LEFT UNITY - Internal Strife and 'Feminist' Witchhunt

Personal Politics - the Divorce from Reality

Left Unity - the group set up with such  hope and optimism - has fallen foul to the same curse that has historically plagued the socialist and far-left of British politics - Sectarianism.  The belief that one's own petty concerns are of more importance than the wider movement and a belief that changing language and one's own and fellow collaborators consciouness is more important than changing society.

Ken Loach will be joined by Left Unity activists Sharon McCourt and Salman Shaheen below the line. Photograph: Matt Carr/Getty Images

With the Labour Party in crisis, losing its Scottish heartland after campaigning with the Tories in the independence vote, trying to outbid UKIP and agreeing to the Tory’s fiscal strategy i.e.  making the poor pay for the banking crisis, it might be thought that this was the ideal chance for a united left.

The Green Party, however radical it sounds, demonstrates in Brighton what Green parties have always done when they have got into power  – which is run capitalism and try to sound a little bit more radical.  In Germany it was a Green Foreign Minister, Joshka Fischer, who first took German troops into action for the first time since WW2.  Not only do Green Parties believe they can green capitalism rather than change it but their attitude is to accept that the State is a neutral instrument of power rather than a means of coercion and repression.  Green Parties accept that it neutral whilst making a few tame proposals to reform it.  In Brighton, a Green Councillor, Ben Duncan, who responded to a march through by troops by calling them ‘hired killers’ has been the subject of a witch-hunt by both New Labour and the Green Party who have removed him from all committees.  Yet what else is an army designed to do but kill?  They might sometimes be portrayed as ‘peace keepers’ but their real role is to kill and suppress on behalf of the Crown.

'The Labour manifesto of 1945 promised 'a socialist party and proud of it'. The Labour government of ’45 chose not to realise that ambition.'

Yet Left Unity, far from making its voice (does it have one?) heard has engaged in a bout of navel gazing and constitutionalism.  Set up with the money of Ken Loach and presided over by Kate Hudson, Andrew Burgin and a few other luminaries of the left, it has repeated the depressing record of the British left's failures.

In June I resigned from Left Unity since ‘safe spaces’ and ‘intersectionalism’ (yes, what’s that) were more important than bread and butter issues.   If ever there was a golden opportunity for the Left it is now.  The deeper reasons for the collapse of Left Unity (down from three to two thousand members rather than attaining the five thousand it intended). lie in the collapse of the far-left's traditional base - the organised working class and the trade unions.

My resignation was mocked by the likes of Andrew Coates who reported it as Tony Greenstein Resigns from Left Unity: World’s Progressives Shaken.

'Comrade Tony Greenstein’s resignation from Left Unity sent shock waves last month throughout the world progressive, labour, and socialist movement.  The news was published in the august pages of the Weekly Worker on the 5th of June.'

People today have not moved to the Right.  Rail renationalisation, bankers and their bonuses, multi-nationals avoiding paying tax, attacks on the disabled, bedroom tax, cutting working tax credits, having a much higher minimum wage are just some of the policies where they are to the left of Labour but in the absence of a party that organises the dispossessed and poor, then easy solutions such as blaming migrants, Europe and ‘scroungers’ seem attractive.  There is a lesson there for the Left but the likes of the International Socialist Group, whose hotchpotch policies have ruined Left Unity, are unlikely to learn it.

Tony Greenstein

Labour Heads for Electoral Disaster

Those Who Want to Replace Miliband Miss the Point - It's the Strategy that Needs Changing

That speech

New Labour MPs Panic as their Seats Are in Danger – But None Advocate a Change in Strategy

When I posted an article in July this year saying that there was no way Miliband could win the election, a lot of my friends told me I was wrong.  On the contrary, given the disarray of the Tories under Cameron and the threat from UKIP Labour stood a good chance of an overall majority.

