Red faces in Millbank as Left make new gains
The Labour leadership broke another promise on 22 June when it announced the result of the election to the Constituency and other sections of the Party’s National Executive Committee. On the ballot papers it had declared that the results would not be announced until September, always a rather silly suggestion.
The leadership, through the press, has trumpeted the results as a setback for the left, since the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance won 3 places rather than the 4 last year.
However, in addition to winning the elected place on the National Constitutional Committee overwhelmingly with Teresa Pearce, the results show not only that the proportion of votes won by the CLGA increased (from 46 per cent to 48 per cent), but the Left clearly improved its position within the alliance. While the loss of the fourth place is to be regretted, lessons can be learnt from it.
The 6 candidates elected to the CLPs section of the NEC were Tom (now Lord) Sawyer, ex-General Secretary of the Party, formerly a leftish NUPE official, now a director of an anti-union company; Mark Seddon, editor of Tribune; Liz Davies, disallowed candidate for Leeds North-East in the general election and supporter of Labour Left Briefing; Christine Shawcroft, Secretary of the Network of Socialist Campaign Groups; Michael Cashman, ex-Eastenders actor and now MEP; and Diana Jeuda, sitting member.
Ironically, it was Tom Sawyer who, when introducing the reorganisation of Party structures, said that this section of the NEC was for ‘non-parliamentarians’, to exclude the left MPs. This stricture obviously doesn’t include himself as a member of the House of Lords. Suspicion remains that the date of the election was brought forward to enable Michael Cashman to stand (just) before being elected as an MEP.
The only way the Blairites could secure half of the NEC places was to stand these high-profile candidates and with the USDAW union machinery backing Diana Jeuda. Even then, the votes of Cashman and Jeuda fell considerably as compared to last year, and Jeuda only beat the next-placed CLGA candidate by 2,000 votes (of 47,000).
The leadership hoped that by having a low-profile campaign this year they would sneak a ‘victory’. This obviously worked for Sawyer, who did not even campaign for nominations, and achieved top place due to name recognition as retiring General Secretary. Yet even his 49 per cent is not that much of a ringing endorsement, given he only got 1,000 more votes than Seddon and Davies.
It did not work for the others: not only did Cashman and Jeuda’s vote fall, but the other 3 Blairite candidates came behind all the CLGA candidates.
The result shows that it is possible to win new support for the Left with the right candidates and serious campaigning
The other side of this calculation was that far fewer members would vote, increasing the proportion who voted for the Blairites. Yet the numbers voting, estimated at 110,000, was not significantly less than last year (133,000).
For the second year running the leadership’s strategy has failed, both high-profile and low-profile. All they are left with is continuing to downplay the NEC elections and the role of the NEC itself.
Among the CLGA candidates it is clear that after name recognition (Seddon’s strong factor), the level of campaigning was probably the biggest single factor in how candidates fared.
Liz Davies’ vote fell by only 1.5%, whereas Willsman’s fell by over 6%. Liz Davies campaigned exhaustively and kept members informed of what happens at the NEC. Willsman did little - he belongs to that school of thought among Labour activists (mainly prevalent among the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy) that the bourgeois media should not be brought into internal Party affairs.
Ann Black, a first-time candidate who was not that well-known outside of small circles apart from her work on the National Policy Forum, did better than Willsman, again because she was willing to go out and campaign for votes.
The biggest success of all however, went to Christine Shawcroft. Unsuccessful last year, her vote increased from 40% to 46%, giving her fourth place above Cashman and Jeuda. Again, Christine had fought for the vote.
The results also show that, at the very least, campaigning against NATO’s war in the Balkans was no hindrance to winning the election. Liz Davies spoke at countless anti-war meetings (making clear, unlike many speakers, that she not only opposed NATO’s bombing but also Milosevic and his ethnic cleansing).
Christine Shawcroft, Ann Black and Pete Willsman were all against the war, unlike Mark Seddon who supported it and favoured the sending in of ground troops. Seddon, who did very little campaigning in the election, saw his vote fall by 8.5%.
The results have much wider implications for the Labour Left. The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, and above all Socialist Action, attempted to keep Christine Shawcroft off this year’s CLGA slate,arguing that the CLGA had won all the votes there are going for the left and the need was to bring on more "centre" candidates.
The result is a slap in the face for this strategy, shows that it is possible to win new support for the Left with the right candidates and serious campaigning.
The result also gives the lie to those on the left who write off the whole Labour Party membership as Blairite. For the second year running the membership has shown both them and the Labour leadership that they do not support Blair’s policies.