With the Collapse of the Corbyn Project there is a clear choice between Building a Socialist Movement or Retreating into the Politics of Sectarianism
Ken Loach absolutely DESTROYS Keir Starmer (doubledown.news)
Starmer
and Evans are conducting a scorched earth policy inside the Labour Party. They
are determined to complete what Blair began, making the Labour Party safe for
capitalism. That is why, on July 20th Labour Against the Witchhunt and
Labour-in-Exile-Network were proscribed. It is on that basis that Ken Loach, Jo
Bird and many others have been expelled.
Any
socialist of note, indeed anyone who sticks their head above the parapet, is
likely to be expelled. But whereas the Labour Party is now a ‘hostile
environment’ to socialists, racists like Trevor Philips (‘Muslims are
a nation within a nation’) and Luke Stanger (‘travellers
are a nasty blight on society’) are quietly readmitted to the Labour Party.
Anti-racists and socialists are expelled on the pretext that they ‘undermine the Labour Party’s ability to
campaign against racism’ even though Labour under Starmer has done nothing about
racism.
Recent
expulsions include Graham Bash, Editor of Labour Briefing with 53 years of
membership, and Cllr. Jo Bird, both of whom are Jewish. Pamela Fitzpatrick, a
much respected Councillor in Harrow and a member of the Campaign for Labour
Party Democracy has also been expelled. Pamela made a number of complaints about
people like Stanger abusing and harassing her and the Labour Party’s response
has been to expel the victim and readmit the abusers.
Very
few politicians tell the unvarnished truth but never can there be two leaders
of the two main parties, Starmer and Johnson, who suffer from truthophobia. Both of them, quite
literally, have an allergic reaction to telling the truth.
As
Skwawkbox noted
‘Just days after Keir Starmer told a
Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) gathering that his would be a party for all Jews’,
Jo Bird, a Jewish councillor in Wirral was expelled. Indeed if you are Jewish in
the Labour Party you are 5
times more likely to be expelled for ‘anti-Semitism’ than if you are non-Jewish! This is the parallel universe of the Labour
Right. Anti-racist Jews aren’t Jews.
The
blame for this state of affairs can be laid at the feet of Jeremy Corbyn and Lansman’s
Momentum. It was they who accepted the false ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative of the right-wing,
that Labour was ‘overrun by anti-Semitism’. It was they who supported the IHRA
misdefinition of anti-Semitism. It was Corbyn and Lansman who supported the
expulsion of Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson
and myself.
Starmer and Johnson leapt to the defence of Israel's racist Ambassador
We are now seeing exactly what the Right meant by ‘anti-Semitism’ – a defence of the nakedly racist Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely and the expulsion of Jewish anti-racists from the Labour Party.
Hotovely was the person who, as Chair of the Knesset’s Womens Committee, invited the overtly fascist Lehava group to give testimony. Lehava, like the Jewish Nazis they are, oppose Jews and Arabs having personal/sexual relationships and they go hunting for Arabs in ‘Jewish areas’ in order to beat them up. This is the vile creature that Starmer and Angela Rayner defended.
Starmer
was elected on the basis of 10
Pledges, which were based on the Corbyn Manifesto. Since his election he
has abandoned every single pledge. Pledge number 1 was to reverse the Tory cuts
to Corporation Tax. When the Tories did
increase it Starmer opposed
it!
Ken Loach Interview with The Canary
Jo
Bird spoke for many when she said that
‘I’m delighted
the Labour Party has expelled me today. I’m free from fear about speaking and
meeting with other people.... This racist Labour Party is dying as a vehicle
for social justice.’
Ken
Loach said
of his expulsion that ‘it’s like leaving
an abusive relationship’.
As
thousands continue to stream out of the Labour Party and hundreds, if not
thousands, fall foul of the witchhunt, a responsibility rests upon 2 of the 4
proscribed groups, Labour-in-Exile-Network
and Labour Against
the Witchhunt to organise, both those who are still inside the Labour Party
and those who are now outside the party into a coherent socialist movement as
opposed to a separate party.
