Labour Representation Ctte.

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Here is a report from Weekly Worker (CPGB)

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/586/labour%20left.htm

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The challenge for the left  
By John McDonnell MP
   
  On 16 July the first major post-election conference of the left takes place as the Labour Representation Committee meets to lay the foundations for a long-term left strategy. Bringing together socialists within the Labour Party, trade unions and others, the conference will reflect the emerging consensus within the movement of the need to organise and prepare for a Real Labour government to supercede the declining New Labour project.

Within two years Blair is almost certain to have gone and the expression ‘New Labour’ will be allowed to fall quietly into disuse. The whole Blair époque will pass into history to be looked upon as a frustratingly worthless deviation in the development of the Labour Party.

Frustrating because it wasted the potential of both the largest parliamentary majority Labour had ever gained and also the most fortuitous economic conditions. Instead of using these circumstances to undertake a radical transformation of our society and place Britain at the leading edge of social progress, Blair has been ideologically devoid of anything more than a continuation of neo-conservatism.
The general election result demonstrated that the electorate have reached the edge of their tolerance of this. At first glance a 67 Labour majority may appear healthy but on analysis the majority is seen as extremely precarious with most of those 67 seats resting on miniscule individual majorities and a declining national Labour vote. It is evident that the 2005 election was in fact a very close shave for Labour.

The electoral message is straightforward. Unless there is a radical change in direction Labour faces the prospect of a wilting disillusion amongst what’s left of its support and eventual loss of office for an incalculable period.

The LRC conference offers the critical opportunity for the left to discuss the development of the policies and organisation needed to create the conditions from which a Real Labour government can emerge.

The conference will pose the immediate question of how do we organise to prevent the outgoing rump of the Blair regime further damaging the standing of Labour with its pursuit of further attacks on civil liberties, privatisation and continuing support for Bush’s policies of international military aggression.

The LRC has published an overview document setting out for debate the basic ideas for a Real Labour policy programme. This debate starts an intensive period of policy analysis and construction, to be launched at the conference. Establishing a range of policy commissions, the LRC aims to bring together policy experts from specialist research and campaigning organisations with rank and file socialists and trade unionists. The aim is to prepare an extensive range of policy reports for widespread dissemination and consultation with the movement.

Our task will be to construct the programme of a Real Labour government and to win the labour and trade union movement to this set of policies. The LRC conference will also focus on the basic organisational tasks for the left in gaining support for its ideas within the movement. With membership of the Labour Party at less than 200,000, promoting membership of active rank and file socialists and affiliation of left trade union branches has the potential for democratising the party and re-founding Labour as a socialist party.

The potential of the LRC at this particular time means that the July conference should be a must attend event for any serious socialist and progressive in our movement.

• John McDonnell MP is Chair of LRC and the Campaign Group of MPs

• A post-election conference for the Labour Left
Sat 16 July, 10am - 4pm, TUC Congress House, Great Russell St, London WC1

Speakers include: Tony Benn • Katy Clark MP •Jeremy Corbyn MP •Jeremy Dear NUJ •Tony Donaghy RMT • Paul Mackney NATFHE • Alice Mahon • John McDonnell MP • Michael Meacher MP • Mark Serwotka PCS • Christine Shawcroft • Alan Simpson MP
Registration: £5 waged/£3 unwaged info@l-r-c.org.uk or http://www.l-r-c.org.uk

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I would also recommend this article for criticism /discussion as well

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/586/labour%20bash.htm

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Is this an example of Socialist Party 'flexibility'?

Labour Representation Committee’s futile efforts

UNDER THE name ‘Time For Real Labour’ the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) held its first annual meeting on 16 July. The LRC was set up in 2004 following gatherings over several years of prominent labour and trade union lefts aiming to ‘reclaim the Labour Party’.

Jim Horton
In fact the Labour Party left’s response to both Blair’s third general election victory and the horrific 7 July bomb attacks revealed much about the LRC’s shortcomings and their mistaken belief that New Labour can be won back to politically representing the working class.

