07.07.2004

Rebuilding a party of labour

In his monthly column, Graham Bash (Labour Left Briefing) looks at the launch of the LRC, Livingstone and the task of revolutionaries in relation to the Labour Party

The Labour Representation Committee launch was a good start. Why? Because it brought together 350 activists and set up the beginnings of an organisation representing not just the parliamentary wing of the movement, but also constituencies and trade unions. It is the start of a long fightback.

Of course, it was limited in numbers and in what it represented - I am not interested in spinning it as something it was not. But it represented an important first step because it created an organisation and it took a position - unanimously supported by the organisers - not only to have a membership composed of Labour Party members, but to have associate status for both expelled and disaffiliated trade unions such as the RMT and FBU, as well as non-affiliated unions such as the PCS, of course. Associate status is also open to those individuals who constitute the majority of socialists outside any political structure and outside the Labour Party - on condition that they are not members of a political party that stands against Labour.

The reason we draw that last distinction is that we are operating in the Labour Party as it is currently constituted today. We have to be intelligent about the way we work. It would be foolish in the extreme at this stage to launch some kamikaze challenge to the constitution of the party.

However, the associate status both takes account of where we are and points the way forward to what we must become. Any strategy that is based only on the internal structures of the party, with its existing shrunken membership, is doomed to failure. Unless we can reach out to the unions, to the individual members who have left the party in despair and disgust and also to those we would have join us in this fight for its soul, then there is no future. The decision to create associate status of the LRC reflected an intelligent understanding of that reality.

The other gain - for all its limitations - was that it has some coherent programmatic basis. Yes, it is reformist. Nonetheless, it is at the cutting edge of the fight against the enemy we face - Blairism. Sure, it is no revolutionary programme, no transitional programme. But it has a certain viability and - most important of all - it is a start.

For those reasons, I think what we saw on July 3 was the beginning of a huge struggle to come - the struggle to rebuild a party of labour. Whether the existing Labour Party can be saved, we shall see. If it cannot, then a party of labour - rooted in the trade unions - must be rebuilt. That mammoth task was set in train with the LRC launch.

Now, the big four unions were not there; they are not on board the LRC yet. The fact that these big battalions of the workers’ movement are nevertheless coming into conflict with Blair is a hugely positive development - one we should all greet with enthusiasm.

It is clearly a weakness of the LRC that those unions are not involved. But that’s where we are and this is where we start from.

Livingstone
The left of the Labour Party must be clear about Livingstone and his comments on the RMT strike. They were appalling.

At the LRC conference, RMT comrade Stuart Watkin attacked him for crossing class lines. He got a lot of support from the delegates who were justifiably outraged. Most of his usual defenders had not a word to say in his defence.

I share that outrage with Livingstone’s call for scabbing. It is one thing to argue that this or that particular strike may be ill-advised - and, remember, Livingstone is the employer. But effectively to call for scabbing is quite another.

However, let me criticise the Weekly Worker on this. Of course, I accept that Ken’s behaviour has undermined the Labour left. But to say, as Tina Becker did in last week’s paper, that this shows the “inherent limits” of left Labourism is ludicrous (Weekly Worker July 1). It tars the Labour left with a ‘scab’ brush along with Livingstone. It would be as nonsensical as me arguing that George Galloway’s ‘scabbing’ on a woman’s right to choose illustrates the “inherent limits” of the revolutionary left outside Labour. Neither is correct.

In fact, just as the left of Respect was actually undermined by what George did, so the left of Labour was weakened by Ken’s actions. Now, I am not a left Labourite in that sense: I am a Marxist, a revolutionary socialist. However, what Livingstone said in no way embodies a left Labourism: left Labourism, with all its strengths and weaknesses, was actually on show at the LRC conference on July 3. The best of the left Labour MPs embody genuine left Labourism, as do the best of many of the trade unionists there. I have criticisms of left Labourism, but is not part of its make-up to suggest workers cross picket lines.

They were appalled by Ken’s call to cross class lines. In fact, these comments have cost him a potential base on the left of the party - not for the first time in his life, it must be said. If he ever wanted to launch a struggle in Labour for some leadership post, who would support him now? He cannot compete with the right for a base - he is simply not trusted - and now he has blown his chances with the left.

