Labour Party

Stolen from members

The crisis within New Labour over Ken Livingstone goes right to the core of the party. Peter Morgan speaks to Labour Party activists who refuse to campaign for Dobson

Blair speaks

Blair, interviewed by the Financial Times (15 March 2000):

'I think these issues about the so called heartlands...is that people want me to adopt old-fashioned rhetoric. Well, I won't. I will say nothing other than what I believe...I'm delighted that we have business people and entrepreneurs that can today support the Labour Party. And I never want to see that situation change again.
Q: Is Ken going to win? Is it really bad for London if he wins?
A: In my view, the important thing is he's not my candidate.

For Richard Williams 9 March was a big day. After many years in the Labour Party Richard finally decided to resign his membership. He told me, 'I've been a member of Hammersmith and Fulham CLP for 17 years. I was branch secretary for four, chair for one and GC member for five. I was very active in the years leading up to and just after the general election, organising fundraisers as well as all the day to day stuff. I was worried about Blair and his crew before the election, but presumed they were just saying things to win the middle ground and would revert to socialist policies once in power. It soon became clear how very wrong I was. I have thought of resigning on many occasions since the general election over such issues as student grants, continued privatisation, bombing of Iraq and Serbia, etc but the treatment of Ken Livingstone really was the final straw.'

Richard wasn't alone. The previous day his brother, Chris Williams, wrote an angry letter to the Guardian hoping that Tony Blair was reading, quoting his Labour Party membership number and his intention to resign. When I contacted Chris he told me why he decided to leave. 'Both my parents--87 years old and lifelong Labour supporters--are deeply sickened by the "rigging" of the selection system for the London mayor candidate for the Labour Party. Many Labour Party members (myself included) are deeply disillusioned by many aspects of this government. Its over-strong emphasis on the needs of business, its "stick and carrot" approach to getting people into work, its total failure to address the ever growing gulf between the rich and the poor in the UK, etc. This government seems to be "conservatism with a slight dash of (very) diluted socialism". This is not what I--and many others in the Labour Party--voted for.'

New Labour: a nasty business

The anger of the Williams family sums up the feeling of many Labour Party members across the country. The rigged electoral ballot which saw Frank Dobson selected as Labour's candidate for mayor has created the biggest crisis for Labour in many years. For many it is the defining issue which has forced them to leave.

One of these is Rose Maskell. As you can see from the membership card on the cover of this month's issue of Socialist Review she has finally taken that decision. Rose, a Labour Party member for 40 years, worked on the London Underground for many years and was a member of the NUR before retiring. She used to be in Bermondsey CLP and is now a member of Bexley CLP. Rose was pleased that Livingstone is standing as an independent. 'There is widespread anger over the Livingstone issue, but I think the support for Livingstone is brilliant, I really do. I'll certainly vote for him myself.' When I asked her if she would do this even at the risk of expulsion from the Labour Party she was quite adamant. 'I'm coming out anyway. I'm resigning from the Labour Party because I think it's been a very nasty business. Tony Blair will get a letter from me explaining why I'm resigning and exactly what I think of it all. I blame Tony Blair for the fiasco. Blair's shoved Dobson in to be Labour's candidate for mayor; I don't know why they think he would be popular.'

When asked what repercussions this would have for the party as a whole, Rose said, 'It wouldn't surprise me if this split the Labour Party, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people came out because I have definitely made up my mind. This goes right to the heart of the Blair project--I've never been very keen on him anyway. He seems to me to be all smiles and I don't like the man. I voted for Prescott, but he seems as bad as Blair now--I'm getting a bit disillusioned there as well. This mayor business is the final straw as far as I'm concerned. We have a local constituency meeting coming up and I've a feeling they will vote to back Livingstone.'

Rose isn't alone in thinking that this may split the Labour Party wide open. Piers Corbyn, the former campaigns organiser for North Southwark and Bermondsey CLP, agrees. 'This may split the Labour Party, but the Millbank apparatchiks and the Blair project have already split themselves off from the vast majority of the rank and file and activists in London, Wales, Scotland--indeed the whole country. Membership has fallen by one third since the general election. Anger is very deep now. For a while a lot of members thought or pretended there was nothing more to the "Blair project" than the best way to win elections, or they thought that Labour's majority was so large that any project had been dropped. The fact that Blair is prepared to put his narrow sectarian power freak alliance with the right before winning a landslide for Labour in London really proves the point.'

