Though Cowards Flinch

Since the disastrous May elections, there have been a number of responses from the Left. Shiraz Socialist asked for reasons to be involved in the Labour Party, and to be honest I couldn’t think of many – those that did come to mind were invariably negative e.g. the alternative is worse, but nevertheless too accurate (it really is worse) for me to consider leaving. David Osler’s response to the slow desiccation of the Labour base which Blairism has led to highlights the chief obstacle facing socialists: where do we go from here? Dave commented on some of the responses already.

Various bourgeois commentators have built a career since the early Nineties mocking the socialist and anti-capitalist Left for having a lot more to say about the injustices of the neoliberal economic order than practical steps to rebuilding the class conscious labour movement we need to advocate freedom and equality. Combined with the old Tony Benn refrain about “too many socialist parties, not enough socialists” and we have a curious situation where a tiny minority of progressive opinion in Britain, the radical left, comes across as a tumultuous and shrill din of competing theories, none of which seem to result in any solid steps forward.

It’s easy to knock the sects, but very uncomradely. Against my worst instincts I tried to show solidarity with the various Trotskyist initiatives during the last elections, even if, as I imagine was the case in many homes, my attention was fully focused on the flawed ex-reformist figure of Ken Livingstone. But it is necessary to remember the disastrous organisational position the Left finds itself in. I’ll just focus on a couple of the bigger groupuscules.

The Socialist Workers Party seems to have completely ignored the failure of the Respect coalition and their own Left List faction in the aftermath of the split with Galloway, putting the blame for the Left’s performance onto Gordon Brown and the Government. Fair enough, I agree that New Labour has decimated the activism and enthusiasm of many voters, but that is not an excuse for the U-turns and sectarianism which the Respect debacle exhibited, noted on a daily basis in soap opera fashion on the Socialist Unity blog. If the Right are benefitting from the contradictions of the social democrats, then we must accept our part in the failure to win over working people to a socialist alternative to Brown, whether inside Labour or not.

The Socialist Party remains in the Purgatory of socialist strategy – unable to quit its Campaign for a New Workers’ Party, now that dropping the word ‘socialism’ and reaching out to the Bob Crow and the RMT has proven not to be the sure-fire method of breaking into the mainstream they hoped after watching Galloway’s parliamentary success, and yet seemingly also unable to salvage anything from its current dead-in-the-water position.

The Labour Left, of which I count myself a part, despite having had our arguments about the ineffectiveness of a Blairism without Blair strategy proven time and again during our long decline in the opinion polls, is stuck in a quandary. The Tories are waltzing into office, unhurried and un-harassed by the tired ministers called on to defend the indefensible. More than the screw-ups over taxes or the “events dear boy, events” of lost data, the Government suffers from what it is not going. People feel the vulnerability of our “flexible”, “dynamic”, “open” economy every time they get a gas bill or buy their shopping, but Labour remains unable to give people an explanation of what needs to be done to counter these threats to our living standards. But what can the Left do? Opt for another, surely doomed John McDonnell leadership bid? It was useful the first time around – the LRC wing of Labour politics collected information on a significant network of activists, and gave people some hope in our Party’s future. A do-over would surely be less inspiring, less productive, less innovative.

As a result, I’ve been suffering the general malaise that I imagine most of the Left is feeling. Bankers, tax evaders and stockbrokers are “living it large” while even the Government’s modest targets on reducing child poverty have suffered from Labour’s unwillingness to be truly radical.

Amid all the wondering about whether the Labour Party actually wants to lose the next election, given the obvious lack of any instinct for self-preservation among the cabinet, let alone understanding of the desirability – the necessity – of rebuilding a solid Labour vote rather than spending the next two years failing to triangulate our way out of defeat, I read the discussion bulletin for the recent Alliance for Workers’ Liberty conference. I was surprised to find some interesting arguments among their proposed documents, including the following statement on the issue of workers’ representation:

6. The original Labour Representation Committee of 1900, the first form of the Labour Party, had union affiliations totalling only 353,070 members, less than 20% of the total trade union membership at the time of 1,908,000. Only bit by bit did the affiliated membership rise to 1.45 million in 1909. If the socialists, and the more politically-assertive unions, had waited until they had a majority, or near-majority, of the union movement, then the Labour Party would not have been founded at all in 1900. Likewise today: to wait for all the big unions to move would be to paralyse ourselves. We should fight for the socialists and the more politically-assertive unions to give a lead – and do so fully aware that, with recent industrial defeats, in the calculable future growth for a new working-class political venture is likely to be slower, not faster, than after 1900.

There is also a significant section (points 14 through 16) on the use that could be made of a revived Trades Council movement to the cause of socialism and working-class solidarity. It’s rather too long to quote here, but is particularly interesting given the vacillation and cowardice which marks the trade union bureaucracy’s relationship with the Labour Party leadership, and I recommend you take a look.

Like the socialist stereotype I mentioned earlier in this post, I’m really not arrogant enough to claim I have a solution to the crisis of socialist representation and organisation. I don’t. In some respects this is simply an attempt to excise the frustrations which have been brewing since the Government utterly failed to learn the lessons after 1st May which it needed to in order move on and rebuild the movement. But the AWL seems to be a lot more focused on forward-thinking than most – I am not a member, nor consider myself a supporter of their group, but a fraternal appreciation that socialists are trying to think through the problems we face is not dependent on outright political support.

Given our failure in Britain to build even the kind of Broad Left parties which exist in many other European countries, I was intrigued by the AWL’s comparisons with the old LRC. Obviously no one (in their right mind) is looking for a simple return to Labourism and all its faults, but as someone who has consistently dismissed left of Labour experiments for their failure to attract formal trade-union support, and been unwilling to consider a break with Labour until the “union link” has been cut, finalising the permanent transformation of the Party, it was provocative to say the least to consider that an unwillingness to move before “big unions” do is actually holding back what may be the inevitable step forward for the workers’ movement. Is it logical to lambast the unions as conservative and bureaucratic, and then expect them to lead the way to a socialist future? Should the Labour Representation Committee, as I believe the AWL proposed at its last conference, be actively considering a break with the Party?

The question is, where they remain members of the Labour Party, are socialists contributing more to the problem than the solution?