Will the Labour Party split?

Both 'no' and 'yes' would be the wrong answers. A split does not describe it. Something new is on its way.

When Western European, Russian and US socialists who were in favour of the overthrow of capitalism first looked at the British Labour Party at the beginning of the 20th century they thought it very odd indeed. They thought that a mass working class party, set up essentially by trade unions and clearly establishing itself as the political expression of the (privileged and relatively secure) trade union bureaucracy, with a distinct leaning towards the defence of Empire, was anything but an anti-capitalist party. There was an argument about whether the UK Labour Party should be allowed to join the Second International.

The new International was a precious gain according to its members. Not only was it spearheaded by the immense German Social Democratic Party, but its resolutions included the emphatic decision that in the event European rulers began to look for war, an international General Strike would be called by the International to stop it. Looking at the rise of militarism across Europe and the growing international tensions, the Second International's resolution was an immense relief for millions.

Members of the International, like Lenin, spoke amd wrote in favour of admitting the British Labourites. He argued that the Labour Party was part of an international process, albeit thoroughly infected by the British capitalism's immense advantages through Empire, of mass working class movements becoming organised not just economically but also politically.

Even after the Russian revolution, and the setting up of the 3rd International by those who had opposed WW1 and supported the Russian revolutionaries, Lenin suggested to the new British Communist Party that they should seek to be part of the growing and inevitable division between the working class base of Labour and its leadership in Parliament and in the headquarters of the trade unions. It was, he argued, 'a bourgeois/workers party.'

Trotsky and others who followed Lenin, when they had time to consider internal British politics, emphasised the need to exploit this contradiction, running like a fault line through the British working class movement.

The greatest achievement of the Labour Party was its reform programme following WW2. British and European capitalism was so weak, and the pressure of the victorious USSR so strong, that a Labour government delivered. Their initiatives were never driven forward. Never developed as part of an organised population beginning to sort out the big problems for themselves, but still immensely valuable in the lives of ordinary people.

In the modern period the conditions for a reforming Labour government have collapsed. Labour governments have managed, here and there, to catch the tail end of a more liberal international wind in favour of important social reforms, abortion rights, more recently equal pay and the extension of marriage, opposition to racist attacks etc. They have (reluctantly) spent more on upholding social provision and maintaining the status quo against increasingly fierce attacks on living standards and the social wage. But since the 1980s they have not ventured to reverse any anti-union laws, or the de-nationalisations, or the use of the private sector in state activity. They have accepted, in every chance of government that they have had, the defence of what is, even when 'what is' has come about as a result of a ferocious attack on working class people. They have never reversed, once in government, any prior retreat or a defeat for the class whose votes they have depended on.

And then there was Blair. There was nothing special about Tony Blair as such. He dealt with the decline of the trade unions by abandoning them and rooting his political operation in the vast new management apparatus of the social sector. He adopted the status quo established by Thatcherism and he destroyed Clause 4 of Labour's constitution, the last symbol of the idea that the working class, a separate and exploited class, should have their own independent economic and political programme from that of capitalist society. Blair's Labour Party was the final, political part, of the social and economic destruction of the traditional working class that had been wreaked by Thatcher and the general, international offensive by international capitalism. And, as a result, he destroyed the remnants of the Labour Party as a bourgeois/workers party.

Blair's Labour Party dissolved its own internal structure and its mass support among an increasingly demoralised and socially atomised working class. Instead it placed itself as the real representation of the new 'white van men' (while the self-employed are still only 17% of the labour force) and defined itself in government as a predominantly classless new management.

The curious consequence, today, of this break up of Labour's traditions, policy structure and organisation at its base has been the emergence of the 'unity of opposites'. Blair and his followers  carried through the attack on the working class in Britain by consciously dissolving the material basis for the old Leninist, contradiction at the heart of the Labour Party. In the course of which it left a largely empty shell topped by a parliamentary party. But that empty shell at the base has, in turn, suddenly become a new vehicle for the current political resurgence of the left. The new left in Britain has found itself in a largely vacant, but still, apparently, politically mainstream vehicle, as a means of expressing its political opposition in society. The bulk of the old parliamentary party now sit on top of a base, with its own leader, drawn from a new left. And the result is chaos.