Opening the conference, John McDonnell said he and other left Labour MPs had resisted pressure to make rash comments on the London bombings while people were still in shock and grieving for the dead. He said a measured response was needed.

But he admitted that the government had no qualms in pushing its agenda immediately after the devastation. Like the Socialist Party, LRC conference condemned the bombings and pointed to the obvious link between Blair’s criminal partnership with Bush in Iraq and the disaffection of millions of Muslims across the globe, which drives many of the desperate to carry out appalling attacks on ordinary working people.

Unlike the Socialist Party - and to his credit George Galloway - Labour Party lefts like John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn sat on their hands recently in parliament allowing Blair to set the political tone by denying any such link.

The initial failure of the left in the Labour Party to stand up and be counted on the London bombings showed their lack of confidence. It suggests that, despite their sincere intentions, they won’t succeed in their aim of recapturing the Labour Party for working people.

New Labour is now firmly entrenched as a pro-capitalist party. It is no longer a question of merely changing the leader, making the structures more democratic or even trying to convince party members to adopt a socialist programme.

Nor is it a matter of waiting for the see-saw to tilt to the left. The Labour Party has fundamentally changed. One delegate claimed that Labour’s election defeat in 1992 had put activists on the back foot, and described Blair’s abolition of Labour’s socialist clause 4 as a scam. Another delegate referred to Blair’s takeover as a coup.

But the truth is that historically the Labour Party had a dual character. Although saddled with a pro-capitalist leadership, its actions were constrained by a membership rooted in the trade unions and a mass electoral base in the working class.

Today Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s sickening enthusiasm for the capitalist market and the enrichment of their profit-bloated friends is well beyond the failed Old Labour idea of a mixed economy. New Labour is an open party of big business, whose attacks on workers’ pay and conditions to bolster profits have left millions politically disenfranchised.

This change was partly brought about by the experience of old labour in office in the 1970s, particularly the attack on the living standards of low paid workers in the 1979 ‘winter of discontent’. Then there was the Labour Party’s failure to mount a serious challenge to Thatcher in the 1980s.

Following his betrayal of the miners and the Liverpool city and Lambeth councillors, Neil Kinnock set about making the Labour Party safe for capitalism. This included expelling ‘Militant’ supporters (the Socialist Party’s forerunners), closing down the Labour Party Young Socialists and driving the Party’s policies sharply to the right.

This process was consummated by Blair, who, following the restoration of capitalism in Russia and Eastern Europe (which were Stalinist not socialist regimes), joined the chorus of a world-wide capitalist ideological offensive against the ideas of socialism.

Under this cover the New Labour was born, embracing Thatcherism and the neo-liberal agenda of slashing workers’ rights to boost shareholders’ dividends.

Disorientated by the seismic changes in world relations many Labour Party lefts at best acquiesced to Blair’s dictates. Others left the Labour Party in disgust, particularly after the war on Iraq. With Labour Party membership now half what it was in 1997 and many branches and management committees moribund, policy-making shifted to the middle-class careerists who now dominate the party.

Speakers at the LRC conference roundly condemned the government’s assault on workers’ living standards, the malign consequences of the privatisation of public services and Britain’s continued bloody occupation of Iraq. Michael Meacher MP noted that such policies have resulted in four million fewer votes for New Labour in 2005 than in 2001.

But, unfortunately, even the best trade union leaders, like Mark Serwotka of the PCS, who questioned the possibility of reclaiming the Labour Party, and Matt Wrack of the FBU, did not make a clear call for a trade union initiative to set up a new mass party to represent the political interests of the working class.

Both these speakers skirted around the issue, while the conference reaffirmed as its task the democratisation of the Labour Party and its adoption of a radical socialist programme. But the key question of how these aims could be achieved was still unanswered by the end of the conference, other than the call to build the LRC’s membership. And no-one, bar Serwotka, dared to question the very feasibility of the LRC’s ambitions.

