A short thread about the Labour Party
I first joined the Labour Party in 1983. And sad to say, the current #LabourLeaks revelations do not surprise me (though the details in black and white are still shocking to read). The Party bureaucracy has not changed.
I first joined the Labour Party in 1983. And sad to say, the current #LabourLeaks revelations do not surprise me (though the details in black and white are still shocking to read). The Party bureaucracy has not changed.
It was in the '80s that the old Trade Union right wing started to work with the up and coming bureaucrats who came out of the National Organisation of Labour Students (John Mann was a big player). Then, as now, their primary motivation was to destroy the socialist left.
They would accuse the left of "entrism", of being "undemocratic", at the same time as using every bureaucratic (not to say Stalinist) manoeuvre against us. I was elected to the Yorkshire Regional Executive (now known as the Regional Board).
Very soon, I was taken to one side by a trade union bureaucrat, promising me a bright future in the Party, and maybe even in due course a parliamentary seat, if I would only "calm down a bit" and "toe the line". Of course, I did neither of those things.
Later, myself and another comrade were proposed to be put on the panel of local authority candidates (ie become available for selection as council candidates) by our constituency party. But we were rejected by the District Labour Party Executive, on the basis of inexperience.
Our CLP appealed on our behalf to the National Executive Committee. The word came back from Larry Whitty, the General Secretary (or someone in his office), to the Chair of the District Labour Party, that the "inexperience" excuse would not hold water. But all he had to do was...
accuse us of being members of the "Militant Tendency", and we could be expelled instead. To his credit, the DLP chair, who wasn't particularly left wing, but was a rank and file TGWU officer with a sense of fair play, refused to do this, and we were duly appointed to the "panel".
I'm telling this story in order to show that we have always had to struggle for socialist representation in the Party, and will likely always have to. As Nye Bevan, the left-wing MP and founder of the NHS said, the right would rather destroy the party than allow the left control.
#LabourLeaks has shown this to be true, but as the above shows, it is nothing new. By the early '90s, I'd had enough, and joined the old Militant Tendency's attempt to create a new party. But before too long I fell out of politics altogether.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, who I had attended meetings with in the '80s, carried on the fight within the Party. And eventually it bore fruit. I was astounded in 2015, but also humble enough to realise that they had been right and I had been wrong.
I rejoined the Party, and we began this lop-sided adventure where the power of social media catapulted us to the leadership, while leaving the right wing PLP and Party bureaucracy in place. Astounding for those of us who thought we could only change the party from the bottom up.
We've done far better than we could have hoped. No-one can ever take 2017 away from us, when we gained more votes for Labour since 1945, with a transformational socialist manifesto. But the road to socialism was never going to be straight or easy. My experiences prove it.
I fully understand the feelings of comrades, old and young, who are now despairing, after how close we came. But the fight must go on. Stay in the Party and fight for socialism. (And, of course, join other movements, especially trades unions, outside of parliamentary politics).
We can, and must fight on multiple fronts at the same time. Staying in Labour is not giving in to the right wing and the witch hunters - on the contrary, they want us to leave. They might have hijacked our party (again), but it's still our party. So fight, fight, and fight again.
