What's wrong with Labour

[Silas Loom]

There is a general Labour thread Why Labour are Scum

This thread title is better, because it is less stupid. And come the glorious day, we can have a new thread: moderate disappointment in the Starmer-led Labour administration.

 

[cupid_stunt]

There is a general Labour thread Why Labour are Scum

But, that's a very old thread that was started in 2013, and all but died in 2017, with just a handful posts in in 2019, then a single final post in 2020.

It's a very different Labour party now, to what it was back then, so it's logical to have a new thread.

 

[redsquirrel]

It's a very different Labour party now, to what it was back then, so it's logical to have a new thread.

Is it, in what way? It's the same Labour Party that is attacking workers, it's still led by a "duplicitous twat and his cabal", to quote Serge Forward, it is still engaging in racist policies, it has the same nasty authoritarian streak New Labour had, it is still supportive of capital, marketisations and privatisation.

There might be an argument that there was some change in the LP between 2015-2019 (although I think the state of the current LP shows that those changes never went that deep), but the current LP is very similar to the one from 2013.

 

[Silas Loom]

What did you think of Corbyn's policies?

His equivocatory stance on Brexit was nearly as disgraceful as his foreign policy alignments. That was enough to damn him for me, whatever his positions on UK public services and economics, which ranged from reasonable to impractical, and in any event would have been put into practice - if he had been elected - by a team of shabby incompetents and thuggish ideologues.

 

[Silas Loom]

Them resigning would never have worked. However if they told the speaker that he didn't enjoy the confidence of HM Opposition then he would not have been Leader of the Opposition anymore.

Sure, but that wouldn’t have solved the Labour leadership problem, not by the time the NEC was nobbled.

 

[The39thStep]

I think it can be argued that there is a dynamic between the state of the labour movement and the state of the Labour Party. For example, a rise in confidence and militancy of workers can force reformist parties to be more radical, or at least raise expectations. It could also be argued that a change of leadership in a reformist party to a more radical programme can also galvanise a labour movement or at least raise expectations. In previous periods we have also seen how the leadership of the Labour Party and the leadership of the TUC can also work together to dampen radicalism and expectancy and then even purge or marginalise the more radical elements within the Labour Party. The best example of the latter is the miner's strike and the witch hunt against Militant.

Let's just put any potential discussion of reform /revolution on one side and try and articulate what role and policies that we might want a reforming party to take or expect to take. We can look across Europe say for examples of reforms that have been made , and are therefore do-able or look back to reforms that were made and then reversed. These reforms could be compared with what the Labour Party has to offer as against what we might want the offer to be. I would suspect that even to the more centrist Labour types on here the Labour Party would fall short. For me an intriguing but simple question is why?

 

[Silas Loom]

I think it can be argued that there is a dynamic between the state of the labour movement and the state of the Labour Party. For example, a rise in confidence and militancy of workers can force reformist parties to be more radical, or at least raise expectations. It could also be argued that a change of leadership in a reformist party to a more radical programme can also galvanise a labour movement or at least raise expectations. In previous periods we have also seen how the leadership of the Labour Party and the leadership of the TUC can also work together to dampen radicalism and expectancy and then even purge or marginalise the more radical elements within the Labour Party. The best example of the latter is the miner's strike and the witch hunt against Militant.

Let's just put any potential discussion of reform /revolution on one side and try and articulate what role and policies that we might want a reforming party to take or expect to take. We can look across Europe say for examples of reforms that have been made , and are therefore do-able or look back to reforms that were made and then reversed. These reforms could be compared with what the Labour Party has to offer as against what we might want the offer to be. I would suspect that even to the more centrist Labour types on here the Labour Party would fall short. For me an intriguing but simple question is why?

It’s an intriguing question. But was the historic egalitarianism and commitment to social protection of, say, the Nordic countries rooted in union militancy? I suspect that there was something deeper at work, but I don’t know whether it’s something that can be replicated in Britain.

 

[The39thStep]

It’s an intriguing question. But was the historic egalitarianism and commitment to social protection of, say, the Nordic countries rooted in union militancy? I suspect that there was something deeper at work, but I don’t know whether it’s something that can be replicated in Britain.

