The McDonnell supremacy
The Labour Representation Committee, of which I am an individual member, has backed John McDonnell’s run for the leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and thereby (courtesy of clause VII of the rule book) for the de facto leadership of the British Labour party as a whole.
Now, if I were the churlish type, I would complain that for a group that believes in the importance of internal party democracy, and is now complaining (with some justification) that the leadership contest is rigged against later/currently less popular entrants, it seems a bit odd that I wasn’t asked for my view on whether John McDonnell should be supported in a leadership bid.
While I accept that it’s the National Committee which makes the decision on the matter, I note that the matter wasn’t on the agenda for the conference at which the decision was apparently taken, and no late notice of the need to include it on the agenda was taken.
But, heh, I’m not the churlish type.
I know that sometimes under-resourced organizations like LRC don’t get everything right administratively, and while it would have been nice to be asked what I thought about whether John should run for leader, I accept that support for his running would have been overwhelming in whatever way opinion was canvassed and the decision taken.
So now it looks like John is going to run. As someone who believes in the virtue of (self-motivated) organizational and party discipline as a key way of being an effective organization, I accept the decision of the political organization of which I have chosen to become a member, and will therefore seek to do my bit, for what it’s worth, in support of John’s bid, should he go through with the decision to seek the 33 nominations.
But just before I get on with that support, let me just express a few doubts about the whole thing – doubts which by rights I should have put in writing before last weekend when the LRC National Committee decision was taken, and indeed might have squeezed in time for if I had been asked.
My doubts are not about John as a person. I’ve never met him, and perhaps I never will, but I’ve no reason to doubt that the reports about his political integrity, his excellence as a proper campaigner, and his ‘leadership qualities’ are anything other than reliable. The people doing the reporting on this (whom I’ve never met either) have my respect for their judgment on such matters.
I also acknowledge that there may be some opportunities to use the media attention that the leadership contest will draw to spread a leftwing message to the wider public, to counter the myth that the Parliamentary Labour Party is made up exclusively of Blairite/Brownite wannabees.
The only problem is that any such message is likely to be drowned out by a more standard media message that this is just some ridiculous leftie upstart getting in the way of the serious Milibro debate, and that lefties really, really don’t live in the real world. I don’t doubt that John is a very fine and persuasive public speaker, but if he gets to be in a television debate with the Milibros, then the content of what he says that will be picked up will be heavily filtered both by the way in which it is all presented and by existing popular perception. That is precisely what happened with the ‘Clegg bounce’; anyone looking at the actual content was unimpressed, but that wasn’t what the media was telling us to look for.
Frankly, the left of the Labour party has got better things to do at the moment than to be focusing on a leadership challenge that it is unlikely to win. Putting available resources in this direction risks doing more or less what happened in the early 1980s, when all the eggs were chucked into the Tony-Benn-for-Deputy basket. When that failed – and failure for John McDonnell is much more of a certainty – the left retreated into its local government refuge, and left the party as a whole to further entrench its position as bastions against working class interest. In the 20 years that followed, I’m unaware of any serious (or at least successful) attempts by the left to counter the infrastructural changes being brought to the party by the precursors of and then the real new Labour.
The leadership contest is a distraction the Labour left does not need at the moment. Instead, we should be focusing on developing a grassroots infrastructure, in direct association with the leftwing trade union leaders whose election we SHOULD be campaigning for in the here and now, which sets in motion the development of a Labour party as properly representative of working class interest.
At end of it all, we should be electing leader prized less for her qualities of oratory, than for her skill in working with her MPs and her MEPs to carry forward the policy direction of the Labour party, in the interests of that freshly conscientised (and thereby enlarged as a ‘core’ vote) working class.
In the short term, the Labour left (and LRC) would do well, therefore, to be focusing on the following kinds of activity rather than engaging in false hope that a leadership beauty contest will allow a leftwing message to take hold across the country:
1) Getting into CLPs, especially in those (often non-metropolitan) areas which feel powerless in the face of the dominant internal political process of the party, and have simply become either campaigning fodder or left-behind talking shop rumps;
2) Working within our own CLPs to develop local parties prepared to go beyond the confines of electioneering and get involved in wider socialist activity either as propagandists or organizational activists, or both;
3) Engaging at a level of organizational and financial-legal detail with union activists and wanabee leaders of unions about how those unions, as Labour’s main funders, can most effectively hold the feet of the party in the fire until it gets a more democratic process of decision making (including the rules around leadership contests and the restrictive need for MP nominations in the first place;
4) Taking seriously the prospect of the need to re-ratify the Lisbon Treaty, and the opportunities that may afford to push for a full referendum on membership, out of which will come a chance to talk about the relationship between the need for EU reform and international socialist politics in local leaflets and on local doorsteps in a way which helps people make sense of the events in Greece and Spain (more detail to follow in a later post).