I doubt if anyone today would repeat that.  The fact is that the chickens have come home to roost.  It wasn’t his disastrous speech at New Labour’s conference, parts of which he forgot, but the lack of any theme to articulate.  Instead Labour comes across as a pink and watered down version of Cameron’s Tories.  They support welfare reform, but not quite as much of it as the Tories and Lib Dems.  They favour capping pr ices on rail and utilities but public ownership is a no-no, but you can’t control what you don’t own.  It’s elementary and Attlee and Wilson understood this.  The policy wonk Miliband understands nothing.

Miliband Address the Zionist Labour Friends of Israel

It would be easy to target the 1% of Britain that owns 55% of its wealth, the savage rich and hangers on but that wouldn’t be the New Labour way and that is why Miliband is doomed.

Miliband Says Nothing in Hiw Own Long-Winded Way

To compound Labour’s misery, the Scottish heartland they took for granted is deserting them en masse.  The Scots rejected devolution but the working-class heartlands such as Glasgow voted to support independence.  Labour ran a campaign with Cameron, with that useless washed up disaster area, Gordon Brown, performing the role of a Tory patriot.  Well devolution was narrowly rejected but Labour has suffered the price of working with the Tories (as well as being stabbed in the back by Cameron the day after the vote).

Ralph Miliband - turning in his grave at the treachery of his sons!

The panic of Labour MPs says more about their fears for their careers than any rethink of  strategy or purpose.  The result may be Labour will struggle to even get 200 seats in the next General Election.   The tragedy is that the socialist left and in particular Left Unity, is so tied up witness navel gazing that it is in no position to take advantage of Labour’s problems.

Tony Greenstein

I posted the following on the Left Unity site.  I doubt it will see the light of day!

‘At a time when Labour is in disarray Left Unity is still obsessing about internal matters.

Who gives a fuck as to who is the principal speaker?  You've lost 1,000 of your members - one third - and have learnt as few lessons and drawn as few conclusions as Miliband has done.

Another left sect consigned to obscurity for which u can thank the ISG and navel gazing 'feminists'. 

Well done for squandering another opportunity for the Left.’

Why I resigned from Left Unity

Feminists Brook no Debate on  'Safe Spaces' - Manchester Branch suspensions

I resigned from Left Unity nearly a month ago. Set up in a blaze of publicity, it has fallen victim to identity politics and navel gazing. It reports that it has 2,000 members. If so they make next to no impact. There is no internal life in the organisation, no paper or journal, and criticism of policies such as ‘safe spaces’ for women are frowned upon or, as is the case in Manchester subject to censorship and suspension.

Ironically, despite the number of ex-SWP members, such as Richard Seymour in LU, they have taken up the SWP's forlorn campaign - understanding nothing and learning even less

Socialist Resistance of the 4^th International, a chameleon group that long ago abandoned any class analysis or Marxism, has no problem with identity, as opposed to class politics. The emigrants from the SWP have failed to understand that the problem with their leadership was not a failure to appreciate feminism, but a failure to create a democratic culture where the leadership could be held to account, unlike the present day oligarchy.

No campaigns have been organised nationally (what use a party?) and now we hear that those who have spoken out, in the Manchester Branch have been suspended and the e-mail list shut down. Left Unity: Freedom to criticise must be defended - Laurie McCauley reports on his suspension from Manchester branch Left Unity was supposed to be different. A pluralist party, we were told, which could accommodate varied views within its ranks. The mistakes of the ‘old left’, of enforcing a false ideological unity that only led to splits, would be avoided. Openness and transparency were to be the order of the day. . It was a Socialist Resistance member, the miserable Ian Parker, who proposed the suspension and the closure of the e-mail list.

As Laurie writes: ‘Left Unity was supposed to be different. A pluralist party, we were told, which could accommodate varied views within its ranks. The mistakes of the ‘old left’, of enforcing a false ideological unity that only led to splits, would be avoided. Openness and transparency were to be the order of the day.’

