Though Cowards Flinch

For session 2 of last Sunday’s Socialism 2009 conference, organised by the Socialist Party, I decided to attend probably the most prominent debate of the event, the discussion around a new workers’ party and what way forward for the Left. Taking place between 1pm and 3pm, the debate was well attended, in the region of two hundred and fifty people in the hall.

Speakers included Jenny Lennox, from the national committee of the LRC; Kevin Ovenden of Respect, who was an excellent speaker; Alex Gordon of the RMT; Mike Davies from the Alliance for Green Socialism; Romayne Rhoenix from the Green Party and Dave Nellist from the Socialist Party. In what follows I’ll try to faithfully represent the course of the debate and highlight points of note, adding my own interpretation.

Dave Nellist started off by discussing the structural change the provision of jobs and services has and continues to undergo, under the capitalist system. He made very clear that each major party wants to squeeze the public purse in order to rescue capitalism from itself. His warning on this point rang around the hall like a gunshot, the hackles on no few of the listeners standing up:

“In one, one and a half or two parliaments, one of these parties is coming for our NHS.”

Dave spoke about the planned spending cuts built into the current budget, the cuts that will take place next year and how they’ll affect youth training for jobs. His point here was to echo the union general secretaries from Saturday night’s rally; there will undoubtedly be an industrial response to this, whether unions lead it or not, what we lack is an organised political response.

Argument was advanced that there is no serious prospect of changing the Labour Party. From a socialist MP who was forcibly de-selected by Labour’s NEC and came within a whisker of being re-elected as an independent, this should be taken seriously. Nellist conceded, interestingly, that perhaps the anti-war movement might have recalled Labour, ‘had the unions co-operated’ but that no other campaign since has had that potential.

I found this particularly interesting, because it seems to me that the same could be said of any mass movement – especially one taking place should the NHS come under threat. Hypothetically speaking, should broad lefts make gains within the unions in the coming period, and sufficient impetus be built up against NHS cuts, then the turn ‘towards Labour’ could be consciously made by the groups involved. At least that’s what Nellist’s remarks about the anti-war movement seem to imply; he himself might disagree with this.

Perhaps Nellist’s own remarks were ill-considered. After all, there are concrete reasons why the anti-war movement did not result in a mass turn towards the Labour Party. Quite the opposite. Throughout the whole thing, Labour lost members. Certainly this was something to do with Labour being the party responsible for the war – but quite a few of the resignations were politically conscious, active people who are smart enough to draw the distinction between ‘grassroots’ and ‘leadership’.

Thus, when Labour’s grassroots can’t even corral their own number, what hope is there of convincing the wider Left, with all the added complication of other fully organised parties? If one follows through to the logical conclusion, it would take the conquest of Labour’s leadership by the grassroots for this convincing to take place – and that won’t happen without a mass influx of politically conscious members to Labour. I would emphasize the ‘politically conscious’ too, as any thing else can easily be turned into door-knocking fodder by the party machine.

Nellist continued with a demand for hundreds of independent challengers at council level, which could be selectively endorsed and supported by a federation of the small parties, to ensure local candidates, local support and a more progressive agenda. This included, a recurrent theme of the meeting, endorsing suitable candidates who were running on behalf of the Labour Party. Such a federation would hammer out a minimum programme, to which any candidate could sign up.

Next up was Jenny Lennox from the LRC. I’ve never met nor heard Jenny speak before, and I think that whoever had her position on the platform that day would have had a hard job. Yet a (joking?) plea for sympathy for her hangover was hardly the best way to start. What Jenny said though, however delivered, was somewhat similar to what Paul has been saying on this blog.

There are few people attending constituency meetings. There are few people who are activists. This is an opportunity for the Left.

Where Jenny and Paul differ is in Jenny’s assertion that “Labour does have the trades unions” and the significance of that. Jenny’s other argument, that Labour is ‘a broad church’ was unlikely to carry any weight in a room full of socialists, most of whom would have had experience of that broad church and the utter reactionaries it brings with it. Disappointingly Jenny simply expected that this would be accepted prima facie as a reason to support Labour.

Jenny rounded off with the assertion that “there is already a structure for coalition, the Labour Party” where we “could get people selected as candidates”. Yet no attempt was made to address issues such as the regular suspensions of CLPs by the Labour NEC. Or the de-selection of parliamentary candidates by the NEC. Or about the various members of the Labour Party simply expelled from the organisation. And no attempt was made to address the democratic deficit between constituency level and national level.

Perhaps Susan Press made a better job of it at the RMT conference the day before.

Romayne Phoenix from the Greens spoke next. Her speech was an unmitigated disaster, in my view – to the point where at one stage Alex Gordon of the RMT simply rolled his eyes and I swore people were going to start booing her. A lot of what she said was innocuous enough, in a conference of socialists; crisis, unemployment, climate change etc. Though rather than talk about structural changes to the economy, Romayne discussed instead about how ‘we need to invest in safe fuel supply’.

Instead of talking about how the Green Party was an alternative for the left-wing to organise, she focused instead on how we should campaign for proportional representation, to ‘improve the democratic system’. Which is probably a good thing, in a way, as it forestalled any arguments about sectarianism, but not something most socialists give two figs about since quite a few of us are in danger of losing jobs or homes, never mind bothering about how we elect the parties that even under PR would form the government.

Where Romayne went dreadfully wrong was, as a Green, a group stereotypically dismissed as liberal, middle-class do-gooders, announcing that we ‘shouldn’t insist on identifying people as working class’, as though socialists knock on doors and demand with menaces that people accept the label before they listen to what’s going on in the area, or agree to help out community groups.

Of all the speakers, I think she was the one performing worst even before it came out that the Green Party will be standing candidates against incumbent Socialist Party councillors in Lewisham, where Romayne herself is a councillor. Fair play to her, she denounced the decision – but it’s still likely to raise a lot of suspicion, despite the Greens standing aside for Salma Yaqoob in Birmingham. Really it exemplifies the schizophrenia in the Green movement, where in one country Greens can get into bed with conservatives, in another with social democrats.

