IN RECENT WEEKS, a BBC series, The Un-Americans, has provided reminders of how Senator Joseph McCarthy and his House Un-American Activities Committee witchhunted thousands of Americans for their political views or because they were ‘suspect’. I hope those who run the Labour Party were watching and heard the echo of their own actions.
Witchhunting is not on the agenda of next week’s party conference, though it ought to be. Of course, there is not the hysteria of the McCarthy period. This is Britain; the witchhunting is muted and conducted by the kind of sub-managerial apparatchik who now polices the party’s ‘modern’, sub-managerial values. But the parallels are there. Guilt by suspicion and association are pronounced upon or implied, denying natural justice with a shabbiness reminiscent of the demagoguery of the McCarthy inquisitors who demanded, ‘Are you or have you ever been a member of . . .?’
Some of those who come before the ‘court’ of the modern Labour Party are asked such a direct question. Their offence may be ‘evidenced by’ . . . ‘involvement in anti-poll tax unions’ or links with Militant, which is proscribed, or with other organisations that are not. Others are less certain of their ‘crime’ and find themselves facing a catch-all charge of ‘bringing the party into disrepute evidenced by involvement in public activity designed to discredit the party’.1
Absurdity is, of course, close at hand. Dave Boardman was suspended from the party more than a year ago. The ‘evidence’ against him included an informer’s statement that he was seen in a pub in Walton, near Liverpool, where a Militant candidate was standing. He was not canvassing; he was there with a team of youngsters to play football. His local party, Oldham, conducted an enquiry and cleared him. However, the ‘allegation’ was apparently enough for Labour headquarters in Walworth Road, London, which sent him a one-sentence letter suspending him and effectively ending his membership.
This is not uncommon. In Coventry, 127 members have been suspended, many of them for their ‘suspected support’ of Dave Nellist MP. No more than a dozen are, incidentally, Militant members. In Manchester, two councillors were suspended for visiting a friend jailed for poll tax non-payment. In Lambeth, thirteen councillors have been suspended for opposing the poll tax and the Gulf war. In Bedford, several councillors have been threatened with expulsion for opposing a pact with the Liberal Democrats.
These are but random examples. When I telephoned the Labour Party and asked if there was a nationwide figure for suspensions, I was told there was none. This seems strange in such a bureaucracy. What is clear is that many local party branches are falling apart as the most energetic activists face discipline from Walworth Road, and entire constituency parties are being suspended for years on end.
For those members brought to ‘trial’, a Kafka quality is present. First, there is the preliminary ‘investigation’ conducted by the party’s Directorate of Organisation – a name with unfortunate overtones of Big Brother. The potential ‘defendant’ often has no idea of what he or she may be accused of, and is therefore ill-prepared to respond and likely to make incriminating statements. Questions to the ‘investigator’ often bring forth the reply, ‘I am only here to listen to you.’
A former Brighton councillor, Jean Calder, herself awaiting ‘trial’, described the process of investigation in a letter to John Smith. ‘There are no sworn statements,’ she wrote, ‘and unsupported hearsay evidence and rumours are accepted and “secret” evidence is made available to the “prosecution” which the defence is not permitted to see.’2
A ‘trial’ is run by a ‘prosecutor’ from Walworth Road, with the ‘judges’ drawn from Labour’s Constitutional Committee. The committee was given extraordinary and secretive powers in the early 1980s when the Labour leadership decided to reactivate proscription, which had been abandoned in 1974.
The ‘judges’ have virtually limitless powers, thanks to an amendment to the party’s constitution that reads, ‘Where appropriate, the NEC shall have regard to involvement in financial support for and/or the organisation of and/or the activities of any organisation declared ineligible for affiliation’. In other words, membership of any political group can be called a crime against the party. These include broad-based organisations and the newspaper Labour Briefing, as well as local support groups such as the Friends of the Brighton Labour Party.3
During the ‘trial’, the prosecutor can call witnesses without forewarning the defendant, yet rules require that the defendant give two weeks’ notice if he or she intends to do the same. A subsequent report to the NEC – described as ‘about half the size of a telephone book’ – is marked ‘confidential’. The defendant has no right of access to it and no guarantee that the information it contains is accurate, or that it is not held on computer in contravention of the Data Protection Act.
