Though Cowards Flinch

Both Compass and John McDonnell have written eulogies for New Labour, and everywhere online there are Tories making hay out of Thursday’s defeat. Socialist Unity and Shiraz Socialist have led the way in considering what all of this means for the orientation of socialists within the Labour Party, one demanding justification for remaining in the Party, the other hoping for some left-wing unity around the basic programme of Compass.

All the comments by Thatcher and her crony Lord Howe on how she changed not one Party but two, whenever she swept to victory in her three elections, are coming home to roost. They are right, she did change two parties, much in the same way that after World War II, the Conservatives could not escape the paradigm of the welfare state for thirty years, however much they might try to water it down. Is it fair to query whether or not the reverse might happen?

Empirically that would require prognostications about whether and how the post-war consensus could be re-established. As a socialist I don’t think that is a desirable outcome by any means; the consensus politics of the post-war period was not some spontaneous outpouring of sympathy on the part of Britain’s ruling class. Britain was then and is now a class society, though some of the outward expressions thereof have changed in between times.

At any rate, I don’t think that reverse is possible. For better or worse, the left within Labour will not control the Party as far into the future as I can see. What sort of Party it will be is far from decided however. When the left made a grab for control of the Party, threatening the careers and acting often in rather ungentlemanly fashion in the early 1980′s, the Party split and the SDP was born. What will be the results of the right being firmly ensconced in control?

Though it is unlikely before the next election (but possible!) Gordon will face challengers for the leadership, possibly multiple challengers. Politics of this kind can’t be ideological; as far as I have ever seen, very little separates Brown, Miliband, Charles Clarke, Jack Straw and the other candidates who have been mooted in the press recently. What happens to the Party may very likely depend on how personal the whole thing gets.

I suspect that it will get personal. Labour is very much a closed shop now. Its membership has collapsed to around 180,000 (as of June 2007) compared to the 400,000 plus who were members in 1997, sweeping Tony Blair to power. The same, largely Oxbridge, faces appear repeatedly once you look beyond a local level. The binning of over 300 councillors, recently pointed to as focuses for CLPs, can only accelerate the diminishing of Party activism, even if membership does not massively decline any further.

Only the die-hard left and the careerists are immune from this trend, I think. This doesn’t spell anything good for the future of the Labour Party because the active careerists massively outnumber the rest.

With these things in mind, it is up to socialists to chart their course whether currently in the Labour Party or out of it. For me, at the present time, I would like to continue to focus on supporting the LRC within Labour. Though John McDonnell is unlikely to win any leadership contest, I support any situation which gives people the motivation to campaign for socialist views within the Party. It pulls to us people who are not attracted by the sectarian squabbling and gives socialism a broader appeal.

This is essentially a rear-guard action within the Labour Party. Ten, twenty more years of Blairism at the top of the Party and our history of being the “working class” party won’t matter any more. A new generation of people will have grown up for whom there is no basic political allegiance to be assumed. In essence, Labour could face a situation where it is right back in the early 1900s, except that this time, Labour itself will be the equivalent of the grand old Liberal Party.

Depending on how the unfolding political situation pans out, up until and after the next general election, it is my view that we should all be members of the LRC, prepared to back it completely. We should particularly be aiming to rejuvenate all the constituencies from which LRC MPs come, and we should be gearing up to make sure the constituencies know the value of their MPs, in case the Party repeats the trick it pulled on Bob Wareing.

The Campaign for a New Workers’ Party is a good idea, bearing in mind the attacks of the Labour Party leadership upon Party democracy, and the acquiescence of the trade unions in the same, but it seems stuck in the mud. I’m pleased that Dave Nellist got re-elected to Coventry City Council, and I’d be interested what Labour Party members say about their campaign down that way. Nevertheless, I think people are too used to the various sectarian groups going four different ways at the same time to trust them.

I think that initiative on the left should come from within Labour until such times as the Party leadership finally moves that anyone to the right of Jon Cruddas should be expelled.

I certainly don’t have any faith in Compass to bring together any elements of the left, to disagree with Socialist Unity for the moment. That doesn’t mean I think all Compassites are opportunists or whatever, I simply don’t think Compass is well-led, I don’t think it is particularly principled as an organisation and, finally, I think that if it comes down to the wire, Compass is more worried about getting people elected than organising in CLPs and unions to help change minds.

Just an opinion. No doubt Tom Miller will shortly be along to smite me.

We have a hard time of it ahead, all of us on the left, regardless of Party distinctions. Even the Greens were pressed hard at the council elections. But hey, at least we have Class War’s party in Trafalgar Square to look forward to, probably before the next election. We may not be tramping the dirt down on New Labour just yet, but we can certainly do it for the personification of their progenitor ideology.