08.09.2022

A ray of light

Momentum behaved despicably, while the CLPD was hardly any better, but there was a welcome upset. James Harvey examines the Labour left after the NEC elections

Over the ‘summer of discontent’ much of the focus of the left has been on the increasing tempo of the class struggle and the strike wave that looks set to continue into the autumn and well beyond.

Taken together with Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘statesmanlike’ neutrality on the strikes and attempts to slap down frontbenchers who offer solidarity by appearing on picket lines, it is no surprise that many have concluded that now is the time to abandon ship. Socialist Worker is far from alone in its ‘streets and strikes’ obsession. The Morning Star, The Socialist, even Socialist Appeal take a similar approach. But before ditching Labour as a site of struggle we ought to be clear about what is going on and what is still possible. It is not all doom and gloom.

A good place to take the political temperature amongst the party’s rank and file is the recent elections to the national executive committee. The bald voting figures show a further slight swing to the right, with the left losing, and the right gaining, one seat.¹ However, given the expulsions, suspensions and resignations since the last elections in 2020, this result had been widely expected. No, the major upset was the composition of the four leftwingers now on the NEC. Leading Momentum member Mish Rahman failed to get elected, while Jewish Voice for Labour’s Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi won the ninth place.²

This is all the more remarkable, given that Momentum’s new-old leadership not only failed to endorse Naomi, but actively attempted to undermine her, giving rise to a whispering campaign on social media which urged party members to treat her as an untouchable. The refusal to endorse her was dovetailed by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s geographically slanted voting advice. Ostensibly designed to maximise the left vote in a proportional representation election system, its recommendations were surely designed to reduce the vote of a ‘nationally’ based comrade like Naomi. So not only did Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi have to contend with the expected attacks from the right: she also faced sabotage from the so-called left as well.

What really distinguishes her, what really marks her out as controversial, dangerous even, is, of course, her brave opposition to the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt. That is why she is reviled, treated as toxic by the likes of the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Labour Movement. Nor does her position on trans rights, good or bad, have anything to do with the desperate attempt by Momentum and CLPD to treat her as a non-person. Typically, Momentum leadership’s response to Naomi’s heartening NEC victory was to ignore it. This shows just how low the official Labour left has sunk. They would, if they could, impose a regime where the only facts are Momentum-approved facts.

Momentum’s official response to the NEC elections, which actually saw them lose a seat, was, therefore, to celebrate a great triumph for ‘socialism’. But, of course, outside Momentum’s Orwellian bubble, what everyone was talking about was Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi.

However, while her 4,686 first-preference votes represent two fingers up to both the Labour right and the fake left, her election remains a ray of light in what is, overall, a rather dark picture. With the aid of trade union and affiliated society members Starmer has a comfortable majority on the NEC. Furthermore, the right dominates the Parliamentary Labour Party. The Socialist Campaign Group of MPs is largely neutered by its own timidity. Although Wimborne-Idrissi’s election gave the left in the Constituency Labour Parties something of a morale boost just weeks before Liverpool, what will surely be one of the most stage-managed conferences ever, the knives are already out for her.

The outraged reaction of the Jewish Labour Movement and the Board of Deputies to her election shows that moves may well be underway to oust her from the NEC, even expel her from the party. Needless to say, such Zionist outfits regard her election as unacceptable, an affront. After all, she is the ‘wrong kind of Jew’. She is an anti-Zionist Jew and, no less worse, a socialist to boot.

When it comes to removing her, much will depend on whether Starmer and the right feel the need to launch yet another symbolic attack on the left, yet another demonstration of Labour’s eminent suitability for government and abject loyalty to the US-dominated world order. Perhaps Starmer will stay his hand simply because the left is safely marginalised. Whatever happens, though, we can be assured, given their past record during the height of the ‘anti-Zionism equal anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt, that neither Momentum nor the SCG will lift a finger to defend Wimborne-Idrissi if she faces the usual trumped-up charges coming from Labour’s Victoria Street HQ. They will easily find ‘principled reasons’ to look the other way.

Jeremy Corbyn’s failure in 2019, the defeat of the hapless Rebecca Long-Bailey, the proscribing of ‘poisonous’ organisations such as Labour Against the Witchhunt, led some to conclude that Labour was dead. The Tories were undefeatable. The UK had a one-party system. Apparently Sir Keir’s sole concern was purging the left. He knew that getting into No10 was always impossible. Stupid then, even more stupid now.

Today Labour is well ahead in the polls, and, despite misconceived leftwing predictions, stands well placed to secure a majority government. It is true that a Labour government under Starmer would be the most rightwing in history. But Starmer’s openly pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist politics make him a very acceptable captain of the second eleven, as far as the British state and capitalist class are concerned. They would certainly be more than happy to support a Starmer government as a way to pacify, dampen down, tame an out of control strike wave and hold the line for British capitalism, if the situation required it.

Electorally, the Labour right’s triangulation strategy and keeping a distance from the trade unions carries the possibility that Labour could be ‘de-Labourised’ and become a British version of the American Democrats - an idea Tony Blair toyed with in the 1990s. Looking back at history, Blair always regretted the strange death of Gladstone’s Great Liberal Party and wanted to reunite Libism with Labism.

But, if there is a parting of ways between Labour and the trade unions, such a split could easily be initiated either by the Labour leadership or the trade union bureaucracy. We saw not a few disaffiliations under Blair: eg, RMT, BFAWU, FBU. However, the chances are that trade union officialdom will stick to the devil they know. Given a choice between Sir Keir and Liz Truss, they will go for Sir Keir.

This rather degraded relationship remains a key aspect of Labour’s characterisation as a bourgeois worker’s party, which maintains its roots in the working class through the organised workers in the trade unions. These roots also allow the class struggle to be reflected in the party and provide the structures which ensure the periodic spontaneous reproduction of a left, despite the dominance of the pro-capitalist leadership, which is organically attached to the state.

If the nature of Labour throws up a recurrent leftwing resurgence, politically these movements have historically remained limited and circumscribed by Labourism and the election of any Labour government, in the forlorn hope that Labour can be reclaimed and eventually there will be a left Labour government which introduces ‘socialism’.

This inability to break with Labourism is the original sin of both the Labour left and those comrades who seek to build Labour Party mark two parties outside of Labour. These projects, such as the Socialist Alliance, Respect, Socialist Labour Network and the now badly wounded Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, merely seek to reproduce Labour in both its political and organisational forms.

The more these Labour Party mark two comrades proclaim that ‘Labour is dead’, the more they actually do to keep Labourism alive. Our position of reforging Labour as a united front of all working class and socialist organisations is not a strategy to reclaim the Labour Party or reboot left‑reformist politics. Rather it is a strategy that seeks to drive out the right and win Labour to a Marxist programme under a Marxist leadership.

For that, though, we need a Communist Party.