In 1996, at the dawn of the Blair age, Hilary Wainwright argued that British socialists should look for life beyond the Labour Party.
This article forms part of a longer debate conducted in the pages of
Socialist Register. For earlier contributions, see Wainwright's
Once More Moving On: Social Movements, Political Representation and the Left and Barry Winter's
Socialists, Social Movements and the Labour Party: A Reply to Hilary Wainwright
Barry Winter and I share a common starting point: a common concern with
how the left can connect and communicate with the majority of people.
He believes that the most effective strategy for socialists to reach the
people is primarily through the Labour Party and through building the left
within it. This conclusion rests on the idea that the left will not get a
hearing unless it is positioned in 'the political mainstream' - and he tends
to see such a location as being the Labour Party. Political activity outside
the Labour party, he describes, though not totally dismissively, as 'the
fringe'.
His argument also depends on the idea that, after all, most of the people
in the Labour Party are pretty representative of the wider population and if
we can communicate effectively inside the party we are 'on the way to
connecting' with this wider population. He believes that failures of the
Labour left to achieve this wider influence are a result of major tactical
blunders and anti-democratic behaviour rather than due to deeper limits on
change built into the Party's institutions - which in turn, I will argue,
shape, though not justify, some of the Labour left's undoubted mistakes.
I believe, by contrast, that the left's position inside the Labour Party has
changed from being the opportunity it arguably was in the past into an
imprisonment, which actually distorts and constrains the left's ability to
convince the people of the relevance of radical socialist politics. The implication
of my argument is that any section of the left which restricts its
political location to the Labour Party and refuses seriously to consider the
prospect of a party to the left of Labour, isolates itself from the people. It
will make itselfmarginal, 'on the fringe' of political debate. My case is that
in the long or even medium run, the most effective way for the radical left
in the UK to engage with the political mainstream, as in most other West
European countries, is with a political voice to the left of social democracy.
This is not to say that working through such a party is an exclusive option;
there would still be a significant left working mainly within the Labour
party as, for example, in Denmark, Germany, Norway, Holland and Spain where there is a significant social democratic left, strengthened by the
existence of a political competitor to social democracy's left. (Incidentally,
Ralph Miliband explicitly assumes the influence of such radical sources of
electoral as well as social pressure when he argues that the radical left's
best medium term hope lies in strengthening the left in social democratic
parties. He still held to his analysis of the limits of working from a permanently
subordinate position within these parties).
This fundamental difference in strategy towards a shared goal influences
our understandings of the importance of social movements, the
political ramifications of the collapse of Soviet Communism, the decline of
social democracy and the pressures of Europe and Scotland on Britain's
unwritten constitution - the further points of disagreement itemised in
Winter's critique. I will dwell first on the source of the strategic difference
and secondly set out the case for seriously preparing for parties of the
radical left which present an electoral challenge to Labour (I put it in the
plural because such preparations for an electoral - as well as extra-parliamentary
- coalition are already underway in Scotland).
In the Labour Party's early years, the structure of the party, based on
trade union affiliations as well as the affiliation of political societies and
parties did provide for the left a captive audience of politically alert
listeners. There were several reasons for this, both to do with the character
of trade unions in that period and the early structure of the trade union/
party alliance. First, trade union membership then was a much more
conscious commitment, a commitment to collective resistance to the
employers and more often than not, the state. Although one should be wary
of generalising, it was a commitment against the grain of majority opinion,
and often taken at some risk. As a result trade union branches and the structures
built up from them, trades councils, district committees and so on,
were generally lively and well-attended, real live centres of debate,
discussion and action about the needs of working class people. This in turn
influenced the character of union participation in the Labour Party,
especially at a local level. After all, Trades Councils were 'Trades and
Labour Councils' affiliated to the Labour Party. Left activists could with
real justification assume that the trade union affiliates with whom they
were working and arguing as they built the Labour Party were a live
connection between socialists and the wider public.
