A couple of days ago, I was discussing with some friends how would we describe the situation in the Labour Party; was it a movement, a revolution, how could we describe it? I am not comfortable with the term “revolution” as I think it plays into false usage of the term; it is a much misused term being used to describe almost any change that occurs. I am also actually worried that by using it, young political activists will think that we will have a socialist revolution following an electoral victory by Corbyn.

Anyhow, Bernie Sanders described his campaign and the hopefully followed up movement as a revolution for example. Again I am not convinced … to me a socialist revolution is a broad transformation in society led by the population to eliminate the current political, economic and social situation towards a new form in which there is actually real democracy and the elimination of private ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange is a central tenet.

Does this describe what happened with Bernie or what is happening with Jeremy Corbyn? As a movement, it has the possibility of impacting the nature of mainstream political parties and consciousness of the majority. Will the changes, if successful, be revolutionary? Or will they actually be a massive reform of what is clearly corrupt and degraded bourgeois democracy?

It is not as though it is the first time that there has been an attempt by the Labour Left to try to shift the party out of the hands of a complacent and out of touch Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). As Ralph Miliband points out in Parliamentary Socialism:

“In fact, the whole history of the Labour Party has been punctuated by verbal victories of the Labour Left which, with some few exceptions, have had little influence on the Labour Party’s conduct inside or outside the House of Commons, bit which have always been of great importance in keeping up the hopes and the morale of the activists (Ralph Miliband, 1961, Parliamentary Socialism, p. 27).”

He provides an excellent example in a footnote to this paragraph which is relevant to today’s discussion:

“In 1908, for instance, the Conference of that year passed a resolution which stated that “the time has arrived when the Labour Party should have as a definite object, the socialization of the means of production, distribution and exchange to be controlled by a democratic State in the interest of the entire community; and the complete emancipation of labour from the domination of capitalism and landlordism, with the establishment of social and economic equality of the sexes.” The resolution was passed by 514,000 votes to 469,000 votes (Labour Party Annual Conference Report, 1908, pp. 76-7). Though it pleased the socialists within the Party, the resolution could hardly be said to have had any influence upon the Party’s policies in the following years (Miliband, op cit, footnote 1, p. 27).”

I am unhappy with the title of today’s piece as it seems to express that what is happening is only due to Corbyn himself, and I think that it a serious error.

What is happening is due to more than Jeremy Corbyn, the man or politician and his closest allies in Parliament. What is happening is a serious challenge in mainstream politics in Britain that has been enabled in many senses by the impact of first Thatcherism, then Blairism and then return to power of the Conservatives (first enabled by the Lib Dems and then by themselves) to the destruction of the post-War settlement between capital and labour, to the destruction of industry and manufacturing (and the immense weakening of the trade union movement) and to the impoverishment of vast numbers of working class people due to destruction of jobs and livelihoods and to the safety net that was meant to protect them. It is in this context that the power struggle in the Labour Party between the Left and the Right and the massive increase in numbers joining the party since Corbyn’s first election to the Labour leadership. Resigned people have found an outlet for their alienation towards Bourgeois electoral politics and this is a very complex and serious change.

What we are experiencing is a struggle over the heart and soul of the Labour Party which can, if successful, change its nature from simply only talking about the needs of working (and middle, how I hate that meaningless term) classes to actually representing them and their interests. Corbyn’s vision is not only creating an anti-austerity Labour party, but actually democratising it so that it represents the will and interests of its members.

The manner in which the Labour Party (LP) has historically functioned (and this had gotten worse under Blair’s leadership) is that of a very top-down organisation with control held by the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) and LP bureaucracy whose members are completely unaccountable to the membership of the party. Removing them from power is a major task in itself as local Labour Party members have little power in setting political agendas or even choosing their candidates.

At the local levels, party members follow routine tasks; they rarely carry out political campaigns except during election periods and those are concentrated on the election itself. Political discussion rarely happens, the Constituency Labour Party (the areas that relate to what Members of Parliament supposedly represent) overwhelmingly supported Corbyn (including Angela Eagle’s constituency of Wirral who came out in support of Corbyn asking her to cease her attack), but that had little or no impact on the actions of the party machinery and the PLP. A desperate need for democratisation exists in the LP and this is what Corbyn is offering. Shifting the power in the LP towards its members is far more than even Tony Benn promised; his movement, like most of the Left Labour movements were far more top down in terms of how things were going to be done. If Corbyn actually shifts power to members, thereby breaking the power of the LP bureaucracy, this would be a monumental shift.

In and of itself, that would be a truly incredible victory, as any person that has participated in Bourgeois democratic politics has experienced the complete demoralisation when the political party supposedly representing the interests of the majority demonstrates quite clearly that it only serves the interests of the ruling class and offers, if we are lucky, some crumbs off the table to keep the proles quiet.

