Desperately lacking in political ideas and dragging the Labour Party into a miserable second place behind the Tories, Labour’s right wing are resorting to their time-honoured diversionary tactic of attacking the Party’s left. A new round of proscriptions was agreed by the NEC meeting today, one that will potentially lead to thousands of expulsions.
Four political groups are being banned: Resist, Labour Against the Witch-hunt, the Labour in Exile Network and Socialist Appeal. All socialists in the Party should stand in solidarity with these comrades who are being attacked for their political views, whatever the ‘constitutional’ or ‘organisational’ pretext.
The Labour leadership under the Keir Starmer/David Evans axis have long been working from the playbook of Stalin, in their drive to undermine free speech and democracy in the Party. But considering that the Labour in Exile network consists of party members who have already been expelled, this decision, at least, looks more like something from Groucho Marx (“I would not join any organisation that would have me as a member”).
One rule for the right, another for the left
It has always been the case that Labour Party rules are applied in a factional manner to the benefit of the right wing. For years, the largest right-wing grouping, Progress (now transformed into Progressive Britain) has had its own membership, subscriptions, full-time paid staff, conferences and publications. Indeed, employees of the Labour Party have even participated in Progress events in the past. The latest right-wing factional grouping, Renaissance, is a platform for the same kind of pseudo-Labour careerists.
We are not opposed to the members of Progressive Britain or Labour Renaissance being Labour members. But what applies to them should also apply to the left: any socialist who supports the party and does not support candidates against the Labour Party, should be allowed membership and have the right to put forward a view.
In another move no less sinister, the NEC has agreed to set up a ‘Star Chamber’ system – short-hand for a small committee of unaccountable right-wing officials – to recommend even more expulsions. The four groups mentioned above are first, but as the statement from Unite says (see below), there will be others in the future, possibly including groups like Momentum and left Labour MPs like Richard Burgon and Zara Sultana. These first four groups are only the ‘low-hanging fruit’, but more will follow.
Parallel to the discussions on proscriptions, the Labour NEC has agreed to the recommendations of a report on Liverpool Labour Party, including oversight of the party for the next five years. It will mean that all candidates for council and parliamentary seats – including sitting councillors and MPs – will subjected to a rigorous quasi-Stalinist system of control by Labour HQ.
It is no accident that Liverpool has been singled out here – the left traditions of the Labour Party on Merseyside are probably second to none in Britain, at least in modern times. It is not because of perceived corruption in a few elements of the party, but because of the deeply rooted socialist traditions in Liverpool Constituency Labour Parties that these drastic steps are being taken. We can be sure that if they are applied to Liverpool today, they will be applied in other cities and regions tomorrow. The Labour bureaucracy á la Evans is moving to establish a Kremlin-like control over the whole life and working of the Labour Party.
Right wing would reduce the Party membership to a tiny rump
The head-bangers on the right wing of the Labour are so determined to root out all traces of the radicalism that permeated the party after the Corbyn leadership victory of 2015, that they will pursue it, even if it means destroying the party in the process. They would be happy to see the party membership reduced to a tiny rump, so long as it toes their line. While Keir Starmer is happily acting like a Poundshop Stalin – only without a five-year plan, or for that matter a five-week plan – the Labour Party is sinking beneath the waves.
In less than sixteen months, the Starmer leadership has reduced Labour to near bankruptcy. Labour was well into the black under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, thanks largely to the millions of pounds of income from the huge influx of members that his victory inspired. But the Starmer/Evans double-act has thrown money away on court cases and on internal factional attacks on the left.
It is a disgrace that Evans has revealed that the Labour Party is going to have to lose ninety of its staff – a quarter of the total – to make savings. As a result of the Starmer/Evans mismanagement, the Party’s financial reserves are apparently down to “one month’s payroll”. Yet meanwhile, the party continues to employ dozens of agency workers to sift through social media to find more candidates for expulsion. They would be better employed investigating how many ‘Labour councillors’ were secretly members of the Freemasons.
These new attacks on the left are an indication that Labour’s right-wing leadership are organisationally powerful but politically they feel themselves to be weak and vulnerable. The Labour leadership’s financial bankruptcy is only a facet of its political bankruptcy.
