10.09.2015

Going into survival mode

The weekend’s national council meeting failed to respond to the Corbyn challenge. Sarah McDonald reports

Left Unity’s national council met in Birmingham on Saturday September 5, the third meeting since the current NC was elected. You could be forgiven for thinking that nothing is happening in the workers’ movement in Britain at the moment. Those amongst the 33 comrades present who were expecting a thorough-going discussion on the implications of Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign for the Labour leadership were to be disappointed.

In keeping with tradition, minutes and matters arising occupied almost two hours of the NC’s time (and, to make matters worse, one comrade challenged almost every item on the agenda). I will give a brief outline of the highlights, sparing readers the soporific detail.

Following a report-back from Simon Hardy from the conference of the new left-nationalist alliance in Scotland - Respect, Independence, Socialism, Environmentalism (Rise) - the question of ‘safe spaces’ made a reappearance. Although proposals to introduce the policy have now been defeated twice by conference, its champions insist it is vital that ‘safe spaces’ is not abandoned. It turns out that no-one had acted on taking the agreed workshop forward. Comrade Terry Conway had been tasked with this, but had not done so because she disagreed with it. Now Bianca Todd is apparently going to make things happen before conference.

Jack Conrad of the Communist Platform expressed deep concern over a resolution appearing in the minutes of the executive committee’s August meeting, which ended: “Left Unity condemns the destructive nature of Weekly Worker’s coverage of the situation in Leeds. Left Unity recognises that such personalised attacks on comrades within Left Unity have no place within the workers’ movement.” Comrade Conrad stated that the Weekly Worker carried discussion pieces and robust polemical articles. Despite the objections of witch-hunters and their allies, that is not going to change.

Finally, Joseph Healy asked who had resigned from LU in light of the Corbyn campaign. Amongst NC members, only Luke Cooper and Liz Davies have left to join the Labour Party so far - departures that will trigger by-elections.

Conference

When we eventually got to the agenda proper, Yassamine Mather moved a motion on behalf of the four Communist Platform NC members regarding the standing orders committee’s arrangements for conference. Our motion called for the lifting of the 500-word limit on motions and for the scrapping of the priorities ballot (where branches vote beforehand to decide which motions will be debated).

Comrade Mather argued that the SOC could itself remove unnecessary preambles from motions submitted, but, in any case, leadership bodies and commissions are not bound by such limits. In other words, the leadership sets policy and the membership can merely tweak it. The word limit is particularly problematic when attempting to equip LU with a constitution fit for purpose - given that day two of conference is to be devoted entirely to the question, this is somewhat significant. The comrade argued against the impracticality of a priorities ballot - many branches will not even meet in the short period between the publication of motions and the deadline. No doubt topical motions will be prioritised, but what about questions that are less immediate, but still demand an LU policy? Priorities should be decided by conference itself, comrade Mather argued.

The CP motion was strongly opposed by some. Comrade Conway assured us that leadership bodies and commissions would be bound by the same word limit (we shall see at conference whether this will apply to any new ‘safe spaces’ policy, for example, which originally ran to several thousand words). Comrade Conway also argued that the priorities ballot is more democratic, but that it ought to be individual members rather than branches that voted. The logical conclusion of this would be to scrap conferences altogether - that would get rid of all those divisive debates.

Kate Hudson pointed out that the priorities ballot is part of the constitution, and so, in her opinion, it must be adhered to. I pointed out that it had not been adhered to in any of the three previous conferences, to which comrade Hudson heckled that the constitutional clause in question had been overlooked on those occasions. Comrade Mather, in her summing up, observed that priority ballots are part of the legacy of Blairism and its bureaucratic attempts to control Labour conferences. An amendment was agreed to the effect that a priorities ballot would not apply to motions pertaining to the constitution, which can only be changed by conference, but when the motion, as amended, was put to the vote, it received 14 votes in favour and 14 against (comrades from the Independent Socialist Network abstained), and so was not carried.

Labour challenge

By this point, the meeting was running considerably behind schedule. In the agenda sent out to NC members, a mere 45 minutes had been allowed for the discussion around the Labour leadership campaign and now this debate risked being even further curtailed. This was a completely farcical situation, given that we are witnessing one of the most significant developments on the left for many decades. Any serious organisation would have given over just about the entire meeting to this matter. As comrade Conrad commented, it is important that we hear NC members views on this matter - the rest of the agenda should have been suspended in favour of debating this key question. In the end, discussion was extended slightly beyond the originally allotted time to just over an hour, but speakers were forced to limit their contributions to a pathetic two minutes - barely time to make a point of any substance.

Andrew Burgin opened the discussion by noting the shift in politics to the left - a reflection of the backing for Corbyn - and he argued that we must look for ways to engage with the new mood. He drew parallels with Bennism and commented that the politics of the Corbyn campaign were largely those of LU, but claimed that LU had more radical politics. Despite that, he thought it was inevitable that LU would lose members to the Labour Party - he talked about LU having to “survive” the present period. Comrade Burgin envisaged civil war within the Labour Party and was concerned that pressure from the right, and particularly the Parliamentary Labour Party, could cause Corbyn to ‘moderate’ his policies. He promised an online discussion journal for comrades both inside and outside Labour, and the creation of a ‘Friends of LU’ category for supporters who have left to join Labour. There should be a spring conference, he argued, along the lines of ‘What future for the left?’

