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.

The ego of Peter Tatchell

My most persisting memory of Peter Tatchell is from a counter-demonstration against the EDL, who at the height of their strength were trying to march past the East London Mosque. Tatchell's helpful contribution to this was to turn up with a placard denouncing 'far right Islamists'. I thought he was a twat.

Now, 'Islamist' is a worse than useless political description, but I no doubt agree with Tatchell that the people who I presume are his targets - fundamentalist, patriarchal, homophobes - need to be stopped. Politics, however, isn't simply about having the right ideas and saying the right thing. It's about doing this in a concrete political situations with due attention to context. In other words, it's about doing this as recognising that your fellow participants are human beings rather than robots. The importance of this is easy to forget if you are, say, a white man with ready access to the media.

If you're a member of a besieged community under immediate attack from fascists, on the other hand, you might wonder why on earth Tatchell felt the need to do something that might look like qualifying or nuancing his support for you. Perhaps you yourself have some ideas, on homosexuality say, that would fall within the remit of Tatchell's condemnation - plenty of people do (or all faiths and none). Or perhaps you have some sympathy for Islamist politics; given the slipperiness of the term it's easy enough. What might move you more towards Tatchell's type of politics would be a display of unconditional solidarity against the immediate threat, leading to conversations based on the relationship of trust this kind of solidarity can create. The intervention picture above would, if anything, push you in the other direction.

Fast forward to today. Jeremy Corbyn was giving a speech on violence against women. And then this happened:

Now, I think the left needs to be able to criticise Corbyn, and I think the cult of personality that some have for him actually undermines his leadership. I also think Corbyn has been naive on Syria - calling for 'diplomatic' responses, for instance (as though either Assad or Daesh would engage in meaningful diplomacy), and being insufficiently strong in his condemnation of Russian attacks in the region. This is the legacy of the dual influence of pacifism and Stalinism on the Labour left, and needs addressing. But once again, it's not simply a question of what one says, there remains the matters of how and where one one says it.

Questions might reasonably be asked about attacking Corbyn at such a vulnerable time, with his leadership under renewed attack in the wake of the Sleaford by-election result. Admittedly Green supporter Tatchell might not care too much about this: one way the heckling could have been reported is 'Politician heckled by member of rival party'. But above all else, whatever you have to say, is heckling a speech against violence against women the way to do it?

One thing the Corbyn leadership has undoubtedly been good at is giving prominence to issues that are forgotten by mainstream politics. Mental health is one example. Women's liberation is another. I don't know what he was saying about violence against women, since it hasn't been reported, nor whether I agree with it (or whether, for instance, his approach was carceral). But at least he was talking about the issue. Here was a politician for once talking about an issue that affects millions of lives worldwide. And it is being ignored because of Peter Tatchell.

A working hypothesis: what Peter Tatchell cares about is getting Peter Tatchell in the newspapers. And being a contrarian is a good way to do that. Hey, I'm even writing a blog about him.

A noninertial frame

Apparently MxV stands for 'momentum times velocity'. This is most likely a bad physics joke gone wrong. The more alarming thought is that somebody at Momentum head office thinks that it sounds down with the kids. People who believe this kind of thing also think that the kids in question say things like 'down with the kids'. We are at this point millimetres away from the organisational equivalent of dad dancing.

The internet you see is a double edged sword. At once a means of communication without parallel and fertile forum for political ideas and campaigns, and yet also a new occasion for surveillance, control, and - less seriously but more irritatingly - gimmicky naffness of the highest order, the technology needs to be handled with care in order to be an asset to an organisation.

It is perfectly in order then that Momentum's National Committee, meeting last week for the first time in too long, scrutinised and rejected the Standing Committee's plans for an on-line conference, with One Member One Vote, to be managed through the MxV system. Instead there will be a delegate conference, in line with the norms of the labour movement. This will allow genuine meaningful debate at a local level, with everyone getting their say in a way the respects them as an agent, able to contribute to arguments within an organisation, rather than simply a passive clicker of a mouse button. It will also prevent the centralisation and leadership control to which the more plebiscitary alternative would be prone, and avoids frustration by technological hiccup.

It was the right decision. National Committee member Laura Murray doesn't agree. Reported by the Guardian today she hands our opponents on the right the opportunity to repeat the tedious line about Trotskyist infiltrators. Quite incredibly, moreover, she claims that the Alliance for Workers Liberty - an organisation which doesn't have enough members to launch a coup in the Inverness branch of the Crewe Alexandra Supporters Club - is plotting to unseat Jon Lansman.

