Workers' Liberty

Just over fifty people attended the launch meeting of the local Labour Representation Committee in Hackney, East London, on Wednesday 27 February.

The meeting was the latest in a string of successful meetings in Hackney, with packed events over the privatisation of the East London Line, John McDonnell’s challenge for the Labour leadership, and opposition to the war in Iraq, and more recently over 100 wishing to oppose the Councils so-called Estate Regeneration Programme.

All of them expressions of the potential strength and possibilities for working class resistance to New Labour.

The speakers included John McDonnell MP, Cllr Patrick Vernon, John Page of Hackney Trades Union Council, Gary Heather of Islington LRC. A number of speakers outlined the growing problem of state racism in Hackney and beyond epitomised in arrests and deportations are on the rise as is the more aggressive conduct of the authorities.

Cllr Patrick Vernon spoke at length on the problems in the NHS but noticeably failed to mention Hackney Council or its appalling record of neo-liberal politics once in his entire speech.

Gary Heather reported on the successful work of the LRC in Islington, rebuilding the Trades Council, securing some left councillors and waging a ‘war of position’ in the vastly reduced local Labour Party.

A common theme from the platform and from the floor was the Greater London Authority Elections in May. There is a real possibility of the Tories under Boris Johnson winning the Mayoral contest, which could be a powerful step towards a Tory challenge for government.

Surprisingly this dangerous possibility was not touched on so much at the meeting. Instead it was stopping the BNP which was the prominent theme. John Page stating it should be the ‘top priority’ in terms of raising the turn out in elections in Hackney. Dan Nichols of UNISON was one of the few to link opposition to the BNP with need for a socialist alternative to address the actual issues which were leading to their growth in a small number of areas in outer London.

The idea that we face a threat of fascism on the proportions present in the panicky tone of particularly the CPB contributions is not helpful. There is a danger that in posing the BNP threat in London at a level beyond its proportions we allow those responsible for creating the conditions for its growth off the hook.

That is not to say that the fascist form of British nationalism is not a danger. It is. It requires a campaign with consistent working class politics to challenge it both physically and politically. The BNP’s growth can partly be explained in the prevailing crisis of working class political representation. This is a question that the socialist and labour movement has not solved and is a situation being exploited by the BNP.

The Labour Representation Committee is one of the key elements in solving this acute problem. John McDonnell reported the LRC has now grown to 1,500 members making it the ‘largest organisation on the Labour left’. He could have added one of the largest on the left as whole.

The LRC now has five national unions affiliated and a string of regions, branches and socialist organisations. In contrast to Hackney North MP Dianne Abbott who supports Brown as a positive improvement, McDonnell castigated New Labour’s record citing such issues as the Agency Workers Bill and the expansion of Heathrow airport. There was every reason for socialists to be optimistic and we should not loose the opportunities he said. The means to address the ‘crisis of representation’ he argued was build the LRC ‘as openly and broadly as possible, those who could not join we should work in unity, ‘from this united front the organisational form will emerge’.

One speaker from the floor, whilst supportive of the LRC, explained he had left the Labour Party and was not convinced of continuing to vote Labour regardless. Graham Bash of Labour Briefing argued that despite the changes in the current situation there no alternative to the struggle in the Labour Party.

I spoke, responding that whilst we should be optimistic we had to be realistic. We have suffered defeats such as the Unions and CLPs committing suicide by abolishing democracy at the Labour conference. We can't rely on spontaneous combustion to provide the organisational solution to this crisis. We have a responsibility in the here and now to start providing solution as working-class activists did when they broke from the Liberals to form the Labour Party in the first place.

In his summing up John McDonnell responded to this part of discussion as an ‘arid debate’, pointing out that on the one hand initiatives outside the Labour Party such as Respect and the Scottish Socialist Party had ended in a tragic failure and on the other the Labour left did not see breaking from the party as a serious alternative in this situation. To a large degree McDonnell is right in his analysis, though the debate has only become arid because the contending left perspectives are now locked in a log-jam.

The biggest socialist bodies outside of the Labour Party have made their own organisations' success the priority, as opposed to the organisation and fighting ability of our class. In the twelve years since Arthur Scargill launched the Socialist Labour Party, every initiative to build independent workers party in England has failed largely due to sectarianism. Those socialists who have remained in the Labour Party are having a crisis of confidence, or in the worse case, of mirror image sectarianism, believing that despite all changes just continuing on their set traditional course is the only alternative.

The basis for a new non-sectarian initiative exists primarily with trade unions such as the RMT and FBU which are affiliated to the LRC and the core of socialists MPs. It is the unions especially who hold the key to breaking the log jam. If they took the lead it would inject confidence into socialists currently in the depleted CLPs and have the sufficient weight to subdue the problem of sectarianism.

If the independent minded unions were to throw their weight behind a new course on workers' representation it would energise the disoriented ranks of our movement and potentially gather thousands of members to such an initiative. This has been the hope of many socialists for a long time, to get them to do so should be the top priority.

The Labour Representation Committee offers the best means of uniting socialists from inside and outside the Labour Party in an independent body that can be the incubator for the much needed new beginning to solve this crisis. Until it does the contradiction between the internal war of position or an external open fight on all fronts will continue to surface.