The brakes of ideology

In almost any situation the odds are massively against any radical political movement preserving its radicalism. History is more littered with stories of revolutionaries turned bureaucrats than is a Saturday night high street with beer cans and vomit. The reason for this downbeat truth is remarkably simple: those who join radical movements are products of the very society against which they are fighting, and the dominant ideas in that society are anything but radical. It couldn't be otherwise if society is to persist. No ruler ever ruled without ruling the minds of his subjects. We rage against our reduced pay packets, our closed hospitals, the deportation of our neighbour, and in doing so we catch a glimpse of how the world could be different. Nevertheless, the news we consume (and what gets to count as news in the first place), the jobs we do, the way we understand politics, the way our political organisations are structured, the very language we speak - all of these constrain our idea of what is possible and push us back towards the old world.

So it is with Momentum. The interesting question about this organisation is not so much why Jon Lansman and his cronies launched their power-grab; the answer is one part preservation of left labourism and one part ego, although in the case of a man who has built his career and reputation around left labourism these are not neatly separable. More deserving of attention is why a significant number of people within the organisation have gone along with him. Thinking back a year to some of the events I attended during Momentum's infancy, it seems difficult to imagine the participants meekly doing the bidding of a white male political hack tucked up in a London office. Demonstrations bursting at the seams, discussions full of energy, political campaigns whose participants were diverse in a way that the left had previously failed to be: these did not look like the beginnings of an organisation of passive doorstep-fodder. The students, BAME campaigners, single issue activists, and many others who joined Momentum groups were acutely aware of the corrosive effects of hierarchy. Why didn't they fight against it in greater numbers when it began to manifest itself in their own organisation?

It is tempting to reply that the absence of political education or a culture of ideas in Momentum was to blame. But this is not a real answer, it just pushes the question back one stage - why did people put up with that? At the start so many of them would sign up to slogans about transforming the world, rejecting capitalism, and much else besides. Now a good number of them won't even demand democracy in their own organisation. In saying this I'm not blaming them, I'm posing a puzzle.

The question how the instinct to resist can be transformed into a force for change is the question of left-wing politics, the rest is detail. It is the question of political organisation, and has pretty much been ignored within the British Labour left. Famously averse to the continental affectation that is theory, many members of the labour movement in this country would respond to the suggestion that they give some thought to the relationship between ideas and organisation as though they were Nigel Farage being offered a croque monsieur. In Britain socialists prefer to get on with things and campaign, rather then spend endless hours with books and debates. In the present context this is akin to complaining that the advice to stop and look at a map is a distraction from driving at precisely the moment your car plunges over a cliff.

The problem of organisation would be especially pressing because of the situation of many of Momentum's members even if the tragic rupture of the most inspiring and popular left-wing movements for a generation didn't deserve analysis. Quite apart from the general pressure towards the status quo I was talking about above, millennials aligned to the political left are pulled in two directions. Faced on the one hand with material attacks and uncertainty on a scale unseen since the end of the Second World War, they nonetheless have grown up under Blairism with a model of politics as a consumer choice between particular brands. To join a political party or a campaigning group is, on this model, to be a brand evangelist. The thought of remaining a member of a party whilst seriously dissenting from its public face doesn't enter into the picture - hence Corbyn's backtracking on freedom of movement  is likely to lead to a small exodus. Nor does the prospect of serious debate within a group like Momentum make sense, still less the suggestion that Momentum act as a source of pressure on Corbyn. The retreat of trade unionism and of any meaningful profile for left-wing ideas makes things worse. There appears to be no alternative to the unstable oscillation between effusive radicalism and conformist politics that can be seen all too clearly within Momentum.

Precisely because it's difficult to see how things could have gone differently, it is important that 'we' - by which I mean the left opposition to the imposed constitution - continue to work with people who don't share our opposition. In the short-term, it is only through showing in practice that a reflective commitment to democratic organisation is not only compatible with practical politics, but feeds into it, that we are going to win anyone over. I don't mean - please don't misunderstand me - that we should accept the coup de facto: my position is that the coup is illegitimate, as are the institutions it has established, and that we should continue to look to the NC and CAC for leadership. But our comrades in local groups are not Jon Lansman. We cannot allow the unity, the energy, and the potential of the past couple of years to be entirely wasted.

