Though Cowards Flinch

Che Guevara once said:

“Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery.”

In the 1960s Guevara conceptualised foco – a type of revolutionary resistance where small groups act to encapsulate popular discontent against a sitting government.

Today, the Basildon Echo have revealed that a number of guerrilla golfers, unhappy about the decision to close their local course down, and sack 12 staff after a row took place between the company running the course and Basildon Council, have taken over the course themselves.

Local enthusiasts are collecting donations themselves and maintaining the upkeep of the site so it doesn’t “go to rack and ruin”.

The council are aware of this, but are “turning a blind eye”.

Basildon. Home to the Basildon Man (who is said to epitomise the working class conversion to Thatcherism) and former MP David Amess (who took Chris Morris’ cake to parliament and who opposes abortion  but is pro-capital punishment), isn’t the most radical town in the land.

But it would seem revolutionary fervor has even devoured Tory hot-spots.

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David Amess also happens to be against fox hunting. Angela Smith, the Blair Babe, former Basildon MP and now peer, was also against fox hunting. She once worked for the league against cruel sports. It was popular at the time of the fox hunting ban to blame a residual class opposition, that Labour had been storing up since the closing of the mines. Clearly, rather than it being a concerted war between the classes, it was the influence Basildon has on the country the world.

* Before I get my windows smashed in, handicap is a golf term, meaning something or other.

Gaddafi has always been something of a challenge for socialists. While it was his charisma and strong rhetoric that suited those keenly supportive of Pan-Arabism and socialism in the seventies, later it would be his malleability and weakness that allowed the West to turn a blind eye to him, or even conduct deals with him in the supposed interest of both parties.

A British source once said of Gaddafi: “We thought he was a bit left-wing, but not too bad, and that we could deal with him.”

In 1950s Libya, King Idriss failed to tip his hat to the winds of change sweeping the Arab world. While the sound of Pan-Arabism played out, Libya was still at the behest of the US and UK, that was until 1 September 1969, when Idriss was receiving medical treatment in Turkey, that a successful coup plot installed into office a group Libyan army officers led by Gaddafi, overthrowing the Monarchy and pre-empting Idris’ abdication.

42 years later and Gaddafi is still leader of the country, and is himself now irresponsive to the winds of change sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, like the leader before him. But moreover, Gaddafi’s defensive is set to be far more heavy-handed than most of the regions, to the extent that he may face a war criminal indictment over the way in which he has responded to protests.

He has been explicit: “when I [order use of force] everything will burn […] I’ll die here as a martyr”.

Gaddafi’s socialist supporters

His authoritarian dictatorship of the last forty years should spell out everything the left needs to know that support for him is misguided, but in spite of the fact he has incited a major civil war against protesters left wing leaders in Latin America have been positively supportive.

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez enjoys good relations with Gaddafi, awarding the dictator the Orden del Libertador Simón Bolívar – something usually reserved for people offering outstanding services to the country. Recently he sent a tweet from his official twitter account saying: “Long live Libya and its independence! Kadhafi faces a civil war!”

Fidel Castro, too, has stated publicly that: “NATO is planning to take over Libya and its oil”, while President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua said he has phoned Libyan Gaddafi to express his solidarity.

Is Gaddafi socialist or a lackey of imperialism?

Chavez’ uncritical support for Gaddafi has once again caused embarrassment for the Venezuelan leader’s UK supporters. The closest tie is between Chavez and the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), who in 2009 made efforts to distance themselves from the support he gave to Ahmadinejad during the latter’s reelection. Alan Woods, one of the leading members of the Tendency, has written a piece for the IMT website condemning the use of force by Gaddafi, while explaining that rather than being a socialist he is actually responsible for “privatizations [which] encouraged foreign companies to open up shops in Benghazi and Tripoli”. He goes on to say: “As recently as last November The Economist published a glowing report about Libya, which it compared with Dubai.”

Andy Newman at Socialist Unity has noted that events taking place in the Middle East in 2003 made it wholly undesirable for regimes to present themselves as avowedly anti-American and Gaddafi’s Libya was one case in point. Gadaffi has always described himself as anti-imperialist, however he has never posed too much of a threat to the US (that is until the Lockerbie bombing – context and debates of which are too long to discuss in any detail here).