So what’s happened?

One would think that when the leadership of the ruling Tory party was in crisis, that the Labour Party members of Parliament would try and take advantage of that situation. You would be wrong, in a series of moves that belong to a play written by Eugene Ionesco or a movie by Luis Buñuel, the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) moved against Corbyn. Rather than uniting behind its leader following the Brexit result, the right of the Labour Party instead launched yet another attack against him.

Laughingly, it was argued by Margaret Hodge (the area that she represents is Barking, in East London, whose majority voted for Brexit; not a surprise, there was a strong British National Party presence there, that shifted to UKIP) that it was his fault that Brexit succeeded. Clearly, they argued he was not showing proper leadership qualities and he was first challenged by Angela Eagle who tried to get him to stand down to provoke a leadership election. When that didn’t happen, a leadership contest was forced on him by the party bureaucracy. After a series of manoeuvrings, Angela Eagle was jettisoned in favour of Owen Smith (clearly while she is useful to provoke a crisis, she is far too incompetent to run for Leadership, much less lead and hold the party together). Desperate to keep Corbyn out of leadership the party machinery and PLP actually tried to force him to get sufficient PLP nominations (which was not going to happen this time around; democracy be damned), they lost.

While the PLP was busily undermining its elected leader, David Cameron’s resignation as Tory leader provoked a Tory leadership party election pitting Theresa May against Angela Leadsom. The Tories rapidly united around Theresa May who cemented the Tory Party even more to the right bringing both Remainers and Brexiters under the same wing to bring about Brexit and quite a group of charming people did she bring together.

If you understand one thing about Theresa May, understand this; she had no real problem with the EU itself, her personal bête noire has always been the European Convention on Human Rights which she wants to "free Britain from" (read that as "freeing the British ruling class from"). Surprisingly, she did demonstrate a sense of humour; appointing xenophobic Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary and as payback for Leadsom’s accusations (at least to my mind) that she would be a better PM as she was a mother, she appointed her to Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (as its name indicates it includes, Agriculture and Fisheries, which have been heavily subsidised by the EU and keeping them afloat and functioning should be quite a feat and Leadsom’s support for fracking sits well with the Tory party programme) who recently declared that British Brexit Trade will be based on selling British Tea, Jam and Biscuits to make up our export trade. I couldn’t make this up; it is beyond my comedic ability.

In the run-up to its leadership election, more and more people joined the Labour Party, the majority of them to support Corbyn. In July 2016, its membership was over half a million:

“This is the highest membership has been at in decades, and includes an astonishing rise of around 128,000 in the fortnight since the EU referendum, bring the total number of members to 515,000 as of today. That’s more than double the 200,000 members the party had on general election day last year, and dwarfs the 20,000 membership boost it had in the days following the election defeat. (labourlist.org/...).”

After Putin’s Party “United Russia” (which has 2 million members), this makes the LP the largest political party in Europe.

The problem for the right of the Labour Party (and the PLP which does not support Corbyn) was how to defeat Corbyn even with this increase in membership? Demonstrating their complete and utter disregard for even the false trappings of Bourgeois democracy, they attempted to prevent what were members of the party from voting in the leadership election.

Given that Corbyn won the first election with over 59% of the votes with fewer members, this would prove to be difficult; claiming that all these new members were part of a Trotskyist entryist project into the Labour Party is beyond laughable – if there were this many Trots in Britain, why the hell would they want to go into the Labour Party? To try and undermine a Corbyn victory in the second leadership election, the Labour National Executive tried to prevent members from voting (suspending them from the party due to posts on facebook was my favourite, putting a window that they had to be members of the Party so that they could not have joined too recently), they tried to prevent affiliate members (member of affiliated Trade Unions have the right to vote) by saying that they had to be affiliated voters from the time of the last election, they also put up a £25 supporters fee (which is a lot of money for people that don’t have it, yes, you can vote if you have the money). As you know by now, Corbyn won the election with an even bigger mandate than he had previously:

“Corbyn secured 61.8% of the vote to Smith’s 38.2%. The victory strengthens his hold on a party that has expanded dramatically since the 2015 general election and now has more than 500,000 members. In last year’s contest, he won 59.5% of the vote.

Corbyn won a majority over Smith in every category – members (59%), registered supporters (70%) and trades union affiliates (60%). (www.theguardian.com/...).”

Labour Party Conference: Some wins and some losses

Corbyn’s second victory as Labour leader was announced at the Labour Party Conference held in Liverpool. If you thought that the right of the LP was going to lie down and die following Corbyn’s landslide victory, you have underestimated the PLP and the right-wing of the party.