That is for the short-term. In the long-term serious thought is required about political organisation, ideology, and education. This means that the Labour left has to do something it doesn't like: think.

Momentum: Business as usual fights back

Just over a month ago I was posting about Momentum. As befits the organisation's name, a lot has happened in the time between now and then. A quick Google will fill the reader in if necessary, and I have no intention of using up pixels repeating what has been reported across the British left internet ad nauseam. The news in brief is that Jon Lansman has imposed a constitution on the organisation and that many members are not happy.

Over the coming days local groups will have to work out their positions on the coup, and on what to do next. I have my own view, as will be apparent from the way I'm writing, and I think it's important to defeat what I see as a power grab. But there's a caveat: the way we debate and interact within groups in the hours ahead matters as much as the outcome. Momentum, and the Corbyn movement more generally, is easily the most positive thing to come out of the British left for a generation. It cannot be allowed to go to waste. To this end, the necessary disagreements that lie ahead are ones that ought to be conducted in a comradely fashion, preserving the relationships on which practical solidarity depends, and keeping enough unity within local groups to go forward. This is especially the case because many people in Momentum are new to political action. Seasoned faction fighters would do well to bear this in mind.

If how we conduct the dispute is important, so is understanding it. This is a conflict about labourism, that peculiarly British way of doing working class politics, where the politics of the workplace is outsourced to the trade union movement, with the Parliamentary Labour Party keeping charge of the bulk of business. A strict separation of powers governs the labourist settlement, with trade unions straying into the 'political' being met with disapproval. So too, the PLP preserves its distance from the constituency activists who keep the Party ticking over at local level. If, on this model, political power is distant and insensitive to pressure from below, the devotees of this remote deity receive compensation in the form of the culture of labourism. The Labour Party and unions provide activities, friends and comrades, structure, purpose, and the possibility of office.

Labourism can be left-wing, just so long as it sticks to the rules of the game - politics is for parliament (and not for the streets, still less - God forbid - for 'political' strikes), MPs are important and to be treated with reverence, the 'Labour family' over-rides all other political loyalties. For all that he is the best leader Labour has ever had, and for all that his election would be a momentous step forward, Jeremy Corbyn remains squarely within the labourist consensus (by contrast, Tony Benn was set upon not least because he didn't).

The Corbyn movement, especially in the form of local Momentum groups, however, challenged labourism. It challenged it politically, organising and expressing solidarity with extra-parliamentary action, tying strikes into political agendas. Voices began to be raised about the deselection, and even mandatory reselection, of Labour MPs, turning the assumptions about power within the labour movement on their head. Scarcely less importantly, the movement challenged labourism culturally. More diverse culturally, ethnically and in gender and sexuality terms than anything the British left had ever produced it confronted a Labour establishment that in many localities is monocultural, white, and male.

Why am I writing about labourism? Because some people do well out of left labourism, those who get established positions in organisations, jobs with campaigning organisations or MPs, those who have just enjoyed being immersed in its culture and feel comfortable within it.

The Lansman coup is left labourism fighting back. It is because labourism, for all its undoubted achievements, can never deliver socialism that it would be good were the coup to fail.

And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race - part II

This post follows up my previous one.

English Nationalism

If the austerity project is a relatively old inroad of reaction into popular consciousness, a newer one is a revived English nationalism. I spent polling day and the previous day in Thanet South. The broad left anti-UKIP campaign there did well, and it is fantastic that Farage didn't get elected. However, what Gerry Adams once said of the Provisional IRA applies to Farage's outfit: they haven't gone away you know. The UKIP phenomenon is real. Labour voters switched to UKIP there, elsewhere, and in particular in a number of northern seats, where the party is now in second place. The talk is now of UKIP's 2020  strategy, with the inroads made last night paying dividends in MPs at the next election.