Following Romayne, Kevin Ovenden of Respect spoke. A lot of what he said echoed Dave Nellist regarding the three main parties and the ultimate capitulation of social democracy. Where Ovenden differed from Nellist was in asserting that ‘it is not possible to establish a coalition of the mosaic left’, which I presume – though it was not clarified – means that a federal organisation between the different leftist groups is not the best way forward. Ovenden did agree, however, about identifying mutually supportable candidates.

John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn, Dai Davies, Dave Nellist and Caroline Lucas were all mentioned by Kevin in this context. It was mentioned that Respect would be standing in three constituencies, and it was opined by that winning would be another blow to the philosophy of TINA, there is no alternative. I’m not sure about how much I agree there; it really depends on how one plays the campaign as to what sort of effect it has. Is it just about door knocking and leaflets or will there be strategic interventions to support the working class in those constituencies, to provoke normal people into politicized activity?

Mike Davies of the Alliance for Green Socialism spoke next, and in my view completely departed from reality. In Mike’s own words, he declared “a vote for any Labour MP is a vote for New Labour.’ When question time rolled around, I queried this from the floor; “I’d like to ask Mike is he serious when he tells us not to vote for Labour MPs like John McDonnell, who have campaigned for years on climate change and the Heathrow runway, and who have never done anything except vote against New Labour?”

Davies flatly denied my assertion that John McDonnell (and I would add Jeremy Corbyn) voted against New Labour. ‘Left Labour MPs have had the odd rebellion’ he said, “They have never voted against New Labour’s project”. Indeed Davies went further into bananaland – “The existence of Left Labour MPs creates the myth that there is room for the Left in Labour”. No reader of the blog can be ignorant of the fact that actually several Labour MPs have been consistent rebels throughout the last three parliaments.

One wonders how Davies would get round the evidence of They Work For You. As for how some Labour MPs have ‘never voted against New Labour’s project’, I don’t even know what such nonsense means. Foundation hospitals? School privatisation? The war in Iraq? The anti-terror laws? Running against Gordon Brown to be leader of the party? How this qualifies as never having voted against ‘New Labour’s project’ is beyond me.

As for how supporting such good MPs ‘creates the myth that there is room for the Left in Labour’, this sounds on a par with the jam-tomorrow type theories that Tory cuts will bring on working class activism, so we should not support Labour to keep the Tories out, an argument put forward in 1979. Supporting some decent MPs might keep a socialist presence in parliament, to ask awkward questions, to provide a credible face to bring together the unions and so on. Not supporting them means allowing the election of still more Tories.

I’d also dispute the premise that supporting John McDonnell makes people believe in Labour’s left-wing credentials. The declining Labour vote over the last number of years begs to differ.

Last up was Alex Gordon of the RMT. A lot of what Alex said made sense; he pointed to the efforts of the Labour Left as heroic, but still heroic failures in trying to rein in New Labour. He said that his union would support Left officials anywhere it could find them, in whatever parliament, but that this would not solve the overall crisis in working class political representation. He argued that other unions needed to be awakened to this problem and orientated towards pushing for left regroupment, Die Linke style.

His argument, basically, was that the efforts of the smaller parties – whilst excellent and praiseworthy – lacked the social weight necessary to really kick off the fightback. Only the unions had that social weight, so he said, and if used correctly, this union weight could get things going. I’d say that makes sense – and Labour affiliation / disaffiliation has increasingly become an issue increasingly riven with a hostility proportional to how likely it is that a disaffiliation vote might sneak through. How we handle it requires discussion, because it is an issue likely to split broad Left campaigns and allow the inertia of the Right to prevail.

Comments from the floor were varied. I’ve already discussed my own, which was the second such contribution. One comrade from Cardiff challenged exactly how ‘broad’ Labour was, in response to Jenny Lennox’ comments. Several people made the point that the next round of cuts, from Cameron’s Tories, will likely make Thatcher’s era seem like a picnic. There was celebration of the positive approach of the RMT towards organising some type of platform for the next election, the first union to do so in a hundred years.

A chap from the Socialist Alliance (which I thought the SWP had folded up years ago) offered their name as the banner for a new left regroupment.

An SP member from Huddersfield made the point that Labour does not ‘have the unions’, what Labour has are the union bosses – the very people selling out to social partnership agreements, allowing their workers to face the sack. Those union leaders who oppose such things fervently end up moving away from the Labour Party – as has recently been found with Brian Caton of the Prison Officers’ Association handing in his Labour membership card to Jack Straw and joining the Socialist Party instead.

Worry was expressed that the LRC seem to be saying that Labour could repeat the 1980s, and that the Left could reclaim the Party. The worry was that the LRC seem to ignore the differences between now and then, about how Labour is so much less democratic, the policies of Labour so much less accountable and the Left within Labour incomparably weaker than it was in the 1980s – when it still failed to win over the party.

Some hopes were advanced about recent successes in the PCS union by a left unity platform that had been arguing for the need for a new workers’ party.

Each of the speakers then summed up from the front, attempting to answer any questions or address any sentiments expressed. These varied from the sublime, such as Jenny Lennox admitting that she supported the idea of independent candidates standing against the worst elements of Labour, though she couldn’t work for them herself, to the ridiculous. This came when Romayne Phoenix attempted to stress the anti-capitalist credentials of the Green Party through the fact that she’d done ‘political artwork’ (loud groans were heard from the floor), oh and that the Green Party manifesto marks them out as anti-capitalist, as does the opinions of their leader.

Dave Nellist, speaking last, endorsed the No2EU idea as showing that some of the smaller socialist groups could work together in a non-sectarian way (neatly ignoring the other left groups also on the ballot). This, he said, should be our way forward to redress the imbalance in parliament, where the major parties are all part of a wider consensus that is screwing people out of housing, health care and education. Thereafter the meeting ended and everyone retired to the closing rally.

(See also: Socialism 2009 Saturday session, Socialism 2009 Sunday session one, Socialism 2009 interview 1, interview 2, and three other reports from the Socialism 2009 conference).

I’m not intending for all my contributions at TCF to become about how utterly stupid rightwing blogs are, as there are better things to do.

