#KeepCorbyn: No compromise with the Labour right

From an Editorial in the Socialist newspaper (England and Wales) with additional points on Scotland included

The next few months will decide the fate of the Labour Party. Although he claims to be “as radical as Jeremy”, the leadership challenger Owen Smith is in reality the candidate of all those with a vested interest in keeping the Labour Party a safe, New Labour-style version of the Tories.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Labour was set up 116 years ago by trade unionists, socialists, women suffrage campaigners, the working class co-operative movement, and others, as “our party”. But over the course of 20 years under the leadership of Blair, Brown and Miliband it was completely transformed into another party of big business and the 1% capitalist elite.

Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity message, and support for trade union rights, free education, council housing etc, changed the terms of political debate. Even Tory prime ministers are now forced to speak of “working class families struggling to get by” from the steps of Downing Street!

But because Jeremy Corbyn’s victory offered the hope of change, a showdown with the capitalist establishment and their representatives within the Labour Party was inevitable. Now what are two-parties-in-one are in a desperate fight for control of the Labour brand.

The immediate task is to mobilise for Jeremy Corbyn’s re-election. But also to organise to ensure that this time victory is consolidated by remaking Labour as a working class, socialist party that really can be the voice of the 99%.

The Labour right was never going to accept Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Standing behind them are the capitalist establishment, the 1%, who have benefited enormously from the transformation of Labour into Blair’s New Labour and the domination of political debate by pro- market ideas which that allowed.

While for example, worker’s wages in Britain are still more than 10%?below where they were in 2007/08, the richest 1,000 people in Britain have more than doubled their wealth to £547bn. The New Labour era was good for the elite.

The Labour right are prepared to be ruthless to defend the interests of their establishment backers.

Only the protests of thousands of Labour members and trade unionists secured a narrow majority on the party’s national executive committee (NEC) to stop Jeremy being effectively excluded from the ballot paper.

But this attempted coup having failed, the right went on to plan B limiting the franchise compared to last summer’s election. And for the first time since WWII, all regular party meetings were closed down, removing the chance for ordinary party members to hold anti-Corbyn MPs and councillors to account.

Local parties should defy these edicts and continue meeting, or #KeepCorbyn meetings should be organised independently, including by trade union branches – and involving Corbyn supporters inside and outside the Labour Party.

This dictatorial rule-or-ruin approach gives a glimpse of the type of regime that will operate if Owen Smith were to win. The idea that the social movement developing around Jeremy Corbyn could conduct an effective struggle within the confines of the Labour Party in the event that he is unseated from the leadership is utopian.

Establishment Labour

By the same token, it is clear that if Jeremy Corbyn is re-elected this time his victory must be properly consolidated. This means taking on the main bases of establishment Labour, in the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), the national party apparatus, and locally, the big majority of Labour’s 7,000 councillors.

Challenging the latter will be vital to show in practice what an anti-austerity party really is, in contrast to the actions of the Labour right. It does not mean a party voting for cuts!

The fact is that Labour councils this year will be sacking three times the number of workers who are losing their jobs from the collapse of BHS, denounced by MPs as “the unacceptable face of capitalism”.

If Jeremy Corbyn is re-elected he must organise for Labour councils to defy the Tories cuts, with local parties pressing councillors who refuse to fight to resign. The situation where council Labour groups and not the members decide council policy must be reversed.

Scottish Labour has been devastated electorally, a result of years of Blairite policies and the disastrous approach the party took towards the independence referendum in 2014.

Were a real anti-austerity policy to be adopted by Scottish Labour, which means a refusal to implement cuts and supporting trade unionists fighting back against austerity, this could lay the basis for a recovery. However, Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, has called on Corbyn to stand down as have a majority of Labour MSPs. These actions can only have the effect of deterring working-class people from joining the Labour Party in Scotland.    

Even if Corbyn defeats Owen Smith, Labour would also have to change its opposition to Scottish independence. A refusal to understand that a desire for independence is primarily a working class demand for a way out of the unending attacks they face would consign Labour to an irrelevance.

It would also let the SNP leaders off the hook for their failures to offer a real alternative to austerity.

The national structures of the Labour Party would also need to be opened out and democratised.

To mobilise the maximum possible support, there should be a return to the founding structures of the Labour Party which involved separate socialist political parties coalescing with the trade unions and social movements like women’s suffrage campaigners and the co-operative movement.

Democratic structures

That federal approach applied to today would mean allowing the right of political parties like the Socialist Party and others involved in the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), and anti-austerity Greens, to affiliate to Labour like the Co-op Party.

While mandatory re-selection would allow local parties to replace their MPs at the next general election, more decisive action would need to be taken before then to bring the parliamentary party into line. MPs should have the Labour whip only

if they agree to accept the renewed mandate for Corbyn and his anti-austerity, anti-war policies.

It is necessary to take on the forces in Labour defending the capitalist establishment, not seek “unity” around their agenda. A party of struggle with fewer MPs but a fighting socialist programme, would have a bigger impact in defence of the working class than a party with a couple of hundred MPs but which accepts the policies demanded by capitalism. Winning new support it could regain the seats that may be temporarily held by anti-Corbyn MPs and go on to win a general election.

The right-wing have moved against Jeremy Corbyn and the most important question now is how the social movement that has begun to mobilise in his defence can be organised for the battles to come.