Caring about the battlefield
Factional infighting is leading all sides to forget the welfare of what it is they are fighting over.
This is the second weekly email of Hard Thinking on the Soft Left. If you haven’t already you can subscribe here. You can also read the first post here.
This regular update is going to become increasingly ironic. The reason for this is I am going to talk a lot about the internal politics of the Labour Party and movement while arguing that one of the Labour Party’s biggest problems is too much internal focus.
I think I can make a decent argument for doing so. This is a once a week check-in where I will look at what is happening with the Labour Party and why it matters. That ‘why it matters’ part will try to have an external focus, always bringing the discussion back to that ‘eyes on the prize’ approach I talked about in the first instalment.
But I accept that - at least in part - this is going to be a case of ‘do as I say, not as I do’! And so on to the navel-gazing.
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This week saw the continuation of an internal battle over control of the Socialist Health Association. As a result of calls from both sides to join, membership of the London branch has more than tripled and reports from all sides of their online AGM that it was a tough meeting for all involved. I haven’t spoken to anyone on either the ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ side who was happy about how the meeting went with increasingly bad feelings on both sides of the Labour divide.
But this isn’t a post about how to have good meetings. It’s sort of about some of the factors that led up to that meeting and some of the fallout from it in the short term. But mostly it’s trying to raise our eyes to the horizon to see the long term damage that is being done not by who wins or who loses, but to the value we place on the battlefield itself.
The Socialist Health Association is a Socialist Society. I am a bit of a geek about these having been involved with several over the years and represented the collective on the National Policy Forum for about five years.
Socialist Societies exist to represent communities of identity (Labour Women’s Network, BAME Labour, LGBT Labour etc) or communities of expertise (Labour Housing Group, Socialist Educational Association, Scientists for Labour etc). There are currently twenty societies listed on the Labour Party website as official affiliates and the only one that falls outside of this descriptor are The Fabian Society - which is a think tank. It’s unusual for a think tank to be affiliated, but as the Fabians helped to establish the Labour Party this outlier makes sense.
Each individual society has a formal role to play with the Labour Party in nominating candidates for various roles and voting on selections, at GC meetings where a CLP is affiliated and in electing their representative NEC member - currently James Asser of LGBT Labour (disclosure - I used to work with James and consider him a friend - though I suspect he won’t agree with this piece).
I first got involved in the wider world of the Socialist Societies in 2002 when I went to work at The Fabian Society (of which I remain a member to this day). I then went on to represent them on the informal umbrella group of Socialist Society executive members who try to coordinate activity between the societies ( eventually became both secretary and treasurer of this group). I then went on to run SERA and later became Vice Chair of Labour Housing Group when working at the National Housing Federation. I sat on the board of the Labour Womens’ Network for a number of years and helped in the affiliation process. Most recently, I joined the Jewish Labour Movement as a non-voting (and that’s important) ally over the antisemitism scandal.
As you can see from this piece written long before the Corbyn wars, I have been championing the unique role of the Socialist Societies in Labour for ages. I see their expertise and lived experience as a vital strength and a place where those who really know what their talking about can work with the party to inform and shape policymaking in the policy areas that affect the ways they live and work.
Sadly, I am worried that this expertise has been seriously downgraded during the ongoing factional battles in the Labour Party.
For example, an email went out from Labour First on the 29th December 2020 calling on people to join the Socialist Health Association to stop a takeover by the hard left. While the email mentioned the ongoing health crisis of the pandemic, there was no indication in it that people joining should have any interest or expertise in health policy.
I am also reliably informed that it was this email circulating among various Momentum WhatsApp groups that spurred on a further increase in joining from their side and eventually the vote split 60:40 with the left in the ascendency taking on the executive roles on the London SHA. The fight continues over the national SHA. And so the cycle goes on.
Over the years, different Socialist Societies have leaned towards different wings of the Labour Party. They ran the gamut of the party which also meant that so did those informal executive meetings. But they were generally held in the spirit of cooperation and camaraderie. When there were bust-ups, these were usually organisational rather than factional.
What mattered though was that sense that they brought that level of expertise to the Labour Party. That is their unique offer. If that is diluted then what is the point of these separate organisations other than simply to be yet another factional battlefield?
The soft left often gets accused of being naive. The right think we’re being played by Momentum, the left thinks we’re too willing to be stooges of the establishment. I refute this absolutely. But I know that in calling for an end to the factional warfare over control of the Socialist Societies that will be a key charge levelled at me. And certainly when I have tweeted about this in the past, there is a sense that there is no possibility of this now happening.
That might well be true. But it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be argued for. And it should be the soft left doing the arguing. If, as I said in my previous post we want to combine pragmatic radicalism with pluralism when it comes to policy, then I don’t believe that which faction runs a Socialist Society should be what matters as long as what comes out is the best-informed thinking from Socialists and Social Democrats in their fields of expertise or from their lived experience.
This is what should matter. Are the Societies best equipped to contribute the best possible thinking to the Labour Party? Are the people who are running to be elected to run the Societies offering the best possible way to maximise that knowledge and contribution? Are they demonstrating how they will get the best from all members of a Socialist Society making it a place where all ideas can be welcomed, tested, strengthened and offered in the spirit of solidarity to make for the best possible Labour platform?
At the moment, sadly, the answer is no. It’s just become another numbers game where each faction tries to get their people into positions of power regardless of what they are actually supposed to do with them.
When this moment of hyper factionalism subsides (and it will) what will be left of the infrastructure to support such expertise coming through? what will be left of the people who aren’t factional and who once felt the Socialist Societies was the safest space to offer their expertise to the whole party?
In my previous post I argued that the soft left need to keep their eyes on the prize. While I meant this electorally, I also mean that we should speak up when we see those around us willing to destroy important Labour Party institutions for short term factional gain. If the Socialist Societies become just another casualty of Labour’s forever wars, something important and possibly irreplaceable will be lost. The soft left should be the voice demanding that doesn’t happen. They must be the people caring for the battlefields.
What I’ve been writing
This week I wrote for the Telegraph that Angela Rayner is right to learn from Margaret Thatcher’s rhetorical style. I also wrote for Byline Times that Ted Cruz has miscalculated his level of appeal to Trumps fan base.
I also appeared on the Midatlantic podcast to talk about how and if Joe Biden can unite the USA.
Reading List
This week I finished reading Difficult Women - a history of feminism in 11 fights by Helen Lewis. I absolutely loved this book. Partly for the causes it champions and outlines, but also because it speaks to that pluralism that I have been trying to champion. There was plenty to dislike about some of the women who have been a huge part in some of the biggest wins in feminist progress. That doesn’t mean they aren’t important and neither their achievements - nor their rough edges - should be hidden away.
While I am on a Helen Lewis bent, this on woke capitalism is my favourite thing I read last year. Too often, especially in our ‘tweet and move on’ age, we allow corporations to wokewash their work without doing the actual hard structural change that is really needed. Too often people on the left champion rather than question these initiatives. Eyes back on the real prize people - not the shiny bauble!
Questions, comments and arguments are very welcome. Insults will get you summarily blocked on every platform that no longer hosts Donald Trump. I’m at emmaburnell@gmail.com or on Twitter (far too often) at @EmmaBurnell_.