It all started with an anonymous document.
Well no, it all started back in the mist of time. Back when the People’s Front of Judea (Splitters!) decided they would wrest control of the levers of power from the Judean People’s Front. But this latest chapter started with the document.
The document was sent to Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) up and down the country, just as they we starting the process of nominating candidates to Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) – the governing body of the party.
The NEC elections are hotly contested this year. There are two main slates – one from the left organised by the Grassroots Alliance and one from the right organised jointly by Labour First and Progress. There are also a few extremely highly regarded independent candidates, who are challenging the domination of the slates*, and that, combined with the massive uptake of Twitter amongst politicos, has completely galvanised this election.
It was always assumed that the dossier was simply about the NEC elections – a way to bolster one slate at the expense of another. But after yesterday’s events, it seems there may be more to it than that.
Yesterday, a motion was discussed and adopted at GMB conference to “monitor the factional activity of Progress”. This in itself is a perfectly acceptable and not particularly controversial event.
The GMB feel Progress are a threat to their position in the Labour Party and the way the party operates and decides on policy. As a result they’ve decided to keep an eye on them. It might feel a bit intimidating if you’re a senior Progress person, but in a democracy, accountability means we have to be accountable to those who disagree with us as much as those who don’t.
If this is how the GMB have democratically chosen to set their political priorities I can see why they have. Progress do push an agenda that is radically different from that supported by a large group of people in the union movement.
Where the controversy arises is not, for me, in the motion passed by GMB members but in a promised motion mentioned from the platform by GMB General Secretary Paul Kenny who said:
“On Progress let me say this. I know that at this very moment a resolution is written and will be delivered to the Labour Party shortly. It is a rule amendment which will go before this year’s conference for next year which, effectively, will outlaw Progress as part of the Labour Party, and long overdue it is.”
This is significantly different than simply monitoring Progress’s activities. I await the final text of the motion, but to effectively “outlaw” a group is an extreme step, one taken by Labour against the entryist organisation Militant in the 1980s. It would be an astonishing step to take against an organisation which includes among its membership most of the shadow cabinet.
The question will be whether the other unions take up this cause, or whether they have other priorities. If they do take up the cause, unions and affiliated Socialist Societies represent 50% of the conference electorate on any motion, so if they unions work in concert, this could be a very worrying moment for Progress indeed.
For myself, I hope they don’t. I think there are far greater priorities for the Labour Party right now than talking about ourselves and our internal wrangling. Labour feels like it’s at a turning point at the moment with members coming together with a renewed sense of optimism coming out of the local elections, and a move as divisive as this could throw the whole thing into disarray.
It would – of course – be the focus of all political stories coming out of conference.
There is a great deal to criticise about Progress. They do not behave democratically internally (for example, there was no ballot of members to decide who they would back over the Labour leadership) and they are frequently criticised – rightly – for the way they sometimes behave towards members of the party who do not belong to their faction.
Progress would do well not to simply fight this (as of course they will and should) but to take the opportunity to learn from it too, and become a more open and accountable organisation. If they do that, they might just have the chance to close this down before it becomes a millstone around the neck of everyone fighting for the election of a Labour government in 2015.
There were also rumours of another contentious motion to conference yesterday, calling for the expulsion of Dan Hodges. Dan has – of course – quite flagrantly and deliberately broken the rules of membership of the party.
The problem is, so did Ken in Tower Hamlets. So did many, many Labour Party members in 2000 when Ken stood as an independent. You can’t have one rule for Ken and another for Dan and NEC member Ken is going nowhere, I suspect, so neither should Dan Hodges until he chooses to leave (my money’s on March 2015).
Why a resolution at conference? Individual expulsions should be a matter for the NEC, and can be referred at any time. It seems to me, a fair amount of showboating is going on here.
* Full disclosure – I am backing Johanna Baxter – an independent candidate – for the NEC.
Comments
Sandra Crawford / June 12 2012 11:11am
As a member of the Labour Party I have been finding several things about progress that I would say indicated that they were operating as a perty within a party. I get constant emails from them, which advertised their recent seperate conference, invited me to join their membership, for which they charge a fee. I am already paying membership fees to Labour, so why am I being asked to join a group within Labour?