Clearly there has been a haemorrhaging of support for New Labour since the decision by Livingstone to stand as an independent, and this isn't lost on the Millbank apparatus. The announcement that no one will face expulsion simply for voting for Livingstone is a sign of the pressure the party leadership is under. The letters from disgruntled Labour Party members which have found their way into the national press must be only the tip of the enormous correspondence of anger that will have been received at Labour Party headquarters. When I asked the Labour Party press office the numbers of Labour Party members who had resigned from the Labour Party, either in London or nationally, the reply I received was a polite but firm--no comment. Party general secretary Margaret McDonagh has claimed that the figures are in hundreds rather than thousands. But this can change.

A sign of the anger can be glimpsed in the letter that Piers Corbyn sent to David Wilkinson, acting regional director of the Greater London Labour Party: 'In the 18 years since I joined the Labour Party, including four years as a councillor, I have campaigned for all the candidates irrespective of whether I had backed their selection or not. This is the first selection "result" I, and many many others, have refused to recognise. The reason is that the selection process was manifestly corrupt. I and others are not saying this out of political whim. Indeed, I have been closely identified with New Labour--having been credited with "setting Trevor Phillips on his political career"--and I was campaign organiser in 1997 for Jeremy Fraser, who is now Dobson's campaign organiser. This commitment, along with that of many others, has been directly appreciated by the prime minister... Those who impose candidates against the wishes of the members will have to do their own campaigning. The party has been stolen from the members. I have resigned as constituency campaign organiser and will not lift a finger for Dobson or the GLA hirelings, and great numbers of other activists are similarly now on a "campaign strike". I do not think you and Millbank Tower realise just how dire the situation is.'

Spin won't build the party

For Labour's leadership, the situation is going from bad to worse very quickly. It's not just that many members are beginning to question their membership, but that those who do stay are not prepared to argue for Blair's politics on the doorstep. Richard Williams explains what this means in practice: 'For all the elections up to the general election, and council elections the following year, we were able to have a full complement of tellers and knockers up for all three polling stations in the ward. For the European election last year, for the first time we were only able to operate out of one polling station due to lack of helpers. For the mayoral elections I suspect they won't even be able to do that. Apart from the two (salaried) councillors and one or two diehards the branch is effectively moribund. Membership was down from 110 at the general election to approximately 60--and that's before the Ken business blew up. Most of those members are "paper" members and have never been seen.'

It's a problem not simply confined to London. The fallout out from the London mayoral election extends through out the country, and so does the crisis in local Labour parties. Maggie Pearse joined the Labour Party when she was 16. She is now in her 50s and lives in Bradford. After the Livingstone decision to stand as an independent she went along to her local Labour Party constituency meeting with the intention to resign. 'Unfortunately when I got there', she said, 'the branch chair had beaten me to it. He had already resigned and he is on the right wing of the local Labour Party. The local Labour Party will be up shit creek if those who run it leave--the New Labour lot don't know how to run the CLP. If the activists pull out they will be lost. And we've certainly lost a lot over the last two years. The spin doctors at Millbank don't know what ordinary Labour Party activists feel.'

It's a similar story in Newcastle. George Waddle wrote to Socialist Review. George is the treasurer of the South Tyneside Trades Council, joined the Labour Party in 1970 and is a life member of Unison. He said, 'The anger over Labour's decision to stand Dobson is epidemic and not just from the naturally left of the party, but even amongst the more moderates who normally see very little wrong with Blair's brigade. I think that Livingstone's decision to stand as an independent could well be the straw that broke the camel's back. The Scottish fiasco with Canavan was the first sign of a crack in the facade; the Welsh Assembly and the choice of Euro candidates saw a further weakening of the structure. Ken Livingstone's treatment has provided the crowbar with a chasm wide enough to split the party asunder. This event marks a watershed for many Labour party members. I live in an area of Labour heartland and they are either leaving in large numbers, seriously considering leaving, or, at the very least, preparing to ostracise the party at the next election. The pensioners feel betrayed. The health workers are morally bereft. Long term sick and disabled are being hounded by the chancellor whose obsession with work of any sort is bordering on the obscene.'

London is Europe's richest city. At the same time there are thousands of people living in poverty.

The London Socialist Alliance says we don't have to put up with this any more. It is made up of trade unionists, community activists, pensioners and students who are sick of Blair's Tory policies.

