The Corbyn Project: a View from the UK Grassroots

Heather Mendick (London) n the BBC documentary Labour - The rather than collapsed. Second, Stephen’s ISummer That Changed Everything, face signals the difficulties of changing about the 2017 UK General Election, the direction of an existing party whose there is a scene that became a thousand infrastructure, including its MPs, was memes. On election night, we see Labour formed within a different political culture. MP (Member of Parliament) Stephen Kinnock with other Party members in a cross Europe we have seen ‘the pub awaiting the results. The television Arapid capitulation of … social announces the exit poll predicting a democratic heavyweight[s] in times of hung parliament, not the Labour wipe- austerity’, dubbed pasokification after out that many professional politicians its first victim, ’sPASOK . PASOK, and pundits, Stephen included, had been the main party of power in Greece since anticipating. He stares blankly at the its democracy was restored in 1974, went screen, unable even to fake enthusiasm from being the country’s largest party for his party’s projected parliamentary with 160 seats representing 43.9 per gains. The voice-over remarks: ‘I’m not cent of the popular vote in 2009 to being sure what Stephen’s face is revealing its smallest party with just 13 seats and but perhaps he’s realising the Corbyn- 4.7 per cent support in 2015. Similarly, free tomorrow he’s been thinking about [i]n France, the incumbent Socialist might never actually come’. This scene Party polled a mere 6.4 per cent in the captures two things relevant to this 2017 presidential election - its worst- article. First, this is the moment when ever result - and won just 30 seats in the National Assembly (down from 280). In ’s avoided the Netherlands, the Dutch Labour Party the fate of our sister parties across was reduced to 5.7 per cent in the same Europe as our popular support increased year (a fifth of its previous vote). And in Germany, the Social

Page 1 Hard Times 103 (1/2019) The Corbyn Project: a View from the UK Grassroots

(SPD), the grandfather of the European and practices; and affiliations by the trade centre-left, achieved a new nadir in last union movement and socialist societies. September’s election, winning just 20.5 per cent of the vote and 153 seats. (Eaton In this article I discuss the experience 2018) of engaging with this infrastructure from a grassroots perspective. n contrast parties of the left that reject Iausterity have gained electoral support: The elected politicians Greece’s in 2015, France’s La France n Parliamentary Socialism, Ralph Insoumise (France Unbowed) and the Miliband argues Labour has never Netherlands’ GroenLinks (Green Left) in I been a because its MPs 2017, and since 2014, Podemos in Spain. are committed to top-down reformism, n the UK and Portugal, established or Labourism, over the bottom-up Ileft parties, the Labour Party and radicalism favoured by much of its the Partido Socialista, have revived by grassroots. He ends by asserting that adopting anti-austerity politics. In the this cannot change because Labour’s UK, there is a left insurgency similar to parliamentarians will never relinquish those in Greece, France, the Netherlands their veto over the leadership. Yet, in and Spain however not through a new 2015, they did. Previously, Labour’s party of the left but within our country’s leader was decided by an electoral college social democratic heavyweight. This with a third of the votes going to each, Corbyn Project has attracted hundreds the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), of thousands of new members, expanded the membership and the trade unions. In the electorate and engaged many young 2015, this changed to One Member One people in electoral politics for the first Vote and the electorate included people time. Labour’s internal revolution has paying £3 to register as a supporter. Now parallels with the left insurgency in the MPs’ votes had the same value as those of US Democratic Party, perhaps because in rank-and-file members. But MPs could both countries, the lack of proportional still ‘protect’ the party from a socialist representation makes it difficult for leader as all candidates needed backing new parties to gain ground. In taking from 15 per cent of the PLP. In response to on and attempting to transform an a remarkable grassroots campaign, some existing party with over a hundred years MPs lent their nominations to Corbyn of history, you gain an infrastructure of despite supporting other candidates. elected politicians, including MPs like hey did this because they could not Stephen Kinnock, and thousands of local imagine him winning. As Corbyn’s councillors; a party apparatus of paid staff, T support grew, they launched vitriolic internal committees, and detailed rules

