By a Young Labour member, Northern Region
[Editor’s note: while we don’t agree with all of the points made in this article submitted to us, it raises important arguments about developments inside the Labour Party that are worthy of consideration and discussion]
Marx’s words once again helpfully encapsulate the current state of affairs. A decade of Kinnock reforms to the party – tentatively building narratives of hard left bullying, then mass expulsions and then a wide sweeping policy review laid the ground for Blair’s ascendancy. A leadership that committed itself to a Tory budget in its first term, in 2003 invaded Iraq and then began advocacy for ID cards. This was no doubt a tragedy for the labour movement, for Britain and most importantly for Iraqi citizens and Muslim communities in Britain who have subsequently faced sweeping authoritarian Islamophobia entrenched into British culture first by Labour administrations.
Today, however, we are in an era of farce. The brazen attacks on the left have been demoralising and shambolic. Whereas in the 1980s NEC meetings could make headline news and comments by leadership staff about gay candidates costing us votes would begin a scandal we now have a political culture devoid of scrutiny. Now leading figures at regional level can cite ‘Islamic plot’ theories and receive minimal media attention and Labour MPs can lead brazen attacks on trans rights with few other than those on Twitter and in small, but important, left media organisations challenging them. Yet despite the lack of scrutiny, laughably, the ‘re-modernising’ process is in a state of constant crisis. We have to ask ourselves why?
Kinnock stood by while the miners were under attack
Kinnock’s greatest achievement, from the right wing perspective, was not the expulsion of Militant, standing by while the NUM was facing attack, or an inactive policy pursued in GLC abolition. Kinnock, either knowingly or unknowingly, pursued a Gramscian project of building a hegemonic bloc that could subsume the soft left of the early 1980s – David Blunkett, Tom Sawyer, Margaret Beckett and Margaret Hodge – and use their votes on the NEC.
He was the leader of a historical project that meant Blair’s cabinets could include both Jack Straw and Robin Cook. Gordon Brown could have Yvette Cooper, Peter Mandelson and Alan Johnson in while also having Ed Miliband, Jon Trickett and Andy Burnham. This is a remarkable historical success. The Socialist Campaign Group, as we all know, was marginalised to the extreme.
Starmer’s farce cannot brag the same success. The resignation of Andy MacDonald, at 2021 conference – precipitated by the demand to argue against a rise in the minimum wage to £15 per hour – is probably the best case in point. The other signs of fracture in the historical alliance between the soft left and right wing was Ed Miliband’s proposals for nationalising energy, despite Starmer’s position, and Lammy applauding a speaker calling for the Forde Report to be published.
Also significant, as Jeremy Gilbert highlighted at the time, was the inability of the right wing to support PR at conference – a key part of the soft left’s policy platform. Contrastingly Kinnock absorbed ideas of devolution and other soft left positions. Kinnock’s expulsion of Militant was attractive to the soft left then. The removal of the whip from Corbyn, the threatening of 11 MPs with expulsion and the Wakefield selection scandal is grotesque and embarrassing to many of the soft left who are notably rarely defending Starmer in the media.
The soft left see Mark Drakeford as an ally
The old hegemonic bloc is in decline. The soft left have realised that global climate crisis requires radical policies – look to Burnham’s public transport policies. The soft left see figures like Mark Drakeford as allies. Meanwhile Blair is advocating biometric ID and Wes Streeting’s vehement opposition to Sadiq Khan’s new drug policy has been leaked.
It isn’t simply Starmer’s failure to rebuild a hegemonic bloc – it is that the Labour right’s ideological guiding light is authoritarianism and the soft left aren’t interested any more.
However, we cannot sit on our hands. To quote Marx again – ‘[people] make their own history history, but not in the circumstances of their own choosing’. The left needs to be tactical. As Gramsci argues:
‘the fact of hegemony undoubtedly presupposes that the interests and strivings of the groups over which the hegemony will be exercised are taken account of, that a certain balance of compromises be formed, that, in other words, the leading group makes some sacrifices of an economic-corporative kind; but it is also undoubted that these sacrifices and compromises cannot concern essentials’
The left must, as Momentum’s membership has thankfully shown willingness to, support PR. Not because we like it, not because it will solve any contradictions within British politics, but because we must build a new hegemonic bloc between the soft left and left.
Those lefts that are immovable on the issue could damn us to a position of exclusion. They must look at the issue from the position of realpolitik – PR is a marginal issue, concession on it is meaningless, but it plays a key strategic role for us in the future. We must use it. We find ourselves in ripe circumstances, but a refusal to compromise on PR is a refusal to make our own history.
