Labour’s antisemitism crisis: false lessons for the left
JVL Introduction
In this review of Labour’s Antisemitism Crisis, Rob Ferguson takes issue with David Renton who, he says, simply lays the primary blame for the antisemitism crisis at the door of the left.
This review addresses the core failures of Renton’s argument:
- There is no serious recognition of the political motivations nor of the context of the attacks on Corbyn and the left.
- It obscures the core of the political and ideological attack against the left: the conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel.
- Its framework for conceptualising antisemitism is fundamentally flawed, failing to understand modern antisemitism as a reactionary ideology, rooted in the systemic crises of capitalism.
We commend this long analysis to our readers. It complements well an earlier critique we published by Paul Field.
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17 Jan 2022: We have posted a longish response by Rob Ferguson to some of the points made about his article. It appears as the final comment below. Comments are now closed, but this debate may be taken up as appropriate on other threads in due course.
This article was originally published by International Socialism on Thu 16 Dec 2021. Read the original here.
Labour’s antisemitism crisis: false lessons for the left
A review of Labour’s Antisemitism Crisis: What the Left Got Wrong and How to Learn From It, David Renton (Routledge, 2021), £19.99
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David Renton’s next book could well be titled “Hands and Knees – My Crawl Back to the Right”.
Labours “antisemitism crisis” took place exclusively on the pages of the right wing press and in the fevered imaginings of the B.O.D. Those who gave it any credence will be looking out for a sound, red, jolly gentleman this Christmas.
David Renton is either deliberately engaged in yet another attempt to promote the opinion that there ever was an ‘antiSemitism problem’ in the Labour Party or he doesn’t understand that there isn’t a single ‘Jewish Community’.
There are Jews who are Zionists, Jews who are not Zionists and Jews who couldn’t care one way or the other.
Jews who are avowedly Zionist, because it is their mission to bring about a 100% Zionist State in Palestine by excluding Palestinians who do not accept Zionist colonisation and occupation, deliberately manufactured a crisis. They knew that Jeremy Corbyn, being a genuine Socialist, could do no other than reject the racism of Zionism and therefore support Palestinian human rights. To have such a person as the leader of the Labour Party and a possible British PM was anathema to Zionists. Therefore using lies, spin and the assistance of the largely Zionist media, they set out to destroy him politically. One of the consequences is we now have a PM who is a lying, cheating, dangerous bullying clown.
Certain members of the left are however guilty – those who thought it wise to pander to the demands of the Zionists and who failed to forthrightly expose and condemn the their tactics. They ended up stupidly accepting the trap of the IHRA definition, thereby delivering Socialists up to the court of Zionist, Keir Starmer.
In the above piece Rob Ferguson says the following:
‘Ken Livingstone was not attacked for his poor framing of history. He expressed a reductive approach to Zionism and to the role of Zionists in the 1930s, but he is not an antisemite. The failure to defend him laid the ground for escalating attacks and further retreat. The same holds for Chris Williamson, Marc Wadsworth, Jackie Walker, David Miller and others. A witch hunt cannot be stopped by abandoning the accused.’
The reality is that had Jeremy – or a spokesperson for the LP under his leadership – defended Ken Livingstone, he would have been condemned and vilified for defending the indefensible. The outcry against Ken was fraudulent and confected, and anyone defending him would have received the same treatment.
In other words, there was no way that Jeremy COULD have defended him and, as such, it’s completely erroneous to assert that HAD Ken been defended, that it would have deterred the saboteurs from continuing with their A/S black op smear campaign. Of course it wouldn’t have!
I recently did a search on the Guardian’s website re >ken livingstone hitler< and forty articles came up in the results. I was initially trying to determine how many Guardian articles there were in which either someone was quoted as saying that Ken said (in his now infamous interview with Vanessa Feltz) that Hitler was a Zionist, OR, in which a Guardian journalist or columnist said that Ken did.
One of the articles was a piece by Gaby Hinsliff from May 2018 in which she said the following in the first paragraph (Yes!, she mentions it pretty much at the outset):
Ken Livingstone is not enormously sorry. That much seems evident from his resignation statement, a classic of the “If anyone was offended by my perfectly reasonable behaviour, then … ” genre. Even now he can’t seem to grasp why repeatedly insisting that Hitler was a Zionist was so damaging to his party and to his own reputation. What a waste of a once formidable political talent…..