It is clear to me that a small group of feminists and men they have guilt-tripped into agreeing with them, have effectively begun to ‘purify’ the organisation. No doubt it will be a good experience for these women before they continue their journey to New Labour.

What began this episode was when Dawud Islam, a former deputy leader of Respect, was demonised for the heinous crime of not coming to a snap judgement on the guilt or innocence of Steve Hedley, a trade unionist accused of domestic violence. His own union, the RMT found he had no case to answer but being working class he must be guilty of something!

Meanwhile LU, which has a Rolls Royce constitution but precious few people to fill all the new posts, flounders about making no impact whatsoever. Ironically, it has adopted the SWP campaign against a 'racist' UKIP, thus entirely misunderstanding this party.  That is why I resigned.

Tony Greenstein

Thursday, 29 May 2014

Dear Left Unity,

I have always supported the idea of a broad party to the left of the Labour Party that would include a spectrum from the left of the Labour Party to the far-Left. I have therefore been extremely disappointed in where Left Unity is going, or rather not going.

I sent an Open Letter to you earlier this year  and asked that it be published on LU’s web site, a request that was ignored. I notice though how Fred Leplat, a prominent member of Socialist Resistance has an article on the web site and certain other members have privileged access. Clearly some people are more equal than others.

Despite having a flying start LU has become entangled in the sectarian politics of feminist and anti-racist identity politics, which 20 years ago were characterised by women for Palestine and Jenny Bourne of the Institute of Race Relations as profoundly reactionary. But then who is to say which identity trumps another identity? It has led to LU becoming an organisation primarily focussed on itself. In prioritising the demands of a few inconsequential feminists with no political base, whose desire is not to be challenged politically but for people to accept their arguments because of the ‘identity’ of those who make them, it has abandoned the most basic democratic norms. It wasted a whole day last December in London debating a constitution for an organisation 100 times as large.

Since then most mailings from the Centre have concerned elections for the multiplicity of posts in LU. Barely a word has been issued concerning prioritising campaigns such as the destruction of the NHS or the welfare state. Bogus issues of interest to just a handful of careerists, such as intersectionality, have been deemed of more importance instead.

It is little wonder that LU didn’t see fit to stand candidates in the European elections when it has such pressing internal issues to deal with. The result is that UKIP and its anti-immigration policies have been given a free ride and LU has abandoned what could have been an effective platform for introspective navel gazing.

As a political activist in the student movement, Irish, anti-fascist, unemployed and Palestine solidarity campaigns, for the past 40 years, I have wondered in amazement at where LU’s leadership believes it is going and its complete lack of strategy as the old, seasoned cooks of the left – Socialist Resistance, the SWP émigrés and people like Andrew Burgin, Liz Davies and Kate Hudson – have taken an organisational and political grip over LU.

LU’s leadership could do worse than to look at the success of Syriza in Greece and try and learn some lessons. However I fear that they are too fixed in their views and politics to learn lessons from anyone. They insist on following the same strategies that embraced Respect and destroyed the Socialist Alliance. Politically LU has demonstrated complete impotence on questions like Ireland. My conclusion is that the time for success has now passed and what is left is a terrible missed politically opportunity.

I have therefore decided that no purpose is served by my continuing to remain a member and I have decided to resign from Left Unity.

In Solidarity

Tony Greenstein

Open Letter to Left Unity

An Organisation that is Afraid to Campaign

 Left Unity was formed last  year with the many of the members coming from the fall-out in the SWP over Martin Thomas and the question of rape/sexual harrassment.  Others are relatively new to politics and of course there are those who are members of existing left groups - Socialist Resistance and the Communist Party of Great Britain. 

At the Conference I attended in London 30th there were some of the same hard-boiled cooks that had played a role in other prominent left groups.  Andrew Burgin as Chair of Stop the War Committee, Liz Davies, who Blair stopped from standing in Leeds and who became Chair of the Socialist Alliance, acting as a cover for the SWP as it proceeded to destroy the SA, Kate Hudson of CND, ex-Respect.  LU has about 1,500 members but it is doing nothing with them other than involving them in interminable intra party elections and affairs.

