In the last few days, the right-wing of the Labour Party, through the National Executive Committee, have launched a full-frontal and brazen attack on democracy in the Labour Party to try and prevent Corbyn getting an easy ride into the leadership elections.
First the NEC ruled that only members who had joined before 12 January will be eligible to vote in the leadership contest. The vote on this ruling was won at the same meeting Corbyn was declared on the ballot, but only after he and a couple of his allies had left the room.
The ruling effectively bars the over 100,000 people from voting in the leadership election who have joined the Labour Party since the EU referendum; it is entirely plausible that a majority of these are supporters of Corbyn.
New union members who were hoping to affiliate to Labour have also now been barred by a later NEC ruling. To vote as an affiliated supporter through an affiliated trade union, you must have been a member of that trade union since before the 12 January, and then apply for affiliated supporter status to get your vote before the 8 August.
The fee to become a registered supporter has been raised in this leadership contest from £3 (last year's leadership contest) to £25, a shameful move that could have only been conjured up in the minds of New Labour grandees who hold those on low incomes in complete contempt. It looks however that paying £25 will be the only way recent members can get the right to vote. But the window to register as supporter is just two days — from Monday 18 July to Wednesday 20 July.
All local branch meetings have been suspended, with the exception of party meetings relating to the leadership campaign. This is an attempt to stifle grass roots party activism which is a vital centre of support and activity for the Corbyn left. The move is probably aimed at preventing the left from organising motions of no-confidence in “rebel MPs”, such as the one passed against Angela Eagle by her own constituency party in Wallasey.
But the reasons given for this anti-democratic measure are allegations of intimidation and violence by the left or Momentum activists. It is alleged that a brick thrown through Angela Eagle's office is part of the “tumult”; but there is no evidence of the brick being linked to the left. None of this holds up to scrutiny. If intimidation or violence was a concern, then why weren't party meetings shut down after MP Jo Cox was murdered? Even if the allegations were correct - which is doubtful - democracy and regular well-organised party meetings are the way concerns like this could be addressed.
On 9 July Brighton Hove and District Labour Party committee elections took place and a sweep of socialists who support Corbyn were elected by a meeting of 600 members. On 14 July, with little explanation, Labour's NEC nullified the election pending an investigation and suspended the branch from it's activities.
Why is this happening?
Within the Labour Party there exists an inherent contradiction, between the collective interests of the working class, and socialist aspirations; and the representatives of capitalist power whose ideological role is to defend the status quo, but to occasionally offer a mild social reform to appease progressive movements. These right wingers, Blairites – whoever – inhabit powerful positions within the Party and the bureaucracy, and would rather see the Party collapse or lose the next election through their launching of a civil war, and drive out of new and energetic members, than allow a serious socialist movement to gain a foothold. They rely on cynical bureaucratic manoeuvres and specialist knowledge of the party's rules and legal mechanisms to exert their power. Our weapon against these tactics is to consistently argue and fight for democracy in the party at every level, to make sure the politics we need to fight the Tories are debated, and to organise Corbyn-supporting socialists, including getting elected as delegates at every level of the Party.
It does not take much to see that the official reasons for challenging Corbyn – 'He's failed to unite the party'. 'He's unelectable'. 'He lacks leadership' — are at best naive, and at worse, cynical deceptions.
Socialists should expose these manipulations to our wider movement – especially soft-left Corbyn sympathisers who may be having doubts, and who have genuine concerns for the future of the party. We need to explain that Corbyn and our whole movement are under siege not because of concerns about electability or leadership but because this movement, and Corbyn, ideologically and politically threaten the New Labour doctrine whose objective has been to defend and uphold the integrity of the capitalist order for the last few decades. We must make clear that the only road forward for the left is to resoundingly defeat the right in this leadership contest, and for the left to win democratic control over the party's internal structures.
Corbyn and McDonnell are sincere in their drive for political change, but we need to be aware that long-term and secure change cannot be achieved through parliamentary means alone. They have galvanised a wider movement, they attend picket lines and speak at demonstrations. They incite action. All that shows us that Parliament does not have a monopoly on political power. This is why their leadership is untenable for even the so-called 'moderate' leftists in the Labour Party. They, and our movement, represent the biggest challenge to the inequalities of modern capitalism seen in Britain in several decades. The role of 'moderate' leftists or liberals in this situation is to crush democracy, and extinguish the fire before things get out of hand.
While the leadership challengers may be able to tick a box of Corbyn's here, or show a policy similarity there – fundamentally, neither of them have a remotely socialist consciousness which gives them the inclination to go out into the street, into communities, into struggles and encourage people to fight against austerity and for socialist goals. Socialists recognise that real change, and the fight for socialism cannot be outsourced to parliamentary representatives, but must be pushed forward through class-struggle, from below, in every corner of society.
If the right wing of Labour are able to defeat Corbyn, they will not kindly relent to anti-austerity politics with a leader that they now prefer, or sympathetically adopt a few of his policies. They will go on the offensive and move to neuter and destroy our movement – just like they are attempting to do already. It would be dangerously naive to believe that they are acting in the interests of 'electability' or 'party unity' – their goal is to destroy socialists' ambitions – as they have successfully done at numerous times in Labour's history.