Yes, she throws in some praise of him as a Blind to her falsehood, whilst lamenting his lot! And she doesn't just claim that Ken said it on ONE occasion – ie in the interview with Vanessa Feltz – but that he REPEATEDLY said it. And needless to say – as with all but one or two of the forty articles – it didn't have a Comments section, and for the obvious reason!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/22/ken-livingstone-labour-hitler-antisemitism
And there were TWO articles at the time he was suspended. Here are the clips in question:
Rabbi Danny Rich, chief executive of Liberal Judaism and a longtime Labour member, said: “If anyone has gone mad, it is Ken Livingstone. His comments get more offensive and unworthy every time he is interviewed.
“Claiming Hitler was a Zionist is not only a huge historical perversion, but it directly equates Nazism and Zionism….."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/28/jeremy-corbyn-denies-labour-crisis-over-antisemitism
And this by Rajeev Syal (a Guardian journalist):
Livingstone was suspended for arguing that Hitler had once been a Zionist – something he defended as “historical fact”.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/10/ken-livingstone-gives-up-place-labour-nec
The number of distortions and misrepresentations and outright falsehoods of what Ken said in the forty articles was just phenomenal. And THAT's just the Guardian!!
Thank you for the most thought provoking analysis I have read on this issue. There are a couple of aspects which I don’t understand. If we place anti Semitism as rooted in capitalism how do we describe the hatred for and attacks on Jews in Europe from medieval times onward? Any general understanding of the word antisemitism would take these into account. Also I am not sure about the unique horror of the Holocaust on the basis of there being no economic motive. Slavery was perhaps uniquely horrific because there was. So I think there might be a place for counterposing other racism and genocides against the Holocaust.
This review is complemented by Tony Greenstein’s. That David Renton’s effort was accepted by a publisher such as Routledge confirms how embedded the false left antisemitism narrative has become, such that the Labour right now act with no pretence at all that it was ever real.
See:
https://labourbriefing.org/blog/2021/10/28/book-review-labours-anti-semitism-crisis-what-the-left-got-wrong-and-how-to-learn-from-it-david-renton-routledge-oxford-2022-nbsp
This is an overlong article which makes difficult reading on something which I think is relatively straightforward. Not sure therefore that it helps much.
Also, I’ve forgotten what Ken Livingstone actually said: it would be useful for Allan Howard not to presume that we all have every fact on our fingertips but assist the reader by actually stating what exactly he did say…..
“Corbyn was faced with a stark choice: confront the parliamentary party, the party machine and majority of local councilors, which were backed by the media and the institutions of state, or seek ways of evading confrontation.”
It seems that we have a mainly left-wing membership but the right controls everything and Starmer is actively replacing left-wing candidates for elections. Surely the Labour Socialist Campaign Group would have far more support, in active campaigners, than the Gang of 4 did when forming the SDP. If they don’t break now they will be picked off over time – Corbyn already has been.
In reply to Alan Howard “Jeremy could not defend Ken Livingston”. Jeremy could easily have defended Ken! He just needed to refer to the Haavara Treaty signed in 1933 between the Nazi Party and the Zionist Federation of Germany. Jewish author and lecturer, Edwin Black, has published more than one book on the Haavara Treaty. A coin was produced to commemorate this Treaty, a star of David on one side and Swastika on the other. Black produces copious documentation and is not the only Jewish author to write on Haavara. Another author (whose name escapes me) alleges that the Zionists initiated contact with the Nazis stating that they believed Zionist philosophy to be similar to that of the Nazis.
I have to point out that I did not originate any of these statements and can not be accused of antisemitism any more than was Ken Livingston!!
Renton repeats the lie that antisemitism “acted as common ground for a “red-green” alliance of Islamists and the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist left, bound in common hostility to liberal democracy.”
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In fact, it is Western governments which have allied themselves repeatedly with Islamic fundamentalists – from Afghanistan (against the Soviets), to Syria (against the Assad regime), to Libya, Yemen, and now, even in Sudan, with the American-Saudi-UAE-Israeli restoration of the military/Islamist-led regime against the democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people.
The fundamental driver in all this has been the massive support for fundamentalist groups across the Middle East by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which regard them as their best guarantee against the emergence of democratic/semi-democratic states in the region. Bribed by vast flows of money from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the US/West have also thrown their lot behind the fundamentalists.
The case of Saudi Arabia and the US is well explored in Adam Curtis’ Bitter Lake (a rare excursion by the BBC into the realm of truth regarding the Middle East): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Lake_(film) – still available on iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02gyz6b/bitter-lake
Mark Curtis’ book Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam deals specifically with the British case: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/britain-s-collusion-with-radical-islam-interview-with-mark-curtis/
Monash, it would take ALL of about sixty seconds to do a search on the web and find what Ken said….. AND read it!
