Leaks, traitors and unity

So, the Labour Party was sabotaged from the moment that Jeremy Corbyn became leader. I’m shocked. Actually I’m not shocked. If I’m shocked at all it is that people on the left are shocked. Anybody who was involved with either the 2017 or 2019 General Election should have known that shadowy forces were working within Labour for a Conservative victory.

The latest leaked document simply confirms what most of us suspected. It is, if you like, the smoking gun, and the people named in it do not come out of it well. That Ian McNichol turns out to be a malicious anti-leftist is hardly a major revelation. He was appointed during the Miliband years (although he had been a regional officer for the party until 1997 when he became a full time officer with the GMB). He built a bureaucracy in his own image. Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott have been in the party long enough to know full well how much contempt they were subject to by those who should have been working with them.

For many people who joined the party in 2016 and beyond it feels, no doubt, like a knife in the back. For many of us who have taken part in this dance before it is simply business as usual. We have seen the left vilified by the right in the past and expected nothing less from the remnants of that sad, dying breed, the Blairites. 

Younger members are likely to be most demoralised

I suspect that many younger members are particularly hurt because their naivety and idealism have been shattered by these revelations. Many of them, not just younger in age but political activism, had no idea how deep the hatred of the left went among the right of the party. Many would have expected such hostility to, at least, be put on hold during the election where we were all on the same side. They had no idea or way of knowing quite what real politics is like.

That many of these same members have just delivered a victory to somebody whose first act was to reward the very MPs who were plotting behind the back of the last leader should at least help them to realise that calls for unity are empty rhetoric, especially when made by individuals who are so dishonourable that they would stab an entire class of people in the back for their own political and professional advantage.

Let’s be clear the people named in the report are all functionaries of the party. They are the employees whose job is to help deliver a Labour government. Now it may be that they were working on their own and this conspiracy, and there really is no other word for it, was all their own doing. Ask yourself, does that seem plausible?

We know from the leaked documents that the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party was being protected by this group. What we don’t know from the documents is how deeply Watson and other MP’s were involved with the conspirators. But, it beggars belief that these treacherous individuals were not working with people in the party with a wider profile: MPs and peers. It also beggars belief that this was not an organised coup orchestrated by those who declared their hostility to Jeremy Corbyn. In particular Mandelson, Campbell and Blair are highly likely to have played a role in this.

How involved were these men in the plot against Corbyn?

Remember, that some of those named had close personal links to the old order. It seems highly unlikely that given how close this group were to the Blairites and Brownites that they were not in touch with them throughout this period. It is no secret that Blair, Mandelson and Campbell hated Corbyn and were, by their own admission, working to remove him as leader. Mandelson told The Times that not a minute went by when he was not working against Corbyn, Campbell encouraged people to vote Liberal in the European elections and Blair said that those voting for Corbyn needed a brain transplant.  None of these people who had dominated the Blair governments had actually retired from public life, even if we think that as war criminals that some of them should be ashamed to show their faces in public. The suspicion has to be that this conspiracy was more far reaching than just a handful of functionaries.

But, I hear people say, where is your evidence? Aren’t people innocent until proven guilty? They have a point the documents released do not implicate Blair et al, or any current or past MPs. But, I would just point out that there has been no proper investigation as to who the functionaries were working for or with, and in all honesty there is unlikely to be one. There is plenty of smoke, we just can’t quite locate the fire.

Jeremy Corbyn was clearly a threat to the establishment and the neo-liberal order in the UK. Perhaps in reality he was not quite the threat that they imagined. But, his vision of a people-powered social movement which sought to empower ordinary people and run society for the benefit of the many worried the establishment to the extent that they mobilised extensively to undermine and destroy him. He was vilified in the papers, hounded by the broadcast media, lied about and smeared almost from day one of his leadership.

These kinds of movements do not happen by accident. When every mainstream newspaper carries similar accusations against a political party, its leader and its members, that is not an accident. When trumped up charges are amplified by people who should be defending their own party, that is not an accident. When members are thrown out of the party on the flimsiest of evidence and then vilified for holding views that are anti-establishment that is not an accident.

What these leaked papers show is a small group of extremely malicious individuals with an utter contempt for those they disagree with. That makes those individuals loathsome and treacherous. But, what those papers indicate is a wider attack on the British left. Yes, they sought to prevent a Labour government, a government with a programme that was badly needed in order to ameliorate the immense suffering that has been caused by 10 years of Tory rule. 

Jess Phillips devastated on election night

But, the plot had a deeper and more significant aim. It was to humiliate and demoralise the left. The goal was not simply to defeat Corbyn, but to ensure that the left would never again be in a position where it was just 2,200 votes away from power. We had to be taught a lesson. Taking on the establishment has consequences. For many members caught up in false allegations of anti-semitism the lesson was a Kafkaesque system of justice in which they were forced to prove that allegations against them were not true rather than have the allegations against them proven beyond doubt. For the rest of us it was designed to silence us. Some will argue that it was to silence criticism of Israel in its treatment of Palestinians. That was certainly a side effect, but I don’t think that was the main aim. 

The plot against Corbynism alighted on anti-semitism having failed to ignite on charges of terrorism links, foreign government links or allegations of bullying levelled against members usually without a scrap of evidence. If it hadn’t been anti-semitism it would have been something else. Anti-semitism simply stuck and became, because of the left’s historic defence of the Palestinians, a really useful stick to beat us with.

These attacks may well have been orchestrated by McNichol, Oldeknow etc, but that is not exactly proven by the leaked documents. It is just as likely that they were part of a network which included embittered Blairites and current members of the Parliamentary Labour Party. The stories which found their way into the press were most likely being fed by people with close links to the papers and broadcast media. Who knows? 

What is certainly true is that a swathe of Labour Party MPs actively and maliciously turned on Jeremy Corbyn and anybody seen to be loyal to him. They attacked him personally and by attacking the members who joined in the wake of his unexpected leadership victory. Every MP who amplified the AS allegations, who sided with those making unfounded allegations against the leadership. Every MP who signed letters calling for the expulsion of people on trumped up charges. Every MP who joined in undermining Jeremy Corbyn during the coup of 2016. Every single one of them should be investigated to see how close their links are to the group that have now been exposed.

Keir Starmer: unifier or plotter?

They won’t be and there is a simple reason why. That list of MPs include the current leader of the party who won the support of people who had previously supported Jeremy Corbyn. That leader who was instrumental in developing a policy that had the net effect of losing Labour key seats. What chance that any investigation will be thorough going?

So, what to do? Personally I think what we have learned is something those of us who have been around for awhile will have always known. You cannot take for granted the notion that everybody in the Labour Party is on the same side. These documents prove without a shadow of a doubt that there are party members who prefer a Tory victory to a left victory. In light of this anybody calling for unity is in a state of delusional naivety. There can be no unity with people who believe that a Boris Johnson victory was a cause for celebration. There can be no unity with those whose hatred of socialists and socialism is so deep that they would lie, bully, humiliate and intimidate in order to prevent it from taking a hold in the Labour Party. 

If unity is not on the cards then what? For now, we should in my view stay in the party and continue to use our numerical advantage to hang on to the little bits of democracy we have won over the past four years. However, we should be careful where we put our efforts. I would suggest that those on the right can campaign for their own victories. The left need to be more ruthless in our treatment of right wing councillors and parliamentary candidates. Not every donkey with a Labour sticker is worthy of our support. In future, if we are not actually driven out of the party, we should campaign for and vote for only those candidates that support the socialist values which motivate the majority of the members. They can take their unity and place it where the sun does not shine. We are not falling for their tricks again.