The conference debated the LRC policy document ‘Programme for a Real Labour Government’. The Socialist Party agrees with much in the document, such as opposition to privatisation and the return to public ownership of the privatised utility and transport sectors, the scrapping of anti-trade union laws, the abolition of tuition fees, increases in pensions and the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

However, while talking about the need for socialism there is no pledge to bring into public ownership the top 150 monopolies that control the commanding heights of the economy.

The LRC document merely talks about regulating the economy. It threatens companies who don’t comply with society’s expectations on pay, job security and corporate democracy with a ‘democratic audit’ leading to the government taking a controlling stake in companies, but only if it would be self-financing.

Such a programme is too feeble to reverse decades of attacks on workers. But it will be fiercely resisted by the bosses who will still control most of the economy. Poverty will never be abolished nor health, education and housing provision provided to meet our needs if working people do not have democratic ownership and control of society’s resources.

A synopsis of the LRC programme that was available for delegates omitted any proposals on what should be done with the main sectors of the economy.

In encouraging delegates to vote for the LRC constitution John McDonnell referred to the "excellent clause 4", which calls for "implementation of a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of the working class". While a vast improvement on New Labour’s clause 4, it nevertheless falls short of Old Labour’s abolished clause 4 which aimed to "secure for the workers the full fruits of their industry" and favoured "the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange".

Just as important a question is how we build a mass alternative. A truncated conference session on building the LRC set itself the task of establishing groups around the country and encouraging trade union members to attend Labour Party meetings. Many speakers drew false parallels between the first LRC’s formation in 1900, which led to the Labour Party’s formation in 1906 and how the LRC can be built today.

But speakers told conference of the difficulty of convincing trade unionists to join New Labour or convincing union branches to find people to attend local management committee meetings.

One delegate pointed out that the most radical unions were not even affiliated to the Labour Party. The PCS has never been affiliated; one PCS delegate commented that given the government’s proposed slaughter of civil service jobs any motion to PCS conference to affiliate would not get a seconder.

The FBU and RMT find themselves disaffiliated from Labour because of their experience of bitter industrial disputes against the government. In other unions there have been on-going battles to break from New Labour.

Good lefts in the Labour Party and trade unions should abandon futile attempts to convince workers to join it and put their energies into building a new mass workers’ party that can attract the hundreds of thousands that marched against war and poverty and are searching for a mass radical alternative to all the parties of capitalism.

From this weeks Socialist.

[Irish Militant]

I think that's an excellent article, which accurately describes both the limits to the LRC's programme and their lack of a viable strategy to implement it. Truly a case of the bewildered huddling together for shelter.

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'the limits to the LRC's programme and their lack of a viable strategy to implement it. Truly a case of the bewildered huddling together for shelter.'

Now surely this was the position of the CWI in the UK when they were involved in the Socialist Alliance!! No viable strategy, the bewildered huddling together for shelter, until the SWP dominated the proceedings that is!!! That was  the excuse of the CWI when that adventure failed.

The CWI dont want anything to do with the Labour anti Blair left. They wont work with them or involve them in campaigns. A touch of 'left' snobbery' I think.The article above proves it.

[Irish Militant]

Originally posted by OUTOFTHENIGHT
The CWI dont want anything to do with the Labour anti Blair left. They wont work with them or involve them in campaigns. A touch of 'left' snobbery' I think.The article above proves it.

The Socialist Alliance was an interesting experiment and one I will talk about on another thread, but let's try and keep the existing threads as focused as possible. I think we will get better discussions if we avoid sprawling all over the place.

The Socialist Party has no problem working with what exists of a Labour left and the above article certainly doesn't say otherwise. The problem as far as we are concerned arises in trying to *find* a Labour left. In that regard even the term "anti-Blair" is problematic since most of the people who fit that bill in the Labour Party are "Brownites", themselves New Labour to the core.

The LRC is the main gathering of the Labour left, yet what is its attendance? Significantly less than you would get at a Socialist Party national event - and that's not boasting about the size of the SP, quite the reverse in fact. And even that attendance includes a proportion of people who aren't all that left wing on the one hand, and on the other some people (like Serwotka) who don't think "reclaiming" Labour is at all viable.

