The far left and the general election
Posted on Wednesday 27 January, 2010
Filed Under The left
The following article was commissioned by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty paper Solidarity. Normally I wait until such pieces appear in print before publishing them on this website, but I am seriously short of blogging time in Hong Kong, so I hope they forgive me just this once.
I’ve just had the first fitting for my first-ever fully bespoke whistle and flute. Beat that, Tommy Sheridan. Off the peg price, of course. Saville Row quality? I guess we’ll see. But Sam’s Tailors of Nathan Road has made garments for the Prince of Wales, Cliff Richard and, er, Carlos Santana. The walls are filled with photographs of the said celebs posing with the proprietor, just to prove the point.
Meanwhile, what you are about to read means that I am breaking my new year’s resolution no longer to write stuff on such topics and stick to matters of political consequence instead. Sorry, couldn’t help myself. And besides, it’s been ages since we’ve had a far left bunfight.
URBAN legend has it that George Best – by this point a rich but has-been alky rather than a footballer of genius – once ordered champagne to be delivered to the five-star hotel room in which he was gallivanting with a half-naked Miss World.
The bellboy arrived with the bubbly, only to find thousands of pounds of casino winnings strewn over the bed. The waiter calmly turned round to the the one-time Manchester United legend and pointedly asked him: ‘So, Mr Best. Where did it all go wrong?’
That’s a question the far left would do well to ponder as it gears up for the impending general election in a condition weaker than any in which it has found itself for perhaps a century.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, I was an enthusiastic advocate of initiatives like the Socialist Labour Party and the Socialist Alliance. But experience has taught me that a project of this type is impossible to realise in this country.
After 15 years of trying, we are actually further away from that target than we were to begin with. If you want to know why in six short words, the left is too bleeding stupid.
The period that opened up with the birth of New Labour offered it a real chance to build some kind of viable leftwing electoral formation, even if the AWL mistakenly clung to entrism.
Social democracy wilfully cast away the working class it once dominated ideologically, and launched into repeated wars that generated genuine mass opposition. Meanwhile, Stalinism appeared finished once and for all, and there was even a partial youth radicalisation.
It was utterly obvious what the situation demanded of us; unity in a single party and the hard slog of putting down meaningful roots in the labour movement and in working class communities. But we totally fluffed it.
The British left managed to shoot itself in the foot so many times that the ends of both its legs now terminate in bleeding stumps. I guess we got the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce and the third time as something that cannot be described in a family newspaper.
Much of the blame rests with the SWP, which has proven itself so entirely incapable of working with other forces inside a common democratic framework. That has to make the question of alliances with this group problematical.
Its central committee arrogantly assumes that the left cannot put together a meaningful electoral challenge without SWP participation. Much of the rest of the left – even if it diplomatically does not say it aloud – feels that it cannot put together a meaningful electoral challenge with the SWP on board.
Meanwhile, the very SWPers that preach ‘flair, determination and decisive leadership’ – qualities that Georgie Best amply displayed on the football pitch, I seem to remember – are reduced to provoking apolitical beauty contest faction fights by hyping up spurious non-differences. Hey guys, notice the fascists in Brussels?
Once, the Scottish Socialist Party demonstrated what could be achieved with a little nous. But all it took was one overblown male ego to squander that.
The Socialist Party in England and Wales deserves some credit for the years of patient local work legwork it has put in, at least in Coventry and a few other places. But the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition it is sponsoring this time round is clearly on the parliamentary road to lost deposits.
There is little point in putting together ad hoc coalitions just weeks before election campaigns begin, not even bothering to stand under the same name twice in succession.
At the time of writing, the SWP was in talks about joining up with TUSC. I’m frankly surprised that idea was not rejected as a non-starter. We’ll see what happens.
But even if it comes off, any shotgun marriage between Trots and the left of the trade union bureaucracy will prove a semi-tankie nightmare, with a rigid internal regime premised on the deterrence of microsect infiltration. That won’t stop the crackpots sneakily tabling transitional demands in the hope that no-one else will notice, of course.