These are the kind of things the Labour left should be involved in, not the vacuities of a leadership contest designed only to frustrate and sidetrack our limited resources.
But for now, the LRC has spoken, and as a member of the LRC, I support John McDonnell for leader, not Maria Eagle as previously stated not entirely for the divilment (details on request).
Is it an “either/or” question? I don’t see the week-long campaign to try and get John on the ballot paper (or even the two month campaign to win support for him) as an alternative to any of the things you suggest.
The problem with your item (1) is that the existing LRC members we have are already activists in their CLPs. But we don’t seem to have an easy way of reaching out to members in areas where we don’t have existing activists, other than through high-profile national things like a leadership contest.
I suppose it would have made sense, even for the appearance of the thing, to discuss whether John would be the LRC nominee, but the vote at NC was unanimous and if put to the Saturday conference, would have been carried by acclamation – and said conference had other things to get on with in any case. Nevertheless, you are right to feel a little miffed.
As for the rest, I see no reason why all of points 1 to 4 can’t be integrated into a McDonnell run for the leadership. Indeed many of them were the last time – in 2007. I was part of a group set up in Oxford East CLP, which met regularly in the city hall courtesy of a local councillor, and went door to door and canvassed CLP members on behalf of the John4Leader campaign. The development of this politically conscious layer is vital to all aforesaid points 1-4 and a leadership campaign is as good an excuse as any.
Lessons can be learned from this (only they won’t be as the NEC want to close down debate by closing nominations in about a week from now) that could serve for a Left revitalisation within Labour. The thought of a McDonnell leadership is enough not just to get activists motivated but enough to get older departed members rejoining (of whom I met a bunch in the first campaign) – and this can be tied to more definite activities, in the realms of pulling in union branches and even sending out ‘missionaries’ to more rural CLPs to aid in recruitment drives, which will benefit the Left, with the right political orientation to activity.
Rory @1: No, it need not be either/or, altough I think your describing it as a one week campaign looks a bit self-defeating (I can actually see the tactical advantages in trying and failing to get nominations, but that’s a bit beside the point.
My point is merely the risk that we’ll all be consumed by the inevitabilities of a leadership talent show. If I can take confidence (see my comment to Dave below) that this won’t happen, then my work here will be done.
Dave @2: I do actually take some assurance from the way you describe the 2007 leadership campaign. There was no such campaign round my way, of course, and no hint of it; for me, old though I am, 2007 is getting on for half the time of my life’s political activism ago, and I held quite different views then, so am able to remember it is as many mainstreamed party remembers would remember it.
If we can instil in a campaign the idea that it’s not about John, as much as about the set of ideas John sets out, then I’m right behind it, though I’d like a voice in the views that John is asked to represent on the telly. The whole crux is that any such campaign should be part of a wider movement of action by the LRC and others, and not the be all and end all. That’s the reason for my post.
And I’m not really that miffed. The point was that if, right from the start, we make this about John and his capacities and not about the ideas and policies (which MUST be set in international context) then we achieve nothing other than frustrated chip-on-shoulderness. My sense about the saturday coference that it was a John McDonnell love-in. I’ll be pleased if the campaign, hopefully beyond next week, proves me wrong – as i’m sure will be John.
Essentially this post boils down to ‘Dont support socialists, the media makes them look bad. Only support candidates that the capitalist media approve of who will take forwards the interest of the working class against the…oh a problem arises.’
Not really sure how that emerges from the post: care to explain?
M Copestake @$: No it doesn’t. It ends by expressing support and a willigness to get stuck into a campaign. It’s a risk assessment, and a proposed strategy for coping with that risk and maximising the impact of a leadership campaign, not least by using it as a launching bad for alternative media (‘propoganda’) aimed at supplanting the capitalist narrative of what left wing politics is about.