This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In actual news, Len McCluskey's disastrous eleven year tenure as Unite's General Secretary is due to end in August as the union's executive council has triggered the election. A full timetable has yet to be agreed. Unite being Unite there is already controversy at a decision to make ballot access much harder.

Three candidates (Steve Turner, Gerard Coyne and Sharon Graham) have declared that they are running and a fourth (Howard Beckett) is expected to join them shortly. Turner has been endorsed by the union's formal Left faction (winning a contentious vote over Beckett) and has stressed a desire to move attention away from internal Labour Party politics and towards the day-to-day work of trade unionism, Coyne is associated with its less formalised Right faction and ran against McCluskey in an extremely bad-tempered election four years ago, while Graham is associated with a new grouping on the Left but which places industrial strategy over political involvement. All three are thus running against the McClusky era, though in very different ways and at very different volumes. Beckett will be the continuity candidate.

[Blair]

Coyne is also, rather unhelpfully, being retweeted with joy by members of the old right- some, like Watson, left UNITE for GMB when things went a bit well UNITE.

As Al said his 2017 election was rather vicious (he ran extremely hard against Len personally over allegations surrounding a flat that UNITE part purchased) and he came very close to winning- in part as well because there was a challenger to Lens left.

I don't understand UNITE politics that much but my hunch is that Turner will win.

Howard Beckett running after losing the united left nomination (to go for the nomination you had to agree not to run if you lost) is pretty much in line with the rest of his career- the most hilarious episode was him calling for an internal audit of the UNITED Left endorsement vote. At least he'll be able to represent himself if things go to court...

Upon reading it's also baffling that the General Secretary was able to effectively call early leadership elections when he wanted.

[CumbrianLefty]

1) Turner
2) Graham









678) Coyne

















3,183,645) Beckett

[EastAnglianLefty]

This would appear to be a specific 'the Labour Party in the West Midlands is an absolute binfire' issue.

The issues here are specific to the West Midlands conurbation, but in fairness the Labour Party in the rest of the Midlands is also a binfire. In Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire they've been struggling for decades because they've been unable to make the fairly obvious case that the low-waged largely Eastern European employment in the area that is very unpopular is almost all at businesses that financially prop up the Conservative Party locally.

Regarding the UNITE election, it's worth remembering that a) turnout will be very low, because it's a union election and b) it's FPTP, because UK unions are sceptical of alternate electoral systems because they fear they're harder to stitch up. This does mean some quite odd outcomes are eminently plausible.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The issues here are specific to the West Midlands conurbation, but in fairness the Labour Party in the rest of the Midlands is also a binfire. In Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire they've been struggling for decades because they've been unable to make the fairly obvious case that the low-waged largely Eastern European employment in the area that is very unpopular is almost all at businesses that financially prop up the Conservative Party locally.

Yes, that one really is next level political/electoral incompetence.

[Blair]

What are people's expectations of A.) The Local Elections from Labours view B.) The fallout on the party from A?

[CumbrianLefty]

Too busy this morning lamenting the death of football to worry about Labour, tbh.

[Blair]

https://renewal.org.uk/archive/vol-29-2021/remember-scarborough/

[CumbrianLefty]

Fascinating piece, a mixture of comical and depressing (often both at the same time)

Does drive home what a total vacuum the Labour right was during the Corbyn insurgency.

[Blair]

Fascinating piece, a mixture of comical and depressing (often both at the same time)

Does drive home what a total vacuum the Labour right was during the Corbyn insurgency.

It's actually a lot better than the reports I heard at the time! But yes there was a part of the party on the right who needed to lose control of the party- the majority of these people aren't involved anymore in the party anymore.

[CumbrianLefty]

Fascinating piece, a mixture of comical and depressing (often both at the same time)

Does drive home what a total vacuum the Labour right was during the Corbyn insurgency.