I happen to think that Jon Lansman's role within Momentum is quite unhealthy and inimical to the organisation doing everything it needs to do, particularly outside of London and amongst working class voters disillusioned with Labour. That's beside the point, however. What on earth incited this vitriol in Murray?

You'll need to read her blog. Leaving aside the unhelpful elision of OMOV with the internet-conference idea, there is an attempt to portray the division as being along generational and sectarian lines. Forward thinking, urbane, and inclusive young people wanted MxV. Conservative factional elderly Trotskyists wanted a delegate conference. As far as the debate in Momentum goes, this is nonsense. Not being based in London, I have the privilege of being involved in an incredibly active, diverse, and energetic local Momentum group with a wide age-span. It overwhelmingly backed a delegate conference, as did our regional representatives. This was because people, having experienced grassroots democracy, being involved in the labour movement, and listening to the arguments were not convinced by the Momentum leadership's case for MxV.

Partly, I think Laura's viewpoint is distorted by her being London-based. I can well imagine that London Momentum meetings feel more like a far-left talking shop than anything useful. But London bias is indicative of a deeper problem that goes to the heart of the current problems in Momentum. It can be seen in the, uncannily Blair-like, assumption that the leadership know what 'people', especially 'young people', want. The upset at the weekend's vote reflects a professionalised polite elite whose role in the organisation has been scuppered. It has this in common with some recent outbursts within the Labour Party.

Momentum will remain relevant and interesting to the extent that it is a genuine grassroots movement run by its members, rather than by a London based leadership of political hacks. That leadership not getting things its own way over conference is a welcome sign. The priorities now are twofold: making sure that conference defends and extends democracy within the organisation, and - much more importantly - building Momentum at local levels.

For the record, momentum times velocity equals twice kinetic energy. That might win you a pub quiz one day.

Defending repetitive beats

This weekend 6Music have been celebrating twenty years of rave. I do not like rave music. It took me a couple of decades to admit this to myself. You see I was politicised by the Major government's Criminal Justice Act. I'd been brought up in a left-wing family, had the right kind of ideas about things and had read the Usborne Guide To Politics. But the first time I did anything political was in response to the then Criminal Justice Bill.

In part this was because my then girlfriend was a bit of a hippy and cared deeply about hunt sabbing and roads protests, both threatened by the Act. Eager to impress, I followed her to meetings and lapped up leaflets condemning governmental attacks on things I dimly understood. Quite apart from this youthful romance, however, my own indignation was fired by the news that the Bill would effectively ban rave parties. I had no idea what a rave party was, but they sounded fun, and I was not going to allow the Tories to stop them.

As it turns out, I feel about rave music much as I do about repeatedly banging my head against a block of concrete. Add this to the list of my contrarian views about the music of the period. Yet this really isn't that important. There are plenty of things that I don't like, from Coldplay through to those disappointing wrapped up chocolate biscuits you get in Christmas assortment packs; I don't think the state should ban them. Not even Coldplay.

So I'm proud of my inept teenage activism. The CJA was a nasty, repressive piece of legislation, targeting not only partygoers, but protesters and travellers. It strengthened police powers - the power of arbitrary stop and search, racist in effect and too often in motivation, and the power to retain intimate body samples. For all the campaign against it was a failure, it brought together a wide range of people - from the music industry to grassroots campaigns, environmentalists, travellers' rights groups, and the organised left. Those at the present time who talk about transforming Corbyn's Labour into a social movement could learn a lot from it.

Who's afraid of Diane Abbott?

So Corbyn's new Shadow Cabinet has been announced and Diane Abbott is now Shadow Home Secretary.

This is, on any sensible reckoning, a good thing. Leaving aside, although we shouldn't, the fact that two of the three senior offices of state are now shadowed by women, Diane is an asset to the Labour Party. Articulate, and sometimes masterly in her parliamentary interventions, she has been a consistent voice against racism and in favour of immigrants' rights more generally. This record matters now more than ever. A disgracefully xenophobic government is trampling on the victories of recent decades in its attacks on migrants, overseas students, and even non-UK nationals working as government advisors. It is shameful that the PLP's prioritising of attacking Corbyn over exploiting Tory divisions allowed May to respond to the referendum result in this way. But given that it did, Abbott is the person to respond.