In the last 60 years, changes in the character of the unions and in the
structure of party-union relations have turned this captive activist audience
into something nearer the dead souls of Tom Nairn's famous description of
the block vote. Ironically, the very success of the Labour Representation
Committee's original project, to establish the trade unions as a legitimate
estate of the realm, weakened the role of Labour's union affiliates as a live
connection between the left in the Labour Party and the public outside. Moreover it made the block basis of affiliation and representation open to
abuse, by left and right, since the union delegates casting votes in highly
politicised discussions, were representing a membership which, except in
rare periods of mass industrial action, or on issues directly affecting their
interests, were politically apathetic.
Since the 1960s, ever since trade unions had the almost habitual, indeed
with the check-off system, automatic, support of over 30% of the
population rather than a small, class conscious minority, the left in the
Labour Party has faced a serious dilemma: to win any serious influence in
the Labour Part and to do so on a sustainable and democratic basis, the left
had to convince a significant section of this mass trade union membership
to support left socialist policies. Such a task itself requires a political party,
with its own press, campaigns and education, able to reach beyond the fulltime
and lay officials representing the membership in the forums of the
Party. In other words to move Labour to the left, the left needed their own
organisation with equivalant functions - other than electoral - to a party.
In its heyday in the 1920s, this is what the Independent Labour was, a
left party within the larger federated structure of the Labour Party. The
Communist Party also tried to play this role, first by attempting to affiliate
to the party then by acting in effect as the industrial wing of the Labour left.
Apart from the limits of the Communist party as an advocate of democratic
socialism, the Labour Party became increasingly centralised, losing many
features of its genuinely federal political character, making any kind of
dual membership or lasting alliance with another political party -even one
which abstained from independent electoral activity - virtually impossible.
One reaction to this and to Labour's dramatic tun to the right under
Ramsey MacDonald, was a split in the ILP with an initially significant
section leaving to form their own electoral party. At that stage, without a
proportional electoral system and without any trade union support, such a
move did not solve the dilemma (though those who tried to maintain the . -
ILP's existence inside the party were no more able to overcome the
dilemma than those outside).
There have been moments of course, when industrial and political
developments have radicalised the mass of trade unionists, without the
midwife of a socialist party. The mid-1970s, with the miners' strike
bringing down Prime Minister Edward Heath was such a moment. This
produced the move to the left in the trade unions which gave the Bennite
left its hope of victory. But the ultimate defeat of Bennism illustrates the
dilemma of the left described above. The 'Bennite' left did not have the
sort of organisation - in effect a campaigning, educational political party -
which could have worked at the base of the unions to build on the organic
militancy of that period and turn it into a sustained shift in consciousness.
They had an organisation that could lobby trade union representatives, at many different levels; but beyond activist newsletters, local rallies and
conference fringe meetings, it could do little more. In tactical terms it was
an impressive organisational effort. As such it was able to harvest the
consequences of an earlier shift in consciousness but it could not sustain
and deepen that radicalisation. All too often, as Winter implies, it accepted
the undemocratic mechanisms of the block vote because they worked in
the left's favour. On the other hand, there were occasions when the
campaign for constitutional change and for Benn to be leader did open up
debate in the unions to a remarkable degree. Where they were successful,
however, they could not maintain the commitment. They often ended up
controlling structures where there was no sustained base of support for
their position. This is one factor behind the relative ease of Tony Blair's
rout of the left.
Sometimes the left was able to use control of the institutions, however
hollow their initial popular content, to built popular support. Ken
Livingstone's radical but immensely popular GLC would be a case in
point. But more often than not the necessity to defend or win control over
structures in which political participation is low has tied up the energies of
Labour left activists in inward-looking wrangles. Thus while there are
many critical lessons to be drawn about the tactics of the Labour left in the
1980s, I would argue that what dragged them down was the structures they
inhabited of which they were insufficiently critical.
The only solution to the left's dilemma within our present electoral and
party system would be the possibility of dual membership of Labour as a
coalition party, with other political parties of the left. The (unique)
relationship between the ANC and the South African Communist Party
illustrates the possibility; a relationship with many similarities to the ILP's
relationship to the Labour Party in its early days. But even to make the
comparison, highlights how radically the Labour Party has changed since
the fluidity of those early years. The process of making itself electable on
the terms set by the British establishment, has led the party to mirror the
establishment's view of the left and treat it as an embarrassment,
something to be hidden, camouflaged and otherwise side-lined. Frosts
from the Cold War at different periods have stiffened this anti-pluralist
ethic.
