WeeklyWorker

26.01.2023

From amidst the wreckage

Talal Hangari banks on staying in Labour and the left uniting to defeat the bans and proscriptions

The Labour left is in a historic crisis: the right has become ruthlessly repressive under Keir Starmer’s leadership. Disagreement with Blairite orthodoxy is now forbidden. A new policy: as Diane Abbott has observed, Tony Blair was considerably more tolerant of dissent when he was leader.

There is hardly anything more fundamental to a political project than the ability to communicate principles and policies, so, if the Labour left cannot argue in favour of its political programme, then it cannot continue to exist in any meaningful form. Fighting the purges must therefore be its first priority.

Keir Starmer was elected leader of the Labour Party in April 2020. In June that year he fired leftwinger Rebecca Long-Bailey from the shadow cabinet on the spurious charge of spreading an “anti-Semitic conspiracy theory” by approvingly retweeting an interview in The Independent. Jeremy Corbyn was suspended in October of that year for the accurate observation that under his leadership anti-Semitism in the Labour Party was “dramatically overstated for political reasons”. Although a party disciplinary panel decided to reinstate him, the leadership refused to restore the whip; he is no longer a Labour MP despite being a Labour member in parliament. These incidents marked the beginning of Starmer’s anti-left policy.

In July 2021 the Labour right made its first sweeping attack on ordinary members. Four leftwing organisations, all opposed to Starmer, were proscribed by the party’s national executive committee: Socialist Appeal, Labour Against the Witchhunt, Labour in Exile Network and Resist. These organisations, it was said, were not compatible with Labour’s “aims and values”, either because they were avowedly Marxist, in the case of Socialist Appeal, or because they vocally opposed the purge of the left. Support for proscribed groups is now punished with automatic expulsion.

The enforcement of the proscription rule defies common sense and natural justice. First, it applies retroactively - members are expelled for an ‘offence’ they could not have been aware of at the time of their ‘guilt’. Second, the NEC’s ability to define ‘support’ for proscribed organisations allowed it to stretch the word beyond reason. One member, Pamela Fitzpatrick, was expelled for giving an interview to Socialist Appeal. The idea that doing that proves ‘support’ for a particular group is absurd, but the same applies to joining a Zoom meeting or ‘liking’ a social media post.

In February 2022, 11 leftwing MPs were ordered by the leadership to remove their signatures from a Stop the War Coalition statement published before the Russian invasion of Ukraine - they were threatened with withdrawal of the whip. The statement said that the StWC “opposes any war over Ukraine, and believes the crisis should be settled on a basis which recognises the right of the Ukrainian people to self-determination and addresses Russia’s security concerns”, and that “Nato should call a halt to its eastward expansion and commit to a new security deal for Europe which meets the needs of all states and peoples”. Stop the War criticised the British government for “sabre-rattling” and failing to support a “diplomatic solution to the crisis”. Shortly after the leadership made its threat, every Labour MP who signed the letter removed their signature! It seems that criticism of Nato, or association with groups like the StWC, is now incompatible with being a Labour MP.

After Labour’s youth section, Young Labour, publicly criticised Nato, the party seized its Twitter account, stating it had been “restricted until further notice”, because “the account has become actively detrimental to the party’s core objectives”. Young Labour’s annual conference was then cancelled. So much for the democratically elected voice of Labour’s young members.

In March 2022, the party proscribed three more organisations: the Socialist Labour Network (a merger of Labour Against the Witchhunt and the Labour in Exile Network), the Labour Left Alliance and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. The LLA was proscribed for its links to expelled members and its association with LAW and LIEN; the AWL was proscribed for Trotskyite entryism. This proscription rule is as illogical as the first one: “participation” in AWL events, but not debating AWL members, constitutes “support” for the organisation and therefore merits automatic expulsion. It is remarkable that the AWL’s vigorous denunciation of (largely imaginary) left anti-Semitism and its agreement with the Labour right on major foreign policy issues were insufficient to save it from the purges.

