I recommend Dave Middleton’s blog post Towards Peace and Justice about the recent initiative from Jeremy Corbyn to establish The Project For Peace and Justice. Like Dave I welcome this initiative. I also share his questions. Does this initiative help us with the most pressing political questions facing the Left today?

My problem with Peace and Justice is to do with Jeremy Corbyn and is the reason I held off joining the Labour Party until after the 2017 general election. I have always admired his stand on issues that we both support. In no particular order: Socialism, workers struggles, women’s rights, anti-racism, anti- fascism, anti-imperialism etc. You get the picture.

I have always had questions about his strategy for achieving these aims. He has focussed on parliament and combined being an assiduous constituency MP who works for his constituents with using this position to speak out on the big issues of the day and lend his name and his time to campaigns like Stop the War. This has brought into sharp relief, now he is building his own campaign, the question of how the electoral struggle for a voice in parliament and mass campaigns to build support for extra parliamentary struggle fit together.

The Peace and Justice launch did not address this question in any detail. It was an impressive gathering of the left. In a pre-Covid age we would all have been in Hyde Park after busting a gut to raise trade union sponsorship for the coaches and after listening to the speeches we would have debated the significance of the event on the long journey home. London comrades would have had the advantage of doing this in their local pub instead of motorway services miles from home, but never mind.

Events like this are always a starting point, a catalyst for debate and further action. And the most urgent question facing socialists today in the Starmer era, the one that was not adequately addressed at the launch is “what is OUR relationship to the Labour Party?” I place the stress on OUR because my social media feeds are full of people saying I. I have left the party because . . . I am staying because . . . I will never vote Labour again until . . .

It’s not about YOU, Comrade. Or ME for that matter. It is about US. What should our collective response be? And our answer should be the one that best serves the interests of the working class. Now I am not so arrogant as to assume that I know the answer to that one. I have more questions than answers if I’m honest. So here are my questions.

If you are a socialist should you join the Labour Party?

At present I would think no. The Parliamentary Labour Party and the media were ganging up on Corbyn like nobody’s business after he put the frighteners on them by nearly winning the 2017 General Election so I joined out of solidarity. And I did my bit. I leafletted and knocked doors during the 2019 campaign. But if you join now you are joining a rearguard action. We are all clinging to the wreckage right now. Unless you’ve got a life raft I do not recommend diving in.

Should socialists stay in the Labour Party?

That depends. My CLP has a good core of socialists who are making a difference at a local level via the council and supporting community action. If I left where would I go? In fact I am not going to leave. It is not a choice for me as an individual . But if the socialist union reps, councillors and other local activists in my CLP make a collective decision to leave I will go with them. If you have left the party or are thinking of leaving it is important to have a plan. What are the options for staying in touch with the socialists you know who are staying for now? How can you link up with other socialists outside the Labour Party?

How can we bring socialists together?

There have always been left wing groupings outside the Labour Party. But even the most successful never numbered more than a few thousand members. And they often seemed more hostile to each other than they were towards capitalism. This was not just stupid sectarianism of the kind that was satirised in Life of Brian. If you believe that Russia or China or any other country is already socialist your first priority is to defend their revolution against the West as a precursor to emulating them here, hopefully with their support. If you think those countries have betrayed their socialist roots the last thing you want is to be identified with them or to seek their intervention on your behalf.

And this matters. In the red wall seats that we lost to the Tories the key argument was Corbyn’s supposed lack of patriotism. He would put other countries’ interests before our own. He was a dangerous leftie because he backed countries like Venezuela and wanted to introduce their failed-state policies into Britain. He would weaken our defences because he was against nuclear weapons and NATO. And he was betraying our democracy by endorsing a second referendum on Brexit. Antisemitism was the story that dominated the media. But its major impact was to persuade liberals and centrists that they held the moral high ground when they chose Johnson over Corbyn. It also had the added bonus of tying the left in knots and making it nigh on impossible to get balanced coverage of our policies in the media.

Whether you are in or out of the Labour Party we have to find a basis on which we can come together that respects differences, allows debate that does not descend into sectarianism, and, above all, helps us to act together to win the victories now that lay the groundwork for bigger victories in the future. In other words, a united front.

*Update 16/02/21*

Creative Socialism

Last week I attended a Zoom meeting that felt like a united front. One of its prime movers was Dave Middleton, whose blog I quoted at the start of this post. We were concerned to keep the ideas of socialism alive, to counter the toxic influence of much of the media and support grass roots struggles. Today he has blogged again as The Unrepentant Socialist. Dave is convinced that we need to find new, more creative ways of organising and hopes last week’s meeting is a step in the right direction. I hope so too. I am looking forward to the next meeting. We are not setting up a new party. We are creating a space where independent socialists, along with those comrades who have chosen to remain in the Labour Party for now, can come together and organize for a better future.