I suggested that a reforming government can make unions more confident and stronger

 

[Silas Loom]

I suggested that a reforming government can make unions more confident and stronger

If that was what you intended by the second sentence of your earlier post, absolutely agree that confident unions are a sign of things going well. As are reforming governments.

 

[redsquirrel]

, absolutely agree that confident unions are a sign of things going well.

You've spent years posting the opposite

 

[Silas Loom]

You've spent years posting the opposite

Confident, not militant. Sitting on boards. Using facility time to fine-tune issues with working practices.

Union militancy is a sign of things going badly.

 

[redsquirrel]

That's not confident that is a service/HR/insurance sell out. And I'm highly skeptical that's what The39thStep meant by confident

The sort of 'going well' that has seen people's live get worse

And it's still not consistent with your posts about "grasping interest groups",

 

[Silas Loom]

That's not confident that is a service/HR/insurance sell out. And I'm highly skeptical that's what The39thStep meant by confident

The sort of 'going well' that has seen people's live get worse

And it's still not consistent with your posts about "grasping interest groups",

I don’t know much about how trade unions work in the Nordic states that historically presented good working examples of social democracy.

The broader question of whether any UK government could replicate their model is more interesting. And, as you’ve noticed, I don’t think that trade unions dedicated to aggressively preserving the interests of cosseted public sector professionals, from the BMA to the RMT, are in any way likely to be helpful in achieving that.

 

[danny la rouge]

Confident, not militant. Sitting on boards. Using facility time to fine-tune issues with working practices.

Union militancy is a sign of things going badly.

I think we have some definition problems here.

“Going badly” or “going well” for whom? We need to establish what we’re talking about.

 

[Silas Loom]

I think we have some definition problems here.

“Going badly” or “going well” for whom? We need to establish what we’re talking about.

Earnings and opportunities for the unskilled, unemployed and disabled might be a good place to start. Or we could base it on income gaps.

 

[nino_savatte]

There is now something called BAME Labour, which I suppose is not that different from the Black Sections proposed in the 1980s, but I may be wrong.

BAME Labour

BAME Labour seeks to empower ethnic minority members within the Labour Party and campaigns for greater representation of ethnic minority communities in public life. Through encouraging increased participation in the political process, BAME Labour empower its members to campaign for a fairer...

bamelabour.laboursites.org

The original Black sections were more left-wing and explicitly socialist. BAME labour is toothless and subservient to the leadership.

From Wikipedia (my bold).

Although Black Sections were established in CLPs around the country, they were not endorsed by the Labour leadership.[21] The legitimate calls for fair representation made by black communities – whose electoral support was given overwhelmingly to Labour – were resisted by the party leadership of Kinnock and Hattersley, who wanted to defeat a rising left-wing rank and file that the right-wing Conservative Party–supporting tabloid national newspapers denounced as the loony left.[4] By 1987, Black Sections' founding principle of autonomous organisation within Labour was in doubt. In the face of the party's NEC backing a resolution authored by the right-wing MP Gwyneth Dunwoody, which threatened disciplinary action against future "separatist" activity, after the Black Sections arguably most successful conference, held in Nottingham, where its vice-chair Hassan Ahmed ran the largest Black Section outside London, the organisation was forced to go on the defensive. Six black prospective parliamentary candidates, who were Black Sections members, agreed with Labour not to subscribe to "statements of Black Sections policy" (the Black Agenda), which were different from the general party programme.[22]

Clare Short, the left-wing Birmingham Ladywood MP, was one of the few white politicians, along with Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone, to stand by Black Sections throughout its almost decade-long campaign.[24] Despite the support for Black Sections, which, by then existed all over the labour movement, Labour still refused to recognise the organisation or and give it an official place in developing the party's race policies.[13]

In 1989, Martha Osamor, deputy leader of Haringey council in north London, and a Black Sections vice-chair, was chosen as the prospective parliamentary candidate by the Vauxhall CLP. Again, Kinnock stepped in to block the selection of Martha Osamor who he considered to be too left-wing to represent the party in Parliament. Kate Hoey was imposed as the candidate by the NEC instead. Osamor's daughter Kate Osamor went on to become an MP for Edmonton in 2015, and Martha Osamor was made a peer and put in the House of Lords by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in 2018.[25]