Given the first past the post voting system, they really have nowhere else to go; the Liberal Democrats have been in free-fall since the ConDem government and have very few seats and are failing to have much impact (they are trying hard to pick up followers on an anti-xenophobia and racism campaign). Joining them will simply mean that they lose their seats at the next election. So forget a split in the Labour Party; they will hang in there and keep on fighting for control over the party and undermining Corbyn. In many senses, it could be argued that the LP is composed of two distinct political parties with different agendas fighting for control of a well-known brand name: the Labour Party.

While Corbyn has the leadership, what the PLP and the right want is for him to have it in name only and they will try to keep hold of the Party apparatus and machinery to limit the power of the historical Labour left and new members and supporters of Corbyn. To provide an example, while Corbyn supporters were elected to the Labour National Executive Committee, he lost control of it as two seats were given to representatives from the Scottish and Welsh Labour Parties which were unelected and not supporters of Corbyn. This was one big loss. An additional lost was putting off the vote on Trident until 2020 (when it is far too late). Another loss was the removal of Ian McNichol (the General Secretary of the LP) staying in his post; he was behind the vast amount of suspensions (aka known as “The Purge”) of LP members and many within the Labour Left and Momentum were trying to get him out of the post to no avail. This was a big ask and it was not surprising that it did not happen; he does have support in the party (and that includes trade unions).

Many discussions at the Labour party conference relate to the threat of deselection of Labour MPs and local Labour Councillors. One very important decision at the LP Conference relates to forbidding the setting of illegal budgets by local councils run by the LP; this is very important as massive cuts to local councils and rules set by the Tories do not allow setting budgets which run a deficit. How can you convince people that you are anti-austerity when the local councils run by Labour are cutting services and privatising others? This will be a problem in any future election.

In terms of policies passed at the LP conference, there were some serious victories for the left and a challenge to the neoliberal consensus which has controlled British politics from Thatcher onwards (in both its harsh and lite versions):

“Corbyn not only strengthened his anti-austerity stance and his determination to democratise the party by handing power to the membership (which is transformative in itself). He also strongly defended immigration arguing that the task was to tackle the social problems caused by austerity and not blame migrants for them. This is a significant departure from the anti-immigration and bipartisan state racism that has characterised the Labour Party historically. He also went on to defend the free movement of people across Europe.

There were other important outcomes from the conference as well, such as the promise to completely ban fracking (and strengthening the stance on climate change), ending the right to buy (hugely important) along with the capping of rents and giving local authorities the right to raise money and build council houses. The repeal of the anti-union laws is also crucially important along with the reinstatement of the collective bargaining structures – wages councils. He then placed the whole thing in an explicitly socialist framework – ‘socialism for the 21st century’ (www.internationalviewpoint.org/...).”

Democratisation, Democratisation, Democratisation …

While the LP is growing in membership and Corbyn emerged from the latest leadership challenge stronger than before, there are several issues that need to be tackled.

The main problem is that while the membership of the LP is growing under Corbyn’s leadership, the left of the party remains caught up in internal struggles with the PLP and the right-wing who, it seems, will quite happily, lose elections rather than they be won under Corbyn’s leadership and political positions. They remain an ever-present danger towards shifting the LP leftwards and democratising it (as democratisation will eliminate their stranglehold on the LP machinery and bureaucracy).

While Corbyn initially stated that he opposed calls for deselection of MPs that are opposed to his policies; the tide is shifting and it is not only members of Momentum and the Labour Left that are talking about deselection; Corbyn has started raising the issue of deselection. It is not hard to understand that members would actually like to choose Parliamentary candidates that represent their views, overwhelming new members of the LP are more sympathetic to deselection of MPs opposing Corbyn’s policies. This would help in shifting control of the party and the PLP away from the right-wing of the party; but this will be fought every step of the way.

The introduction of boundary changes of constituencies by the Tories to “lower the amount of MPs” will de facto force some reselection of Parliamentary candidates as many (read that as most) of the changes are in areas where there are LP MPs; of those 68 constituencies left unchanged in England, 43 are held by Tories and 25 by Labour. To give an example left-leaning Walthamstow borough (and community) is being divided up between 3 re-shaped constituencies that will neither reflect the community itself nor offer representation to the new areas brought together as these communities may have different needs. Having lived in Waltham Forest, I can tell you that the area in which I lived received little from the Borough of Waltham Forest in terms of funds compared to Walthamstow.

These boundary changes themselves will probably force either deselection or reselection of candidates as MPs will have to fight each other for new created seats; but the process can actually be used to deselect current MPs if Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) actually have the power to choose those that are running. Interestingly, CLPs overwhelmingly supported Jeremy Corbyn over Owen Smith in the leadership election (but they do not elect the leader directly), but that is essentially meaningless in terms of any power that it could actually give them.

