In its statement following the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, the "moderate" faction Labour First set out a number of preconditions for effective unity within the party. As these discussions are likely to continue in the party for some time, the statement merits a response.
Condition 1: “As well as Jeremy’s newly renewed, legitimate mandate, the respective and sometimes competing legitimate mandates of the Deputy Leader, MPs, the NEC, the NPF and so on are recognised”.
Here, Labour First signal that they see units of the party where the balance of political forces is more favourable to them as instruments to "compete" with the Corbyn leadership.
They're right that elected office-holders within the party have legitimate democratic mandates. Every election within the party is an arena for contest between different visions of what kind of party Labour should be, and the left should organise within every one. The clean-sweep for the left in the recent NEC elections was a good start, and Momentum must develop a serious strategy for supporting left-wingers to challenge for positions at every level of party structure, right down to ward officer positions.
It's misleading to suggest that the "mandate" of, for example, National Policy Forum (NPF) members is the same as Corbyn's. Corbyn won more than 300,000 votes; the highest-scoring candidate in the last round of NPF elections won just over 20,000.
The Policy Forum was established as a way to disenfranchise the wider membership from the policy-making process. Any programme for democratic reform in Labour must make as its starting point the return of sovereignty to the members, beginning with the re-empowerment of conference. That is where the party's policy, which must be binding and acted on by the leadership, should be decided.
Condition 2: “The shadow cabinet is elected, meaning that the most talented MPs are able to serve on the frontbench.”
We can assume that, for Labour First, "most talented" means "closest to our politics". The gaffe-prone, hapless Owen Smith, who the right put up in the leadership election, can hardly be described as "talented", even by the conventional standards of being media savvy or an impressive speaker.
Systems of electing the Shadow Cabinet should certainly be explored, but the wider party membership, and not just the Parliamentary party, must be part of the electorate. Otherwise Shadow Cabinet elections will just be another way of bolstering the power of the PLP - comprised of people most local party members had no say in selecting as candidates in the first place - as a semi-autonomous caucus within the party.
Faced with a leadership with deep support amongst the grassroots membership of the party and its affiliated unions, but to which the majority of the PLP is hostile, the right seeks, like the East German Stalinists in Brecht's poem, to "dissolve the [membership] and elect another". Rather, if the PLP and other office holders insist on acting against the wishes of the party membership, it is those structures, and not the membership, which must be recomposed.
Condition 3: “There is a recognition that unity doesn’t mean unanimity – the Leader sets the general direction of travel and we respect that is to challenge the economic orthodoxy but a pluralistic debate about detailed policy must conducted in a comradely way.”
Labour First's call for pluralism is welcome, but that must cut both ways. If those on the right of the party want to retain their right to dissent from agreed policies and propose an alternative political perspective, members on the left, including revolutionary socialists, must also have the right to organise to promote our ideas.
Genuine democratic pluralism would involve an amnesty for all members expelled or suspended for their political views. Allegations of abuse must be investigated, but the obscenity of members being expelled effectively for thought crime must end.
Condition 4: “Threats of deselection on grounds of ideological purity are removed from hard-working MPs and councillors. Similarly, sectarian moves by Momentum to oust CLP and branch officers just for their politics are unacceptable.”
This is utter nonsense. No-one at any level of the Labour Party, from CLP officers to MPs to the leader, has the right to a job for life. Elected post holders are not technocratic functionaries but democratically-elected representatives. Their roles are political roles, and if members wish to democratically replace them - for their politics, or for any other reason - then they must have that right. Democratic debate and the conflict of ideas, expressed at all levels and in all fora, up to and including elections for positions within party structures, is the lifeblood of any functioning political party.
Anyone wishing to represent the Labour Party, at any level, must place before Labour members their ideas, perspectives, and record of activism - their politics, in other words - and agree to be judged on them.
The right feign horror at the idea of mandatory re-selection, but in fact it is an elementary democratic mechanism. If the candidates of the right are so "electable" and so "talented", let them use their talents to convince the membership of their local parties to select them.
After all, without winning the loyalty and confidence of those local party members, their election campaigns will be hobbled. Any would-be MP who thinks they can do without the support of their local party is welcome to stand as an independent candidate.
Some on the right argue that the left's call for mandatory re-selection confuses the role of delegates and representatives. They argue that MPs are representatives of their constituents, not delegates electing to Parliament by their local parties. But part of the function of a labour party - a party founded to express in politics the interests of the working-class movement - is to blur and break down this distinction. Labour politicians represent and should be accountable to their constituents, but, again, if they do not wish to also be accountable to their local party and affiliated trade unions, they should stand as independents. We should develop a culture where Labour politicians do see themselves as having been delegated to Parliament or local government by their local labour movements, sent there to argue for, and to enact in government, labour-movement policies. They should be as unashamedly partisan for labour-movement policies and working-class interests as the Tories are for the interests of the rich.
