13.02.2014
Left Unity: Assume we have a tin opener
Mark Fischer spent a day at Left Unity's most recent TNC meeting... though it felt like a lot longer
I have to confess that I approach this report of the February 8 meeting of the transitional national council (TNC) - the interim leadership body of Left Unity - with some trepidation. There were a number of times during this often chaotic five-hours when even the competent co-chairs - Pete McLaren and Sharon McCourt - were, much like the majority of us in the 43-strong meeting, totally lost, as we attempted to navigate through an agenda stuffed to bursting point. Apologies to comrades for any inadvertent slips I consequently make here.1
These practical problems were very much akin to the chaos that ensued at the November 30 founding conference and were caused by the same fundamental flaw - characterised by us as the “attempt to cram several days’ business into six hours”.2 In addition to its other political problems, Left Unity is an organisation in far too much of a hurry.
At that founding conference, the delegates of what is in reality a small left group adopted an elaborate, multi-tiered constitution that essentially assumes a mass organisation. As Socialist Resistance comrade Terry Conway put it, in moving an unsuccessful TNC motion for an online branch to draw in isolated or mobility-impaired comrades, “the constitution assumes branches everywhere”. (I was reminded at this point of that old Stalinist joke that ends with Trotsky ticking off Stalin and Lenin: “Comrades - let us assume we have a tin opener …”)
Of course, we have plenty of other reasons for opposing this constitution, but its practical danger in the here and now is that it could paralyse the whole project before it is barely out of the starting blocks. The painful discussion on regional reps to the TNC and regional committees illustrates this perfectly.
A comrade from Reading raised the not unreasonable point that the whole notion of regional elections at this stage made little sense, as he had “no idea about the other branches and the people in them”. LU secretary Kate Hudson wearily admitted that the whole thing was “doing my head in too”, but “we have to do what the constitution guides us to do on this”. Co-chair Pete McLaren then attempted to clarify the relationship between regional committees and regional TNC reps - and got it wrong. Comrade Andrew Burgin did then set us straight - apparently regional reps will not come from regional committees, as suggested by comrade McLaren, but will be directly elected - notwithstanding the current situation, where few comrades in any given region know their local LUers or their politics.
We will have to “live with it”, comrade Conway sadly concluded, “as it comes from the constitution we all voted through”. (Not quite all of us, comrade. In our report of said founding conference we wrote that this constitution was “absurdly Byzantine” and that LU would “come more or less immediately into conflict with its own constitution as soon as it starts to operate”. We also warned that bureaucratism would spontaneously generate, whatever the subjective intentions of leading comrades.3)
Even with sufficient time this mess would be hard enough to hack a way through, but couple it with the additional decision of last year’s founding event that a policy conference had to be reconvened within four months and we have a recipe for an organisation rapidly heading towards a collective mental breakdown.
Predictably therefore, large parts of the TNC consisted of delegates (not unreasonably) pushing for extended deadlines, more time for debate in the branches, etc, while others - including leading comrades such as Conway, Burgin and Hudson - emphasising (again, not unreasonably from their point of view) the pressing time constraints and volume of work that must still be done before the March 29 policy conference. Thus, when a Loughborough comrade argued for all deadlines to be bumped back a week, Terry Conway countered that in the lead-up to the founding conference, the standing orders committee was meeting for 12 hours at a time - and still did not complete its work.
I am sure that the confusion and sense of being railroaded was compounded by the fact that many at the TNC had not seen the extensive agenda before the morning of the meeting itself, when they picked up its (unnumbered, unstapled) pages. Understandably there were frequent complaints that not only had delegates had no time to discuss the motions and proposals laid out in these documents in their branches and be mandated how to vote, but they had barely enough time to read the material at the TNC itself.
Thus, Ally McGregor of Leamington Spa implicitly challenged the ability of the meeting to decide anything at all, when he observed that “none of us here have mandates” (one comrade quite correctly pointed out that, as delegates to a leadership body, comrades should actually debate and decide their position on the day, then report back to their branches). It was clear that there was no conspiracy or leadership shenanigans; comrade Hudson’s suggestion that it was a technical cock-up is no doubt true. The point is that the forced pace of development lends itself to this sort of fiasco and the inevitable feeling amongst those outside the London-based inner circle that decisions are being made without democratic input. This is an irony, as many have seized hold of the LU project as an alternative to the bureaucratically manipulated unity initiatives of the past.
However, the impatience to ‘get out there’ and speak to the masses, plus the cavalier attitude to fundamental political questions is something LU shares with initiatives such as the Socialist Labour Party, the Socialist Alliance, Respect et al and - left unchecked - is likely to end in exactly the same sort of disasters and demoralisation.
In the end, the ‘more time needed’ lobby won a little ground when delegates agreed to extend deadlines for officer, national council and committee nominations to February 27 at 5pm (seven days later than the original) and for amendments from branches and individuals to March 14, 5pm (four days later).
In addition, just as the meeting was drawing to a close and comrades began thinking of the journey home or the first round of drinks, comrade McLaren made himself unpopular with the leadership by suggesting another TNC was necessary before the March conference itself. Despite opposition from the likes of comrades Burgin and Hudson on the grounds of practicality and work constraints, this was passed by 16 votes to nine.
Notes
1. I refer readers to comrade McLaren’s comprehensive report on the Independent Socialist Network website as an accurate record of the formal decisions taken: www.independentsocialistnetwork.org<.