There will be no prospect whatsoever of leadership accountability or control by the rank and file. That alone will prevent such a formation making headway in the working class.
The mosque bloc vote might see Respect fare slightly better than TUSC in percentage terms, but it has no realistic chance of securing any MPs either. It’s saddening to see activists desperately trying to kid themselves otherwise.
And I’m not telling you anything you don’t know already when I remind you that the solitary AWL candidacy may well struggle to poll a three-figure vote. Haven’t you lot got better things to do?
In short, the only socialist MPs that will get to Westminster this year will be the handful that get elected as Labour candidates. I’ll be concentrating my political efforts on securing the return of John McDonnell in Hayes and Harlington, and then participating in the debate that will be had after Labour’s imminent crushing defeat.
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Comments
60 Responses to “The far left and the general election”
OK, so Dai Davis won’t be returned to Westminster for the Blaenau Gwent seat because he is not Labour is he? Funny, but I thought that the whole of south and central Wales had dumped Labour for the independents and People’s Voice, but obviously not if you say so.
In parts of England the BNP are riding the wave. Before you start to wonder what I am on about, have you seen their economic policies? Straight out of the 1970s Alternative Economic Strategy. It will be interesting to see how well they do in May – certainly a lot of arseholes belonging to the type of people that I despise are clenching which is a laugh in itself.
What you really meant to say was that folk are not buying into your particular brand of politics. Dave, given that you are a Trot and given that Trotskyism is less and ideology and more a mental disorder, is it any wonder?
‘E10rifle’, poor chap, earns my commendation as the most intelligent commenter on this thread.
You are, sir, if I may say so, absolutely right to imply (or at least, I infer it from your comment) that class still exists (thank God) in the UK. My contention is that any class-based political movement needs to examine the current class structure very closely rather than relying on old 19th century efforts which are now hopelessly out of date. It’s a bit like comparing the steam age with the electronic age. I would go further and suggest it is the apparent disappearance of the traditional ‘working class’ which has forced so many ‘Lefties’ into other areas like feminism, Greenery and so forth. All of that, of course, has fractured Left-wing parties.
Mr. Seaton/Shenton (or should it be ‘Joseph K’?), I read what you wrote in regard to your, er, mysterious identity. To be fair, I don’t have much interest in who you are, frankly. I simply rely on my old e-pal, Oliver Kamm, a man who is irritatingly right on so many things – doubly irritating in that I disagree with him so often – who wrote this in the last day or two:
““Josef K”, or rather Anthony Shenton of Media Lens, the reason I took exception to your contributions was that you posted under several different names (e.g. Arthur Seaton) in order to pretend that you were different people all supporting you. I have no difficulty with comments posted under assumed names, but I object to the practice of pretending to be different people. You didn’t at any time disclose your real name to me: I worked it out from the aggressive letters you were sending to one of my readers, who’d advised me on an article I’d written. If you don’t wish to be a public figure, then don’t express views publicly. And if you feel aggrieved, then of course you should complain; I’ve sent you the name of the person who deals with reader complaints at The Times.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/oliver_kamm/2010/01/howard-zinn-rip.html#comments
I can’t help wondering if perhaps you are one of those deluded people who go around wearing a false beard and moustache and changing your name in the mistaken belief that MI5 are the slightest bit interested in you?
Exile, Trotsky led the Red Army to victory. The man was an intellectual genious. Probably better if you got the icepick in the head.
The mere fact that an admirer of St. Leon the Loser is whining says it all. Here you go, click on this link and have a good long mither.
Given that neo-liberalism started in Callaghan’s time and that we have now had about 33 years of it, what are your plans, O follower of the Great One? I know! Sell the paper: build the party!
Meanwhile Respect, Socialist Action and the Communist Party of Britain are holding today a conference of ‘Progressives’ with Ken Livingstone, Harriet Harman, Ed Miliband, Liberal Democrats, Greens,some trade unionists, Socialist Unity, a gaggle of god-botherers, and other do-badders.