But the way some of the more foam-mouthed rightwing blogs react to this story, of a soldier found guilty of firearms possession under what appears to be ‘strict liablility’ for this charge,  provides so much handy evidence that leftie bloggers are more interested in actual facts than their rightwing counterparts, that I just couldn’t resist.

Unity’s post at Liberal Conspiracy is quizzical, and through the comments it becomes clear that there may, though not for sure, be more to this story than meets the rightwing blogger eye.  Tom Freeman simply asks the question and seeks information.  Fair enough.  I gave him some as best I could.

Likewise, Jack of Kent, whose blog I’ve never seen before, makes some sensible points without trying to claim he knows everything about the case, and appears to be sane.

I commented as follows on Tom and Unity’s posts, in what i though a reasonable attempt to cast some light on what might be happening:

‘Yes, I think there may well be more than this than meets the eye from the initial report. It’ll be interesting to see what the more foaming rightwing blogs make of it in the next day or two, as matters of detail are not really there forte.

But assuming Mr Clarke’s intentions were as pure as he suggests (and there is no real reason to doubt this yet), the key to the matter may be that of ’strict liablity’ (though I accept what Jack of Kent says of the inadvertent dangers of walking across town with a gun).

When I was a magistrate I faced the odd ’strict liability’ issue in respect of other more minor issues, including driving without insurance.

In circumstances where it was very clear that the driver was ‘innocent’, usually because he worked for a company and simply assumed that the company insured the vehicle, the concept of strict liability also applied.

What had to be done, in the eyes of the law, was for the defendant to plead guilty and then immediately receive an absolute discharge, thus acquiring no criminal record.

The difficulty of course was getting people to understand this strange convolution of pleading guilty in order to found innocent; one clerk of the court round my way used to seem to take a slightly odd pleasure in making it all a bit tricky, rather than just encouraging the chair of the bench to say ‘Listen mate, plead guilty, ‘cos you have to and the law’s maybe a bit stupid/hard to understand about this, but if you do you’ll be out of here 30 seconds without a blemish to your name.’ (Of course that’s difficult, technically, for a magistrate to do before a plea is made.)

The fact that the jury took 20 minutes to decide (which is absolutely the minimum given that they all go to loo and have a cup of tea) suggests that we may be talking a straightforward case. The fact that it has been adjourned for sentence in 4 weeks may suggest a more complex story than we’re first getting, or it may simply be a bureaucratic silliness before an absolute discharge is announced.’

Pretty reasonable stuff, I contend, with a few insights thrown in from my quasi-legal experience.  This is how a well-know Libcon semi-troll responds to this attempt to shed light:

Why did you suggest that it would be the ‘foaming rightwing blogs’ that would be interested in making something of this story?

One would have thought that the prospect of an innocent man being jailed for five years would have exercised those who consider themselves to be liberals.

Or is that indicative of how far along this dark authoritarian road we have sleep-walked?’

Oh clever stuff.  Just ignore totally what I’ve said and pretend I’m a wannabbee authoritarian.  Great technique.  Maybe he’s been learning from Spectator columnists.

Except that this time, given the speed which rightwing foamers have picked up this story, the evidence that he is talking utter shite is just a couple of clicks away.  So I respond:

‘I didn’t say I was interested whether right wing blogs would make something of this story; I said I’d be intererested in what they made of it.

Posts like this from Unity, and from Jack fo Kent, and from Tom Freeman, all make something of it in that they think there may be something more to the story than meets the eye. You yourself have researched and found something, and this ‘antecedent’ may be behind at least in part tghe judge’s decision to dealy sentence. In addition, there may possibly be a case for a Newton hearing, a fairly recnt development where a ‘mini-trial’ may be held after a jury vedict based on strict liability where the issue is not so much the verdict but the level, if any, of sentence. 

We know none of these things, but at least Unity et al. are prepared to be open to new facts as they emerge.

Compare what we get from Devil’s Kitchen (just a taster):

I can only echo the anguished and furious cries of bloggers such as Constantly Furious and Dick Puddlecote: seriously, what the fuck is wrong with this country?’

‘This is, of course, utterly irrelevant: the jury, had they had any balls whatsoever, should have returned a ‘not guilty’ verdict—and they would have been perfectly within their rights to do so. They chose not to.

And now this man faces a minimum of five years in gaol—and not only was he doing ‘the right thing’ but he had not initiated force or fraud against anyone. Do you see?’

As for Devils Kitchen’s notion that it’s because of cowardly jury, has s/he never actually heard of the notion of common law precedent?

I’ve not bothered with Constantly Furious and Dick Puddlecote – you click if you want to - but here’s Charlotte Gore, who is supposed to be on more sensible side of the right.

‘It’s a clear miscarriage of justice. The man’s life is ruined because he tried to do the right thing. What reasonable person would believe this is the correct outcome in this case?

In what way exactly is this a ‘clear miscarriage of justice’? He’s not been sentenced yet, and as I’ve said there remains scope for an absolute discharge, if the facts and Mr Clarke’s motivations are in fact as the initial story suggests.’

Yes, there may be an issue to look at as to why the CPS proceeded to prosecution, but that’s quite a different matter than assuming that civilisation as we know it has come to an end because there’s such a thing as strict liability in law, and has been for quite a while.

Oh, and I see Alex Massie at the Spectator joined in. Now there’s a surprise.  He reckons it’s the ‘most enraging story of the year’ to date that he’s simply regurgitated from his wingnuts links. 

There you have it then, members of the jury.  I submit to you, based on the evidence presented to you today, and in light of the disclosed antecedents in this case, that rightwing bloggers are simply not interested in facts.

This was an interview I did with a Labour Party member from the south-east, who attended the Socialist Party’s Socialism 2009 event, to see what he thought of the whole thing from an outsider’s perspective.

So, Dan, tell us about your role in the Labour Party and about what wing of the party you stand in.

I am ICT and Assistant Secretary for the Southampton and Romsey Labour Party, which involves wrestling with the cumbersome WebCreator software to try and give us some kind of active website. I am also on the Committee of the Southampton University Labour Club, and a local government candidate at the 2010 elections.

