The Labour Party: document from AWL conference 2021

Submitted by martin on 25 April, 2021 - 12:42 Author: Workers' Liberty conference, April 2021
Labour Party

1. Life in the Labour Party has been low since Starmer won the leadership in April 2020 and since the start of lockdown in March 2020. The obvious reasons are:
The dismay and disorientation of the 2015 lefties at the progressive disintegration of "Corbynism" and the December 2019 election defeat
The lockdown itself, with the consequent lack of all but small strikes, of all but small demonstrations (except the first big BLM protests), and of in-person meetings.

2. The human base of the left which won victories at Labour's 2019 conference has not disappeared. Rather, it is dismayed, disoriented, in retreat, sometimes deactivated for now. LP membership fell from January 2020 to August 2020, but markedly less than it fell from June 2018 to November 2019.

3. Part of the picture is the general weaknesses of the post-2015 "Corbyn surge" Labour left. Although numerically lots of young people were involved, in terms of attendance at meetings and Labour party activity, it has been dominated by older "returners". "Corbynista" young people have generally not been organised into Young Labour or Labour Students. It has had weaker links with workplace, union, and neighbourhood activity than previous Labour lefts. Thanks to much of the "space" for organising the Labour left being taken by Momentum, which then transmuted itself into a hub-and-spokes online operation, it has been ill-organised, with many online initiatives but little of the sort of organisation which generates local meetings in which ideas are debated. Much of the structure from the Blairite period has persisted. Although Labour conference did become more open and lively between 2015 and 2019, the model of policy being made by backroom advisers and then “announced” persisted. We still need to work on the fight for the democratic charter which we wrote in early 2020 . Much of the culture (triangulation, focus-group orientation, etc.) has also persisted. Many take the slogan "For the Many, not the Few" to sum up the Corbynite left shift, but in fact it was coined by Blair as part of his right-wing move to scrap the old Clause Four.

Nevertheless, it has been and is a left, of some hundreds of thousands of people, and Labour's 2019 conference was the most left-wing since the 1980s. Marxists must be the last to give up on getting something solid out of it, rather than the first.

The lockdowns provided Starmer with an opportunity to move Labour right at a time when meetings have been restricted and when general political life has been low. The 10 pledges he included in his election campaign have been quietly ditched. Over the pandemic, Starmer has been slow to respond and minimal in criticising the government. (The outgoing Corbyn leadership was no better in February-March 2020, but Starmer has continued and deepened the passivity). Starmer has refused to come out clearly on the side of unions like the NEU in taking action under Section 44 and similar legislation against unsafe working. Starmer has quickly tilted his shadow cabinet to the Labour right, and boosted right-wingers within it like Bridget Phillipson and Rachel Reeves. He has explicitly dropped his previous promise to defend EU27 free movement, got the shadow cabinet just not to talk about Brexit, and taken up the flag-waving of Blue Labour. This tactic is aimed at regaining the votes of previously pro-Brexit voters by ditching the kind of soft left internationalism his supporters, including many who had previously voted for Corbyn, would have expected. At most, on Brexit, there is a subtext of refocusing Labour as the party for business being hit by Brexit. This tactic has had little impact for Labour in the opinion polls. It goes against the views of the majority of the membership and is likely to have only a negative impact on Labour voters in big cities who remained loyal to Labour in the 2019 election. Some resistance has begun to emerge, over issues like the spycops Bill. That is likely to develop further when lockdown is eased further.

The "Corbyn surge" in the Labour Party was always limited by the lack of any parallel "Corbyn surge" in the unions. The unions, the big unions anyway, did regain greater weight in the Labour Party in the Corbyn years. But that weight came through lobbying and personal connections by top union leaders, largely over the heads of their members. Everything in the Labour Party will be limited - though not reduced to zero - as long as internal life in the Labour-affiliated unions is low. We cannot "fix" that limitation from the Labour Party "end" of the Labour-union link. It is down to developments, and our work building on developments, in the unions. We continue to defend the "link" and press for its democratisation and the more general democratisation of the unions.

4. Mass unemployment is coming, extensive pauperisation, economic disruption from Brexit, and many months of virus danger, with the Tory government seriously discredited by its floundering in the pandemic. Social tensions will increase rather than soften. Industrial and union battles will revive to some degree, and probably the Labour left too. We can't predict when. All we can do is be the least-in-retreat now, and the foremost when revival starts. We have already seen MPs' revolts. The rebellion against the post-EHRC suspensions and bans on discussions is set askew by being largely tainted by antisemitism-denial, but it also shows a healthy impulse.

5. Forward Momentum has done badly since "taking" Momentum, maybe even worse than we predicted. Even allowing for the difficulties of generally low Labour Party life, Momentum has been very inactive for a group with 20-plus paid staff. Nevertheless, it would also be wrong to dismiss Momentum. It has tens of thousands of members, and remains by far the most visible reference point for Labour leftists as they begin to stir and to criticise Starmer. Some Momentum groups have continued active in lockdown, and we've seen a small start of Momentum groups reviving after lockdown.

6. The priority in the "waiting" period is to regrouping the internationalist, libertarian, class struggle left (anti-Brexit, pro-free-movement, anti-antisemitic) by structuring and strengthening groups like Momentum Internationalists (which may rename itself to signal a broader profile). The first step is to build a profile for Momentum Internationalists as a visible internationalist and pro-democracy left wing for Labour leftists to rally to as they stir back into activity. (I.e.: viable electronic profile, lively website and social media; regular model motions; regular Zoom meetings, preferably debates; regular promotion of campaign activities on issues like migrant rights, especially with LCFM; Uyghur rights; industrial disputes - all things that can be done at will by an energetic minority and, when done, can then attract other people). Labour for a Socialist Europe was a useful vehicle in the December 2019 general election campaign, and it will be useful if it keeps "ticking over" for the sake of keeping its e-list and such live, but for most practical purposes has been superseded by MI.

In the Labour Party, the alliances Marxists make on particular issues will almost always be with people who are "to our right" on other issues. This is the Labour Party, after all. Possibilities of work with other would-be revolutionary left groups in the Labour Party are slight.
Socialist Appeal were unresponsive to work with Stop the Purge even when they themselves were being purged, and in the meantime they have positioned themselves as among the most militant defenders of left antisemitism. Some Red Flag people worked in L4SE, but they have moved away from even the strands of L4SE activity which they themselves proposed, and refused to join with Momentum Internationalists in the FM primaries, instead seeking to capture the left-antisemite vote there. (Besides, they are very few). Our door remains open as new issues arise, but nothing in our strategic direction can depend on coaxing those self-announced revolutionary groups into the alliances we must build.

7. Groups like Momentum Internationalists will be able to make useful alliances, both locally and party-wide, on a variety of issues, sometimes with the more old-fashioned sections of the left, sometimes with "centre" groupings like Open Labour which are better on many internationalist issues but weaker on economic questions.

8. Together with that goes reviving after virus-restrictions, and then improving, the Marxist basics, of putting motions in CLPs, seeking out contacts, etc.

Memo item: hard-fact figures for LP membership at different times, from NEC election ballot papers distributed

July 2017 – 538,606
November 2017 – 525,779
June 2018 – 506,320
November 2019 – 430,359
January 2020 – 552,835
August 2020 – 495,961

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