An unprecedented and well-funded operation was launched over the summer
to back the Blairite slate for the constituency section of the Labour
Party national executive. This included spending at least œ50,000
on half-page adverts in national newspapers and magazines, direct mail-shots
to thousands of party members, printing thousands of glossy promotional
brochures and employing a private marketing firm to undertake telephone
canvassing. The centre-left slate was publicly denounced by party general
secretary Tom Sawyer - who is supposed to uphold the impartiality of
the election - and by former party leader Neil Kinnock. At issue was
not control of the NEC, because the constituency section makes up less
than a fifth of the NEC seats, but the elimination of all possible dissent
from the leading bodies of the party. This looks like paranoia. But it
is, in reality, rational.
Blair and Mandelson know that their political project - to eliminate
trade union and rank and file influence from the Labour Party and move
it towards coalition with the Liberals - and the government's economic
policies, notably the goal of cutting social spending, will collide with
successive layers of the labour movement. John Edmond's calls for lower
interest rates, progressive taxation and attacks on 'greedy bastard'
employers gave an early flavour of the sort of opposition Blair and Mandelson's
party 'reforms' anticipate. They are therefore acting, while the government
retains relatively strong public support, to try to eliminate any points
within the party leadership or structures - no matter how seemingly insignificant
at this moment in time - around which opposition could coalesce into
an alternative political perspective within the party.
Under rules introduced by last year's Labour Party conference, party
members can no longer elect Labour MPs to the NEC. This change was originally
suggested by the Labour Coordinating Committee to stop the constituencies
from registering dissatisfaction with a Labour government's policies
by electing left wing MPs - as happened under the Wilson/Callaghan government.
What concerned the LCC was how to retain control of the party if the
parliamentary leadership lost the support of both the local constituencies
and the trade unions. After the last Labour government it was this combination
which swung the NEC to the left. The political nexus around Blair and
Mandelson are determined that this should not be allowed to happen again
- even if labour movement opinion swings decisively against the parliamentary
leadership.
The idea was that dominance of the parliamentary leadership would be
guaranteed by downgrading the role of party structures, dominated by
supposedly left wing activists, in favour of postal ballots of individuals.
But the defeat of Mandelson by Livingstone in last year's NEC election,
support for Livingstone for London mayor and black members' use of OMOV
to try to select black candidates for inner city parliamentary seats
showed that the individual membership cannot be totally controlled by
the leadership.
That is why a Labour leader who made OMOV a central plank of his campaign
for the party leadership, is now drastically curtailing its scope - by
restricting the choice of candidates for the European parliament, Scottish
and Welsh Assemblies, to those previously approved by leadership appointed
vetting panels. The use of this device to purge left wingers and other
dissidents from the list of Scottish candidates has already boosted the
SNP's standing against Labour at the polls. The party conference will
be presented with proposals to extend vetting to the selection of Westminster
candidates.
The ultimate goal of all this is to eliminate the Labour left and render
the parliamentary leadership completely independent of the trade unions
and the rank and file membership of the Labour Party - creating a party
which seeks to govern in long-term coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
In this scenario, business would replace the trade unions and membership
funding of the party. The cash-for-access scandal gave a foretaste of
how this would operate - with financial corruption filling the vacuum
left by reduced accountability to the party membership. This money nexus
is already well-advanced - ranging from the appointment of unelected
business leaders to ministerial posts, the various trade-offs with Murdoch,
the tobacco companies over Formula 1 racing and others, down to the merging
of the political apparatus around Blair and Mandelson with lobbyists
selling access to government ministers.
It would doubtless end up in the kinds of corruption scandals which have
rocked the French, Spanish and, most spectacularly, the Italian Socialist
Parties in the past.
But there is still a considerably long way to go before Blair achieves
that goal and the peculiarity of the present situation in the party is
that the pace of change is dictated by his need for the backing of the
unions as long as they retain the major role in party structures and
funding. None of the changes to downgrade the powers of the elected bodies
of the party - notably the conference and NEC - and restrict members'
rights to select candidates for public office could have been adopted
without support from the trade union bureaucracy.
The present alignment of forces is one of the right wing trade union
bureaucracy organised by the AEEU leadership, allying with the most anti-union
forces in the party, that is the Blair/Mandelson nexus, against the party
membership and the left. The centre-left and centre-right trade union
leaderships of the GMB, TGWU and UNISON are not necessarily happy with
all of the operations being conducted by this alliance - but they are
not playing an independent role at the present time on the internal Labour
Party issues. The critical contradiction between the trade union and
Labour Party leaderships is on economic policy. It remains to be seen
whether Edmonds' speech at the TUC marks a shift which will affect the
inner Labour Party battle.
At present a political alliance of the party leadership and right wing
trade union bureaucracy is spending unprecedented sums of money to try
to take control of this NEC section.