In terms of what ‘wing’ I stand in the Labour Party, I don’t like to give myself an ideological title, my political views vary based on the issues. I am a member of Compass as I support their positions on Trident and tackling inequality, but also have views which may well be considered to the right of the party, on crime for example. I would consider myself a socialist, but perhaps my view of socialism is not the same as others.

You attended Socialism 2009. How would you characterize the conference? Is it much different to the sort of Labour conferences you’ve attended?

I’ve been to several Labour and Unison events, and there is definitely a difference from the kind of discussions that I’ve had at them. I found Socialism a mixed bag in terms of events, I enjoyed the Rally, and I enjoyed a panel event that included included Dave Nellist, along with the RMT, AGS, LRC, the Greens and Respect. However, I found the seminars less interesting, and I did detect hints of sectarian differences on the left, notably in the debate about the need to form a new anti-fascist organisation outside of UAF, which seemed foolish to me, and a tendency to hark back to the glory days of Militant with little vision for the future, as I found very prevalent in a discussion entitled “Is Cameron the new Thatcher?” in which no debate on this issue was had, but fluctuated between the days of Liverpool Council and a current dispute involving Leeds binmen.

Can you explain how the Labour and UNISON events differed from the SP event?

Free meals and accommodation! In all seriousness this seemed more ideological and theoretically focused whereas Labour and union events are more policy-focused.

You mentioned the “Is Cameron a new Thatcher?” session which you attended. What about the first Sunday session you attended, on fighting the BNP? What message did you take away from that?

I found it very unimpressive. I am a member of Unite Against Fascism and found the party’s criticism of it odd, given I have found it a very positive and commendable experience. Particularly I am concerned with regard to the Socialist Party’s attitude to “no platform”, with most members at the event refusing to support it, and the Welsh secretary of the SP arguing it needs to be “reassessed”, the BNP “exposed” and a new anti-fascist organisation created. Very troubling and sectarian.

Do you think anything could have been done to improve the discussion in the sessions?

I wish there had been more intervention from the chairs of the various sessions as they quickly descended into a hazy boredom with various ambitious SP members wishing to voice not their ideological opinion but promote some unimportant event that occurred in their area.

Obviously, being a member of Labour, you think that the place of the Left is in the Labour Party. But was there anything during Socialism 2009 which might have convinced you that Labour needs to work with groups like the Socialist Party?

I wouldn’t be opposed to a working relationship between Labour and these organisations particularly the disaffiliated unions, but I think the real question is do factions like the Socialist Party want to work with us? There was a real atmosphere at the debate on the crisis in working-class representation, created by SP members that suggested the Labour party as a political force for leftist politics was over and that it was no longer in the interests of these organisations to consider Labour as a viable group to work with.

One of the things I like to focus on is political theory, on my blog. Did anything at Socialism 2009 bear out any political theories you have, or present evidence to refute them?

I have to be honest, I’m not as well read on political theory as I should be; I tend to find the contemporary and practical application of politics more interesting than the writings of theorists.

What sessions would you like to see on the agenda for next year?

I’d like to see less about the past and more about the future, the implications of a left of Labour coalition, and the benefits and problems it presents. I would like to see less of the harping back to the days of Militant, and more on how the Socialist Party can bring about realistic changes to politics.

In between sessions at Socialism 2009, I took some time to chat to some of the attendees, including a Socialist Party member from the Isle of Wight. I figured a good topic would be the recent campaign around Vestas, where the labour movement tried to intervene to protect the jobs of a bunch of workers who specialize in building parts for wind turbines.

Brother D’s first point was that literally as soon as the occupation of Vestas began, by the factory workers, that the police moved in with barriers and assisted private security in attempting to cut off food. The sheer weight of publicity acquired, however, meant that this was not going to be a workable strategy – people tend to take it amiss when you try and starve workers out.

He was impressed by the way the Socialist Party, the AWL, the local unions and indeed the local Labour Party jumped in feet first, to get leafleting and building support for the workers and for the demonstrations organised to provide some moral support. Though the workers in the plant were not unionised, they quickly became so, being faced with both opposition and support that hinged around the ‘organised labour’ vs. ‘organised bosses’ paradigm.

A permanent camp was established outside the factory, and a broad swathe of opinion mobilised behind the occupying workers.

The local Labour Party supported Vestas, but Brother D thinks that it hindered matters because a) they were marching under a Labour banner, to which not everyone was friendly, and b) they kept demanding negotiation with the government. By all accounts the CLP on the Isle of Wight is fairly left-wing, and was prepared to disagree with the government position. Yet I think the idea of negotiations with this Labour government illuminates some illusions obviously held either in the power of mediatic campaigns, or in the ideology of the government.

A media-orientated campaign was, maintained Brother D, an almost inevitable outcome due to the broadness of the campaign, pulling in people who were not necessarily amenable to more direct solutions, and this acted as a break on the move to support the Vestas workers. None of the groups managed to achieve support for a tactic that might have moved the struggle along.

Interestingly, Brother D suggested that the physical isolation of the most militant workers – those occupying the factory – from the rest of the crowd may have played a role in breaking morale, or preventing the necessary critical mass from building amongst the workers inside and out to try something other than just waiting inside and hoping that the bosses would cave in. Also, following the several demonstrations, a fatigue set in and the familiar malaise of, “what can we really do?” took hold.

Thus, following the sacking of the workers by Vestas, one by one they came out of the factory.

During the dispute, the Tory MP declared that he had intervened on their behalf but ultimately wanted the workers to simply accept the fait accompli that they were being made redundant. The Liberal Democrats were, apparently, completely invisible on the issue. At the very least this demonstrates a clear divide between Labour and the other parties, but doesn’t escape that Labour is still to the Right of demands by workers.

It also demonstrates that, when it comes to a straight-up fight, Tory populism will keep them off pickets and away from workers, and the field will be clear for left-wing radicalisation. Surely proof, if such were needed, about the continuing universality of the working class and the implicit socialist aspect to that class acting in its own interest, with or without acknowledged theoretical leaders.