I therefore send an Open Letter to LU members making my criticisms clear.  I have had a favourable response from a number of members but it is doubtful that the central leadership understands it.  Despite submitting it to the website a week ago, it has yet to appear

Founding Conference

There is, of course nothing wrong with internal elections, quite the contrary.  For ex-members of the various left sects it’s probably a novel experience.  But the intricacy and complication of the election process are self-imposed burdens.  Instead of simple elections, weighted to ensure that minority political opinion is represented there is a full-blown PR system.  Women won’t be elected of course in accordance with their politics but simply because of the biological fact that they are women.  We have yet to go down the UNISON road with every minority of a minority being represented (except the working class) but no doubt that that is a delight to come as the Left Unity confuses its own organisation with the society it is seeking to create.  No better example of the contempt for democracy that this breeds is the statement:  ‘There is no obligation on individual members to vote for at least 50% women in any section though members may of course choose to do so.’

BBC News Interview

I can remember when the demand for positive discrimination first raised its head, in the student group of which I was a member, the Socialist Students Alliance, in the 1970’s.  The SSA was dominated by the International Marxist Group (now Socialist Resistance) which had abandoned working class politics for ‘movementism’.  Positive discrimination encouraged clichés, slogans and a superficial support for socialism, in place of any deep commitment to opposing this system or involvement in campaigns at the sharp end of the battle with this capitalism.  Most of those women either became supporters of New Labour (Blair was a particular supporter of positive discrimination and all-women shortlists) or dropped out of politics. This was not true of all the men – especially the Irish and anti-fascist activists. We had 101 women (New) Labour MPs, who 75% of whom voted in favour of the Iraqi war (as opposed to 40% of men who did so).

Coupling this with the fact that the 30th November Conference devoted the whole day to drawing up a constitution and it appears ever more obvious that Left Unity is like the Malaysian Airline plane – destined to crash but we know not where, at least yet.

Left Unity is an organisation with a small number of members, yet it has a Rolls Royce constitution fit for an organisation of hundreds of thousands.   Indeed, until New Labour took over, it could be said that our constitution is more complicated and cumbersome than the Labour Party’s.

Some people are losing sight of the fact that the purpose of Left Unity is to make a political impact in and away from elections that the mass media and the establishment cannot ignore.  One thing that UKIP and to a lesser extent the Green Party have shown is that it is possible for parties that are determined and dedicated to succeed, even electorally, despite First Past the Post elections.  To translate the ideas and desires of the working class and chunks of other parts of society, into a vehicle for socialism.  A thoroughgoing debate on how to achieve it, what issues to prioritise, the targeting of resources on particular areas, the concentration on campaigns that epitomise everything which is wrong with market capitalism.  I’m thinking of the NHS and Welfare 'reform' in particular and above all steady and solid work over the lifetime of a parliament, with a possible focus on by-elections, are just a few example of this.  This will lead to steady but slow recruitment. A weekly paper (no not Socialist Resistance revamped!) But this hasn’t even been subject to any debate, nationally or in the local branches.  Instead the focus has been wholly internal.  The first thing you see on LU’s website is the absurd and trite slogan ‘Coming soon to a ballot paper near you!!’ with a picture of a cross on a ballot paper and the top three articles are  concerned with internal elections and then an equally trite article ‘A budget for UKIP not ‘hardworking people’ which, apart from anything else, is nonsense.

The term 'hardworking people' not the working class or marginalised or unemployed, is in itself a reflection of New Labour ideology.  Are the disabled 'hardworking people'?  Does it matter?

