26.09.2024

Hidden divisions in Collective

After the ‘private meeting’ of the former Labour leader and a host of other former this and thats, Carla Roberts investigates the disorientation of the soft left and the probable results

As soon as we published last week’s article about Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘maybe party’, Collective, a number of people got in touch to tell us more.¹

On the one hand, this is encouraging, because it shows that comrades value the openness of the Weekly Worker and the role it plays in dragging into the light of day the left’s differences, manoeuvres and splits. We report such things not because we are gossip-mongers but because we are serious about the need to fight for the self-liberation of the working class as the only strategy that can lead to the achievement of socialism and communism. This understanding requires Marxists to discuss issues around programme and platforms, principles - and even what might superficially appear to be minor political disputes - frankly, honestly and fully, so that people can make up their own minds.

On the other hand, for that same reason, it is a very bad sign indeed that the possible formation of what might (or might not!) become the first sizeable organisation to the left of Labour in many decades is treated like a private matter, with information being clandestinely shared in WhatsApp groups and/or leaked to the bourgeois press.

We understand that there are (at least) two ‘factions’ involved in the discussions about turning Collective into a party of some sort - and they have serious differences over what to do next. In one corner, we have Len McCluskey, former general secretary of Unite, who is leading what we might call the ‘pro-party faction’. He has, we are told, been pulling strings and set up the September 15 ‘private meeting’ in London to nudge Collective into becoming a party. On his side: his partner, Karie Murphy (Corbyn’s right-hand woman, when he was Labour leader), Pamela Fitzpatrick and Justin Schlosberg, the two directors of Justice Collective PLC.

Companies

Somewhat as an aside, it is quite worrying that it seems to have become normal practice to register political organisations as companies. First, Jon Lansman did it when he set up Momentum in 2015, making sure that the data of hundreds of thousands of Corbyn supporters became his own personal property. After he suffered defeats on various issues on Momentum’s national council (which decided, crucially, to organise a first ever conference on a delegate basis), he quickly moved to abolish all democratic structures in the organisation. Yes, the now infamous ‘Lansman coup’ of January 10 2017 was based on him stitching up a meeting of the executive committee.² But he could have simply done away with it anyway - because he owned Momentum.

Nigel Farage too has made sure his Reform Party is registered at Company’s House - no doubt in the hope that its rather eccentric and unreliable membership cannot turn on him and vote him out of office. It is worrying that McCluskey, Fitzpatrick and Schlosberg too do not seem to trust the (future) membership of Collective.

In any case, apparently it was the McCluskey faction that informed The Guardian of the private September 15 gathering³ - in the hope of pushing along the second faction, which we shall call the ‘reluctant localists’. This faction includes former African National Congress MP Andrew Feinstein, former Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll and, rather importantly, Jeremy Corbyn. They say they want to focus on building local assemblies first (more on that below).

Turning to the bourgeois press to leak ‘confidential’ information is a tried and tested tactic, when it comes to bourgeois politics and perhaps even trade unions. As a tactic to convince your comrades to set up a new party, however, it seems like an incredibly silly thing to do - which is very likely going to achieve the exact opposite. But perhaps McCluskey and co know that Corbyn was so opposed to the idea that this was something like a last-ditch attempt to get him to change his mind. They clearly do not think they can launch a party without him - and they are probably right.

The kind of party these soft lefts have in mind would in all likelihood be pretty much indistinguishable from the dozens of ‘parties’ and groups that have sprung up since the defeat of the Corbyn movement in 2019 - they are all based on their own version of Corbyn’s For the many election manifesto: a lot of motherhood, plenty of apple pie, very little about socialism and nothing about how to get there. They need Corbyn on board. He is, surprisingly, still incredibly popular, and perhaps even more so now: the contrast between the frugal hippie, in his scruffy anoraks, and the unashamedly corrupt Starmer and his cronies, parading about in their fine, billionaire-paid for clobber, could not be more stark.

McCluskey knows that without Corbyn, Collective would doubtless end up just like all the other recent ‘party’ efforts: small, uninspiring and entirely ineffective. We cannot blame him for his political impatience. Clearly, there is a huge political vacuum to the left of today’s Labour Party. The small rebellions at this year’s Labour conference and the elections to the national executive committee show that the left in Labour has not been entirely snuffed out - three candidates from the slate put forward by Momentum and the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance were successful.⁴ We would argue that the Labour Party does still constitute what Lenin dubbed a “bourgeois workers’ party” - with one pole based on the working class through the electoral base and the affiliation of trade unions, while at the other pole are thoroughly corrupt career politicians, ever eager to serve capitalism and its interests. But clearly, Sir Keir Starmer has been leading the party back to the right and, in the process, has considerably reduced the left’s room for manoeuvre.

Splits

The split between the two Collective ‘factions’ seems, on the surface at least, entirely focused on the how rather than the what. There are very few, if any, political differences when it comes to the programme of any new party they might set up - presumably it would be slightly expanded from its current miserable and minimal offering (the five short points from Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project, plus Palestine tacked on for good measure) to become yet another variation of For the many.