This strikes me as a powerful neoliberal lobbying group who are trying to make sure that Labour remains addicted to the flawed neoliberal Thatcherite doctrines of Blair. I would not mind if neoliberalism had had any success, but it has not. It is bad medicine for Labour, the country, and even eventually the rich if they did but know it.
Labour does not have to lean to the left - but IT MUST DITCH NEOLIBERALISM. This is the doctrine of bubble and crash economies.
It is a disaster and will lead to total stagnation. Read a book by Thomas I Palley called "From Financial Crash to Stagnation." by Cambridge University Press. It is brilliant.
Progress keep sending me articles written by deluded neoliberals who thinks that Labour will have to continue with austerity. It is an insane doctrine that they are addicted to - and the business who pay them to say it are amd and deluded also. Just read that book - it explains why we must ditch neoliberalism and fast. Thus we remover the need for the progress party.
Michael Bater / June 12 2012 6:05pm
Hmm slight difference between Dan & Ken. The Nu Labour Politburo 'engineered' it so Ken wouldn't be nominated for 2000, much to the disgust of a lot of us Grass London Labour members, that's why we campaigned and voted for Ken.
Ken was expelled from the Party & readmitted to be the Labour candidate for his Second Term (in hindsight if he hadn't of been re-admitted, he would of probably of beaten Boris the 1st time, thus keeping London with a 'Labour Mayor'
Dan blatantly supported Boris in the Torygraph, (writing for them should be cause for expulsion! LoL!) by saying that he would vote for him. He could of easily suggested a Lib Dem or Green vote, if you are Labour voter dissatisfied with Ken (& yes Ken's Gob did open before brain could engage at times).
So Hodges should be be suspended/expelled for the same amount of time as Ken was.
John D Clare / June 12 2012 6:26pm
Of course there is a precedent for banning factionalism. It was Resolution 12 of the Tenth Party Congress of the Bolshevik Party in March 1921. And the person whom Lenin chose as 'Gensek' to enforce the purge was ... Josef Stalin!
It strikes me that the cure is worse than the disease, here.
I do have reservations about Progress - the main one being that, by being - in essence - the rich man's wing of the Labour Party, it absorbs all the rich men's funding. So we have a Labour Party which is desperately in debt, and a lobby-group within the Party which is awash with money.
However, whatever you think of their political beliefs, the grassroots members of Progress such as Luke Akehurst are totally-Labour, and for Labour to consider outlawing them would be tantamount to cutting off your arms because they didn;t look like your legs.
I don't know Paul Kenny, but this is a stupid move. It begins to look for all the world like an attempted Trade Union coup. If successful, it will split and destroy the Party, because it will involve expelling a large number of the Party's most senior politicians, and leaving a rump of pro-unionists whose public perception will be at the mercy of the right-wing press.
Typical Labour Party - just as we've got the enemy on the run, some idiot gets us all fighting amongst ourselves again.
Hopefully, it'll all turn out to be a storm in a teacup - a bit of tub-thumping - and we can get on with unseating the Tories.
The whole point of the Labour Party is that it is a tension between centrist pragmatism and left-wing idealism. What Mr Kenny needs to appreciate is that this polarity exists *within* each member, as much as across the two wings of the Party. It needs debate, understanding and compromise, and it cannot be solved by explusion.
Cllr Tim Swift / June 12 2012 7:55pm
Generally, I agree with you Emma. And I'm really disappointed in the GMB, who I've usually seen as a reasonably sensible voice in the party. A slight quibble though when you criticise Progress for not having a vote about who to support in the leadership election - as a Unite member, I was subjected to lots of lobbying on behalf of their preferred candidate (including wholly disgracefully sending out lobbying material in the same mailing as the ballot paper) and I don't remember them holding a vote first!
Heidi Svenson / June 13 2012 12:42am
Might I point out that 'Progress' are not simply an internal problem for the Labour Party: a faction dominated by Progress members Ruth Smeeth, Anthony Painter and Dan Hodges (to name but a few) has hijacked anti-racist campaign 'Hope Not Hate' and sought to turn it into a Tory-friendly factional base. This is explored fully in the article I have co-written for the latest Notes From the Borderland issue 10 (see www.borderland.co.uk for outline)