Even in spite of the well-documented meetings between Gadaffi, Berlusconi, Blair and others, the former should not be looked at primarily as a lackey of imperialism. However nor can he be viewed as a socialist. His ideology is not based upon the concerns of the people (which explains the large contingent rising up against him in Benghazi and other places) but upon a Nationalism that seeks to safeguard a ruling elite through whatever means possible. It’s durability is questionable; when Benghazi was lost Gaddafi ordered naval ships to attack it, however reports suggest there was major deliberation by the crew on what to do. As Woods, mentioned above, suggests, this shows early signs of a military in doubt over their leader.

The violent force planning to be used by Gaddafi is proof – if any more were needed – that he is in trouble. His regime is weakening, marred by resignations; he is flogging a dead horse. But if his last ditch attempt to flatten dissent works, some serious discussion needs to take place over what the rest of the world watching those scenes can do about it.

Conclusion

Unlike the South American leftist leaders, I don’t think Washington as a whole will be rubbing their hands together hoping for another war. If anything, Gadaffi himself by waging civil war and threatening to blow up oil terminals is rubbing the US up the wrong way. There is no doubt of his seriousness when he evokes crimes to humanity. Many hard right Neo-conservatives and left-leaning Liberals in the US senate have agreed that sanctions are the appropriate use of power for now, but they are not a long-term solution, and can often have undesirable effects to the people they are meant to help.

A no fly zone is only an option if there’s a foreign military presence in the country anyway, and an all-out military intervention like the one in Iraq ought to be avoided at all costs. This leaves options slim on the ground for the UN, whose only other option is to do nothing.

Debates on arms sales are tricky; of course small countries have the right to be armed against neighbouring oppressive nations, but the sort of monitoring which David Cameron spoke of recently on countries like Libya arming themselves against dissenters is pure fantasy, nor is it in the profit-driven interests of arms dealers anyway.

The Libyan situation poses many difficult questions, but let’s be clear: Gadaffi’s anti-imperialism doesn’t necessarily make him a friend of the left (this is what confuses Chavez et al); his desire to kill people on a large scale will force us all to think long and hard about the possible use of interventions – which may include forces and nations dubbed imperialist.

Activists have said: “We don’t need foreign forces to oust Gaddafi“. Let’s hope they’re correct.

Party affiliation is a key organisational question for a Marxist, not one of sentiment. This is why, when New Labour published a sentimental campaign video hijacking half a century of social democracy, the reaction from many was disgust. We could not believe that New Labour saw itself as part of the pro-welfare state tradition even while dismantling it. Processes like this define the primary question for socialists: in or out of Labour?

Social processes and Labour’s role
There are two struggles worth speaking of and in both of them the Labour Party has played a negative role. The first is in the marketisation and privatisation of public services, essentially redistributing public funds into private coffers, with the added bonus of undermining workers’ rights. The second is in the prevention of a class based response to these and other pressures of capitalist retrenchment, resulting in an impetus towards right-wing populism and anti-politics.

I think these things are pretty obvious, so I’m not going to dwell on them. Equally evident, however, is the desire of many Labour Party members to oppose their leaders. There are several dozen MPs who signed the EDM demanding a TU Freedom Bill, who’ve opposed privatisations, illiberal terror laws, protested the dissolution of the welfare state and the victimisation of claimants as being lazy reprobates deserving of our moral judgment.

These MPs, and the number of internal factions which advocate certain policies, have failed to achieve them and on the vast majority of occasions failed even to moderate New Labour’s agenda. The choice to join the Labour Party is thus the choice to be considered part and parcel of a Labour government widely seen as corrupt, unaccountable and actively working against the material interests of the vast majority of its members.

As Labour moves towards opposition, the contradiction here will lessen and finally disappear. Labour will not be the Party demanding sacrifices from the electorate, on behalf of business, nor imposing tax rises and service cuts. If the 1994-1997 period is anything to go by, whatever survives of New Labour will roll around in radical rhetoric and proceed to criticize the Tory government for things they will do themselves if elected.

This can make membership of Labour easier to consider, but the realities of power within Labour won’t have changed.