While McCluskey, Murphy, Fitzpatrick and Schlosberg want to launch immediately, Corbyn, Feinstein and Driscoll say that the aim should be, first, to build local assemblies “everywhere” and then, perhaps, form a party down the line, most likely in order to stand joint candidates at the next general election - little more than an electoral alliance, in other words. But there seem to be disagreements within this faction too.

Let us start with Corbyn. As he explained in The Guardian a couple of months back, he has launched a “people’s forum” in his constituency of Islington North, which is:

a monthly opportunity for residents to hold me, their elected representative, to account. It will be a chance for local people to ask me anything about the month gone by and give me instructions for the month ahead. It will be a shared, democratic space for local campaigns, trade unions, tenants’ unions, debtors’ unions and national movements to organise, together, for the kind of world we want to live in. Listening to the voices of those who elected me. Discussing the concerns and hopes of our community. Empowering each other to do something about it. That is what real democracy looks like.⁵

As we have commented before, this is certainly not what “real democracy” looks like. Real democracy would mean the working class running every aspect of society, from top to bottom - what we would call socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the transition to communism. To achieve that, our class needs to be organised in a party, around a clear programme that fights to achieve such “democratic control over every sphere of life: the state and politics, work and economy, international relations”, as the CPGB Draft programme outlines.⁶

By comparison, Corbyn’s plan is a tame monthly get-together, focused entirely on himself and his position as an MP. This clearly could not, by definition, just be replicated elsewhere - and thank god for that. It will be entirely run by Corbyn’s paid staffers, for a start.

Labourite

And, even though he has been thrown out of the Labour Party, Corbyn also remains a Labourite, through and through. He is very unlikely to want to break with Labour even now - at least not until some of the unions disaffiliate and join any new endeavour. That currently looks very unlikely, especially considering the pay rises granted to train drivers and resident doctors, which seem to have appeased the unions for the time being. They are also waiting to see what they will get from Angela Rayner’s meagre ‘workers’ rights’ bill.

Then there is Andrew Feinstein, who is trying to organise a local ‘hub’ in his constituency (Holborn and St Pancras), which is supposed to move towards a membership organisation, with an AGM electing an executive committee, which I have seen described by a supporter of Feinstein’s plans as “some kind of embryonic pre-party branch”. Apparently, there are documents floating about outlining this perspective. The idea that you could build a party branch before any actual party is, of course, rather odd.

The third naysayer, Jamie Driscoll, has done one better: He has announced - just a few days after the September 15 gathering - that he is launching a different organisation altogether! No wonder he does not want Collective to turn into a potential rival organisation. ‘Majority UK’ will hold its inaugural conference in Newcastle on September 28.⁷ It is based around his own (unsuccessful) mayoral campaign and, while it seems to want to concentrate on the ‘North East’, the ‘UK’ in the name implies that Driscoll has, perhaps, greater ambitions.

The website states:

… political education will be at the heart of our movement. Preparing candidates and activists. The focus will always be on active learning and supportive mentoring. Winning political power is only the first step. Delivering change is the hard part. We want to find and nurture 500 new leaders in the North East who can build coalitions and represent their communities with courage and competency. Sound interesting?⁸

No, it really does not. It sounds very confused.

This is also a very odd, Labourite definition of ‘political education’ - ie, learn how to become a councillor. Clearly Driscoll is not interested in learning any lessons from our rich working class history - or from the many mistakes our movement has made when chasing “power”. “Majority exists to rebuild our democratic institutions to serve the interests of the many. We do this by supporting citizens to become activists and activists to become leaders.” Rebuild which democratic institutions, exactly? To do what precisely? Who knows?

Unsurprisingly, there is no mention of the word ‘socialism’ on the incredibly vacuous website. Majority UK spouts even more banal platitudes than the Peace and Justice Project, rambling on about “fairness and dignity”, “justice and peace”, “tolerance and respect” - it is truly dire stuff and very obviously yet another political dead end.

No doubt Corbyn, Feinstein and Driscoll would have been profoundly affected by the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt in the Labour Party and its aftermath. But they have no hankering for life amongst the confessional sects (well, except when they provide speaking tools). Nice, friendly local assemblies are supposed to be the building blocks of something brand new.

But even if these local assemblies (or Majority UK or Ken Loach’s For the Many Network or Roger Hallam’s Assemble, etc, etc) should take off in more than four or five areas, all these hubs, pre-party branches and wannabe power centres would, by definition, develop independently of each other, attracting all sorts of flotsam and jetsam, pushing and pulling for different campaigns and different politics, depending on the local situation. How on earth could they be brought together into a coherent party with a coherent programme?

1. ‘Corbyn’s maybe party’ Weekly Worker September 19: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1507/corbyns-maybe-party.↩︎

2. See ‘Fight back - but for what?’ Weekly Worker February 2 2017: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1140/fight-back-but-for-what.↩︎

3. The Guardian September 15.↩︎

4. labourlist.org/2024/09/labour-nec-election-results-national-executive-committee-2024.↩︎

5. The Guardian July 12.↩︎

6. communistparty.co.uk/draft-programme.↩︎

7. majorityuk.org.↩︎

8. www.majorityuk.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=611019&module_id=690553.↩︎