Labour’s soft left has not been spared. In July 2022 Starmer fired shadow transport minister Sam Tarry for joining an RMT union picket line. Tarry, though he always preferred appeasing Starmer to fighting him, was then deselected as Labour MP for Ilford South. Soft left MP Nadia Whittome was treated the same way: she was fired from her junior role as a parliamentary private secretary in September 2020 after voting against Tory legislation which would “make it almost impossible to prosecute soldiers for war crimes or acts of torture committed more than five years ago” (Amnesty International1). Labour had ordered its MPs to abstain on the bill.

Leftwing parliamentary candidates have been blocked by the party bureaucracy in Stroud, Wakefield, Camberwell and Peckham, Hastings and Rye, Milton Keynes North, and Kensington. The pretext for these bureaucratic interventions is sometimes as flimsy as the fact that the candidate ‘liked’ a tweet by a politician from a different party.

Labour’s rules have also worsened. The 2022 rule book says that “Neither the principles of natural justice nor the provisions of fairness” (2.I.4D) apply to members who violate Labour’s proscriptions. This is an admission that Labour’s rules are unjust and unfair, perhaps to forestall legal action against the party. The right used its majority at the party’s 2022 conference to enact more oligarchic rule changes. Conference agreed to change chapter 5 of the rulebook to give the NEC “absolute power to cancel or amend procedures for selections [of candidates] … in accordance with procedural guidelines or other guidance set by the NEC”.

The Labour Party under Starmer is now an enemy of democracy: it does not respect elementary principles. Anyone who vocally disagrees with the leadership and the bulk of the Parliamentary Labour Party faces disciplinary action. The leadership is especially harsh in punishing anti-imperialism and anyone who questions the myth of widespread Labour ‘anti-Semitism’. This situation is intolerable, yet no ‘leaders’ of the Labour left are prioritising fighting against Labour’s purges, nor is any strategy being offered to ordinary leftwing members.

Abandon

Given the foregoing, many are saying that the left should now abandon active engagement with the Labour Party. This position is mistaken - it fails to recognise that much of the left’s misery has been self-inflicted.

Labour’s purges began under Corbyn, not Starmer. But with Starmer the purges are a coordinated attempt to crush the left, and demonstrate to the ruling class that Labour is a safe option; under Corbyn, the purges were intended to appease enemies of the leadership, many of whom were acting in bad faith. Hence, during Corbyn’s leadership, the left reduced its own political forces with the approval of large segments of the ‘official’ left. This partly explains why it is unable to react appropriately to the continuation of Corbyn’s policy (albeit with a different motive). The official left does not know how to defend freedom of thought and expression.

The adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of anti-Semitism, along with all its examples, is instructive. The IHRA examples are useful for censoring discussion of Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. In response to Amnesty International finding Israel guilty of the crime of apartheid, Claudia Mendoza, a co-chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, declared: “The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is clear: to claim that the existence of Israel is a racist endeavour is anti-Semitic and, unfortunately, it appears Amnesty International is doing exactly that.”2 In sum, Amnesty International’s report is anti-Semitic and can therefore be ignored.

Yet a number of leftwing figures offered their support to adopting all the IHRA examples in 2018. Among them were Jon Lansman, founder of Momentum and a member of the NEC at the time, Andrew Fisher, Labour’s executive director of policy and Len McCluskey, Unite general secretary. Others on the left were reluctant to adopt the definition and examples in full, but offered partial support.

Ash Sarkar, contributing editor at Novara Media, courageously criticised the definition and the examples in an article for The Guardian. Still, she wrote it was “necessary” for Labour to adopt “some version” of the definition in order to restore “Jewish trust” in the party.3 This compromise solution was naive: the examples, some of which Sarkar correctly identified as a threat to freedom of expression, were the main concern of the party’s critics. The party had already adopted the vacuous definition in 2016. Even after Labour integrated almost all of the examples into its code of conduct, it was still savaged for not adopting all the examples without qualification.

