Campaign for Labour Policies August 23, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.trackback
Dear Friend,
I am writing to you today on behalf of the Campaign for Labour Policies.
We are a campaign of grassroots Labour party members who have come together to mobilise Labour members and supporters around an alternative political programme to the one now being pursued by government.
We are determined to fight for a political party which serves to meet the needs of ordinary people. We are deeply concerned about the erosion of social and economic rights that is taking place in Ireland, as austerity continues to wipe clear hard fought for gains. We do not believes that austerity is working, or that austerity politics, which have failed up to now, will somehow start working soon.
We are launching the Campaign for Labour Policies at a meeting for Labour members on the Saturday September 15th at 2pm in Wynns Hotel, Middle Abbey Street, Dublin. Our speakers will be Mags O’Brien and Michael Taft. We hope to mobilise as many Labour members and supporters around policies which prioritise the needs of society. Our campaign will focus on key questions such as job creation, income inequality, the protection of services and dealing with the onerous bank debt.
The Campaign is open to all Labour members, and we are made up of ordinary labour members of all generations. As Labour members, we all fought hard to convince our communities to elect Labour TDs. The Campaign for Labour Polices is determined that Labour members will have a voice, and become a voice for change in a radical campaign for labour, left policies.
We hope to see you on the 15th.
Yours faithfully,
Neil Warner
Secretary Campaign for Labour Policies
Interesting, but I can`t help but feel that leading people into a cul de sac is not the way left.
This idea of trying to change the policies of the leadership of the labour party from the inside will not work in my opinion. The leadership of that party have a tight hold on their power just now. It will take an election, local or national to wrest that power from them. Or a real internal upheaval.
The organisers of this ” group ” must realise they will not be tolerated by the current leadership, no matter how soft they (” group ” ) are.
I have left out the fact that it is worded as if the labour party is not involved in this current government.
Good luck to this initiative. I hope the Campaign for Labour Policies developes and follows the aspirations in this letter of invitation to their conclusions. I hope the Campaign finds its own public voice of opposition. I hope too that they and the ULA can both work together in growing co-operation.
I doubt the ULA will co-operate with anyone bearing a Labour Party membership card, but time will tell
That depends what you mean by “co-operate”.
I don’t personally expect this charmingly retro new grouping to amount to very much, but if whatever activists it can muster actually get involved in oppositional campaigns and struggles then there’s no reason why the ULA would treat them any differently to anyone else who takes part. But, whatever about the ULA as a whole, the Socialist Party certainly won’t stop arguing that in our view the few dozen remaining Labour lefts are wasting their time and they should leave Labour and join the ULA.
If someone is such a sensitive soul that they can’t bear hearing arguments that they are wrong, then perhaps from their point of view this would look like a refusal to “cooperate”.
And those few dozen Labour Leftists are probably sick to their back teeth of being treated like they are too stupid to decide which party they should be in by the likes of the SP, and have their own reasons for remaining in Labour. Knowing several people in the ULA, often members (particularly the SP end of it) cannot concieve of any reason beyond crude careerism that Labourites remain. Knowing several people in Labour, I don’t think this is the case.
Hence, I remain skeptical that this grouping and elements of the ULA (some of whom on both sides harbour old grudges stretching back to the days of the Militant faction within Labour) can co-operate on an equal or productive basis on anything but the most limited demands.
It should also be pointed out that this is likely a grouping of (in the main) reformist social democrat types, who’s analysis of borgeois democracy and the like probably differs sharply with a marxist revolutionary perspective. In short, the ULA and this Labour Left style group probably hold very different aspirations for society.
As I said, while I doubt there will be much to talk about between activists within this rump faction and ULA members, stranger things have happened so time will tell I guess…
The core problem here is that you are confusing an ability to cooperate on campaigns and areas of common agreement with some kind of “agreement to disagree” on wider politics, where cooperation depends on diplomatic silence. There will be no generalised cooperation on our wider political projects because, as you note, we don’t share a wider political project in the first place.
I think that the last few dozen Labour leftists are completely and utterly wasting their time. I’m not going to pretend otherwise, and I’m certainly not going to mouth platitudinous babble about all being one big happy family on the left, where all strategies deserve respect and nobody should criticise anyone else. Still less am I going to keep quiet about the role of the wider Labour Party in government. If any of that’s what you mean by cooperation or that’s what you think cooperation depends on then, certainly, I have no interest in that sort of “cooperation”, and neither does anyone else in the Socialist Party.
