Liz Davies interviewed
"There is no hope of changing the Party back to the values that most Labour Party members believe in"
Veronica Fagan from Socialist Outlook talked to Liz Davies about her book ( review ), and the political choices that had emerged for her during and since its writing.
SO: One of the things that struck me reading the book, is that because it is written, in a certain sense as a chronology, it’s difficult to distinguish between the slow drip of the realisation you came to that this isn’t what I joined the party for and break points.
LD: I suppose it was much more of a slow drip than one break point. When we were elected to the NEC in 1998, I had very low expectations. I knew that Millbank were capable of dirty tricks, and I also knew that the Grassroots Alliance – holding four seats out of the 33 – were never going to win any votes against the leadership.
But it would be fair to say that Millbank’s behaviour exceeded even my low expectations. The first meeting was spent discussing Millbank’s "code of conduct"; prohibiting us from speaking to the press – dubbed by the media a "gagging clause". At the second meeting, they moved next business to prevent us even discussing our motion condemning the bombing of Iraq.
Then at the National Policy Forum in July 1999, the Grassroots Alliance was hoping that we could ally with some of the trade unions in order to achieve a few amendments on minority positions – such as restoring the link between pensions and earnings, lifting the cap on national insurance contributions, defending housing benefit, opposition to PFI.
Instead, Millbank wanted everyone to withdraw amendments so that they would not even be voted on by the National Policy Forum, let alone Conference. The trade unions went along with Millbank’s manoeuvres, withdrawing all their motions in favour of a meaningless intention to conduct a "review on welfare" and voting down the Grassroots Alliance motions.
It became clear by then that, despite the policies of the trade unions, their representatives were more interested in supporting Millbank than arguing for their own policies and there was no possibility of any middle ground developing on the NEC.
It also became clear to me that the decision-making structures in the Party – which had been created in order to restrict democracy in the first place – were hopelessly manipulated by Millbank and there was no possibility of any dissenting voices being heard through those structures.
As far as government policies were concerned, like many on the Labour left, I did not have high expectations of the New Labour government in May 1997.
But I did not expect an assault on lone parents, the scapegoating of asylum seekers, the attempts to restrict trial by jury – none of which were in the manifesto.
SO: You talk about Christmas 99 being a key time, but you don’t say very much about the dilemmas you were grappling with?
LD: I was trying to decide whether to stand for the NEC for a third term. We were in the middle of the Livingstone saga. The Asylum Bill had been passed by Parliament six months earlier with only seven Labour MPs voting against.
I was beginning to feel that I could not necessarily support New Labour at the ballot box. I was very clear that if Livingstone ran as an independent, I wanted to support him.
It seemed wrong to put myself forward to Party members to stand for the leadership body of the Party when I did not feel committed to the Party any longer.
And the reason why I did not feel committed was because this was a Party now dominated by New Labour – it was not the Labour Party that I had originally joined.
SO: You mention that you did not vote for Dobson in the London Mayor election and that your partner put a Socialist Alliance poster in the window at this time, but you do not say very much about the Socialist Alliance.
Yet your public act of leaving the Labour Party was combined with a declaration of support for the Socialist Alliance. What I don’t get from the book is how much your decision to support the Alliance is a negative against new Labour, and how much it is a positive choice
LD: I took three separate decisions at probably three separate times. I wanted to come off the NEC – I had a mandate to stay on the NEC for the term of office which ended in October 2000, but I wanted then to come off it, take a deep breath, and make some political decisions.
Having come off the NEC, I had some time to think and what became clear to me was that, for reasons that I explain in the book, the Labour Party had qualitatively changed as a result of New Labour and was no longer the Party I had joined.
My experience on the NEC had led me to conclude that there was no hope of changing the Party back to the values that most Labour Party members believe in – the decision-making structures were entirely manipulated by Millbank to prevent that.
As a result, I felt that I could not support New Labour at the ballot box and that seemed fairly conclusively to mean that I should not continue as a member of the Party.
The third decision was to support the Socialist Alliance and it’s been the imminence of the general election that has crystallised that question for me.
As it happens, because I live in Hackney North, I will be voting for Dianne Abbot, one of the few remaining left Labour MPs and someone for whom I have a good deal of respect.
