We Must Learn The Lessons
Below is an article I've written for the Guardian's Comment Is Free website on Thursday's local elections:
We must learn the lessons
John McDonnell
May 4, 2007 5:40 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_mcdonnell/2007/05/we_must_learn_the_lessons.html
The trend in recent years has been for Labour to dip at local elections, but to bounce back at general elections. However this cycle is unsustainable: at each election that dip is getting deeper, and our recovery less. On the basis of last night, the best we could hope for is a hung parliament at the next election.
Having canvassed with Labour candidates in Scotland, Wales and in several English local authority areas, I was not surprised that our vote held up better than was touted. However, we should not believe our own propaganda - playing up fears of a wipeout in the media may soften the blow of these results but, make no mistake, these results are certainly not good.
A share of the vote of just 27% is deeply worrying. The swing against Labour averaged between 5-7% across Britain. Although it is a crude analysis, if this was replicated at a general election the Tories would either be the largest party in a hung parliament or might just scrape an outright majority.
To learn the lessons of last night, we must understand and address what has increasingly turned off our voters, and what has demoralised and weakened our activist base.
By the time all the counts are completed, hundreds of Labour councillors will have been voted out not for their own personal or collective failures, but because of the way New Labour has alienated so many voters and and our own activists - on whom elections are won and lost. One positive is the lack of a breakthrough for the BNP, who fielded more candidates than they have for a generation.
In Wales, Labour remains the biggest party and voters have certainly recognised the "clear red water" between Welsh Labour and New Labour. Even so, if the results of last night were replicated in a General Election, we would lose eight Labour MPs.
In Scotland, the SNP ran a basically negative campaign with little to say about how they would improve Scotland. The fact that they have polled so well is testament to the strength of latent anti-Labour sentiment upon which they have capitalised.
If we as a party are serious about devolution, then we must respect councils and nations enough to determine their own agenda. When I was a GLC councillor, we won and held London as Labour was imploding nationally - running popular campaigns against the Thatcher Government and fighting on our own agenda.
As part of my leadership campaign, which has won the support of a number of local councillors, I am advocating strengthened local government so that councils have the power and resources to address the needs of their communities. In key areas such as regeneration, housing, and education, local councils have lost considerable powers to respond to their communities' needs.
The significance of yesterday's election is to reinforce the message that there is a need for a thorough and objective debate about how our party can re-inspire the broad coalition of support that brought us to power in 1997. Many will have felt relief that this was no wipeout, but it was only a reprieve. We must not repeat what happened to the Tories in the 90s, when they never took that opportunity and eventually went down to cataclysmic defeat.
Parties don't lose overnight, there is a gradual erosion of their base and electoral machine, which leads to sometimes cataclysmic defeat.
Our supporters need re-inspiring and our coalition rebuilding. What better method could there be than a democratic debate for the leadership involving all our members and affiliates?
We must learn the lessons
John McDonnell
May 4, 2007 5:40 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_mcdonnell/2007/05/we_must_learn_the_lessons.html
The trend in recent years has been for Labour to dip at local elections, but to bounce back at general elections. However this cycle is unsustainable: at each election that dip is getting deeper, and our recovery less. On the basis of last night, the best we could hope for is a hung parliament at the next election.
Having canvassed with Labour candidates in Scotland, Wales and in several English local authority areas, I was not surprised that our vote held up better than was touted. However, we should not believe our own propaganda - playing up fears of a wipeout in the media may soften the blow of these results but, make no mistake, these results are certainly not good.
A share of the vote of just 27% is deeply worrying. The swing against Labour averaged between 5-7% across Britain. Although it is a crude analysis, if this was replicated at a general election the Tories would either be the largest party in a hung parliament or might just scrape an outright majority.
To learn the lessons of last night, we must understand and address what has increasingly turned off our voters, and what has demoralised and weakened our activist base.
By the time all the counts are completed, hundreds of Labour councillors will have been voted out not for their own personal or collective failures, but because of the way New Labour has alienated so many voters and and our own activists - on whom elections are won and lost. One positive is the lack of a breakthrough for the BNP, who fielded more candidates than they have for a generation.
In Wales, Labour remains the biggest party and voters have certainly recognised the "clear red water" between Welsh Labour and New Labour. Even so, if the results of last night were replicated in a General Election, we would lose eight Labour MPs.