Their competence can be summed up by a letter by many of those participating to the Guardian against French proposals to ban ‘the veil’ (sic). Well whatever your opinion on this it’s not the ‘veil’ in general, it’s the Burka and Niqab, and it’s not a ‘ban’, but a ban in certain public services.
In their declaration they promise to make their conference a place where they can huff and puff against French secularism.
Ah, what a popular front!
As a non sequitur, I’d like to consider the original post.
I don’t see quite how the Best story relates. Is New Labour supposed to represent him? If so, something has gone wrong, if you don’t think the personal enrichment of Blair, Mandelson and friends is sufficient to replicate the irony.
The piece seems to be doubly subjective, first in its analysis of what’s wrong with the far left, secondly with blaming their shenanigans exclusively for their failures.
Much of the blame rests with the SWP, which has proven itself so entirely incapable of working with other forces inside a common democratic framework.
Or alternatively it was making a go of the Socialist Alliance even after the SP left in a huff because it couldn’t handle the prospect of being democratically outvoted by a bunch of ultra-lefts that had violated its understanding of historical materialism by becoming bigger and smarter than it, and with Respect it had an early electoral success and then Galloway decided it was getting in the way of his aspirations. Maybe the left cannot put together a meaningful electoral challenge without SWP participation.
At the time of writing, the SWP was in talks about joining up with TUSC. I’m frankly surprised that idea was not rejected as a non-starter.
By which side? You seem compelled to say it’s all doomed to failure, and so it would be better for your predictive abilities if it didn’t get off the ground. And you can’t stand under the same name mulitple times until you’ve done it the first time.
The mosque bloc vote might see Respect fare slightly better than TUSC in percentage terms, but it has no realistic chance of securing any MPs either.
Probably true, though Salma Yacoob does seem to be closer than the other two, though Respect supporters seem to be under the delusion than because Galloway came from behind in 2005 when Respect was new and so constantly picking up name recognition, it can do the same now when it is straining at its limits to growth. It’ll probably shift to an even more communal orientation after the next election, assuming it survives at all, and so bother left watchers less.
If New Labour has shifted politics to the right in the last couple of decades, supporting those few Labour candidates with left credibility is something most of the far left would agree with, but it still doesn’t provide an alternative. Or are you too bleedin’ stupid to see that that’s necessary?
Be fair, Duffy. The Arthur Seaton I know is no Marxist – he’s a foul-mouthed lathe operator in a Nottingham bicycle factory who can’t hold his ale.
In fact he threw up over my wife in a pub a couple of Saturdays ago, after we’d gone out for a quiet jar to celebrate Sven’s transformation of the Magpies into world-beating bankrupts.
I’ve got a question: Why is there not a single far left party or organisation with a well designed website? I mean, most of the Mainstream Parties’ efforts are pretty bad too, but on the left we don’t seem able to grasp the fundementals of graphic design or usablity. Now, the Left has messaging problems all over the place, we all know this. We need some young charismatic leaders (See Caroline Lucas), we obviously need one umbrella party (See The Left) and we need to kick up more or a fuss to appear in the mainstream media as more than just scary protesters (we talk about oppression, but how often do the leaders of the micro-sects phone in to radio-shows, request slots on the BBC, write editorials for the Guardian, or counter editorials for the Times?)
But one of the easiest things we could do is at least make our online presence a bit cooler, a bit more welcoming of outsiders, a bit more serious.
http://www.npa2009.org/ I can see young activists coming across these guys and wanting to get involved.
http://www.workersliberty.org/ I can’t say the same about this…
Interestingly it seems the SWP have very recently given their site a makeover: http://www.swp.org.uk/ Say what you will about their policies and methods, it’s a step the rest of the British Left should follow.
boilermaker:
Do you really think that NL are scared that if they ditch the few remaining left MPs, they’ll lose power? That the media-invisible Campaign Group and LRC MPs are keeping a large number of ‘traditional’ Labour supporters on side?