Page 2 Hard Times 103 (1/2019) Heather Mendick

“They fear you.” © Jon Southcoasting (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) attacks in the media against him and public comments criticising MPs. Yet his supporters. These continued after if we complain about MPs’ abuse, we we won culminating in June 2016’s are told their comments ‘do not go any attempt to undemocratically remove further than political discourse’ or that Corbyn as leader via mass resignations, complaints have been passed onto the negative press briefings, bullying and a whips without any discernible action. no-confidence vote supported by 172 Abuse aside, it is possible that the out of 229 MPs. This ‘Chicken Coup’ Corbyn Project will be destroyed by was resisted by mass demonstrations and Labour MPs who refuse to back a future actions coordinated by Momentum, the Corbyn government. This raises the successor organisation to the Corbyn for issue of the selection and deselection of Leader Campaign. Even after Corbyn was parliamentary candidates which are the re-elected leader in 2016 with increased responsibility of local parties. Momentum support and after Labour made electoral have campaigned for members to choose gains in 2017, the assault continued. Corbyn supporters to contest marginal One MP called Corbyn ‘a fucking racist Tor y-held seats at the next General and anti-semite’ and the Twitter hashtag Election. But this leaves in place the #TrotsRabbleDogs combines some of current PLP many of whom oppose the insults thrown at party activists by socialist policies, like nationalisation and members of the PLP during summer 2016. international relations based on peace and human rights. Do we trust MPs n the grassroots, people are angry. to fall into line? Do we support a few IOrdinary members are suspended local parties to deselect Corbyn’s most and expelled for social media posts or virulent opponents? Or do we attempt

Page 3 Hard Times 103 (1/2019) The Corbyn Project: a View from the UK Grassroots mass deselections in the hope of creating death of the party they have known’. a fit-for-purpose PLP but risking bitter Although Labour has an extensive Rule and divisive battles that may split the Book, it requires interpretation and party and ruin our electoral prospects? staff often control how it is applied. In 2016, then General Secretary Iain hese questions apply - albeit less McNicoll obtained legal advice allowing Turgently - to local government. him to argue that an incumbent leader In Haringey council, ‘zombie Blairites’ is not automatically on the ballot if were attempting ‘to shove family homes, challenged, so Corbyn would need to school buildings and libraries into a secure MPs’ backing to stand again - giant private fund worth £2bn’ and to something they were unlikely to grant hand over control of this Development now they knew he could win! When Vehicle to a private company with a overruled by the National Executive, terrible track record on public housing McNicoll successfully advised them to projects. Local Labour Party members restrict the electorate, took some Party organised through Momentum to replace members to court to stop them voting, councillors who supported this policy and presided over a purge of left wingers ignoring whether they had backed by trawling their social media accounts, Corbyn. Initially a big media story suspending them en masse and removing about ‘hard left’ attacks on ‘moderates’, their votes in the leadership election. the new councillors are now in place and are no longer in the spotlight. Haringey’s ew of us who joined or rejoined targeted and policy-focused approach to FLabour to support Corbyn’s deselection may work at a national level. leadership had anticipated facing a vast bureaucratic apparatus of officers, The party structures meetings, conferences, rules, committees and delegates. Nor had we imagined he PLP are highly visible. Labour’s the extent of the resistance we would paid staff, committees and rules T face within our own party. Winning are not. At least until you bang up the leadership and piling in members against them. But Labour staff were as initially had little effect as the party’s disturbed by Corbyn’s win as MPs. As unchanged infrastructure persisted in Alex Nunns describes in his book tracing working against us. At a local level, Corbyn’s ‘improbable path to power’, people encountered dull report-filled at the special conference announcing meetings where they were treated with the 2015 leadership winner: ‘Party staff suspicion. Local Momentum groups wear sullen, sad faces to match the black sprang up around the UK, creating attire they are sporting, symbolising the

