WeeklyWorker

15.09.2016

After Corbyn’s second victory

The failed coup presents the left with an unparalleled historic opportunity. James Marshall of Labour Party Marxists outlines a programme of immediate tasks and long-term strategic goals

Despite the unremitting hostility of the mass media, despite the no-confidence motion, despite the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smearing, despite the court battles, despite the gerrymandering exclusion of 130,000 members, despite the ongoing witch-hunt, Jeremy Corbyn is set to score a second leadership victory. If the polls are to be believed, he will trounce citizen Smith by a resounding 62%-38% margin.

Whatever the exact figure, everyone knows it is Corbyn who will win and the right has already been adjusting its approach accordingly. The 169-34 vote by Labour MPs calling for a return to the pseudo-democratic practice whereby the Parliamentary Labour Party elects the shadow cabinet - scrapped under Ed Miliband in 2011 - is not an attempt to “heal wounds”. Nor is it a peace offering to Corbyn. No, it is a continuation of the civil war - albeit by other means.

The PLP right eyes the national executive committee - a vital field of struggle in the organisational, constitutional and policy battles to come - with worry. The shadow cabinet is allocated three NEC seats and the right fears that the left stands on the threshold of establishing a functional majority. And, towards that end, the Corbyn camp is busily promoting the idea of having two more trade union seats, plus an extra councillor, Scotland and Wales NEC seat … elected by the membership. The left would be expected to win the lot.

Similar constitutional moves are afoot for the September 25-28 conference in Liverpool to take the MP and MEP 15% threshold for nominating leadership contenders back down to 5%. In 2015 that would have allowed Corbyn to stand. He would not have had to rely on the “morons” to “lend” him their votes.

Of course, what the PLP right dreads, above all, is submitting to a genuine reselection process in the run-up to the next general election. By the same measure, anything towards that end, no matter how tinkering, is to be welcomed, at least as far as Labour Party Marxists are concerned. Most constituency members are itching to see the back of traitor MPs.

There has been much chatter in the media about a PLP split. Needless to say, however, the right remains haunted by Ramsay MacDonald’s 1931 National Labour Organisation and then the ‘Gang of Four’ of Roy Jenkins-David Owen-Bill Rodgers-Shirley Williams who broke away exactly 50 years afterwards to form the Social Democratic Party. MacDonald’s NLO instantly became a Tory satellite. It finally dissolved in 1945. As for the SDP, it merged with the Liberal Party in 1988 and shared the same sorry fate. From the early 1970s, even till the late 80s, of course, the political centre enjoyed something of a revival.1 No longer. At the last general election the Lib Dems were decimated. They remain to this day marginalised and widely despised. Given the punishing logic of the first-past-the-post election system, it is therefore highly unlikely that the rightwing PLP majority will do us a favour and walk.

Conceivably, the PLP right wing could go for electing its own leader (not the hapless poseur, Owen Smith) and constituting itself the official opposition. The result would be two rival parties. A rightwing Labour Party with by far the bigger parliamentary presence. Then, on the other hand, a leftwing Labour Party with trade union support, but a much smaller number of MPs. That way the right would get hold of most of Labour’s £6.2 million Short money and come first when it comes to asking parliamentary questions.

However, a de facto split surely guarantees their expulsion and the selection of alternative, official candidates. Most traditional Labour voters are predicted to remain loyal, not opt for some SDP mark two. Premising such a split, a recent YouGov poll gave a Corbyn-led Labour Party 21% of the total vote and a “Labour right party” just 13% (and the Tories 40%, Ukip 11% and the Lib Dems 6%).2 Doubtless, such arithmetic explains why Ed Balls, former shadow chancellor, dismisses the idea of a breakaway as “crazy”.3

Political suicide certainly has no appeal for most rightwing Labour MPs. The one thing they truly believe in is their own career. So, the chances are that the right will dig in, use its base in the bureaucratic apparatus, amongst councillors, MPs, MEPs, etc, and fight till the bitter end.