The internal focus depoliticised the aims of the Black Sections.[6] In October 1990,[16] at the annual general meeting, Bernie Grant pointed out that the general political mood was one of retreat, the left was weak, and his view was the Black Sections' corresponding weakness meant it was time to be "pragmatic" and assess what would be achievable in such a climate. This stance, by one of its most prominent advocates, indicated that Black Sections was about to lower its horizons on the very existence of the organisation and the official recognition it would pursue. Some Black Sections activists suspected that Grant and his fellow Black Labour prospective parliamentary candidates were now less keen to rock the Labour boat now they were about to become MPs. Despite this scepticism, the official demand for Black Sections was replaced by the organisation's leadership accepting the compromise of a hybrid Black Socialist Society because they believed their original demand was no longer feasible. In 1990, the view which gained ascendancy was that Black Sections should continue to operate as a pressure group under its current constitution, actively develop a Black Socialist Society within the Labour Party and seek to win political leadership of it.[8] To end its longest-running internal dispute of the 1980s, Labour finally agreed to change the party's constitution to embrace the Black Socialist Society along the lines put forward by the Black Sections.[4]

 

[redsquirrel]

The ludicrous thing is that the results of individualist consumerist politics Silas advocates are the current UK society, not the nordic "social democracies" he imagines in his mind.

The service unions he pretends to favour have resulted in wider pay gaps, increasing inequality and - taking for a minute his sort's language - lower productivity.

 

[The39thStep]

When we talk about Nordic this or that it would help if there were examples of what and where. The states grouped as Nordic have different policies.

My intention was to try and get a sense of what posters thought were reforms that a reformist party ie Labour could make and perhaps some discussion on what was preventing Labour from doing so. I was somewhat surprised that the first answer out of the box was that the trade unions were preventing Labour from adopting reforms characterised as 'historic egalitarianism and commitment to social protection'.

 

[redsquirrel]

My intention was to try and get a sense of what posters thought were reforms that a reformist party ie Labour could make and perhaps some discussion on what was preventing Labour from doing so.

Well for the first part we could start with a comparison of the Democrats under Biden and the current LP, have there been other times when the LP has been more timid than the US Democratic Party?
I can't see the LP advocating and implementing policies parallel to the Biden administration scaring anyone. And considering the greater public support for national industries in the UK I think the LP could go further.

 

[Silas Loom]

When we talk about Nordic this or that it would help if there were examples of what and where. The states grouped as Nordic have different policies.

My intention was to try and get a sense of what posters thought were reforms that a reformist party ie Labour could make and perhaps some discussion on what was preventing Labour from doing so. I was somewhat surprised that the first answer out of the box was that the trade unions were preventing Labour from adopting reforms characterised as 'historic egalitarianism and commitment to social protection'.

Not what I was saying at all, but CBA anymore.

 

[The39thStep]

Not what I was saying at all, but CBA anymore.

What are you saying though?

 

[Silas Loom]

What are you saying though?

That it may not be in Labour’s gift to transform us into a Nordic-style utopia.

 

[The39thStep]

That it may not be in Labour’s gift to transform us into a Nordic-style utopia.

Ok. Have you seen any intention by Labour to discuss some steps towards reforms or policies in this direction?

 

[Serge Forward]

Seems more like Labour just looks at the Tories then plays a bit of monkey see monkey do.

 

[danny la rouge]

Earnings and opportunities for the unskilled, unemployed and disabled might be a good place to start. Or we could base it on income gaps.

That reads as a non sequitur. I wanted to establish what “going well” or “going badly” meant. Your thesis was that “Union militancy is a sign of things going badly”. So, what does that mean? What does “going badly” and what does “going well” entail? It’s not obvious.

 

[PTK]

The original Black sections were more left-wing and explicitly socialist. BAME labour is toothless and subservient to the leadership.

From Wikipedia (my bold).

Thanks for that. A correction: Bernie Grant was already an MP in 1990, as he was elected in 1987.

 

[danny la rouge]

Seems more like Labour just looks at the Tories then plays a bit of monkey see monkey do.

And for the interests of capital, that would be seen as “things going well”; “the smooth running of the economy”; “a steady hand at the tiller”.

