We publish here an article by the Irish Marxists from the Fightback site on the UK Labour leadership campaign.
Following
their defeat in the General Election and the resignation of Gordon
Brown the British Labour Party has begun the process of electing a new
leader. The party apparatus would undoubtedly prefer a comfortable
transition to a Milliband run party and indeed there are two Millibands
to choose from. But there is another candidate, John McDonnell who is
well known and respected among sections of the Labour Party and the
Trade Unions in Ireland for his socialist ideas. This article looks at
the election and the current state of the Labour Party and at John
McDonnell’s campaign.
The
significance of this election is that it will formally open up the
debate around why Labour lost and where it is going. The right wing of
the party are keen to stitch the election up and will be determined to
prevent the left in the party from presenting an alternative. But
things have changed significantly in Britain and within the working
class since the last time Labour held a leadership election. When Blair
resigned the intention of the leadership was to hand power over to
Gordon Brown in a seamless transition; something akin to a coronation
and then the economic crisis hit.
At
the time of the last leadership election the Labour bureaucracy and the
parliamentary Whips Office did their best to keep John McDonnell the
left candidate and chair of the Labour Representation Committee off the
ballot paper. They succeeded at that time. Now, after a general
election defeat and in the face of a budget crisis on a similar scale
to that in Greece and in Ireland it is inevitable that questions will
be asked. The general election has been lost; the right wing policies
of the New Labour Project gained less votes than the Party did under
Michael Foot in 1983. At the time (or rather in hindsight) the right
wing called Labour’s manifesto for the 1983 General Election the
“longest suicide note in history”. The truth is that they squandered
the opportunity that they were granted by a huge majority in 1997 and
2001 and a substantial one in 2005. Once the crisis broke out
internationally the Brown leadership who were tied to the coat tails of
big business could not provide a socialist alternative.
The
different tendencies within the Labour Party are re-orientating
themselves to being in opposition and the election is more open than
before. A major factor in the situation is the state of the party after
the election. Labour’s defeat was contradictory and reflected important
political shifts within the working class. Labour lost a lot of seats,
but in many of the big cities and the industrial areas Labour’s vote
increased numerically and in some cases there were swings towards the
party even when there was a national swing to the Tories. There was in
other words something of a polarisation, with the Lib Dems being
squeezed.
Now
that the Lib Dems and the Tories are in coalition there is a new mood
developing among the active layers in the unions and within the working
class. Even inside the Labour Party, the defeat was lighter than
anticipated and there were even some gains on a local level, the mood
is not as flat or subdued as might have been anticipated a year or so
past . The phoney war over the cuts and other attacks on the working
class has now ended, the axe is about to fall. So the mood in the
movement is changing and the formation of the new coalition government
has if anything made that process more distinct.
It
is interesting to note that in the first week after the General
Election some 8-9,000 people joined the Labour Party, within a
fortnight 21,000 had joined. In fact the website was jammed at times.
Given the fact that the Party has been quite empty for some years this
is significant, particularly since the Tories attacks on the working
class haven’t actually started yet.
There
are six candidates for the leadership elections with the brothers
Milliband; David and Ed. There’s Ed Balls an ally of Gordon Brown, Andy
Burnham and potentially two left candidates John McDonnell and rank
outsider Diane Abbott. John McDonnell is the leading left in the
parliamentary Labour Party, he has a good track record of supporting
workers in struggle and has been instrumental in establishing the
Labour Representation Committee a broad left organisation that despite
its many failings has become the most
significant Labour left group since the 1980’s in Britain. The LRC has
affiliations from national trade unions and local branches and combines
groups working both inside and outside of the party. McDonnell’s
influence has spread beyond Britain, in fact the Irish Labour Youth
Conference in 2009 voted to send a delegation over to London to support
his campaign. A number of Labour Youth members attended the national
LRC conference in November 2009.
The
support from John McDonnell within the Irish Labour Party and the
Labour Youth reflects the pressures building up within Irish society.
This demonstrates a political expression of the political and economic
situation. At present there is a substantial support for Eamon Gilmore
in the Irish Labour Party, he is after all swimming with the stream,
but the prospect of a coalition with the Fine Gael means that the
contradictions within the coalition will come to the fore sooner rather
than later. Socialist ideas will gain a much bigger echo in the party
over the next period, particularly under a Fine Gael/Labour coalition.
The
programme of the LRC is ambiguous and contradictory. While the LRC
conference voted almost unanimously for the position advocated by the
Marxists around the Socialist Appeal Newspaper it also voted for the
reformist “People’s Charter”. This contradiction illustrates the low
base of the Labour Left after years of Right Wing domination in the
party and a period of relative social peace up until fairly recently.
But it also partially reflects the pressure on movement from below.
That pressure will only develop over the next period as the axe begins
to fall.
The
perspective of the Marxists in Britain has been that the process of
differentiation in the Labour Party would take some time to develop. As
such the current leadership election is a bit early on in the process.
It is likely that the tops of the party will jostle for position over a
period, with eventually one or more of the leadership breaking cover
and turning towards the left under the pressure of events. Jon Cruddas,
seen as a possible soft left contender and a possible focus for a
broader move to the left at a certain stage ruled himself out of the
contest early on. Before the process emerges fully it is likely that
the trade union leaders will be first forced into opposition to the new
coalition. The experience of Ireland is that this sort of process is
likely to be contradictory and confused. But pressure from below will
inevitably have an effect on the union tops.
Doubtless
the Party hierarchy would prefer a bland election with no choice other
than which Milliband to support. But the crisis of capitalism and the
pressure of the Labour movement and the working class on the party
could significantly cut across the “ambition” of the Right Wing. Already
the Party Leadership have been forced to extend the period for
nominations and there is some evidence already in the unions of
pressure on MPs to back John McDonnell.
The
key task for John McDonnell has to be to patiently explain why Labour
lost the election and to fight for a socialist programme, a fighting
left campaign popularising socialist ideas would act as a poll of
attraction within the party and within the working class as a whole.
The economic situation in Britain is as grave as that in the Eurozone
and the working class are going to be in the firing line as in Ireland
and Greece. Under these conditions a clear position that links the day
to day experience of workers with a programme capable of challenging
the Tories, the Lib Dems and capitalism would connect with the most
advanced layers of the working class and would represent an important
factor within the trade unions and the Labour Party itself. After years
of right wing domination there is now a far more favourable perspective
for building the ideas of socialism, in Britain and likewise in Ireland
and throughout Europe also. In that respect John McDonnell has a great
opportunity.
