Workers' Liberty

AWL PRE-CONFERENCE DISCUSSION, LONDON 17/05/07

LABOUR PARTY

Sean: A lot of comrades here won't be familiar with our history in relation to the Labour Party. We should reprint some of the articles describing it.
In the late 1970s and the early 1980s we united a broad Labour Left. We remained active in the local CLPs for some years after that, but then life in the LP declined and we moved away.
Why were we interested in the LP? If there is a broad labour-movement party based on the trade unions, then we have to be involved to break workers away to our politics.
But we were never exclusively involved in LP activity. We have shifted away because the LP has changed.
We have a "Labour" government which is shamelessly bourgeois. The structures of the LP remain such that it is still linked to the TUs. The LP and its leaders get a lot of money from big business these days, but the LP is still financially dependent on the unions.
In the old LP, you had relatively open CLPs with union delegates which could take motions to a real conference. The parliamentary leadership would not obey the conference decisions, but the conference was a real forum for working-class politics.
There was a living movement, tied to the trade unions, where the working class could express itself politically.
That has changed. There is still a conference, there are still GCs. But they are changed. As Jon Cruddas, who is no left-winger, recently said, the conference is now irrelevant. There is very little life in the CLPs. Those few members there are mostly basically Blairites, sometimes disillusioned Blairites or left Blairites.
The Labour left? A few little groups like Briefing and the Chartist.
That doesn't mean it is all finished. A revival is still possible. The leadership after defeats may decide they want to revive the party, or the unions may move. But it is not certain that a revival will ever happen. We can't orient to it, because it may not happen and in any case is not happening.
We have taken part in various experiments since 1997. For example, the Socialist Alliance. That was taken over by the SWP and so didn't do very well and was then liquidated. That failure does not indicate anything positive about the Labour Party. LP membership continues to decline.
Now, our norm, politically, is that we stand independent socialist candidates when we can. For decades, with an open Labour Party and the Marxist forces very small, that made no practical sense. But it remains the norm. Entry into the LP is a tactic, which may or may not be appropriate depending on circumstances.
The McDonnell campaign? As Maria predicted in a conversation with me some months ago, whether McDonnell could even get on the ballot paper depended on whether some MPs who didn't agree with him nominated him just to get a contest.
Maria was right about that. But on the general assessment she seems to live in a world where nothing has changed. But a lot has changed.
We all agreed on promoting the McDonnell campaign. None of us are against working in the Labour Party as such.
In Maria's text she proposes that we advocate affiliation of the AWL to the Labour Party. I thought they were joking! Which LP? The Blair-Brown LP? That's absurd.
Go back 17 years? But then we were banned, in 1990. We could not affiliate. Go back 48 years? The open Trotskyist organisation formed then, the SLL, applied for affiliation. It was immediately rejected. Go back 82 years? The early CP's application for affiliation was definitively rejected in 1925.
A LP to which we could affiliate would have to be a very radically changed LP. And what AWL would affiliate to the LP? Obviously a radically changed AWL? If we had 100,000 members we could not at will now remake the life in the LP which existed in the 1970s. But we might well choose not to affiliate to LP, but e.g. to stand independently in election.
The clause on affiliation of AWL to the LP is a sort of a-historical love letter to a LP which does not exist.
And if we wrote it into our Where We Stand now, think what would happen if some life revived in the LP and we wanted to get involved. We could not possibly affiliate. The "principle" of affiliation would act as a block to the involvement really possible.
In the whole history of the LP going back to 1900 there has never before been a period when the structures of the LP were as atrophied and cemented-over as they are today. John McDonnell agreed with me on that. There is no precedent. Maria seemed to disagree in a previous discussion. But why?
Take the CLP of Alan Simpson, the well-known left MP. At a recent constituency meeting they had just 4 or 5 people. There is not a level of life such that it makes sense for to immerse ourselves in.

