Coalitions of the Left by Michael Prior

  The postings by Nick Wrack, John McDonnell and Mark Hoskisson, all illustrate the quandary facing the left. The Labour government seems locked into almost suicidal electoral defeat with its main preoccupation seeming to be who will take over from Gordon. The Labour Party (LP) shows no signs of recovery from its disintegration as a political organisation. Yet the left, including both those remaining inside the LP such as John McDonnell and members of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) as well as those outside, seems unable to discuss any realistic strategy for assembling some kind of united left opposition to the neo-liberalism which has taken over the LP nationally. 

Both McDonnell and Hoskisson dodge the issue. McDonnell simply offers a new policy, a set of changes which in themselves would probably be accepted by most of the left even those, like Hoskisson, who feel they do not go far enough and those, like myself, who believe that he omits any mention of the key environmental issues which have to frame policy. But he fails to provide any indication of just how these policies might be politically enacted. The LRC has a large website but it is possible to look through it quite unaware that anything existed in the political universe apart from the LP and some selected trade unions. We know the problem. The LRC hovers on the edge of proscription from the LP and, if it offered support for any organisation which provided any kind of electoral opposition to the LP, it would topple over the edge. The welcome presence of a member of the LRC at CoTL meetings and of McDonnell’s promised presence on the Question Time panel is probably as far as they can go. But the fact is that this means that McDonnell and other LRC M.P.s are effectively neutered when it comes to proposing any political strategy other than trying to gain support for another attempt to win a leadership contest ─ something which is doomed from the outset. 

But Hoskisson also evades any real political alternative despite his chiding McDonnell for only putting forward a set of policies. Asserting that “the priority is beginning the fightback – the sooner the better – so that the working class movement is better equipped to resist whatever is thrown at them by either New Labour or the Tories, before, during and after the next general election” is just rhetoric unless he explains just what this ‘fightback’ involves in terms of political activity and alliances. 

Nick Wrack clearly comes closer in formulating some kind of political response to the situation. However, he does, to say the least, seem to miss out a step or three in setting the objective of a new party of the left. There are already at least eight left parties in Britain, several of them sponsoring the CoTL plus left groupings in two or three others. Of course, they vary greatly in size. Two, the Greens (to which I belong) and Respect, hover at the fringes of electoral success whilst others number their membership in hundreds at best. They also cover a very wide political spectrum from left social democracy (which is roughly where I would place the Green Party) to a Leninist socialism ─ a spectrum which has been in the past notoriously fractious. At this moment it is doubtful whether any one of them would for a moment consider dissolving their identity into some new formation unless, to be frank, they saw the chance of dominating it, a process which would inevitably lead to the cycle of splits and mutual suspicion which we have seen so often in the past. 

Political parties in mature democracies such as Britain, in which insurrection as a method of change has been abandoned, essentially perform two functions. One of these can be seen as cultural; to provide a place where various policies can be debated, accepted in some form and promulgated in the wider world. On the British left, until around twenty years ago, the LP was the centre of this kind of political culture with a supporting role played by the Communist Party. The disappearance of the CP and the effective collapse of any democratic process inside the LP means that there is very little space for forming, debating and, where possible, agreeing the kind of overall left policy which, for better or worse, did emerge in the 1970s and early 1980s in such as the alternative economic strategy. It is possible to see efforts to reproduce this kind of left strategy in such as the Compass pressure-group ─ before its disastrous alignment with Brown in the non-existent leadership contest ─ and in the Labour Representation Committee and McDonnell’s May Manifesto. The weakness of both, however, is that both are in the end tied to a political party that has essentially given up on any kind of open policy formation. The result is that neither is able to link whatever policy formulation they develop with the second function of political parties in Britain, to contest elections. Compass, in particular, is reduced to backstairs lobbying of No. 10. 