Whatever this is, it is not the replication in modern life, of Lenin's original view of the Labour Party and how it would resolve its central contradiction. The new left in Britain, with important trade union links and the capacity of effective mass action, is not yet anywhere near the day to day leadership of the still scattered, still disorganised and super exploited British working class. And what remains of the Labour Party in Parliament is in an increasingly unlikely condition to form any sort of government. It is neither an attractive political proposition for large hunks of what is the working class movement (eg in Scotland or who support the Greens, or who are against war) nor for the establishment, because in the absence of their ability to lead labour in general, they bring nothing (but crisis) to the table. Already, without Corbyn's victory, right wing Labour MPs twig their uncertain future. It is literally only because they have no sight yet of an independent project that prevents their shift to more hospitable circumstances now. Certainly, in a potential world of coalitions, many of these MPs would offer themselves like a shot to work with a new minority Tory government under the right conditions (like Lord Adonis.)

Blair has done his damage. He summed up the change in the Labour Party from a bourgeois/workers party, to a fully bourgeois (but weak) party, still supported in part by more and more alienated working class votes. The fragility he bequeathed coincides with a moment of a new eruption and growth of the British left. The old mass Labour Party died. The question is, will a new mass Labour Party, with the principle and purpose to re-gather and re-animate a political working class movement and a new anti-capitalist vision, now be born?

Some of the preconditions for such a development are obvious. For example there needs to be a mass movement, working in action, rooted among the ordinary people - that is mobilising and drawing society together in a challenge to the way we are all expected to live. Alternatives to our economic and political system have to become a new common sense. More narrowly and concretely in the scope of this article, there needs to be a direct challenge to those MPs who want to defend the status quo and yet who also wish to be part of the new party and the movement it allies with. It is not a question of whether there will be a split in Labour to build this new party; there has to be a split. It is another precondition.

Taking one example; Constituency Labour Parties and affiliated unions will soon be discussing their resolutions to the 2016 Labour conference. When the Tory government calls on Parliament to vote on Britain's nuclear weapon, Trident, and its renewal, the Tories will hope for Corbyn's isolation among his own Parliamentary party, which will certainly happen. The bulk of current Labour MPs will vote for renewal. Corbyn, representing Labour's new base, will not. The new members will want to deal with Trident in their resolutions to Labour's conference in two ways. First they will want to stop Trident's renewal and second they will want a conference that is allowed to force Labour MPs to carry out their conference decision in Parliament. Some of the delegates will call this resurrection of the old rights of Labour conferences. In reality difficult conference decisions were always sabotaged by Labour's leaders. This time, for the first time ever, because of the new base in Labour, because of Corbyn, that will not happen. Labour MPs who support the sort of country which flourishes nuclear weapons will need to decide where their allegiances lie. And, of course, Labour's right wing know this, and although toppling Corbyn will not solve the problem of Labour's diminishing power to form a future government (it will make it worse) it will make their future leverage with those that can that much more solid.

What can solve Britain's political crisis - in favour of the majority? The Labour Party question is now at the heart of Britain's general political crisis - and energetic socialist initiatives can be a giant step to resolving it. Labour can take a turn backward to the already declining party, already unable to create a majority in society or even form a government. In reality the old Labour Party right wing embraced the reality of medium term dissolution. Or, instead, a grand new party might be built. When Blair brought the Labour Party's historic contradiction to its end, he inadvertently cleared the ground for something new. Lots of little left parties tried their hardest (and some are still trying) to get themselves 'sucked up' into prominence by the vacuum that Blair left behind. It did not work. While, in Lenins' terms Blair had pushed out the 'workers' bit from the 'bourgeois/worker' party, there remained only a social and political hiatus and nothing inevitable about the future politics of a shattered (economically, socially and even geographically) working class movement in Britain.

Today, mass movements, headed by the Peoples Assembly have been built and are knitting together a new voice of hundreds of thousands of the left. And the real vacuum inside the Labour Party's dying organisation (an organisation that had to allow non members to elect its leader) has, finally, 'sucked up' this new left. And, now, a new set of alliances in politics and a new mainstream party heading them, can be built. There is no prospect of resurrection here. Just like the reality of the old Labour conferences, the old fantasies surrounding Labour's history in 1945 - 8, cannot be repeated or even sought out. Labour is not 'returning' to its history. It is breaking from its history or it will fail. A new government, headed by the left, requires linking with the left of the SNP and opening to Scottish independence and a UK federation, allying with the Greens and their base, and drastic reform of Parliament and on, and on. Britain's current political crisis cannot be resolved by Britain's establishment. It can only be resolved by a new mass party, creating new alliances and striking out in the direction of an entirely new and different sort of country.