We will work with anyone in our campaigns, the issue of working with Labour lefts doesn't come up very often. There just isn't much Labour left left.

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Where/what is the Labour left is a good question.
Small? Yes but as small as alot of the far left groups outside the LP.I think a lot of left groups have taken a batteringover the last decade . In my view the only significant move to the left has been in the trade unions.It is interesting to note that the CWU in London has a strong presence in the LRC. There were also significant representations from the RMT, TGWU and UNISON , all involved in some industrial fightback against Blair.
I think we should give the LRC time to develop.The LP is empty of industrial workers at the moment but the most significant point is that they are not going anywhere else.

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Also, wasnt the last national SP event Socialism 04 about 500 delegates and visitors? Only a few hundred more than turned up at a mainly London based LRC event.A question of wait and see for both tendencies I think.
What would have been wrong with the SP sending a few delegates to the LRC to argue their case? Its open to non LP affiliates and I know for a fact that the SP send papersellers to cover the event. Why not go in and argue the case?

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CWU backs LRC

 
Submitted on 27 June, 2005 - 22:38. Labour Representation Committee | CWU | Privatisation | Solidarity 3/75, 23 June 2005 | Union conferences
Possible privatisation of Royal Mail, and the union’s link to the Labour Party, were the big issues at the General Conference of the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) in Blackpool from Sunday 12 June.

On Sunday the Executive’s emergency proposition, calling for a strategy to defeat privatisation and a review of the Labour link at conference 2006 if privatisation happens was narrowly passed. The alternative was a demand to withdraw from the Labour Party in November 2005 if the Government will not give a restatement of its commitment in the general election manifesto to keep the Post Office public.

The debate was a power struggle between different regional sections of the postal section of the union. The London Division held a fringe meeting that evening where divisional representative Martin Walsh called for London to launch its own campaign and run a ballot to see if the members wished to withdraw from Labour.

On Monday, the conference passed a more combative motion, moved by Pete Keenlyside from Greater Manchester, by a five-to-one majority. It called for a retention of the Labour link but for all money except affiliation fees to be spent on campaigning for CWU political ends, including joint campaigning with other unions and developing the Labour Representation Committee.

It also called for the CWU to campaign for a fundamental change in Government policy on the anti-union laws and privatisation and to give support only to MPs committed to the aims of the labour movement.

Issues discussed at the sectoral industrial conferences included strike action on the pay offer to O2 staff, and an improvement in the rights of postal branches to call industrial action.

From AWL site

Also check this link for affiliates http://www.l-r-c.org.uk/links/#affiliates

CWU/FBU/RMT all unions involved in action against the Blair Govt.

[kimberlysark]

Hi ppl.

Where does the LRC have branches? I've not seen them before. What do they do in-between their annual conference to organise the fightback within Labour?

What does the CWU actually do to practically reclaim the Labour Party? Do they instruct all their members to join and go to CLP meetings to take it over? If not, why not?




KS x

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We have an LRC branch in Southampton.Last week 8 people attended with about 4 apologies.
There are a few branches in other areas especially London and for a tendency thats only been going for a couple of years that aint too bad.There are some branches in the midlands and up north.Ask the LRC for more info in your area.
I dont know what point you are trying to make about the CWU.There is no problem about individual union branches affiliating to the LRC. Billy Hayes the leader of the CWU, a left reformist, has supported the idea of reclaiming the Labour Party.I am sure if you do a bit more digging you could find out more.
I did hear a couple of years ago that some CWU branches were to affiliate to the SSP. Wether it happened or not I dont know.Maybe the idea isnt so much of a runner now the SSP is in its own decline and financial crisis.(see previous posts regarding the SSP)

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Here is a recent article from Socialist Campaign Group News.
Hayes is a left reformist so people here might have a few criticisms.His orientation though as a trade unionist is correct.

Defend trade union influence in the Labour Party
 
By Billy Hayes, General Secretary, CWU  
  It is evident that the trade unions made an irreplaceable contribution towards Labour’s successful election campaign, yet we are hearing strong rumours about another attempt to break union influence in party structures.

