---

By @JustinTheLibSoc

I’ve only met Owen Jones a few times and though we have had a few bizarre arguments, I can’t help but have a warm affection for him. I can’t deny that I find myself harbouring genuine sympathies for his stated aims. I cheered when he spoke against Israeli militarism on Question Time. I have found myself nodding to his rebuttals to right-wing propaganda. I believe that we both support the liberation of each and every part of the oppressed classes whether that is black, white, female, Muslim, cis-male, worker, unemployed, refugee, LGBT or some combination of the former. Also I admire Owen for engaging with most of his ideological opponents and detractors especially in the age of “trolling”.

But this disagreement isn’t really about Owen, it is about the bankruptcy of the strategy and ideas which Owen, the Labour Left and their fellow travellers, champion. In this article, I’ll describe some current and age-old problems with Labour, Parliament and the State, and respond to the question of how working class liberation is built and why those who either adopt or propose racist policies/positions must be excluded. In a second piece, I’ll outline an alternative strategy which can be found in various pockets across this country and far beyond.

But first an overdue apology: I neither did nor do not regard Owen Jones or the Labour Party as Nazis, I apologise if my anger and brevity on Twitter gave this impression. In my view, Labour has become a more nationalistic project with a touch of social-democratic dressing. Jim Murphy’s desire to make special laws for insulting or attacking soldiers, the Party’s co-option of the flag and slogan of Empire and colonial domination, and Maurice Glasman, one Ed’s leading thinkers, expressing an anti-immigration stance that is indistinguishable from UKIP. This probably could be a described as Social Nationalism or a Patriotic Socialism though but National Socialism, and certainly not in the classic or conventional sense of the term.

Speaking truth to power: Labour’s institutional racism

As with most bust-ups these days, it all started with an innocent tweet. On Sunday 22nd September, Owen Jones sent a special plea to his mate who setting out his stall during an interview with Andrew Marr:

Ah c’mon Ed Miliband, commit to raising the minimum wage. Public want it, it’d save money on in-work benefits and stimulate economy #marr

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) September 22, 2013

Before I go on consider the context first. This tweet was sent soon after Ed Miliband confirmed on the Andrew Marr Show, that he would keep the welfare cap. Miliband then proudly gushed that One Nation Labour would maintain the immigration cap by effectively offset the pollution of immigrant labour from corporations with apprenticeships for British people. Owen’s reaction to the Labour leader’s acquiescence to Osborne and Cameron’s cornerstone anti-working class policies, was to make a chummy plea for a pro-social micro-economic policy. Not a peep about the declared continuation of the Conservative Party’s welfare and immigration caps that he states to be so strongly against. Such is the never-ending farce that is being a Labour “Leftie”. See the praise they bestow on Labour for promising to scrap the Bedroom Tax despite Labour’s commitment to keep the greater damaging principle of a welfare cap. The Labour Left after being robbed out of £50, have learned to jump for joy when they are given back £5. This glaring lack of dissent and strong criticism towards Miliband, was compounded in my mind with the miserable response to the recent news about Yarl’s Wood. That place of torment that Labour built to imprison individuals and families fleeing persecution.

That very same morning, the Observer had a follow up piece to its front-page report on the allegations of rape at Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre. Anyone who is familiar with Labour’s asylum policies, would know that these allegations are not new. Yarl’s Wood was built in 2001, then Europe’s biggest immigrant prison, and almost since its opening, has been the subject of much criticism, reviews and investigations. The Observer reported on the testimony of one of the former detainees:

“Some of the women are succumbing to whatever they are being propositioned to do. Some of the guards are touching the women; the girls are being promised that they are going to get their freedom. They say things like: ‘You better be nice to me if you want to get out of here.’ They make funny gestures: one puts his finger in his mouth and winks at me.”

Owen, normally quick to comment on the scandals of the day had been eerily quiet on Yarl’s Wood. Just suppose it was English women that had been raped and assaulted by state prison guards or the police. Undoubtedly Miliband, Jones and others would have been queuing up to express horror then comment about what this means for British society, and for those who allowed this to happen. Yet when those who are abused are refugees, they seem to be unfortunate but also “illegal” and therefore beyond concern. Alas it was a scandal that was only fit for the Observer’s front page, so perhaps they find Daily Mail editorials more controversial. The rape of refugees is not shocking enough to make BBC National News, news controllers appear to have decided that the liberal pressure valve had been sufficiently released, so no further comment was necessary.

The tweets, boycott threats, placards and demonstrations of the recently outraged were not for these women. Nevertheless, there were dignified protests, organised by and led by former detainees and solidarity shown by their supporters including Labour MP, John McDonnell to his credit. Last week, 30 current detainees went on hunger strike, though I do not know about their current condition, I know that our government has just deported women who spoke out against rape even when medical evidence supported their claims. So for the victims of state racism, if the Labour leadership’s complicit silence is out of tacit approval, wilful ignorance or plain indifference, their nightmare is unaltered regardless. For they have carried and will continue to bear the physical and psychological wounds inflicted by a state run institution dedicated to their persecution and brutal punishment.

