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A challenge remaining Judging by the Compass conference in June, the left has yet to develop a coherent political strategy, says Will Brown Lenin
is not a figure one immediately associates with the soft left yet there he was
on a giant screen at the front of a packed conference hall proclaiming ‘The
victory of ideas needs organising!’. And if organisation is anything to go by,
Compass are certainly getting
something right. The June conference in London, ‘The Challenge Left’, was put together in short order following Labour’s May election victory to discuss the way forward for the Labour left. It was extremely well attended – some 600 people Compass claim – and included speeches from Robin Cook, Yvette Cooper (housing minister), Michael Meacher as well as Compass chair and head honcho Neal Lawson.
Head
honcho Neal Lawson Attendees
seemed to range politically from the slightly more left-ish end of government
(even Gordon Brown sent his wishes) through to elements of the Campaign Group of
MPs. The hard left – both within and outside the Labour Party – was absent,
perhaps fortunately. Groups organising seminar sessions included think tanks
such as Demos, the New
Economics Foundation, Catalyst
and the Institute for Public Policy Research,
as well as campaigning groups such as Save
the Labour Party, the Co-operative
Party and London Citizens.
The conference itself was sponsored by the Guardian
(among others). These
days, such a large gathering of the Labour left is something of a rarity.
Indeed, it was a pleasant surprise to find that the queue, which on arrival
stretched out onto the street (and afforded the opportunity to eavesdrop on an
exchange of views between former MP Alf Dubbs and John Reid’s special advisor
about the continued presence of bishops in a reformed House of Lords), was as
much due to the large turnout as lefty-disorganisation (they couldn’t get the
doors open on time). Such
enthusiasm, which gave the conference a discernible ‘buzz’, may well be down
to the prospect of the end of Blair’s domination of the party and a feeling
that Labour’s future direction is now up for debate. However, the conference
left some doubt as to whether this section of the Party is in any better shape
than it has been recently to achieve Compass’s aims. Compass
describes itself as a ‘membership-based organisation’ whose aim is to
develop ‘a more coherent and radical programme for a progressive left
government’. It is Labour Party-based but hopes to reach out to others on the
left and to the 200,000-odd members who have left the party in recent years. Its
ability to attract speakers and attendees on this scale, so soon after it was
formed (2004), are indicative of good connections in the parliamentary party,
the media, the constituencies and among the wider left. Left
manifesto Neal
Lawson opened the conference with an up-beat speech and a call to engage in the
coming months with Compass’s central project of developing a ‘left
manifesto’. Compass, Lawson maintained, was not a think tank – ‘the left
doesn’t want for ideas’ – but a pressure group which aims to shape
thinking for the next election. He was followed by Yvette Cooper who, apparently
still in election mode, gave a rather typical new Labour-ish speech. She went
on, however, to call for the Party to renew itself while in government, not, as
in the past, and as with the Tories now, in opposition. Quite how a party which
has been excluded almost entirely from influence on policy, and decimated in
membership, was now to come to the rescue of a government which, by implication,
found itself lacking direction, was not explained. Perhaps not surprisingly, as
a government minister, Cooper came in for some early and frank criticism from
the floor. In particular, her call to find out why Labour lost so many student
votes was met with short shrift: Iraq and tuition fees. The
middle section of the conference was, apart from a slightly unreal debate about
electoral reform, given over to seminars. This always presents something of a
problem in that it is very hard to get a feel for the conference as a whole. I
hope the others were more interesting and insightful than the first session I
attended. Called
‘Towards a new left political economy’ and organised by Catalyst, the
seminar was a monumental disappointment. The three speakers – John Rowse from
the TGWU, Kelvin Hopkins MP from the Campaign Group, and John Grieve-Smith –
provided an incredibly narrow, ill-defined and backward looking perspective on
economic policy. For much of the session I felt like we were in a time warp,
back in the late-1980s Political
strategy The
second seminar was better and, given its focus on ‘Building a left political
strategy’, it is interesting that it was very well attended. Journalist Robert
Taylor (formerly of the FT), academic David Marquand, and MP Ed Milliband gave
three interesting contributions. True, the one thing they almost entirely
neglected to talk about was a left political strategy. Leaving aside the tricky
subject of how the left might exert more influence, and on whom, they
concentrated instead on what the left’s aims should be. Marquand, in line with
much of his writing and with Compass’s own concerns, argued for revitalisating
representative democracy and (problematically in my mind) for prioritising the
‘democratic’ bit of ‘social democracy’ ahead of the ‘social’. He
viewed the election as a defeat for the left, arguing that as engagement with
politics wanes, and electoral support for Labour declines (in numbers and share
of the vote), the legitimacy of state regulation, which is at the heart of