Those on the right who point to the serial rebellions of the likes of Corbyn and McDonnell against the Labour Parliamentary whip are missing the point. Invariably they were not voting against policies democratically formulated and agreed upon through Labour Party structures, but imposed on the Parliamentary party by the unaccountable cadre around the Blair and Brown leadership. Where was Blair's mandate for the Iraq war, for PFI, or for tuition fees?
There is, in fact, a legitimate criticism to be made of the Corbyn leadership here; they have not done enough, and not quickly enough, to re-empower conference, and to break from the New Labour model of policy making whereby policies are formulated by the leaders' office in consultation with various think-tanks and advisors. Their proposals for "digital consultations", which would only serve to further sideline and diminish the party's existing democratic channels, are a step in the wrong direction.
Policy should be formulated, debated, and agreed upon via the Labour Party's democratic structures, from ward level up to the AGM, and then acted on.
Condition 5: “Online abuse and intimidatory behaviour in meetings are fully clamped down on.”
Again, this has to be a two-way street. There has already been plenty of "clamping down", including mass expulsions, by the party bureaucracy against members for such "crimes" as retweeting the Green Party in 2014. The Compliance Unit has been engaged in a full-scale campaign of "intimidatory behaviour" against thousands of Labour Party members, which must certainly end.
Allegations of abuse must be thoroughly investigated, in an impartial manner that upholds the rights of all parties to due process. Serial online trolls, of both right and left, are not representative of wider political tendencies within the party, and members on the right should stop implying that the behaviour of individual abusers has been personally sanctioned by Corbyn and McDonnell.
A definition of "abuse" which extends to include the use of perfectly legitimate political descriptions such as "Blairite" is a cover for political censorship. Moreover, it fails victims of genuine abuse by implicitly trivialising their claims, by lumping them in with a definition so broad it could include almost any exchange of political criticism.
(We do not consider ourselves "abused" when people on the right of the party describe our politics as "Trotskyist"; why should those who explicitly and proudly lay claim to the legacy of Tony Blair consider themselves "abused" when they are called "Blairites"?)
Online abuse substituting for serious political debate, however sharp, is in large part a product of a political culture devoid of meaningful debate and discussion around ideas — a culture that the think-tank, focus-group, marketing-obsessed Blairite right wing is in many ways a key architect of. The best way to undermine cultures of abuse is to rebuild a culture based around serious, sometimes sharp but yes, always comradely, debate and discussion within the party.
Condition 6: “The scourge of antisemitism is properly tackled and Jewish members feel safe and welcome in the Labour Party.”
Workers' Liberty has long argued that much left-wing common sense on certain issues has antisemitic implications - not in the sense of racialised antipathy, but as a political hostility to Jews as Jews.
But the only way to meaningfully address antisemitism, or any other form of bigotry, within the movement is through consistent political education. Administrative and disciplinary measures cannot solve political problems.
A distinction must be drawn between ideologically-convinced antisemites, who may, directly or indirectly, threaten the safety of Jewish members, and those - like Naz Shah MP - who unthinkingly recycle the antisemitic tropes which are unfortunately all too common in some left-wing discourse around Israel/Palestine. The line is not always clear cut but the default culture should be one of political education, that gives members a chance to reflect, learn, and change their minds, rather than one of bureaucratic bans.
The recommendations of the Chakrabarti Report, which emphasise the need for a culture of free speech and the importance of due process in investigating claims of abuse, must be urgently implemented.
Many on the left will have their doubts about whether the Labour right really want unity at all. Their reckless decision to plunge the party into a pointless leadership contest at a time when we should've been taking on the Tories shows clearly that this is not a matter of personalities, but of policy. They will never accept the Labour Party fundamentally reorienting away from free-market economics and arguing for even for the policies of widespread public ownership and redistribution of wealth that were once the common coin of mainstream social democracy.
Still, no consistent and sincere democrat could insist that member on the right of the party, and even within the PLP, simply "put up or shut up", and fall into line as if they no longer disagreed with Corbyn's politics. As long as they remain Labour Party members they have the right to speak out within the party. But they must accept that if they want to arrest the surge to the left, they must do so not by attempts to sabotage Corbyn's leadership, by way of bureaucratic procedure and gerrymandering, but by convincing party members of an alternative political perspective.
All tendencies within the party should discuss and debate their ideas openly, while uniting to campaign for agreed policies such as the renationalisation of the NHS and the railways; an end to academisation in education; mass council house building; living wages; and higher taxes on the rich to fund public services. Those who disagree with those policies are free to voice their dissent, but they cannot act to sabotage and undermine the campaigning efforts of the majority of members who clearly do agree with that platform.
What the Corbyn movement represents most fundamentally, and most significantly, is the rebirth of politics as a process of struggle and conflict - between ideas, and, ultimately, between the interests of conflicting social classes. The right wing of the Labour Party has gone along with, and in many ways driven, the de-politicisation of politics, reducing it to a series of marketing and branding exercises in which the relationship between political parties and the electorate mirrors the relationship between retailers and consumers.
Labour Party activists, of all political stripes, must learn to act in a new way, seeing the party as an instrument for shaping consensus rather than adapting to it. This is the basis on which campaigning unity in the party must now be built.