Maria: The McDonnell campaign has been very successful in the terms of what's possible. It probably wasn't ever feasible for him to get on the ballot.
The reason why he has not got on the ballot? It's not structural, or New Labour. It's very old Labour. It's the union leaders deciding that they want to do deals and not use their power in the Labour Party. The structures are there. The unions do not use them for political reasons.
The unions have not used their power inside the Labour Party. That is not because of structural changes.
Bourgeois workers' party? Bourgeois layers on top of a working-class party. The class composition of Labour Party membership has not changed. There is still an organic relation with the unions.
There are very few Blairites in the Labour Party. The hold of Blairite ideas has to be explained politically, not in terms of structures.
Electoral challenges? I have no objection in principle. But the last ten years show that the conditions do not exist. All the challenges have been a failure. That is an empirical fact. We were wrong in seeing real possibilities.
The unions won't even support McDonnell in the LP. So the idea that they will support independent candidates or create a new workers' party makes no sense.
It's not worth doing work in CLPs? But we're arguing for the unions to stand up against Blair and Brown. If we argue for the union leaders to do that, why don't we do it ourselves at local level. There is real potential for developing local LRC work. You will not understand British labour movement politics if you separate the unions from the LP.
Our motion says that our fundamental task is to break the hold of the bourgeois LP parliamentarians and the trade union bureaucrats over the working class.
Recently in South London a big demonstration against cuts which we were involved in, but we had no input via the local LP. Why not use those LP mechanisms?
Issues like cuts - even in my CLP, which is quite right-wing, you can pass motions on them. We can use the LP to argue for our ideas in a more effective way.
We do not say, immerse yourself in LP structures. Activity in the LP does not mean just putting up motions. It means using the structures as a way of reaching out to workers.
If the trade unions had wanted to, they could have de-selected every single MP. So the issue is political, not structural.
The issue is class. It's about relating to the class as it is, where it is now. We have misused the slogan of working-class political representation to dismiss the LP. Working-class people's concerns and interests are linked in with the LP. By not understanding that we are drifting into the area of protest politics. We are drifting into being sectarian to the class as it is.
The debate involved McDonnell? Sean said it had changed qualitatively. I said it hadn't. John McD said it had, but it has done so many times, in many ways.
The LP is a bourgeois workers' party, so it adapts to capitalism. So, as capitalism changes, so also the LP changes.
Sean started with the question of whether there is life in the LP. But that is the wrong criterion. Now, when the LP is very unpopular, it can lead us in a sectarian direction.

Robin: Q to Sean: so where do we intervene, if not in the LP? Q to both: what does "bourgeois workers' party" mean, now?

Sacha: The fact that we want the labour movement to have a voice in politics does not automatically tell us where to go. In some circumstances you just have to go where you can and spread your ideas where you can: you can't have a focus in one area.
The key villains in McDonnell not getting on the ballot paper are the unions? Sure. But doesn't that show that the battle in the LP has been pretty much reduced to the workings of the Labour-union link? In contrast to the life in CLPs in previous periods? Like in the 1980s?
We all agree on working on the Labour-union link, but the argument is about an orientation to CLPs. I'm not against working in CLPs, but we have to be realistic about the level of life there.
Recently the LRC group, SYN, organised a minibus to go to Cardiff to do election work for the Welsh Assembly. OK, so we went on it. But only four people on it, and that is the biggest pool of Labour left youth.

Jean: Robin's question - at the conference we are also discussing "inside organising". We should be focused on the workplace and the unions. I won't argue in my workplace for my workmates to join the LP. I focus on struggle, on the fight in the unions.
Maria says it's not structures, it's the politics of the unions. That's true at the top level. But it is structures at every other level in the LP.
Tell my workmates to join the LP? They won't go, and in any case it gives them no voice.

Duncan: One of the reasons why John McDonnell isn't on the ballot is that the Blairites increased the number of MPs' nominations needed. If the rules were as in 1988, then McDonnell would be on the ballot paper. That's structural.
In 1999 I argued against us supporting socialist candidates outside Labour. I was wrong. The idea of strong footholds in the LP to fight Blair has proved illusory through three terms of the most right-wing Labour government in history.
People say, if not the LP, where? But before the LP was founded, socialists stood propaganda candidates. The Liberal Party dominated the working class then. You could transfer Maria's argument to those days and end up backing the Liberal Party.
There is no easy way forward. In fact, the period of extreme openness in the late 70s and early 80s, where you could almost everything through the LP, was exceptional.

