Adios

Many years ago I was a somewhat inactive member of a small, ultra-left group. In the flesh they were nice, supportive and very comradely. And thanks to their then relatively well-known publication, had built up a sizeable readership covering disputes inside other far left organisations. They also had a logical and consistent project: the refoundation of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and the route to success was principled unity between the main fragments of the revolutionary left. Their vision of the CPGB was a democratic centralist party along the lines of what the Bolsheviks were prior to the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party. That is a party united in action but operating with a culture of open debate and polemic, replete with factions and the rest. This proved an attractive proposition to a layer of militants, and indeed the cpgb - for it is they - were able to build up some political capital among the wider left as advocates for the Socialist Alliance movement, if it can be called that, in the late 90s and early 00s.

I took out membership in 2001 (I think), and by that point had been reading the Weekly Worker for four years. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent there was a weird cycle in the group's behaviour: they would undertake an initiative, attract a bit of interest, and then quickly piss it up the wall with ridiculously provocative behaviour. In the first issues I read, they were debating their impact on the 1997 referendum campaign for setting up the Scottish parliament. Rather than voting no or yes, they set up their own outfit (the Campaign for Genuine Self-Determination) and advocated an active boycott of the polls. A bit of interest was generated, and their small nucleus of organisation north of the border looked poised to fill out beyond the two members of its "Scottish Committee". The cpgb were also advocates for the then Scottish Socialist Alliance (centered on Scottish Militant Labour, which later became the Scottish Socialist Party), but very quickly spoiled their relations with SML and other leftists. This was because in their polemics they insisted on characterising SML comrades as national socialists. Not in the Nazi sense, of course, but as leftists committed to a variance of socialism-in-one-country-ism. Naturally, SML'ers were not impressed, and neither was the core of the cpgb's outfit in Scotland - especially when group guru Jack Conrad, in the most tone deaf manner imaginable, defended its use as perfectly reasonable and had a healthy pedigree among the grey beards *innocent face*. Burnout was one reason why the Scottish comrades decamped, but neither was it helped by their having to face animosity from their would-be partners and allies on the left.

Later on, as new comrades were attracted to the 'party' via their unity work they would drop polemical bombs almost designed to test newcomers' loyalties. One particularly egregious example was a bizarre obsession with the abolition of the age of consent laws, which caused no end of grief for the new comrades it had not long recruited on the infamous UK Left Network. Or unnecessarily spiky polemics. Or one bizarre episode where left unity feelers between the cpgb and the Alliance for Workers Liberty - ostensibly organised around the same 'open' principles - were destroyed because of a mix up over a billing at a public meeting attended by one man and his dog in a church hall in Leeds, an episode which saw the cpgb lose members to the AWL. This cycle, which I saw repeated a couple of times after I left before losing interest in their doings was typical of a certain kind of behaviour you see on some parts of the far left: provocation, boneheadedness, and a complete absence of tactical and strategic nous. No wonder the likes of the cpgb are no bigger now than 20 years ago.

This brings us to the case of Jackie Walker, who has just received her marching orders from the Labour Party. This has caused a bit of a flap with declarations of solidarity on Twitter and all kinds of hand-wringing. Some of that support, shall we say, should set alarm bells ringing. But let's be honest and get real. The behaviour of "comrade" Walker has been harmful to the Corbyn project.

Walker has been expelled on the grounds of "prejudicial and grossly detrimental behaviour against the party". In case you need reminding, this isn't because she "criticised Israel" or some such nonsense, but because she has taken part in deliberately provocative and damaging behaviour. Imagine turning up at an event designed to tackle anti-semitism at Labour Party conference and, in full glare of the hostile media spotlight, to argue the toss over who Holocaust Memorial Day should be commemorating. Or pretending her dog-whistling comments about Jews financing the slave trade were entirely innocent and academic. And there's stuff that weren't heard in the charges against her, like attacking Momentum's decision to campaign against Gilad Atzmon, weird conspiracy theorising on public fora about Jon Lansman and his, nudge nudge, puppet mastery and "links" to Tel Aviv, defending Ken Livingstone's comments about Zionism, and the rest. While Walker has subsequently attracted a great deal of racist abuse herself, none of that excuses the fact that she has used her position, first as vice chair of Momentum, and then as a person of interest in Labour's anti-semitism wars, to ratchet up the tension, deepen controversy and damage the party and movement she supposedly cares about. This is not the behaviour of someone who wants to be helpful to the left, and certainly not of anyone deserving our solidarity against disciplinary action by the party.

The truth of the matter is ultra lefts of the Walker stripe are irritants at best and, at worst, useful idiots for the enemies of Corbynism and the labour movement. Funnily - and coincidentally - the cpgb and Walker happen to co-habit the same micro-campaign, Labour Against the Witch-Hunt. Birds of a feather and all that. As sectarians in the truest sense, their cracked ideas and provocations are far more important than the collective and the common approach. If they do know how badly their actions and behaviour reflects on and exasperates their comrades, they don't care. Winding their necks in and behaving responsibly, of trading in the infantile politics of provocation for the grown-up politics of persuasion is, it seems, far too much to ask and expect. Fine. People are quite welcome to peddle their incontinent narcissism as they always have done - just not in the Labour Party.