In Scotland, the SNP ran a basically negative campaign with little to say about how they would improve Scotland. The fact that they have polled so well is testament to the strength of latent anti-Labour sentiment upon which they have capitalised.
If we as a party are serious about devolution, then we must respect councils and nations enough to determine their own agenda. When I was a GLC councillor, we won and held London as Labour was imploding nationally - running popular campaigns against the Thatcher Government and fighting on our own agenda.
As part of my leadership campaign, which has won the support of a number of local councillors, I am advocating strengthened local government so that councils have the power and resources to address the needs of their communities. In key areas such as regeneration, housing, and education, local councils have lost considerable powers to respond to their communities' needs.
The significance of yesterday's election is to reinforce the message that there is a need for a thorough and objective debate about how our party can re-inspire the broad coalition of support that brought us to power in 1997. Many will have felt relief that this was no wipeout, but it was only a reprieve. We must not repeat what happened to the Tories in the 90s, when they never took that opportunity and eventually went down to cataclysmic defeat.
Parties don't lose overnight, there is a gradual erosion of their base and electoral machine, which leads to sometimes cataclysmic defeat.
Our supporters need re-inspiring and our coalition rebuilding. What better method could there be than a democratic debate for the leadership involving all our members and affiliates?
posted by John at 9:43 PM
18 Comments:
Wycombe District council became even more conservative -now only 5 Labour to 49 Tory and a couple of Lib Dems and one independent. Only increased Tories by one and it looks I think as though we may have lost on Labour seat due to postal vote probs in one particular ward. I got 218 votes -only about half what you would need to win in my ward - not bad for a paper candidate!!!We only stood two out of three possible candidates (both paper candidates i.e. me and my neighbour) as of course we haven't got the activists anyway with the situation as it is.
I will now read John's words on Guardian website - already looked but couldn't find but I see it's in Comment is Free section...Now we need to get on with the important stuff - getting the nominations for John for time is running out now and it's difficult if MPs are considering nominating both John and Michael Meacher as Alan Simpson has written to me, depending on which one emerges the with the most of those two. It's difficult not having firm pledges I should imagine though on the other hand it could be an advantage should John get all of Meachers's votes! Here's hoping!!
I think we need to get the message out that there's nothing wrong with the so called "hard" left - we are not going to impose a communist elite government on people so that soft left voters won't be scared off and political commentators who I think often don't have a clear of what socialism is don't dismiss us as irrelevant.
no I can't find the comment in the comment section under today's date; can you put up the exact weblink please?
thanx
H
just read Mirror (Friday's) there is a v good letter from A Robinson which states that John McD should be the next PM as the current Labour govt have sold out to big business (as we know) and so the Tories will otherwise be let back in as they were after the Atlee govt as the electorate has again become disillsioned with Labour due to the leadership's policies.
It ends "In order to restore true Labour principles, John McDonnell needs to follow Blair as the next PM or I fear that we will soon see the Tories back in power."
Cameron's Tories should be exposed for having no worthwhile policies differnt to New Labour in the coming months as we've had their PR but they have no policies. We have the policies but we still need more PR - now that John's getting on the media more thsi should help though it's difficult as we only have seven weeks to do it in once Blair goes (as long as John gets on the ballot paper which of course he will!)
To the blogger below who still wasn't sure about joining Labour (in order to support John) I offer the following cliches:
you've got to be in it to win it
if you don't vote you can't complain
never give up until the last counter has been played
(that's enough cliches for the next year!!)
the last cliche really works for me though (especially after a nun teacher at school said that I gave up too easily!)
An excellent piece, John! It shows exactly why you must become leader of the Labour Party.
Again, Good luck Comrade!
I think i'm the 'blogger below' :)
I'm going to join this afternoon when i get back - however much i dislike the majority of New Labour's policies, the conservatives would still be much worse i believe.
All of the other parties are so far behind the 'big two' (due to tradition i guess) that it is extremely unlikely that any of them are equipped or going to get into a position where they'd be able to instigate change.
JC
It's so rare to see the campaign even given a proper mention in the media. So it was good to see John's piece on the Guardian's website - but it also inspired some criticims, as I'd like to see this campaign really take off.