But in terms of practical cooperation on areas of common agreement, neither I nor anyone else in the Socialist Party has any difficulty with cooperating with people who belong to the rump Labour left. Admittedly the issue only arises infrequently at best because there are relatively few Labour leftists around, and those who do get involved in useful campaigns rarely (perhaps never) do it in an organised way as Labour lefts. For that matter, I’ve never had a problem cooperating with members of parties more obnoxious than Labour if they support the goals of a particular campaign. In fact, I’ve encountered more Fianna Fail members in campaigns like that against the bin tax than I’ve ever encountered Labour members.
But isn’t he actually saying something slightly different, which is that – and you did precisely what he was talking about – there’s an inability amongst some in the SP and other further left formations to appreciate the ideological gulf between those who are Labour left however large or small that cohort and self-avowed revolutionaries.
This is what made me smile when I heard some say Patrick Nulty should join the ULA and wonder why anyone would say they should join the ULA. Why on earth would he, why on earth would they? From their perspective which is left of neo liberalism you’re as equally wrong and they’d be perfectly in their rights to assert that as loudly as they felt.
That said I agree it works both ways in terms of not pretending there has to be any profound cooperation between forces. But then I think that’s baked into the cake from the off and it doesn’t have to be an issue of making out there’s greater division than there really is given the balance of power on the left of ‘mainstream’ or ‘orthodox’ Labour.
No, I don’t think he is saying that there’s “amongst some in the SP and other further left formations to appreciate the ideological gulf between those who are Labour left however large or small that cohort and self-avowed revolutionaries.” He’s more straightforwardly complaining that the socialist left and what little remains of the Labour left don’t really like each other and don’t “cooperate”.
As far as the gap between the Socialist Party and Labour is concerned, that’s as every bit as big a gap as that between the SP and Fianna Fail or the other right wing parties. As far as the gap between the ULA and the rump Labour left is concerned that’s a slightly more complex picture.
If we assume that there are about 50 Labour left activists remaining (based on the number who voted against the most right wing programme for government in the history of the state), that will include people who are barely a hair’s breadth to the left of neo-liberalism. And it will include some people who consider themselves, with varying degrees of justification to be Marxists or socialists. And the ULA certainly contains a few people who are no more radical than those individuals.
To put it another way, I don’t think that you can really talk about a single Labour left “project”, because the Labour left is so small, scattered, bewildered and atomised. You have fifty different “projects” for those fifty people.
That should of course have been “that’s there’s an inability amongst”…
Where the Labour Left fit in the hierarchy of significance of the Southern Irish Left (excluding SF, don’t want to get into that argument now):
1. ULA (incl. SP + SWP)
2. Worker’s Party
3. WSM
4. Communist Party / Eirigi / ISN
5. Labour Left
It always strikes me as odd how people seem to behave as if the least organised, least influential, least coherent and among the smallest numerically of the Irish left are accorded such undue significance.
No, I don’t think he is saying that there’s “amongst some in the SP and other further left formations to appreciate the ideological gulf between those who are Labour left however large or small that cohort and self-avowed revolutionaries.” He’s more straightforwardly complaining that the socialist left and what little remains of the Labour left don’t really like each other and don’t “cooperate”.
Well, it’s hard to take that reading from it given that he doesn’t phrase it in the present tense but rather in the context of possible opportunities for co-operation (presumably in the future). I’m also not sure he’s exactly complaining, but pointing out some basic truths, that the LL is essentially reformist (and he notes that in his opinion grudges exist on both sides). TBH reading it is in some respects like reading an inverse of your usual critique, though I find it hard to quite pin down where he stands.
As far as the gap between the Socialist Party and Labour is concerned, that’s as every bit as big a gap as that between the SP and Fianna Fail or the other right wing parties. As far as the gap between the ULA and the rump Labour left is concerned that’s a slightly more complex picture.
I hope I didn’t say that there wasn’t a massive ideological gap between the LP and the ULA, or indeed between much of what I’d consider left social democratic thinking and the LP (or indeed that and the ULA too).