Loyal party members have been suspended for actions which, at the time they took place, were not against the rules, and for misdemeanours for which they have already been punished. Disproportionate weight may be given to the submissions of those who support disciplinary action while others, even if they represent a large majority, are ignored or suppressed.
Ray Apps is a 62-year-old, working-class man. He is well known in Brighton for his support for what used to be known as ‘basic Labour Party principles’. This has earned him the respect even of his opponents. He joined the party in 1945 when Labour was ‘building Jerusalem’, and has since held numerous senior positions in the local party, including chairperson, election organiser and conference delegate. As a dedicated socialist, he sees no contradiction in his support for Militant and in maintaining an honourable tradition of dissent that refuses to recant in the face of established authority. As one who joined the party forty-seven years ago, he can hardly be accused of ‘entryism’.
Apps’s trial took place on September 12 at the Old Ship Inn in Brighton. The defendant appeared to many who attended as the embodiment of the struggle of ordinary people during the past half-century. Speaking quietly, with some of the self-deprecation for which he is known, he said he had ‘always fought for reconciliation within the party’. Later he reflected, ‘It comes hard after a lifetime of work helping to build the Labour Party to have to face this. I can’t deny there’s a feeling of hurt and injustice. With other members of my generation, I worked for the party from the time we had only seven councillors, right through until Labour took control. It seems ironic that I am not wanted now.’
At Apps’s trial one of his friends wept; and both ‘prosecutor’ and ‘judges’ looked decidedly uncomfortable. ‘But Ray,’ said one of them, ‘we never suggested you had not worked hard for the party.’ He was expelled.
The treatment of Ray Apps is part of a witchhunt that began in earnest in 1990, when Brighton Labour Party called for the reinstatement of six councillors who had been suspended from the Labour Group. In line with local party policy, the councillors had refused to support the use of the courts against poll tax non-payers. ‘We undertook’, wrote Jean Calder to John Smith, ‘to stand alongside the 30,000 Brighton residents who could not afford to pay the tax. Though we expected punishment for breaking the Labour Group whip, we were unprepared for the draconian response of the party leadership. We were suspended indefinitely, and when the local party protested, it too was suspended for “investigation”. Small wonder that, with dissident councillors barred from standing for re-election, the Labour vote reduced by 6,000 in 1991 and by a further 4,000 in 1992 with a loss of eight Labour seats.’
Of the twenty members suspended in Brighton, only six belong to Militant; and this is not untypical throughout the country. Jean Calder is a Christian Socialist. In her letter to John Smith, she reminded him of his own ‘dual allegiance, not just to socialist principles but to our faith as well’. She wrote, ‘A system has been set up which penalises honesty, and encourages sneaks, bureaucrats and informers. Aided by the ambitious, the corrupt and the naïve, they have taken over our party. Now the witchhunt has acquired a terrible life of its own. With the national membership scheme and the party’s finances in crisis, recruitment is at an all-time low . . . and a climate of fear has been created. Last week I was shocked when a very elderly and frail member, who I had always thought supported the witchhunt, apologised to me, saying, “I should have done more to help you, but I was frightened I’d get on a list. I’ve been a member for years. I didn’t want to get expelled too”.’4
Labour is said to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on its ‘investigations’ and ‘trials’. To what end? The ‘modernisation’ of the party has failed; Labour distinguished itself by being defeated in a general election at the depth of an economic depression.
If the aim of the witchhunters is to destroy the party of the rank and file, leaving a rump to provide for the new conservatism, they have not succeeded, not yet. There are still a great many people in the Labour Party who cling tenaciously to the reason they joined. In Blackpool next week their voices should be heard.
September 22, 1992