Why Socialists Should Still Stay in the Labour Party
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
The question as to whether, and in what ways, socialists should work in and through the Labour Party is a perennial one, especially when it does not accord with their values.
It is re-posed today in acute fashion as many on the left have been expelled or have left in disgust at the undemocratic treatment of the membership.
Nevertheless…
Mike Phipps reviews the debate as Labour Briefing saw it thirty years ago and largely endorses the arguments advanced then for those who can, to remain in the Party.
We expect some lively responses!
This article was originally published by Labour Hub on Mon 14 Nov 2022. Read the original here.
Why Socialists Should Still Stay in the Labour Party
Thirty years on, Mike Phipps revisits the debate
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Not convinced, Starmer’s on a roll rightward and there’s little difference between Reeves, Streeting & Dodds than your average Tory. Any slight deviation will be treated as a return to ‘Corbynism’ (whatever that is/was) and a threat to electoral success.
“… withdrawal does not constitute a strategy.”
Withdrawal is the first step towards developing a strategy. Labour under Starmer cannot serve as a vehicle for the transformative change that is needed to rescue this country from its current decline. Starmer is a weak leader posing as a strong-man. In waging a war against the left he is like the cartoon character who saws at the branch he is is sitting on. His determination to occupy the nebulous centre ground creates an opportunity for a new openly socialist party to satisfy the country’s craving, after more than a decade of austerity, broken services and income inequality, for a genuine radical alternative.
In spite of eloquent pleadings Starmer cannot be supported by any socialist. The Left needs representation do or die.
Sorry but I don’t have the choice, having been suspended for a Facebook comment in support of an official party initiative (the Democracy Review of 2018), posted on a page that was later to be proscribed for alleged antisemitism but was quite kosher at the time.
Nothing looks like it will change.. until it does.
This could be inside the Labour Party, in the teeth of the dictatorship.
Or it could be the appearance of a mass alternative, despite the electoral system.
It happened in Scotland in the last few years.
In these conditions we need a combination tactic that uses whatever residual power we have inside the party plus organises those 150,000 who are now outside.
Given that so many have been expelled or failed to renew their Membership after being in the ‘proscribed organisations’ situation it would seem that the only real alternative is what Les Hartop has mentioned above.
It would appear that time is of the essence and the sooner we have a realistic alternative to get behind the better.
What those MPs of a Left persuasion will do is up to them but for so many reasons Starmer and Co are not for turning and as long as people of the likes of Luke Akehurst a Ella Rose are welcome in the LP it would be beyond any form of rational though to consider re-joining.
The LP Members numbers now are a fiction with so many people who have left being just considered as being in arrears and at least as far as numbers are concerned are still counted as being active.
But when you have lied about Unity and your Ten Pledges to become elected as leader what is a little slight of hand relating to membership?
‘More broadly, the working class as a whole looks to Labour to represent it and expects the Party to act in its interests. “It does not do so because it is composed of millions of deluded fools,” writes Mike Marqusee, “but out of a genuine, if often contradictory, class consciousness.”’
My first comment is that this is really wide of the mark now. A significant section of the working class showed recently that it “looks towards” the Tories, some went to UKIP/Brexit Party, a large number support the SNP and more and more abstain. What this shows is that there is a lot of political volatility, which has been amply demonstrated all over Europe and further afield as well – a big change since the 1990’s. Tribal loyalty to traditional social democracy is dead.
This volatility was also shown by the Corbyn phenomenon. You didn’t get thousands turning at his election rallies and hundreds of thousands cheering him because he represented the traditional Labour Party – exactly the opposite. And they would do so again if he left the LP and declared he wanted to form a new party. Yes, he would have to have a nuanced approach to elections given the lack of PR, but that is a good thing: the party would have to be leading action against the Tories, not just waiting for an election.
I don’t see any future for the left in the LP. The current reselection battles and the revelations about racism in The Labour Files show that the right has taken complete control and will never allow the left to get any bases of power in it. They are utterly ruthless and willing to adopt any reactionary policy if they think there’s votes in it. They’ve gutted LP democracy to ensure that Corbyn years will not be repeated. The state will not allow any repetition either.
I’m particularly disappointed with the major left figures in England who surely can see that there is the potential for a new, left wing, campaigning party of maybe 50,000-100,000, yet none of them are prepared to take the steps necessary to bring it into being.
As always, when people speak of ‘The Labour Party’, they treat it as one homogenous chaotic entity. It’s not. There are – at least three different Labour Parties.