If we assume that there are about 50 Labour left activists remaining (based on the number who voted against the most right wing programme for government in the history of the state), that will include people who are barely a hair’s breadth to the left of neo-liberalism. And it will include some people who consider themselves, with varying degrees of justification to be Marxists or socialists. And the ULA certainly contains a few people who are no more radical than those individuals.
To say that there are 50 members who voted against the govt. programme and say that’s the extent of left wing sentiment in the LP seems to me to be unlikely. Firstly that’s just the people who were able to vote on the day. There are presumably others who weren’t able to take that opportunity to do so. Then there are many reasons why people might be bumrushed into voting for that programme – not least the guff about it being an existential crisis, loyalty to the org and so forth at that point in time who on serious reflection would look back and see that the LP leadership was wrong. And having seen similarly existential votes put to people it’s amazing how much momentum a leadership can have and how many it can bring with it ( the WP ‘reform’ vote is a good example of same ).
Furthermore your politics and mine is in no small part about convincing people that they were wrong to cleave to the right or centre. There’s no inevitability that having drawn that lesson they’ll go as far as you or the perhaps somewhat less far journey to my sort of politics. If you’re suggesting that there’s no way people who voted for that could come back from it then why are we active and organising? People can’t change their minds in light of furhter information or development of their thinking? Seems unlikely too.
As for it being the most right wing programme in the history of the state I kind of see what you’re saying, and yet if one were to look at it on various metrics one could argue that the FG LP coalitions in the 1970s and 1980s were pretty awful. Same with FF in 1987? CnaG in the 1920s?
To put it another way, I don’t think that you can really talk about a single Labour left “project”, because the Labour left is so small, scattered, bewildered and atomised. You have fifty different “projects” for those fifty people.
I certainly wouldn’t think there’s a single project, already we have seen two slightly different manifestations of a left of the LP but from the LP project and at least one TD (possibley two if we include Broughan). But I suspect that it would need a credible and attractive vehicle left of the LP before they’d be prised away from it, at least at this point. Some might indeed go to the ULA, but I’d suspect from talking to a fair few of them that they wouldn’t.
combatliberalism, who accords them undue significance? There was no editorialising at all with the piece above. On this thread there’s been only one comment that’s wholeheartedly positive, the others have been neutral or negative. For myself I’ve never said any more than that there’s nowhere for them to go outside the LP and for the medium term no evidence they’ll have any influence within it. That said I’m always glad to see activity on the left whereever it manifests itself. (and addendum, it’d be a bit crazy not to note in passing or in depth some hint of nascent oppositional activity on the left of one of our governing parties – whatever one considers their prospects are).
One last thought, combatliberalism. I see in your list no sign of those Independent leftists around various TDs and Cllrs.
I’d have thought they too had at least some electoral weight in all this – perhaps some, not so much undue significance as actual significance.
Say we take it as Murphy, Halligan, O’Sullivan and Pringle as being distinctly leftwing with McGrath and Flangan as being not so much. Can’t quite define Wallace. There’s four TDs in there who are definitely left of Labour, six if we thrown in McGrath and Wallace. That’s got to count for something.
Now… where would they go on that list?
Hmmm… questions questions…
To say that there are 50 members who voted against the govt. programme and say that’s the extent of left wing sentiment in the LP seems to me to be unlikely. Firstly that’s just the people who were able to vote on the day. There are presumably others who weren’t able to take that opportunity to do so.
The reason why I insist on putting a number on it is the tendency of some on the left to speak of “the Labour left” or “the Labour rank and file” in a manner completely divorced from the reality of those bodies of people. I think it’s largely a result of an unexamined influence from the British left in previous decades, back in the days when Britain really did have a huge Labour rank and file and a very substantial left amongst it. But in the discourse of parts of the Irish left (the SWP are particularly prone to this, as are some independent leftists), the “Labour left” and/or the “Labour rank and file” are religious entities, with a spiritual existence and importance entirely out of synch with their real existence on this material plane.
There was an attendance of more than 1,000 at the Labour conference that voted through the Programme for Privatisation, Cuts, etc. That is about a sixth of the Labour Party’s paper membership and it is actually a bigger number than its entire regular activist base. There many have been a few left wing types who weren’t there, but the fifty oppositionists will also have included some people who weren’t voting out of left wing sentiment but simply out of party survival instinct. The point is that there’s no significant body of Labour leftists out in the ether, nor are they hiding under a rock in Kerry. They are scattered individuals, small in numbers and smaller still in relevance.