If the aim is to get One Nation Labour into government, then the shrewd would realise that Miliband won’t gain a majority in parliament by prioritising rape survivors and certainly not when they are foreign women. Elections have never been won by humanising convenient scapegoats. Ed Miliband understood this when, as the author of Labour’s 2010 manifesto, created the section titled “Crime and Immigration”.  The pragmatists in Labour have told me that with Yarl’s Wood and Labour’s immigration policy, the anti-racists were the minority and sadly lost that argument to the racist elements in the leadership but don’t worry as there will be a motion next year that will sort out the racists. I told to be reassured that Ed Miliband doesn’t like it but his hands are currently tied. Just wait, they say, for public opinion to sway in favour of the welfare of refugees, as the bodies of the brutalised, the hunger strikers and those who take their own lives pile up in Britain’s modern dungeons. The Labour Left put their faith in Ed Miliband, clearly the most left-wing Labour leader in a generation. A man who persists a xenophobic agreement with the Conservatives on immigration, is indifferent to the abuse and rape of refugees and had openly supported the despicable abuse of state power that was the purge of Dale Farm. For the prophets of the Labour Left counsels that there is no sin too great, which cannot be absolved by the healing power of the Union link. And so, with this gospel of despair, continues Yarl’s Wood and other weapons of racist misogyny designed, maintained and endorsed by Labour. It is this institutionally racist and sexist electoral machine which Owen puts his trust in and great lefties like John McDonnell depend on.

Amidst my impotent outbursts of anger on Twitter, Owen reminded me that Labour is a coalition. This truth is plainly obvious when you place John McDonnell and the Labour Left as the equivalent of Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats. That is to say useful fig-leaves to Labour’s more powerful right-wing coalition partners. Vote John McDonnell, and you probably get Liam Byrne as Work and Pensions Secretary. This is part of the logic which allows Miliband to be portrayed as an ally to the working class, a leader that the downtrodden should work with, and not against, to raise the minimum wage. So of course, Owen deplores Yarl’s Wood explicit rape culture but in order to get the ear of the Great Leader for the sake of the masses, his role is not admonish but to exhort. He will speak truth to power but preferably when the economics and opinion polls add up. Owen may regard Ed Miliband as part of the “Old Labour Right” but treats him as a confused comrade who just needs a bit of direction. Owen channel Obama and helpfully points out what “Ed should to say” rather than openly question what and who Miliband really represents.

The extra-parliamentary strategy: The People’s Assembly

But it would be unfair to say that is the circumference of Owen’s strategy, he has gone beyond “Lefties needs to join Labour” to something more practical. It is called The People’s Assembly Against Austerity. A movement comprising of a mix of Green and Labour Party leftists, Leninists of varied traditions, trade unionists, anti-austerity campaigners and bankrolled by members and Trade Union bureaucrats. Though it being managed by mostly “the usual suspects”, that is the mastermind behind the “Left List/Alternative” 2008 GLA campaign, John Rees and his subordinates in Counterfire, it is still the most impressive national assortment of people making up the largest element of Britain’s anti-austerity movement. So how did it start?

Back in January, a few weeks before the founding Guardian letter was published which announced the launch of the People’s Assembly, Owen wrote a piece outlining his rationale for creating this movement after the SWP Comrade Delta fallout:

“Such a network would push real alternatives to the failure of austerity that would have to be listened to; and create political space for policies that otherwise does not exist. Faced with a more courageous, coherent challenge to the Tory project, the Labour leadership would face pressure that would not – for a change – come from the right.”

In 2013, millions are being physically, emotionally and materially reduced by the biggest decline in living standards in memory. Benefit cuts have ended lives and working parents are forced to skip meals to feed their children. This battle is vicious and demands an equal and greater response. As a basic principle of self-defence, ordinary people need to be part of an anti-austerity movement. Unemployment unions are emerging, neighbours and activists are creating networks of mutual aid and a new class solidarity is to be forged. Our movement must be broad and encompass people of varied and no political traditions. However to succeed, as the Poll Tax movement did, those of us who want a prosocial future, have to be clear, principled, honest and hold no illusions about how change will happen. I believe this clarity about how modern capitalist politics operates is missing from the underlying assumptions of Owen’s overall strategy which simply put is this: build a movement that can push British public opinion and therefore pressurise Labour to reposition itself to the “Left”.