Tasks

John McDonnell has been holding out an olive branch, talks of welcoming back Owen Smith into the shadow cabinet and pulling together to fight the “real enemy”, the Conservatives.4 In the mind of team Corbyn doubtless that constitutes clever tactics. Divide the implacable anti-Corbyn MPs from those merely fearful of losing their seats. Divide the MPs who want an effective opposition to the Tories from those who really are Tories.

An approach which presumably originates with Seumas Milne. Back in January 2016 our director of communications is meant to have produced a spreadsheet of Labour MPs. Leaked to The Times, it shows just 85 MPs who can be considered “core group negatives” or “hostile”. Another 71 were supposedly “neutral, but not hostile”. Just 19 MPs were put in Corbyn’s “core group”, while 56 were classified as “core group plus”.5 Needless to say, however, Milne’s calculations were violently wrong.

After all, in June 2016, 172 Labour MPs actually signed the no-confidence motion. Then, after that, we have had the 169-34 vote on shadow cabinet elections. These two votes accurately photograph the real proportions of the “core group negatives” or “hostile” camp. There might well be those who can be considered “neutral, but not hostile”. They are, though, vanishingly small. What of the Corbyn camp? The “core group”, together with the “core group plus”, nowhere near adds up to 75 MPs. No, there are little more than 40 of them ... in total.

So we need less spiel about olive branches, coming back and uniting. Instead, the membership must be organised, educated and galvanised. Not just to vote Corbyn. Not just to defend Corbyn. But organised, educated and galvanised for the war in the wards, constituencies, committees and conferences.

There must be a strategic recognition that the right will never reconcile themselves to the Corbyn leadership. Let alone the growing influence of the radical, socialist and Marxist left. And, because the PLP right will pursue its civil war to the bitter end, we must respond by using all the weapons at our disposal.

In our view the Labour left therefore has five immediate tasks.

Long term

Reorganising the Labour Party from top to bottom must be our overriding aim, certainly not trying to win the next general election by courting the capitalist media and concocting some rotten compromise with the right.

Organisationally and politically far-reaching change is surely on the agenda. We need a sovereign conference. We need to subordinate MPs to the party. We also need to sweep away the undemocratic rules and structures put in place under Tony Blair. The joint policy committee, the national policy forums, the whole horrible rigmarole should be junked.

Moreover we need a new clause four. Not a return to the old, 1918, version, but a programmatic commitment to working class rule and a society which aims for a stateless, classless, moneyless society, embodying to its core the principle, “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”.7 Towards that end the Labour Party should commit itself to achieving a “democratic republic”. The standing army, the monarchy, the House of Lords and the state sponsorship of the Church of England must go. We should support a single-chamber parliament, proportional representation and annual elections.8

We are rightly proud of being a federal party. Therefore securing new trade union affiliates ought to be a priority. The FBU has reaffiliated. Excellent. But what about the RMT? Let us go out to win RMT militants to drop their misplaced support for Tusc. Instead affiliate to the Labour Party. And what about the NUT? Why can’t we win it to affiliate? Surely we can … if we fight for hearts and minds.

Then there is the PCS. Thankfully, Mark Serwotka, its leftwing general secretary, has at last come round to the idea. The main block to affiliation now being opposition from the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party in England and Wales. Yes, PCS affiliation will run up against the Trades Disputes and Trade Union Act (1927), introduced by a vengeful Tory government in the aftermath of the General Strike. Civil service unions were barred from affiliating to the Labour Party and the Trade Union Congress as a result. The Civil and Public Services Association - predecessor of the PCS - reaffiliated to the TUC in 1946. Now, surely, it is time for the PCS to reaffiliate to the Labour Party.

Yes, when we in LPM moved a motion at the February 2015 AGM of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy calling for all trade unions to be encouraged to affiliate, we were met with the objection that it would be illegal. However, as NEC member Christine Shawcroft, who was sat right next to me, said, “What does that matter?” Here comrade Shawcroft, a close ally of Corbyn, shows an exemplary fighting spirit. Force a another change in the law.

Use the partymax

The PLP rebels are out-and-out opportunists. Once and for all we must put an end to such types exploiting our party. Being an MP ought to be an honour, not a career ladder, not a way for university graduates to secure a lucrative living.

