JOHN GOLDING WANTED LABOUR to be elected and re-elected to government as the party of justice, jobs, security and opportunity. Those purposes were and are shared by many. What made him different was his ruthless diligence in organising for them. In Labour’s years of near self-destruction in the late 1970s and 1980s he was merciless in his treatment of anyone or anything that he considered to be standing in the way of achieving those objectives. His relentless organisation, his plotting to beat plotters, his use of sectarian methods to beat sectarians are without precedent or copy.
This book is a dipped-in-vitriol documentary of those efforts. It tells the story without deference to the Marquis of Queensbury or anyone else, but with gallows humour, pace and fish-hook frankness. Because of that it provides a chronicle for students, a cracking read for anyone with a taste for raw politics, and an object lesson for any political party that allows itself to drift away from electoral reality and into the wilderness of illusion and self-obsession.
NEIL KINNOCK
JULY 2003
IN THE TWELVE YEARS since I wrote that Foreword, the Labour Party has won one and lost two general elections in tumultuous times. It experienced – at the top – sourness and split that, to a greater extent than ever before, arose from animosities between personalities and their retainers rather than policy conflicts. Its unprecedented thirteen years in government, which brought jobs, security and record health, education and anti-poverty spending, ended in the wake of history’s greatest economic crash caused by the excesses of international market chicanery. That government was buried in the shroud of ‘incompetence’ despite the fact that the Prime Minister and Chancellor had managed a gigantic rescue from ruin nationally and secured multi-governmental action that saved global capitalism from devastation. In this century, the party has been deserted by members disillusioned with decisions to wage war in the Middle East and make passive peace with ‘filthy rich’ financial interests. And then, following defeat in the 2015 general election, a surge in sentiment and eligible voters, enfranchised through revised party rules, resulted in the election to leadership of an MP that had around fifteen committed supporters in a PLP of 232.
That result did not surprise me. It was a reaction waiting to happen. The size of that victory was, of course, facilitated by the changes that vastly expanded the Labour electorate for the price of a pint (or its temperance equivalent). But from the moment that Jeremy Corbyn, more pleasant, calm and appealing than previous contestants from the PLP awkward squad, gained enough MP nominations to put him on the ballot paper, my own experience told me that he was odds-on favourite to win. For years, at frequent party suppers and socials, I had been factually exposing George Osborne’s falsehoods about ‘Labour’s ruinous legacy’, his risible ‘Long-Term Economic Plan’ and his ‘austerity’ regime of gross inequity and pillaging of community assets. In those meetings, using the arguments developed by respected economists, I also set out the rational case for investment-led durable growth and social solidarity, emphasising the interdependence of economic efficiency and social justice in modern economies. Those efforts, sometimes conversational and sometimes (I confess) tirading, had roused (mainly) Labour-supporting audiences from pervading glumness. Revealingly – and worryingly – people from diverse social and educational backgrounds, and of all ages, had said to me that they hadn’t ‘heard the argument put like that for a long time’. Even taking into account kindness to an old warhorse, such comments came so earnestly and so often that they couldn’t be attributed to courtesy, sentimentality or even appreciation of political jokes. They were expressions of frustration and a rising desire to ‘hit back’ with feasible, productive and enthusing alternatives. Labour’s cool, crafted critique was – despite its intelligence and sincerity – not articulating the disgust and fury aroused by the damage and injustice being done to communities and individuals by Toryism and by the glib arrogance with which the harm was being inflicted. Labour people were boiling with irritation and they wanted that to be voiced.
Those rank-and-file feelings were productively mobilised in the general election campaign. It was just about the most active in my 56-year memory of electoral battles – and, in England and Wales, brought a gain of over a million votes.
The feelings – the fervour – also became manifest in the leadership election: the votes of half of the existing party members poured to the candidate who seemed to express the accumulated dual emotions of outrage and idealism. Among the other sections of the electorate, the result was even more emphatic. As my countless conversations in the six months after June 2015 confirmed, the great majority of those – young and not young – who voted for ‘Jez’ were motivated by the same ‘dual emotions’ of resentment and hope. The former was – is – deep and resonant, the latter less specific and cogent. The mixture has been expressed to me and to others as a desire to ‘give it a try’. It articulated a spirit of resistance that rejected convention and caution, paid little heed to any solemn lessons of the May election and gave even less primacy to the objective of building for victory in 2020. I understand but regret that the irrefragable fact is that lessons do need to be learned, and the 2020 contest started within days after 7 May 2015. Every vote, decision and action by and in the party should therefore be dedicated to the long, hard fight to regain government. But it is also the truth that few of these people who vented their exasperation and optimism by voting Corbyn are stupid or giddy or malevolent. Most were acting on convictions of decency and expressing enthusiasm for core Labour values of care, opportunity, security, fairness and freedom – the reasons why I and so many others, including John Golding, joined and have continually fought for the party. Both the instincts and the vigour clearly have indispensable value. They are consequently welcomed by veterans like me and by the great majority of MPs and long-standing party members as the qualities of fresh, energetic, democratic socialists who, because they genuinely want change in our country, will increasingly engage in winning support for Labour and accept the arduous obligations that come with achieving that.