Such moves will have to be fought. Having played a major part in delivering a third term for Labour, the argument has already been settled. Trade unions delivered for Labour in a way focus groups, think tanks and consultancies never will.

The content of the rumours appears to be that some sections of the party leadership do not wish to deliver the Warwick Agreement. Despite the fact that it is a manifesto commitment. From this follows the suggestion that structural changes are needed to avoid a commitment to a future Warwick II.

Avoiding the Warwick Agreement means forgetting the positive impact this had in Labour’s election campaign. It was the key plank for unions re-engaging with members in support of the party.

The government seems anxious to reconnect with the business lobby now the election is over. It would be particularly wrong to cave into this lobby, given that they have nowhere else to go for the next five years. If, however, Labour does begin to renege on Warwick then the party will feel the negative results as early as next year’s local council elections.

The talk seems to be of two changes. Firstly, to marginalise the unions in the National Policy Forum (NPF) structures. This is being dressed up as improving the contribution of other stakeholders.

Secondly, to change the voting balance at annual conference by lowering the percentage of conference vote given to affiliates. Here, the change is being linked to the possible merger of Amicus, TGWU and GMB.

The vehicle for these changes is suggested to be the findings of the Party into Power review. If this is the case, then this is a completely artificial injection into the process. Whatever the findings of the review group, there have been no submissions previously that indicated the need to weaken the contribution of the unions.

The rumours are a challenge to the ‘Smith settlement’, not just to the Warwick Agreement. This was made in 1993, establishing the principle that affiliates and constituencies should have their own sections at Party Conference, each with 50 per cent of the vote. Attacking Warwick and the Smith settlement are sure ways to turn our movement inwards when we must be looking to strengthen the party.
Though we were successful in getting Labour re-elected, it is clear that we have lost millions of voters’ support since 1997. Affiliated unions have to be one of the key instruments for reconnecting with voters and for recruiting a new generation of Labour activists.

The Party into Power review ought to lead to deepening the involvement of members and affiliates in the party structures.

We want to see reforms like the government placing green papers and white papers into the process. There should be a reduction in the numbers required at the NPF to allow a minority position to be presented to conference.

The CWU has a constitutional amendment due to be debated at this year’s annual conference. If carried, this would allow annual conference to make amendments to final documents in the policy cycle. Such measures have to be considered if conference is to be seen as a major event for the Labour movement. The accusation that conference at the moment is a rally with a trade fair bolted on seems unfortunately apt.

A better relationship is possible between party members and government in the third term. But this cannot be achieved if the promise of Warwick is broken. And a fight to sever the union link would both fail, and embitter relationships. All sections of the movement must now insist that Warwick is implemented, and the Smith settlement honoured.

[Irish Militant]

Originally posted by OUTOFTHENIGHT
I dont know what point you are trying to make about the CWU.

The point he/she seems to me to be making is that the Labour-loyal union bureaucrats who push the LRC are for the most part not at all serious about "reclaiming" the Labour Party or even about waging a real fight to do so. At least if they are, it is the lowest profile fight, involving the fewest people, ever waged! Instead the LRC and empty talk of reclaiming Labour generally is simply used by sections of the union bureaucracies as a tool to hold off those in their unions who want to break the link.

Having looked at other reports of the LRC's open conference, it appears that there were between 150 and 200 people in attendance, including people who aren't all that left wing, the members of left groups and the people like Serwotka who oppose a reclaim Labour strategy. I'm not suggesting that's the entire Labour left, but it is an interesting sign of the chronic weakness of that milieu. There were once tens of thousands of Labour lefts, now as a movement they have almost disappeared.

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Granted , but there hardly anything happening outside of the LP either!!The left outside the LP is tiny. In most areas outside the cities it is miniscule and entirely irrelevant to the Trade Unions. In the cities it seems to be mainly involved with white collar and public sector trade unionism.
The left completely failed to make anything out of the Anti War movrment , which is tragic.

So, there is a chronic weakness of left groups outside the LP as well.