Starmer wants to push through rule changes that give even more power to Labour MPs (Pic: Wikimedia/CreativeCommons )
Left wing Labour members arrived for their partyâs conference in Brighton on Saturday amid big questions and debates about their future.
Activists debated âsocialist strategy after Jeremy Corbynâ at the parallel festival The World Transformed. Meanwhile delegates on the conference floor faced a losing battle against the party machine.
Left wing members are organising desperately to stop moves by Keir Starmer to give MPs more power in party leadership elections.
It comes amid reports of swathes of left wing delegates being suspended before conference even beganâand after at least 100,000 members have quit under Starmerâs leadership.
Some Labour members at the World Transformed event talked of dramatic falls of left wing members turning up at their local party meetings.
âWhen Jeremy Corbyn was leader we had so many people at our meetings,â one told Socialist Worker. âNow under Keir Starmer so many have left or donât want to come to meetings anymore.â
Others talked about the silencing effect that the leadershipâs war on the membership has had.
Richard Kuper is a member of Jewish Voice for Labour. He told a meeting party members had to answer, âHow do we do this organising, particularly in the Labour Party, when there is a purge being carried out this very moment against socialists?â
Many activists at the meeting said left wing Labour members had to build support for campaigns outside the party.
Leo from Bristol said, âThe most important thing you should be doing is organising your workplace. And if you don’t know how to do that then people need to train you how to do it.
âIf your union is resistant to proper organising then we need to be working out how to take over those committees and branches and to force that stuff through.â
A couple of people said Labour left organisation Momentum should open up its membership to people outside the party to become more outward looking.
âI really believe we need to be in the Labour Party,â said one. âI think the least demoralised of us are those of us who are in the Labour Party who have a left community.â
She added, âThose who are most at risk of being isolated and demoralised are those who are not in that left community. Momentum really has a role to play in finding those members and bringing them back into the left community because it’s so important that we stay together.â
Another member, Hillary from Hackney South, asked, âWhere do we find some kind of hub that can connect all the different movements which are growing up?
âAfter 2019 what kept me going was fighting privatisation of Homerton Hospital, fighting the sacking of teachers. Then suddenly there was all the attacks on Labour Party people and all the energies got sucked into this internal battle.
âOn the one hand I wanted to support the comrades that were being victimised, but on the other hand I wanted my energies to be reaching out.â
Internal
Yet at the same time, most at the meeting also thought it was important to stay in Labour, and keep trying to fight internal battles against the right.
As one told Socialist Worker, âWeâve only got a choice between the Tories and Labour. Iâd still rather a Labour government and itâs important we stay to make it keep left wing policies.â
The World Transformed organisers said it was a priority to defeat changes to Labourâs rules proposed by Starmer.
Starmer wants to increase the number of MPsâ nominations needed for a candidate to stand in future leadership elections. This would make it harder for a left wing candidate to get on the ballot paper.
He had wanted to go further and make the votes of MPs count for a full third in any leadership election. Union leaders made him back down before conferenceâbut approved the new planned change that the left wing membership still want to defeat.
And in a potential sign of things to come, the left lost a vote to reject the appointment of David Evans as general secretary. He has overseen the war on party members. Delegates from the Unison and GMB unions voted to back Evans, in a card vote where union membersâ ballots count for half.
Left wing party members are still grappling with how they can stay in a party with a machine that wants to silence them or drive them out.
As Alex from Somerset put it at The World Transformed, âIt would be nice to be able to organise within Labour. But there are many of us do not have that option due to exclusion by our party structure.
âWeâre in a paradox where we need a proper organised structure of the left that can speak collectively. And we cannot trust that to exist within the current party political system.â
John McDonnell learns wrong lessons from Bernie Sanders campaign
The World Transformed hosted an interview by left wing MP John McDonnell with US senator Bernie Sanders.
Sanders stood unsuccessfully to be the Democratic Partyâs presidential candidate in 2020, and now claims to be influencing president Joe Biden to increase public spending.
In fact, Biden has spurned the so-called âprogressivesâ in the Democrats. Even Sanders admitted, âOn healthcare, Biden is wedded to the for-profit system.â
But McDonnell asked Sanders how to build âa working relationship from the leftâ with a âcentristâ leadership of the party.
McDonnell has appealed repeatedly to Keir Starmer to stop his attacks on the left in the name of unity.
Undermine
Even as he encouraged party members to vote down Starmerâs plans at conference, he said he and Jeremy Corbyn had agreed not to undermine Starmerâs leadership.
âWhen Starmer won the leadership election Jeremy and I took the view that we wouldnât do to him what they did to us.â he said. âWe didnât want the excuse to be made that the left was undermining Starmer.â
He added that âUnder the first past the post system, thereâs no other way of achieving some advancement of socialism unless itâs in the Labour Party.â
But that means staying in Labour and trying to find compromise with the right. Some Labour members are questioning whether thatâs possible.
One, who didnât want to be named, told Socialist Worker she wasnât sure the right would agree to live with the left. âYou would like to think that would be possible, but thereâs so much aggression from their side I just donât know,â she said.
âThe other thing is, what will you have to sell out on? Do you sell out on some point of principle or do you stand your ground and just leave them in power? I just donât know.â
Source: Socialistworker.co.uk