Though Cowards Flinch

The release of Iain Dale’s top 100 Labour blogs has provoked some eager discussion around the blogosphere as to the character of the list and how this reflects upon the deficiencies of the Labour Party. Andy Newman at Socialist Unity makes the point that “signally missing from this list is much sign of the blogs being used as a forum for strategic thinking by Labour Party members”, a point with which I agree, to an extent.

At least such a forum might squash Andy Newman’s notion that the machinations of the centre-Left to foil a McDonnell leadership bid somehow made Cruddas’ deputy leadership bid more credible – something that comes out in the comments of the above linked-to article. But that’s neither here nor there. I think the broader point deserves a closer look – as regards the potential for strategic thinking via blogs within the Labour Party.

I would regard this blog as a forum for strategic thinking, and over the years it has made links with others who wish to pursue similar inquiries: the Bickerstaffe Record, Tom Miller in his “Newer Labour” guise, Duncan Hall from Labour Left Forum, Susan Press and quite a few others. Yet if the success of such an endeavour is to be judged by its effect on the course of Labour, then I’d agree with Andy Newman – such has been negligible.

So long as such discussion is confined within Labour, I suspect that it will take some time for there to be any change of course by the national Party. We can recruit all the radical members we want, but in so doing we are hamstrung by a national party that people simply don’t want to be associated with – for good reason. We are doubly constrained by a Party bureaucracy that is in total control – stepping in to shut down any branch it pleases (as Northampton South found out the other day, like half a dozen other CLPs suspended over the last several years; likewise some members from Rochdale) and whose senior members think nothing of trying to rig the electoral selection process.

On the other hand, as the writers of this blog can testify, there is plenty of room for an effort towards local organization. Some Labour councillors and Labour activists could do great work at local level. If there is a mistake on the Labour Left, I think it’s that many of our activists tend to prioritize holding together national opposition to privatization etc over the need for local campaigns. Now the local campaigns are breaking out anyway – such as refuse collectors on strike – and my impression is that the Labour Left is struggling to catch up.

This local orientation can be strengthened by looking outside the Labour Party. From No2ID to the smaller parties, lots of groups have bodies of activists scattered about the place. In my own Canterbury, there are four hundred members on the local Labour Party rolls, and a regularly active bunch of about twenty – of which maybe one or two has any real political nous when it comes to moving beyond interminable meetings or writing letters to the local papers. The SWP has a regular presence; the Greens have a regular presence.

All three groups, no doubt, even have some basis in the unions – certainly some of the better Labour guys were also solid union men. And yet with SERCO running all over the show, a huge homeless population and plenty of local issues to get stuck into, Labour suffered catastrophic defeat at the last city elections. The Greens have barely made a dent and the SWP are less well known than that, also attuned to the national protest movement rather than developing the sort of strong roots provided by a network of local activists.

Within Labour here, there are a few campaign group supporters, but they have no traction for a variety of reasons (none of which I’ll go into). The SWP, on the other hand, are busy organising a “Rage Against New Labour” protest – which I personally think is preposterous. As for the Greens, I have no idea what they do; they have a big student group at the University of Kent that seems to like sitting around talking over a pint more than actually picking up on the problems local people are having – something endemic to the student movement really.

We need ‘a forum for strategic thinking,’ but for it to belong to any one of the above mentioned groups would be self-defeating. I said much the same thing when it came to the Convention of the Left, which brought together Labour’s LRC with non-Labour groups. The CotL proposed some good ideas about local organisation – but to my knowledge, none of them have been followed through. I think there is a basis for an agreed minimum programme, around which local events and campaigns can be organised and co-operated upon.

With that done we can move towards building momentum; bussing activists out of London to areas where we’re struggling to get beyond two or three people on campaigns. Have them go door to door. Have a rally. Do things which people will notice and appreciate. Then have the local activists attempt to cash in on it. It doesn’t have to be under a party banner; indeed it can be co-operative whilst encouraging people to make their own choice in terms of which party they join. There could be special days each year for partisan platforms.

Only then, whenever we have a critical mass of people pursuing even the most basic connections with the working class – through campaign work, and union organising, and socials at the local Labour Club or wherever – will the type of factional argumentation we see vented on the blogosphere begin to have any meaning. I am a factionalist; I am a Marxist and I have certain definite views that correlate to the views of other members of different parties – and no doubt we would seek to advance those arguments.

Right now, however, it seems like making specific arguments for and against different groups (witness the exchange of letters between the Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party) seems to be happening in a vacuum. Socialist activists, at the moment, seem to have two personalities; the one on the ground, making arguments to the class, and the one in the blogosphere and elsewhere making arguments to each other. When the first is done consistently and well, around what we all believe in common, will the latter take on greater meaning.

Yet the Labour blogosphere has clearly not reached any such conclusion. Labour members, from their arrival in the party, are drilled in only one thing – the need to turn up for leafleting and door-knocking. Everything else one pretty much stumbles upon alone – and this explains the atomised nature of the Labour blogosphere and why under the terms set by Iain Dale (i.e. any blog by a Labour member or a Labour supporter) it cannot be a forum for strategic thinking – it encapsulates polar opposites, just like the Labour Party, and it does so by being singularly unreflective.

For this reason, I am disappointed that a promising site, Left Luggage, shut its doors. It reflected on both practice and theory, and how they are meant to be joined at a local and national level. It bears saying that time was a major factor, though the authors of the site felt they had said everything they needed to say. On the latter, I disagree. Good arguments bear dissemination and repetition by every available means – especially when they encourage individuals to look to wider fields and different forms of engagement without ever having to leave their home town.

I submit that the only way we move past this unreflective behaviour is to move past considering ourselves as exclusively the members of one party, when really we are all members of a class – and that will involve debate on the blogosphere, but will not be achieved merely by such debate.