The current basket-case, that is the English Labour Party, where people, either, leave because they want to speak their mind without fear or favour, or are forced to leave because they – have – spoken their mind and have fallen foul of Southside’s Stalinism.
Scottish Labour, who dropped the ball in 2014, were punished for it, and have never recovered from their myopic betrayal – as seen by Scottish Socialists. They can issue as many optimistic press releases as they wish, but that’s a long road back, and there’s a long way to go, yet.
Then there’s Welsh Labour. In government, and quietly getting on with implementing democratic socialist policies, from the GE19/Senedd Election21 Manifesto.
There’s a ‘danger’ UK Labour could suffer a three-way split, leaving Southside Labour, even, more chaotic than it, already, is, leaving Blair, Mandelson and Starmer with the monster they, themselves, have created.
The signs are, those three gentlemen, wouldn’t be too alarmed about that. They would have achieved their goal. The destruction of a democratic socialist Labour Party – in England at least. What would the socialists do, then? Seriously! What would the socialist do? Why not do it now?
I, still, have optimism for socialism in Scotland. They, at least, have a way back – after – Independence, without the burden of association with Southside.
…and Welsh Labour? They’re doing fine, without interference from anyone else. Better to keep quiet about that, and let them get on with it. Sh!
HURRAH FOR KEIR STARMER
When you surrender
It’s like evil
You soon forget
You picked the lesser
Evil becomes the normal
cannot rejoin the LP as I would be expelled under current Inquisition Rules so would be a waste of everyone’s time and effort. Ho-hum
I agree with Philip Ward. Guilt-tripping members who have been betrayed, bullied, threatened, shouted down in meetings is not a good strategy. The leadership has successfully killed off any trust in the party by riding roughshot over values and principles, killing off dissent, debate, free speech, binning the rulebook, as that allows them to make up rules as and when they want to, rampant factionalism, smear campaigns and outright lies. Reminds you of something? It does me and it scares me. I think that withdrawal does give a good opportunity to take a step back, learn from the experience, then move on and develop new ways of organising. This however is not possible in a party run by tories wearing red rosettes.
The one politician in the last fifty years who had no interest in occupying the centre-ground as the formula for electoral success was Margaret Thatcher, who openly scorned the post-war social democratic consensus that the state had responsibility for its citizens. She was a class warrior for the small business people who look up to Big Business, who think of themselves as cut from the same cloth if not quite so well padded.
Thatcher despised those weaklings who clung to their protectors in the trade unions. She convinced enough followers that there were two kinds of people; the scroungers who wanted to live off other people and the go-getters who got on their bikes and were grateful for a job and who were aspirational in hoping it led to a better life. She fought two wars – one in the South Atlantic, one in the coalfields. Labour opposed neither of them.
And that’s still the problem. Labour wants to wave the Union flag whenever it can. It can’t/won’t support independent action by any section of the workforce. For Labour, workers’ militancy is a sign that the managers have made mistakes; “Trust us! We’ll run it better.”
No, we can’t ignore the election when it comes, but we can’t be restricted to it as defining what politics is either.
It is unfortunate that Mike Phipps has sought to burnish his muddled arguments – already adequately disposed of in comments here – by a jibe at “marxist grouplets” which invokes a quote from Marx which in its original context would naturally be interpreted as advice almost exactly contrary to what Phipps would have us believe:
“It is ironic that Labour Party activists have to explain this point to self-styled Marxist grouplets, as Marx himself encapsulated the idea when he wrote, “Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes.”
In its original context Marx’s sentence cited above is immediately preceded by the words:
“it is my duty not to give recognition, even by diplomatic silence, to what in my opinion is a thoroughly objectionable programme that demoralises the Party.”
Can anyone possibly imagine for one moment that Marx would have chosen a “diplomatic silence” in order to remain a member of Starmer’s corrupt and totalitarian carcass of a party? Or, alternatively, if in the cited statement “Marx” is envisaged as playing the role of a major activist outside the labour party, who can dream that left activists within the labour party would be allowed to associate with him without instantly being expelled?
For the record I am not a member of any “marxist grouplet”, nor do I consider that in the context of the 21st century, it is any more helpful for a person with a genuinely critical intellect to describe their views on the organisation of human society as “marxist” than it is for them to describe their views on the living natural world as “darwinian”.
After the general election of 1987, Neil Kinnock pretended that Labour had lost because of its opposition to nuclear weapons—contradicted by Denis Healey in his memoirs.
Kinnock also supported the Gulf War.
And yet, Labour still lost in 1992.
