Stop the Blairite steamroller -
No to 21 st Century Party!
MATTHEW WILLGRESS , Co-youth officer of the Network of Socialist Campaign Groups writes (in a personal capacity)
Being a member of its exciting National Policy Forum, I take a rather unhealthy interest in all things to do with the Labour Party.
My favourite moan at the moment is the 'consultation' around the 21st Century Party document. Someone in Millbank certainly has a sense of humour.
This document, which supposedly sets out to 'reform and modernise' the Labour Party, is in fact one of the key points in pushing British politics back into the 19th century.
This is the stated aim of leading Blairites who believe the Labour Party was a tragic mistake and want to unite the party with the Liberals. We are in the process of seeing such a shift to the right that even Peter Kilfoyle is regarded as something of a dangerous left-winger.
The document itself includes a heavily loaded questionnaire at the back and talks a lot about "empowering" party members. What it explicitly doesn't do is ask members for what they see as the reasons for the failure of the party structures.
This is because the Blairites are well aware that these reasons are political. For example, in the proletarian revolutionary bastion of North West Cambridgeshire, members resigned over the bombing of Iraq. There are likely to be more resignations in London if the government insists on going ahead with privatising the tube.
The pretence that this is really a 'consultation' document is exposed by its 'flagging-up' of Enfield Southgate CLP, where the party structures have already been changed.
Also, if one wants to see the true meaning of these 'consultations', it is always better to go straight to the horse's mouth. In this particular case that horse is David Evans - a Millbank employee.
In an article entitled The New Labour Party: A Vision for Organisational Modernisation Evans is quite clear about the Blairites' intentions. He states that "Representative democracy should as far as possible be abolished in the Party." He then goes on to say "All members are equal, so there is no need for General Committees."
This must have been what good old Mandy meant when he talked about "redefining" activists in Modern Labour magazine - getting rid of them altogether.
However, as Evans' plan involves one all-member AGM a year electing a tiny executive to run the Party as they please for the next year, some members are considerably more equal than others!
Evans is quite blunt about the reasons for this change saying: "it will empower modernising forces within the Party and marginalise 'Old Labour'."
This is the first reason why socialists must oppose these reforms. They make it impossible for any left movement amongst constituency members to be reflected in the Party.
They know from Bevanism and Bennism that a Labour government pursuing reactionary policies leads to a backlash. Therefore it is a crucial part of the 'project' to destroy the CLPs.
In getting this through Conference the Blairites will need the support of the unions - many of whose leaders would no doubt like to oblige. This is quite ironic, because in destroying the GCs the union link would be severely weakened on a local level, making it much easier to implement a further step in the 'Project' by breaking any remaining ties with the unions.
The fact that Blair makes a speech on the centenary of the Labour Party saying that the whole thing has been a "mistake" (The Guardian-Jan.19th) and doesn't even invite the union tops along shows that this is well on the cards.
Amongst the groups opposing these 'reforms' are CLPD and the Network of Socialist Campaign Groups. The task of organising opposition to Blairism in the unions and the Labour party together has never been so important. For the Left to let sectional divides get in the way of such a fight would be sheer lunacy.
The Network of Socialist Campaign Groups are currently writing a programme on the issues facing young people today. For more information contact Matthew c/o [email protected] or Owen Jones [email protected]