A particularly potent weapon here is the demand that all our elected representatives should take only the average wage of a skilled worker. A principle upheld by the Paris Commune and the Bolshevik revolution. Even the Italian Communist Party under Enrico Berlinguer applied the partymax in the 1970s. With the PCI’s huge parliamentary fraction, this proved to be a vital source of funds.

Our MPs are on a basic £67,060 annual salary. On top of that they get around £12,000 in expenses and allowances, putting them on £79,060 (yet at present Labour MPs are only obliged to pay the £82 parliamentarians’ subscription rate). Moreover, as leader of the official opposition, Jeremy Corbyn not only gets his MP’s salary. He is entitled to an additional £73,617.9

We in LPM say, let them all keep the average skilled workers’ wage - say £40,000 (plus legitimate expenses). Then, however, they should hand the balance over to the party. Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott ought to take the lead. Imposing a partymax would give a considerable boost to our finances. Even if we leave out our 20 MEPs from the calculation, it would amount to a £900,000 addition. Anyway, whatever our finances, there is the basic principle. Our representatives ought to live like ordinary workers, not pampered members of the middle class. So, yes, let us agree the partymax as a basic principle.

Given the huge challenges before us, we urgently need to reach out to all those who are disgusted by corrupt career politicians, all those who aspire for a better world, all those who have an objective interest in ending capitalism. Towards that end we must establish our own press, radio and TV. To state the obvious, tweeting and texting have severe limits. They are brilliant mediums for transmitting simple, short and sharp messages. But, when it comes to complex ideas, debating history and charting political strategies, they are worse than useless.

Relying on the favours of the capitalist press, radio and TV is a fool’s game. True, it worked splendidly for Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell. But, as Neil Kinnock, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband found to their cost, to live by the mainstream media is to die by the mainstream media. No, to set the agenda we need our own full-spectrum alternative.

The established media can be used, of course. But, as shown with the run-up to the anti-Corbyn coup, when things really matter, we get hardly a look in. Indeed the capitalist press, radio and TV were integral to the anti-Corbyn coup. There are, of course, siren voices to the contrary. Those who think we can win over The Guardian, the Mirror, etc.10 But, frankly, only a fool would not have anticipated the poisonous bias, the mockery, the hatchet-jobs, the implacable opposition.

Once we had the Daily Herald. Now we have nothing. Well, apart from the deadly dull trade union house journals, the advertising sheets of the confessional sects and the Morning Star (which is still under the grip of unreconstructed Stalinites).

We should aim for an opinion-forming daily paper of the labour movement and seek out trade union, cooperative, crowd and other such sources of funding. And, to succeed, we have to be brave: iconoclastic viewpoints, difficult issues, two-way arguments must be included as a matter of course. The possibility of distributing it free of charge should be considered and, naturally, everything should be put up on the web without pay walls. We should also launch a range of internet-based TV and radio stations. With the abundant riches of dedication, passion and ideas that exist on the left here in Britain and far beyond, we can surely better the BBC, Al Jazeera, Russia Today and Sky.

Refounding

Of course, the Jeremy Corbyn-John McDonnell leadership faces both an enemy without in the PLP and an enemy within in their own reformist ideology. They seriously seem to believe that socialism can be brought about piecemeal, through a series of left and ever lefter Labour governments. In reality, though, a Labour government committed to the existing state and the existing constitutional order produces, not decisive steps in the direction of socialism, but attacks on the working class … and then, as we have repeatedly seen, beginning with the January-November1924 MacDonald government, the re-election of a Tory government.

While it is correct to unconditionally support the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn, we must not give up on our critical faculties nor our commitment to transforming the Labour Party into a united front of all working class organisations that is genuinely committed to socialism.

Naturally, knowing our history, real Marxists, as opposed to fake Marxists, have never talked of reclaiming the Labour Party. It has never been ours in the sense of being a “political weapon for the workers’ movement”. No, despite its electoral base and trade union affiliations, our party has been dominated throughout its entire history by career politicians and union bureaucrats. A distinct social stratum, which in the last analysis serves not the interests of the working class, but the continuation of capitalist exploitation.