Jay, in the first place, WHERE would and could Jeremy have defended Ken (and referred to The Haavara Agreement etc)? In the year or two after the interview with Vanessa Feltz – ie after he was suspended – Ken went on various programmes so as to explain that what he said was an historical fact, but he just got condemned and vilified again each and every time he did so by the MSM et al. And you can be 150% certain that within a matter of several hours of the episode hitting the TV news (as it initially did, with the footage of John Mann verbally attacking Ken), every single journalist and columnist and editor of the MSM and the Jewish newspapers who were denouncing him – along with the BoD and JLM and CAA et al – KNEW that he was alluding to The Haavara Agreement – ie those that weren’t already aware of it, that is, which was almost certainly the vast majority of them, as very few people had ever heard of it.
It took ME all of about two minutes to do a search re >hitler supported zionism< (which brought up dozens of results), click on the first one in the list of results (which was the wikipedia entry for the agreement) AND read the first couple of paragraphs, which basically tells you everything you need to know about it. THAT was probably the very first thing the 'journalists' in the press who wrote the articles about the episode DID, as any 'journalist' on the planet WOULD.
My point is of course that they ALL had an agenda, and they weren't going to let FACTS get in the way!
Great article and a brilliant response to David Renton’s (deliberate?) misunderstanding of how the charge of antisemitism was used against Corbyn by the Right. It’s worth pointing out that before the Right settled on antisemitism they tried anti-feminism (not enough Woman in high enough positions in Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet). It’s great in exploring the weakness of the Left when it came to challenging what was happening and the way our hesitancy/stupidity was used to dice and nullify us.
Where I’d disagree with Rob is in his characterisation of the Labour Left. There are so many divergencies and tendencies it’s never possible to see it in such homogenous terms. The debate within Momentum in Camden for example was split 50/50 between those who wanted to defend Livingstone – and shared Rob’s understanding – and those who thought Livingstone was being wilful or foolish, and wished (to some extent) that he would just shut the fuck up! I think this latter group were wrong – and subsequent expulsions made it obvious – but there were both difficulties in building a campaign/defence of Livingstone and a lot of political animus based on his attacks on the Left (RMT in particular) while he’d been Mayor. The issues, in the moment, became confused and overlapped.
And this is often what happens on the Left inside the Labour Party. The leadership – Corbyn, and more particularly McDonnell, hoped to build bridges towards the centre of the PLP and side-lined the defence of Livingstone (Walker and Wadsworth, latterly). This was an error. But I understand its basis. As it became apparent that a compromise (to the Right) would never satisfy it was already too late. The narrative that Renton accepts had already taken root and the idea that Corbyn was (somehow) above criticism – his kindness, manners, and even his allotment – was being sullied. Most importantly – and this is direct from the Right playbook – the most appealing aspect of Corbyn – his long-standing internationalism (very rare in Labour) was being used against him …. Starmer’s manic attacks on the Left since he became leader show how fearful the Right remain of us being in the Party and offering an alternative. That alternative will never be as vanguardist as I’d like but it’s an important counterpoint to what’s occurring. Rob would see this as a waste of energies – a fool’s errand – but it doesn’t preclude other actions or initiatives; whether this is supporting workers in struggle, Extinction Rebellion, or Manchester United (without the Glazers, obviously) x
In the Real World – and definitely by the time we were three years or so into Jeremy’s tenure as leader – there is no way on this planet that the Tories and the LibDems and the vast majority of the PLP and other parties would have attended Parliament – the Hse of Commons – whenever Jeremy was present. I mean if you REALLY believed that he was an existential threat to the UKs Jews, you would boycott Parliament every time he was there. Of COURSE you WOULD have! But they DIDN’T! And PMs Question Times continued as normal, and Theresa May wanted to consult with him about Brexit (in April 2019) etc, etc:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47807622
And the reason they DID….. well we ALL know the answer to THAT one (left-wingers, that is)! And all those MPs who pretended it was real just hoped that not too many people would notice the ‘discrepancy’.
And although a majority of the general public had probably heard of Jeremy Corbyn prior to him being elected leader, outside of the Left the vast majority of them probably knew very little about him – ie that he was a life-long anti-racist and anti-war etc – and the PTB realised and knew that THAT was the case and, as such, knew that they could ‘transform’ him into an anti-semite in the minds of millions of people. And an extremist and a Marxist and a friend of terrorists and ‘our’ enemies etc, etc, etc.