Symptomatic of its failure to uphold freedom of expression, the key political error the left made was to support the definition and examples in any way, whether fully or in part. The Labour left should have instead made a powerful argument for general anti-racist principles and protecting free speech in the party in relation to controversial topics. It should have said that it would therefore reject all particularised definitions of bigotry. Instead, freedom of expression is being further constricted. Since adopting the IHRA definition, Labour has adopted the All-Party Parliamentary Group definition of Islamophobia. Apart from the fact that it is not clear whether these two are compatible,4 one can imagine various mutually reinforcing definitions being adopted until Labour members are terrified to express any opinion that might violate these granular, illiberal and contentious guidelines.

Most disciplinary action under Corbyn involved policing the supposedly insensitive or offensive utterances of party members. Instead of trying to confront such utterances - which could be the product of mere ignorance rather than hate - by free and open discussion, the party chose the most severe and censorious options. Thus the left laid the groundwork for Corbyn’s own suspension in 2020. Could it not be persuasively argued that by saying anti-Semitism in the party was “dramatically overstated”, Corbyn had been “insensitive” in the same way that ex-Labour MP Chris Williamson had been when he said Labour had been “too apologetic” in responding to allegations that it was an anti-Semitic party? If it was right for Williamson to be suspended and ultimately expelled, why not Corbyn? It should be admitted that the way the party managed discipline under Corbyn was wrong, and, in the end, never stopped or slowed the onslaught of smears in the establishment media.

The left also requires a much greater philosophical appreciation of the importance of freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is not just a liberty that must be defended against government interference: it should be an ethos in leftwing organisations. Until the left sees freedom of expression as a value to be encouraged and esteemed, the fight against the ruling class, and the search for truth, will fail. This is particularly important when identity politics and minority groups are used as clubs to smash any programme of class struggle. Corbyn and leftwing Labour members were called anti-Semites; the social democratic American presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, and his supporters were called ‘racist misogynists’. Instead of entertaining these charges out of sensitivity to the groups concerned, the left must be able to call a smear a smear and a witch-hunt a witch-hunt.

But the weakness of the left does not stop with its disregard for free speech. Another failure, connected to the refusal to come out for free expression, has been the absence of active solidarity with the targets of proscription and expulsion; and in the most severe cases some on the left have supported attacks on members.

Solidarity

Lara McNeill, the Momentum-backed leftwing youth representative on the NEC, voted for all the leadership’s July 2021 proscriptions except Socialist Appeal, breaking with all other leftwing members of the NEC. Guardian columnist Owen Jones supported “kicking out” Labour Against the Witchhunt before backpedalling and saying that he opposed proscriptions. Left media, as I have pointed out elsewhere, had almost nothing to say about the Labour right’s assault on members.5 As for the organisations of the official left, they too were absent from the fight. Although Momentum released a statement opposing the proscriptions, it did not sign the statement of Defend the Left, an organisation set up to fight the purges, nor were any senior leftwing figures or MPs to be seen at the protest organised against proscription outside the Labour conference on July 20 2021, where members of proscribed groups were in attendance.

The refusal of the official left to fight the purges was summarised in an article on strategy written by Momentum’s former co-chairs, Gaya Sriskanthan and Andrew Scattergood.6 They began by identifying the threat: “Starmer’s McCarthyism” and the purge of members who disagree with “retro-Blairism”. In yet another instance of Momentum’s remarkable aversion to active solidarity with proscribed groups, they did not explicitly mention the party’s NEC banning seven organisations opposed to Starmer.