Labour’s right wing have no policies to offer
Faced with one of the most corrupt and incompetent governments in modern times and a Prime Minister who has made a steady stream of lies a badge of honour, Labour should be miles ahead in the opinion polls. That it is languishing far behind the Tories is down to one factor alone – the leadership.
Fifteen months after winning the leadership, Starmer has completely abandoned the ‘ten pledges’ he made in his election campaign and in practice he has nothing to say to Labour voters. It is no surprise that under his stewardship Labour lost Hartlepool, got the lowest-ever recorded Labour vote in any by-election, and then scraped home in Batley and Spen.
We would challenge the Labour NEC representatives, including those from the Association of Labour Councillors; what are your policies? While you are voting to expel ‘trots’, are you pledging to build thousands of council houses in your Labour areas? Are you pledging to build hundreds of new youth centres? To the right on the NEC we would ask, do you support the NHS workers 15% pay claim? Do you support a complete ban on ‘fire-and-rehire’? To the representatives of right-wing unions, like GMB, UNISON and USDAW on Labour’ NEC, we would ask, can you justify your decisions to your low-paid members?
The answer to these and many more questions facing working people, is a resounding, ‘NO’. Labour’s right wing have nothing to offer working class people and they imagine that expelling the left they are doing the party a favour. They might be doing the BBC, the Daily Telegraph and the Mail a favour, but they are actually destroying the Labour Party. The right wing is doing as much damage as it can, in the shortest-possible time, before history catches up.
No ‘neutral ground’ in the Party today
There is no ‘neutral ground’ in the Labour Party today. Any member who pretends to stand aside from ‘factional’ arguments is by their inaction facilitating the anti-democratic right and enabling the shutting down of democracy and the expulsions of good socialists.
It is time for a prolonged and persistent fight-back. As long as there are any democratic avenues remaining in the Labour Party, we should use them to fight for democracy and the right to advance socialist ideas. We urge all members to pass resolutions against the NEC decision, to sign and disseminate the petition against more proscriptions, and to mandate conference delegates to uphold democracy. Labour members in affiliated trade unions should do the same.
We are all struggling in a political and economic system that is rotten to its core, driven by greed, ignorance, environmental despoilation and waste. Capitalism is in a permanent and ongoing crisis and there has never been a time when socialist ideas have been more relevant.
Right wingers in the Labour Party, consciously or not, are the political representatives of capitalism, and that, in a party whose historical aspirations – still alive and kicking at the grassroots – have been to replace the system. The right wing is on the wrong side of history. It is on the wrong side of this debate but knowing that does not absolve us from the need to organise and fight doggedly and with determination against every step they take on the road to crushing party democracy.
The full statement from Unite the union:
“This is another disheartening move by a Labour leadership whose priorities could not be more different from those of working people and our members.
While working class communities are continuing to bear the brunt of the sickness and employment worries made much worse by Conservative mishandling of the pandemic, Labour is abandoning the field of battle against this government to turn its fire on its members instead.
Acts of political machismo like this latest move to proscribe groups within the party neither advance the party with the voting public nor appease the right-wing media which demand them. They simply create a sense of despair among voters who see a party at perpetual war with itself, more interested in running down its membership than running the country.
Further, the proposed creation of a Star Chamber to act as judge and jury for further proscriptions and purges is a shocking and repressive move. It belongs to the dark ages and should have absolutely no place in a modern day democratic party.
We say this without holding any particular brief for the organisations targeted today, but history teachers that this will only be the start.
Unite the union urges Labour’s NEC members to oppose both moves when presented to them, as a continuation of the perverse strategy to establish Labour as a hostile place for those hundreds of thousands of members who have joined since 2015 and without whom election victory will prove simply unattainable.”
Excellent Editorial raising some very valid, if somewhat concerning points. Perhaps the question this publication should now be asking itself is ‘how long before Left Horizons gets proscribed?’ as it has up to now appeared to have avoided the gaze of Starmer et al. In my opinion, unless something radical happens at leadership level it will only be a matter of time.
Perhaps, what will be will be. One thing is sure and that is that socialist ideas will not be silenced. For every reader of Left Horizons who is undemocratically kicked out of the Party, there will be three more Party members who read our website.