12.02.2004

Another cul de sac

Graham Bash is on the editorial board of Labour Left Briefing, an influential monthly magazine on the Labour left. This is the first of an occasional column in which he looks at developments in the party and the broader movement

I am concerned that Respect is a diversion from the major question facing the workers’ movement. Most comrades in the Labour Party have not even heard of it from my experience. That’s the reality. Those comrades who have heard of it regard it as another delusion.

If the Socialist Alliance - which was a far more viable project - could not make an electoral impact, what chance has Respect? It’s an SA mark II, but at a much lower level. More of the same on a less principled basis. Some think it may do better because of the presence of George Galloway, but I remain very sceptical.

Even if it could get a few people elected, it is a cul de sac. People on the left of Labour treat it with a degree of sadness. It is such a waste of the time, energy and resources of talented comrades. There is no resentment against the project, or against George for fronting it. But there is a weariness that comrades don’t seem to learn any lessons from history.

I have put forward this view in the pages of the Weekly Worker before, but let me state it again. There is no objective space to build a left electoral alternative to Labour. Unless and until a grouping comes forth which actually speaks in the name of labour and is actually in the process of recreating a mass party of labour, then sects - however they package themselves - will not achieve anything substantial.

Galloway

George Galloway continues to excite comment and controversy. There are probably as many opinions about this comrade on the left as there are lefties to hold them!

No doubt, there has been scepticism about the man on the left of Labour. He was never part of the Campaign Group and he certainly has had a less than spotless record in the past. For myself - and I am probably in a minority on this - I take a more favourable view of the comrade. His record in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was outstanding. He was a major spokesperson for the Stop the War Coalition.

At the same time, I deeply regret that expulsion from Labour has led him down the Respect road. I think I understand the pressures that were on him and pushed him in that direction. However, once you stand against Labour in the ballot box, a lot of your formal relations with your ex-comrades can become sectarian. I’m afraid this is what could happen to George.

The same process was observable with Scargill - although he had tendencies that way already, of course. But the pattern is familiar. In order to justify what you are doing and where you are doing it, you must overstate your position on the Labour Party.

This is not to deny that some of his recent comments have not been correct. Of course, there ought to be hundreds more Jeremy Corbyns, John McDon-nells and Alice Mahons. But there aren’t. Therefore, to the extent that he is saying there are too few socialists in the party, that the left is weak, he is undoubtedly right.

But he overstates his case. He has to do this in order to justify his current stance. My worry is that through this the broad anti-war movement, in which George played such an outstanding role, is being reduced by trying to squeeze it into a non-existent space - that of an electoral challenge to the Labour Party. There, it will be a failure.

As for the comrade’s comments about Livingstone - where he suggests that Ken has crawled back into Labour - that is very strange. I’m used to the left painting defeats as victories; this is the opposite - painting a victory for the left as a defeat!

The truth is that Blair has been forced into a climbdown. Ken’s return to the party is a victory against New Labour, a victory for the left against the right. Let us not overplay it, but it is a limited victory. He has come back insisting that he is going to be Labour candidate for mayor, that he will be responsible for the manifesto. He is asserting his will against New Labour. Does that sound like a stooge of New Labour? Hardly!

Labour and the unions

The key question facing the left is how it breaks its isolation, how it starts to rebuild the structures of the party that have been devastated by New Labour, how we bring the trade unions and trade unionists back to reassert their power in their party.

That’s a long-term question and there must be an ongoing debate about how this happens. The idea of a Labour Representation Committee was floated at the end of last year by some trade union leaders like Mick Rix. Whether or not it can be built in practice remains to be seen, although I plan to be part of the fight to build it if possible.

Of course, this is part of the more general question. To what extent can the trade unions collaborate with each other and with the constituency left in forcing key issues onto the agenda of the party? The strengths and the weaknesses of the unions were illustrated at last year’s conference. Yes, they forced labour movement issues onto the agenda, but ultimately it was the responsibility of the unions - with the honourable exception of the RMT - that the war was not debated.

A few months later on, and the RMT is disaffiliated from the party. The NEC took the disgraceful decision to expel the union when its special conference on February 6 decided to ratify the decision of the organisation in Scotland to affiliate to the Scottish Socialist Party.

The responsibility for this lies firmly with New Labour. They have made the party more and more uninhabitable for working people and their organisations. The FBU could be going the same route - a real problem for the left. In its own way, this is another cul de sac for working class militants.

I think the general view that comrades on the left of the party will take is that the schism beginning to open up between Labour and the trade unions is something we must work to overcome rather than exacerbate. Therefore, I strongly believe that it is incumbent on that left of the party to maintain as many links as possible with those unions that disaffiliate from Labour, however much we disagree with their decision. I know that there will be some sections of the Labour left who will take the stance that we must have no more formal links with the RMT at all after it is outside our ranks.

That would be a profound mistake. It would mean that we on the left of the party would be part of the problem, not a potential solution for the unions. Our task is to look to the Labour Party not only as it is today, but as it will be tomorrow. We have to have a vision of rebuilding a party of labour which can appeal to those tens of thousands who have left the party in disgust in recent years and to the unions that now seem set to follow them.

How can we think of cutting off our comrades? I have infinitely more in common with the ‘disaffiliationists’ of the RMT and FBU and with those socialists who have left the Labour Party than the Blairites and their hangers-on.

These are our comrades in the RMT and FBU and we have to be linked with them in as many structures of the workers’ movement as we can. They are the raw material for rebuilding a genuine party of labour.