If they weren’t, the Labour leadership would have withdrawn the whip from the usual suspects long ago (following any organised rebellion against the government whip from the one over benefits cuts in 1997 onwards). In purely practical terms, the Labour leadership couldn’t have ditched the LRC and its unregistered allies in this Parliament, without leaving itself with a paper-thin majority and thus risking frequent votes of confidence and being forced into a snap election at any time. If the LRC had quit Labour as a block, say when Brown became leader, we would be a couple of years into Cameron’s premiership by now.
NL is afraid of ejecting those people as a block, because they could easily go off and form a left-wing version of the SDP. Such a party would never be likely to form a government, but as a splinter from the Labour Party with sitting MPs, it would certainly cost Labour significant votes and seats at successive elections. Such a party could take away a proportion of the union funding and would certainly grab a large chunk of the grassroots membership in many seats, which is still crucial to campaigning.
Even as individuals, they would take away a proportion of votes. In some seats, they would take enough to win outside Labour – as Peter Law did. In others, enough to give the seat to the Lib Dems, the Tories or the Scots or Welsh Nats. While it’s absolutely true that these people are not well-known enough to draw millions of voters to Labour’s side, they do draw plenty of voters to Labour’s side in their constituencies. Furthermore, the media coverage of their ousting from the party, the perception of an anti-left witchunt, would certainly send millions of voters (who have probably never heard of those individuals) away from Labour.
Labour lost around 6 million traditional Labour voters between 1992 and 2001, and another rump in 2005. These are the people who have stopped voting, the fall in the turnout at each successive election. The notion in NL in 1997 was that such voters would stick with Labour because they had nowhere else to go – ejecting the left would give those voters somewhere else to go. Since then, NL has realised that such voters can simply stay at home. Ejecting the left would lead even more traditional Labour voters to stay at home, and even more Labour members to quit, starving the party of door-knockers and fee-payers.
If they weren’t, the Labour leadership would have withdrawn the whip from the usual suspects long ago (following any organised rebellion against the government whip from the one over benefits cuts in 1997 onwards). In purely practical terms, the Labour leadership couldn’t have ditched the LRC and its unregistered allies in this Parliament, without leaving itself with a paper-thin majority and thus risking frequent votes of confidence and being forced into a snap election at any time. If the LRC had quit Labour as a block, say when Brown became leader, we would be a couple of years into Cameron’s premiership by now.
They could easily have expelled them and held the vast majority of those seats at any time between 97 and now.
NL is afraid of ejecting those people as a block, because they could easily go off and form a left-wing version of the SDP. Such a party would never be likely to form a government, but as a splinter from the Labour Party with sitting MPs, it would certainly cost Labour significant votes and seats at successive elections. Such a party could take away a proportion of the union funding and would certainly grab a large chunk of the grassroots membership in many seats, which is still crucial to campaigning.
And who would benefit from that? The members of a party which “would never be likely to form a government”? The reduced Labour Party?
Even as individuals, they would take away a proportion of votes. In some seats, they would take enough to win outside Labour – as Peter Law did. In others, enough to give the seat to the Lib Dems, the Tories or the Scots or Welsh Nats. While it’s absolutely true that these people are not well-known enough to draw millions of voters to Labour’s side, they do draw plenty of voters to Labour’s side in their constituencies. Furthermore, the media coverage of their ousting from the party, the perception of an anti-left witchunt, would certainly send millions of voters (who have probably never heard of those individuals) away from Labour.
Away from Labour and to where?
Labour lost around 6 million traditional Labour voters between 1992 and 2001, and another rump in 2005. These are the people who have stopped voting, the fall in the turnout at each successive election. The notion in NL in 1997 was that such voters would stick with Labour because they had nowhere else to go – ejecting the left would give those voters somewhere else to go. Since then, NL has realised that such voters can simply stay at home. Ejecting the left would lead even more traditional Labour voters to stay at home, and even more Labour members to quit, starving the party of door-knockers and fee-payers.
Ejecting the left would have temporary disadvantages for psephological reasons but the idea that keeping LRC MPs in the Party has any serious benefit for New Labour is grossly overstating the importance of what others call the ‘hard left’.