The article starts in 92 with Kinnock, so in 2024, Keith 2nd referendum Starmer will fail
There is a strategy, to bankrupt Red Tory party and buy it back from the receiver for buttons, in meantime
We need is JC to step up and lead a mass movement taking direct action against vested interests
For instance why are we the people not all customers of the same bank, energy and phone company, why do we not own them or at very least have a controlling interest in them
Be the disruptor
I agree Scottish independence is the next big move politically, then a United Ireland
The demographics are in our favour, there are millions of young and progressive voters who want change
When you have them by the Town Halls then surely their hearts and minds will follow
Beware of PR, at least until we fix our democracy and institutions
Yes, it is an interesting debate and those who argue in favour of continuing to fight from within are both rational and logical. I have resigned twice from the Labour Party. Firstly over Iraq and secondly over the suspension of Ken Livingstone.
I suppose this could be made to sound a bit petty or spiteful. The reality for me however is much simpler. I just couldn’t even vote Labour following the mad, mendacious invasion of Iraq, while it isn’t possible for me personally to vote for Starmer; any thoughts about who might be in his cabinet set my mind boggling.
This is not intended to persuade or dissuade anyone, but merely to point up the perspective of those people who have been disenfranchised by the Starmer machine.
I wonder, so many here seem to assume labour will win the next election. Having lost the many seats it used to get from Scotland and then the shattering of the “red wall”, I think it could be that labour will never win an election again. Coalition’s may be the future.
A waste of time after the savage anti-Corbyn and bogus antisemitism witch-hunt. That’s why I left.
We need to get the Tories out but should be clear that that will put another pack of Tories, the working-classless Parliamentary Labour Party, in.
Tony said:
After the general election of 1987, Neil Kinnock pretended that Labour had lost because of its opposition to nuclear weapons—contradicted by Denis Healey in his memoirs.
Kinnock also supported the Gulf War.
And yet, Labour still lost in 1992.
Yes Tony, but it was The Sun wot won it!
And the Mail and the Express and The Times (who ‘exposed’ Kinnock’s Kremlin Connection*) and the Evening Standard and the News of the World and Mail on Sunday and……
*It’s amazing how many LP leaders turn out to be spying for the Russians/Soviet Union….. Harold Wilson, Neil Kinnock and – as we learnt a few years ago Jeremy Corbyn as well!
PS I’m not sure about Michael Foot, but he probably WAS too!
Judging by Sir Keirs anti-strike stances, Labour have abandoned the working class, if it ever supported us in the first place, and a lot of the self-identified socialists that do exist are middle class, as exemplified by outlets like norvira media, Jacobin etc.
Mike Phipps is convinced that solidarity with the working class requires us to stay in or close to the Labour Party. He believes that the many thousands of good comrades who left an authoritarian, abusive, Party need to be roused from political inactivity and be given direction by Labour Party socialists like himself.
To suggest that those who have been suspended and kicked out of the Party should lurk at the stage door hoping for readmittance, is a recipe for inaction and ill-health. They deserve solidarity but find this withheld by some, fearful of abuse by the Party. Many comrades, that I know, who re-joined the Party under Jeremy Corbyn have since returned to their former activism. Many who have stayed in the Party are not in the vanguard for radical societal transformation but have ceased knocking on doors to support candidates who willed election defeat in 2017 and 2019, and cannot stomach persuading voters of the virtues of the lying, hard-right, human rights hating, Starmer. I also know great activists who have never joined the Party.
But Mike Phipps biggest omission is the need for socialists to revise their priorities in the light of impending climate and biodiversity collapse. I re-joined the Party, in part, because under Jeremy’s leadership the Party would draw together mitigating ecological catastrophes with action against inequality and oppression.
In calling for the stiffest sentences for climate activists, Starmer extolled the contribution to resolving climate breakdown of research on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) at Imperial College. CCS is a fantasy, high energy consuming solution, unable to reach scale in the time required. Imperial College is partnered by BP and Drax power and helps to greenwash them.
Starmer rejects the three years insisted on by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report of April 2022 to have a chance to limit runaway climate catastrophes, talking instead of “ten years or so”. He is in denial, but denial is not an option for good socialists. The nature of politics, including parties, will be radically changed in the next couple of decades because of environmental breakdown. We need to find our own best route to eco-activism whether outside or inside the Labour Party and help to reshape the priorities of the left.
Solidarity!