It's actually a lot better than the reports I heard at the time! But yes there was a part of the party on the right who needed to lose control of the party- the majority of these people aren't involved anymore in the party anymore.

Hmmm, some high profile figures certainly left Labour but not so sure about "the majority".

[Blair]

Fascinating piece, a mixture of comical and depressing (often both at the same time)

Does drive home what a total vacuum the Labour right was during the Corbyn insurgency.

It's actually a lot better than the reports I heard at the time! But yes there was a part of the party on the right who needed to lose control of the party- the majority of these people aren't involved anymore in the party anymore.

Hmmm, some high profile figures certainly left Labour but not so sure about "the majority".

I meant the majority of people on the right who I couldn't stand- which might be a smaller group than others...

[CumbrianLefty]

Well they did tend to be the most objectionable to many people, not just you

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I have read the Scarborough piece. Very much confirms my long-standing view that most Youth/Student politics in this country amounts to a form of abuse and that Young Labour should be abolished and not replaced.

[Blair]

I have read the Scarborough piece. Very much confirms my long-standing view that most Youth/Student politics in this country amounts to a form of abuse and that Young Labour should be abolished and not replaced.

You would have thought the scandal that the Tories had would have convinced people that the whole system needs to be abolished- you still have the absolute farce in Labour where I'm considered a member of young labour a whole 3 years after finishing university!

[Geoffrey Howe]

https://renewal.org.uk/archive/vol-29-2021/remember-scarborough/

I wonder why factionalism is so much greater - or more acrimonious - in left wing parties.
What was the Conservative Party internally like in the 1980s? After all with Mrs Thatcher pursuing a fairly radical agenda, wouldn't some of the old Butskellites have been quite angry? IIRC there was something of a battle between the Young Conservatives (One-Nation types or sensible ones?) and the Federation of Conservative Students (nutters?) but my memory is a bit hazy on this.

One wonders, for example, how Ian Gilmour remained a Tory.

[Blair]

https://renewal.org.uk/archive/vol-29-2021/remember-scarborough/

I wonder why factionalism is so much greater - or more acrimonious - in left wing parties.
What was the Conservative Party internally like in the 1980s? After all with Mrs Thatcher pursuing a fairly radical agenda, wouldn't some of the old Butskellites have been quite angry? IIRC there was something of a battle between the Young Conservatives (One-Nation types or sensible ones?) and the Federation of Conservative Students (nutters?) but my memory is a bit hazy on this.

One wonders, for example, how Ian Gilmour remained a Tory.

Well there's a number of reasons for this.

I think the foundation point is that the Labour party is essentially a coalition of different parts of the Labour movement & the wider left in Britain- my history of the early years of the party is quite weak but the roots of the party always seemed to be as a combination of rather different parts- the trade unions (of which a large chunk at least back then were firmly on the more reactionary side of the party), the intellectual wing of socialism (heavily influenced by Marxism) the them successors from the Liberal Party & a number of other smaller parts (the Methodist movement, the co-operatives & in more recent moments you had black sections, the gay & lesbian rights activists in the 80s and so forth.

These different parts & the political traditions they're closest to in the party have all to an an extend crossed ideological divides & have joined together at various points to fight other parts of the movement

While the Conservatives certainly have its coalitions & a weird mix at times (both in terms of voters & activists) it's still not at all as complex.

When you add on the fact that the Labour Party is a party controlled by a set of committees you have a rather vicious tendency to manage, fix and control... especially when things go wrong.

If you're a conservative leader who wants to make the party in your own image you just need to win an election (see Thatcher in 79, Bojo in '19 & to a degree Cameron in 2010) The conservative party as William Hague said is an absolute monarchy governed by regicide... so if you try and actually play factional politics you lose. (see the 22 rebels)

There is also now a rather poisonous well in Labour of 'well they started it' with factionalism; see the stitching up of the Hartlepool by-election selection.

