I USED to practice deep entry, and let me tell you, it was nowhere near as much fun as it might sound. For the uninitiated, the phrase refers to the strategy of sections of the Trotskyist left, who have been active inside the Labour Party continuously since the 1930s.
The idea, of course, was that Labour constituted the mass party of the working class, and that immersion inside what we used to call ‘the social democracy’ would allow revolutionaries access to the bulk of class conscious workers in this country.
In reality, this often involved clandestine advocates of world revolution having to sit through excruciatingly dull ward meetings discussing the niceties of traffic light provision in Walthamstow, just so they could briefly move a resolution demanding solidarity with the heroic struggles of Bolivian tin miners.
Since the 1980s, the vast majority of entrists have been expelled or have simply walked. True, there are at least a couple of Trot groupuscules who survived the Kinnock purges and are hanging on in there. But given the social basis of today’s Labour Party, the tactic long ago lost any real point it may once have had.
That makes the current online mini-debate between Fabian supremo Sunder Katwala and my Hackney North Constituency Labour Party comrade Luke Akehurst just a tad surreal.
Luke seems to think that Labour needs what he calls ‘a Trot infestation strategy’ in place for the internal battles he expects to break out after the next year’s all but inevitable election defeat.
The Bennite left and its Trotskyist allies have not gone away. I see the evidence of that every time I go to my local Labour GC meeting. Their cadres are getting older but a Labour defeat in the General Election will allow them to recruit new activists and reactivate old ones around a myth of leadership betrayal.
Insurgency from the left has afflicted Labour during every major period in opposition - the 1930s, the 1950s and the 1980s.
In every case it has been necessary to wage a long and bitter internal struggle to smash the left and purge entryists who are not democratic socialists in order to make the party electable again.
This is not a pleasant task but it is one that has to be done. Sunder worries that this is "deeply alienating for new generations of activists". Not half as alienating as having your local party taken over by revolutionaries is.
Hmmm. Do I detect a certain degree of relish at the prospect here, Luke? But frankly, I suspect that comrade Akehurst hasn’t got much to be worried about.
My back of the envelope calculation is that the number of current Trot activists is down something like 90% over the last 24 years of so, and many of the diehards are barely active, now having to factor in such quotidian concerns as paying the mortgage and pitching up at parents’ evening.
In most constituencies, the traditionally Labourite trade union militants and tenants’ association people are long since departed, and nobody on the far left is going to devote the bulk of his or her spare time to meaningless bunfights with ultrablairites with no discernible prospect of recruitment gain.
In any case, since the 1990s, the focus of so-called ‘party building’ activities has been firmly focussed outside Labour. Note the inverted commas; not one single organisation worthy of the designation party has actually emerged from the Socialist Labour Party/Socialist Alliance/Respect/Scottish Socialist Party/Solidarity/Campaign for a New Workers’ Party/Respect Renewal/Left List/Left Alternative/Unity for Peace and Socialism/No2EU milieu.
Of course, some commentators in the rightwing press argue that Labour has moved to the left in recent months, and in a qualified sense, I guess this is true. Let’s face it, there was nowhere further right for New Labour to go.
Moreover, milquetoast social democracy has re-emerged in the form of Compass, while residual Bennism is now incarnated in the shape of the Labour Representation Committee.
Like Luke, I expect that Labour will lose the next election; I also expect there will be some debate about ideological direction in the what remains of the Labour Party on the ground, which will be very little once the careerists quit en masse to seek their fortunes elsewhere in the coming Cameroon decade.
Socialist Appeal or Socialist Action – whose combined forces cannot number more than a few dozen – will presumably seek to participate. But the slanging match will largely be had out by currents indigenous to broad church British Labourism, ranging from the quasi-Marxist left that has been present from day one to the old school trade union right.
Now, I know Luke personally. He’s a bloody good local level organiser – I’d go so far as to say the best bar none I have ever come across, in fact – and not an unpleasant chap face to face. He’s even personable to Trots, provided only that they are willing to dish out leaflets.
I would like to think that when not camping up the superannuated NUS politician act, as he sadly sometimes does on his blog, he would agree with the proposition that inevitable political differences should be resolved by debate and majority decision, rather than proscriptions and expulsions. Excitable talk about ‘smashing the left’ is childish nonsense and entirely out of place among grown ups.
Posted at 14:22, 26 March 2009
Comments (17)
"Ben Brandzel said at the meeting "When all you have to choose from is professional politicos and the unemployed Trot newspaper-seller, then you are in trouble. Seven loud and angry people can dominate a small meeting".
But we will be in trouble if we lose the next election, and meetings probably will be like that. When that's the choice, those of us who are what Brandzel calls "professional politicos" will have to get eight people of good will into the room to out vote the "seven loud and angry people". Unless you win those fights then the chances of ever getting "thousands of people" involved are nil as the people who actually want Labour to win elections will not control the structures of the party."
The quote above comes from Luke's post. Is he saying the the centre/right don't control the party structures ?