A few days after the GE in 1992, Neil Kinnock announced that he was standing down as leader, and in his speech he blamed the right-wing press for Labour’s defeat. Here’s an extract from his speech:
There will be many opportunities to consider the causes and consequences of last Thursday’s election result. I will not dwell on them here. I will content myself, for the moment, with drawing attention to the words of the former treasurer of the Conservative Party, Lord McAlpine, in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph: “The heroes of this campaign”, said Lord McAlpine, “were Sir David English [editor of the Daily Mail], Sir Nicholas Lloyd [editor of the Daily Express], Kelvin MacKenzie [editor of The Sun] and the other editors of the grander Tory Press. Never in the past nine elections have they come out so strongly in favour of the Conservatives [his little joke!]. Never has their attack on the Labour Party been so comprehensive….. This was how the election was won…..” Lord McAlpine could not be expected to acknowledge the degree of misinformation and disinformation employed in the attacks on the Labour Party, but in other respects his assessment is correct….. I make, and I seek, no excuses, and I express no bitterness when I say that the Conservative-supporting Press has enabled the Tory Party to win yet again when the Conservative Party could not have secured victory for itself on the basis of its record, its programme or its character. The relationship between the Conservative Party and those newspapers which Lord McAlpine describes as being edited by “heroes” is a fact of British political life.
April 13th, 1992
In respect of what Tony Booth said in his post about the climate crisis – and Keir Starmer – here are a couple of clips from a recent MediaLens piece entitled ‘On The Highway To Climate Hell’ – The Climate Crisis, Activism And Broken Politics:
Following the interview, Bastani used Twitter to highlight the glaring contrast between Packham’s cogent remarks on climate activism and the disparaging comments by establishment stooge Sir Keir Starmer. Bastani presented a clip of Starmer, the supposed ‘Leader of the Opposition’, addressing Just Stop Oil as though he were a fossil-fuel-friendly government minister:
‘Get up, go home. I’m opposed to what you’re doing. It’s not the way to deal with the climate crisis. And that’s why we’ve wanted longer sentences for those that are glueing themselves and stuck on roads.’
And:
Alex Nunns, author of ‘The Candidate – Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path To Power’ and former Corbyn speechwriter, tweeted ‘A short video about fraud’ showing Starmer’s transition from a supposed supporter of climate activism in 2019 when he had said:
‘Climate change is the issue of our time, and as the Extinction Rebellion protest showed us this week, the next generation are not going to forgive us if we don’t take action. There’s been lots of talk. Now we need action.’
Three years later, you see an authoritarian, right-wing politician calling for longer sentences for climate activists. Fraud, indeed.
https://www.medialens.org/2022/on-the-highway-to-climate-hell-the-climate-crisis-activism-and-broken-politics/
This is a highly selective history lesson. Mike Phipps omits to say that Mike Marqusee and Terry Liddle both quit Labour themselves a few years later to build left wing alternatives to New Labour: Mike Marqusee in the Socialist Alliance and Terry Liddle with the Green Party. The notion that nothing fundamentally has changed since Labour Briefing produced that pamphlet is lazy and misleading. Phipps points out that 150,000 or so left activists have quit the Party, but many thousands have also been expelled, including many affiliated with JVL, on spurious grounds without any due process, for crimes which in ex Briefing editor Graham Bash’s case consisted of signing a ‘Labour Against the Witch-hunt’ petition more than a year before that organisation was proscribed. The idea that Labour is contestable ground for socialists any more is a myth. When Briefing produced that pamphlet, there was a principled anti-war Parliamentary Left around Benn and the Campaign Group. That no longer exists. Starmer has made it clear that any Labour MPs who put their names to any Stop the War Committee statements or open letters will have the whip removed. Faced with the ultimatum of remove to remove their name from the StWC committee’s statement on Ukraine for its mild criticism of NATO expansion or lose the whip, a principled socialist would have told Starmer to go to hell. With the exception of Corbyn and Claudia Webbe, who had both already lost the whip, the Parliamentary Left capitulated. Will Phipps tell socialists to abandon Corbyn is he stands as an independent in Islington North or for Mayor in order to save their Party membership so they can spend their time electing MPs too fearful to even sign a statement criticising NATO? This is not a principled basis on which to build any political movement which fights for the overthrow of capitalism.
There is no doubt at all now that there is any hope for even a smidgeon of socialism left in Starmer’s ‘Labour’ Party. All traces of Corbyn or Corbynism have been squeezed out, and the right in total grip of power. If there was any dignity left in those socialists and anti-Zionists who have left or has been suspended/expelled, they should cry Freedom and form or new party of the left, that would in fact be a choice for people to have for a socialist alternative. Together with the Greens, a truly socialist party with all the great policies of freed left, and the mass of people who joined Corbyn’s part, and the many still in the current party, could number in the hundreds of thousands. All we need is a good strategy, courage and determination to change the course of history.