Now, thank God, we’re the other side of the AV Referendum we can consider the real issues dividing the Labour Party. They certainly got scant attention in the debate, apart possibly from an article by Peter Mandelson in the Observer. Even there he only touched on the issue by rehashing the Roy Jenkins heresy that there was a progressive majority in the country frustrated by the division of the progressive parties. The root flaw of this argument is that it implies that the creation of the Labour Party was a mistake (which Roy probably believed). Their agenda is a pact between Labour and the Lib Dems possibly leading to a merger, depending on whether or not the Lib Dems had bargained and gerrymandered their way to an electoral system that amplified their importance. The ‘progressive majority’ delusionists would appear to prefer this to a majority Labour government. Irrespective, it’s been comprehensively undermined by the behaviour of the Lib Dems since the General Election. Of course this was quite predictable from their behaviour in local government, but don’t let’s dwell on that.
The real issue to be addressed is do we think that Labour is just one of a number of groupings in the ‘progressive’ rainbow, or do we believe that there is a unique role for a social democratic party that combines a wide range of elements, including and especially trade unions, in order to create a party able to get elected and function as a government. Of course that is a more relevant question under a first-past-the-post voting system, but in reality it is a dilemma being faced by our social democratic colleagues across the world. In many areas they are seeing support being cannibalised by parties coming at them from different angles, Greens, leftist parties, ex-Communists in Eastern Europe, populist anti-immigrant anti EU parties, anti globalisation and regional separatist parties. The most recent manifestation is the True Finns, (led by a Millwall supporter).
Even so we should not assume that this dilemma is a new problem although the current manifestation may have novel features. In our history The Labour Party had faced many attempts to integrate the Communist Party or infiltrate its members and fellow travellers. The Labour Party gave a trenchant reply in 1936:-
“Moreover, the National Executive Committee cannot fail to take note of the proclaimed fact that the present application for affiliation is but an evidence of the deviation in the tactics which have been pursued by the Communist International in recent years and that affiliation is sought, not for the purpose of promoting the Labour Party’s declared Policy and Programme, but, on the contrary, to utilise Party facilities on the platform, in public conference, and in the Party press, to displace their essential democratic and Socialist character and substitute a Policy and Programme based upon Communist Party principles. The National Executive Committee is as firmly convinced as were their predecessors that any weakening in the Labour Party’s defence of political democracy, such as the affiliation of the Communist Party would imply, would inevitably assist the forces of reaction, would endanger our existing liberties, and would retard the achievement of Socialism in this country.”
The contemporary popular front view is articulated by the increasingly erratic leader of Compass, Neal Lawson. Welcoming the opening of Compass’s membership beyond Labour Party members he pontificated:-
“The vote signals a big step toward a new politics. What matters is what people believe and what they will do about their beliefs – not what party card they hold or if they have one at all. Tens of thousands of people want a world that is more equal, sustainable and democratic. Now Compass can play an even bigger role in the creation of that world. Of course Labour remains the biggest and most important party in this progressive movement for change. Compass will maintain a special relationship with Labour and Ed Miliband who we gave overwhelming backing to. But Compass will exert more influence on Labour and be more capable of building and sustaining a wider alliance if we get everyone involved in the process of making the economy the servant of society.”
Historically the Labour Party rightly rejected the enticements of a Popular Front which would be of benefit to other parties or groups. For the Labour Party it would mean these other parties would be able to eat into our support and undermine us, while in the eyes of the public we would be guilty by association. The media would have a field day linking us with their idiocies. This is exactly the dilemma the Australian Labour Party is facing now with the Greens. The problem was summed up by previous Swedish Social Democrat PM, Goran Pearson, when asked about the election result in Sweden. He replied “ I think my Party lost because they destroyed more or less the brand of social democracy by going into a coalition with the left wing Communist Party and the Green Party. So they destroyed the possibility of going with a clear social democratic message and that was a tremendous mistake. The irony is we had a good economic position that we delivered for the income government 2006. So the relativity good times in Sweden combined with the damage to the social democratic brand in the campaign was I think the explanation for the centre right party’s success.”
There is a further danger with such alliances and involvement which is that there are those in the Labour Party who are unable to win the battle inside the party or with the voters and use the prospect of alliance with outside groups in order to incorporate polices that they secretly favour. Unfortunately they see any alliance not as a price to be paid but as an opportunity to undermine and circumvent mainstream Labour.
There would appear to be a sneering stigma attached to wanting the Labour Party to continue existing independently, seen frequently in the organs of ‘The Progressive Majority’. Labour loyalists are dismissed as ‘tribal’, although the Lib Dems never attract this condemnation. Down the decades, Labour ‘tribalists’ have asserted the importance of Labour’s independent role. This can be traced back to the heated debates that split the Fabians and the unions from the Liberal Party in the first place at the start of the 20th Century.
This Labour ‘tribalism’ was carried through the Labour Party’s relations with different manifestations of the Communist Party from the 1920s to the 1960s and into the battles against Militant and other Trotskyist entrysim from the 1970s to the early 1990s. Now Labour’s integrity faces a challenge from those wanting a ‘progressive majority’ with the Lib Dems, Greens and others. This is curiously a cause that in the case of Co mpass has stronger roots with certain Bennite veterans of the early 1980s Labour Co-ordinating Committee (LCC) than it does among Labour moderates.
Labour First was founded to organise and articulate the tradition in our Movement that believed in the unique role of the Labour Party (the clue is in the title). It is now time to robustly reaffirm that view.
John Spellar is Labour MP for Warley
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