On Sunday 5th June, Momentum Youth and Students held its founding conference. The mood was very positive thanks to the fact that there was a real sense of the tide having turned. Socialism is now back on the agenda and this is enthusing large swathes of young people who are new to politics.
Last August, thousands of Corbyn supporters were barred from voting in the Labour leadership election. Now the campaign against Corbyn’s supporters and allies has re-emerged, and a fresh wave of baseless expulsions and suspensions seems to be taking place, whose victims include a number of Socialist Appeal activists and supporters who have been expelled for “not supporting the aims and values of the Labour Party”.
Despite facing a barrage of attacks since his election as Labour leader last September, Jeremy Corbyn’s support amongst Labour members has not been dented. Indeed, according to the latest figures from YouGov opinion polls, Corbyn is even more popular with the rank-and-file of the Labour Party now than at the time of his election – much to the chagrin of the Blairites in the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Momentum – the pro-Corbyn movement inside and around the Labour Party – has taken the significant step of becoming a membership based organisation. By taking steps to tighten up the organisation of Momentum, the position of the Left within the Labour Party is being strengthened, serving to solidify Corbyn’s position against the right wing within the Party who are set on removing him.
After being initially denied membership of the Labour Party, two of Britain’s left-wing trade union leaders have been allowed to join the party this month. This is indicative of the shifting balance of power within the party, which is bolstering Corbyn’s position. Nevertheless, deep divisions in the party still remain.
This year’s Young Labour conference comes in the wake of the transformation in the Labour Party that began with the election of Jeremy Corbyn. The overall picture of the conference confirms that there has been a shift to the left in the Labour Party and its youth organisation. Now is the time to put socialism back on the agenda.
Since Corbyn’s landslide victory to become the leader of the Labour Party, a furious battle has opened up within the party. Tens of thousands have signed up to Momentum in order to defend Corbyn and argue for his policies. The task now is for Momentum to become a vehicle to transform Labour and fight for socialism.
The Corbyn movement that began last summer represented the beginning of a political revolution inside the Labour Party. But this transformation is not yet complete. Corbyn has weathered the storm of attacks from the Tory press and the Blairites, emerging stronger in his position as leader; but Labour’s civil war is far from over.
In the end it was by no means the “night of the long knives” that the national press were predicting. However, Jeremy Corbyn’s reshuffle of Labour’s shadow cabinet in Westminster was critical enough to enrage the Blairites who infest the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP).
Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership has brought to the surface a seemingly insoluble contradiction inside the Labour Party: there two wings of the party – Corbyn and his supporters; and the Blairite clique in parliament – which are irreconcilably divided. Mandatory reselection is the only way to genuinely unify the party and defeat the Tories.
We publish here the second part of an analysis of the Corbyn movement by Alan Woods, originally written in early November 2015 for the In Defence of Marxism magazine. In part two, Alan discusses the role of the Blairite right-wing within the Labour Party, and the future prospects of a Corbyn-led Labour government.
Everyone was on the edge of their seats, braced for terrible news from Oldham. The media was full of prophecies of doom for Corbyn, predicting that Labour would suffer at the hands of UKIP in last week’s by-election. In the end, the complete opposite occurred, providing a massive vindication of Corbyn and his leadership of the Labour Party.