The issue is that the structures and processes do not allow for a 'takeover' even if 1000's of trots infested the Labour Party. The Conference has no power and is like the Tory Party now in that its a rally. There is no way the left can take over the party. personally I would say the direction of travel will be out of the party, IF we can find a way to build something outside . As Dave points out though the prospects don't bode well.
Interestingly looking at the list of projects a fair number were dominated by 'celebrity leaders'. Projects built around a man , Galloway, Sheridan , Scargill. Hmmm.
As a Labour Party member I would love to leave and join something else and would like to see the LRC build that in partnership with those outside. Fat chance though.
So as a former Bennite trouble maker from the 80s I don't see any point in attempting to 'take over' the LP. Its not possible.
I expect i'll leave and just focus on single issue campaigns sadly.
it was strange to read Dave's summary then pop over to a very public sociologist and get his cut on the same story
http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2009/03/burn-witches.html
I am tempted to go along with Phil BC, when the Labour Party is dominated by the likes of Luke Akehurst, who rarely seem to have had a "proper" job, then the LP is well and truly fucked.
but then again it could be a ploy to have someone to blame when Labour loses the next general election? which I assume will be within the next 6 months (before the Iraq War Inquiry really gets started on the meat of the issues and it blows up in the LP's face.)
That Luke Akehurst is a 'consultant' to an arms firm tells me all I need to know about him and his politics. I have been wondering how the Labour people I used to know in Hornsey and Wood Green Labour Party feel about the direction of the Party now, people like Andy Love, Judy Mallaber (don't know if she is still an MP), Jo Moore, Iam Wilmore etc etc all of them Blairites, although apart from the last two not viciously anti-Trot. As they have befouled their own nest, how are their careers going to pan out now? I suppose they will move onto the international charity UN-type world or something in Europe. Whatever it is, they will go to their deathbeds blaming the Trots.
I can authoritatively say on behave of one group of former pretty open entrists that no one on the radical left is interested in penetrating New Labour.
What a bizarre paranoid notion. The man hasn't been reading what most reasonable people think of the organisation.
I think this is a completely daft debate which has arisen because of a mis-reading of what worked for Obama
http://blog.matthewcain.co.uk/the-change-we-need-revie/
matt Cain said:
"I think this is a completely daft debate which has arisen because of a mis-reading of what worked for Obama"
And there's me thinking it was because Luke Akehurst is a twat.
Ah, the joys of watching various Labour factions tear chunks out of each other.
Nothing quite like it to finish the week at work.
I know what you mean, LFAT. I love watching the Tories do likewise.
"That old red herring, that old red herring, it looks like Hitler and it smells like Goering"
C'mon Dave, wasting space on a jumped up little twat like Luke Akehurst?
Why not post on something more interesting like Peggy's wedding on EastEnders?
Luke seems to think
No. No, he doesn't.
It maybe that behind his mad foaming at the mouth ranting he is actually capable of rational thought. That is a small possibility.
But it certainly doesn't seem like it.
Well Dave the comments here remind me how close the Trots came to destroying the Party.
I for one will keep my Ice Pick sharp and very close to hand.
And no I don't need Luke to guide me on this.
GW
Not as close as New Labour has managed, mind.
Keep going another ten years and people will look back nostalgically to the brief century when the Labour Party arose to challenge the Liberal-Tory partnership, only to vanish as quickly as it arrived.
GW:
"Well Dave the comments here remind me how close the Trots came to destroying the Party."
How I love to hear those words. The words of those rather odd Labour members who have rejected even the tamest of degenerated Social Democracy.
They have lost members in vast numbers and destroyed any reason for being an active member - the ability to help shape policy.
How did we lose out to these idiots?
Possibly by winning elections, not campaigning for a state of permenant revolution !
Fortunately the likes of the above will never be in a position to dictate party policy again.
Its funny how yet again the unrepresentative left seems hooked on the idea that the counter to the right wing Tories is to march further left. But then reality does takes it's time to filter into CiF and the SWUPPIES.
Alex Glascow summed it up with "As soon as this pub closes, the Revolution starts"!
GW
GW said:
"Its funny how yet again the unrepresentative left seems hooked on the idea that the counter to the right wing Tories is to march further left."
And there we have it, the politically stupid right wing of the Labour Party in all its stupid glory. Too stupid to know it.
New groups will always spring up in a political vacuum, and on the left there certainly is one,
like this one:
They are called Left Luggage, they have a incisive critique of the UK Left,such as it is , and indeed the anti-cap/G8/G20, 'spectacle'They appear to have an awareness of the tasks faced and argue that only through hard and dilligent work in the community and the working class and ditching the 19C ideologies will the Left get anywhere. They also have interesting things to say about the great left 'shibboleth' immigration. They say they are a mixture of union shop stewards community organisers and at times sound a bit like the IWCA.
the website needs to be abit more modern though...
http://theleftluggage.wordpress.com/