This is really the heart of the problem facing the left ─ linking the formulation of a broad left policy with an electoral presence able to put this policy forward to the British people so that they can make a real choice rather than the largely cosmetic policy differences which currently divide Labour and the Conservatives. In fact that should really be amended to be the English people as the transformed electoral systems in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales do, to a degree, offer such possibilities. What these show is that recognisably left positions are popular particularly in Scotland. 

One conclusion which can be drawn from this is that electoral reform providing some genuine form of proportional representation ought to be given a much higher policy priority on the left than, currently, it is. The suspicion accorded PR on the left is now a genuine historical relic rather than any basic principle. 

However, support for PR by itself does not solve the problem. It simply raises yet another issue which is kept firmly off the national agenda by effective collusion between the two main parties, neither of which sees any gains in breaking the two-party system which has dominated British politics for nearly a hundred years, longer if one includes the Conservative/Liberal hegemony of the nineteenth century. It is illuminating that PR was a central part of Labour policy up to the sudden and rather surprising electoral success of 1924 that destroyed the Liberals. Then, almost overnight, it disappeared. There is a good case for PR being a genuinely popular policy, one that might reverse the corrosive cynicism that engulfs the whole political process in Britain. However, it does remain just another policy that the left could put on to its websites without any real chance of its being taken seriously. 

So where to begin the process of having our policies taken seriously outside the enclosed political ghetto we now inhabit? The CoTL is an initiative that offers a good place to start enabling people from all parts of the left to gather together without any sectarian disputes ─ at least so far. Hopefully, enough of the LP members who will be in Manchester in September will take part to promote this spirit through the LP as well. But we need to look to the future.  

One possible line of approach, which could be used as the expected 2010 election approaches, would be to adopt a form of left tactical voting. This has proved successful in some previous elections as a crude way of keeping the Tories out, that is one voted Labour or LibDem simply on the basis of which would be most likely to beat the Conservatives. Now that Labour and Conservative are essentially indistinguishable it is time to forsake the ‘Hold your nose and vote Labour’ position which, I think, now dates back at least to 1970. If a broad left policy manifesto, something along the lines of McDonnell’s Manifesto but much improved, were to be adopted, it could then be used to quiz the declared candidates with the left, including as many LP members as possible, agreeing to only campaign and vote for candidates who personally accepted it. The next general election seems likely to be a frenzied ‘Vote Labour to keep the Tories out’ operation from Labour H.Q. The left needs to solidly resist this and the approach of only voting for candidates who have made a personal commitment to left policies might offer a constructive way of resisting such calls. 

A second line might be through local elections and through the MEP elections, due next year, which because they operate under PR will offer a chance to elect some left MPs. It is important that, in advance of the MEP election, the left should discuss just how PR ca be used to its advantage. Perhaps this could be a topic at the CoTL. The local elections are not, of course, run under PR but there is growing evidence throughout the country that people are willing to switch away from Labour to other candidates.

Respect and the Green Party have made gains, as have independent Labour candidates in Wales. Of course, the BNP have also had success and one topic, which needs urgent debate on the left, is just how to stop this. The swings to the BNP are always down to acute disaffection with Labour and there is not much to be gained by trying to counteract this by supporting Labour as such. BNP tactics are a good deal cleverer than in past years. (If there is any doubt about this, I suggest that people look at the videos that can be seen on You Tube.) It is doubtful whether street confrontations are going to do other than support their claims of being supportive of anti-violence measures. We might like to think about the fact that in the last local elections in Manchester, the LibDems winning a surprise seat from Labour stopped the BNP in its tracks in Miles Platting. 

Even raising the outline of the kind of coalitions that might be formed in elections brings all kind of problems as to just how they might be carried through. But it is by confronting just these problems and finding solutions to them that the left will progress rather than by essentially simplistic ideas about new parties or by ignoring the specifics of political activity. The CoTL has shown itself to be a good forum for beginning the process. We must hope that it finds a way of renewing itself after September.  

Michael Prior 

July 2008     

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