Socialist Resistance : SR46 - Summer 2007

Debate: ...Left in disarray

After McDonnell failure: Time to get real!

Alan Thornett

We are at an important turning point in British politics. Brown is about to enter office. It is already clear that he is planning to drive forward all the main items of New Labour policy: the neo-liberal offensive; the attack on public sector; the continuation of the war in Iraq; the replacement of Trident; and the attack on human rights and civil liberties as well as his current attack on public sector wages. He may disengage to some degree from Iraq, but no more so than the US Democrats are planning to do.

This situation has been compounded by the spineless soft left Labour MPs who refused to nominate John McDonnell and create a contest. They have facilitated a seamless transfer from Blair to Brown that New Labour has been planning for a long time. It is the plan B under which Blair, damaged mainly by the war, but also through his association with corruption, dishonesty and neo-liberalism, can be replaced with a new broom in his own image.

The danger now is that we could now have a rejuvenated Blairism well placed to drive the whole new Labour project to a new stage.

Unfortunately much of the left seems to be oblivious to this danger and appear to have learned little out of the defeat of the McDonnell campaign.

The McDonnell defeat has exposed the chronic weakness of the Labour left as far their influence (or relevance) inside the Labour Party is concerned. Yet all the signs are that they intend to plough on with the same line - that the Labour party can be “reclaimed” for the left and for the workers’ movement. The Communist Party of Britain (CPB) which also has a “reclaim Labour” position appears to be doing the same.

This would be a big mistake. Despite campaigning for months John McDonnell fell well short of the 45 nominations he needed from Labour MPs to stand. For the first time since the early years of the Labour Party the left failed to mount a challenge in a Labour leadership contest.

The McDonnell campaign’s claim that they were robbed of a contest by the requirement to be nominated by 45 is not credible. Of course the right are not going to do them any favours, but it is not a new requirement. It was there in the election following Ramsey McDonald’s resignation in 1931. What’s new is that for the first time the left was unable to surmount it.

Brown won a massive 318 nominations, including those of Campaign group member Bob Marshal Andrews and John Cruddas the “left” challenger for the deputy position. This was a huge vote of confidence for Brown’s project.

Yet John McDonnell says: “We’re now in a stronger position to fight for socialist policies than we have been for years”. It is another delusion His failure has exposed the full extent of the weakness of the Labour left which has clearly existed for a long time.

Others on the Labour left argue that problem was amongst Labour MPs, not party members. Of course there is a problem amongst MPs. The whole of the intake of new Labour MPs since 1997 have been absorbed into the Blairite project. But Labour MPs have to reflect the pressure from party members – and there lies the other problem, there was no significant pressure from party members to nominate McDonnell. In fact the pressure was in the other direction, for MPs to try to secure their future by nominating Brown.

And what happened to the trade union awkward squad? Most of them rushed to endorse Brown. McDonnell failed to win the support of any major union for his campaign. Neither Derek Simpson, Tony Woodley, Dave Prentis nor any of the general secretaries of the big unions were prepared to back him. They enthusiastically backed Brown. In fact a bit of support from the trade union leaders would have been enough to get McDonnell on the ballot paper.

McDonnell argues that the way forward from here is to support the conference of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) in October.

But the LRC hardly exists outside of its occasional conferences. It is also a misnomer. It is not a campaign for independent labour representation – like its predecessor at the turn of the 19th century which produced the Labour Party as an alternative Liberal representation. It is a campaign to reclaim Labour: i.e. a campaign to stay in the Labour Party as its first principle and win it back for the left. That is why you have to be a Labour Party member to join it.

The reality is that a crisis of labour representation and consequently the conditions for a new party to the left of Labour have existed since the mid-1990s and Blair’s take-over of the Party. Space opened up to the left of Labour which is even wider today.

At the same time the Labour left have been ever more marginalised. Every major radicalisations of the past 10 years from Seattle to the to the Global Justice Movement and from the mass anti-war movement (with its millions on the streets) to the current environmental and anti climate change campaigns have by-passed the Labour left. You only have to look at the decline in the number of Labour Party banners on demonstrations over the last two decades to get the picture. It’s now unusual to see one at these events.

Some on the Labour left argue that you can’t build a new party to the left of Labour with the current low level of trade union struggles. But the mass anti-war movement, the global justice movement, mobilisations against the G8 and against climate change and in defence of the environment are forms of class struggle as well. If you take these struggles and the radicalisation they produce alongside the potential political recomposition created by the march to the right of new Labour and the collapse of new Labour membership figures you have the necessary ingredients for a substantial new party.

But if people from the Labour left and the CPB were to help organise a political alternative outside of Labour this would open up new possibilities for the left as a whole.

The problem we have is that while the political conditions clearly exist for a new party to the left of Labour the project has stalled as a result of divisions amongst the left themselves. The SWP have their responsibility for this, but they are not the only problem.

The reason why the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) has been so successful is because it has been a genuine coalition of the left. The CPB, the trade union left and much of the Labour left are in it and working fruitfully with the SWP and George Galloway. If the left can work together in this way in the StWC why can’t it do so as a political alternative to Blairism?

Respect has its problems (which we have written about at some length) but it has responsibilities in this situation as well.

Respect is the best attempt so far to build something to the left of Labour. No other party has found a response amongst some sections of the working class in the way that Respect has. It is the only organisation on the socialist left which can win new seats in local elections and which has a chance (a very good chance) of winning a seat or seats in the London Assembly next year. The 12,000 votes in Birmingham in May amongst 7 candidates was a remarkable achievement.

Respect is not, in itself, the answer to the problem of a left alternative. But it is the best focus around which such an alternative can be built. Respect should not simply call on people from the Labour left and the CPB to simply join it in its present form. Rather it should be prepared to discuss the problem without preconditions and not let organisational formulae stand in the way of the political goal in front.

Using the advent of the Brown era to organise the left into a far more effective force is the only adequate response to the problems we face.

Alan Thornett was a leading activist in the car industry for many years and is a leading member of the ISG, British Section of the Fourth International, and sits on the Executive Committee of Respect.

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