Tuesday 29 March 2022

Expelling the AWL

Energy gas prices through the roof. A cost of living crisis the Tories won't do anything about. A mass sacking that has aroused condemnation of the employer, even from Tory benches. A police investigation into law breaking in Downing Street. Suspect links between the government and the favours they've rendered to Russian oligarchs. And the small matter of a shooting war on NATO's borders that's seen the shelling of a nuclear power station, almost routine talk of using biological and chemical weapons, and nuclear threats lobbed around like Molotov cocktails in Mariupol. If that wasn't enough, the pandemic killed 300 more Britons in the last 24 hours and the government are scrapping free testing from, appropriately, April Fool's Day.

Which of these issues have Labour settled on? What has occupied the time of Labour's ruling National Executive Committee as it met on Tuesday afternoon? Building solidarity with Ukrainian trade unions? Finalising hard edged messaging to exploit the multiple crises exploding across our attention spans? No, it was something more important than all of these things: expelling three irrelevant groups and their supporters from the party.

Dark moments aren't without their high farce and the NEC motion to expel, which passed by sizeable margins, was a proper hoot. Readers might recall when the Labour right came for, among others, Socialist Appeal last summer. In true Kafkaesque style, the ban was applied retrospectively. Anyone interviewed in their publication prior to the NEC ruling came under suspicion of not possessing the correct thought and were turfed out as well. This time, the successful motion defined support for the Alliance for Workers Liberty as appearing in their paper or speaking at AWL events. With the added caveat "excluding debates with AWL members". Which was bolted on to protect arch rightwinger Luke Akehurst, who has shared AWL platforms in the past.

Why this and why now? If you believe the Labour right's self-serving theory of victory, the party can only win office if it's seen to be publicly flogging and victimising the left. This persuades the punters Labour's a safe bet and the votes will follow. And with Labour's polling in reverse and threatening to fall behind the Tories again, the logic of the theory tells us it might help firm up a layer of swing voters. Which is nonsense, of course. What are the real reasons for the move? One is petty spite. No trend in politics in any of the parties is as vindictive and petty-minded as the Labour right, and clogging up NEC time with a motion to get shot a group whose membership is between 120 and 150 typifies their behaviour. The tiny handful of right wing branch secretaries, CLP officers, and frustrated candidates who had their nose rubbed in it by the AWL's organising efforts these last six years are toasting their great victory tonight. There's also some substitutionism going on. Being unable to affect the course of events thanks to the uselessness of the Labour leader and his top team, a bit of bloodletting for factional advantage's sake is no bad thing.

The AWL and their co-expellees, the Socialist Labour Network and Labour Left Alliance, aren't weighty organisations. Even with the disastrous drop off in membership since Keir Starmer was elected, the organising capacity of these outfits doesn't count for much. Instead, what does count is the warning this sends to the remaining left wing membership: stay in your lane, don't get ideas about organising seriously, do not exercise socialist or, for that matter, independent thought, toe the party line. Accept this state of affairs and you'll be allowed to deliver leaflets praising NATO and Labour's PFI scheme for wind turbines.

What else the expulsions say, despite the bullish arrogance of the Labour right, is how brittle their handle on the situation is. We're not about to see another left insurgency wash through the party and clear out the scabs and time servers existent at all levels, but that doesn't mean the Labour right don't fear it happening again in the future. The efforts at centralising the party, protecting its favoured politicians, candidates, and apparatchiks, and abiding by the rule book when it suits are about sewing it up, effectively sealing its elite layers from popular pressure and protecting their positions. They do it bureaucratically because they don't have the stomach, let alone the politics for a straight up political struggle. Their problem, and one for Labour as a whole, is this is symptomatic of a leadership running on empty.

If the Labour leadership and its Trotfinder generals in the party don't have the confidence to do political battle with tiny sects on the fringes of the labour movement, how can they be expected to have the nous and conviction of purpose to take on the Tories ... and win?

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3 comments:

Phil said...

Accept this state of affairs and you'll be allowed to deliver leaflets praising NATO and Labour's PFI scheme for wind turbines.

The thought of leaving is very tempting at the moment, not least because I'd be able to give our councillors a piece of my mind - not least about the state of our local party. I had no idea before I joined the party quite what a political force careerism and timeserving can be - these people stand for nothing except getting to be in charge, and when they are in charge they stand for nothing except staying there.

Anonymous said...

All too true Phil ! The , always relatively small, organised 'Left' amongst the general membership is truly smashed and cowed now . Only Momentum really remains as a supposed 'left' organisation . And that is mainly organised nowadays by covert or actual AWL members , so what happens there ? Though I suspect the once 40,000 strong Momentum is nowadays a hollowed out husk with few ordinary members , except 'Left' opportunist wannabe MPs and councillors.

The Labour 'Left truly brought on this disaster themselves - siding decisively in the majority with the Labour Right's uncritical pro EU arrogance - and together in 2019 backing the reneging of Labour's 2017 Manifesto promise to "respect the EU Referendum result" , and the Mandelson/Blair 'People's Vote' con trick - which destroyed Corbyn's base both in the Party, and amongst the Key 'Red Wall' and wider working class vote. So now the arrogant, middle class, identity politics-obsessed , crap pseudo 'Left' politics of the actually merely Left Liberal Labour Left has borne its predictable poisoned fruit under the triumphant Labour Right's nuLabour2 regime , ie, mass expulsion in phased cohorts !

And the response of the PLP's supposed 'Socialist Campaign Group' of MP's ? keeping their servile heads well down, and under the cynical guise of ' waiting for better future days - to yet again shift Labour Leftwards ' they beg Left members not to leave , whilst they just carry on taking their huge salaries and expenses , as fully tamed pet leftie MP's (who regardless may well be squeezed out as candidates before the next General Election - on some bogus pretext or other , a la Corbyn) . What a spineless craven, crew they are.

I don't know what Labour's current real membership is , but the much rumoured near bankruptcy of this once mighty Party, and the failure to turn up of Mandelson's promised 'returning and new Big Hitter mega billionaire funders ', seriously suggests that Labour will soon follow the once equally mighty
French Socialist Party and the Greek PASOK, into financial and electoral oblivion. And yes, I do know the advantage of our FPTP electoral system to maintain even a zombie Party like New Labour, but the political vacuum created by Labour's adoption of a totally identical policy 'offer' to The Tories, will eventually be filled by some new radical political formation . The trouble is, as across Europe, that may well be from the populist Far Right.

dermot said...

"And the response of the PLP's supposed 'Socialist Campaign Group' of MP's ? keeping their servile heads well down, and under the cynical guise of ' waiting for better future days - to yet again shift Labour Leftwards ' they beg Left members not to leave , whilst they just carry on taking their huge salaries and expenses , as fully tamed pet leftie MP's (who regardless may well be squeezed out as candidates before the next General Election - on some bogus pretext or other , a la Corbyn) . What a spineless craven, crew they are."

Well said. Whatsisname and Diane Abbot walking away from the antiwar demo when 'Sir' Keir DPP threatened expulsion sums them up. I have no idea why anyone left would waste a penny of their paycheck or a second of their time on these wastrels. Let them go the way of their cousins in Irish Labour party, currently rotting on a well-earned 3%, and falling.