvious as one moves around the various public debates centred on the Labour Party, the left within that party as well as various fragments of the old socialist groups seem largely oblivious to this fact.

The third shift in context is the overall hollowing out of the British state and of the two-party system which has sustained it for so long. In the mid-1960s, Britain was a unitary state governed within the framework of a two-party system, historically largely dominated by the Conservatives, but with Labour the only credible and legitimate opposition and, within Labour, a socialist left which could visualise itself as being a government-in-waiting. This system has almost fallen apart. Scotland and Wales have started down paths of a legal national identity, whose future route is uncertain, but which has already given their nationalist parties a leading role. In England, a slow edging towards a more pluralist political structure has given a third party an increasingly prominent role, despite the obvious unfairness of the electoral system. All this has taken place against a background of growing disillusion with the political system as a whole, refl ected in the decline in electoral turnout.

The destruction of the socialist left inside the Labour Party, together with the effective demise of its socialist outriders, has left the British left leaderless and without any coherent political strategy. However, Gordon Brown, as he searches for the political base necessary for an extended period in power, also has serious political problems, despite his success as co-author of the project to shift the policies of Labour into the new centre ground of the neo-liberal hegemony.

The first is that the British state is slowly falling apart, with the effective separation of Northern Ireland, the slow-motion departure of Scotland and a slower, though still palpable, process in Wales. It remains uncertain just how these three national situations will evolve. None is near completion but each has acquired a momentum which will now be hard to slow, though it may well stop short of full independence. The formation of coalition governments where once there was effective single-party domination is one of the milestones along the line, a result of the various kinds of proportional representation which now exists in these quasi-states. This by itself offers a serious, if as yet muffled, challenge to the first-past-the-post system which now so distorts Westminster elections.

So far, Gordon Brown’s response has been to try to muster political support around the idea of ‘Britishness’, one of those weasel words whose real and surface meanings diverge. In this case, ‘British’ actually means English, a none-too-well concealed drive to give Labour the majority in England which it will increasingly need, but so far lacks, as the Celtic nations move towards greater autonomy. That he should adopt direct from the BNP the slogan ‘British jobs for British workers’ is evidence for just how seriously this issue of Englishness is taken by the Brown cabal.

The second problem is that the drop in electoral turnout, combined with the steady advance of third-party voting, threatens to become a crisis of political legitimacy if it continues much further. It should be emphasised that both these trends, and in particular the former, have been a feature of the Blair/Brown regime, notwithstanding claims that in 1997 it embodied the popular will.

The third problem is more complex but no less serious. Brown and Blair drove New Labour to adopt all the clothes of neo-liberal capitalism, so that now Brown’s central political position is essentially that of a right-centre (English) nationalist party. However, this terrain is already occupied by a previous incumbent who is unwilling to vacate it and still loosely ‘owns’ it. To appreciate this it is only necessary to note how often Labour is said to have outmanoeuvred the Conservatives by occupying ‘their’ territory. In other words, Labour is still seen as a party which has taken power, rather like a cuckoo, by stealing another’s nest. (David Cameron is now attempting to emphasise this by his refrain that Brown simply ‘steals’ his policies.)

The result is a political system which has shifted from apparent stability to one perpetually unstable, as potential voters swing from one centre-right nationalist grouping to the other, depending on which manages to push the right buttons at the right moment, whilst others simply turn away from voting on the entirely rational basis that there is no difference between the only two parties which can achieve power. The extraordinary shift in the opinion polls in October 2007, apparently because of one small policy claim on inheritance tax, is a vivid reminder of this. Neither to the left nor to the right is there a real alternative to this duopoly – at least not in England – though there have been lurches in specifi c constituencies towards both extremes (Respect, UKIP and the BNP), as well as towards independents like Richard Taylor in Wyre Forest, which suggest that there is some repressed desire to find one. The Liberal Democrats also waver around the centre, uncertain which way to swing as they seek to offer alternatives to both sides, sometimes taking away their supporters only to find them turning back as the specific issue that attracted them, such as opposition to the Iraq war, fades.

