10.02.2000

AWL contradictions

Phil Watson points to inconsistencies in the statements of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty and calls for an open accounting of the errors of auto-Labourism

Communists can only welcome the Alliance for Workers' Liberty's current movement away from knee-jerk auto-Labourism.

If we read the current issue of Workers' Liberty, we can see the clear attempt that the comrades are making to think in relation to Blair's project of 'modernising' not only his own party, but the whole terrain of bourgeois politics in Britain. More than that, one can ascertain the AWL's own internal tensions as it grapples with an evolving phenomenon. As with recent editions of Workers' Liberty, this can often produce a peculiar mixture of the old and new.

The editorial in the December 1999-January 2000 edition makes quite clear the healthy direction of the AWL in the past year, putting an emphasis on flexible tactics in the cause of reforging independent working class politics: ie, standing in elections against New Labour, whilst having an orientation to the internal stresses and strains of the labour movement that Blair's rapid march to the right is leaving in its wake. One does not have to be a genius to understand that this approach is, in certain tactical respects, close to that of the CPGB, particularly in the context of Ken Livingstone's bid for the London mayoralty and the formation of a Socialist Alliance slate.

There was of course a time when the AWL would have used the Livingstone revolt as a justification for another seemingly eternal bout of pro-Labour loyalism. With this in mind we can note its contemporary thinking on the Livingstone campaign. Correctly the unnamed author points to the fact that these events have "confirmed that there are still real links between Labour and the working class bedrock organisations, the trade unions, [and] that there is some life still inside the Labour Party ..." (Workers' Liberty February). This time though our comrade strikes the right note of sobriety when considering that "there are no grounds yet for supposing that it has radically changed the overall trends within the Labour Party". In other words, Britain's bourgeois workers' party remains one in which the bourgeois pole is more heavily accentuated, but this has not yet produced a qualitive shift.

On the other hand the comrades make sure that we will not be putting up the bunting just yet. This month's Workers' Liberty commentary on 'Blair's NHS U-turn' provides ample evidence that the AWL's doddery reformist habits remain only partially exorcised. To understand this thoroughly confused piece we should cast our minds back to the election of New Labour in May 1997 when the AWL got rather excited at what they ambiguously termed "the return of hope". As they stood outside Downing Street with the 'masses', our friends were lathered up in thoughts of the forthcoming 'crisis of expectations' that would form the prelude to a determined working class offensive.

It hardly needs stressing that this perspective has been decidedly refuted by events. The CPGB was almost alone in pointing out that in a scenario where the working class movement was heavily atomised, and the Blairite machine was showing no interest in breeding illusions that New Labour would change things radically (or even reverse the Thatcherite legacy), such a perspective was a tactical dead duck. Worse, by behaving in such a manner, the AWL et al were guilty of inverting their proclaimed schema into one where they actually bred (and were fooled by) the illusions and not the working class.

It is rather unfortunate then that the AWL still feels the need to assert that in May 1997 "many millions chose to ignore Blair's explicit warnings and to hope instead that New Labour would bring a generous, responsive regime committed to reversing Tory damage" in the context of a bog-standard Tweedledum-Tweedledee bourgeois election. However, the AWL does offer some mealy-mouthed evidence to illustrate why the 'crisis of expectations' perspective utterly failed, pointing to the mood of "demoralised fatalism" that set in once Blair had got his feet under the table and the subsequent routinised and defensive outlook of the labour movement.

The error that the AWL makes is to partition this off from the election itself, when these signs were all readable beforehand. Indeed, Blair's whole modernisation project was surely partly premised on a battered Labour left and a passive, demoralised trade union movement. This talk of "demoralised fatalism" setting in may save the AWL's (1997 vintage) blushes, but whether it serves the elementary cause of truth and honesty is another matter entirely.

Our anonymous writer's defence of this hoary old anthem is not though merely technical or historical in nature. The AWL has merely revamped the 'crisis of expectations' for the year 2000, something that has all the residual appeal of a 50-year-old Keith Richards strumming the opening chords of 'I can't get no satisfaction'. Tony Blair's mind-bending 'promise' to raise spending to the average levels of the European Union by (gasp!) 2006 is apparently enough "to make people expect real improvements and protest when they do not come". Sound familiar?

Just in case cynical readers think I am indulging in quote-chopping, let us move on to the paragraph where the AWL dreams of reliving that 'wonderful' summer of 1997: "In history, the downfall of dictatorships and absolute monarchies has often started when they begin to reform. The reforms are designed to placate people, but in fact stir them up. By signalling that improvement is possible, they incite people to demand real, radical and rapid improvements." Just in case you were wondering, we are still in 2000 and not 1917.

