Though Cowards Flinch

Introduction

This is the first section of the fourth part of six parts in an occasional series on the future of the left and the Labour party, which I call the Fifth Tradition, combining as it does important elements of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd traditions that have marked out the history Labour party, but not the 4th, which is a bad one and should be rejected.

This first section of part 4 sets out step 1 in a five part action plan, of which steps 2 to 5 will follow over the next four evenings. 

Got that?  Oh never mind.  Just read on, will you?

In this version of part 4 (steps 1-5), which is likely to be heavily adapted when I revise it in light of the multi-million pound book deal I’m almost certainly working towards with this series, I am writing with a mind to the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) AGM to be held on 14 November 2009. I won’t be there, but this is what I’ve got to say to the people who will be, as well as to anyone else on the left who’s reading it. 

 In part 1 of the series I set out the case for the Left to remain with the Labour party as the most effective route to socialism. 

The key challenge I was set in the comments on that post was to provide an evidence base for my assertion that the Labour pary continues, on balance, to have the most suitable infrastructure AND membership for a resurgence in appropriate leftwing activity. It is an issue that Dave brings up again here, and it is something that Salman, for example, explicitly denies here.

 I accept and agree with Dave that more work needs doing on this area, but maintain that the available evidence does suggest that, in most areas of the country at least, the Labour party continues to be the most effective vehicle for the Left at local level.  The key weakness in Salman’s argument that the Labour party has lost its validity as a force for the left is that his referent is the the national leadership;  he provides no evidence that the wider membership has lost that validity, and indeed my main claim is that the wider membership, while currently powerless to effect a move towards the left (for reasons I will explore in section 3, with recommendations for action), does wish to do so.

 In part 2, I broadened the enquiry, and sought to answer the question: ‘what is the current state of capitalism in Britain, and what are the opportunities and threats for the Left?’

 In part 3, I sought to deepen that enquiry, looking particularly at how working class struggle brought about the Keynesian post-war fix (covered again in briefer, more polemic form here), and then to suggest that ‘the future of socialism lies in re-establishing a working class identity, an identity which carries primacy over but absolute respect for the other identities which have been forged through admirable struggle over the last 30 years.’

In this part 4, I’ll be seeking to build on the five point plan recently set out by Owen Jones (of the LRC in his article over at Socialist Unity , and recently assessed by Dave here at TCF.

 Owen’s article was a useful contribution, in that it highlighted the importance of re-engagement with the working class, and the primacy of working class interest in anything we do.  In the face of liberal-left alternatives (like this, for example) which seek to drain what resources the left has and use them to campaign for pleasant-sounding but materially irrelevant ‘freedom’ and ‘reforms’, keeping on highlighting, to anyone who’ll listen, what the left is actually for, is vital

Where the article falls short though is that it drifts towards being a shopping list of proper leftwing policies, somewhat in the style of Compass shopping lists, without sufficient focus on how the Left might go about acquiring the power its needs within in the Labour party and the labour movement more generally, so that it is in a position to start to enact leftwing policy. 

Here, therefore, I present a five point action plan complementary to Owen’s, in which the focus fair and square on wresting control of power mechanism.  As Dave is keen to remind us, it’s about about ‘organisation, organisation, organisation’ comrades, and it’s on how and what we might organise that I now focus.

 Step 1: Reclaiming the local party infrastructure

It’s not trendy.  It’s not very exciting.  But this is where it has to start.  The exciting bits comes at step 3, but you’re not allowed to go there till you’ve got through step 1 and step 2.  That’s the point.  The exciting stuff won’t happen without the dull stuff.

I’ve set out at some length previously  some of the ideological confusion and consequent organisational deficiencies of the left, including the Labour left, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the last time it had may of the kind of opportunities and concomitant threats it now faces.  I’ll come back to some of those organisational deficiencies below (step 2), and suggest what we need to do better this time around.

However, we should also recognise what the Left did well back then.  In many urban centres what became known as the New Urban Left, there were quiet, and sometimes not so quiet, revolutions in Consituency Labour Parties (CLPs), as people (men, mostly) who had headed up party structures for years suddenly found them under challenge, and the notion that local parties were ‘full’ – you’d think it was apocryphal but it’s not – were challenged by a new breed of activists. 

Often unlinked to unions and their conservative (small ‘c’; but sometimes big L for liberal), these new activists often had funny ways and ideas, including feminism, a desire to challenge the National Front, a focus on housing need, and all sorts of stuff which had had not much place in the Labour party of the 1970s.

There are plenty of books about this phase, because for plenty of young thinkers and radicals it was the very best time in their lives, when theory met practice, and they won.  That’s something to boast about.   Here’s one, here’s one, here’s another.  Take your pick.  They’re all pretty good, contemperaneous or near contemperaneous studies from activist-academics.

What they achieved when they’d grasp the levers of local Labour party has been, in retrospect, disappointing and even inimical to the material progress of the working class; I’ll come to that below (step 2).  Yet what we can’t deny, and what we should learn from is their organisational success in wresting power from the Labour right – in many areas of the country – and, almost in passing, getting  a then leftwing Tony Benn to the Deputy Leadership of the Labour party – (we’ll set to one side Tony’s more recent indiscretions out of respect for his now advanced years).