But in the neighbouring constituency of Hornsey and Wood Green the choice between Socialist Alliance candidate Louise Christian and Barbara Roche is one of the most straightforward in British political history. There is no doubt in my mind I would vote for Louise Christian.
SO: Towards the end of the book you talk about the thinness, the lack of energy in the Labour Left, but you don’t say very much about how you think that has come about.
LD: The book is intended as an exposure of New Labour, not a study of the Labour left. But obviously I’ve been part of the Labour left for years and there can be no disputing that the Labour left has declined.
SO: But what do you think are the major factors in the decline of the Labour Left?
LD: the Labour left started to be beaten back under Kinnock, but there’s no doubt that New Labour has made it impossible for the Labour left to function. When they barred me from standing for Parliament, that sent a message to the Labour left not even to try to put candidates forward.
The left used to play its part in the decision-making structures of the Party – so New Labour closed those down. The only opportunity for Labour left voices to be heard are the annual NEC elections. Even those elections are largely symbolic since they cannot affect the balance of power on the NEC, but Millbank resent them so much that they are now proposing to reduce the frequency of NEC elections.
The Labour left has declined in influence, but also in numbers. Lots of good socialists have left the Labour Party in recent years. In the last few months, I’ve been struck by how low the expectations of the Labour left have become.
It seems to have lost its ability to be shocked by the wickedness of New Labour, because it spends so much time watching New Labour up close – and I think that’s another reason for its decline.
SO: Do you think what has happened in local government has had an effect on the strength of the Labour Left? Because the book is written about your experience on the NEC you don’t say much about your experience as a councillor.
LD: At the end of the book, I contrast my experience in Islington in 1993, when I was involved in the campaign to occupy and save two nurseries from closure, with the recent crisis in Hackney.
The point about the nursery occupation is that the campaign, working both inside and outside the Labour Party, managed to win and persuade the Labour councillors to overturn their original decision to close the nurseries.
It took a strategy of public campaigning – the occupations, leaflets, petitioning on the streets etc – with using the Party’s democratic structures to put pressure on the councillors.
One shouldn’t be too nostalgic – there were plenty of campaigns at that time using those methods that didn’t succeed, but that one did and as a result one nursery was re-opened.
In Hackney in 2000 – 2001, the Council (run by a Labour-Tory coalition) is privatising its services, attacking the terms and conditions of the workforce, closing nurseries and old people’s centres – and there’s a serious trade union and community campaign opposing these measures.
But the campaign isn’t heard within Hackney Labour Party. There was an attempt by the Hackney left, including myself, to raise the issue at Hackney North Labour Party General Committee meeting – but a motion that was written to appeal to the broadest possible alliance, urging reconsideration of the cuts, was smashed out of sight by the Blairites.
That taught me that the strategy by which I had always worked – public campaigning and raising the issue within the Party at the same time – no longer applied and that if the cuts are to be defeated, that will only happen through the public campaign. It won’t happen inside the Labour Party.
SO: Earlier, you referred to the Socialist Alliance as a party and obviously in electoral terms that is what it is. I don’t know how much you are aware that there are elements of a debate within the Alliance about whether the long term project is actually to form a party in reality as well as in law.
Many of us would see the model of the Scottish Socialist Party as the sort of model we would be interested in. I wondered if you had given this any thought?
LD: Watching the Socialist Alliance, until recently from the outside, I’ve been struck by what appears to be a new understanding on the left – that not everyone has to agree with every dot and comma in order to be able to work around a common programme.
I’ve been impressed by the various election results, by the strength and diversity of the candidates and by the broad alliance that it represented.
I’m aware that sometimes there are differences within the Socialist Alliance – and that those differences are resolved democratically. That’s a refreshing contrast to New Labour.
I’ve also been struck by the number of people who have left the Labour Party – either recently or over the last few years – who are now involved in supporting the Socialist Alliance.
I don’t have any prescriptions for how the Alliance should develop. The most important task is to obtain a decent vote at the general election that will confirm our position on the electoral map.
Having seen many of the candidates speaking or campaigning, and seen the real enthusiasm that there is in the Socialist Alliance for getting the socialist message out to the electorate, I’m convinced the Alliance represents a new and exciting alternative.