This ditching of pluralism for reasons of electoral expediency has
become extreme in reaction to four successive defeats, all blamed to
various degrees on the left. It is this which has created a felt need on the
left for their own political voice.
My case for such an independent voice does not rest on optimism as
Winter implies. On the contrary it is because of the serious difficulties
facing the left that such a political initiative needs to be prepared, through
careful negotiation. In particular, there is a growing awareness of the need to work now to prepare a positive focus for the disillusion that will set in
under what we might as well call 'Blatcherism'. People remember that as
disillusion set in under Caliaghan and the first moves towards monetarism,
there was an ominous growth in electoral support for the far right. Racism
and xenophobia are now more firmly entrenched in the Conservative party
than ever before, as indicated by the resignations and growing disaffection
of its 'Christian democrats'. A left that simply continues with a 'business
as usual' routine in the Labour Party, however hard-working, cannot create
the confident alternative that will be necessary to prevent Portillo and his
crew from sailing to power on the demoralisation created by Blair.
It is because this need for new directions - diffuse and inchoate though
these presently may be - is widely felt that the basis for new political initiatives
exists. My examples of a new confidence amongst some leading left
MPs, for instance, were intended not to imply some revival of the Labour
left but to illustrate how when some left haps made common cause with
campaigns outside the Labour Party and helped these movements gain a
popular platform they had a real impact, bridging that chasm between
socialists and the rest of society. This is leading to a detached co-habitation
between many on the Labour left and the leadership of the party. They
inhabit the same home but even more than before follow entirely different
political lives.
Similarly my focus on recent progressive social movements was not
driven by some naive presumption that they could give virgin birth to a
new political party. It is rather that in their practice, influenced as it was
and is, by the failure both of social democracy and Soviet communism,
they have been testing out new methods of organising, new understandings
of social change, and in particular the connections that link individual
consciousness self-awareness, practical knowledge and skill to the
collective capacity and the collective power to transform structures. A
critical development of these insights needs to be central to the left's future
initiatives if they are not to be dogged by past failures.
Barry Winter says that for me the past does not weigh heavily. In one
sense that is true. But it is not because I have taken the social movement
escapism pill. Rather it is because as someone who became a socialist in
opposition to the actual experience of both Soviet Communism and social
democracy, I have sought since their collapse and demise, to think through
why and how the libertarian left with which I have identified is different.
This does not mean that I now believe that the libertarian left, influenced
as it is by involvement in social and radical trade union movements, has a
clear programme and strategy. But it does mean I have a clear, methodological,
as well as substantive sense of why the socialism for which, with
many others, I am working, is different; why in a certain sense the past in
so far as it is the past of regimes and governments that ruled in the name of socialism, is not my past.
In elaborating a different kind of socialism we need to learn from the
past and especially to discover socialist traditions that have been
suppressed and marginalised. But with perspectives clarified by an understanding
of history and a knowledge of previously hidden continuities, a
modern vision of socialism can best be made practical through focusing
reflective attention, with an international lens, on present and future experiments
in social co-operation, public ownership and democratic
participation.
While Barry Winter may consider that I am cavalier towards the past, I
find that for Barry the present does not sufficiently impinge. In particular
the present state of decay of the British state and the pressures it is under
from within - most notably Scotland, but also the implosion of the royal
establishment, the revelations of the Scott inquiry, the rebellions of the
young and poor whose city councils can no longer provide public services
- and from without, thesteady encroachment of ~ u r o ~ e a n integration.
Barry Winter rather begrudgingly admits that the unstoppable pressure for
constitutional reform is likely to lead to electoral reform. This, he says,
might give scope to the forces of the right. Indeed it might. In fact constitutional
reform-of itself is never automatically progressive. That is why the
left needs to be well ahead of the process, not just predicting that change
might happen and that the picture is complex and dangerous. We need to
spell out what kind of electoral reform, what kind of bill of rights, what
powers for local and regional government, what kind of republic. And
knowing that electoral reform at Westminster is almost unavoidable as the
pressure surrounds this archaic citadel on all sides, we need to prepare to
make the most of it to give political expression to the millions-of people
who presently feel disenfranchised. If anything is going to play into the
hands of the right, it is to imagine that the 'inside left' can change the
Labour Party to provide an adequate voice for the generations of disaffected
voters it has alienated in the past.