I agree with you, by the way, that people can vote against their principles out of misguided loyalty and that people can change their minds. However, the vote of fifty wasn’t a one off. It’s come at the end of a long process of the destruction of everything even slightly leftist remaining in the Labour Party over many years. To give another example, there weren’t even fifty people voting against going into a right wing government as junior coalition on the previous occasion when it was discussed, just a debate between admirers of FG and admirers of FF with a handful of “radicals” making the suggestion that they should choose between the two after rather than before an election. It’s not really the same context as someone going with Democratic Left out of misguided loyalty to De Rossa.
I do expect quite a number of Labour members and backbenchers to get a serious case of buyers remorse, just as many Green members did. But I don’t expect many of them to be motivated by left wing principles rather than a political survival instinct.
Even by your own figures there would be an LL (I use the term for convenience, not as an entity) attitude six times as large as that 50 if we take it that the 1000 is a sixth of the paper membership. Frankly I think it’s probably larger than that and I’d be very interested in what the result would be if the vote were taken again.But say, that it were possible to get 100 votes this time around, hardly an unreasonable proposition and frankly quite minimal that would actually be given the diminished nature of the Irish left quite a cohort of people. Not huge by any means but large enough. The Labour Members Forum meeting much earlier this year in Wynn’s got 120 or so in attendance.
And while you’re correct loyalty to PdR isn’t quite the same, one can argue that the nonsense about national interest would have a wider and deeper effect than “Proinsias is right comrades, we’d better go with him!”.
Then there’s the point that this was at the start of a process and at a point where the LP had just won its largest cohort ever of TDs. I’d be astounded if a lot of LP members didn’t buy the line – rubbish as it clearly was and is – that this time it would be different with FG etc, etc. Marry in haste repent at… etc, etc.
Finally, why do you think for some it’s simple political survival, ie why do you paint even those who resile from the programme in the worst possible light? Why do you believe not merely that you’re right and all others are wrong but they’re wrong for the worst possible motives? I’m genuinely curious.
I think the worst of the motives of the Labour membership, outside of the 50 or so leftists, because I’m familiar with very many of them.
The paper membership is irrelevant, with Labour as with other parties. Votes tell you something important. Activist numbers tell you something important. The number of people who once bunged you a tenner tells you nothing.
The Labour Member’s Forum attracted such leftists as Aodhan O’Riordain.
It’s odd though, I too know a good number of LP members, mostly, though far from exclusively on the left and from talking to them I don’t get the sense of the worst of motives at least not the majority. Not necessarily facing up to reality, but certainly not malign or indifferent to what’s around them.
And not just him, there were a few others too where eyebrows would be raised as to their leftist credentials.
Tell me more about these tenners
Well it depends on whether you regard being a smug complacent liberal without a recognisable left wing instinct as constituting “the world of motives”. I don’t think that they are sociopathic murderers or sadists, I just think that they are a body of useless self-regarding liberals, quite apart from the minority but by no means insubstantial careerist element.
Yes, quite, on the others of dubious leftist credentials, but he’s currently the gold standard.
Bloody hell, I think that’s my third stupid typo here today. “The worst of motives” not “the world of motives”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5OWRRJh-PI&feature=share Higgins, our President, attacks the tea party. He could grow on you
I get the feeling that the Tea party is a godsend for the Democrats.They can argue with these guys till the cows come home on abortion,gay rights,taxation and ndeed win…. but in the meantime their economic policies are still very similar to the Republicans,the wars abroad will continue(Syria?Iran?)and Obama will keep on being funded by multi-millionaires.
Mark P:”If we assume that there are about 50 Labour left activists remaining (based on the number who voted against the most right wing programme for government in the history of the state), that will include people who are barely a hair’s breadth to the left of neo-liberalism. And it will include some people who consider themselves, with varying degrees of justification to be Marxists or socialists. And the ULA certainly contains a few people who are no more radical than those individuals.
To put it another way, I don’t think that you can really talk about a single Labour left “project”, because the Labour left is so small, scattered, bewildered and atomised. You have fifty different “projects” for those fifty people.”
I would broadly agree with the first paragraph, with qualifications. I would say that almost all of those who opposed coalition are some distance further than a hair’s breadth away from neo-liberalism. Jack O’Connor of SIPTU, for example, supported the programme for government, but is quite consciously opposed to neo-liberalism.