What is or should be the target for the website?  New Labour of course.  It is the beneficiary of the working class vote.  Articles hammering away at this would at least suggest that LU has some coherent strategy other than, as at present, being a mishmash of left and not-so-left ideas.  Attacking Miliband for support for the Benefits Cap, for following Gordon Brown’s strategy of engineering a boom via house prices inflation, the selling of council houses, privatisation of the NHS, the fact that the pension reforms will inevitably lead to growing poverty among the elderly, the pathetic suggestion of a 20 month prices freeze in utility bills when the real issue is nationalisation.  These are examples of what a focused and aimed political strategy might aim at.  But instead we debate the constitution and focus on internal elections!

There is also the absurd name – Left Unity.  What does it mean to people?  That the left is disunited?  Perhaps if we hadn’t faced a Hobson’s choice at the Conference, when suggestions could have been taken from the floor, we might have had ‘People Not Profit’ or something that sums up what LU purportedly stands for.

It is telling that no candidates came forward for the elections from Scotland, the North-East or South-West.  What does this say about LU’s present political trajectory and appeal?  Even the Socialist Alliance, before the SWP took it over and destroyed it had more political weight and substance.

One suggestion would be that national leaflets on renationalisation nd the NHS, Welfare attacks, the contrast between Bob Crow and the present TU leaders and privatisation, racism (G4S).  This would mean that LU becomes a vehicle moving in the same direction together.  How does LU achieve momentum and a critical mass?  This is of greater importance than interminable internal elections.  LU has a year at most before stagnation and decline set in.  It can either move forwards or backwards.   If it doesn’t start focusing on society out there as opposed to its own internal structures, it will lose any chance to do so.

I write a column every other week in the local free paper, the Brighton Independent, which has over 3 times the circulation of the daily Argus, a paid for paper, My articles have focused on disability, benefits, the closure of a children’s centre, Tony Benn and Bob Crowe, the parasites that Osborne represents, housing etc.   At present I would be loathe to even mention LU as I would be plugging a group that is unlikely to be around long and which is unable to live up to its own hype and pretensions.

Tony Greenstein

Left Unity Conference



A banner headline which didn't match the strap lines



Another Missed Opportunity as feminists and reformists link-up

Left Unity is the brainchild and founding father, the distinguished socialist film maker Ken Loach who has produced more radical and socialist films that I can remember.

Ken Loach - Left Unity's guiding light

 According to its own web site, as one might expect, the new Left Unity (it’s doesn’t call itself a party!) saw a successful launch for Britain’s new and latest socialist project.  All inclusive, democratic, it is the ideal counter to the sectarianism of the far left sects.

If only things were as simple as that.  For a start it involved a glossing over of political differences.  This was made possible by the utter madness of having a constitution more fitted to a party 100,000 strong, not one that is 1,200 and, according to a seasoned ex-member of the Morning Star Communist Party, Andrew Burgin, is expected to increase to 2,000.

There are not only branches, but regional structures, a National Committee and an over-weight Executive.  It would seem that some members are going to be burnt out just attending the meetings and since the life-style feminists were determined to ram through positive discrimination then no doubt the structures are not going to function for long if at all.   Activity and campaigning is going to be at a minimum.

A simplified branch structure, feeding into an Executive would have sufficed.

Politically the main problem is that a large number of members are political refugees from the SWP, like Richard Seymour.  Unfortunately they have drawn all the wrong conclusions from the shipwreck of what is left of the SWP.  The problem in the SWP wasn’t feminism or the lack thereof.  It was a failure of democracy and the determination of women to get the leadership clique to accept that rape and sexual molestation are unacceptable in a socialist (or any) organisation.  Comrade Delta i.e. Martin Smith, managed to be acquitted by a jury of his mates, not because there was no positive discrimination but because the SWP lacks all democratic control by its membership.  Indeed Alex Callinicos and co. were very clever.  The majority of those involved in acquitting Smith were in fact women.  The only dissent on the Disputes Committee came from a man.  Positive discrimination, which is written into the new Left Unity project’ constitution, comes from a faulty analysis (see more later).