Page 4 Hard Times 103 (1/2019) Heather Mendick spaces for people on the left to meet each local government, policymaking, and organise ways into the labyrinthine mobilising members, making our party Labour Party. In many local parties, more representative and all of the party’s there are now contested elections for internal structures. However, many unglamorous administrative voluntary of the Review’s key recommendations roles which previously nobody had were rejected by the National Executive wanted to do. There are competing (which even after three years lacks a slates of candidates at every level from reliable pro-Corbyn majority) and/or local to national and competing agendas subject to further reviews. This includes for regional and national conferences. nearly all of those on policymaking. The National Policy Forum remains hen the left gains control of local unchanged but in a small concession to Wparties, we can give our own members the contemporary criteria for meanings to the Rule Book, but we are Conference motions has been dropped still constrained by it. Policymaking and more issues will be debated. We will illustrates this. We inherited a system see what members can do with these created under in which and other changes in the coming years. the policy motions that members submitted to National Conference had The trade unions to be ‚contemporary‘, meaning they related to events occurring in a short n contrast to the PLP and staff, trade window between early August and Iunionists gave pivotal support to early September each year. Further, the Corbyn Project. They backed left contemporary motions on only eight candidates in winnable seats for the 2015 topics could be debated each year. General Election giving Corbyn some of This left most policymaking in the his original MP nominations (Nunns hands of the National Policy Forum, 2016). The labour movement’s shift left an opaque and inaccessible body, and along with grassroots pressure led to severely restricted members‘ input. nine unions including the two largest endorsing Corbyn for leader. The leader o address such democratic deficits of the Communication Workers Union Tand look at ‘how our hugely said: ‘There is a virus within theLabour expanded membership becomes a mass party, and Jeremy Corbyn is the antidote’. movement which can transform society’, Other leaders were less forthright, but Labour launched a Democracy Review in they added credibility, votes, money, 2017. Although parliamentary selections staff, office space, even fire engines for were deemed too controversial to be rallies. Most union leaders backed him included, it was far reaching covering again in 2016 and are highly critical of

Page 5 Hard Times 103 (1/2019) The Corbyn Project: a View from the UK Grassroots

PLP rebels. The Fire Brigades Union has a picket line in your constituency re-affiliated toLabour and other trade it is your responsibility to join it”’. unions support Corbyn from the outside. his shift mirrors one at the n 2016, a rare junior doctors strike Tgrassroots. At my first local party Ihad broad public support. Labour’s meeting after rejoining Labour in Health spokesperson Heidi Alexander September 2015, I was one of several triangulated saying that Labour had ‘new’ members. We were repeatedly sympathy for the strike but would not told by longstanding members that they endorse it. She instructed Labour’s top were a successful local party focused on team not to join picket lines. Corbyn campaigning, aka going door to door ally and Shadow Chancellor John to identify Labour voters with the aim McDonnell ignored this, standing of winning elections. There is a tension with strikers as did Momentum at the heart of Labour’s current internal activists. Alexander was following struggle between seeing electoral politics mainstream Labour MPs’ practice of as the only relevant locus of action and distancing themselves from the unions seeing our goal as being to create a social

Corbyn Vote Labour rally © Jenny Goodfellow (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) that founded and finance the party. movement that can both win elections Gradually this has shifted and in 2018, and sustain a transformative legislative the Economist’s political correspondent programme. Unions are central to tweeted: ‘John McDonnell says a memo the latter vision. As left members has gone round Labour MPs: “If there’s have taken on local roles, we have

Page 6 Hard Times 103 (1/2019) Heather Mendick rejected a narrow idea of campaigning, unresolved cultural gap between the two backing strikes with solidarity that is also reflected in differences between action, publicity and fundraising. the larger more cautious established unions and the newer more radical owever, the influx of nearly half a ones organising precarious workers. Hmillion members, many wanting direct democratic input into Labour Conclusions policies and practices has created conflict with the party establishment he Corbyn Project has much in including the unions. In 2018, Christine Tcommon with other anti-austerity Shawcroft, then members’ representative electoral projects across Europe. In this on Labour’s National Executive and article, I focused on a distinctive feature, Momentum vice chair, posted on Facebook its actualisation via an insurgency in the before deleting it, that the major trade UK’s main social democratic party. Change unions “stick it to the rank and file is slow and huge energy is expended in members time after time after time. It’s internal battles. The existential tension also time to support disaffiliation of the in the Labour Party between top-down unions from the Labour party. The party gradualism led by parliamentarians belongs to us, the members”. It is likely and bottom-up radicalism led by social union representatives on the National movement activists has always favoured Executive voted down the more radical the former. We must change this. Democracy Review recommendations. At Michael Foot, a past Labour leader also the Party’s 2018 National Conference, on the left, said, ‘A left Labour MP is most votes were backed overwhelmingly only as good as the movement behind by member and union delegates alike, them’. This applies a hundredfold to a but there were some divisions. Union left Labour government. If a Corbyn-led delegates who have half the votes government is going to enact a socialist blocked debate on whether or not all programme it needs a large, active incumbent MPs should face a contested and democratic movement behind it. selection process prior to a General o win power we need to maintain Election, something 92 per cent of the Labour’s ‘broad church’, its wide delegates representing members wanted T electoral alliance, while moving the party on the agenda. So while links between left on both policy and practice and Labour and the trade unions are stronger building outwards into communities than ever with the Corbyn Project’s to create a participatory political commitment to the labour movement culture across society. Interviewed and to workers’ rights, there is an in 2015 soon after first winning the

