The left in the UK has a fatal attraction to shortcuts. In 1906 the left-wing Independent Labour Party (ILP) joined the Labour Representation Committee, the trade union dominated committee that founded the Labour Party, because it believed that the Labour Party, with its trade union affiliations, provided socialists with the organised working class as captive audience – and thereby a shortcut to socialism. The ILP abandoned its independent organisation and, interestingly, its support for a proportional electoral system and a republic, and became part of the Labour Party – and with it the British political system, monarchy, House of Lords, United Kingdom and all.
It proved to be one of the longest shortcuts in history. It also turned out to be a circuitous journey on which many would-be socialist travellers lost their way.
By the turn of the century, after Labour leaders had in practice refused to abide by the decisions of party members on austerity in the 1970s, council tax in the 1980s and the Iraq war in the 2000s, and opposition to Labour grew on the streets, some on the left took it for granted that the mass movements on these issues provided the basis for declaring a new political party – another shortcut to socialism. Towards the end of the 1900s, some presumed that the movement was there and what was missing, the thinking went, was a leader and an organisation. Enter Arthur Scargill and the Socialist Labour Party in 1996, followed in 2004 by George Galloway and Respect.
Along with the Socialist Alliance in 1992 and Left Unity in 2013, we have seen many new parties of the left, all of which have failed to have a significant impact on British politics. Now there is talk of a new initiative on a similar model, and while it is not this time driven by the hubris of an individual, it still derives in significant part from the projections of would-be members who are waiting for Jeremy Corbyn to lend his backing. He, meanwhile, makes clear that his priorities are local. Any realistic discussion about forming a new political party in the UK today must start from an acknowledgment of the graveyard of dead parties.
Independent initiatives
Another process, however, is under way, on the rhythm set by the everyday pressures people face. It is driven by a growing number of local activists, especially ex-Labour councillors, motivated by the material hardship of their constituents and unable in all conscience to remain in the Labour Party or abide by the Labour whip on councils. The Hackney Independent Socialists, the Southport Community Independents, the Ilford Independents, the Broxtowe Independent Socialists, the Camden Community Alliance, the Chingford Independents, the Tyneside based Majority and the Islington Independents all take a longer-term view. And they illustrate that a national party is not the only option for an independent left.
Most of these activists left Labour because of the party leadership’s lack of accountability to and lack of connection with working or would-be working people. Consequently, their priority has been to build locally effective accountability and democracy. As activists with a track record of working with poor and marginalised communities, and deeply aware of the extent of disengagement from politics, they see themselves as creating new democratic foundations based on popular participation – through, for example, people’s assemblies. These are open meetings of local people meeting regularly to which many of these independent councillors make themselves accountable.
‘It’s just a beginning,’ commented Claudia Turbet-Delof, the Bolivian Independent Socialist councillor from Hackney, after the group’s second 60-strong neighbourhood people’s assembly. In Camden, too, as well as Islington, Tyneside, Broxtowe and elsewhere, the talk is about the long term, with the emphasis on building local power.
Feminist insights
It is striking that women have a leadership role in many of these local initiatives. Certainly, feminism and the experience of the women’s liberation movement influences my doubts about rushing to form a national party. ‘All the movements in resistance to humiliation and inequality discover their own wisdom,’ wrote socialist feminist Sheila Rowbotham, explaining why she, Lynne Segal and I wrote Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism, first published in 1979. We were seeking to share the wisdoms learnt from a movement that grew steadily from small groups scattered across the country to one that influenced the lives of millions and was able to mobilise over 100,000 in defence of abortion and women’s right to choose.
Today’s young socialist feminists will write their own insights but we highlighted two. First, that the means of organising invariably shape the outcome and consequently it is unwise to let the goal become the be all and end all, thereby disregarding any human suffering and new, unanticipated forms of authoritarianism emerging in the process. As women, many of us were organising a movement simultaneously with caring for the young and the very old. An instrumental approach to politics, whereby the end justifies the means, was likely to lead to a rhythm that ignored such obligations and pressures.
We sought, by contrast, to create a movement that prefigured the kind of society we were working towards – a society in which care and collaboration was fundamental to both means and ends. With difficulty we created a movement whose tempo and priorities were shaped by care and mutual support.
Against the grain
The work of building people power is tough. The difficulties lie partially in the fact that daily realities of people’s lives – housing, health and sources of livelihood – are themselves precarious. Genuinely people driven politics is also working against the grain of the inherited Labour movement institutions through which many people are still organised, where they are organised at all. These are shaped by the legacy of a centralised, parliamentarist state for which the Labour Party historically signed up.
This implied the separation of the ‘industrial’ and the ‘political’. Hence a trade union movement that resists taking on ‘political issues’ – responsibility for these being abrogated to the Labour Party. Local community organisations, moreover, have often become a vehicle through which councils explain – and justify – themselves to residents rather than a means of citizens calling councils to account.
In this context, the extent – likely to grow – of the break from Labour creates favourable conditions for an independent politics from below, liberated from this top-down institutional culture that seeps out from Westminster. It will need time and the concerted attention of all independent actors, alternative media, independent councillors and radical unions to nurture the variety of forms of popular organising that are emerging. Red Pepper is one such resource and we look forward to discussing its role in collaboration with all those who are working in an experimental and open-minded way towards an independent, genuinely bottom-up political organisation.