Unions and the Labour Party
Labour is, or should be, in hock to the unions. This should be extremely evident from the progressive collapse of New Labour’s base of personal donors and loan merchants. Yet the unions themselves look preposterous. In 2004, the Warwick Agreement was negotiated between Labour the the unions, as being key to what the unions wanted from this parliament: the demands themselves are pitiful, and some, as with Royal Mail, were plainly ignored.

Bureaucratic conservatism has been a key arm of the New Labour ‘coalition’. Within those unions, impressive heads of steam have built up specifically centred around moves to disaffiliate from Labour. In at least one union, combative non-Labour activists have been specifically targeted for expulsion. The fragmentation of the Labour-union link is also evidenced by the disaffiliation of the RMT, the FBU and the recent strong call from the CWU.

These moves are class-driven: if the unions and Labour cease to adequately represent the working class, then there will be moves first against union bureaucracies and the Labour Party, then away from unions and/or politics in general or worse, towards fascist politics. This is not going to be corrected merely by skilled political argumentation; it must be corrected by a change in the objective anti-working class processes sustained by Labour in government.

Here too, of course, there is an element of confused consciousness. Once the Tories get into power, unions will simply blame all the world’s ills on them and advocate a vote for the opposition – Labour – a position not open to them when Labour is in government. Yet this dissipation of pressure will serve to cement the union bureaucracy and centrist panderers rather than take the challenge further.

The only ray of hope I can spot is that at an Electoral Reform Society poll of TUC delegates back in late 2006 resulted in a majority supporting John McDonnell over Gordon Brown for leader of the Labour Party. It would be interesting to see how this has developed since then, so we have some idea of the direction political consciousness is going in.

Composition and Constituencies
My most intense experience of Labour was while at university in England. Particularly considering that one of my two fields of involvement was Oxford, this may not make for the most representative sample. Yet my experience of these young people, supposed to be the future of the Party, was almost universally negative, up to and including the point where I actually had to argue with one person that inequality was a bad thing.

There are reasons beyond my own parochial experiences for assuming that all is not necessarily well in Labour constituency organisations. Most obviously, the Labour heirarchy has recently felt free to assert its authority, ousting people selected as candidates by local parties, suspending local parties and continuing practices of ideological vetting for national selection lists. It’s difficult to see what a small trickle of activists back to Labour can do.

We should bear in mind that a large number of people (including former members) now refuse to have anything to do with Labour, and when even openly socialist Labour MPs can worry about the collapse of a 10,000+ majority, because of New Labour’s policies. For all the ‘resilience’ of Labour’s core vote, these aren’t the faces in charge of local constituency parties. Many CLPs are dormant in any case, lacking engagement beyond Voter ID.

Returning to my own experience, over vast swathes of the country, Labour simply isn’t competitive. It has no engagement (nor empathy for) local union needs, though it bears saying in turn that local union organisations have largely atrophied as well, and are maintained or established in many cases by the force of will of individuals whose dedication is not to the Labour Party. Local unions aren’t everything, of course, but Labour’s disengagement from collective community politics, rather than the occasional nimbyism, is visible round ‘ere at least.

Inside CLPs, it also seems that the party is visibly ageing.

Anti-fascist work
A lot of Labour members are engaged with groups like Love Music Hate Racism and Hope Not Hate, or supporting Unite Against Fascism. Yet even Labour members fully acknowledge that it’s Labour government policies which currently sustain the atrophy of Labour support and the concomitant growth of BNP support in areas like Dagenham.  Lee Walker, a Labour councillor in the area, has a lot to say on the subject.

Though Lee is part of Labour (and presumably advocates socialists joining) and though he attests that Dagenham is ‘very firmly Old Labour’, he reaffirms the view that with the wrong type of politico ensconsed in Westminster, the practical effect even of conquering the council is relatively small compared to what needs to be done to hold off the BNP, and provide the jobs and housing which that part of London cries out for.

Lee is convinced that through arguing the toss, that Labour members on the ground aren’t represented by their parliamentary cadre and national policies, we can stem the BNP and cites his own ward as evidence. I think there’s some evidence, such as from Nuneaton, to support this. Plenty of Labour members are also involved with counter-demonstrations against the BNP and the English Defence League, which help to mobilize local sentiment.