 Their organisational strategy was not rocket science.  It simply involved a commitment to doing the small things properly, and keeping on doing them.  It involved a recognition that, just as is the case today, years of a Labour government which had not lived up to working class expectations, party structures had simply withered away, and could be taken over by anyone committed to doing so, and a seconhand typewriter.

 Just for example, Hilary Wainwright (1987) gives us this story about two young activists, Anita Pollock and Phil Bradbury in Newnham. a borough of London:

 ‘There we were with three councillors for the area who didn’t live in the ward, Claude and a sweet old woman who’d run the ward in the past.  We were elected chair and secretary.’

Anita got hold of the address list of about 50 members and went to visit them, only to find that most of them were dead.  She and Phil Bradbury then went round from door to door recruiting.

 If this sounds a familiar scenario, that’s because it is a familiar scenario up and down the country.  What Phil and Anita did thirty years ago – the first stage in the development of a leftwing local party controlled by leftwingers – is perfectly replicable now. 

 Of course the next bits are harder, and in some places where the right is strong and well organised, there will be real struggles even at this level, and a need to recruit lefties into the party as an initial step, drawing them in with some of the promise and ideas that I’ll set out in steps 3 to 5.  

Luke Akehurst, an excellent party organiser and staunch defender of the Labour right, has made no bones about his commitment to keeping the hands of the left of the levers of any power in Hackney, for example, both because he realises how easy it could be for him to lose control if he doesn’t watch out, and because he understands the importance of having say and even control over whatever party machinery (including the reisograph if there is one), and the party funds.  Luke says:

The Bennite left and its Trotskyist allies have not gone away. I see the evidence of that every time I go to my local Labour GC meeting. Their cadres are getting older but a Labour defeat in the General Election will allow them to recruit new activists and reactivate old ones around a myth of leadership betrayal.

 The left has to be as clued up as Luke, and has to have the same courage of convictions that Luke displays.  The left also, perversely perhaps, needs to have the same confidence that Luke has about its potential for a resurgence within the party, though of course it should seek this resurgence whether Labour lose the general election or not, having campaigned hard for a Labour victory (see also step 5).

 The next local bits – taking over the CLP and starting to get committed lefties in both as local councilors (though see below on the relative importance of this) will also require the kind of caucus discipline and commitment to the dull but essential first step cause.

 My own research interviews with Manchester activists who worked for a Labour left takeover of the party in the early 1980s made clear to me how solid organization and commitment were as important as any ideological drive.  Activists reported meeting thre or four evenings a week in different fora both to argue their case and ensure votes went their way, and to ensure that comrades knew exactly what was required when the crunch times came.  It might not have been pretty, but it worked.

Can such local organization work again in enough places to build up a critical mass of Labour left power bases?  Yes, it can, but we also need to be aware of the countervailing pressures that left activists will face, and provide support – whether it be through the LRC mechanisms or more informally.  

 The biggest pressure, of course, is to conform to the New Labour ideal of what it is to be a Labour activist; that is, the pressure is to accept that an activists first role is to gather votes for the party.   I will pick this up at step 4 ‘The re-conceptualisation of campaigning’, because it is so important as a specific (peer) pressure; it is probably the most controversial recommendation for Labour left action that I will make.

But there are more general pressures that didn’t exist in the later 1970s/early 1980s, and which might easily deflect a working class-focused left movement within Labour from its key purpose.  Perhaps the most important of these, linked to the growth of internet communications, is the ‘liberal left’ issue-based (as opposed to class-based) campaigning that has been the subject of much debate on this blog and several others over the last few days.

 In what is developing into a catch phrase, the key issue is one of opportunity cost.  Quite simply, a Labour left which is seeking to renew its sense of purpose and organization, does not also have the resources to devote to what are essentially side issues like electoral reform. 

 The challenge is to persuade lefties who might be tempted towards such campaigns – which can look attractive, even politically ‘sexy’ and offer the prospect of quick wins – that prospects for real success lie with the potential for a working class-oriented Labour party, first at local level, and then expanding. 

 Yes, there must be real prospects for success, and a clear route to get there, and I’ll come to that in step 3, but nor should activists be under any illusion that step 3 can happen without steps 1 and 2.  The world will not be changed materially for the working class because of an internet competition; it may change if activists can get real.

 That’s enough for tonight.  Here’s the plan for the rest of this action plan:

 Step 2 (Monday) Staying focused

How the Labour left must avoid the pitfalls of the Labour left of the 1980s, and eschew the easy feelgood victories in favour of the real deal

 Step 3 (Tuesday): Hitting New Labour’s power base where it hurts

How the only way the Labour left can seize back power from the New Labour institution is to develop a radical new contract with the unions which bypasses the traditional entente between union and party leadership through a disaffiliation/reaffiliation process.

 Step 4 (Wednesday): The reconceptualisation of campaigning

How the Labour left must tear up the part of the Labour party rule book which makes members leadership campaigning fodder, and give a whole new meaning to what it is to campaign for Labour.

Step 5 (Thursday): Working with the best of the rest of the left

How the Labour left needs to tear up the rule book about working with other left parties, to get humble about what the Labour party has been and is, and earn the trust and comradership of socialists who have learnt to hate Labour.  If this means Labour thrives and subsumes other parties in time, so be it. If it means Labour is subsumed by other parties in time, so be it. 

What matters is the outcome for the working class, not the name of the organisation.