Quite frankly the AWL's logic is threadbare. It is one thing to recognise the atomised and depoliticised nature of contemporary working class life in Britain, but quite another to imagine workers are stupid enough to fall for a projected promise from a profoundly anti-working class government in a situation where, as Workers' Liberty correctly reasons, their traditional organisations remain stultified in a narrow, economistic routine. In this regard, the piece quotes Blairite Peter Kellner's failure to even mention the left in citing Blair's 'radical' shift on the health service, stating that Kellner's comments "should be a challenge to us", given the lack of an effective vehicle to oppose New Labour. Blair is essentially concerned with retaining his credibility in the vagaries of bourgeois opinion polls, not running scared from a rampant labour movement.

On the level of a strategic response to the crisis of the traditional labour movement, Workers' Liberty's latest tactical nuance is revealed as nonsense. The question remains as to why the comrades should still want to expound such rubbish. Firstly, this is precisely what happens when you fail to account, honestly and openly, for the failure of old perspectives. We can see this is the case from reading the subtext of certain AWL statements and their (very welcome) shift towards opposing New Labour in the electoral arena. But the resurrection of the failed 'crisis of expectations' perspective shows precisely what happens when pragmatism becomes the substitute for the theorisation of strategy.

Secondly, the contradictions we have sketched above relate to different trends of thought in the AWL itself. There has been an intense debate on the continued viability of supporting New Labour. For example, some AWL comrades have told us that in London assembly constituencies where the LSA, or any other 'credible' left candidate, is not standing, the working class should vote for Blair's hand-picked cretins. Others have quite clearly argued that they would have no problem in advocating abstentions. Seen in this light, the editorial excitement of Workers' Liberty toward Blair's NHS pledges represents an attempt by leading comrades to smooth away such contradictions by offering those members still hankering after the old certainties the hope that the AWL could revert towards its previous sectarian insistence on auto-Labourism if Blair presents a something-is-better-than-nothing shopping list between now and the next election. The question to leading comrades is, do you want to subordinate the truth by servicing backwardness?

If we go further and consider the sort of movement that the AWL espouses in relation to the erosion of public services, all that can be really ascertained in the above-mentioned editorial is the method of left economism (politics follows spontaneity). Of course, the author finishes with a wonderful little flourish: "The job of the socialists, here as always, is to ... blaze the trail and to make ourselves as strong as possible a force against passivity, demoralisation, resignation and narrowed aspirations." This (worthy of 'official communism') is revealed as mere fluff by the usual 'transitional' guff that the AWL appear to excel in. Thus we are told that the "general issue [in relation to forming a mass movement against Blair] is the defence of public services - the defence of the non-profit, non-market elements of the 'political economy of the working class' won by the labour movement over many decades" (my emphasis).

As an aside we might want to ask when the public sector has ever escaped the logic of the market, but we should content ourselves with noting the economistic shroud with which the comrades veil the horizons of the working class. Not a word of course about the need to challenge Blair's political hegemony by confronting the task of how we are ruled. All the AWL seems interested in achieving is the further subordination of the labour movement to an inherently defensive posture.

If we peruse the editorial statement on Ireland in the previous issue we can read the following argument: "Working class activity on social issues can generate working class politics capable of reshaping society only if it is tied to a programme of consistent democracy on the national and communal questions around which catholic and protestant workers can unite, each recognising the others' rights" (my emphasis Workers' Liberty December-January). Couldn't have put it better myself. But it is clear that the comrades have failed to universalise this approach: quite all right for the extremes of Ireland, but far too sophisticated for the routine humdrum of the British class struggle. Again the picture confronting us is one of external (and no doubt internal) contradiction.

This eclecticism quite obscures the AWL's declared aim of an independent working class politics. Such a politics will never arise if workers are not given a clear lead in challenging bourgeois political hegemony by taking a clear stance on the burning questions of political democracy. The error is a critical one: the working class will never become a ruling class unless it becomes able to master politics and the totality of oppression under capitalism.

With this in mind we should surely cringe at the following statement from Janine Booth - the AWL's candidate on the LSA PR list: "There are a whole number of issues where we can bang on about democracy, while our own politics become more and more buried" (Weekly Worker February 3). It is the AWL that is "buried" - in the economistic mire. Questions of democracy are apparently only "our own politics" when it comes to Ireland.

To conclude, there are plenty of signs that the AWL is quite capable of formulating a communist politics worthy of the name. But there are no short cuts. Such an art cannot be squared off against decades of Labourite habit or an opportunistic pragmatism that short-sightedly degrades consistent theorisation. If the AWL chooses to confront openly its own political unevenness this will undoubtedly lead to further sharp debate in its ranks. I can advise the comrades that this will be not be a weakness, but an eternal strength.