Page 7 Hard Times 103 (1/2019) The Corbyn Project: a View from the UK Grassroots leadership, Jeremy Corbyn explained: Works Cited

I want a party structure and a union structure that allows your intelligence to BBC (2017) Labour - The Summer That come forward and be part of our policy- Changed Everything, Director: David making. … So the need is to reach, to Modell. widen our organisation to make us a community-based party. Chakrabortty, Aditya (2017) “A La- his has been slow to realise. Only bour council attacking its own people? Tin summer 2018 did Labour This is regeneration gone bad”,The finally appoint community organisers. Guardian https://www.theguardian. Even now their work is shaped by our com/commentisfree/2017/oct/25/la- electoral system as they are concentrated bour-council-regeneration-housing-cri- in the marginal constituencies that sis-high-court-judge, accessed 11 Sep- Labour must win to form a government. tember 2019

omentum originally set out to Corbyn, Jeremy, Wainwright, Hilary M‘organise in every town, city and Panitch, Leo (2015) “‘What we’ve and village to secure the election of a achieved so far’: an interview with Jer- progressive left Labour Party at every level, emy Corbyn”, red pepper, https://www. and to create a mass movement for real redpepper.org.uk/jeremy-corbyn-inter- transformative change’. This expansive view/, accessed 11 September 2019 vision was possible because Momentum was less constrained by electoral politics Hannah, Simon (2018) Party with So- than Labour. But Momentum has moved cialists in it: A History of the Labour Left. away from this ambition, narrowing its London: Pluto Press. reach to focus on organising nationally in Labour, creating social media content and Hannah, Simon (2017) “Momen- campaigning in marginal constituencies. tum and the Labour left - which way It is Labour that now offers the best hope forward?”, Labour Briefing, https:// of enacting its original vision of building labourbriefing.org/blog/2017/11/26/ a mass social movement. Labour has pvkfnifvrds5r4vzvwc8sxf1srzih- always been, as Simon Hannah puts q?rq=momentum, accessed 11 Septem- it, “a party with socialists in it’”. It ber 2019 remains an open question whether we can prove Ralph Miliband wrong Labour Party (2017) “The Labour Party and transform it into a socialist party. Democracy Review”, Labour, https:// labour.org.uk/about/democracy-re-

Page 8 Hard Times 103 (1/2019) Heather Mendick view-2017/, accessed 11 September an.com/society/2016/jan/13/john-mc- 2019 donnell-junior-doctors-labour-agree- ment-not-endorse-strike, accessed 11 Mendick, Heather (2017) “Building September 2019 Corbyn’s Labour from the ground up: How ‘the left’ won in Hackney South”, Watt, Nicholas (2015) “Communi- red pepper, https://www.redpepper.org. cation Workers Union backs Corbyn uk/building-corbyns-labour-from-the- as antidote to Blairite ‘virus’”, The ground-up/, accessed 11 September Guardian, https://www.theguardian. 2019 com/politics/2015/jul/30/commu- nication-workers-union-backs-cor- Miliband, Ralph (2009/1964) byn-as-antidote-to-blairite-virus, ac- Parliamentary Socialism. Brecon: The cessed 11 September 2019 Merlin Press.

Nunns, Alex (2016) The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn’s improbable path to power. New York: OR Books.

Robinson, Duncan (2018) tweet, Twitter, https://twitter.com/duncanrob- inson/status/1047799182436851712?la ng=en, accessed 11 September 2019

Stewart, Heather and Syal, Rajeev (2018) “Momentum-backed NEC member: Labour should cut union links”, , https://www. theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/07/ momentum-backed-nec-member-chris- tine-shawcroft-labour-should-cut-un- ion-links, accessed 11 September 2019

Watt, Nicholas (2016) “John McDon- nell joined junior doctors despite La- bour agreement to not endorse strike”, The Guardian, https://www.theguardi-

Page 9 Hard Times 103 (1/2019)