Labour’s leadership contest and after

The political movement around Jeremy Corbyn is part of a global context which also includes the Sanders movement in America, the rise of Syriza and Podemos in Greece and Spain, and, in earlier and more ephemeral forms, the Spanish Indignados movement and the Occupy movements across the world. On the right, the Trump movement, the rise of Ukip, and “Brexit”, are also expressions of some of the same phenomena: the effects of capitalist globalisation, long-term neo-liberal economic policy, and specifically the 2007/8 crash.

The Corbyn movement represents an opportunity to transform our labour movement, but only if the hundreds of thousands activated by it are persuaded to consciously commit themselves to that task — that is, to become dedicated militant and socialist activists who see the reinvigoration and transformation of both the trade unions and the Labour Party as their aim.

The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty sees its role in the surge as that of “permanent persuaders”. Our job is to convince those new to labour-movement politics, and those returning to it, through discussion, debate, political education, and common work in campaigning, to take conscious ownership over socialist ideas, and to become themselves persuaders and educators for them.

Corbyn’s platform is fairly mainstream-social-democratic, but policies such as the “renationalisation of the NHS”, and public ownership of the railways, can be given a “transitional” dynamic by incorporating them into a “workers’ plan”-type programme. That is to say, such demands can express a link between immediate struggles and the struggle for a society where the interests of human need, rather than those of profit, predominate.

Local campaigning activity — street stalls, meetings, demonstrations, etc. — around these policies, linked wherever possible to workers’ struggles, can shift the leadership debate onto the terrain of politics and policy. For example, local Momentum groups could approach local branch of rail unions around current disputes (on Southern, Virgin Trains East Coast, and other companies) with proposals for joint campaigning for renationalisation. The prospect of renewed junior doctors’ strikes also presents an opportunity for campaigning, developing the work we have already done to build Momentum NHS.

It seems likely that Corbyn will win the current leadership election. A renewed mandate for a left-wing leader will pose two questions immediately: what kind of Labour Party do we want, and what kind of future Labour government?

In the Labour Party we fight for a top-to-bottom structural and political transformation, radically democratising the party, restoring sovereignty to the membership via party conference. Politically we advocate working-class socialist policies, with the aim of winning a workers’ government.

The central argument of the Labour right, that radical left-wing policies are “unelectable”, relies on a conception of “the electorate” as a fixed, unchanging entity — something akin to a hurricane, a natural phenomenon whose behaviour can perhaps be predicted and adapted to, but which can never be changed. We disagree: we believe that people’s ideas can change in struggle, and that confident, assertive labour-movement campaigns around socialist policies could rapidly shift the parameters of “electability”, especially if accompanied by an upsurge in industrial struggle.

Even without a much higher tide of industrial struggle, ideas can shift. Local parties properly embedded in local communities and, through unions, in workplaces, can mobilise and make gains.
Our experiences in Wallasey, recounted in our pamphlet How To Fight Elections, can be a model.

The role of the press since Corbyn’s election has had a significant impact on many activists — both positively and negatively. Better press work, media training, etc., are desirable but they do not amount to a political strategy. Genuinely radical left-wing politicians and policies will never get a “fair hearing” in a capitalist media. Our movement can best counteract press attacks by holding firm to its principles and campaigning in a positive and consistent way for our policies and demands. We should raise in the movement discussions about the labour movement developing its own press and wider media.

The next steps for the right in the PLP are unclear. An SDP-style break to the right seems unlikely, but other iterations are possible: for example, a semi-split, involving the right organising a distinct Parliamentary caucus. We do not advocate a split; however, we do advocate a political campaign inside the party against the right in the PLP, calling for and moving motions of censure or no-confidence in their CLPs wherever possible. They cannot be allowed to perpetually sabotage and undermine the democratic wishes of party members.

Workers’ Liberty members and supporters in Labour promote, in the first place through Momentum, the policy of “workers’ representatives on workers’ wages” — the idea that Labour politicians at every level are not technocratic functionaries accountable to their office, but representatives accountable to the labour movement, who will act in politics to further the movement’s interests. We want local parties to have open selection processes, and a wave of new, better MPs with direct, recent experience of struggle and labour-movement activism. We think the party needs to be transformed every level, street by street, from ward parties up. We think ward organisation need to be democratic and active. A political line should be drawn in every ward between those who want to see an active, open, democratic party fighting hard for working-class interests and socialist policies and those who oppose that perspective.

Momentum groups should become a hub for organising the left in the party at a local level. To the extent that the attacks on us by figures on the Labour right, such as Tom Watson, Luke Akehurst, and others, have any substance, it is around the question of “democratic” versus “revolutionary” socialism (quite how Watson, a cadre of the Blair/Brown tradition, expects anyone to take him seriously as a defender of democratic-reformist socialism, is another matter). But contrary to their claims, our perspective is not to surreptitiously hijack a parliamentary-reformist party for revolutionary aims; we are in the Labour Party because we believe in the working class developing itself politically through every channel available, including the party organically developed from and linked to our unions.

Momentum has the potential to become the serious, organised, mass left campaign group of the Labour Party. It could play a lead role in pursuing change in the rules, structures, policies, and campaigns of the party, as well as the class composition of the Parliamentary party, and the party’s attitude and orientation to workers in struggle: in other words, transforming the Labour Party. But this potential will only be realised if Momentum itself is transformed into an open, democratic, and accountable organisation, based on socialist ideas and politics, with a consistent orientation to the labour movement.

Since the attempted coup and leadership election, previously dissipating Momentum groups have been revived and become more clearly focused on organising inside Labour. This is positive; Momentum should have a fundamental orientation to the Labour Party; all Momentum members must be active, in a coordinated way, in their local parties. But this is not counterposed to grassroots campaigning around policies under Momentum’s own banner, and indeed, part of Momentum’s “Labour Party orientation” should be focused on turning the party itself out towards campaigning and activism, including in support of workers’ struggles.

Momentum is planning a national conference around February 2017. That conference should be policy-making, made up of large delegations from local groups (and not from the rarely-convened regional structures), and established at the sovereign body of Momentum at which its national leadership is elected. We will argue for Momentum to take up socialist policies such as, public ownership of the banks and for Labour Party-led councils to refuse to pass on cuts.

As well as the attacks on “Trotskyists”, Workers’ Liberty specifically, there has been a renewed purge of left-wing Labour Party members, including high-profile comrades such as Bakers’ union general secretary Ronnie Draper. A revived campaign to “Stop the Purge” is required, fighting for the reinstatement of expelled comrades, against a culture of bans and proscriptions, and for the abolition of the Compliance Unit (or, removing any powers it has over membership issues).

Part of the role of socialist activists in the Labour Party is to persuade new, young activists who are not already active at workplace and union level to become so, to build the same project of democratic and political renewal and transformation in the unions as the Corbyn surge represents within the Labour Party. An essential element of what Workers’ Liberty fights for in Labour is for the party to become, explicitly and unashamedly, the party of strikes and workers’ struggles. Labour should see it as its role to support and encourage workers to organise and fight back at workplace level; it should officially support and throw its weight behind campaigns like BFAWU’s “Hungry for Justice” and Unite’s hotel workers’ campaign (where possible, taking them on and resourcing them as official party campaigns), the BECTU strike at Picturehouse Cinemas, and as attempts by independent unions to unionise workers in the so-called “gig economy”.

Such an opportunity to reshape and reinvigorate our movement may not come again for a generation or more. We should seize it. Our aim is to challenge the power of capital. The prize is not
merely a more democratic and left-wing Labour Party, but a radically transformed labour movement and thereby a working class that is not only fit to fight, but to rule.