I also do wonder if there's a much simpler answer about the way in which left wing activists, individuals and parties interact... in my experience you see the exact same behaviour in the labour party throughout virtually every single strand of it... whether it's 7 pensioners meeting in a rural CLP, or 100 youth delegates in a sh**tty conference centre in Blackpool. 

[Geoffrey Howe]

So you mean the Conservative Party is effectively just a vessel to get into power and implement any non-socialist policies?

I think in a party that largely defines itself against the status quo there has to be more identity-searching and a battle between principle and practicality, which you do not have with a party largely comfortable with the 'system'. That's not to say Tories don't change things though.

Your analysis does seem correct.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Factionalism in the Labour Party is a lot like factionalism within the clergy of the Church of England: in both cases a big part of the problem is that new recruits are immediately introduced to factional groupings and are usually immediately indoctrinated into one of them (often for reasons that might as well be random) and then they learn everything else about the institution and life in it through the factional grouping they have become attached to. The only difference is that the factional groupings in the CofE do, at least, still map on neatly to actual disputes about fundamental matters: the current roster of Labour Party factions mostly date to the late Cold War and their alignment to each other is entirely from that period. In practice this actually adds to the unpleasantness.

[CumbrianLefty]

Tory factionalism can be vicious, but they do seem to be better at "getting it over with" and both sides accepting the outcome once things are decided.

Whereas with Labour, things have a habit of festering for years if not actual decades.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Tory factionalism can be vicious, but they do seem to be better at "getting it over with" and both sides accepting the outcome once things are decided.

It's largely about personalities and there's a tendency to abandon a defeated faction leader for dead, which makes it easier to unite around the winner. Of course when it gets really bad it's as debilitating as anything Labour has to offer, but it seems that some sort of spiraling effect has to develop for that to occur.

[CumbrianLefty]

Factionalism in the Labour Party is a lot like factionalism within the clergy of the Church of England: in both cases a big part of the problem is that new recruits are immediately introduced to factional groupings and are usually immediately indoctrinated into one of them (often for reasons that might as well be random) and then they learn everything else about the institution and life in it through the factional grouping they have become attached to. The only difference is that the factional groupings in the CofE do, at least, still map on neatly to actual disputes about fundamental matters: the current roster of Labour Party factions mostly date to the late Cold War and their alignment to each other is entirely from that period. In practice this actually adds to the unpleasantness.

All sides often talk about stuff from the 1980s as if it was last week.

[afleitch]

Factionalism in the Labour Party is a lot like factionalism within the clergy of the Church of England: in both cases a big part of the problem is that new recruits are immediately introduced to factional groupings and are usually immediately indoctrinated into one of them (often for reasons that might as well be random) and then they learn everything else about the institution and life in it through the factional grouping they have become attached to. The only difference is that the factional groupings in the CofE do, at least, still map on neatly to actual disputes about fundamental matters: the current roster of Labour Party factions mostly date to the late Cold War and their alignment to each other is entirely from that period. In practice this actually adds to the unpleasantness.

All sides often talk about stuff from the 1980s as if it was last week.

Which is a leftist political and leftist cultural/arts hangover too. The miners strike and poll tax are cultural cows to be milked by boomers who lived it or those who cut their teeth during that time. Who often don't have time for or indeed have disdain for current social and political justice movements.

[Blair]

On that subject my favourite misreading of the Labour party was when a 'senior source' compared Tom Watson versus Caroline Flint in 2015 deputy leaders race as a redux of the 1982 deputy race...

[Alcibiades]

The other thing is that factionalism seems to be a fairly universal phenomenon among left-wing movements worldwide. Maybe it’s something about the ideology, or perhaps more precisely how that ideology affects their conception of doing politics, which leads to this.

Nonetheless, as Blair points out, the Labour Party is fairly uniquely heterogenous among social democratic and socialist parties in terms of the number of historical political traditions it draws on. Even if these divisions are not particularly relevant today, they have left behind an environment, culture and apparatuses in which factionalism can thrive.