McDonnell slaughters some sacred cows…as Brown gets “Blue Tongue disease”
On Saturday September 29th around 60 activists attended a forum in Hebden Bridge Trades Club, Yorkshire to discuss “21st Century Socialism”. This meeting took place immediately after the end of the LP conference in Bournemouth..
The first part of the day focussed on what Gordon Brown’s leadership of the party is likely to result in. Some comrades, in a very lively debate, argued that it was not right to slag off the new leader, that he must be given time to “turn things round”. They argued that he had already shown some encouraging steps in the right direction, notably in relation to “social” housing and halting further privatisation in the NHS. Other comrades, including your reporter, made the point that Gordon Brown was the chief architect of New Labour and that we should have no illusions about him.
For those that did, they should carefully study his first speech as leader in Bournemouth. His speech showed how fast the new “BlueTongue” disease was spreading. The speech was extremely right wing, with its focus on “Britishness” , including at one point the infamous reference to “British jobs for British workers” – taken straight from the BNP’s manifesto. Some comrades even tried to defend this chauvinist nonsense, by saying that he was meaning to include Black workers – yeah right!
As the various speakers, including McDonnell, arrived on the platform, contributors turned their attention to the role played by TU leaders last week. All agreed that the TU leaders had played a disgraceful role in their collaboration with Brown’s scheme to shut down the Conference as a democratic event where positions could be debated and decided. Their climbdown was universally condemned by the meeting.
There then followed a remarkable contribution from the platform by John McDonnell. In line with his piece in Saturday’s Morning Star, he spelled out what he saw as the “qualitative changes” in the LP as a result of the events in Bournemouth. He argued that “the old strategy of reclaiming the party had failed”, that “we need to reappraise”, that, “changes were non existent”. There has been “no movement forward” and the “party is degenerating”. Although he went on to argue against leaving the party, this was undoubtedly a departure from the relative complacency of many LRC supporters, who, in the previous discussion had reduced the problems to simply the Left having vacated the LP arena and if they would only return, things could be a lot different.
Any thoughts that McDonnell was simply “banging on” after Bournemouth were removed by what he next had to say. He said that the strategy of winning positions in the TUs by the Broad Lefts had ALSO failed and that in future we had to “take on the bureaucracy”! Further, the left had to engage with youth, direct action strategies and the new social movements for it to be relevant. Clearly, after his failed leadership campaign, the consolidation of Brown in power and the capitulation of Simpson, Woodley, Kenny et al, McDonnell has had a gutful.
How far this translates into a serious fight in the TUs and LP in the next period will depend on revolutionaries and other militants seizing on these remarks and translating them into action. It will also need us to “move on” from the warmed up old labour nostrums in the LRC’s “Another World is Possible” manifesto.
). But over time the organisation might change (shift to the right for instance). By that time though people's social lives have got meshed in with that organisation so they stay on regardless.
So they'd plump for yet another dose of Maggie Thatcher. 
