Labour can still recover before the election, says Paul Flynn, but any splits would be suicidal
IT WAS an eye-catching headline. “Independent Labour Party? I’d be the first member says Adam Price MP.” There were conditions, of course, as the Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefw explained in his column in Welsh Language magazine Golwg (“View). He would join only if the new party was a sister party to Plaid with a similar arrangement to that existing between the Labour and Co-operative parties.
A new political alignment in Wales based on the “One Wales Agreements” that underpin the Labour-Plaid coalition running the Welsh Assembly has its attractions. Dai Davies, the independent MP for Blaenau Gwent, would be tempted to join. And a powerful anti-Tory alliance may be needed in future if there is a Tory surge at the next general election. But the prospects for a new party are not good. It would need a credible leader and a fresh philosophy.
Dagenham Labour MP Jon Cruddas wants to rebuild a community-focused party, embrace electoral reform and pursue what he calls “ new socialism”.
He claims to have detected a movement from the left of the party which is inclined to leave Labour and form a new workers’ party. According to Cruddas: “Now is the time to build a different Labour Party, to develop a new kind of economy and determine the just distribution of power and resources, in which government and the people work together toward a vision of the good society.”
Unfortunately, the left lacks a credible leader. The only challenger to Gordon Brown when Tony Blair stood down, John McDonnell, slapped down Cruddas’ idea as an attempt to drag the left into a snake-pit.
In the deputy leadership election, I initially supported Cruddas as the banner carrier for Compass. I swiftly became disenchanted and transferred my vote to Peter Hain.
Jon Cruddas is bright and personable but he has not done the basic groundwork essential for a leader-in-waiting. He has spoken only once in the House of Commons in the past year. He asked only eight parliamentary questions and is not a member of any Select Committee. This is a dismal record of parliamentary inactivity, which is matched only by Labour MPs who have given up already and are waiting for their P45s. How can his merits be judged if he is not willing to display his skills in the Commons’ Chamber?
Cruddas’ appeal to left-wing MPs is gossamer light. He voted for the Iraq war, 90 days’ detention, health service privatisation, Heathrow Airport expansion and the Welfare Bill. On all these core issues, he sided with the Blair-Brown tendency.
While McDonnell has the virtue of persistence, he failed to reach first base in his challenge to Gordon Brown. That was in spite of having the votes from those of us who supported him only to force a leadership election. The purpose was to give party members the same choice of leader that MPs had. John McDonnell was hard put even to win all the votes of the Campaign Group.
Unlike Cruddas, McDonnell is a regular Commons performer. His strengths and, sadly, his weaknesses are well recognised. His heart is in the right place, but his brand of socialism is the rusted wreck of the past rather than the 21st-smart style of socialism that Compass is shaping.
There are other potential leaders of ability and vision. They are wisely remaining invisible while Jon and John damage each other in a premature and self- defeating competition.
There is no appetite in the Parliamentary Labour Party for an internecine struggle while a pre-election recovery is still possible. The party is not ready to divide. There is satisfaction and gratitude for three general election victories, a stable prosperous economy and progress towards re-distribution of wealth. There has been was some stealth socialism. No one has shouted too loudly about it in case the likes of the Daily Mail heard and castigated us.
But unhappiness with “new” Labour’s false dawns runs deep. The crime of dragging our country into George Bush’s war in Iraq must be confessed. I share the view of Glenda Jackson’s comment on that war. “I am not ashamed of my party. I am ashamed of my Government.’
The tribal attachment to the Labour Party is unbreakable for many of us. I got my disillusionment in first on “new” Labour when Tony Blair and Harriet Harman exercised their “choice” of schools. Even for a serial loyalist to Labour party leaders since Clement Attlee, this was a betrayal too far.
I had a nightmare in 1996 that, if a malign foreign force wished to take over a country, there might infiltrate alien life forms here. They could be reared in the human veal crates of public schools and fed a diet that made them beautiful, eloquent and voraciously ambitious. But their idealism would be stunted. Transfused into a political party, they would be admired, applauded and acclaimed as leaders. Then they would be free to smother that party’s values and replace them with their own.
Now the nightmare is fading. Our best hope is that Labour will emerge restored and refreshed from its alien colonisation.
The first historic lesson of socialism appears on 1,000 Welsh banners: Mewn Undeb mae nerth (“In unity there is strength”). Disunity weakened the early struggles for justice of working people. Renewal must come without suicidal splits. New socialism can be nurtured into fresh life from the detritus of “new” Labour.
Paul Flynn is Labour MP for Newport West
