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Mark Perryman
© Mark Perryman 2007
Unless we understand the Blair decade as a period of massive defeat for any meaningfully defined Left we are profoundly mistaken. Of course there are achievements to credit Blair with, what else should we be asked to expect from a Labour government? But anyone clinging to the ideals we once cheerfully labelled Left, or even social democratic will confess to ten years' worth of emotions ranging from disappointment to betrayal.
For eighteen years previously, 1979-1987, with varying degrees if enthusiasm, the Left looked forward to a Labour government as the rightful alternative to Thatcher and Major. Surely things could, as the song went, only get better? And this there was no obvious need to address the question of agency. But for a generation growing up under Blair this is very much an issue. Anyone leftish, politically conscious and under thirty is unlikely to be convinced that Labour is the answer. This is going to create a deepening disconnection in the coming period whatever the result of the 2009/2010 General Election. We ignore this consequence at our peril, especially as the Left is currently showing a glaring incapacity at generational renewal.
Brown's Labour is destined to be Blair-lite. There is not a single instance which can be cited that suggests Brown will be any different to his long time partner. And if the hapless Prescott is anything to go by he will use his supposedly labourist credentials to discipline the unions in a way that Blair would wholeheartedly approve and sneakingly envy. Nobody can pretend that challenging Brown from the left will generate a revival of hegemonic proportions but it isn't attempted then we really are surrendering all hope to a soggy centre mired in racism, warmongering, unregulated global corporate power, the most timid of environmental concerns, nuclear power and illiberal social control. A future as bad as that is surely worth challenging.
Such a challenge is bound to take a plurality of forms. Soundings has hardly bothered to engage with these and this is what often conjures up a sense of abstraction and timelessness even though the politics of the journal are mostly excellent.
Compass is the one element which Soundings has engaged with. Of course the main challenge to Brown is likely to come from within Labour and it would be reckless to discount this potential. Yet Compass is a pale representation of the 1980s soft-left and how far did this advance the progressive agenda when government office came knocking? And what kind of connections is it seeking to build outside of parliamentary politics? Given the experience of Blairism these are inadequacies which cannot be lightly dismissed.
Soundings emerged from a tradition heavily influenced by a non-Leninist left, including Marxism Today, Lawrence & Wishart, the Eurocommunist wing of the Communist Party, and elements from New Left Review in its less politically exotic moments. Lets be frank, that tradition is virtually extinct organisationally speaking and in terms of surviving personnel. That does not decry its ensuring significance but is an observation on its current standing. Instead it is the Socialist Workers Party that has survived as the organisational workhorse of the outside left. The eventual failure of those initiatives that it has dominated has to carefully accounted for and the potential for alternative ways of working examined. Stop the WAr enjoyed its greatest moment on 15 February 2003 with two million marching. It was also the greatest defeat of the Blair decade. We marched and not Blair, not one minister, lost their job when the war went ahead and the nightmare that is occupied Iraq ensued. Yes the Lib-Dems won a few extra seats, Oona King lost Bethnal Green to George Galloway but what else has changed? A culture of cynical discontent has emerged with no meaningful political representative, no movement to enlist in. This is the true scale of the SWP's failure, a direct consequence of their organisational culture which needs to be rigourously critiqued in the manner the libertarian and feminist left taught us with Beyond the Fragments. Today no such counter narrative exists.
The Respect party has been similarly unsuccessful for near identical reasons. But in Preston and Sparkbrook, Birmingham there has been a measure of breakthrough. What lessons can be drawn from these experiences, could they be generalised, is there any kind of prospect for Respect after Galloway's and the increasingly divided Tower Hamlets Respect councillors? These are fragments which need addressing. LIkewise the success of the Green Party in Brighton and Norwich, the independent councillors such as the Community Action Party in Wigan, instances of community trade unionism and the great success story of the 2007 local elections, community-led anti-fascist campaigns which saw off the threatened BNP breakthrough.
Across Europe what can kind of engagement can Soundings construct with Rifandazione in Italy, the PDS-WASG Linkspartei in Germany, Left Bloc on Portugal, the LCR and enduring support for the PCF in France, the Dutch Socialist Party, and others. THere is virtually nothing to be read of any of these groups and their successes, however partial, in the British political press, the outside left must draw inspiration and lessons from beyond our shores and most immediately from political and social system with which we have the most in common, these will primarily be European.
There was a moment when the anti-globalisation protests of Seattle and Genoa seemed to offer a bright new direction. But this appears to have dimmed, why? Only by honestly examining setbacks can a better future be constructed.
PR used to be simplistically wished for as the answer for an outside left to emerge electorally. The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) implosion north of the border, no outside Left MEPS and the failure of Respect to win any GLA members indicates that this task is more than just about electoral arithmetic. These failures need to be carefully accounted for, the causes examined, and look to the far greater success of the Green Party too.
The future is Brown, what a prospect to look forward to. The scale of the Left's defeat and marginalisation in and out of Labour unprecedented. McDonnell was able to attract a tiny fraction of the support Benn enjoyed inside Labour and virtually none outside of the party. This is but one measure of the decline. Another decade of this scale of decline and demoralisation and the situation will be scarcely recoverable. Agencies for change are what this debate should be about, without them we're all going nowhere, fast.
Mark Perryman was a member of the Marxism Today editorial board and helped set up the Signs of the Times discussion group, 1992-1998. He is currently editing a collection The English Collection for Lawrence and Wishart and is the co-founder of the self-styled 'sporting outfitters of intellectual distinction', www.philosophyfootball.com .
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