Whereas Gordon Brown went from Stalin to Mr Bean, Starmer has gone from Mr Bean to Stalin
That
is why the two All Members Meetings (All Members Meeting) this Friday and
Saturday of LIEN and LAW are so important and I urge people to attend. At these meetings motions will be proposed
that the 2 organisations should merge. If you are not already a member of one
or both groups then you should join now. You can join LIEN here and LAW here.
Luke Stanger, a vile racist and friend of Hove's right-wing MP Peter Kyle (Vice Chair of LFI) is readmitted to the Labour Party
LIEN’s
Steering Committee has voted in favour of merger or consolidation of both
organisations, since LIEN was in many ways an outgrowth of LAW. At one time 3
members of the LAW SC were also on LIEN’s SC . However LAW’s Steering Committee,
under the influence of Labour
Party Marxists, has come out against a merger with only myself, out of 6
members, in favour of merging with LIEN.
Trevor Phillips - another genuine racist readmitted to the Labour Party
At the
LAW AMM on July 24 a motion was passed
to ‘explore the merging of Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour In Exile
Network’. Moved by Tina Werkmann (who has since changed her mind) the motion
read:
This meeting believes that:
1. Unity is strength. While there are
obvious political differences in the history of both groups, the composition of
both memberships and some campaigning priorities, we believe that both groups
have enough in common politically to justify a possible merger.
2. Such a merger would send out a strong
signal to many of those who are feeling disheartened and politically
disoriented by the current trajectory of the Labour Party.
3. It might encourage more people and
groups to join our merged organisation.
4.
This meeting therefore resolves to start exploring a merger process
between both organisations...
At a
joint LLA, LAW and LIEN members and supporters meeting on October 14 a motion
moved by Tina Werkmann stated:
Unity is strength. While there are
obvious political differences in the history of the three groups, the composition
of their memberships and some campaigning priorities, we believe that
they have enough in common politically to start bringing their forces closer
together by setting up joint campaigns, joint educational events and joint
meetings of the respective leaderships.
Amendment
number 8 moved by me stating that
A merger of LAW and
LIEN in the light of the recent proscriptions and attacks on the left in the
Labour Party would be extremely welcome
was
passed by 43-25. Amendment 6 by Diana Isserlis calling explicitly for a new
socialist movement passed by 44-31.
Amendment
4 moved by Roger Silverman calling for
the establishment of a common
transitional movement uniting socialist activists both within and outside the
Labour Party
was
passed by 61-15.
Amendment 3 moved by Diana Isserlis calling for a new
organisation to
co-operate with forces inside and outside the
Labour Party, pursue campaigns linked with the wider socialist movement, build
a socialist movement including those inside and outside the Labour Party
was passed by 45-26 and Amendment 2 from me calling for the
new combined organisation ‘to organise
shadow CLPs to include ex-members and current members of the Labour Party’ was
passed by 54-11. By way of contrast a
wrecking amendment from LPM, deleting half of the motion was heavily defeated
by 58-12.
The amended motion was passed by 63-11. In other words except
for the hard core supporters of LPM just about everybody else agreed with the
strategy of merger.
The LPM,
which is the Communist Party of Great Britain, which produces the Weekly Worker.
It is a small group of around 30-40 members which has stayed approximately the
same size since it was formed from The
Leninist over 30 years ago.
Their
strategy, if it can be called that, is to form a mass revolutionary Marxist party which
will, with the support of the unions, force the Labour Party into becoming a ‘united front of a special kind’. In the meantime LPM simply writes off the
hundreds of thousands of people who joined the Labour Party after the victory
of Jeremy Corbyn and the millions who voted for the 2017 manifesto as having
the ‘wrong’ politics. There is a complete failure to understand what the Corbyn
project represented and how to build on it.
LPM is
therefore fiercely opposed to such a merger or indeed any attempt to build the
left other than temporary alliances with already existing left groups like CLPD
or LRC in the Labour Party. It dismisses all attempts to build anything outside
the Labour Party as a Labour Party Mark II.
