Labour MP's consciences.

When the British Parliament voted to bomb in Syria, Labour MPs were allowed to use their votes 'according to their consciences', which meant that they did not have to follow any particular Labour policy, or vote according to the views of the leader or his shadow cabinet. It is worth remembering that both the majority of the shadow cabinet and the majority of Labour MPs voted against bombing, but the 66 Labour MPs who voted for bombing made Parliament's majority decision in favour of extending the war much more credible.

During and after Parliament's vote on military action in Syria a secondary debate started in the media (and wider) about MP's 'right' to vote according to their consciences on matters of war. MPs right to vote at all about war is a consequence of the public opprobrium felt for Bush and Blair's bloodbath in Iraq. There were many socialists and other radicals, inside and outside Parliament, during and after the Syria debate, who also believed that MP's consciences should be the basis of their vote (eg, shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and Green MP Caroline Lucas.)

It is likely that Corbyn drew back from arguing that Labour MPs should vote against the bombing and that there would be a Labour whip, because it might have provoked several resignations from his shadow cabinet. It is also argued that if he had insisted on the whip, then the Labour vote for the bombing would have been much less and the result would have meant that the bombing campaign would have been seen as less acceptable among the wider population.

But MPs voting according to their own determinations is a generally popular idea among voters, and not just for votes relating to war. Breaking from party orthodoxy creates the impression that MPs are challenging the old party structures thereby undermining the endless preservation of Britain's despised political status quo. It is a definite sign of the enlivening of political interest and understanding, as decisive questions are now debated and fought through in Parliament, when for decades there was little distinction between the programmes of the mainstream parties. All the major issues of wealth and power were not just glossed over by the main Parliamentary parties, they were denied as issues of any substantive contention across the whole of society. Today, Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party has changed all that. People are getting more interested in politics and, as a result, look for personal initiative from MPs and reject the 'political machines.'

The popular enthusiasm for voting by conscience maybe a reflection on the decay of the major, traditional, mainstream parties. They are not seen as trustworthy vehicles to express the public will, especially in this new acerbic and substantive political contest in Parliament. The public's political understanding turns to the most private part of politician's personalities to attempt to find its true reflection! But there is a deep paradox at the heart of this argument.

Not for the Tories. They were 'whipped.' Behind that fact is the coalescence around the idea in the last months, of the Generals, the main scions of Britain's media, the international rich, as reflected in the City of London and elsewhere, and most of the rest of the British establishment, that bombing Syria was about getting Britain's feet firmly under the international negotiations table, about joining the counter-front to the Russian's intervention, about dumping the dangerous toxic shame bequeathed by Blair and, most of all, about what sort of country Britain should continue to be. Accordingly, with the establishment marshaled, the Tory MPs were organised to deliver. In the good old days Parliamentary votes would never have been involved in this sort of very serious stuff about foreign policy. For the time being that has changed. So be it. The Tories unite to go to war.

On the other hand, those in British society that deeply distrust its establishment, and the bombing of Syria, are not politically coherent or coalesced. Many have not yet seen the great divides, of interests, of foreign policy, of the nature of the country that Britain is, and that might change to become. Bombing Syria is seen by some as a 'personal' judgment. 'Even if my MP votes to extend the war to Syria, and I do not accept that policy, I will nevertheless accept her or his 'right' to represent me - when they vote for the opposite!'

And so a radical lack of confidence in the traditional mass parties, building up for a generation into an important part of Britain's political crisis, becomes transformed into its opposite, as the lack of confidence in the significance of peoples' own political rights to have their views acted on - in society's main political forum - ends up by expressing itself as a judgment of the superior morality of the individual MP. And the reliance on MPs consciences then becomes another part of the dissolution of the voice and of the impact of the views of the majority of the people in the national and international political context.

Why are there political parties? What do they do?

Political parties are the summary of the historical experience of humanity since the emergence of politics. Human beings discovered that collective organisation was indispensable for production and extended their social organisations into the political field. Social groups, clans, factions and ultimately classes required political expression - especially when politics (states, armies, government) was set up by other, socially dominant classes. Parties - at their most basic - battle for the social, economic and political interests of the classes that set them up and adhere to them. Like any other human institution they can be overwhelmed by the power of the interests of their enemy, by the divisions among their own social base and, more recently, by the emergence of a distinct political class that serves its own social interests simply by becoming highly privileged politicians.

The continuous integrity of political parties, especially those that serve subordinate classes in society, comes exclusively from two conditions. First the degree of collective behaviour, action and thinking which they observe, as that is most likely to lead to stronger policy, just as strong social unity of a class best protects its interests in society. Second the deep and continuous accountability that parties demonstrate to the classes that form them. Without the second, politics begins to separate individual interests from the requirements of the people as a whole. Politicians begin the search for distinction, within their supporting classes for particular support, and for themselves, among others in their party.

In this context, the individual conscience of an MP as a platform for their political decisions is absurd if not unhealthy. A political system may be set up to obscure that fact, like the one-past-the-post constituencies in Britain's corrupt and labouring political machine. The division of the rich and their party from those who are poor and who work to live and their party, maybe hidden behind shared flim-flam about the national interest - when one of the parties has effectively collapsed. These screens may all provide a backdrop for the 'sacred conscience of me. An individual MP.' But the essence of the matter is unavoidable. A genuine political party of the majority, including all its members, would thoroughly debate its policy on Syria, thoroughly study and debate the views of its voters, come to a social, collective decision, then vote together. It does not exist to express a large selection of individual thoughts and feelings.

Of course a minority, despite the full and unconditional debate and collective thinking, might still decide a different route to that of the majority. That might be a minority of one. So be it. Even the deepest, widest and most accountable of democratic exercises are not 'truth proof'. They are, in the absence of God's thoughts, simply as good as human organisation can get. But to accept the worth and significance of that opposition, and not to repudiate it, it has to rest on a unique interpretation of the wishes and needs of the party's base, including the international implications of that base's interests in society, and not on the unique thoughts and fears of A. MP.

Some MPs argue that they are representatives and not delegates. That is to say they represent people by making their own decisions. They are not delegates who have to follow the decisions of those who elected them. They have been elected 'to use their own conscience.' Of course their background, their wealth, their associations, their upbringing and their social context will probably give most people a clear enough idea of where such an MP's conscience might lead. Even something as personal as a conscience cannot be abstracted from the pressures of the mundane matters of the world. The overwhelming majority of people across the world seem to know that. It looks as though this undertsanding is even more hard-wired in the human brain than an MP's conscience.