(See also this excellent interview with one of the Polish workers involved in the occupation).

Socialism 2009 was the Socialist Party organised conference to bring together people from the party and the Left to discuss ideological issues, to educate and debate. It lasted all last weekend, and I’ve already outlined the Saturday events. This is part one of Sunday’s events.

There were three slots for meetings on the Sunday, the first two you could choose what you wished and the third was a closing rally. For the first session, I went to see Peter Taaffe outline his defence of Leon Trotsky, in particular against Robert Service’s new biography – though Service himself refused to turn up for a debate, despite having been asked.

On Service’s biography, Taaffe’s criticism was scathing and can be read here. If a tenth of the things said about the book are true, it would be a waste of money to buy it. Debates between Robert Service and Chris Hitchens were referred to by Taaffe also and they can be watched on YouTube.

Knowing a bit about Trotsky, from his own writings and Deutscher’s masterful three volume biography, I wanted to go along to see what Taaffe would say about those things for which Trotsky is habitually criticised, which I assumed would be the focus for a session entitled “In defence of Leon Trotsky”. Actually they weren’t – in fact very few critical sentiments were voiced about Trotsky at all.

This was disappointing, because understanding some of the criticisms raised against Lenin and Trotsky are key to understanding the Russian revolution, post-October 1917. Glazed over in one comment by Taaffe was a discussion about democracy in the Soviets. There was no discussion about the ban on factions within the Bolshevik Party, or about measures such as the militarization of labour which Trotsky proposed.

It is not the case that socialists have no answers to these questions – but in a session designed to educate people about Trotsky, warts and all, the absence of discussion was mystifying. Did economic liberalization demand the suppression of the other parties, to prevent the NEPmen and kulaks from building a political base? Did Lenin and Trotsky think banning factions inside the Bolshevik Party was necessary?

These are questions which need to be asked if they are to be answered – but they were not asked, even rhetorically. The focus was on Robert Service, at best a second rate historian.

Despite this, some very good points were raised from the floor, when debate was opened. One comrade from Birmingham SP, who had studied revolutionary social history, made an excellent example of her own time at university, showing how university teachers can be motivated by their own prejudices. This raised some debate about how socialists should look on mainstream academia. A different comrade pointed to a favourable review of Service’s biography being published as part of right-wing PCS union material, for example.

An important point is contained here. Universities tend to favour the fashionable, and following the defeats of the 1980s, the successes of the Right have bred changes in the composition of faculties across the UK. This has in turn allowed the dissemination of a great amount of (some really hysterical, occasionally easily disproven) anti-communist tracts that have the official seal of university publishing groups like the OUP.

Unfortunately no recommendations on this subject were to be had, in terms how to remedy the situation. No links were drawn from revolutionary education to wider education and improvement of the working class, from the victory of the Right to the decline of social spaces to read or the de-funding of the Workers’ Educational Association and other bodies with the general betterment of our class in mind, including teaching workers how to get involved in researching and writing their own history.

An SP member from Newcastle brought up how we can put Trotsky’s ideas to practical use. Occasions in recent memory were illuminated to good effect using the example of Trotsky – such as the Lindsey Oil Refinery dispute. Discussion was had over the attitude of Trotsky to the masses of dirty, ill-clothed, rough-spoken workers whom he addressed either at the Soviet or as soldiers in the Red Army or in the halls he filled for many nights in Petrograd during the revolution.

The point was won that even where workers have some backward ideas, e.g. nationalism, that once it’s time for struggle, we should support their legitimate demands even while confronting their backwards ideas. This has always seemed self-evident to me, as we can’t be expecting workers to arrive at our headquarters fully versed in socialist theory, history and practice, else the revolution would have been won decades ago.

Similarly, it was discussed that actually directly reading Trotsky’s writings can be a palate-cleansing experience when it comes to looking at the politicial positions of some groups from British political history, such as the Socialist Labour League / Workers’ Revolutionary Party. Far from reducing ourselves to a form of biblical exegesis, we should read enough to know when ‘socialists’ are trying to BS through use of many a fine revolutionary phrase and appending Trotsky’s name.

Following this substantive debate, Peter then summed up from the front and I took some great encouragment from his words. He said, “We want to create an educated cadre who can act independently of a national leadership” and he figured on Trotsky as an example likely to inspire such independence of spirit. About that I can only agree.

(See also: And Now For Something Completely Sectarian, Nation of Duncan and David Bishop)

Over the last two years, this blog has been exceptionally critical of the Tories, Liberal Democrats and SNP whenever any of those parties won a by-election. The reason being, that whenever such a shocking event happened, each side waxed lyrical about how it was ready for government and how ‘the people’ favoured them. Because it’s unheard of for the opposition to win the odd by-election against an incumbent government.

So imagine my chagrin when it was Labour’s turn:

“This by-election has been about many things, but, most of all, it has been about jobs and the economy.

“People have had their say. They have backed Gordon Brown in his efforts to secure our economic recovery, they have sent a resounding ‘No’ to Alex Salmond and his treatment of our great city and a resounding ‘No’ to David Cameron.”

Thus spake Willie Bain. Is it possible for these people to retain any sense of perspective? Or be remotely humble? The victory obviously has nothing to do with the previous SNP candidate being forced out of the race by allegations in the Sunday Herald as recently as July. Or that Labour have held the seat for decades. Or that they were defending a ten thousand majority. No, the fightback truly has begun!

It was definitely a show of support for one of the most unpopular leaders in the democratic world. Absolutely. I wish they’d all just bugger off.

This, lest you need reminding, is my five step organisational action plan for the local Labour left.  This five step plan is itself the fourth part of a wider six part series on the Labour left generally.  When I’m done I’ll set it out all as a single pdf file.

Steps 1 and 2 of the action plan were about how the Left might take over the local parties again, and how it should refocus its efforts on engagement with the working class, not least through engagement with the unions.

 Step 3, which has met with a ‘cautious’ reception to date, is the ‘big idea’, which seeks both to reclaim real power for a revitalized membership, and to draw in further membership from outside (ex and non-members) with the real promise of democratic centralist influence over party affairs and ultimately party policy.

