Many middle of the road Labour activists are not impressed. Les, with whom I occasionally share lunch at my local cafe, sums this attitude up. In May, things could only get better, in July he was a bit worried about arms sales to Indonesia, by September he was annoyed about tuition fees. This week Les came in and announced that the Labour leaders were “a shower of shits”. A Party member for over twenty years Les, and many other middle of the road Labour activists, have had enough.
The Labour leadership’s performance over the last few months has been a monumental disaster. The Blair babes, it seems, can only spin when they are winning. That Blair was forced to appear on On The Record to shore up a bankrupt policy — financing a party of labour with funding from big-business — left everyone smelling a rat. Major faked being a man of the people by eating a fry-up at the Little Chef. Blair will be known as a man of the millionaires who lives at the Berni Inn.
The strong vote for the left in the NEC elections followed by the fiasco on tobacco advertising — not to mention lone parent benefit, disability allowance, fox hunting and tuition fees — are indicators of a changing of the balance of forces in the labour movement. A space has begun to open for the Labour left.
By excluding MPs from the CLP section of the NEC elections, Blair has effectively put on the agenda the election of an extra-parliamentary leadership of the left on the NEC. There are a number of issues posed by this. In an immediate sense there is widespread agreement amongst the left that a slate for the NEC has to be built on the basis of building a coalition of forces that are opposed to the policies of Blairism.
The last Network Steering Committee meeting agreed unanimously to aim for a centre-left slate for the NEC elections. Also agreed was a resolution that encouraged the slate to adopt the political platform of last year’s SCG slate. The root of this resolution is an understandable fear that the left may be in danger of selling its policies to build a coalition with Labour Reform that can defeat Blair. Clearly there is a lot of negotiating to be done. Some of the NSCG’s AGM will focus on this. Compromise on policy is inevitable when the slate is negotiated in a series of informal meetings. But the central political issue is the policies on which the slate is built — not the alliance with Labour Reform itself or the dot and comma of the SCG slate. Put bluntly, the slate has to be constructed on a modernist defence of 1945: more effective progressive taxation, free education, a free NHS, the restoration of lone-parent benefit and a minimum wage. This would draw a line in the labour movement against Blair and would start to develop a coalition aimed at removing the Blairites from leadership.
Being a Christian Democrat, Blair is a break from the labourist traditions of the long term mass Party membership. The bulk of Party members will not fall in behind a generalised attack on the leadership but many will be won over through single issues about which they feel passionately. The central problem that they face is a crisis of accountability in the Labour Party. There are no broad Party forums where a real debate is possible. The resolution of this crisis will be central to a regeneration of the Labour left.
This year the left will be unable to resolve this crisis meaningfully. The left’s NEC and Policy Forum candidates will have to be agreed though informal arrangements. Next year we must elect a slate rather than select it. As someone once said: the battle for socialism will be won on the field of democracy. The left will have to find a representative structure to avoid two pitfalls. First, the impression that the left’s NEC slate is decided in a smoke-filled room and second, the prospect of a conference of the left dominated by unrepresentative activists. The left will have to get together in a room to decide on basic policies and candidates for the slate but such a conference will only work if it is democratically accountable with delegates from agreed bona fide and affiliated labour movement bodies. Delegations from Party wards to regional bodies would have weighted votes and the legitimacy of delegates should be open to verification.
Currently there is no left wing body that has the authority to do this because of a crisis of accountability on the left itself. It is this problem that has be resolved in the next six months. It is not beyond the ken of left labour movement activists to organise a conference for next year on such a basis and it is that which should be focused on.
To create such a workable and representative conference would raise the profile of the left and the candidates that it selects to run for the NEC and would provide an obvious counterpoint to how the right will select its candidates. It would also play a central role in resolving the crisis of accountability in the Labour Party itself and be a springboard for ensuring that labour has representation in national political life.