Mark O: I work as an adult education teacher, and I'm involved in UCU. We're facing big cuts there. The local council is Labour. So what about the local LP?
I've been to the local LP ward some years back. It was dreadful then, and I'd guess it's even worse now. There is no way of holding the LP to account. The organisation is a tiny rump.
We've said in some struggles in the past, "reclaim your local LP". If I said that to people involved in the cuts battle, they would think I'm mad. There is widespread hatred of the LP among working-class people.
There's also a trade-off. To work effectively in the LP in current conditions I would have to lie low, not sell the paper openly, etc. Why would I want to do that?
Why not stand in elections? I wouldn't get elected. Does that mean it's not a success? But we would gain a visible profile for people standing up against cuts, etc.

David A: I agree with Sean. The trade union bureaucracy and the LP leadership are as one. I was a member of the LP in the early 80s. I could openly sell Militant in the CLP then. But things have changed.
If you find an active local CLP, fine, go along. But we are revolutionaries. And most people hate the LP.
Of course we're not likely to get many votes when we stand candidates. The prevailing ideas in the working class are bourgeois.
But the LP has moved so far to the right that many working-class people are voting BNP. We don't want to affiliate with the LP, but with other Trotskyists who agree with us.

Martin: Maria says she admits the LP has changed, but actually her argument, like her motion, recognises no changes at all. For example, the majority of CLP delegates to LP conference now regularly votes with the platform and way to the right of the TU bureaucracy. That is unprecedented.
If the big unions decided on a serious fight in the LP, they could change things, and incite activists to flood into the CLPs? Sure, but if that happened we would have a totally different situation; we'd assess it and change tactics. What do we do now? Maria's proposal amounts to us trying to act out in miniature what we recommend the big unions should do life-size. It's like urinating to make it rain.
Independent candidates? Maria concedes that "broadly-based" independent candidates may be admissible. But revolutionary socialist politics are not at present "broadly-based". Why exclude running revolutionary socialist candidates - by definition, more or less "narrowly-based" - as one of the tactics to help us become more "broadly-based"?
Maria says the LP is unpopular now. Unpopular with which class? Not with the bourgeoisie. With the working class, even with workers who still vote Labour on a lesser-evil basis. It is a fantasy to suppose that we can find the best leverage for Marxist politics in the CLPs.

Chris F: From 1997 I advocated as an absolute principle standing candidates against the Labour Party. But I was wrong. Those were moralistic arguments. I hear the same arguments this evening. Different from the organisation's perspective of transforming the labour movement, its breach with the tradition of British sectarianism, a return to the rotten tradition of British Marxist sectarianism like the SDF.
Like it or not, there are 16 unions affiliated to the LP. There is no substantial move for disaffiliation e.g. in Unison.
But we're offered a kneejerk, moralistic perspective, based on impatience and antagonism to this government's policies. This government's policies are no worse than previous governments'. The Labour Party, historically, has been a machine for selling out to capitalism.
Capitalism changes. That's why the Labour Party is so bad now, because capitalism now is different from in 1945.
Of course people hate the Labour Party. They always have done. But we have to break from the sectarian, self-isolating attitude.
We should not orient where we can sell papers, but on a serious long-time perspective.
The LP still has 100,000 members, a lot more than the revolutionary left, and it remains overwhelmingly working-class in its membership.
We don't refuse to join unions because they are repugnant or because they are undemocratic. Unless our perspective is just to lobby trade union leaders to do the necessary, why do we not do locally what we advocate the unions should do nationally? Why are not fighting the sectarians to have Unison branches fight cuts politically, in the LP, as well as industrially?
What is our long-term perspective if it is not centred on the labour movement? It can only be a sectarian one.