social democracy, declines also. Taylor’s
contribution was a paean to European social democracy and a criticism of the
British, Blairite economic model. As such it appeared to chime with a widely
held view in the seminars and in the plenary discussions, that the ‘European
social market model’ was something to be endorsed. While underlying economic
weaknesses in Britain (productivity, skills, research and development) may or
may not be there, the blithe way in which high unemployment and fiscal problems
in Europe were skirted over illustrated a blind spot about the limits of social
democracy in a capitalist world. Indeed, the Europhilia meant some went as far
as to condemn Blair for his confrontation with Chirac over reform of the CAP
which had come to a head the day before. Quite why the left should give any
succour to Chirac’s defence of this European abomination is beyond me. Contributions
from MPs past and present then illustrated some of the range of views in the
parliamentary party. Ed Milliband offered a partial defence of the government
(the change is real and significant, it’s just ‘slow burn’ not ‘big
bang’) while also calling for ideological renewal. Former Sheffield MP Helen
Jackson and current MP Angela Eagle met with approval from the audience when
they called for the party to be allowed again to influence policy. Confusion Back
in plenary the conference moved on to a ‘Question Time’ panel facing
contributions from the floor and consisting of Polly Toynbee of the Guardian,
journalist John Harris, minister Douglas Alexander, and Ben Somerskill from
Stonewall, among others. Questions ranged widely through climate change,
inequality, Clause IV (seriously!), Europe and the future direction of the
party. This was followed by a closing address from Robin Cook (who had been in
attendance all day). Cook
was both funny and interesting. His main concern (reflected in a Guardian
article the day before) was with the profound confusion of identity on the
left. New Labour’s identification of itself as ‘we’re not the new right
and we’re not the old left’ had ceased to have any meaning, he claimed.
Instead, a celebration of public service values, a concern with reducing
inequality of incomes, and an identification with European social democracy
should be at the core of a renewed Labour Party. As
the conference closed, the big screen at the front showed a succession of
uplifting quotes from the great and the good. Lenin was joined by Rosa
Luxemburg, Gandhi and JFK, and a trio of Labour ‘greats’ – Bevan, Atlee,
Castle. Perhaps fittingly, some of these were contradictory – Barbara
Castle’s ‘Guts is all in politics’ was immediately followed by JFK’s
‘Effort and courage are not enough’. During
his opening address Lawson had argued that ‘Compass is more than the sum of
its parts’. I think he may have something here, but not in the way he meant.
The event was very successful on an organisational level and attracted a wide
range of people from across the party and beyond. However, below the top level
platform rhetoric, in the seminars and contributions from the floor, a rather
more disparate left presented itself. Lawson may be right in claiming that the
left doesn’t want for ideas (although in some areas I doubt this), but if he
was talking about coherence, programme and strategy, there may be some way to
go. In
his pamphlet on democracy (and in the conference) Lawson demonstrates the
tension that much of this left is dealing with. They don’t appear to want
massive old-style extensions of public ownership, yet they don’t really trust
the market. The focus is instead on the regulatory role of the state and a
concern with the renewal and extension of democracy. To its credit, the left
applauds forms of citizen-community-participatory democracy. Old
conflicts Yet
if democratisation of economic organisations is merely a cursory footnote, as it
is in Lawson’s pamphlet, the same conflicts between public aims and private
wealth, that have bedevilled the left for decades, will continue to recur. The
danger is that in failing to transcend the public-market dichotomy the left
remains trapped by this opposition. Indeed, Compass appears to combine a
distrust of the market with a reluctance to confront private accumulations of
wealth. Without democratisation of the market, in the form of democratisation of
economic organisations, the vision of the good society which Compass seeks will
remain short-sighted. In
this light, it is interesting to note that Compass is now embarking on a series
of regional seminars to discuss and flesh out a ‘manifesto’ to be published
next year. Compass are essentially social democratic in outlook, calling for
capitalism to be managed in the interests of human need, rather than to be
transcended. However, by virtue of opening up a forum for constructive
discussions among social democrats and democratic socialists, in an atmosphere
which seldom descended into traditional left denunciation and finger pointing,
they have done us a service. Future events should be worth participating in. m ‘The
Challenge Left: Can Labour renew itself in government?’ was held at the TUC
Congress centre in London on 18 June 2005. Neal
Lawson’s pamphlet is called Dare more democracy: from steam age politics to
democratic self-governance, published by Compass. Groups
participating in the Compass conference: Demos Comprehensive
Future New
Economics Foundation POWER SERA Catalyst IPPR New
Local Government Network Unions
21 Save
the Labour Party The
Co-operative Party London
Citizens New
Statesman Renewal Soundings New
Politics Network Fellows’
Trust New
Policy Institute Centre
for European Reform |
