Carl Rowlands says Hungary provides a salutary lesson for the officer class of any party which thinks it has no need of foot-soldiers
IT IS understandable that more and more people are getting the impression that those in the top echelons of the Labour Party – despite their protestations to the contrary – don’t feel they need or want a large, active and committed membership.
Many policy “highlights” of the past few years, such as benefits reform, increasing police powers, adoption of the Trident upgrade and the pursuit of national cards, have clearly not originated as a result of members’ demands. In many cases it’s not apparent what has driven these decisions, but it is certain that the origin is not any provincial or metropolitan branch of the Labour Party.
The inevitable result of the exclusion of the membership is a lack of members. What can happen to a political party when many unpaid participants have gone and the officers outnumber the troops? There is a startling precedent in Hungary.
The Hungarian Social Democratic Party is the country’s oldest political party and has had a turbulent, but often proud, history since its inception in 1890, reflecting the history of Hungary itself. Formed at a time of growing industrialisation and agricultural depression, it grew in the newly urbanised areas of Budapest in the early years of the 20th century. Its links with the unions and democratic worker organisations were broadly on the same basis as the British Labour Party.
After the First World War, the Social Democrats briefly held power, before being submerged into a Communist regime and implicated in a “red terror” inflicted on the bourgeoisie. When the right-wing struck back and installed Miklós Horthy’s regime, the ultra-nationalist military units known as the White Guard launched their own terror and targeted Social Democrat supporters in response.
Once established, the inter-war Horthy era saw an authoritarian regime which tolerated a certain amount of trade union activity and social democracy, and enacted a wide set of paternalistic social reforms.
However, this limited tolerance had evaporated by the onset of the Second World War, and trade unionism had been driven deep underground by the time that tanks of the Soviet Union rolled into Budapest in 1945. Resulting elections still showed strong support for the left. The right-wing Smallholders Party won the election, yet the Social Democrats had rebuilt their organisation quickly to finish in a strong second place.
However, the Soviets were now taking a direct interest in the Social Democrats, pushing hard for a merger with their own “unity front” Communists. It was at this point in the post-war period that Denis Healey came to Budapest, as international Secretary of the Labour Party, to attempt to persuade the Social Democrats to resist a merger. Unfortunately, those who were against the merger were targeted and sidelined. First the Social Democrats and then all political parties were assimilated into the ruling Communist machine.
Subsequently, the Social Democrats re-emerged briefly as an independent entity for a few months in 1956, along with independent trade unions. But when the shutters were drawn down again, it was more than 30 years before the Social Democratic Party begin to reconstitute itself at the end of the 1980s.
The Social Democratic Party that emerged from a deep hiatus to fight the 1990 election was a weak animal, with an unproven leadership and a thin membership base of old warriors and inexperienced younger people. The biggest problem for this disinterred organisation was that the ruling Communist Party had renamed itself the Socialist Party. It had a core of members and funds inherited from the old system, along with a professional, ruthless leadership.
The Social Democrats didn’t stand much of a chance against the Socialist Party’s manoeuvrings, and as parties consolidated their positions across the political spectrum, they were effectively squeezed into oblivion.
But there is life after death for a famous political franchise these days. Just as a mail order company has bought the Woolworths brand, a rich former Communist called Laszlo Kapolyi, who is well-connected with Russian oligarchs and the Soviet-era security services, decided to bankroll the Hungarian Social Democrats. He sits currently as a government MP, representing both the Socialist Party and the Social Democrats. He is the Social Democrats’ only MP, established by virtue of a cross-party agreement.
So perhaps some people see no problem if there is no membership left in the Labour Party, as long as a rich, well-connected businessman decides to buy the brand. Consider Roman Abramovich and Chelsea – not just a football club, but also a franchise. And it’s obviously a worthwhile investment. When your company is bidding for public sector contracts, it can’t do any harm. Perhaps you could buy a little political party and come to an agreement with the leaders of the big parties to enable you to sit in the national parliament as long as you would like and be a force with which to be reckoned.
Not only this, there are opportunities for travel. As the Hungarian Social Democrats have full membership status in the Party of European Socialists, its leader is afforded the privileges and VIP passes of the big European socialist parties, most of which have the problems of dealing with their real memberships and being accountable to them – to an extent, at least.
The one thing you don’t want in this situation is people getting the wrong idea. People may see the name of the party and think this could be a leftist alternative to the “Third Way” Blairite non-ideology of the Hungarian Socialist Party leadership, which is notable for the total disregard it has for its members’ opinions. In fact, so many Hungarians are disillusioned with the governing Socialist Party that it has become necessary for the Social Democrats to pass a rule that actually prevents people from joining. You couldn’t make it up. But, as Kapolyi has said, he doesn’t want “shit-stirrers” in his party.
Of course, there are some who warn that this process could precipitate the ultimate debasement of democracy and possibly lead to domination by a nexus of political-criminal elites. At best, the current incarnation of the Hungarian Social Democrats represents politics as a multi-millionaire’s idle hobby – a hollowed-out, morally bankrupt parody of the political process.
That’s the reality of life after mass membership.