Brown’s central problem is that New Labour achieved power in 1997 essentially by offering a new take on Thatcherism. In this it had considerable success. However, sharing a house with another tenant means that, ultimately, the other partner will have their day. If politics becomes simply a struggle between the Ins and the Outs in which, inevitably, the labels are reversed at regular intervals, then New Labour is doomed to defeat; the only issue is the precise timetable. On this inexorable law Brown is now hung. His only way out is to claim legitimacy over the premises now shared with Conservatives and to move them out, something that requires them either to relinquish it or to be erased from it. In this endeavour he has two key advantages: fi rst, he has power, that is he has the ability to offer real political office and honour; and second, he leads a party which is, apparently, unsplittable, whatever policies are espoused. Ironically, given Labour’s history, the Conservatives are now more vulnerable in this respect because the internal structure of the party, whilst hardly democratic, does offer much more room than Labour for disaffected groups to organise into factions, and there are a number of issues – notably Europe, but also others on social policy and the environment – over which the factions are bitterly divided. The electoral fright occasioned by the rather absurd UKIP shows up this fragility. This factor may prove decisive, as the open disputes within the Conservatives in summer 2007 showed, even if they superfi cially united under the potential threat of a snap election. Brown’s great disadvantage is, of course, events – in particular, the rapid deterioration of the economy or any support for the USA over a new war, this time in Iran.

In first, tentative steps, Brown has begun to lay out his stall. In policy terms he will stay rock-solid on the nationalist centre-right whilst, politically, beginning to offer a home to disaffected or possibly just bored members of both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. He will play tunes on the theme of being the big-tent party and hope that, at a suitably opportune moment, he can turn over the national unity card, split the Tories by filching a chunk of their MPs and possibly some of their leadership, and humiliate the Liberal Democrats by doing the same thing with them. Until the moment comes, he will continue to appoint non-party business leaders such as Digby Jones as junior ministers, and assorted Tories and Lib Dems in the hitherto unknown constitutional role of ‘government adviser’.

This will be a hard trick to carry off. If successful, it may come to be called in future political science textbooks an inverse Ramsay Mac. On the other hand, it could fail. Either way, it is a manoeuvre that Brown is almost forced to try as it offers a solution to all three of the political problems noted above. A centre party reorganised on such lines would almost certainly retain political legitimacy by securing a large share of the popular vote – at least at its first general election – and could thus fend off the tricky question of electoral reform. It would obtain such a margin most securely in England and would allow Scotland and Wales and their beleaguered Labour Parties to sail off to whatever destination beckoned, defusing the national question at least until specific and unavoidable demands for further national autonomy were tabled. But the one issue which Brown almost certainly ignores is how the left in his own party would react to such a manoeuvre, however adroitly carried through. The Labour leadership election debacle showed just bereft is the Labour left of any leader who might threaten defection. However, the political imperatives of Brown’s position may yet open up new possibilities for the wider left.

Where is the left?

The process of political hollowing-out discussed above, combined with the catastrophic, if partially self-inflicted, defeats of the 1970s and 1980s, have produced a left in Britain which is scattered, fractious and unable even to recognise itself except by largely meaningless labels of affiliation. The key, though apparently paradoxical, question is just what constitutes the left and where it can be found. It is, in other words, a process of self-discovery. There are many over-lapping answers to the former question of course but the following may serve:
The left encompasses those who believe:

that, in general, collective responses to general social, environmental and economic issues are to be preferred to individual ones;

that, in particular, market mechanisms are undesirable ways of providing public services;

that these public services include education, health, welfare, policing and national security, as well as some other areas, which might include some natural utility and transport monopolies and some aspects of housing;

that health and education should be free to all without discrimination;

that practical and functioning forms of democracy should exist in all areas of social activity, including the economy;

that forms of ownership other than private are preferable in many sectors of the economy;

that all citizens are entitled to receive a basic level of financial support from the state if they are without personal resources;

and that equality is a public good in its own right.

There is plenty of scope for the argument and dispute traditional on the left over these, and they could be expanded, particularly at the international level, but they encompass what most would think of as forming the broad left.

It should be clear that this left is wider than what, historically, was called the socialist left, whose core belief was that society operated under a general social and economic system called capitalism, which could and should be replaced by an alternative system called socialism, both systems being essentially defined by ownership. It needs to be recognised that a significant part of the left, as defined above, is resistant to the very idea of overarching systems and does not recognise any neat dichotomy into capitalist and socialist.

It also needs emphasising that much of the left now lives inside political areas which are by no means ‘owned’ by the left. There is left participation in areas such as nationalism, the environment, feminism, the peace movement, and a whole range of international issues such as resistance to Israeli oppression of Palestinians or the war in Iraq, as well as dozens of local and regional initiatives, but none of these are wholly of the left. The environmental movement is a key example. Although the left has a prominent role in the Green Party, it is by no means the only grouping there, whilst figures such as Zac Goldsmith have perfectly sustainable environmental credentials whilst being, politically, on the right.