Sriskanthan and Scattergood reasoned that, because state power is necessary for socialism, and the best available vehicle for state power remains Labour, socialists must continue to focus on the party. This argument fails to consider the existential crisis the Labour left faces. If it is impossible for Labour members to be vocally leftwing, then the Labour left cannot exist. This is the problem posed by Starmer forcing MPs not to criticise Nato, or expelling members for opposing the weaponisation of anti-Semitism. If the Labour left is serious about transforming the party, it must prioritise fighting Labour’s purges. The alternative is to quietly remain in the party and work secretively in the hope that, in years or decades, the right wing might loosen its grip. That is hardly a strategy: it is a long gamble not worth wasting time or resources on.

Sriskanthan and Scattergood added that “the inability of independent parties to make any mark in the last half-century” (presumably forgetting about the Scottish National Party and the outsized influence of the UK Independence Party) means leftists must continue to focus on Labour. But the question for the Labour left is not whether socialists should organise inside or outside the Labour Party: the question is whether the left can survive in Labour in a healthy form. For the Labour left to continue to exist, there is no choice but to fight “Starmer’s McCarthyism”.

According to Sriskanthan and Scattergood, “Despite crackdowns and purges, Momentum’s membership remains around 20,000 strong”. One wonders whether Starmer and his allies view Momentum as a real obstacle to their objectives, especially given its failure to actualise the ‘Fight’ in ‘Stay and Fight’. Momentum is also said to “control hundreds of CLPs across the country”, which is meant to be an advantage. In theory, controlling Constituency Labour Parties means controlling the selection of local and national candidates, but, in practice, the party bureaucracy regularly intervenes to prevent leftists being selected: so what use is controlling CLPs? Even if a leftwing candidate is selected who is then elected as an MP, that MP is unable to challenge the status quo by, for example, criticising Nato. Socialist MPs should be tribunes of the people who expose all the injustices of capitalist society, but under Starmer’s regime this is impossible. Hence the perpetual cowardice of the Socialist Campaign Group.

Fighting the purges is a precondition for any useful political work in the Labour Party. Unless the left accepts that, all talk of “municipal socialism” or “increas[ing] the number of socialist MPs”, is wishful thinking - an irrational hope that the leadership will allow these projects to develop despite all contrary evidence.

Sriskanthan and Scattergood ended their article with an exhortation to resist “the siren call of despair”, writing: “There is nothing to be gained, and a huge amount to be lost, by throwing away the organisations, leaders and infrastructure we have built up.” Momentum’s strategy does not inspire any hope, because while its leaders acknowledged Starmer’s “vicious” McCarthyism, they had no suggestions for confronting it - besides continuing to anxiously plod along in the hope that the left will not offend Starmer with a wrong step. This, in effect, is “throwing away” whatever has been built up. There has to be real effort put into staying and fighting.

The leadership’s decision not to proscribe Momentum or a similar official left group, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, is tactically intelligent. By leaving those more established organisations alone, the right adds to the perception that it views them as legitimate and strengthens the tendency in those organisations against active solidarity with proscribed groups and expelled members.

The left has successfully been divided and conquered. This was made especially obvious by the existence of two left slates for the 2022 NEC elections, when CLPs elect nine NEC members. The two left slates had four identical candidates, but Momentum decided not to endorse the fifth, Jewish Voice for Labour member Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, thus automatically surrendering a majority of the nine CLP seats if leftists only voted for Momentum’s slate. JVL has resisted the purges more strongly than any other organisation on the Labour left by standing with proscribed groups and expelled members. Hence Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi was elected by leftwing Labour members despite Momentum’s refusal to endorse her. But, of course, she was suspended by the party before the new NEC’s first meeting and has since been expelled.

