22.09.2010

Diane Abbott: class matters

We must draw lines of demarcation

The arguments put forward by the pro-Abbott comrades in the Weekly Worker and internally are a confused defence of a tactical approach marked by isolation from the struggles of our class in the Labour Party and beyond. Talk of ‘left communism’ and leftist purity is a cover to try not to deal with the arguments of those members of the CPGB opposed to the position proclaimed by the leadership.

The argument of opposition comrades is simple, to back a candidate in the Labour leadership battle they need to fulfil important criteria to be of any use to our movement. Look around the world, the two key battles we face are the austerity drive brought on by the capitalist crisis and the imperialist slaughter and interventions, spreading death and destruction on an ever greater scale. In Britain the cuts agenda, once the mantra of the Labour government, has been taken up with a fury not seen since the 1930s by the new Liberal-Tory coalition. To make any impact on these struggles, to win workers up and down the country to united action we need to promote working class politics and working class political leaders.

We must draw lines of demarcation, not based on some purity test but on whether the social democrats are to be of any use to the battles the working class is facing. These are not moralistic markers but the key battle lines that our class faces. We need to have a strategy that is not just splitting out the broad left from the right, but separating the class-collaborators from the genuine grass-root members who do hold working class positions. We have to be clear, supporting candidates who do not fight for basic working class politics on the key struggles of the period is of no use to the working class, let alone the cause of communism. We must fight to expose them and undermine them at every opportunity, not act as apologists for them.

Peter Manson went out of his way in his article (‘Debating the Labour leadership contest’ September 16) to turn Diane Abbott into the anti-war candidate we all know she is not. Comrade Manson attempts to cover up her sell-out over her vote over the Iraq war in 2009. Apparently by voting for a motion that calls for the continuing role of British forces and highlighting the hard work of occupying troops she was simply defending the Labour Party from the Conservatives. This collapse into social chauvinism is brushed aside and her lack of attendance to vote with her Socialist Campaign Group comrades against the Afghanistan occupation and her support for imperialist intervention in Sierra Leone is ignored. You have to wonder what use is an anti-war candidate that collapses under pressure at key moments? Acting as attorney for Abbott’s social imperialism does nothing to get us closer to comrade Manson’s declared aim of ‘the development of a left opposition within Labour in order to win it to Marxist politics.’

Comrade Manson and the PCC must see the Labour left as some homogenous mass, that just because legalism is a common approach to opposing wars by reformists that those who call for an immediate withdrawal are somehow no different to those who support Nato’s timetabled withdrawal.

Last week we had the first strikes by tube workers against the austerity measures. These are the same tube workers Abbott turned her back on when she backed the privatisation of the East London Underground. She has also vacillated on the question of opposing cuts, she has called for ‘fair’ cuts and more of a balance between cuts and taxes. An approach that is not much different to the rhetoric of Ed Miliband or Ed Balls.

The PCC think communists should seek to build and strengthen the Labour left by backing Diane Abbott. There are two things wrong with the approach put forward by the PCC. Firstly as comrade Manson points out Abbott herself cannot provide a ‘pole of attraction’ - she is not attempting in any serious way to organise the Labour left and seems more interested in organising her own career. Secondly we do not want to strengthen those forces within or outside of the Labour Party that do the movement more harm than good. The Labour Left is not homogenous. For all his problems, John McDonnell represents a far more grassroots, struggle oriented, political approach. This is of much more use to the working class and communists at present. We need candidates of struggle not candidates that are far more interested in having a career in the media. Supporting Diane Abbott in this contest actually politically damages the Labour left. It strengthens its conciliationist, realpolitik tendencies.

James Turley (London)
John Sidwell (Wales)
Jamie Tedford (Sheffield)
Lee Rock (Sheffield)
Liam Conway (Manchester)
Caitriona Rylance (Manchester)
Chris Strafford (Manchester)
Dave Isaacson (Milton Keynes)
Simon Wells (London)
Maciej Zurowski (London)