Editorial
The Corbyn insurgency
This edition of Socialism
Today goes to press three weeks before the result of the Labour Party
leadership election is announced. But whatever the outcome of the
contest, Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign has already transformed the political
situation in Britain. Public ownership, a free education system, trade
union rights, councils resisting the cuts and not implementing them, all
are once again up for discussion. And although explicit references to it
have been muted in the campaign, even the S-word itself – socialism – is
now back in ‘mainstream’ political debate.
But does this mean that the
transformation of the Labour Party into New Labour, another ‘normal’
capitalist party, has now been reversed? Michael Meacher MP, a minister
in the 1974-79 Labour government and again under Blair from 1997-2003,
backing the Corbyn campaign, described it as "the biggest
non-revolutionary upturning of the social order in modern British
politics. After 20 years of swashbuckling capitalism the people have
said enough, and Labour is now finally regaining its real principles and
values" (The Guardian, 13 August).
The reconstitution of Labour,
however – claimed by Margaret Thatcher as her greatest achievement – was
not one act but a process, taking place against the world background of
the seeming triumph of capitalism after the collapse of the Stalinist
states of Russia and Eastern Europe in the early 1990s. It was both an
ideological and an organisational process, rooting out socialist ideas
and destroying the democratic structures of the Labour Party which had
allowed the organised working class, through the trade unions in
particular, to contend for influence within the party. The Corbyn
insurgency is indeed a movement against ‘swashbuckling capitalism’, but
the ‘new social order’ of the last two decades that removed the element
of independent working-class representation within the Labour Party will
not be lightly overturned.
Tony Blair abolished Labour’s
historic commitment, in Clause Four, Part 1V of the party’s rules, to
"the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and
exchange", in 1995, replacing it with a paean to the dynamic "enterprise
of the market and the rigor of competition". This was not just
symbolism. Clause Four summarised the collective interest of the working
class in fighting for a new form of society, socialism, in opposition to
the capitalist market system.
On the other hand, trade
union affiliation (when democratically exercised by union members)
enshrined the potential ability of the working class through the unions
to control its political representatives. It was these characteristics
that defined the Labour Party in the past as a ‘capitalist workers’
party’, with a leadership at the top which invariably reflected the
policy of the capitalist class, but with a socialistic ideological basis
to the party and a structure through which workers could move to
challenge the leadership and threaten the capitalists’ interests.
But the trade unions’
collective role was systematically erased, too, starting with the
introduction in 1994 of ‘one member, one vote’ (OMOV) rules for
selecting candidates. Previously, trade union branches would send
delegates to constituency Labour Parties, alongside local ward party
representatives, to debate, decide policy, and select candidates. This
was how the Militant MPs, Dave Nellist (now chair of the Trade Unionist
and Socialist Coalition –
TUSC), and the
late Terry Fields and Pat Wall, won their selection as Labour candidates
in the 1980s. That democratic structure – participatory, representative
democracy – meant that healthy mass parties such as in Liverpool and
Coventry were effectively local ‘parliaments of the labour movement’.
New Labour, in contrast, rested on a largely passive membership.
Ironically, this process
culminated in the introduction of the current Labour Party leadership
election system – a US-style ‘primary’ contest – as one of the ‘Collins
reforms’ pushed through by Ed Miliband at a two-hour special Labour
Party conference in March 2014, with individual trade unionists having
to sign up as ‘affiliated members’ to vote, alongside a new category of
‘registered supporters’.
Ex-MP Peter Hain now laments
how this move to "broaden the franchise" has turned out (The Guardian,
12 August), with the surge of Corbynistas from outside the Labour Party
signing up to vote. Yet Hain was the author of the idea, in his 2011
Refounding Labour report, after he found a party "that barely functions…
activism among Labour members has diminished". Tellingly – as Hain’s
report asked "are too many local parties moribund?" – it commented that,
"where once there were numerous union activists in almost all
constituency parties, now they are few and far between", and
"organisational tasks previously performed by volunteers" are now done
by MPs and councillors.
These qualitative changes to
the character of the Labour Party will not be easily reversed, even if
Jeremy Corbyn wins. He would face an open revolt – with the timing
dependent on the scale of his victory – from the pro-capitalist right
that dominates the Parliamentary Labour Party, Labour council groups
across the country, and the Labour Party machine, which would do
everything to sabotage his leadership.
That is why he would need to
mobilise the maximum possible support from across the workers’ movement,
with the aim even of going back to the founding structures of the Labour
Party which involved separate socialist political parties coalescing
with the trade unions and social movements like the women’s suffrage
movement. An immediate task would be to organise a conference of all
those who have voted for him, plus the many trade unions – including
non-affiliated unions like the RMT, PCS, POA and FBU – and political
parties including those involved in TUSC, which support a fighting
anti-austerity programme. What would need to be done to take on the
Blairite base among local councillors is examined in the article Council cuts and the Corbyn campaign on page
17.
TUSC was co-founded in 2010
by Bob Crow, with the Socialist Party playing a leading role, to push
forward the development of a new workers’ party that could fill the
vacuum of independent working-class political representation created by
the transformation of the Labour Party. Its very existence has assisted
Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership bid, for example, in the decision of the
national executive committee of UNITE, a Labour-affiliated union, to
nominate Jeremy Corbyn rather than Andy Burnham, partly motivated to
counter the growing support for TUSC members campaigning in the union
for a new party.
If Jeremy Corbyn now goes on
to win on 12 September – and mobilises the necessary mass campaign
required to defeat the still dominant organised capitalist forces within
the Labour Party – it will be a giant step towards creating a new
workers’ party out of the dying embers of New Labour. The same
opportunity to build a new party exists, of course, if he loses, but
outside the constraints of the sterilised Labour Party structures.
The Corbyn summer insurgency
has signalled the potential that exists in the new stormy period ahead
to build working-class representation and the forces of socialism.
Labour’s membership figures
The Labour Party’s
official membership figures for 2014 – released by the Electoral
Commission in August – showed individual membership standing at
193,754 at the end of the year. At the end of 2009 the membership
was 156,205, rising after the 2010 general election to 193,261. So,
after four years as an austerity-lite opposition, Labour went into
this year’s election with a virtually stagnant membership.
This has changed with the
leadership contest, with the number of full Labour members,
including £1 a year student-rate payers, rising to 299,755. In
addition, there are 189,703 political levy payers in affiliated
trade unions who have signed up (for free) for the leadership
contest vote as ‘individual affiliated members’, and 121,295 others
who have paid £3 to be a ‘registered supporter’.
If Jeremy Corbyn becomes
the Labour leader it creates a completely new situation in British
politics. But if he doesn’t win, the qualitative changes made to the
character of the Labour Party in the past two decades that have
blocked off the avenues for democratic participation mean that the
recent membership influx is not likely to be retained. Either way,
the task will be to organise the forces that have been ignited by
the Corbyn campaign to fight against the pro-capitalist politicians
of all parties, including at the ballot box.