I just happened to come across the following a couple of days ago, which says it ALL, in effect:
THE SUN SAYS If Boris Johnson wins today, a bright future begins… but if Jeremy Corbyn gets in, the lights will go out for good
SUN readers must help save Brexit, and Britain, from the horror of a Corbyn-led Marxist Government.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10533081/election-boris-bright-future-corbyn-lights-out/
When you ACTUALLY had journalists, so-called, and columnists telling readers (millions collectively) that Naz Shah wanted to move Israel to the US, OR, that she wanted all Israeli Jews moved or ‘transported’ to Israel….. well, if THAT doesn’t show everyone just how mendacious and malevolent they are, and convince people (who criticise Jeremy), how getting the truth out there was ALWAYS a non-runner, then I really don’t know what WILL!
Rob Ferguson’s review is a powerful and well written response to David Renton’s sad retreat.
I do wonder, though, why he has to distance himself from, and criticise, Ken Livingstone on this issue. Ken was essentially correct in his references to the transfer agreement – and his treatment, and the accusations against him, were obscene. He was probably the greatest ant-racist the party produced. For him to be labelled an antisemite is a tragedy – ditto, Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein and so many more.
Like so many of the victims of this witch-hunt, Ken was thrown under a bus by sections of the left, and we have all had to pay the price.
And there is in Rob’s review a suggestion that this was somehow an inevitable consequence of “Labourism’. It wasn’t. Yes, the pressure on the left was enormous. But these allegations – part of the Establishment Tendency’s class war on on Corbyn and the left – could have been challenged. The left’s betrayal was not pre-ordained.
That said, Rob Ferguson’s review is a necessary and welcome response
This otherwise trenchant crique of Renton’s hatchet job on the left has one major flaw: it doesn’t sufficiently acknowledge the part played by Israel’s appalling human rights abuses in inspiring the humanitarian left’s f ervent criticisms of Israel and Zionism. The reason the Israel lobby has contrived to crush the Corbyn project with such force and persistance is because they rightly perceive the left to be the group most outraged by Israel’s actions and most determined to condemn them in the court of world opinion. Of course those who defend Israel right or wrong recognise that the antisemitism of the right is more profound and pernicious than anything that exists on the left, but the right’s objection to Jews is fundamentally racist in nature, and unlike the left’s objection to the practices of Israel it has no convincing moral basis. The fact that racist ideologues like Tommy Robinson or Trump or Hungary’s Orban are strong supporters of Israel is neither contradictory nor accidental. Rather than addressing Israel’s moral failings they admire it as model of the sort of purist race-based state they would like to create in their own region. And of course true antisemites are more than happy to see Jews absorbed into a Jewish homeland rather than continuing to exist within a nominally Christian state.
A simple test of whether Israel’s human rights abuses are chiefly responsible for the left’s criticisms and not antisemitism would be if Israel started treating Palestinians as equals with equal rights, including the right to return. Should this happen I suspect that the left’s criticisms would turn in other directions, and the accusations that the Labour left are more antisemitic than anyone else would largely lose their force. Unfortunately the recalcitrance of the government of Israel on this issue makes it unlikely that any such test will be carried out in the near future, if ever.
The problem with Ken Livingstone’s reference to the Haavara agreement is that for many Jews the Holocaust is a subject so painful that the idea of Jews negotiating with the Nazis is literally unbearable. Similarly many Jews are so sensitive to the need for a Jewish homeland that any criticisms of Israel’s actions feels like a denial of their right to be safe from a second Holocaust. If we want to persuade the Jewish community to support radical changes to Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians we have to respect those sensitivities and opt for a different approach. Having recently had some unpleasant exchanges on Twitter, I am aware that a major element in the Israeli mindset is anti-Arab prejudice – those who support Israel right or wrong simply cannot accept that Jews and Arabs can live together in peace and amity. This is the attitude that has to change if there is ever to be peace in the region. Arguing about the Holocaust is as counter productive as arguing about religion.
There is much of value in Rob Ferguson’s response to Renton. I have just one or two reservations. I share Graham Bash’s view about the failure of too many on the left to defend Livingstone and other early purge victims. We will never know how different things might have been if the weaponisation of antisemitism had been called out from the very first. Corbyn and his team failed to recognise the ruthlessness of the enemy, within and outside the party, and therefore fatally opted for appeasement rather than confrontation. We in JVL tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade them to take a different course.