 Step 4 brings us back to earth, and focuses on how we ‘campaign’ as local parties, and what ‘campainging’ should actually mean. 

 I believe we should seek this transition even if Step 3 – important as it is – doesn’t come off, because changing the way we do things at local level, and becoming more successful both non-electorally and electorally, may draw in resources and power from the centre even in the absence of the radical shifts I propose we should struggle for with our trade union comrades.

 It’s a little schematic, but currently this is what campaigning means for many Labour activists all around the country:

 1.  Printing leaflets with messages about how well the local Labour representatives (MP, councilors, candidates) are doing and how good the Labour government is, asking for help to deliver leaflets, and a grumble sheet destined for a) the contact database b) the casework list of the relevant councilor or MP;

 2.  Delivering the leaflets;

 3.  Canvassing with the national database sheets to hand, identifying voter preference, and picking up case work problems.  This is on the phone or on the doorstep;

 4.  Entering the data into the database;

 5.  Campaign meetings, often separate from the CLP main body or executive, to co-ordinate the drafting, the printing, the canvassing, the finance for it all, the timetable, and to draw up an action plan;

And that, essentially, is that.  It’s focused primarily on winning elections, via ‘visibility’ of candidates, and by making sure the short electoral season is run efficiently, getting to ‘promises’ and ‘undecideds’

 Certainly, there’s more room for the political message with the new canvassing system and set of questions, if you’re a good enough canvasser, but in the end the objective remains information gathering, storage, analysis and electoral use.

 I know these things because I’m good at them; none of it’s rocket science.

But it is, essentially, crap. 

When done my most people, and most CLPs it treats people like numbers and fails to engage at all meaningfully.  That’s why people see us coming from behind the tweaked curtain and don’t answer the door.  That’s why people without babies in the bath upstairs say they’ve got the baby in the bath upstairs (who would generally leave a baby in the bath upstairs?).

Even the very best canvassers – those with the confidence born not just of doing it a lot but also the knowledge base to respond, to draw issues together, to make an action plan in the head as you go down the street – have all heard the less experienced canvasser two doors down saying something, or using an approach that makes you want to a) cringe b) try and get some more training sorted c) cringe.

 Come on, admit it, you excellent canvassers (you know who you are).  You know who the people are in your CLP that make your heart sink ever so slightly when someone other than them runs the board (and what’s that running the board about, anyway?).

 No, we need to do campaigning differently.  We need to make it a campaign, as in the military sense of the term – a struggle for victory, before another struggle for victory in a long war.

 In my mind’s eye, there’ll be one big indication of getting campaigning right.  That’ll be when we have campaign meeting which have an agenda about more than one campaign, and a slot for new campaigns.

 Sure, lots of campaigns will still involve doorstepping and time on the phone,  and there will also always be some scope for Dan’s opening line (see comment 9): ‘I’m just calling round from the Labour party to see if there’s any problems we can help you with or any improvement you’d like to see in the area’. In fact that’s almost word for word what I say when I’m just out and about.

 But that’s not enough in itself, because the problems get atomized, and councilors and activists end up becoming cheap council customer service staff rather than people involved in politics. 

Rather, we must have the courage of our socialist convictions, and trust people to vote for us at election time if we campaign for them on all the other things that matter.

 It’s not that this isn’t done in places, and Dan points to excellent examples of it in both John McDonnell’s constituency and Liam Byrne’s, but we need to make it the accepted form of campaigning.  The features that a new socialist campaigning should have include:

 1.  Newsletters which provide information not just about what Labour’s up to, but about what’s going on, and in particular about where there is injustice;

 2.  Newsletters which invite contribution and which actually pick up those contributions and take them forward;

 3.  A willingness of CLP activists to engage with non-Labour action, and to take the Labour hat off while engaging, but to ensure that it is fed back into newsletters (and accompanying websites);

 4.  A conscious move away from a simply focus on candidate ‘visibility’ to proper engagement;

 5.  A move towards the development of social enterprise/co-operative publication of newsletters, with people (not necessarily Labour members) getting paid to do, in the manner of the LeftNewMedia-related proposals set out, in relation to printed material, by Dave here;

 6.  A willingness and even determination not simply to focus campaigning efforts on housing areas, but to get into workplaces, especially with a view to unionization, initially through newsletter drops to canteens etc. in places where we know people will chew over what’s written with work colleagues (this was very effective as a measure when I was a trade unionist in hospitals);

 Is that an easy shift?

 Of course it isn’t.  Most active campaigners have never known anything other than the Labour canvassing board, and even members who still don’t get the rationale of the canvass board and data entry/analysis tend to pretend that they’re up to dare with it all.

 The key pint is, though, that the focus on Contract Creator and all that goes with it is a huge opportunity costs, and also creates both an intra-party cultural blockage to ‘proper’ campaign and worker struggle.

 Controversially, I know, what leftwing CLP should do at an early stage is to get rid of contact creator, get rid of the canvass boards and the regular Saturday mornings, and thus make a clear statement; we are about socialist campaigning, not number crunching.

 The effects of our Voter ID has can be significant when it comes to election time, but the remain relatively marginal compared with bigger swings in popular feeling, whether that be about who to vote for, or whether to vote for any of the bastards at all. 

Much better, I contend, to put all that energy and time into connecting more properly with working people, and have the confidence to know that efforts will be repaid (and of course, an early newsletter can send out that message).

Of course it can’t happen before this general election.  I’m realistic.  We are too set in our ways to make it happen now, and not enough CLPs are under leftwing control to give it the critical mass it needs to take hold,

But along with Steps 1 to 3, it should be part of the grand plan to move away what’s been imposed on us by a New Labour hierarchy keen to make us doorstep cannon fodder.

 In step 5, I’ll be looking at working with the rest of the best of the left. That may be a day or two away, as I am now officially ill.

Until recently I was only barely aware of a magazine called the Spectator and its accompanying website, but I’ve noticed it a lot just recently.  I’ve noticed it because everything in it seems to be such utter nonsense, and the trolls even worse than elsewhere.

