16.03.2000

Socialist Appeal and Ken

For those who are sceptical about anything positive arising out of Livingstone's break with the Labour Party, it is fruitful to look at the small section of the left who have a factional, strategic interest in keeping him in the party.

Socialist Appeal is Ted Grant's somewhat sober split from the Militant Tendency in 1991. It believes that Peter Taaffe made a grave sectarian error in trying to establish a "small mass party" outside of the Labour Party. Instead Socialist Appeal comrades have continued to keep their heads down - waiting for an economic meltdown in the hopes that workers will come flooding back into the party.

The last decade for Socialist Appeal has been a quiet one - 'training cadre' and (where its comrades have not themselves been absorbed) struggling to win a small amount of influence among the Labour and trade union left. That is, until Livingstone's 'bolt from a clear blue sky'.

The February and March issues of Socialist Appeal have had a number of telling articles on the topic of Ken's bid for mayor. Of particular interest in the February issue is an uncomfortable article by comrade Ted Grant himself trying to establish a theoretical cover for Socialist Appeal's continued loyalty to Labour.

The bulk of the article is a very ordinary rant about Labour's election victory "marking a fundamental turn" and how New Labour has failed to live up to expectations, etc. The standard Socialist Appeal spin is added. This is that the only way the masses move is through the Labour Party and the unions, and when they do Blair and Mandelson and their coterie will be vomited out of the party. Just like Ramsay MacDonald in the 1930s, you see. The rest of the story is tantalisingly left up to the reader's imagination.

It is worth stopping to examine the supposedly scientific underpinnings of these ideas. The theory "first worked out by our tendency" - apparently it is too advanced for Marx, Luxemburg, Lenin, etc - sees workers as nothing other than trade union members, and trade unions as the moving spirit in the Labour Party. Add to these premises the empirical fact that workers have indeed flooded into the Labour Party before, sprinkle some (un)dialectical materialism and serve to the cadre.

To put sarcasm to one side for the minute, the flaw in the theory is its economistic view of the working class. Class politics for Socialist Appeal is primarily trade union politics combined with a utopian ideal of socialism, where all problems in society are conveniently solved.

This view reduces workers to mere automata obeying the laws of history. It is therefore unsurprising that a class rebellion not directly linked to economic struggle, such as we are beginning to see in London, simply leaves the theory in tatters.

Ted Grant and his follows find themselves in the awkward position of cheer-leading for Livingstone, but unable to support him as an independent. Indeed it is doubtful whether they even imagined that Livingstone could split with the party, as their 'theory' says that it is Blair who will be forced to split.

Comrade Grant's solution is entirely inadequate. Grant tries to put a long-term perspective on the matter - never mind the crisis in the Labour Party; things will go back to normal eventually. Dovetailing neatly with Blair, Dobson and the bourgeois media's propaganda about loony lefts, Grant launches into an attack on "ultra-lefts", meaning the LSA. In my book ultra-leftism is a curable disorder, so why doesn't Ted Grant engage in a proper polemic with the LSA?

Worse still is the demagogic rallying cry for the "industrial front". Apparently the unofficial strike movement is threatening to wrench the unions out of the control of the bureaucracy. Not only that, but the demonstrations in Seattle and against Haider represent a revival of the class struggle, don't they? Anything but join half of London and support Livingstone. The biggest gem is the following quote:

"The fact that Blair referred to Livingstone being backed by 'Trotskyists' in the London Labour Party is significant. It was obviously an attempt to smear Livingstone as a dangerous ultra-left (which is very far from the truth). But nevertheless it also shows that the Labour leaders are aware of the potential for the development of a Marxist tendency inside the Labour Party."

Grant uses the actions of other comrades as a confirmation of his own theory! In all reality Socialist Appeal is of no significance to Blair. It is the London Socialist Alliance which Blair is afraid of. The reason is obvious to anyone not blinded by dogma. There is a real possibility of a split to the left from Labour and no short-term prospect of an expulsion of the right.

Socialist Appeal has chained itself to Labourism and is reduced to impotence when faced with these events. Comrades, there is no shame in rethinking your strategy.