The first problem for Blair was that the right wing was split into two
slates - the AEEU-backed Labour First slate made up of individuals tied
to right wing unions, and a number of other Blairites, such as actor
Michael Cashman, retired USDAW official Diana Jeuda and Scottish party
official-turned-lobbyist Jack McConnell.
On the other hand, a very broad coalition had emerged in the centre
left Grassroots Alliance around upholding party democracy, members' rights
and the broad-based character of the Labour Party. The Grassroots Alliance
ranged from Labour Reform and Tribune editor Mark Seddon, through the
Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and Socialist Campaign Group News
to the campaign group Network and Labour Briefing. The Campaign Group
of Labour MPs strongly backed the alliance. Tribune newspaper welcomed
it although some of its staff objected to left-wingers on the slate.
The only current on the left opposing the alliance was Workers' Liberty.
In these circumstances a divided establishment risked defeat, particularly
because it could not rely on support from some of the liberal bourgeois
media - in part alienated by the Mandelson/Campbell methods of news control
and in part believing that Mandelson-style uniformity within the Labour
Party would prove counter-productive. As a result, a Guardian editorial
on 10 August urged a 'vote for Labour diversity' saying that while 'this
newspaper would have differences with all six [Grassroots Alliance candidates]'
that political differences should be 'aired around Labour's governing
table' and urged 'those who have a vote in this small but significant
election [to] bear that in mind - and take a stand against uniformity.'
A similarly friendly tone was struck in some of the radio and television
coverage.
Roy Hattersley, without going so far as to back the centre-left slate, caught the mood when he wrote in the Guardian on 20 August that the Labour leadership demeaned itself by defining 'loyalty as uncritical agreement' and that it 'diminishes the party's moral authority by endorsing candidates who promote their cause by buying advertising space in newspapers.'
By this time, the party leadership had already stepped in to produce
a single Blairite slate. This was done around the Members' First grouping
which was originally billed as the brain-child of lobbyist Ben Lucas
- whose role was downplayed after he was named in the cash-for-access
corruption scandal.
A number of candidates, like Maggie Cosin, Jack McConnell and Christian
Socialist Chris Bryant stood down, leaving a single Blair/Mandelson slate.
To counter media support for pluralism, Members First spent enormous
sums, provided by trade unions, on advertisements in the Guardian, Observer
and other publications, as well as individual candidate mail-shots to
thousands of party members and telephone canvassing. A Progress mailing
promoting the Members First slate claimed the candidates were 'experienced
Labour Party members, prepared to speak up for what they believe in'.
Spending on this publicity campaign was at least ten times more than
anything ever spent before and far beyond the means of the left and centre,
let alone ordinary party members. It is doubtful that union members would
approve of this use of their dues.
Learning a lesson from Livingstone's defeat of Mandelson last year,
the leadership understood that to stop the centre-left it would have
to present its slate as the middle ground rather than Mandelsonite. This
was also the basis on which a coalition of the trade unions was held
together with the cash-for-access lobbyist nexus to back the slate. The
understanding was that most of the candidates would be pro-union as well
as leadership loyalist. On this basis the anti-membership coalition of
the union bureaucracy with Blair/Mandelson was created.
It is obviously unstable. Large sections of the national executives
of unions like the GMB, TGWU, UNISON and others have more in common with
the Grassroots Alliance than the AEEU and Mandelson. Again, Edmonds'
TUC call for higher taxation on incomes above œ50,000 and lower
interest rates underlines this. If union members were allowed to determine
the orientation of their union in the NEC elections they might well wish
to align with the centre-left. This could result in either different
unions allying with rank and file currents on a political basis which
would tend to equalise their impact, or an agreement that the constituency
section be left to the rank and file.
The final layer to be added was the soft left in the government - with
David Blunkett, Robin Cook and Peter Hain billed as backing the Members'
First slate. Their subservience obviously deepens the division between
themselves and the centre-left in the constituencies around Labour Reform
and Tribune newspaper. It contrasts with the situation last year where
Prescott's likening of Mandelson to a crab did not convey unanimous cabinet
backing for his candidacy.
Even though Blair and Mandelson need the soft left ministers and the
unions to broaden their base while they whittle away members' rights
and fight the left and centre-left - both the unions and the soft left
are also in the firing line. The cabinet re-shuffle prior to the summer
recess was used to weaken the influence of both Gordon Brown (who is
linked to the most right wing trade unions) and the soft left linked
to the traditional labourist unions. The replacement of Margaret Beckett
by Peter Mandelson at the Department of Trade and Industry decisively
swung the balance in the ministry in favour of business and against the
unions.