Simon Hardy talked about the left-moving mood, which he said was exemplified in social attitudes towards the migrant crisis. He argued that what was needed was not a Labour Party mark two, but something to the left of that. Politics not based on electoralism, but on “campaigning”, and in that sense “Left Unity is not going anywhere”.

Of course, what is needed is something much more than LU - more than a halfway house - but posing further to the left just to distinguish yourself from a left-led Labour Party, is as instrumental as posing as left Labourites is dishonest. It becomes more about a plan for your group’s survival, not about what is actually needed.

Oliver New felt that those new recruits to the Labour Party would soon be disillusioned with the realities of the rightwing bureaucracy, and he would advise people not to join. For his part, Tom Walker began his contribution with the assertion that lots of people will be on their way out of LU, so LU should stay independent, but have a general orientation towards the Labour Party. He said that it would be a mistake to focus on a critique of the Labour Party. It should not be about differentiation, but rather commonality.

Jack Conrad complained that he was almost left speechless by the fact that LU did not take this issue seriously, as shown by the lack of time allocated to the item. In his view there would be all-out war in the Labour Party. It was very unlikely that we would see a repeat of the rightwing breakaway that led to the formation of the Social Democratic Party in 1981. They will stay and conduct a prolonged struggle. The comrade said that drawing a parellel between Bennism and Corbyn was profoundly mistaken. Tony Benn lost contests for both the leadership and deputy leadership. Corbyn is set to win. However, the mass influx into the Labour Party is amorphous and disorganised - a situation that needs to change, with potentially hundreds of thousands more people signing up after September 12.

He commented on the enormous powers Corbyn will have as leader - ironically thanks to a certain T Blair. However, Corbyn will not only face the Labour right, a hostile media and the financial and organisational might of big business. The special branch, MI5 and their cousins in the CIA will be working night and day to undermine and get rid of him. The comrade concluded that LU should not be relating to the Labour Party as an outside force, but should seek to transform it into a workers’ party committed to genuine socialism. That would best be done by seeking affiliation.

Ed Potts made a valuable contribution, stressing the failure of the far left’s approach of advocating Labourite policies. He drew parallels with Syriza, which was essentially forced to manage capitalism, and pointed to the dangers of sowing illusions in this practice. Matthew Jones asserted that the Corbyn challenge was the most important thing to happen since the 1984-85 miners’ strike and was sure there would be a split in the Labour Party.

In my contribution, I argued that a Corbyn leadership ought to use its powers to create its own media, newspapers, podcasts, broadcasts, etc, to combat the media onslaught it will face. A Corbyn victory would provide LU with an acid test - we need to put forward the Marxist politics that the vast majority of members say in private they believe in. The Labour Party cannot be reclaimed, because what people romantically view as ‘old Labour’ was never ours: it was and is a bourgeois workers’ party. But this can change: as Trotsky advocated, Labour must become a united front of a special kind.

Yassamine Mather emphasised the importance of criticising Corbyn and trying to ensure he does not give ground to the right. The comrade noted that he was already starting to wobble on Trident and Nato. She, like others, said we should not support the Keynesian economic policies of so-called ‘Corbynomics’. The role that the state will play, if Corbyn wins, and the potential for a coup within Labour will bring into sharp focus the question of democracy.

A motion from Lambeth, the essence of which is conveyed above in Simon Hardy’s contribution to the discussion, was defeated. Those against either took the Andrew Burgin line of being ‘more Corbyn than Corbyn’ or wanted a significant change of direction. Needless to say, the Communist Platform does not see any kind of worthwhile future for LU unless it moves quickly and decisively in the direction of the Marxist programme.

Syriza

There was a brief discussion around a second motion from Lambeth regarding our attitude towards Syriza following the events of the last couple of months. Unfortunately, one mover, followed by four other speakers with two minutes’ speaking time, hardly allowed for an intelligent discussion. Liam Cooper moved that we should distance ourselves from Syriza (once our ‘sister party’), since it had sold out the Greek people, and that we should align ourselves with the leftwing split, Popular Unity.

Various comrades noted how the actions of Alexis Tsipras and Syriza had had a detrimental effect on the credibility of the left parties across Europe. Felicity Dowling, on the other hand, thought it was not a good idea to bad-mouth people (presumably it would make Tsipras feel unsafe). Matthew Jones argued against the motion, commenting that we cannot be asked to endorse one group when there are other forces emerging on the left and that we ought to look at them all.

Jack Conrad stated that Syriza was elected on a programme it could not implement. He agreed that we should not be supporting one group of former Syriza members, who had come from the same opportunist camp, but who were now proposing an equally disastrous policy amounting to autarky. Instead we must express our solidarity with the working class in Greece and oppose the institutions.