Yet she gets ridicule of a sort not thrown at any other politician from one of the main parties. Leaving aside the dregs of the internet, who are fond of accusing her of 'racism against white people', as though that were a thing, people who fancy themselves as political commentators don't take well to her. "Even you can't take this seriously": a dyed-in-the-wool liberal complained about the appointment on a friend's Facebook wall.

The left joins in its own way. I don't mean the kind of socially and humanly challenged leftist who can't get their head round the idea that Abbott might be friendly with the odd Tory. I mean the way her undoubted mistakes are remembered and regurgitated in a manner that is not the case with any other Labour MP. Reformist politicians will be reformist politicians: perfection is too high a bar to set. Disappointment is inevitable this side of the end of capitalism. You need to go for the best of the bunch, and Abbott is amongst them. Yet people who seem to understand this in the case of other figures - including much, much, more problematic ones (Ken Livingstone, for instance) - seem uncomprehending in the case of Diane.

What is it about Diane that attracts this, in a way that so many of her colleagues don't? I'm stumped.

Anyway, here's a picture of Diane Abbott:

Jackie Walker suspended

Jackie Walker has been suspended from the Labour Party for saying that 'she had not found a definition of antisemitism [she] could work with' and, seemingly also for calling for the inclusion of other genocides in Holocaust Memorial Day celebrations (something that has already happened). Many people within the labour movement are applauding the suspension, including figures from its left-wing. In fact, a spokesperson for Momentum is reported as saying that the organisation is looking to exclude Walker - as a Momentum member myself, I am keen to know how this has been decided, who these spokespeople are, and to whom they are accountable. If nothing else, this sorry episode serves as a reminder that Momentum stands in urgent need of democratisation.

I do not support Walker's suspension. This will no doubt prove controversial, and that is entirely understandable. People are rightly worried about anti-Semitism on the left and in wider society, and do not want to be seen to be sitting lightly to this growing and grotesque racism. This case however stands at the complex intersection of two racisms and the internal politics of the Labour Party and deserves careful thought.

Jackie Walker, a lifelong and courageous campaigner against racism who has written a moving and very personal account of one woman - her mother's - experience of the Windrush migration, is herself of Jewish heritage. She has a consistent history of taking a stand against the far right and their targeting of Jews and other minorities. She is in no way an anti-Semite. In the current pressure cooker environment of the Labour Party that truth, which should be obvious, requires stating firmly. Does that make her comments wise? Not in my opinion, although I'll say something about context in a moment. Nor, however, were those comments anti-Semitic. To say something else that should be obvious, Walker's claim that she had not found a good definition of anti-Semitism is not an assertion that there is no such thing as anti-Semitism. And a context in which the charge of anti-Semitism is quite cynically and disgraceful being used as a weapon in the internal politics of the Labour Party, definitions matter. Nor does tactlessness or ignorance regarding Shoah commemorations constitute anti-Semitism. Jackie Walker is not a professional politician; mistakes made in a tense and hostile situation deserve to be treated with sympathy.

It matters, you see, who is speaking; the power relations which frame a context of speaking cannot be ignored. Jackie Walker is a black woman who has been subject to vicious invasions of privacy, press intrusion, and hostility in recent months. She is not a powerful person; she is an activist trying to work through the relationship between two racisms, each of which is not an abstract matter for her, but rather a threat to be both feared and fought. She was speaking to a hostile audience. This last point might not be obvious, indeed the suggestion that something called the 'Jewish Labour Movement' is a hostile audience might sound problematic in itself. Now, the Jewish Labour Movement is not, as its name might suggest, an organisation for all Jews within the labour movement. It is an affiliate of the World Labour Zionist Movement and an enthusiastic supporter of the state of Israel. Anti-Zionist Jews are effectively excluded from the organisation, which has a particular political agenda, and one to which Walker is opposed. Good socialists disagree about the issue of Israel, and I don't want to rehearse that particular debate now. But Walker was not amongst political friends, and was facing hostile questioning of a type she lacks the professional training to face.

The accusation of anti-Semitism is being mobilised by the right as a way of attacking Jeremy Corbyn and the movement that supports him. A dangerous and cynical tactic, this undermines the fight against anti-Semitism. The left should think very carefully before helping in this; we should at least make ourselves more sensitive to the possibility of alternative perspectives.