We also responded in full to the hostile critics who alleged antisemitism at every turn. https://jewishvoiceforliberation.org.uk/statement/rebuttals/. I’m surprised that Rob suggests the Mear One mural is self-evidently antisemitic. The imagery it contains is loaded with references which people cannot be expected to recognise, nor is it reasonable to expect knowledge about the originator’s background which might influence viewers’ judgement.
Altogether though, I welcome Rob’s contribution.
The following piece in the Daily Mail published on April 28th, 2016, (the day Ken Livingstone was suspended) consists of two articles and several ‘side pieces’. The primary article is headlined ‘Labour in crisis over ‘anti-semitic’ scandal: MPs demand Corbyn gets his ‘head out of the sand’ after Red Ken is SUSPENDED for claiming Hitler backed moving the Jews to Israel….’ with six sub-headlines, one of which says that ‘Shah [Naz Shah] triggered the storm with Facebook post on re-locating Israel to the US’, and the article begins by saying the following:
Jeremy Corbyn tonight denied Labour was facing an anti-Semitism crisis despite being forced to suspend his old friend Ken Livingstone for claiming Hitler was a ‘Zionist’. Mr Livingstone made the incendiary comments…..
Then further on in the article it says:
Ken Livingstone gave an interview to BBC Radio London in defence of Ms Shah. He made the explosive claim that Hitler was a ‘Zionist’ when he ran for election in 1932.
And further on in the article it says the following:
Rabbi Danny Rich, senior rabbi of Liberal Judaism, said: ‘If anyone has gone mad, it is Ken Livingstone.
‘His comments get more offensive and unworthy every time he is interviewed.
Claiming Hitler was a Zionist is not only a huge historical perversion, but it directly equates Nazism and Zionism.
‘It suggests they share objectives and values; it is guilt by association.
‘It is hard to think of a more offensive linkage.
‘Suspending him from the Labour Party is not the end of the matter. Livingstone is a symptom, not the cause.’
It’s rather odd that the one bit where Rich is quoted as saying ‘Claiming Hitler was a Zionist…’ etc doesn’t have a quotation mark??
Whatever the case, millions of people were duped and deceived and led to believe that Ken said Hitler was a Zionist! And repeated THREE times so as to make sure it stuck!!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3563223/Ken-Livingstone-claims-Hitler-supported-Zionism-supported-moving-Jews-Israel-went-mad-ended-killing-six-million-Jews.html
This is in response to Naomi and Graham: As you probably know, I have on many occasions defended Jeremy against charges of appeasing his enemies and not ‘fighting back’, and done so on the grounds that he would just be attacked and vilified for doing so and, as such, that he was in a no-win situation. And I have cited – as examples – what happened when the LP condemned the Panorama hatchet job, and what happened when Jeremy defended his record on dealing with anti-Semitism in the party the day the EHRC published its so-called report. But there is in fact further evidence in the Daily Mail article in my post above (in which I was of course focusing on the Big Lie that Ken said Hitler was a Zionist, and the repetition of that Big Lie).
The article actually starts by repeating what Jeremy said in response to the accusation that there is an anti-Semitism crisis in the party – ie Jeremy denying that there was – and he subsequently gets slammed for saying so, and part of a quote is even included in the headline. So here are the responses to him and his denial that there is a crisis:
Former minister Ian Austin told MailOnline: ‘Just seven days from polling day and instead of knocking on doors like the rest of us, Ken Livingstone is treating us to his weird views on Adolf Hitler and his offensive views on Jewish people.
‘The media are talking about nothing else, the party is having to suspend people on almost a daily basis and Jeremy thinks there’s no problem?’
Mr Austin continued: ‘It looks like a pretty big problem to everyone else. Labour’s reputation is being destroyed and instead of pretending there’s no problem Jeremy needs to act and he needs to act now.’
John Woodcock, a senior backbencher, told MailOnline: ‘Many thousands of Labour members will be bewildered by the hideous remarks of Ken Livingstone and are looking to Jeremy Corbyn to swipe the moment and tackle Labour’s anti-Semitism problem.
‘He must not bury his head in the sand in the face of this madness.’
And further on there’s a piece entitled: LABOUR LEADER FACES RISING DEMANDS TO ACT OVER ANTI-SEMITISM, and of course plenty more quotes by people pretending that Ken said something abhorrent and giving it the full Monty. And if Jeremy had tried to defend what Ken said and cited the Haavara Agreement, I have no doubt whatsoever that there would have been explosions of (faux) outrage from numerous quarters, and Jeremy attacked (via the MSM) in much the same vein as Ken was by John Mann.