Perhaps this all means he is simply content to run London for another four years and that is the extent of his ambition - something I find a bit pathetic.

Respect
This is my first column since the June 10 elections. I have to say in one or two pockets, such as in east London, Respect did better than I anticipated. They had one or two good results and good luck to them.

But overall, the results were what I expected. The worst of all possible worlds, in other words. On the one hand, not good enough to constitute any electoral breakthrough (inevitably); on the other, not bad enough to kill the initiative at birth, which might have been a considerable kindness. That would have meant that comrades such as those in the CPGB would have to rethink their orientation.
A question of balance

I have been thinking quite a lot about the point of this column (as I am sure many readers are!). It seems to me that my starting point and that of the CPGB are opposites. You begin from the need to assemble a revolutionary vanguard, even in embryonic form, around a communist programme. However, you do at least pay lip service to the idea that that process must have a relationship to the living reality of the wider workers’ movement. I start from my own recognition that you cannot build a revolutionary party without at the same time interacting with that wider movement and that cannot be separated from the struggle for a united front, the fight to unite the class. 

Now, we can both be criticised here. The CPGB for paying a ritual obeisance to the idea of the unity of the broader movement, while wasting your efforts on the margins of the tiny revolutionary left. In turn, I can be criticised for agreeing with the need for revolutionary leadership of our class, while in practice being engaged in a broader movement dominated by Labourism to the detriment of the struggle to forge that revolutionary vanguard.

It seems to me that here are two sides of reality that are not meeting, not fusing. In fact, this reflects the objective weakness - political, organisational and theoretical - of our class at this stage of the development of the struggle. Of course, it is only in the course of the revolutionary crisis itself that revolutionaries and the masses actually merge in an organic sense - in 1917, there was a fusion between the Bolsheviks and the Russian working class.

So we both have a role in this process, but the brutal truth is that we start from such different standpoints at the present moment in history that - on the face if it - there does not seem to be a meeting point. What I want to see is the struggle for that revolutionary leadership much more engaged in a fight to bring the revolutionaries out of isolation and into contact with the broader workers’ movement - the place where they can actually make a difference.

I cannot see that revolutionary leadership actually emerging until the working class itself becomes much stronger. It is something that goes hand in hand with the development of the struggle itself. Preserving ‘revolutionary politics’, on the fringes of the movement, is useless, if separated from the struggle to rebuild the labour movement.

I remember the days, 30-odd years ago, when I used I used to attack the ‘alternative economic strategy’ taken up by sections of the Labour left as a load of reformist claptrap. Today, I am a member of an LRC that is putting forward the beginnings of a programmatic alternative to Blairism well to the right of anything in the AES. Have I changed, or is it objective reality that has?

I’m afraid it is the latter. I am wary of excusing the failures of individual revolutionaries by grandiose references to ‘objective circumstances’, but I do think that these changes reflect where the movement is at after so many defeats. To attempt to be at the cutting edge of the fight against Blairism without isolating yourself from your audience does inevitably mean starting from the type of limited programmatic basis we currently have in the LRC.

The danger is that it will become a substitute for a revolutionary vision. If that happens, then you really are doomed. How to guard against this? The point is that sometimes you have to recognise that you are in retreat and any leftist gesture or precipitate initiative - while it might be a salve to your bruised revolutionary ego - is useless. It will only isolate you. However, the moment this tactic is systematised in a theoretical rejection of revolutionary politics and Marxism in toto, then that is the end.

How is this delicate balancing act achieved? You have to be part of the labour movement and part of the revolutionary left. If you are just part of the labour movement, then you can wilt in the face of the rightist pressures on you - which are considerable. I recognise the danger of this in my practice.
But if you are just part of the revolutionary left, then the danger is that you start to deal in abstractions, that you develop an ossified form of Marxism, with no living relationship to the real movement of the class.

So, returning to my original question, that, I suppose, is the real purpose of this column. It is a tangible recognition of the need to fight for balance. This is a task both for myself and other revolutionaries in the Labour Party, but also for comrades like yourselves, who are outside the party.
The relationship between Marxism and the labour movement is, however, not just about balance - but ultimately about fusion.