Yet even while some Labour members are doing this, there are Labour MPs, and the elements of the Labour Party they represent, which essentially buy into the BNP narratives on issues like immigration, calling for tighter laws, and fewer benefits, rather than advocating a massive house building programme, universal provision of services and jobs (to everyone, including the “white working class”).

This contradiction hinders the grassroots Labour attempt to stop the BNP, even if that effort mitigates them in some areas some of the time. As the Hope Not Hate map (left) shows, it’s in working class areas that the fascists really gather support – and its working class areas that do now and will continue to bear the brunt of New Labour and Tory attacks, for which some Labour figures and supporters prefer nationalist rather than class-based answers. Short term, joining Labour will not change that.

The argument from the Socialist Party, that standing ‘proper’ socialist candidates from independent parties can bring in votes unreached by Labour, potentially denying the BNP votes, is one I regard as unconvincing. What I do consider important is the intervention in local strikes and struggles, to force the unions to act against harmful council decisions and to give the working class confidence in its own power to drag change kicking and screaming out of local government.

In some areas, Labour is pretty good on this, and we should respect and support their efforts – but these efforts will pale when it comes to disrupting the agenda of a Tory government that will decimate social spending and push deprived former manufacturing areas towards fascism all the quicker. Labour is institutionally opposed to such efforts, preferring instead the straight-jacket of parliamentary activity.

Labour and the alternative
In recent struggles however, it is groups outside Labour which have been playing the key role – whether it’s the Socialist Party at Lindsey or engagement with the National Shop Stewards Network, the SWP’s Right to Work Conference, independent greens and socialists at Vestas and ClimateCamp and so on. Labour, on the other hand, seems to vary between declining to a slow ‘death’ and the determination to kill itself by squeezing out its last drop of left-wing credibility.

This inclines me to think that what pull on the working class that Labour exercises is residual, a phenomenon readily evident in countries like Germany, where ‘newer’ social-democratic parties have emerged to challenge the neo-liberal capitulations of the older parties. On the current trajectory, Labour may end up a model of the old Liberal Party remade for the 21st Century with ‘social justice’ as the new non-conformism.

I do not believe that the Labour Left, even impelled by a surge in working class militancy as a result of a frontal Tory attack on the last remnants of the welfare state, has numbers to rival the days of the height of its power in the 1970s never mind to bodily seize control of the Labour Party from New Labour, which has had years to entrench its favourite sons in ‘safe’ parliamentary seats.

Class struggle proceeds regardless of party affiliation of course. Labour is no longer in a position to be the sole – even the main – beneficiary of a new impetus towards class struggle, of workers linking up. I may be wrong, or the Labour Left fightback may be so impressive – bucking the trend hitherto – that our calculations are upset, and we’re called on to join Labour and battle even for the social democratic redistributive policies of old, in a climate of still further global capitalist retrenchment and greater demands for deeper neo-liberal reforms.

My impression, however, is that the Socialist Party is well positioned amongst activist elements in the unions and working class, and that most of the Labour Party will simply act as a conservative deadweight to those elements of the Labour Left who are similarly positioned – putting a brake on potential change coursing through CLPs, selection processes and so on. This is a direct refutation of a stance I held a few years ago.

With all this in mind, I don’t quite understand the decision of Phil, lead blogger at A Very Public Sociologist and long-time Stoke Socialist Party member to resign from the SP and join Labour, especially since he was a key person who I consulted before joining the SP myself.

I share his sentiments against standing candidates against moderate Labourites, and on the dismal prospects for the Socialist Party’s rather silly and opportunistic-looking Trade Union and Socialist Coalition electoral front. I can even surmise that, with him being in a very heavily Labour area and me being in a very lightly Labour area, our respective views on the ‘smaller links’ between Labour and the working class should be added together and divided by two to come to a proper appreciation.

What I can’t understand is how Phil reaches the conclusion that Labour’s direction of travel is an improvement on what it is currently. My generation has grown up not knowing ‘Old’ Labour, one element of which is more attracted by the flashy political campaigns of Bono and “Make Poverty History” than by the government, and another element to which is the product of persistent refusals to engage with real social ills: joblessness, poverty, terrible housing and crime, and couldn’t be more disillusioned if it tried.

If ever there was a time to explode the old trope that Britain hasn’t had a revolution because the British character is too moderate, now is the time to build the organisation for it.