Jeremy Corbyn`s destruction was engineered from Israel`s London Embassy. As soon as he mentioned Israel`s oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza, in the House of Commons, he was doomed. His character assassination was led by the BBC and Daily Mail. Under Keir Starmer the Parliamentary Labour Party has ceased to be Her Majesty’s Opposition. His support for Boris Johnson against the Tory rebels over COVID 19 Restrictions prove that the UK now has a One Party System of Government.
Rob Ferguson replies to some of the comments
I am struck by the positive responses here and elsewhere to my review article of Renton’s book. I am particularly grateful for the comments from Steven, Graham and Naomi. While acknowledging shared ground, I would like to address the differences.
Steven makes the point, rightly, that the Labour left is not homogeneous. Graham makes a similar point. I do however draw a strong distinction in my piece between those who held the line against the witch hunt, and those who equivocated, stayed silent or capitulated.
Yet this still leaves the question of the left defeat. It cannot be explained simply by an adverse “balance of forces”, that can be overcome by yet further battles in the future. This will only further weaken the left.
I have argued that the shared electoral project that binds left and right in the party is the Achilles heel of the Labour left project. This means that the PLP is always structurally dominant; the notion of holding the PLP accountable has always been a mirage, however many positions the left may win inside the structure or secure conference votes.
The PLP was shaken by Corbyn’s unpredicted leadership victory in 2015 and by the 2017 election results. However, it found its feet. The right was able to push confrontation inside the party knowing the left would always retreat from an existential party rupture.
Subjectively, Corbyn could have defied and confronted the right onslaught politically. However, this would have entailed a fundamental breach with the PLP the official party structures, and the majority of councillors. The big guns of the trade union movement, including the “lefts” such as UNITE would not have countenanced even the glimmers of such a prospect.
Faced with such a prospect, layer after layer, from centre to “soft left”, to the SCG, to the NEC lefts, Momentum et al, retreated and conceded to force majeure, falling domino-like. The concessions and retreats are symptoms, not the cause of the left’s weakness.
The antisemitism crisis was the right’s litmus test of whether the left would break with Labourism. Once the right sensed that they could test the left to destruction they did so relentlessly and without quarter.
True, defeat in one sense is not inevitable. However, it depends on what terrain you choose to fight. The internal machinations of the Labour Party will always remain the terrain of the right. To challenge the right successfully Corbyn would have had to appeal to mass movements outside parliament over the heads of the entire PLP and the Labour machine and to have courted a complete break from Labour’s MPs, even to the point of the PLP declaring UDI.
This is the point at which the argument that you can fight inside Labour while supporting struggles and movements outside parliament falls down. It becomes a choice. You can ride two horses – until they ride off in different directions; then you have to choose.
The right knew the bulk of the left would concede to dictat rather than risk expulsion. Even the most principled friends here, were left simply calling fringe-type meetings rather than systematically defy and mobilise against the edicts of the General Secretary inside the party structures. In practice, “stay and fight” became an oxymoron. The right were simply able to pick off ever more targets at will, thus disciplining the party as a whole. As the left conceded to party discipline, Starmer then proceeded to proscribe organisations that provided the left with platforms of opposition outside the party’s constitutional structure, even though these posed no real threat in themselves.
Steven is mistaken in maintaining that Starmer is fearful of the left remaining in the party and so offering an alternative. I’m sorry to be harsh but this is whistling in the dark. Starmer and the right know they can act with impunity, and there is nothing for the left but to “stay and sulk”. It is not the left that Starmer is afraid of but the power of business interests and the British state to derail Labour’s electoral prospects for a future Labour government.
Far from weakening Starmer, cleaving to membership of Labour only reinforces the claim that workers have no alternative but to hold their noses and look to another Labour government rather than their own struggles.
The defeat of the Corbyn project is not an isolated example. Left electoral parties have generally emerged in opposition to or as splits from the main social democratic parties. This points to the challenge Corbyn faced. However, like Corbyn, all such electoral projects, Syriza and Podemos being the most recent, have suffered the same fate.
This does not mean that socialists should never stand on an electoral platform. However, this can never be on the basis of putting Parliament first, with extra-parliamentary struggle as an add-on.
The force for a different society, “for the many, not the few”, lies outside in struggle outside parliament, in the mass struggles of workers and movements of the oppressed, fighting for their own cause and in their own interests, unconstrained by electoralism.
The antisemitism crisis was ultimately a test of whether the Labour left would break from Labourism. We should learn the lessons.