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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