Let’s be clear, what the media relays as public opinion, does not spontaneously emerge from below. Opinion polls capture largely the echoes of propaganda that has been manufactured, and framed by mainstream media and the ruling elite. The BBC does not, and much less Sky, exist to serve the British people. They are not democratic institutions that are controlled by or accountable to the wishes of the people. Rather they are autocratically run businesses controlled by a particular group of people with a particular set of biases, values and interests. They decide what makes news and what doesn’t. They are accountable only to the political class or private owners that sets their allowance.  So when our actions and interests conflict with the dominant class’ interest, we should not be surprised nor shocked when our demands, our voices and our actions are ignored, censored or sidelined. Let us understand that our licence fee or monthly subscription payments do not make the media is our servants. This doesn’t mean we should boycott them but don’t engage with it but it should be critically, aware of its limitations and with caution. However our power is not generated by getting the right soundbites broadcast on the nation’s airwaves, it grows not as pressure from below but democratic self-determination directly at the point of need. This should be the lesson of the Poll Tax movements, it became unenforceable, the sanctions of the courts lost their sting because the people refused to cooperate with the state, that can happen regardless of the editors decisions on BBC’s Television News coverage.

Labour: The Party of Capital, Work and Parliamentarism

As they often leave aside the violent racism of the Labour Party, Owen & co may be slightly chuffed and encouraged with Labour’s recent announcements, as it appears to be moving in their direction or at least assimilating a few “pro-social” policies and pledges. Without question in time they’ll soon be gutted by this positioning, as their victories reveal itself as a mirage. Though on one-hand their campaigning has shown that hope can affect politics and change is possible. It more importantly obscures the parameters of change offered by Labour are far narrower than what this struggle requires. If Owen or other lefties believes in anything like socialist policies will be endorsed by any Labour leadership then they misunderstand the historical ideological nature of the Party and the Trade Union leadership that it relies on. Enter Ralph Miliband:

“The belief in the effective transformation of the Labour Party into an instrument of socialist policies is the most crippling of all illusions to which socialists in Britain have been prone”

– Moving On (1976)

In Ralph’s analysis of the Labour Party, despite it containing a largest collection of socialists in Britain, the leadership and its orientation was that it sought to manage Capital and with that aim, Labour remained too ideologically tied to Parliamentarism. It is historically accurate to state that neither industrial action nor protests of any kind has ever been tolerated or welcomed by Labour’s leadership. From Ed Miliband’s “Get around the negotiating table”, to Ramsay MacDonald’s hatred of the General Strike of 1926. Both Marx and Engels were thought whoever formed the government in Parliament was just the “committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”. Parliamentarism or “Parliamentary cretinism” is the misguided belief that the ruling class could be voted out of office, or the occasionally watered down version that the ruling class will tolerate a government that carries out policies that could threaten its continued existence. History has shown this notion to be wrong time and again but Leninists, Labourists and other Leftists tell us that Parliament, that ancient and disgraced body of British democracy is an appropriate arena for working class liberation. This ridiculous idea is still clung to even after the Labour Party pledged in 1983 to accommodate Leninist utopian demands and renationalise recently privatised sections of the economy, just as the state hold on managing capitalism was crumbling. It was to be remembered by all future Labour leaders as “The longest suicide note in history”.

The Labour Party may have that magical constitutional link that connects the party apparatus to millions of workers but this composition doesn’t make it a party for working class liberation. The TUC represents workers to Capital, this function fundamentally against workers’ interest of self-determination.  Trade unions help Capital manage and maintain an abusive and exploitative relationship that should be broken. The ideology of Labour is that of the Trade Union Movement, that dangerous but pervasive myth which claims “we need Capital in order to live but Capital also needs reasonable partners to manage the economy for everyone”. This is the purpose of mainstream trade unions, now currently disabused from its childish Trotskyist tendencies and toy Stalinist leaders, to deceive its membership and all working people that we need bosses, we need to create profit, we need to accept wage cuts and redundancies rather than claim it is the wrong way round. Why attempt push a party of capital, of class subjugation to the “Left”? Why lead the dispossessed into accepting a pernicious lie that can only strengthen their chains? Why not push Lib Dems or the Tories to the “Left”? If there was no illusion of the nature of these liars, charlatans and racists then I would have some respect for a project that seeks to educate people through struggle against the Labour and Trade Union leadership and builds towards the self-emancipation of the working class. But instead of fighting for ourselves, Owen is fighting for the Labour leadership in 2015, and the People’s Assembly is fighting for politicians to return to the pre-2008 spending budgets by trying re-inflate the “Spirit of 45″ without any of the existing historic political and socio-economic conditions. What we need is a new future not a re-run of a failed past. Ultimately our faith cannot be in the representative politics permitted Capital as that model can only betray us. Cleggmania and the Change and Hope of Obama 2008 are just modern examples of an age old tradition.

We should deal with the world as it is, not just how we think it should be. The old truism remains the case, we live in an age of where mass-industrial unionism is in apparent terminal decline along with the Fordist economy it relied on. In my next piece I will outline what we could and should put our hope in. A politics of refusal and a politics of collaboration that has moved this country and other nations in the past. This creative energy is rising again in small ways here but more significantly in Southern and Eastern Europe, in South Asia and South Africa. It is in part, the belief and praxis of direct and decentralised democracy, for if we don’t believe in ourselves then there really is nothing left.