The ULA certainly contains some people who are “no more radical” than those few in the Labour Party “who consider themselves, with varying degrees of justification to be Marxists or socialists.” But that is still relatively radical.
Is the gap between these in in the ULA and those in the Campaign for Labour Policies (fifty in both cases?) bridgeable?
Mark P’s second para above is less acccurate with the advent of a Labour left project, the Camapaign for Labour Policies. It remains to be seen how it will do and where it will lead.
“Jack O’Connor of SIPTU, for example, supported the programme for government, but is quite consciously opposed to neo-liberalism.”
This is what’s known as “cognitive dissonance.” Jack O’Connor wrings his hands with great vigour and enthusiasm, but when actual decisions have to be made…
Is the gap between these in in the ULA and those in the Campaign for Labour Policies (fifty in both cases?) bridgeable?
What does this question even mean? Loyalty to the neo-liberal Labour Party is incompatible with building a left wing alternative in this country in 2012. Why would anyone want to “bridge” such a gap and what would it involve?
The most radical handful left in the Labour left rump should be encouraged to leave Labour and join the ULA. The rest of them, well, really, who cares? We are talking about such small numbers of people and people who are so set in their ways that what they do or say is a matter of nearly complete irrelevance to the socialist left.
Crap, I forgot to close the brackets. I also forgot to laugh at the idea that this new CLP will involve the whole fifty. If there are a dozen actually seriously involved and committed to it I’d be pleasantly surprised.
I won’t speak for D_D, but surely what he means as regards ‘bridgeable’ is between LL and the ULA, not between the LP and the ULA.
And one could obviously be disloyal to the LP while being within it. Militant demonstrated that, surely?
Militant’s strategy wasn’t compatible with that of, say, the Socialist Labour Party and neither group thought that the gap was “bridgeable”.
And yes, you could be in today’s LP while seeking to build a Marxist current in opposition to the leadership, but you would have no success (as demonstrated by the two lads from Fightback who are attempting such a task and who are still two lads some years later).
Well, easier by far then to be a social democrat opposition within it, no? That would be going with the grain rather than agin it. (Though at this point I accept this is an almost entirely entirely academic discussion
)
This then is the origins of the Irish LRC. If grass roots Labour rebel which is what is happening, abeit quietly, pressure will be put on MPs. The best thing that could come out of this is that Labour splits in the long term or loses its activist base.
I think one thing that it’s doing very successfully at the moment is losing significant portions of its electoral base, and a lot of it to SF. That’s grand for the high command who are close enough to retirement come the next election, but for those who aren’t in that exalted position… not so great.
I think that Fine Gael and Fianna Fail can hope to benefit from Labour’s difficulties as much as Sinn Fein. You’ll have an element who hoped for better for Labour and an element who will decide that they might as well vote for the real thing rather than the pale imitation. There’ll be spilled votes all round.
As for the second part: That’s pretty much what I was driving at when you thought I was unfairly ascribing the worst of motives to them!
Out of interest is there a die hard Labour core vote, like with FF, which will always be there despite Irish Labour’s anti working class policies?
Though, Mark P, that wouldn’t necessarily impute worst motives. If you were part of a party where the leadership was adrift and shedding policies you agreed with in favour of more right wing ones while simultaneously indifferent to the people you thought you might represent then you might begin to push back for what would actually be the best of motives because your position wouldn’t be great.
RS. Interesting point. It’s base figure has always been 8-10 per cent of the electorate. Actually that’s been its standard base for aeons. Big question is what happens to that.
From a tactical point of view. It would be nice for Labour to be able to pretend they have a left wing, “like old times”, that they’re not a stagnant, decaying right-wing party. Some illusion, in order to keep on board the few people in their activist base who would be good to have in the real left. They do exist and it’s a shame they’re still in Labour.
On the other hand, I don’t think they exist in significant numbers, even within this campaign.
Most importantly: a strong opposition campaign within Labour would be a major source of instability for the leadership, by extension for the party, by extension for the government. At crucial points they could frustrate the leadership. So on balance, I wish the CLP the best of luck. I hope they drive some nails into the coffin the Labour Party has built for itself, and that the genuine lefts within CLP learn from this campaign that there’s nothing in Labour for them, and join the real left.
Some more details on what the policies are would be good, can anyone comment?