They will be standing for the 25-seat Greater London Assembly in the elections in May. LSA candidates are committed to putting socialist policies at the heart of London.

They include 'Journalist of the Decade' Paul Foot, rail worker Greg Tucker, pensioner activist Austin Burnett, teacher and trade unionist Christine Blower, and anti-racist campaigner Theresa Bennett.

You can help the campaign by putting up an election poster, taking a sign-up sheet around your street, or sending a donation to London Socialist Alliance, PO Box 20492, London SE11 5WL. Phone 020 8981 9243. Make cheques payable to London Socialist Alliance.

Time to leave Labour

So although for many Labour Party members the Livingstone fiasco is the final straw, the anger goes much deeper. They are also concerned about the attacks that Blair has carried out against the poor, elderly and ordinary working class people since coming to power. It was best summed up for me when I visited Tony Haynes in Slough. Tony works for British Airways at Heathrow and first joined the Labour Party in 1978. Between 1987 and 1997 he served as a Labour councillor on Slough Borough Council. He proudly showed me an award that he was given by his local MP for his services and dedication to the local Labour Party following the 1997 election which saw Labour win the marginal seat of Slough for the first time since 1983. It was a hip flask with the House of Commons symbol engraved on it. Yet Tony no longer considers himself a Labour Party member--he now calls himself an independent.

'I was on the council for ten years. I fought many elections. I was deselected at one point, and I took on a marginal seat and doubled the majority. I had a seat that was in one of the poorest areas in Slough--things like overcrowded housing, no youth facilities, poor facilities for the elderly, lots of crime that was associated with poverty as well. I represented that ward for about six years. The dedication when I joined the council and the feeling that we are doing something good is not there today. The people who I think count have all been betrayed--they are now getting people in with no background and I don't know if any of them know what socialism is about, to be quite honest. Instead they believe it is all about good management principles and delivering services.'

Slough's New Labour council is pursuing policies that Blair would be proud of. They are part of a vicious attack on local people. Tony explains: 'We are getting the same thing happening in Slough Borough Council that is happening in large multinational corporations at the moment--downsizing, kicking people out of their jobs. The council is looking for £80,000 worth of cuts and so it decided to take out residential wardens who look after the elderly people. It put a 25p charge on people paying their rates and council tax at the post office. Last year it tripled the price of the pensioners' bus passes. Now it has employed a spin doctor and an assistant for £80,000 to explain to the people in Slough how wonderful the council is. Millbank and the Labour leadership are out of touch with working class people. For the New Labour people who come into the party it shows how out of touch they are. Blair and Brown keeping to the Tory budget means they are attacking rock solid Labour values--student grants, pensions and so on. I believe they think that strong socialism is unpopular, but it's not.'

Tony's anger against New Labour's policies was combined with a passionate attack on Blair's control of the Labour Party: 'Tony Blair thinks that local Labour Parties are a thorn in his side. And he wants to control the whole thing. There is that deep rooted fear that the activists are left wing and they are going to rock the boat. He fails to understand how loyal people are in the Labour Party and for someone to resign from the party, whether it be Livingstone or anyone else, then it is one hell of a decision to make. It is not easy to do and the longer you are in the party the more difficult it is to make that decision. For Blair not to realise that there is something fundamentally wrong that it forces people to give up so much, that they have to walk away from it, means that Blair is misreading the mood of the party and of Labour Party activists totally.'

Support for the LSA is growing and attracting wider publicity, as seen here with this full page article which appeared in the London Evening Standard recently

The more Blair attacks working class people and the more he tries to impose his candidates against the will of the members, the more the anger and disillusionment will spread. The result is that many Labour Party members, like Tony, are now deciding that the only way to fight this rotten government is to leave the party they joined to carry on the fight to make society more equal and fair. 'My message to Tony Blair is to look again at the most vulnerable people,' says Tony. 'The Labour Party is too influenced by big concerns and it is the little voices, ordinary working people, that are being ignored. Labour has turned its back on ordinary people. I think there are a lot of people who are very disappointed at Blair's performance as leader. He promised to bring back a more equal society and he hasn't changed this a bit. It's big business and big concerns that are powerful and getting more powerful, and this goes against what most people want. The reason for me resigning is that there is no mechanism to make any of these changes. You can't convince the spin doctors, the management, Millbank, that a vast shake-up and change is needed. The only way you can do it is to step outside of the party and to take it on an issue by issue basis'.

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