I detect in Barry Winter's writing an effort to maintain a taboo. A taboo
on serious discussion of what is part of the political scene in virtually every
West European political system: a party to the left of social democracy,
trying with varying degrees of success to rethink socialism, but with a
continuing commitment to a different economic and social system. In
effect it is a taboo, prevalent in England at least, on openly imagining what
possibilities might emerge under democratic constitutional arrangements -
as if the left had some vested interest in the existing unwritten constitution
and should not think beyond it.
At the end of 1995 Arthur Scargill had the confidence - born of
frustration and a touch of arrogance perhaps - to break the taboo. Scargill's
virtue is his ability to identify an injustice and insist publicly on action to right the wrong - whether the government's pit closure plans or the
political injustice of the radical left's exclusion from political representation.
His flaw, in my opinion, is his voluntaristic presumption that others
might follow his lead despite the absence of the prior process of coalition
building that could produce a more strategically effective initiative. It is up
to others who share some elements of his long term goal to respond to his
initiative and turn it into a far reaching debate that may well end up with
outcomes different from that which Scargill presently proposes. At the
time of writing it appears unlikely that this will be possible. It is likely that
others on the left with different timetables and more inclusive ways of
organising will need to pursue their own discussions (for instance left
organisations from within the Green party, the Labour party, the
Democratic Left and independent socialists in the Socialist Movement and
Red-Green network are already engaged in a process of convergences).
The problem of left political representation which he addresses is too
important to leave to Scargill. It is not just a crisis of representation for his
particular brand of socialism but for all those - left greens, for example -
who believe in a socialisation of wealth and a transformation rather than
mere amelioration of capitalist political economy. Now that the
MandlesonIBlair leadership is following to its practical conclusion the
view that everything associated with the left's influence in the early 1980s
has to be exorcised, it has become an urgent issue. Many long-term Labour
activists have made the painful decision to leave the party: others have
made the equally painful decision to hang on for the time being. Many
politically active citizens are homeless or lodging in temporary accommodation.
But the silencing of the left is not just a matter of frustrated activists. A
small, but significant number of voters also feel that their views no longer
have a legitimate voice in the political system. It's not just the anecdotal
evidence of local left activists who have told me about how they have been
rung up by people who want details of Scargill's new party, or indeed of
the reports from his office of hundreds of requests, especially from trade
unionists, for party cards. Opinions polls show significant minorities with
views on taxation, public spending, privatisation and public ownership to
the left of New Labour's. There is also the question of the marginalisation
of what Fenner Brockway called the 'outside left' for the wider political
culture. The suppression of this left by the current Labour machine is an
extreme response to the way in which the electoral system makes the
floating voter the magnet to which the main parties are drawn. There is an
inbuilt pressure on Labour to look over its right shoulder which can only
be countered by pressures in the party bolstering up the left against shortterm
electoral imperatives - a diminishing possibility after four electoral
defeats - or by an electoral competitor to labour's left, which is not a serious possibility until there is real momentum towards the introduction
of a proportional electoral system.
As the transformation of Labour into a party of modem capitalist
management proceeds apace, however, the refusal of many Labour Party
socialists seriously to discuss even the long term prospects and conditions
for a new party will become a seal on their own subordination. Their
timidity in providing an intellectual and campaigning alternative focus - if
not an electoral one - increases the humiliating phenomenon of grown men
and women slavishly obeying a leader who is intellectually vacuous,
however tactically brilliant he and his team may be.
The case for a left electoral challenge to Labour and hence for proportional
representation is a perfectly respectable one which could quite
legitimately be supported by people within the party. A left electoral
challenge under a proportionate electoral system would overcome the bias
towards the centre; it would provide both a left ally for and pressure on
Labour in government - opening up, formalising and in effect making
democratic the coalition that the labour movement claims to be. None of
this case adds up to the kind of 'betrayal' of which some Labour socialists
accuse anyone who advocates even serious debate about a left party.
Moreover, there are a variety of ways short of an electoral challenge to
Labour, in which the left inside and outside the Party could work together
campaigning and refining shared socialist policies in the build-up to the
election and in opposition to many of the policies that a new Labour
government will pursue. The exact timing of an electoral challenge could
then be open, to wait for conditions in which such a challenge would gain
mass support, rather than lost deposits.