Today its columnist David Blackburn takes the plaudits for the TCF’s new ’most woefully inaccurate journalist of the week award’, with not one but two entries – posted within a couple of hours either side of lunch? - which are simply wrong with a capital W.

First, at 12.43pm, is his suggestion that a political party, well the Labour party anyway, trying to maximise postal votes might be illegal in some way, and that Labour is bound to be up to no good.  That brought the trolls out, for sure.  He’s simplu wrong with a capital W.

Chris Paul’s already dealt with that one, and got the following comment published:

‘This seems to be speculative nonsense. People with PVs are about three times as likely to vote as those without. Weather doesn’t intervene. Holidays don’t. Illness doesn’t. Work doesn’t. Can’t be bothered less likely. Which is why all parties in close run seats try to get their known or likely supporters on PV. Conflating a perfectly logical optimisation exercise with cheating seems sloppy and ignorant. I repeat: sloppy and ignorant.’

Then, at 2.56pm, presumably after a hearty lunch, Blackburn can’t be arsed doing anything as original as looking at someone else’s blog who’ not sat in the same office, so regurgtitates some of Melanie Foaming Phillips’ nonsense about nursing from the morning. 

In so doing he directly insults around 400, 000 trained nurses and all the accompanying Health Care Assistants that work alongside them. 

Good work if you can get it. 

Again, he’s simply factually wrong, and around twenty years behind the times (as Iain Dale was as well), seemingly unaware that the move to nurse training within higher education rather than hospital-based schools of nursing, started in 1992.   

Do Blackburn and Dale not know anyone at all outside their bubble?  Have they no idea what happens in the real world?  Have they never heard of Google?

Some of the commenters on the nurse nonsense, not so trollish to be fair, try to put Blackburn right, but I think he’d probably left by then (my corrective comment didn’t get published). 

Facts wrong?  Who cares?  He’s at the Spectator. It goes with the job.  Not one you’d need a degree for, though, I imagine.

The current lead story on the website is called ‘Two Elementary Mistakes’.  That’s a heap of regurgitated crap too, as Duncan shows, but at least the headline’s appropriate.

Just a quickie, but I have to.

Unlike Iain Dale, I am a trained nurse (registration now lapsed).  I trained at St George’s Hospital in Tooting in the 1980s, and worked in London, Switzerland, Bangladesh and (briefly) Lancashire, before moving on to the rest of my life.

I only raise this to establish some basic credibility, in order to then offier a corrective to Dale’s peddling of inaccurate crap on his website this morning.  He says:

‘So when I heard this morning that the NHS was now going to insist on a degree before nurses could train, I was dumbfounded.’

Yes, almost unbelievably, he thinks the new proposals mean that all trainee nurses will have to have a degree in something else before they start training to be a nurse.  It’s degrees IN nursing, we’re talking about, you ignorant, silly person [update: he’s now realised that bit and updated his own post.

Further, he has clearly never heard of Project2000, an initiative which started seven or eight years  before the year 2000, with a view to moving nurse education into higher education by about 2000. 

So when I say Dale’s a decade out of date, I’m being charitable.  His understanding of what modern nursing is really about is probably about fifty years out of date.

He says he was a nurse when he was in his gap year.  He might have been called an auxiliary nurse then, but now he’d almost certainly be called a Health Care Assistant (HCA) instead.  The details about how HCAs relate to nursing (and how being an HCA can lead into nurse training), are not very hard to find.

The training and career path of nursing has changed, and in many ways the HCAs now do what Enrolled Nurses did a quarter of a century ago. 

For Dale therefore to make out that the steps now proposed, which are to move the process towards the finalisation of a workforce strategy begun in the early 1990s under a Tory administration, are some kind of ridiculous overnight shift in policy thought up by Labour just for a laugh - a notion picked up eagerly by his trolls – is misleading at best, and damaging to the reputation of nursing profession at worst.  

Nursing as a profession gets enough shite from people eager to hark back to a Carry On world of  stern matrons, randy doctors and promiscuous ‘young things’, without Dale sticking his fact-free oar in.

He should be supporting the ‘modernisation’ of a workforce, not throwing around aspersions about what it does and doesn’t take to be a highly trained public servant.

I think there are issues with Project 2000 and what ensued, not least in relation to the terms and conditions of HCAs, but at least I know some of the facts, and how to use Google just to check them.

A little bit later than planned, because the kids are ill, we move to step 3 of the five point organisational action plan for the Labour left. 

Step 1 was all about taking over local party infrastructures and how manageable that is.   Step 2 was all about avoid the pitfalls that the Labour left fell into in the 1980s, keeping focused on engagement with the working class and using that to draw in a new and revitalised membership.

 But there’s an elephant in the room, and it’s time to confront it.

 As Dave neatly pointed out here in a separate but complementary post (see comment no.2), the name of the Labour party is ‘besmirched’.

There’s no point in seeking to deny that for many young people with leftwing inclinations, in particular, the idea that the Labour party offers a viable way forward is simply ridiculous. 

By way of recent example,  while Salman,  – a committed young activist, I’m sure – is good enough to pat me, an my ‘old Labourite’ head and say he admires what I’m trying to do, he’s not prepared to engage in any serious discussion/analysis about the difference between the national leadership and the Labour grassroots.

Similarly, when I was giving a talk about local politics a few years ago at the local university, not long after the initial Iraq war, a first year student – so I guess about 18 0r 19 years old – asked me quite simply ‘How can you live with yourself?’ with reference to my party membership.

The message is that, as Labour members, we’re all implicated together.  I could talk till I’m blue in the face about the opportunities the left now has to take over a valid (and reasonably financed) infrastructure; my impeccable logic (though not fully evidenced-based yet) will not be believed because I am seen as an accessory both to murder overseas and the ransacking of civil liberties in the UK.

 This is not something to be bitter about, because such a reaction is what drives people even further from the Labour party, but it is something to acknowledge openly.

Then, just for good measure in the challenge the Labour left faces, there’s the other elephant in the room. 

This is again the elephantinely obvious point that just gaining control of the local infrastructure isn’t the big prize that people on the left really want;  they want more say not just on local issues, but on how the national Labour party conducts its affairs, and the policies this and future Labour governments will implement. 