So where does this left now reside? Perhaps a division into five, overlapping sectors is helpful. First, there is a core of left-wingers within the remaining membership of the Labour Party, including some elected Labour representatives. Second, there is a left fraction of a number of other parties including the three nationalist parties, the Green Party and, yes, the Liberal Democrats and which will also include some of their elected representatives. Third, there are the members of those small socialist groups which still retain an explicit attachment to the Communist or Trotskyist parties of the past. Fourth, there is a body of individuals who have been members of the Labour Party as well as those Communist or Trotskyist parties, who retain left ideals but have detached themselves from active national politics. Fifth, and probably the most numerous, there is a body of individuals who are active in some form of political action, both local and global, and who regard existing political formations at least with scepticism and often with downright hostility. Some of these actions are descendants of the local campaigns once organised by Labour and Communist members but now largely detached from any organised political body. Others are part of wider and looser assemblies such as the anti-globalisation alliance.

Just how many people could be assembled under these headings is impossible to know; a personal guess would be around a quarter of a million activists, with the majority in the last two categories. In electoral terms, a left platform based upon the above principles might be able to get ten to fifteen per cent of votes cast in most constituencies. But numbers are, at least for the moment, largely irrelevant. The task faced on the left is how to fashion some kind of network from these disparate groups, in which they can acknowledge each other and engage in debate about political strategy, without attempting to denigrate the choices that have led to individual places of residence, but with the objective of developing some discernible impact on practical politics. This is not a new project. It first surfaced forty years ago in the May Day Manifesto group and re-emerged nearly thirty years ago in Rowbotham, Segal and Wainwright’s vision of a left Beyond the Fragments; and there were efforts in the 1990s to form some kind of red-green alliance which effectively amounted to a new kind of left unity. All failed, though not without some initial success. Why should any new endeavour succeed now?

The negative answer to this is that there is really no alternative. Efforts to work through the Labour Party have failed whilst the left outside the Labour Party has fragmented in all directions without any clear purpose. The positive answer has to be that Britain is approaching a general political conjuncture which, as the previous analysis argues, is unstable and likely to give rise to seismic movement as the great, colliding, tectonic plates of Labour and Conservative, moving over rather than confronting each other, fi nally give rise to sudden shifts. In this sense, the Brown project, which I described above as being essentially forced, may be precisely the political opportunity the left needs. The fi nal, explicit centring of Labour, the moment when the cuckoo tries to change into a blackbird, is the time when a clear left formation could emerge, just as a clear right formation may also develop as the
Conservatives split up.

The problem with this is that, although the broad idea of such a shift may be accepted, its timing and scope remain in the hands of others, in particular a notoriously secretive and manipulative other. Perhaps the key is that the next general election is likely to be both close and chaotic; chaotic in the sense that it will have a great variety of dynamic strands running through it whose interaction is very hard to forecast. Many on the left voted against Labour in 2005 on an anti-war basis and some of these have permanently changed their affiliation to other parties. Others will return to voting Labour on the age-hold grounds of keeping the Tories out. Still others will never have left Labour though retaining grave doubts over the New Labour project. Others have already voted for other parties such as the Greens or Respect. In Scotland and Wales, the formation of nationalist governments, albeit on a coalition or minority basis, means that old voting patterns are being dissolved, with many on the left choosing to fight their corner inside the nationalist parties. These are just the confusions and dilemmas existing on the left. The more Brown pursues his big-tent theme, opening up to all and sundry on the right, the more confusion will reign there too.

Organised and systematic tactical voting based upon simple criteria for being ‘on the left’ could have a swift impact in such circumstances. There is no possibility that these disparate elements can be reconciled into any common voting at a national level at least at the next election. However there does exist a chance that the electoral dilemma can be recognised and a common approach worked through locally in some cases, whilst the very process of recognition could be a major step on the road of reconciliation.

Where to begin? Perhaps the best approach is to change the metaphor used to describe left political action, which has traditionally been dominated by the quasi-Darwinian slogan that from acorns do big oaks grow – though only one acorn succeeds, crushing out all the other seedlings from failed acorns. Instead let us turn to the metaphor of rain-making by seeding clouds with silver iodide particles, no one of which is decisive but in which all are necessary. The left exists in Britain as a large amorphous cloud without measure and without purpose. Just what would happen if it could all shift in one direction is hard to know but it would certainly be spectacular. We should take as our alternative slogan that from many drops a flood can come.

This essay is a summary of a longer appraisal by David Purdy and Michael Prior on the definition and historical role of the British left, which can be seen at hegemonics.co.uk

Notes

1. A full analysis of this process can be found in Feelbad Britain, available at
hegemonics.co.uk.

2. G. Eley, forthcoming.

3. Ibid.

Michael Prior | ukwatch.net

Searching for the Left