Question time for the left

JamieSW — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:25:53 +0000

The convention’s final session, ‘Question Time for the Left’, brought together a panel from across the left to see, once and for all, if they could work together. Not to spoil it for you or anything, but the answer was ‘yes’.

The panel was certainly wide-ranging: the panel took in Colin Fox (SSP), Clive Searle (Respect), Lindsey German (SWP), Robert Griffiths (CPB/Morning Star), John McDonnell, (LRC/Labour left) Mark Serwotka (PCS union), Derek Wall (Green Left) and Hilary Wainwright (Red Pepper).

I’d be blogging all day and all night if I wrote about every question that was asked and answered: the session was rapid-fire, with speakers’ points kept short and audience participation made central to the session. The ‘us and them’ wall was broken down once and for all.

Their verdict on the convention was unanimous, though: it was ‘historic’ (Wainwright), ‘a tremendous success’ (McDonnell), and even ‘maybe, just maybe, the start of 21st century socialism in Europe’ (Wall).

The discussion darted from why left organisations are so ‘pale and male’, to the anti-war movement, to free public transport to tackle climate change – but it somehow stayed on track, making real links between the problems we face without resorting to the old ‘the problem is capitalism’ schtick. Suddenly the underlying question wasn’t ‘what are the problems?’ or ‘can we work together?’ – it was ‘how will we win?’

Lindsey German pointed out that not only can the left make a difference, but it does every day: on strike picket lines, in the anti-war movement, in fighting the BNP. ‘I don’t think the left should beat itself up,’ she said. Our groups might not be perfect, but our convention was full of life – Labour’s conference had none.

On fuel bills, most of all, the mood to go out and build a mass campaign right there and then was palpable – some members of the audience told of how they’d seen their bills almost double. ‘We need to be going straight onto action,’ said John MacDonnell, while Mark Serwotka called it ‘the best issue I can think of’ to organise around.

Colin Fox called for militant action to stop people dying from the cold: ‘There are millions who will be disconnected this winter. We have to say: if they try to disconnect one single worker…’ – the rest of the sentence got lost in the wild applause.

German offered a nice slogan – ‘can’t pay, won’t pay’ – while Clive Searle said it was an opportunity to really make the left relevant to people’s lives, and Robert Griffiths told an encouraging story of how well petitions on fuel bills had gone. Hilary Wainwright added: ‘The importance of a mass campaign around a winnable issue is that it opens things up for us.’

Other campaigns with broad support included the climate camp (which may be forced to launch direct action at Heathrow as soon as December if the third runway gets the go-ahead in parliament), civil disobedience against ID cards (the next poll tax, for sure), renationalisation of public services, and the Europe-wide mobilisations against Nato and the spread of war.

When the convention’s idea of local left forums was raised again, McDonnell had news of some people who have already gone home and started setting one up: ‘I think it could be a tremendous breakthrough.’ Searle tackled the ‘talking shop’ issue head-on: ‘If they were just talking shops they’d be good, if they’re talking shops linked to action it’ll be excellent.’ There is going to be a ‘recall conference’ on 29 November to hear reports back from the local forums, so we’ll soon know whether we’re getting anywhere.

Summing up, Serwotka said: ‘If movements like this are to mean anything they’ve got to be linked to action. We need some victories.’

So, after five days of discussions, the job of the left suddenly appears much clearer than before. All we have to do now is get started.

Burying the hatchet

Ellie Keen — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:07:01 +0000

If you decided to draw a family tree of the British left, you’d have a bit of a job on your hands. There have been so many splits and splinters that we’ve all ended up as ideological half-sisters or second cousins, surrounded by immediate family who warn us off having anything to do with our scatterbrained relatives.

You could see the Convention of the Left, then, as a sort of family get-together – one thrown by a well-meaning aunt to encourage us all to ‘get along better’. It has the potential to be the most important event for socialists for many years, which is why I’m going to be blogging from it for Red Pepper over the next five days. But can it really work?

Its organisers have certainly picked a good time and place. Setting it up as a counter-conference to the Labour Party’s debate-free rally is a great way to pull in some of ‘Old Labour’, and having the opening session right after Saturday’s Stop the War protest will draw in some activists who might not otherwise have made the journey.

And the convention is not a rushed response to the wipeout the left faced in the May elections, or even to the escalating economic crisis. It was announced more than six months ago: before London elected a Thatcherite buffoon for mayor and a full-fledged fascist to its assembly, and the rest of the country appeared to take a shine to David Cameron; before the consternation about whether British politics was ‘moving to the right’; and before certain over-eager lefties started declaring that the collapse of a few banks means ‘the end of capitalism’ (again).

The immediate issue it plans to tackle is not the rise of the right or the twilight days of that system we all love to hate – it is the collapse of the left, in the broadest sense. Labour’s support is a fraction of what it was even in Blair’s day, with the ‘core’ voters and the diehard members finally pushed over the edge by Brown’s head-in-the-sand tricks, and yet the left-of-Labour parties have somehow spectacularly failed to grow. Without going into the controversial details (we all know them anyway), it seems clear at least that we never managed to harness the energy of the anti-war protests five years ago into anything long-term.

Today, the left has another chance. It is only the Westminster system that makes it look as if the public somehow desire woolly centrism tied to fetishes for privatisation and war – in poll after poll, voters support the parties on the basis of ‘lesser of two (or three) evils’ politics while roundly rejecting their actual policies. The economic crisis has exposed the absurdity of having three neoliberal parties and no alternative: no-one can seriously maintain that the City is an ‘engine of growth’ when people are losing their homes because some speculators decided they’d make good casino chips in their game of roulette.

You don’t have to think very hard about bankers getting multi-million pound rewards for failure while food prices and energy bills go through the roof to come to some notion of nationalisation or ‘production for need’ (even if you don’t necessarily call it that). In an age when an economic crisis can get halfway around the world before the central bankers have even got their boots on, anyone can see that the problem is the system – the economic Wizards of Oz have suddenly found their curtains drawn back, exposed as the selfish frauds they always have been. The free market has stopped being simply unpleasant and started actually not working on its own terms. New Labour, the New Tories and the Cameron-lite New Lib Dems have no answer to that.

I’m not saying that ‘the revolution is upon us, comrade’, but it certainly seems that people are casting around for an alternative. The point of the convention is to organise a forum where we can see what unites us and how we can make tentative steps towards unity that will really work – the broad support the convention already has is an encouraging sign. I just hope the left will use its convention as a chance to bury the hatchet, not as a venue for that most destructive of socialist sports: sectarian point-scoring.

Tom Walker | ukwatch.net

Question time for the left

Burying the hatchet