18.11.1999

The Labour Party and Livingstone

Party notes

Draft theses

1. Labour emerged in the 20th century as a hybrid political formation. Through trade union, and then individual, affiliation the mass of its membership were working class. However, whether or not a party should be categorised as a workers’ party does not depend solely upon membership. What is crucial is those who lead it and the nature of its actions and political tactics.

2. The Labour Party has traditionally been staffed by a combination of career politicians and trade union bureaucrats. In war and peace these people acted fully in the spirit of the bourgeoisie. Reforms have been conceded, especially in the period of the post-World War II social democratic state. From the point of view of the Labour leadership such measures had nothing to do with empowering and furthering the struggle of the working class. They were designed to stabilise and sustain the system of capital by demobilising the working class.

3. The Labour Party is therefore correctly defined as a bourgeois workers’ party, a party with a predominantly working class membership, but which acts in the interests of the bourgeoisie. Sociologically it is proletarian; politically it is capitalist.

4. The Labour Party has always been divided into a left and a right. Except in the most exceptional circumstances the right dominates, especially when it comes to practical implementation of policy. The relationship is symbiotic. Rank and file discontent with the leadership in particular and the effects of the capitalist system of exploitation in general is articulated by the Labour left. Often this is enshrined in recipes for a nationalised socialism which relies upon the existing, bourgeois, state for realisation. The strength of the Labour left tends to vary with the class struggle, being a key site of mediation between the working class and the capitalist system. The Labour right needs working class votes but is in the business of obtaining and maintaining political power. In a society dominated by the capitalist metabolism and bourgeois ideas and values, this effectively means serving the production and reproduction of capital.

5. We note that Lenin welcomed the formation of the Labour Party as a step forward. The organisation of the Labour Party, based on trade union affiliates, represented a break from the Liberal Party and the potential for working class independence from the bourgeoisie. Lenin therefore seconded the affiliation of the Labour Party to the 2nd International in 1908. That did not imply illusions. Lenin famously described the Labour Party as “an organisation of the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically dupe the workers”.

6. When the Communist Party of Great Britain was established in 1920 Lenin correctly urged it to seek affiliation to the Labour Party (the British Socialist Party - the biggest body that helped form the CPGB - was from 1916 a Labour Party affiliate). He also correctly urged communists to support the Labour Party in elections “as the rope supports a hanged man”. These tactics were specific historically and applied to Britain alone. The communists were not supporting Labour because it was the ‘lesser evil’. The aim was to get a hearing from rank and file workers in movement.

7. The Labour Party leadership and conferences turned down repeated CPGB attempts to affiliate. Nevertheless individual members of the CPGB often held dual membership or represented their trade unions at Labour Party conferences. The first communist elected as an MP, Shapurji Saklatvala, stood as an officially selected Labour Party candidate. CPGB members successfully led the National Leftwing Movement within the Labour Party, and through its Sunday Worker - edited by William Paul - gained a considerable audience for their ideas. From the mid-1920s onwards the Labour leadership imposed a witch hunt - bans and proscriptions - in an attempt to isolate the communists. Unfortunately this was compounded by the so-called ‘third period’ turn demanded by the Stalin-Bukharin duumvirate in the USSR.

8. Expunging the old state socialist clause four, introduced in 1918 under the pressure of the October Revolution, represents the extreme marginalisation of the political influence of the Labour left. The introduction of electoral colleges indicates the relative loss of influence by the trade union bureaucracy. Such changes, plus the overt pro-big business links and stance of the Blair government, show that the bourgeois, active, pole of the Labour Party has achieved unprecedented domination. Nevertheless in terms of individual membership and trade union affiliation the rank and file of the Labour Party is overwhelmingly working class. Hence in spite of the internal ideological and constitutional innovations introduced under Blair the Labour Party continues to be a bourgeois workers’ party.

9. Positively overcoming Labourism remains a strategic task for communist revolutionaries. This cannot be achieved by crude attempts to write off the Labour Party. Communists must develop a critical but cooperative relationship with workers influenced by left reformism. Without such a process - whereby the advanced elements win over those with medium or backward consciousness - there can be no hope for a mass Communist Party, let alone the rule of the working class.

10. The Provisional Central Committee of the CPGB is right to critically support Livingstone’s bid to become the first directly elected London mayor. Though Livingstone is effectively standing on a New Labour programme - his main point of difference is opposition to tube privatisation - this is in no small part the result of the regime imposed by Millbank Tower, which has gone to extraordinary lengths to foil his candidacy.

11. Livingstone’s victory would be a big blow against Blairism. It would more importantly not simply be a victory for one man, but for a movement, no matter how incoherent, from below.

12. Communists will actively work for the Livingstone campaign. Whether Livingstone is the official Labour candidate or not is an entirely secondary question. Livingstone as London mayor would be a living anti-Blair manifesto on the other side of the Thames. Those who back Livingstone’s right to stand but cannot bring themselves to vote for him as mayor if he is chosen by the Labour Party electoral college in London are either hopeless doctrinaires or put the interests of their sect above the interests of the working class as a whole.

Jack Conrad