It's entirely possible that UKIP won't exist in five years time. The British right is famously division-prone; the party has lost its leader, and its solitary MP is a loose cannon. Never the less, the UKIP phenomenon will certainly persist. Populist reaction, with a social base combining abandoned working class communities, the insecure middle-class, and elements of the bourgeoisie proper, is here to stay. Its ideological suture is the standard resentful premise that they are out to get what we have, or had. They want our money, our homes, our culture, our history. Underneath, on suspects, is the nagging fear also that they might being enjoying themselves more than we are.

The nature of them is flexible. They could be the European Union, migrants in general, Eastern Europeans, metropolitan liberals, hippies, benefit claimants, the Rothschilds, the Muslims, or the Scots. As is so often the way with ideology, whether or not they are, in fact, screwing us over is entirely independent of the ideological effectiveness of this pattern of thought. Metropolitan liberals are, as it happens, guilty as charged; Muslims, as it happens, are not. But that is not the point. The scapegoat provides a focus for political opposition, and thereby, like its biblical forebear, carries the sins that justice attributes to another - in this case, capital.

The Scots are the latest lucky targets; English nationalism is on the rise. The Scots, you see, want your money. The SNP, in particular, in a startlingly impolite move want political power. Will the subaltern never learn? UKIP both contributed and tapped in to a simmering English resentment, evident already during last autumn's election campaign. It was the Tories, however, that brought an English identity constructed against a Scottish threat into the mainstream. Indeed, as thought to prompt the political slow-learners who deny that anti-Scots racism exists, Boris Johnson warned of a coming Jockalypse.

The genie of English nationalism has been let out of the bottle. There's a lot of talk of 'English votes for English laws', a proposal which in current political context could only mean a shift rightwards south of Alnwick. There will, inevitably, be noise from Billy Bragg and other elements of the eclectic left about the need to resist the politics of English reaction with a 'progressive' English nationalism. This is premised on a basic misunderstanding of the ideological function of Englishness within the current politics of the UK. The nationalism of the dominant nation of a historic imperial power, currently defined in opposition to national autonomy movements within the same state, cannot be won for socialism by a bit of Morris Dancing. What is needed is a different politics altogether. At the time of writing that is nowhere to be seen.




Labour and the crisis of labourism

Which brings us belatedly to Labour. Labourism is dead in Scotland. It is at crisis point in England and Wales. Labour cannot rely on the votes of even a stable proportion of the working class, and that is only likely to get worse as generational profiles shift. Already the Blairite knives are out; journalists are being briefed that Labour lost because it pitched too left (a theory that, to put it mildly, has difficulty incorporating the data of Scotland), and that a move back to the centre-ground is the only way to restore Labour's electoral fortunes. The Labour left is institutionally weak, dispirited, and increasingly afflicted with cynicism. Intellectually, its Marxist elements are often hopelessly in thrall to a vulgar determinism, for which everything is to be explained by the 'low level of class struggle' (as though this were something independent of human agency) and which counsels riding out the tide, preserving 'the movement', by which is understood the Labour Party and the union link.

This last element is likely to come under attack in the wake of a near inevitable Blairite resurgence. Already the implementation of the Collins Report threatens the link. Meanwhile, the leader of Britain and Ireland's biggest union has openly supported Lutfur Rahman and threatened to form a new workers party in the event of the Labour loss that is now a reality. In any case, if the labour movement doesn't break with the party, it may be that the party breaks with the movement. The link has always been a target for the Blairite right.

Only a fool would take any delight in this. The Labour Party, for all its contradictory nature and in spite of the multiple betrayals of its leaders, is a substantial achievement of the British working class. If labourism were finally to die, even though the more excitable leftists will no doubt wax lyrical about 'great new opportunities', over a century of struggle would be laid to rest. Whether that happens, or whether another narrative plays out, the task that falls immediately to the left is the difficult one of at the same time resisting the assault of the Blairites within the party, whilst looking outwards to unions, the new community-based groups, and the extra-Labour left (the unpreparedness of Labour leftists to work with left groups outside the Party has been a serious brake on the British left). It has to become less white, less male, and less prone to mood swings between despair and pollyannaism.

I have to say, the current Labour left is not well equipped to carry this burden. But then we can never make history in circumstances of our own choosing.