By Andrew Scattergood
Over the last year, the left has seen its power in the Labour Party wane. This has been a shock to many who found their feet in party politics under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. But for those of us who remember the days before Corbyn, it is familiar territory. However, things have not simply reverted to how they were. We are far stronger now than in 2015. The legacy left behind by Corbyn and the organisations and networks that grew out of that period of influence are a source of hope. Momentum is the biggest of those organisations, achieving huge success over the last few years in mobilising tens of thousands of activists for the cause of socialism.
But like most of the left, we now find ourselves redefining our purpose and goals. The vigour with which the Labour leadership’s factional attack on the left has taken many by surprise. Keir Starmer was always likely to distance himself from the left, but not many would have anticipated the speed and extent of his offensive.
But in spite of the hostility, the left remains strong. We’ve built bigger and more organised institutions and the movement leaders whose platforms grew under Corbyn still hold influence on the left. What is missing is a coherent strategy. We need a new direction, building on the foundations already laid, that reckons with our mistakes yet takes advantage of the huge space left by a Labour Party leadership bereft of ideas.
There are some policy areas and campaigns where our movement has built up considerable strength over the last few years and the need for continued work on them is greater than ever. A Green New Deal becomes more urgent by the day; our public sector desperately needs investment; the housing crisis still burdens millions of people, workers’ rights need strengthening with the repealing of all anti-trade union laws.
Corbyn’s proposals went a long way to showing that the left has the answers to these pressing questions — but we didn’t show that we had the means to deliver. This should be our first priority and the answer to this must start with building up support for these policies within trade unions and within local government. Alongside our socialist-based policy programme, the coming years will also be defined by the scale of resistance we are able to mount against Tory corruption and class warfare.
The economic burden of the Tories’ mishandling of the pandemic is already being placed on working-class people, as shown by the public-sector pay freeze and local government being forced to make cuts to public services. Building resistance to this, in the workplace and with local movements is key.
Once lockdown restrictions have eased, the left must rediscover its energy by getting out into the streets and channelling popular anger into a sustained resistance movement. Momentum’s groups, spread out in communities across the country, will undoubtedly play an important role. But we also desperately need to affect things from inside the chamber too: council elections due in May provide a perfect opportunity to elect left-wing candidates to local government.
Since the beginning of 2020 we’ve been training dozens of brilliant socialists through our Future Councillors Programme to achieve just that. This will be the coal face of the activism needed to fight back against Tory policy. It is also essential that the left doesn’t cede ground within the Labour Party.
Despite the loss of the leadership, this year’s national executive committee results were encouraging in that respect. Five out of the six left candidates won election as CLP reps and in the Young Labour contest 13 out of the 16 Momentum-endorsed candidates were victorious.
There is a socialist majority inside the party — and the signs show that there could be one for decades to come. But if that is going to be translated into socialist change we must use our institutional weight inside the party to defend and further the democratic gains made over the last five years. The authoritarian crackdown led by the leadership and general secretary David Evans is an attempt to roll those back, with dozens of CLP chairs being suspended for daring to discuss Starmer’s refusal to restore the whip to Corbyn.
This whole debacle has shown how important it is to have a general secretary who is accountable to the membership — which is why we as Momentum is proposing a motion at Labour Conference 2021 that would make the position elected. We can only democratise the British state if we democratise our party first. The loss of the Corbyn leadership — around which we all cohered for a period of five years — has undeniably left a hole in terms of left strategy.
This is why Momentum will soon be setting out its stall with a clear socialist vision that prioritises building power in local government and in our workplaces; building a confident movement that leads the resistance against the Tory treatment of working-class communities; that elects the best of our movement into national and local chambers; and continues the task of democratising the Labour Party and pushing it to adopt transformative, socialist policies. The last year has been tough — but we have much to look forward to.