Anita: Maria talks about looking at where the working class actually is now. The problem is, most of the working class is not organised. Even trade unions are very deficient.
But at work, lots of people wouldn't even vote for the LP. Those who would turn up to LP meetings are a tiny, tiny minority. The LP is so far removed from most of our class...
I can do work in the union. In the LP? I might as well not be there.
I've been active in politics, really, only since the LP has been in government. I've had no experience of more productive work in the LP. So my vision may be skewed. But I find it hard to understand this devotion to the LP, this idea that it never changes...
I understand that there is a point in doing some work through the unions in the LP. I understand the LP may open up a bit again in future. But I see no point in being loyal to something that isn't actually doing any good.

Matt: Chris's intervention? It's like a parallel universe. We oppose disaffiliation of unions from the LP. We have a perspective of transforming the labour movement. We are not sectarian towards the unions or the LP. We encouraged McDonnell to stand!
But then there is the question of tactics. What leverage do we have to move the LP leadership? We want to transform the labour movement, yes, but where as a small group do we apply leverage now?
It depends on circumstances. In 1968, would we necessarily be involved in the LP? Not necessarily. But then in the 1970s a movement from the TU bureaucracy and from the CLPs levered open the LP and made it a lively arena. That reached its height in 1981. Then the life declined and collapsed.
We should argue in the unions for working-class political representation. But the majority of the best trade unionist militants now are disaffiliationists or indifferent to the question. What do we say to them?
You can be sectarian in different ways. Being too LP-focused can also be a way of being sectarian to those trade-union militants.
"The perspective" now? Basic class-struggle work. Look for where the cracks and openings are.
Yes, my political mindset was fixed in 1980-4. I'd love to have a Tony Benn for Deputy campaign again. But things have changed.
Where we do have leverage? Not in transforming the LP.

Robin: My experience was when I was growing up I was the first one among my friends not to want to vote Labour or join the LP, because I was the most radical. But now we're encouraging our AWL members to join the LP. So couldn't we do the same with people around us? Surely we should be encouraging people to take an activist stance? The problem is always to get people to do things, rather than to think a particular way. So shouldn't we encourage people to do things in the LP?

Sacha: Robin seems to be saying that either we have an SP orientation or immerse in the LP. What do we say to people? Why don't we say to people, join the AWL, or at least work with us?
Chris was against voting Labour after 1997 and is now for a full LP orientation? Well, he is consistently wrong.
The LP is not equivalent to the unions. We do not want to destroy the unions. We want to destroy the LP. We want to break it up and develop a revolutionary party with some of its constituent elements.
The state of the LP just reflects capitalism? No. The LP was not at its most right-wing in the Thatcher years, when capital was most on the offensive.
Election campaigns? They are worthwhile even when you get a small vote. In 2005 in Nottingham East we did very badly in the vote, but we gained a lot out of the campaign politically.

Jean: We have always hated the LP. The reason why we were in the LP was that we hated the LP. During the miners' strike we encouraged miners who hated the LP to join it and fight. The question is, where can you have an impact? During the miners' strike, it was CLP members across the country who were the backbone of the miners' support groups. It's not like that now.
Chris says that we are in the unions for the same reason that we are in the LP. No. Workers have no choice but to combine in unions. There is no choice. We can't change that. That's cast in stone. It is also cast in stone that workers have to combine politically as well as in unions. It is not cast in stone that it has to happen through the LP. We use the LP only if it helps us. We are not syndicalists. We are the memory of the class. We know syndicalism doesn't work. But how we pursue politics is a matter of our assessment.

Chris: Martin criticised us for lack of empiricism. But take this assessment: "LP declining, meetings increasingly empty and boring, etc..." That's Tony Cliff, 1975. Would we have agreed? No.
Every single LP government has accommodated to the needs of capital and reflected the needs of capital in that period. But there are internal contradictions in social democracy, and that is why revolutionaries need to be in it. After the Russian Revolution, Lenin's argument with the ultra-lefts was the need to intervene.
We are not a-historical. We know European social democracy has changed its forms of appearance many, many times. The question is, has there been a fundamental change in the social character of the LP, in the class composition, not just in the forms of appearance? Yes, there are changes in ideology. But the relationship with the unions, the class composition, the internal contradictions have not changed.
The internal contradiction may be resolved in a negative way, and the LP become like the US Democratic Party. But that hasn't happened yet.
The problem is opposition to building LRC at a local level. It's a contradiction that we support LRC at the national level, but we won't bring union reps together at a local level to build LRCs.