The same comradely embrace cannot be extended to some others with less benign and progressive motives who voted in the leadership election and have now joined or rejoined the party, or gained some prominence in organisations operating around it. Names from the assorted tendencies of the 1980s, now older but seemingly no wiser, have reappeared. Sectarians in their sixties and seventies have the same time-worn list of impossiblist demands, the same illusion that the ‘masses’ would yearn for their agitprop politics if only their ‘consciousness’ could be raised, the same delusion that the hearts and minds of the British people would be won if MPs and councillors were turned into delegates of constituency parties run – of course – by the Keepers of the Ultra-Left Conscience. Numerically, they are a small minority among the multitude who supported Jeremy Corbyn. But they have a doctrinaire cause, political manoeuvring is their preoccupying interest and they organise zealously and through networks. In a party that is – rightly – a ‘broad church’, with a membership that is characteristically friendly in thought and deed, they can, therefore, have disproportionate influence.
For the sake of the party and its wellbeing and public appeal, it is important that these elements do not benefit by the tolerance of Labour people who do not habitually attend every meeting and have the more usual preoccupations of earning a living, enjoying their leisure and – when politically active – campaigning against the party’s real foes. When those who are accountable only to their own cliques and cadres seek, in the name of ‘accountability’, to pressurise elected representatives that serve well and act in good conscience, they have to be resisted. When meetings run for several hours due to arcane discussions on convoluted resolutions and votes are taken when most members have, understandably, departed to re-enter the real world, alarm bells should ring. When these and the other tactics of menace or manipulation so well rehearsed by sectarians become evident, the mainstream – left and right and centre – must counter with strength and comradeship.
The possibility realistically exists that, within welcome mass membership, there are some that will seek to replay the antics of yesteryear and, by that means, discredit the Labour Party and cause disillusionment with political activity. It is important, therefore, for the broad membership to be vigilant and engaged so that we safeguard against the exploitation of the party by those who have sectarian motives. If we do that, we can prevent the turmoil and division that distracted, disfigured and disabled us thirty years ago and necessitated John Golding’s operations and my actions to defeat and exclude those who abused the identity and generosity of the Labour Party. The great Hispanic-American philosopher George Santayana advised that ‘nations which forget their past are doomed to relive it’. The same is true of parties. In politics, amnesia is a lethal ailment.
Every committed party member must therefore be focussed relentlessly on the reality that, while we must always articulate opposition to injustice and exploitation for the people of all ages and conditions that we exist to help and advance, it is never enough for us to be merely a vehicle for protest and complaint. We have to develop and present policies that appeal to the breadth of the British people because they offer coherent, practical answers to daily challenges of life now, and provide credible prospects of fulfilling ambitions in housing, employment and enterprise. Failure to do that will betray those who need Labour most. We can respect and learn from our yesterdays but, as ever, the task for democratic socialists is to be attuned to the present and to help people to prepare for the future.
Since the great majority of longstanding and recent party members strongly share that purpose of winning power to implement principles, they should declare, with Aneurin Bevan, that they ‘have no patience with those Socialists, so called, who in practice would socialise nothing, while in theory they threaten the whole of private property. They are purists and therefore barren.’ That stance is rational and relevant when, in addition to combatting the injustice, inefficiency and waste of Toryism, we also have to rebuff the self-indulgent introversions of ultra-Leftism. It means that democratic socialists, old and new, should
Now, with just forty-odd months to go to the next general election, and with the variety of crucial contests in between, we need huge, effective, united campaigning efforts by the party and its leadership. We do not need the distractions of schism, or threats of deselection, or menacing language against conscientious representatives. We do not need internal wrangles that might fascinate political anoraks but have no significance or interest for people coping with the daily realities and seeking useful, usable political answers. We need consistent advance, not postures that impress the fringes while alienating the majority that we must convince and regain.
By deliberate contrivance, the Tory government is seeking to impede our financial support from affiliated trades union, cut our parliamentary numbers through arbitrary boundary reorganisation and diminish our potential electoral support by a new system of voter registration. In such conditions, mutual respect among comrades, unity of purpose, civilised conduct, relevance of policy and presentation must be at a premium. They are vital for our fightback, for our integrity and for our vitality. All who accept that will be striving for Labour success. All who don’t will be culpable for Labour failure.
NEIL KINNOCK
DECEMBER 2015