At the
November 9 Steering Committee Stan Keable submitted the following motion:
The LAW steering committee
resolves to withdraw from the recent joint meetings with the steering
committees of Labour in Exile Network and Labour Left Alliance, and to end
LAW’s participation in joint all members and supporters meetings.
The joint steering
committee meetings, while nominally favouring continuing the struggle in the
Labour Party, have in fact been dominated by proposals to orientate away from
Labour, to give up on the struggle within Labour, and to attempt to create an
alternative movement or party based on the failed politics of Corbynism, aiming
to keep together the thousands of disillusioned comrades at all costs. Far from
rearming and rallying the left, we believe such a project will only add to the
widespread demoralization and disorientation of the Labour left that already
exists.
However, we wish
those comrades well, and will seek to co-operate with them wherever possible.
Meanwhile, LAW has a tremendous job on its hands in fighting the ongoing
witch-hunt.
Unsurprisingly
at the LAW All Members Meeting this Saturday LPM will move Motion 2 which is titled: Reject
liquidation of LAW! Keep the focus on Labour!
The merger or consolidation of LAW and
LIEN is called ‘liquidation’ a favourite word in sections of the left. The
motion is the height of unreality. It fails to take account that the atmosphere
of McCarthyism and vitriol inside the Labour Party, the harassment and bullying
of activists has produce a situation where over 150,000 members have simply
left with thousands more likely to do so.
It is crystal
clear that there is little or nothing that LAW can do to combat the present
witchhunt. As Ken Loach said ‘democracy
is dead inside the Labour Party.’ In a situation where Labour Party apparatchiks
manipulate and make up the rules to get rid of their enemy, where nobody on the
left can even become a councillor or MP anymore, it is impossible to fight the
witchhunt. There are no hearings before panels anymore because there are no
hearings. Thanks to Corbyn and Formby fast-track expulsions have become the
norm.
In the
present situation the question is whether we can build a new movement from
amongst those who were part of the Corbyn movement. The LPM prefers to inhabit
a sectarian ghetto of 30-40 to the more difficult task of organising with
people who will not always share hard line Marxist politics.
What they
are advocating, behind their talk of Solidarity
with all victims of the Labour witch-hunt! Step up the fight! is nothing
less than an abandonment of any fight whatsoever. Given that virtually no supporters of LPM are even inside the Labour
Party their resolution is pure wind, rhetoric without any purpose.
As LIEN says on its website
The main aim
of the Labour In Exile Network is to keep together all those who were mobilised
and enthused to support Jeremy Corbyn for leader to continue the fight for democracy
and socialism. This includes those who remain in the Labour Party, those who
have been unfairly suspended or expelled in the last five years and those who
have resigned from the Labour Party in despair of the party’s direction of
travel under Keir Starmer and Dave Evans.
There
is nothing whatsoever in this which is incompatible with the aims and purpose
of LAW.
At
the meetings on November 26 and 27 Esther Giles and myself will be moving a motion
calling for the ‘consolidation
of Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour-in-Exile-Network into one
organisation’.
There will therefore be a clear choice facing members as to
whether or not to continue the fight against Starmer, but not necessarily on Labour
Party terrain since that has now become enemy territory.
The stance of LPM raises wider questions. How does the Marxist and
anti-capitalist left build in a situation which is anything but revolutionary.
Is the Bolshevik model the only one for Marxists today? Why is it that there
has been no workers’ revolution since 1917? Is the working class of the West
potentially revolutionary? What is the relevance of modern movements such as Black
Lives Matter to revolutionary change? Does the pending climate catastrophe
dictate a change in tactics and strategy?
However when you are obsessed with what dead Bolsheviks said or
didn’t say a hundred years ago, such questions seem otiose.
Whatever your views please come and have your say and if you are
not a member of both organisations then it’s not too late to join!
Below is an Open
Letter to Members of Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour-in-Exile-Network
from Carel Buxton, Roger Silverman, Esther Giles and myself to
members explaining why we think that a merger of LIEN and LAW is necessary.
Tony Greenstein