Whereas “disruption” and “class war” might be stopping the (not so) stealth privatisation of the NHS.

This is what we need to establish. The framework we are using.

 

[redsquirrel]

Coincidently reading the latest LRB over a pint in my local I came across this letter on the nordic social democratic utopias


Owen Hatherley writes that Scandinavian countries, bar ‘some controlled neoliberal experiments’, are still among ‘the most affluent and egalitarian on the planet’ (LRB, 8 February). This is a myth that is no truer of Sweden than it is of the UK. As Andreas Cervenka’s 2022 book Girig-Sverige (‘Greedy Sweden’) – still, inexplicably, unavailable in English – demonstrates, the rapid dismantling of the welfare state that began in the early 1990s, with the government of Carl Bildt, has only been advanced by successive administrations. Sweden no longer has any wealth tax or inheritance tax; property taxes are largely nominal. The country has more billionaires per capita than either the US or the UK. Privatisation of state assets has been rampant, with the effect that the public health service is now difficult to access and hugely inefficient, the waiting lists for public housing in the cities of Gothenburg and Stockholm are many years long, and public rents are increasingly pegged to the ‘market rate’. This last item is especially bad news in a market that saw a million kronor (currently about £76,500) fall in purchasing power from 200 square metres in 1995 to 22 square metres in 2022 – before the latest above-inflation hikes.

Meanwhile, the thoroughness with which the marketisation of state agencies was carried out means that these agencies are not allowed to own their premises, but must pay market rents to other state-owned commercial entities. Universities, for example, move out of buildings they used to own because they can no longer afford the rent. But what should be done with a listed building designed as an Art Nouveau college of crafts in the early 20th century when the college is forced to move out? Even the Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament, has faced questions over whether it can afford the rent owed to the Swedish Property Board.

The problems began long ago, during the ‘Golden Age’ of social democracy in the 1970s. It’s true that many public housing projects incorporate lots of open space and border on what in Sweden is called ‘nature’: open woodland, for instance. Burcu Yigit Turan of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences talks of ‘greenlining’, a reference to the ‘redlining’ process in the US which prevented Black Americans from accessing loans to buy houses, so that they were unable to accrue wealth in property in the way white families could. While the Social Democrats built a million new high-quality public homes between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s, they also deregulated the housing market for the first time, ensuring that new suburbs of detached houses went up at the same time as the large apartment blocks (the Swedish habit of acquiring a sommarstuga, a summer house, took off during this period too). The working classes had their public apartments and the middle classes could speculate on the value of their villas: what separated these parallel worlds were the green spaces, ‘nature’ acting as a planned class buffer. The segregated working-class suburbs were often left unfinished and over the years many started to fall into decline. Once large-scale immigration began in the 21st century, class segregation turned into racial segregation – which, of course, is now blamed on the immigrants themselves.

When I lived in Belfast, the excuse always given for segregated urban space, bad planning and a dysfunctional society was the deeply disruptive effect of a long war. In Gothenburg, a similar city in very many respects, the explanation is that it was actually designed this way. Social democracy in Sweden was consciously planned as a bulwark against full-strength socialism and the most radical plans (worker ownership of factories, for instance, as envisaged under the Meidner Plan) were never realised. It’s high time that the fairy tale of Sweden as a social utopia – then and more especially now – was put beyond use.
Daniel Jewesbury
Gothenburg, Sweden

 

[The39thStep]

And for the interests of capital, that would be seen as “things going well”; “the smooth running of the economy”; “a steady hand at the tiller”.

Whereas “disruption” and “class war” might be stopping the (not so) stealth privatisation of the NHS.

This is what we need to establish. The framework we are using.

Tbh Starmer's whole cabinet reminds me of one of those inept HR departments that you come across where they have had to send the Head of Department on a leadership course and his assistant would really like the job in two years time..

 

[hitmouse]

I've been watching Steptoe and Son for the first time, just watched an episode from 1965 where Harold is hoping to be selected as a Labour candidate for the local council, and hosts a meeting where at the end the bloke from Labour head office tells them all that the candidate's already been chosen and they're imposing a doctor that none of them have heard of because they can't have a rag and bone man standing as the Labour candidate. Impressively timeless for an almost-60-year-old piece of television.