That’s not rocket science to work out, because it’s what people who’ve stayed in the party want as well.

Talk to most Labour party activists for any length of time at all and before very long you’ll get to the key reason why many people have ‘had it up to here’ with the party. 

If you explore a bit further, it usually gets around to the decision, taken by the Labour party conference in 1997, to adopt Partnership in Power (PiP), and thereby to abandon once and for all any pretension that ordinary members and branches might have any real influence over national party and thereby government policy (see also here and here for  reviews).

Further, it comes to round to the total lack of respect that the Parliamentary Labour Party has for anything ‘beneath’ it, to the extent that they will now quite happily ignores party rule that the PLP accepted in 1997.  This is set out usefully by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (and Peter Hain) in the following terms at the time of the 2005 review of the PiP process:

 The review is, in large part, a recognition that PiP is facing a crisis of credibility.  In his latest pamphlet, The Future Party, Peter Hain admits that members have a perception that devolving ‘most responsibility for policy-making to the NPF has been used as a means of denying them a say over contentious current policy issues’. 

 Hain accepts that many members ‘feel marginalised and the PiP framework is losing credibility.  I believe that we will struggle to establish ourselves as a true party of government unless we can end the relationship of perpetual distrust between party members and the leadership’.  This distrust is fuelled when, in clear breach of undertakings made in 1997, Ministers announce they will ignore Alternative Positions from the NPF (such as rail re-nationalisation and the fourth option for council tenants) that were carried by Annual Conference, the Party’s sovereign body.  And the distrust is further fuelled when major controversial policies, such as foundation hospitals and top-up fees, aren’t taken through the PiP process at all, but are simply steam rollered through Parliament by leadership diktat.  This lack of credibility and distrust helps explain why Party membership has slumped by at least 50% since 1997.

 The core problem here is one of apparent irreversibility. 

In signing up to the PiP process in the first place, the broader membership handed over all power.  Now it does not have the legitimate decision-making power set out in the rules by which to demand back that power. 

 Checkmate, it would seem, to the PLP and an acquiescent National Executive Committee – acquiescent by means of the design of its membership structure (see the briefing paper links above).

 So how, then, faced with these two elephants – of poor reputation and little quasi-judicial power – can the Labour left go forward?

 The answer is to change the rules of the chess game unilaterally, and to announce loud and clear, even as steps 1 and 2 get underway, that the rules are going to be changed.

 What I would like to see happen is the Labour Representation Committee, and any other Labour left organization that’s listening (such as Compass?) announce loud and clear the following policy direction:

1.  To campaign for the total disaffiliation of all affiliated trade unions currently affiliated to the national Labour party;

 2.  To campaign concurrently for a re-affiliation by these same trade unions TO CLPs (or branches) with a commitment to the same or more financial contribution;

3.  To campaign for the re-affiliation to CLPs of trade unions which have already disaffiliated from the national Labour party;

 4.  Other Labour party should be invited to follow suit and to devolve their contributions to local Labour level.

Pretty simple really, as a rallying call,  but it’s a campaign which would, if successful, have huge impacts upon the way the Labour party both operates, and just as importantly in view of its besmirched reputation, how it is regarded by people on the left outside the labour party, and especially by young people who have never thought it right to go anywhere near the Labour party (see also Step 5 on other measures that need to be taken.

 The key impact, obviously, is that the flow of financial resources would be reversed.  Unions and ordinary members would start to get a say both on how affairs are run locally, and how their MP (if there is one) represents them, because they hold the purse strings.  More critically, the national leadership would lose its de facto power and would need to approach CLPs and, let’s say, regional conference, with a ‘business plan’ to be agreed if it is to get its fund to operate.

 Of  course, it’s never going to be simple to arrange this, and much will depend on the extent to which union members and their branches can exert the required influence over their own leaderships, either by winning votes against leadership advice or by toppling the leaderships..  I won’t cover that in detail here, as I’m not qualified to do so (not having been active in a union for a while) but much will depend upon who is correct about ‘where the unions are at’.

 In Luke Akehurst’s view, on the right of the party:

 Most active trade unionists do not sit on the left of the Labour Party. They tend because of the nature of trade union activity – representing ordinary working people and negotiating deals with employers – to be pragmatic and moderate.

This, is, just as with who actually constitutes the remaining membership party, a matter to be tested empirically, but as with my experience of Labour party membership, I have a decent hunch that Luke is thinking wishfully here; that when offered a real chance to seize real power over ‘their’ party via a radical move in union policy, we may find a lot of grassroots support at a time when anything that smacks of MP involvement/power bases is something to be distrusted and fought against.

Regular readers of this blog will see that, in this step 3 proposal (but a step to be ‘talked up even as we get to step 1) there is a link to the other proposals for the ‘reverse of financial flows’ to political parties that I have set out most recently here. 

Where I think the strength of this step 3 version lies, over and above the ‘legislative/all party version, is that while the latter would need to be accepted and implemented solely on the basis of its appeal to the ‘democratic reform’ spirit of the existing institutional powers, the former is about a real challenge to those powers based on mass membership and its financial clout. 

That is, the legislative liberal reform option won’t be accepted, because people in power don’t tend to give up power like that.  The one based on the recognition of what power and resources actually are, and where relative strengths lie, might.

Of course, having seized greater control over  what a labour government must do if its party infrastructure is to be financed, we may at some point be able to force through accompanying legislation which reverses the financial flows of cash over which the unions and the grassroots has no current control, but that’s beyond Step 5, so I’ll leave it there.

 This is the logic for Step 3, but it’s not all about logic.  What we also need to do in the Labour party is to change the culture of deference that has emerged in the last 20 years.  MPs (and as I said in Step 2, councillors) should be regarded not as higher beings, but as our representatives – there to do our bidding, to be commended if they do it well, to be replaced if they do not. 

Such a change in mood in the party – the willingness to take matters into our own hands backed by a workable plan to do so – will be more effective than any policy paper urging us all, yet a-bloody-gain, to enter a competition about electoral reform.