But what are the conditions for left party, parties or an electoral alliance
to come into being as an effective political force? The experience of
northern Europe where left parties have between 8 and 18% of the vote
points to two conditions: first the existence of a proportional electoral
system and secondly the occurrence of a major split in a Communist or
social democratic party or both. In New Zealand, working with the colonial
legacy of a Westminster first-past-the-post system, a split from the Labour
Party there in response to the Thatcherite economic policies pursued by a
Labour government led to the creation of a new left breakaway led by Jim
Anderton, which, in coalition with an already-established Green Party and
radical Maori party, has proved not only a serious electoral challenge to
Labour but also a decisive factor in overturning the electoral system. But
the breakaway was equivalent to Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone and Peter
Hain, if not Robin Cook and Michael Meacher, splitting from British
Labour.
In Britain, the historical lack of a strong communist party, the demise of
the Independent Labour Party and Labour's monopoly of labour movement political representation - partly thanks to an electoral system
designed to protect the establishment - has denied the left a base from
which a challenge to Labour might grow organically. In this context, a few
sustained campaigning movements, notably CND, have periodically acted
as a convivial shelter for the politically homeless.
Discussion of the prospects for a new left party or electoral alliance in
Britain needs to take account of very different national dynamics,
especially in Scotland and England. In Scotland, as already mentioned,
there is, in preparation for a Scottish parliament, work under way for a left
electoral alliance. One of the possible components, Scottish Militant
Labour, has already a small number of local government seats. The
Scottish National Party is itself, on present policies, a left electoral
challenge to Labour. In England, too, the emphasis has to be on preparations.
After all, there is much to prepare for: the strong possibility of a real
momentum towards electoral reform, assuming the Lib Dems are in a
strong position after the election; the strong likelihood of policies proposed
by a Labour government for which many left MPs will find it impossible
to vote.
There are also many preparatory problems to consider - for example,
problems of structure that determine how one approaches questions of
programme and policy. Scargill's proposal extols the original constitution
of Labour, with its coalition-like character. Moreover, he stresses that
'radical opposition in Britain is symbolised not by the Labour and trade
union movement, but by the groupings such as those which defeated the
poll tax, the anti-motorway and animal rights bodies, Greenpeace and other
anti-nuclear campaigners, and those fighting against open-cast mining'.
But the structure he proposes, 'a simple socialist constitution', does not
allow for the diversity and flexibility that a coalition of left political organisations
and a closer relation with these new movements would require.
Then there is the question of electoral intervention. If the preparations
followed the Scottish model, then there could conceivably be a selective
and realistic electoral intervention even at the next election. It could
involve support for socialist Labour MPs, Green Party candidates and the
left of Plaid Cymru in Wales, plus one or two high-profile challenges in
safe Labour seats with leading New Labour MPs or safe Tory seats- if
there are such things.
Finally, there is the question of policy. Again, given the fissiparous state
of the left, it would be more realistic if the coalition of electoral-alliance
model were followed and an agreed platform of economic, constitutional,
social and international themes drawn up instead of a detailed party
manifesto. A green socialist alliance of this kind would not be exclusively
electoral. It would provide a platform and information exchange for the
variety of trade union and green campaigns now emerging. Even during the election campaign, it could organise for policies and support for extraparliamentary
campaigns where it did not back a particular candidate.
A vacuum has been steadily opening up in British politics to which
Scargill has now responded, without any of the political sensitivity needed
effectively to begin to fill it. If the radically minded left inside the Labour
Party is to help to renew the left, it will not suffice to scoff at the idea of a
new left. The possibility is irreversibly on the agenda, the debate is about
what kind, when, following what preparations, negotiations, period of nonparty
coalition. For this, the left in Britain needs to learn from the
successes and failures of the radical left across the world. Just as the British
establishment, Labour as well as Conservative, can no longer cling on to
the political cosiness of a two party monopoly, so the British left can no
longer plead 'British peculiarities' and retreat into inner Labour Party
obscurity. It has to learn, drawing on international experiences, how to take
its message to the people, independently, no longer under the cover of
Labour.