The second problem is related to the first, but distinct. That problem is that the LP is too inward facing; it needs to start getting people outside the party interested in politics and fighting for themselves in campaigns. In fact, it needs to get Labour Party activists engaging in campaigns outside the party alongside the anti-austerity movement and the struggles to save the NHS, state education, and develop a progressive housing policy.

Momentum which was initially set up to get activists outside of the LP fighting alongside those in the LP for progressive change has essentially turned into an inwards looking group fighting for progressive change in the LP. Moreover, like the rest of the LP, it is lacking in democratic mechanisms to bring this about. Controlled by an undemocratically elected leadership (elected by chosen delegates and not by the members at large) its primary concern was getting Corbyn re-elected (which is fair enough) but it has not moved outside of the confines of LP debate afterwards and it must do so in order to secure support for the Corbyn project in the country as a whole.

For those who have been following British politics, yet again the smear campaigns of left-wing antisemitism have arisen after the LP conference. The further attacks on black-Jewish anti-racist campaigner Jackie Walker for supposed antisemitism at an “antisemitism training event” led by the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) during the LP conference (which was videoed without telling anyone and carried out even though the Chakrabarti Report said that the JLM were not qualified to conduct training exercises on antisemitism has led to attacks against Walker leading to her removal as Deputy Leader of Momentum by the Momentum NEC; somehow solidarity between the left is once again lacking (quelle surprise).

The issue under discussion essentially comes under whether being a Zionist and support for Israel falls under the fundamental definition of what it means to be a Jew and as such whether criticisms of Israel’s policies means that you are an antisemite. While it is certainly an attack on Corbyn (who thinks that the Palestinians actually have human rights and as such is seen by the right-wing in the LP as vulnerable on this issue), it is also an issue of redefining antisemitism and for that matter what it means to be a Jew; really does one’s politics actually determine whether or not you are a Jew? In this discussion, yes it does and this attack is being carried out throughout Europe. The fact that the victim here is a black-Jewish anti-racist activist that is at the centre of this should not be surprising at all for many reasons both relating to the politics of Zionism as much as to the politics of racism itself.

Problem number three is a big one and it is not one that is easily solved. This relates to the politics in the UK itself, specifically Scotland. You may have noticed that since the Scottish Independence Referendum, the Scottish National Party (SNP) has not only taken control over Holyrood (the Scottish Parliament) but is the predominant representative of Scotland in the British Parliament. You may have also noticed that Scotland and North Ireland also voted to remain in the EU, but that is an additional issue at the moment (even though The Good Friday Accords require British membership in the EU) which is relevant (and will impact Brexit discussions).

Given that the next general election is due in 2020, it is completely conceivable (barring an early election by the Tories) that the Labour Party under Corbyn’s leadership could win in England. It can certainly do well in Wales (although the Welsh LP is not really supporting Corbyn’s project), but Scottish Labour will not win in Scotland. In fact, given that it is to the right politically of both Corbyn and the SNP and Unionist (that is, it doesn’t support Scottish independence; Labour party line calls for staying in the United Kingdom) as well, it means that the vast majority of seats in Scotland will go to the SNP (part of the reason for this is the promise of pretty close to Devo Max) during the Scottish Independence Referendum by Gordon Brown who could not deliver it has certainly not helped the position of the Scottish Labour Party). In order for Corbyn to actually come to power, he will need a progressive alliance with the SNP and possibly Plaid Cymru after the election (I cannot imagine a situation where the Scottish Labour Party refuses to run against the SNP). Whether or not this can happen depends upon agreement with the Scottish Labour Party and the LP machine itself; Corbyn himself would probably be up for it, but he is not in full control over the situation. So again, big ifs … but so much promise!

So, the struggle for the LP continues, this will be an ugly and difficult struggle. Just yesterday, Brighton and Hove’s Constituency Labour Party (which has grown in size to 8000 members and which had been suspended in July and its election results annulled after it elected members supportive of Corbyn to the local leadership) has been broken up over accusations of “bullying” and worries over deselection. This fight will get downright dirty (and if you think that what has happened is dirty, you ain’t seen nothing yet).

Yet, this is a struggle so many on the left have dreamt of for ages. European Social Democratic parties have abandoned Social Democracy by the wayside in support of first Social Liberalism and then neoliberalism; they have capitulated and have lost their support (see PASOK in Greece for example). The rise of new parties of the broad left (Bloco in Portugal, Podemos in Spain) expressed that change in response to the general acceptance of neoliberalism. Corbyn’s victory is part of this struggle; but in a different framework, this is an attempt to win back the Labour Party from the neoliberals … standing on the sides cheering it on, just doesn’t quite do it anymore … hmmm

Such interesting times we are living in …