New strategy

The Labour left’s primary political task now is to secure the space for politics to be conducted freely and openly. To continue as though the left is not in a historic crisis is an enormous mistake. The boundaries of legitimate discussion in Labour are constantly shrinking; there is no reason to believe that what we are permitted to say today will be acceptable tomorrow. Yet the Labour left continues to put forward its old demands without any sense of the importance of resisting the purges; there is not even a dedicated, functioning organisation for this purpose. If the Labour left is to have any chance of remaining a useful political force, it must defend its right to exist within the party. A new left organisation should be founded with the sole focus of fighting the purges. The following should be its programme. All left forces should support it:

The policy of broad free expression is already operative for rightwingers in the Labour Party. Individual members, such as Luke Akehurst, are permitted to support arms sales to Saudi Arabia, as it pursues a murderous war in Yemen. Labour MPs are permitted to support an apartheid state and organise for this purpose inside Labour Friends of Israel; hardly anyone calls for LFI to be banned because it does not conform to Labour’s ‘aims and values’. Many current Labour MPs, including shadow defence secretary John Healey and shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, voted for war against Iraq, and remain members in good standing despite the lethal consequences of their actions for thousands of Arabs.

The double standard of free speech for the right and censorship for the left also applies to offensive utterances. Under Corbyn, Labour MP Margaret Hodge was permitted to say that her receipt of a disciplinary letter from the party (after she called Corbyn a “fucking anti-Semite”) made her think of “what it felt like to be a Jew in Germany in the 30s”. If the Labour right can support an apartheid regime and invasions that kill thousands of people; if the Labour right can attack the Campaign Against Antisemitism for “using anti-Semitism as a front to attack Labour” (Margaret Hodge after the CAA condemned Starmer); if all this speech is protected by the party, the least the left should demand is an equal right to freedom of expression.

The Labour left should work for the implementation of the above programme for as long as possible. The new organisation to fight the purges should be launched at a meeting of all left forces. There should be conspicuous solidarity between the Labour left still inside the party, members who have been expelled, and groups that have been banned. Momentum, the CLPD and SCG should stand on the same platform as banned groups and expelled members. It might be retorted that the whole left would be banned as a result, but that is not obviously true. JVL, which is characterised by better political judgement than the official left, has successfully protested against bans and expulsions without being proscribed.

What would happen if the rest of the left joined this struggle is unknown. The left might claw back more breathing space, or it might become obvious that working inside Labour is a waste of energy, at least for the time being. If it is impossible to even advocate the freedom to express leftwing ideas in the Labour Party, then it is no longer a useful vehicle for left politics.

Active resistance is much better than the long gamble of quietism, yet most of the left implicitly prefers the latter. The Labour left must fight for its survival now or it will continue to melt away into nothingness.

  1. www.amnesty.org.uk/25000-people-called-uk-stop-overseas-operations-bill.↩︎

  2. Mendoza is wrong that the IHRA definition says this. As has been proven in an exhaustive report by Jamie Stern-Weiner (The politics of a definition: how the IHRA working definition of anti-Semitism is being misrepresented), in 2016 the IHRA’s decision-making body excluded the examples from the definition itself. Pro-Israel groups and the IHRA have since tried to conflate the examples with the definition. By now the definition and its origins have been so distorted in the course of its instrumentalisation to defend Israel from criticism that public discussion of these issues is rife with misinformation.↩︎

  3. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/03/ihra-antisemitism-labour-palestine.↩︎

  4. The All-Party Parliamentary Group definition of Islamophobia includes an example that says it is Islamophobic to deny Palestinians their right to self-determination. In so far as it required the ethnic cleansing of the Arab population, then, the founding of Israel must have been Islamophobic. Yet an IHRA example stipulates that to say Israel’s founding was racist is anti-Semitic (note that the APPG definition construes Islamophobia as a form of racism). This means that, according to their understanding of Israel's founding, Labour Party members are necessarily guilty of either anti-Semitic or Islamophobic conduct.↩︎

  5. ‘Too little, too late’ Jewish Voice for Labour blog, January 12 2022.↩︎

  6. ‘Is there any point staying in Labour?’ Novara Media April 10 2022: novaramedia.com/2022/04/10/is-there-any-point-staying-in-labour.↩︎