The British Labour Party is in one of the greatest crises in its history.
Last week’s vote to leave the EU has the potential to splinter four key institutions of global capitalism: the EU itself, the British state, the British Conservative Party and the British Labour Party. All are paralysed, facing a future of possible and unpredictable splits.
In the Labour Party the fever is currently most acute. Labour MPs, grandees and financiers are flinging themselves into battle. For two days, these masters of spin and smear have been engaged in a public war to drive left wing leader Jeremy Corbyn from his position. Nearly every hour, like clockwork, another MP resigns from the cabinet, or demands Corbyn resigns, or both. Twenty-three members of his shadow cabinet departed, each with a flurry of publicity: letters posted online, television interviews and a blizzard of tweets.
The stagecraft is impeccably calculated to turn 24-hour news networks into 24-hour anti-Corbyn broadcast stations. It is a fine return to form for the television masters who brought us the invasion of Iraq. Even old villains such as Alastair Campbell have returned to the screen, a plot twist worthy of this golden age of television. With the connivance of a sympathetic media, the shocking result of the referendum has been turned into an endless confirmation that Corbyn and the Labour left might go, could go, should go, must go, will go. The final episode: a no-confidence motion, to be moved tomorrow, and a new leadership election.
Why? Why now, when the Tories are in crisis, when the far right is inflamed and energised? To those who see the battles within the Labour Party as collegiate struggle of ideas, the apparently suicidal wrecking behaviour of the right wing Labour MPs can seem inexplicable. A totally artificial crisis has been generated and promoted with great gusto and excitement – for the second time this year – at the very moment when this will most harm their own party and potentially even split it.
The battles reflect the contradiction that still defines the Labour Party, even after its long decline, even after “New Labour” and the purges of the left: it still gains power and influence by appealing to the hopes of the oppressed and exploited, even as it props up the system that grinds them into the dirt. That contradiction, when pressed in a social crisis, can produce shocking eruptions of internal conflict and division.
But no crisis of the past has quite followed the pattern of the current turmoil.
The party has been turned inside out. Inside parliament the party leader is heckled by his own MPs while he talks; outside parliament, he speaks to adoring crowds of thousands about the need to struggle against oppression, racism and austerity. At a time of acute social polarisation and political chaos, the Labour Party is run by a man who called for Tony Blair to be tried for war crimes. The stability of British capitalism and the safety of the ruling class require that the Labour Party leadership be recaptured by the right. And so, as they have done many times before, Labour MPs are mobilising to defend their turf from the left.
This time, their enemy is not a rebellious trade union, or an oppositional grouping of leftist MPs. It is not a weak left minority that can be disciplined or driven out. It is the leader of their own party and his massive base of popular support, which defeated all his rivals in the 2015 leadership election landslide.
The referendum brought to a boil many simmering crises in British society. It revealed a deep well of bitterness and resentment, particularly among older workers, who were willing to lend an ear even to the reactionary leaders of the Leave campaign if it gave them a way to stand up to the hated figures promoting Remain: Blair and Brown, Cameron and Major, the big banks and the business societies. In South Yorkshire, where organised mineworkers had fought most heroically against British capitalism and the state, and had been punished and humiliated most violently for their defiance over many decades, 62 percent voted to leave.
Where will this energy go now? The Labour Party right wingers have a preferred solution, revealed in their condemnations of Corbyn for his purported “sabotage” of the pro-EU campaign. What was his sabotage? He refused to stand on stage and campaign for the EU alongside the hated British politicians and captains of industry who have overseen the destruction of working-class communities, and he refused to blame migrants.
This is to his great credit. The response of the British political establishment is to present a united front against their angry working class population while encouraging racist resentment. The strategy was summed up in a Financial Times article calling for Corbyn’s overthrow: “They need to find someone who recognises the concerns that Labour supporters have about immigration while explaining the damage to the economy that would follow [Brexit]”. Prop up the EU while bashing migrants: that is the acceptable Labour strategy. This would intensify the dynamic that so many dread: the broadening and deepening of extreme anti-migrant racism, merging into the desire for cataclysmic social reorganisation.
But Corbyn has stuck to his guns, and provided not just a call for compassion, but an alternative strategy that has the potential to upend British politics. Refusing to compromise his anti-racism, he has instead called on Labour to win those working class Leave voters to a struggle against austerity. He accepts their anger as legitimate, not condescending to those who defied the “experts” with their referendum vote, but challenging them to fight against their real enemies – the rich and powerful at home and abroad.
This is not just a moral demand for compassion, although Corbyn often peppers his speeches with Christ-like calls for politeness and understanding. It is a strategy to defeat austerity and racism at once, turning the anger of the dispossessed into a struggle for a better world. It is a strategy that could win. It is a strategy that has the potential to defeat the program of the British ruling class. It is a strategy that poses, incredibly, the possibility of using the leadership of the Labour Party as a coordinating centre from which to re-energise social struggle. And for that reason, Corbyn’s performance during and after the referendum have led to the immediate frenzied attempts to destroy him. The Blairites’ aim is to rob humanity of that hope.
“Our movement – our labour movement – was founded on the most immense struggle”, Corbyn told a crowd of 10,000 cheering supporters outside parliament, mobilised on a day’s notice to defend him from the coming coup. Just before, he had stared down his parliamentary enemies, resisting their calls for resignation and daring them to challenge him, as the protesters gathered outside. “I do not want to live in a country where people are sleeping on the streets while the mansions are kept empty.” If the leadership contest is called, there may be many more such protests, and the struggle within the Labour Party has the potential to ripple outwards into society.
The right wing Labour MPs are doing their best to serve the ruling class. They have one weakness: deep and abiding unpopularity. In any fair contest, Corbyn would be swept into the leadership once more on a wave of popular support. But our side has weaknesses too. Corbyn’s position partially depends on the support of left wing union leaders, who have backed him for now. But some of whom also have uncertain and compromised positions on questions of immigration and nationalism and a longstanding commitment to the “unity” of the Labour Party – unity that almost always entails capitulation to the right. The political crisis sweeping Britain has not yet resulted in large and sustained street protests. Corbyn and his supporters will be tested in their capacity to inspire and encourage confidence at a time when many British workers feel fearful and confused.
But as the referendum shows, sometimes the powerful are defied. In times of crisis, the high-and-mighty may be brought low and the strong made weak. And the need for victory is urgent. The coup against Corbyn is part of a broader trend. The ruling class is happy to dispense with any pretence of democracy when their going gets tough. Democracy was discarded in Greece after the 2015 anti-austerity referendum. Now the rulers are attempting to dispense with democracy in Britain and overturn the 2015 election of the anti-austerity Labour leader. Even the mildest promise of hope is inimical to their survival as a class. A fightback in Britain will have to exceed the boundaries of politeness and party unity that Corbyn has thus far respected.