Martin: Not true that we opposed building local LRCs. We tried it, and found it impossible.

Maria: How can you fight for the unions to assert themselves in the LP without doing it yourself at local level? Yes, there are Blairites in the CLPs who get themselves delegated to LP conference. But we can use the TU link at local level to build active, useful CLPs.
Our priority should be the TUs? But we can take the class struggle forward by going from TUs to the CLPs.
12.5% of MPs nominating required to be on the ballot? Well, the Labour leader used to be elected by MPs alone, and 12.5% isn't so unreasonable.
The unions are not going to break from the LP. And we can't do pick and mix in elections.
The unions that have disaffiliated? FBU? After a defeat. RMT? Led by the leadership. But they now face the problem of political representation.
Change? Life changes, but the basic social composition and class character of the LP have not changed.
Narrow-based challenges in election can lead to broad-based challenges? But it hasn't worked.
There is no political cost to us being in the LP. I can sell the paper at my union conference. It's not a practical problem.
There have been disaffiliation motions in my union four years running. The people advocating them are not the best militants. It's macho posturing that passes for militancy.
Pete Keenlyside says that you don't get debates about affiliation of the unions to the LP unless the LP is in government. That is because it exposes the contradictions.
We couldn't change the LP? That is lack of ambition. We want to change the world.
Look at our amendment on the general election. Matt says that Chris is talking to us as if we are the SWP. Reason why, we act like the SWP sometimes. In the election, we should not be moralistic. Class interest dictates backing the LP.

Sean: I wrote a long pamphlet three years replying to Maria and Tom on these issues. I'm frustrated that there has been no attempt to reply to it.
Chris has not acquainted himself with our discussions of the last ten years and instead throws in a bunch of abstractions.
Why don't we ask people to join the LP? Not because we hate the LP. But because it doesn't make sense. You can't have an orientation to that just for two or three CLPs. You need a general orientation, and for it to make sense there has to be some real movement in the CLPs for us to link into.
And there isn't. Maria says that the CLP members are not Blairites. Why does their anti-Blairism not manifest itself empirically, then?
Can we use the LP to build our organisation? That is what we are in business to do. Can we go into the LP and help organise a broad left wing to fight? No, we can't. Because there is very little life there, and the structures militate against it. E.g. these days you can't organise around resolutions to LP conference in the way you used to be able to.
Even if we could find a local CLP which you could make left-wing - and I don't rule it out - that could not link into a national orientation in the way it used to.
Membership of the LP cannot be equated with membership of the TUs. The TUs are basic, broad class organisations. The LP is a specific political organisation.
The very first document of our tendency, 41 years ago, concerned itself with exactly this question: the relationship between long-term perspectives - even better-founded ones than Maria's and Chris's - and what we do now, practically? It made the point that you cannot read off immediate revolutionary tactics from long-term perspectives.
In the whole history, revolutionaries have won recruits in the LP almost exclusively in the youth. But there is no Labour youth now.
Is the LP a bourgeois workers' party? Yes, in general and in abstract. But the point is that the description has two antagonistic poles. The poles can shift, and there has been a huge shift towards the bourgeois pole.
It's happened because the trade union leaders have effaced themselves politically? Yes. There has been a huge retreat. There are reasons for it. But it is a fact, and we cannot change it at will.
What do we have to do now, in these conditions? Build a Marxist organisation. Can we do that best in the LP? Generally no, though there may be some local CLPs where we can do good stuff.

Footnote from Sean: In my speech I said something to the effect that Chris's contribution was "not from our tradition". The phrasing was unfortunate, or at least misunderstood. What I meant was that Chris's contribution was from outside of, took no account of, the process of the development of our ideas on the Labour Party for the last 15 years or so. It also seemed to take no account of the ideas on the relation between long-term perspectives and immediate revolutionary tasks outlined in our founding document, What We Are And What We Must Become.