Speaking in the context of the advisability of the newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain applying to affiliate to the Labour Party, Lenin had this to say:

[W]hether or not a party is really a political party of the workers does not depend solely upon a membership of workers, but also upon the men [sic - JM] that lead it, and the content of its actions and its political tactics. Only this latter determines whether we really have before us a political party of the proletariat.

Regarded from this, the only correct, point of view, the Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois party, because, although made up of workers, it is led by reactionaries, and the worst kind of reactionaries at that, who act quite in the spirit of the bourgeoisie. It is an organisation of the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically dupe the workers with the aid of the British Noskes and Scheidemanns [the executioners of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht].11

An assessment which still retains its essential purchase. The PLP right is a 172-strong bourgeois party, which acts “quite in the spirit of the bourgeoisie”. However, the election of Corbyn, the “core group” of 19 pro-Corbyn MPs, the massively expanded membership, gives us an unparalleled historic opportunity to refound Labour as a party that it “is really a political party of the workers”.

Today the Labour Party is a chimera. Instead of two-way contradiction between the leadership and the membership, we now have a three-way contradiction. The left dominates both the top and bottom of the party. That gives us the possibility of crushing the rightwing domination of the middle - the councillors, apparatus and PLP majority - from below and above.

No wonder the Tories, the army top brass and the bourgeois media want an immediate end to the Corbyn leadership. In this context, note David Cameron’s genuinely impassioned put-down to Corbyn during one of their set-piece PMQ jousts: “It might be in my party’s interest for him to sit there. It’s not in the national interest. I would say - for heaven’s sake, man, go.”12 Tory MPs cheered to the rafters the “for heaven’s sake, man, go” phrase. It is, of course, directly borrowed from that great bourgeois revolutionary, Oliver Cromwell. Most Labour MPs kept glumly silent. But obviously they really agreed - having the day before voted 172-40 for the no-confidence motion.

In the exact same spirit, Sir Nicholas Houghton, the outgoing chief of defence staff, publicly “worried” on BBC’s Andrew Marr show about a Corbyn government.13 There were accompanying press rumours of unnamed members of the army high command “not standing for” it and being prepared to take “direct action”.14 Prior to that, a normally sober Financial Times ominously warned that Corbyn’s leadership damages Britain’s “public life”.15 So, in the event of a Corbyn-led government, expect a “very British coup”.

Of course, in the medium to long term we Marxists want the abolition of the Bonapartist post of leader. In the meantime, however, we favour Corbyn using to the full all the dictatorial powers accumulated by Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee, Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair. Indeed, when dealing with the 172 rebel MPs, he too should borrow from the revolutionary Oliver Cromwell:

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye are grown intolerably odious. You were deputed here to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! In the name of god, go!16

Corbyn’s much publicised admiration for Karl Marx, his campaigning against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, opposition to US-led imperialist wars, call to scrap Trident and nuclear weapons, his commitment to increase the tax take from transnational corporations, the banks and the mega rich, his Platonic republicanism, even his timid mumbling of the royal anthem - all mark him out as completely unacceptable for the British ruling class. It does not want him as the leader of the official opposition. It certainly does not want him as prime minister.

Of course, there is the danger that the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership will have their agenda set for them by the attempt to establish PLP unity. Put another way, in the attempt to placate the right, it will be the right that sets the political agenda. We have already seen the abandoning of principles, staying silent on them or putting them onto the backburner. Eg, John McDonnell’s pusillanimous statements on Ireland. Eg, Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to defend the victims of the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt. Now there is the call from the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership to have a “sensible” discussion on immigration. After the European Union referendum McDonnell says we are no longer obliged to defend the principle of the right of people to free movement (disgracefully backed by Unite’s general secretary, Len McCluskey). Such a course is meant to pander to working class EU exiters. But it demobilises and demoralises Corbyn’s base.

Outside

What about those on the left who stand on the sidelines of the civil war out of a false sense of loyalty? Eg, members of SPEW, SWP, the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain, Socialist Resistance and Left Unity? Do not dismiss them. Do not shun them. Instead they, or at least their cadre, should be viewed as a potential asset. If they throw themselves into the fight to transform the Labour Party, I am sure they would make an outstanding contribution. Necessarily, towards that end, there has got to be a thoroughgoing self-criticism … beginning at the top.