A conference session

What one didn’t get the sense of was any active political involvement by many of the women.  Perhaps this was best epitomised by Liz Davies, a barrister who chaired the first session and did her best to call women or men she knew.  The afternoon Chairperson was no different.  Some habits die hard!  Ms Davies in particular doesn’t seem to have a sense of shame or political honesty.  At the 2001 Socialist Alliance Conference when the Socialist Party walked out and the SW P began its take over of the Executive, via ‘independents’ like Liz Davies, she accepted the role of Chair of the SA knowing full well, not least because a caucus at lunch time pointed it out to her and her partner Mike Marquesee, that she was, to be blunt acting as the SWP's patsy.  A died in the wool reformist she is typical of the new feminist bureaucrats.

What was even more confusing was that the Chair couldn’t decide whether the Aims and Objectives were part of the constitution.  He ruled against but the agenda stated differently.  If so, then we have a party that is committed to the mixed i.e. private and public, economy.  A great start for a unified socialist party, which is probably why the term ‘left’ rather than ‘socialist’ was the order of the day.  There were 4 platforms – Class Struggle, Socialist, Communist and Left Platform.   The latter won out with a ¾ majority.

Kes - the first of Ken Loach's films I saw and possibly the best

But there were some recognisable seasoned cooks, from the left groups like the perennial Alan Thornett, who the last time we spoke berated me for having opposed the SWP’s move in the Socialist Alliance to create Respect.  Nothing it would seem has changed for this veteran of the Workers Revolutionary Party.  And his Socialist Resistance is one of the better groups on the far left.

Left Unity conference

All hell broke out when I had the temerity to oppose positive discrimination.  Apparently that made me a member of the far-right, according to one hysterical woman that followed me.  The points I made were simple:

i.              In a political party you vote for someone according to their politics.  You should not have a free ticket because of your sex.    

ii.             If you are going to have positive discrimination for women, then why not for black women, gays, the low paid, disabled transgendered etc.  It is a recipe for fragmentation, not unity and socialism is about unity if it is about anything.  However judging by some of the screeching feminists, this is probably a good thing.

iii.            In   my own union, UNISON, there is the most advanced form of positive discrimination there can be.  It’s called the ‘diversity agenda’.  Every fraction, from black lesbians to the low paid and women are represented.  The only problem is that a union  which has a largely female leadership, led by Dave Prentis, sells-out its members, mainly working-class women, every year. 

This really got the sisters howling.  But since it’s only nurses, teaching assistants, carers etc. who experience the 'benefits' of UNISON's positive discrimination then who cares.  Female barristers and bankers are more concerned with 'glass ceilings' than strikes and class struggle.  But since there seemed to be few if any working-class women (or men) at the conference it probably didn't matter.

It is a sign of how the democratic norms of the SWP have been imported into Left Unity that the Chair made no attempt to quieten the cat-callers, quite the contrary.

But of course positive discrimination is not something particularly socialist or ‘left’.  Anyone who remembers that photo of the 101 Blair Babes, women labour MPs, most of whom owed their position to all–women short-lists, might also recall that when it came to the vote against the Iraq War in 2003, 40% of male Labour MPs voted against war and just 25% of female MPs voted against the war and many of them were the old, traditional socialist working-class women, like Alice Mahon, who had become an MP in the absence of any positive discrimination.

To get 500 socialists in a conference hall, without a solitary Socialist Worker seller, is an achievement.  However I fear that Left Unity has already reached its apogee and the way from now on will be down.  Left Unity has been set up on the basis of a false analysis of the problems facing the socialist left which is not that we don’t all come together but that there is no shared strategy.   

This is, in turn, the product of a working class that has been defeated and restructured (atomised) with a consequent weakening of trade unions.  The problem with Left Unity is that the debate on the Constitution prevented any discussion or debate on strategy or elections through lack of time.  This was a serious, if not fatal mistake.

A case was also briefly made by the Republican Socialist Platform for a party with its roots in the English revolution (1649), in contrast to the two main platforms, Left Party Platform (1945) and Socialist Platform (1917).

Tony Greenstein