As the Financial Times put it on 29 July, Blair used his 'reshuffle
to display his ever-increasing ardour for business people and business
practice'. Lord Sainsbury, holder of Sainsbury's shares worth œ1.4
billion, was appointed junior minister at the DTI, joining Peter Mandelson
and Lord Simon, former chair of British Petroleum. Anti-union link Blairite,
Stephen Byers, was made number two to Brown at the Treasury and Nick
Brown was removed from the crucial position of Chief Whip.
Irrespective of the outcome of this year's NEC elections, the critical
tactical challenges for the Labour left are to continue to broaden the
alliances in defence of party democracy and to start to prise apart the
bloc of the trade union bureaucracy and Mandelson/Blair. The points of
greatest pressure will be first, those which impact onto the membership
of the trade unions, secondly, those with the largest social forces behind
them and thirdly, those where the trade union bureaucracy cannot avoid
the political contradictions with Blair.
The issue which is going to have the greatest impact in terms of de-stabilising
the unions' relations with the government is economic policy. High interest
rates, an overvalued pound and mounting international competition are
pushing the economy towards recession. This, together with the public
sector pay freeze, will hit the government's spending plans and trade
union members. But to start to construct an alliance of the unions with
the Labour left, and for the left within the unions to advance politically,
requires focusing opposition to individual government policies around
an overall alternative economic strategy centred on cutting interest
rates and raising progressive taxation, which will have to be won at
next year's trade union conferences. As recession starts to bite the
necessity for this will become apparent to wider layers of trade union
political activists.
Secondly, it is no accident that in two of the areas where sections
of the population are to the left of the rest of Britain - Scotland and
London - Blair is running into his most serious problems to date. In
Scotland the Labour Party faces a simple choice. Either Scottish Labour
takes a position to the left of Blair, which it could do by deciding
that it, not Millbank, will determine policy for the Scottish Assembly,
or else it risks an historic defeat at the hands of the SNP. As Dundee
East MP John McAllion put it, 'Scottish Labour will have to demonstrate
that, where it is in Scotland's interests, we are willing to stand up
and to take on our own government in Westminster' (Tribune 31 July).
In London, Blair's attempt to stop Livingstone being selected as Labour
candidate for mayor suffered a setback when the regional party conference
voted almost unanimously for a motion saying that all candidates nominated
by 10 CLPs should be automatically shortlisted for an OMOV ballot to
select the candidate.
Thirdly, the appointment of Alistair Darling to the Department of Social
Security is clearly designed to re-launch the attacks on the welfare
state which stalled after the rebellion on lone parent benefit cuts.
This will bring the government into renewed conflict with those scheduled
to suffer the cuts. First in line appear to be disability benefits. Darling
used his first day in the post to declare that the 'time for talking'
about welfare was over and that people should now expect action. Subsequent
statements implying there would be no quick moves to introduce legislation
indicate that the government has concluded that the level of opposition
its proposals will provoke necessitate a combination of piecemeal changes,
tightening up of regulations and getting a better balance of forces for
itself into place before embarking on head on attacks.
It also remains to be seen whether the Blairites in Labour Students
can hang onto control of the student movement as tuition fees and lower
grants and spending cuts start to bite. The other potentially large-scale
clash is with pensioners as the government desperately looks for ways
to cut spending.
Fourthly, the black community expects action from the government against
racism and, if it is not delivered, will fight back. It is already clear
that a racist asylum policy is to be pursued. In addition, the black
community will want to see what action follows the Lawrence inquiry into
the police response to racist murders. Failure to meet black aspirations
will result in extra-parliamentary mobilisations and intensified demands
for proper black representation at every level of the party and society
as recent CRE demands show. The left must be the best possible ally in
this fight.
Fifthly, the Belfast Agreement makes it easier than ever before for the
labour movement in Britain to ally with the cause of equality and self-determination
in Ireland.
Within the Labour Party the next key objective for Blair is the removal
of the rights of members to select candidates. This has already been
done for the European elections, the London and Wales assemblies and,
most explosively, the Scottish parliament. It has been announced for
local government; the local government White Paper would pressure councils
to adopt 'cabinet' style administrations and directly elected mayors.
Removing rights of selection for Westminster is advanced in the consultation
document on parliamentary selections which will go to this year's Labour
Party conference for endorsement. Millbank will also be organising to
prevent left resolutions featuring on this year's conference agenda and
to carry through a purge of the left in parliament - which, as Scotland
and the Euro-selections have demonstrated, will be greatly facilitated
by an approved list system of selection of candidates. These issues present
themselves as priorities for the Labour left.
Finally, strategically, the two key issues around which Blair will seek
to fundamentally re-draw the map of the British political system are
entry into the European Single Currency and electoral reform. These,
no longer distant goals, are linked. The latter will create the breadth
of coalition government with the Liberals necessary to force through
the former. The work must now be done to ensure that the Labour left
understands why both have to be opposed.