If Peter Taaffe, SPEW general secretary, wants to be treated seriously, it is obvious what he must do. Firstly, openly and honestly admit that his characterisation of the Labour Party as a bourgeois party, as being no different from the US Democrat Party, was short-sighted, impressionistic and fundamentally mistaken. Secondly, he should immediately put an end to standing candidates against Labour. Close down the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition forthwith. Thirdly, comrade Taaffe must own up that his repeated attempts to get trade unions to disaffiliate from the Labour Party amounted to sabotage. He should tell his comrades in the RMT, PCS, NUT, etc to join us in calling for affiliation or reaffiliation. Unless he does that, a suitable replacement should be found.

The SWP is little different. Charlie Kimber, its national secretary, claims to “stand shoulder to shoulder with all those seeking Corbyn’s re-election”.17 But the SWP has likewise dismissed the Labour Party as a trap, backed Tusc, supported trade union disaffiliation and opposed affiliation. Indeed comrade Kimber sees the Corbyn re-election campaign as little more than an opportunity to “build for the ‘Unwelcome the Tories’ demo in Birmingham on Sunday October 2 and the ‘Stand up to Racism’ conference the week after on Saturday October 8”.18 Myopia still rules.

Charlie Kimber says that what really matters is not changing the Labour Party, but “strikes and demonstrations”. A Bakuninist, not a Marxist, formulation. Because Labour is historically established, because it involves all the big unions, because it has drawn in hundreds of thousands of new members, because it provokes bourgeois fear and anger, what is happening in the Labour Party is, in fact, a far higher form of the class struggle than economic strikes, let alone ephemeral protests or fake front conferences. In fact, the civil war raging in the Labour Party is a highly concentrated form of the class struggle.

Then there is the Morning Star’s CPB. When not promising to shop “entryists” to our witch-finder general, Iain McNicol, we have, in essence, a continuation of the SWP’s movementist politics. Morning Star editor Ben Chacko wants to focus attention not on decisively winning the civil war in the Labour Party. Idiotically, even at this crucial stage, he sees “a task far bigger than the Labour Party”. Fighting for a mass revolutionary party? No. Forging the links necessary for establishing a new workers’ international? No. What comrade Chacko, laughably, wants is “organising at a local level in groups such as the People’s Assembly, Keep Our NHS Public, Black Activists Rising Against Cuts and many more”.19

Where we in LPM strive to elevate local struggles to the national and the international level, comrade Chacko’s sights are set on “saving an A&E or a youth club”. That he does so in the name of Marxist politics and creating a mass movement on the scale of the Chartists shows an inability to grasp even the A in the ABC of communism.

Hopefully members of SPEW, SWP, the CPB, SR and LU will as a matter of urgency deal with their sectarian, their benighted, their nincompoop misleaders and join us in the history-making struggle to transform the Labour Party.

Notes

1. From a 1951 2.5% historic low point, the Liberal Party experienced a revival in the 1970s, which saw it win 19.3% of the popular vote in the February 1974 general election. Despite the Jeremy Thorpe scandal, even in the 1979, 1983 and 1987 general elections the Liberal vote stood up at well over 10%. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(UK)#Electoral_performance.

2. yougov.co.uk/news/2016/08/02/who-gets-keep-voters.

3. The Daily Telegraph September 1 2016.

4. www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/news/78857/john-mcdonnell-calls-his-mate-owen-smith-rejoin.

5. The Times March 23 2016.

6. D Pryer Trade union political funds and levy House of Commons briefing paper No00593, August 8 2013, p8.

7. Labour Party Marxists July 7 2016.

8. Ibid.

9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leader_of_the_Opposition_(United_Kingdom).

10. Eg, Owen Jones The Guardian September 16 2015.

11. VI Lenin CW Vol 31, Moscow 1977, pp257-58.

12. The Guardian June 29 2016.

13. The Mirror November 8 2015.

14. The Sunday Times September 20 2015.

15. Financial Times August 14 2015.

16. www.emersonkent.com/speeches/dismissal_of_the_rump_parliament.htm.

17. Party Notes September 12 2016.

18. Party Notes August 22 2016.

19. Morning Star September 10-11 2016.