26.08.1999

Communists and left splits

Livingstone and London Independent Labour

Within a couple of months the Labour Party’s short list of candidates for next year’s mayoral elections in London will be finalised. On current evidence, it seems probable that the Millbank machine will not allow Ken Livingstone’s name to appear on the list. The question will then arise as to whether Livingstone, as he and his friends have darkly hinted, will go it alone and stand as the ‘London Independent Labour’ candidate, triggering his expulsion and possibly inaugurating a new nationwide leftwing project. In any event, it could well create a powerful focus for dissent among Labour activists.

For communists and revolutionary socialists in the capital and beyond, such a move would represent a significant qualitative development. Speculation along the lines of ‘will he or won’t he?’ is an amusing diversion, but what should concern us now, as a matter of the first importance, is to orient ourselves to the possibility that an independent Livingstone candidacy could serve as the catalyst for a split in the Labour Party. Even though the programme and composition, the strategy and tactics, the disposition of political forces for and against such a formation cannot at present be determined with any accuracy, the CPGB has set about the task of defining our position on the principles involved.

Hence, the question was discussed at various times during our Communist University ’99, particularly in the final session, when a presentation on Livingstone and the left initiated a lively and constructive debate. One visiting comrade from south Wales raised two questions of fundamental relevance to the CPGB’s position.

In the first place, he suggested that, heedless of principle and desperate to escape the political wilderness, the CPGB was simply looking for a bandwagon on which to jump. He could not have been more wrong. Our approach to the matter is shaped by the strategic objectives which animate all our work: at all times - but especially in the current period of reaction, characterised by theoretical crisis among many groups on the left and by the atomisation and passivity of the working class - we support every initiative that offers the prospect of greater unity and cohesion of anti-Blairite forces, with the ultimate aim of creating a new mass workers’ party; we grasp every opportunity to engage with leftwing activists (including those in the Labour Party) and with the class as a whole.

We do so on the basis that the sine qua non of all such efforts must be the greatest possible openness and democracy, including the elementary right to criticise the platforms adopted during the course of development. In this respect, the stance taken by some comrades at the recent ‘relaunch London Socialist Alliance conference’ on August 1 - an event specifically aimed at ultimately mounting a united left challenge in the London mayoral and assembly elections - should set the alarm bells ringing. Comrades Rob Hoveman (SWP) and Pete Brown (ILN) were adamant that gagging orders should take effect from the start - criticism in our press was “not on”, as it constitutes “bickering” (Weekly Worker August 19). Evidently the SWP is still licking its wounds after the exposure of its theoretical poverty and political timidity over the June 10 European elections, when the mere prospect of Scargill’s candidacy was enough to send it running for cover, and led to the disintegration of the last attempt to consolidate a united left alliance.

Secondly, the visiting comrade at CU ’99 claimed that any putative Livingstone party would be an “SLP mark II”, but, whereas Scargill was “the most significant working class politician since World War II”, who had launched an attack on the whole capitalist system, Livingstone was just another opportunist and careerist, driven only by ambition and lacking any kind of coherent socialist programme. Again, we believe the comrade was mistaken, certainly so far as Scargill is concerned. There is no doubting the fact that he was a major figure in the trade union and working class movement. Nor would we deny the man’s personal courage during the great miners’ strike of 1984-5, though even during that historic battle he made some serious mistakes, as The Leninist - forerunner of the Weekly Worker - did not hesitate to point out at the time.

But, from the very inception of the Socialist Labour Party, Scargill the politician has been an unmitigated disaster. Locked into the undemocratic, reformist and economistic politics of his upbringing in an opportunist-dominated Young Communist League, Scargill the would-be labour dictator ran the SLP as if it were his own private property. The consequences were predictable and, faced with the stinking corpse that constitutes the SLP today, we are left to wonder about what might have been. In comparison with Scargill, Livingstone appears astute. To begin with, he is far more intelligent and is an accomplished communicator, with the born populist’s chameleon-like instinct that makes him capable of garnering support, not just from the left wing of social democracy represented by Labour Party activists disillusioned with Blair, but from a wide range of social forces.

Does this mean that we have any illusions in Livingstone, that we are blind to his cynicism and ambition? Certainly not, but to focus on these factors alone and ignore the objective potential of a mass, Livingstone-led split from Labour is to adopt a position that is essentially philistine and doctrinaire - the sort of approach taken, for example, by comrades from the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. Readers may recall that earlier this year the Weekly Worker published an article by comrade Mark Osborn of the AWL, a polemic against Workers Fight, in which the AWL set out its reasons for rejecting any suggestion of giving support to Livingstone in the mayoral elections.

The comrade pointed out that Livingstone, though “superficially plausible, is not what he seems”; that his leftwing, radical socialist credentials are to a large extent illusory; that his record as leader of the GLC is mythological rather than substantial; that for a long period he had a questionable relationship with the WRP; and finally that he has a record of accusing political opponents like Sean Matgamna (and the CPGB for that matter) of being in the pay of the security services (Weekly Worker January 7).

This indictment contains much truth and more charges could be added, not least Livingstone’s recent public support for Nato’s bombing of Serbia - not, despite appearances, an obsequious attempt to demonstrate his loyalism to Blair, but an idiosyncratic position that he has held for some years. It is this, which, if reports are correct, has led the SWP to abandon its earlier enthusiastic backing for Livingstone’s candidacy as mayor, though - as befits an organisation currently beset by profound internal tension and dissent at the highest level - the SWP has made no public statement on the question, choosing instead to keep its options open by dallying with comrade Nick Long’s relaunch of the LSA election bloc.

Comrades will no doubt ask how the CPGB can contemplate giving even the most critical support to Livingstone in the event that he does break organisationally from Labour. It has to be said, in the first place, that the ‘holier than thou’, ‘clean hands’ approach to Livingstone taken by the AWL, for example, is incoherent and contradictory. After all, back in May 1997 the same organisation, deluding itself about the supposed gains to be derived from a post-electoral ‘crisis of expectations’, was happy to tell the working class to vote for Blair’s New Labour, including Ken Livingstone in Brent East. The same applies, for that matter, to the SWP and its consistent auto-Labourism. If there were a general election next year, as opposed to an election for a London mayor and a Greater London Authority, what position would the AWL and the SWP take towards the Labour Party?

The CPGB’s approach is dictated neither by an opportunistic search for a potential ‘bandwagon’ on the one hand, nor by a dogmatic purism that is averse to having any truck with a dubious, leftish social democrat on the other. We focus instead on the genuine potential opened up by a possible split from Blair’s Labour Party under the leadership of Livingstone: among the Labour Party’s membership is a small army of leftwing activists, thousands of potential recruits for socialism, constituting the embryo of a mass political movement that could in time, through joint work and frank and open debate, be won over to revolutionary politics.

In such circumstances, can there be any doubt that it is the duty of communists and revolutionary socialists not just to engage with such a movement from outside, but to struggle within it?

Michael Malkin