So good luck with the campaign! And please read the following as written in a spirit of constructive criticism:
I think your response to these election results is spot-on. I went on at some length in Michael WHite's thread (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2073011,00.html) about how these results, especially in Scotland, mean the end of the Labour party as we've known it for the past 10 years. Quick summary: with not even a coalition-workable majority for either Labour or the SNP at Holyrood, with 30 out of 32 Scottish councils either NOC or controlled by "other" groupings, with 185 Conservative councils in England, cross-party appeal, looser party "discipline" and coalition politics is now the reality. And Blair's legacy Labour party doesn't "do" any of these things - it only understands, and functions with, large majorities and a nationwide hegemony. Engagement is not its strong point, to put it mildly.
But your response doesn't go far enough - and as some posters have already noted, your vocabulary sometimes lets you down.
What you fail to say explicitly (but what you might mean and believe, but fail to say for some reason) is that this is not just about some internal Labour party "debate" (which jarrah skewers, possibly unfairly to your true intentions, as being a top-down proposition): it's about the Labour party CHANGING.
Now a lot of people will loathe you for advocating this. But this, I think, is what you're really advocating. The "debate" you'd like to see is not just an internal thing - a unilateral move on the part of an unchanging central Party: it is (or should be) a bilateral process, by which that lost support you aim to win back will end up changing the party itself. You aim to upset the applecart, and that scares people who still, somehow, believe that only the New Labour route can bring Labour to power.
Personally I believe that the applecart needs upsetting, or is about to disintegrate anyway. Or to put it another way: the fragile New Labour shell, kept intact for years by rigidly enforced discipline, Blair's personality and the cotton-wool of a large majority, within which the party has rotted, needs to be smashed. The alternative is to continue on as before, in this new political landscape, and become a shrinking New Labour rump. "Disintegrate" and "smash" - these are words you'd avoid using, out of caution.
But I do think you need to go further. I think you need to engage with New Labour supporters' fear at the end of an era, you need to show and inspire faith in the fact that, within that obsolete shell, the Labour party still exists and can be something effective. There are still thousands of committed activists, and principled MPs on the left - as well as the activists you aim to win back. And dare I say it, there are also principled activists and MPs on the right and centre of the party. They need to be offered a positive choice too: the choice to engage in a renewed Labour party, in which they will now have to engage with the centre and a re-invigorated Left, and fight their corner within the party - or to stick with the outdated New Labour hegemonic model, and be left as a rump.
I was going to write that I'd love to see a Labour party dominated by leftwingers such as yourself - but that's not quite true. A left-wing Labour party, with the same top-down, debate-free, rigidly-controlled, Blair-style power structure, would fill me with horror - and I'm a leftwinger! What has been missing for 10 years is the idea of the Labour party as a broad church, within which the left or the right might win on any particular issue, but which still somehow manages to remain united.
Won't all this just be a return to the "bad old days" of Kinnock, Militant, Michael Foot, "longest suicide note in history" bla bla bla? You don't address this point, and you need to. A lot of people still believe that anything other than rigid top-down control within the party can only result in crippling internal arguments.
I believe that's an old script, and that you've thought about it and moved on from it. But you need to engage with this argument, and prove to people that you've addressed it.
I think that the last 10 years have in fact already proved that Labour can be a united party of government - but at what cost! The ghost of the bickering 80s has been laid to rest. It's time for the pendulum to swing back to the centre: something in between centralised, ultra-controlled, "on-message" Blair-style party management (whether done by a right or leftwinger, it's loathsome) on the one hand, and ineffective, divided anarchy with Left and Right at each others' throats on the other.
But you need to show how you intend to make this work. I believe you have thought about both the 80s and Blair's 10 years, and learned from them - but this is not obvious.
Again - good luck with the campaign!
New Labour are about to charge people more then they can pay in rent on their council house. Then chuck them out into hostel accommodation and sell their homes at full market value. Not only this but also just plain chuck people out of council houses. New Labour are doing this to subsidise the rich,the tory voters down south that vote tory at election time.
New Labour are about to take disability living allowance off people who are ill to save money for the rich who vote tory at election time. They have employed a criminal organization to carry this out they are called...
In the US, UnumProvident’s claims management had been coming under increasing scrutiny. In 2003, the Insurance Commissioner of the State of California announced that the three big insurance companies had been conducting their business fraudulently. As a matter of ordinary practice and custom they had compelled claimants to either accept less than the amount due under the terms of the policies or resort to litigation. The following year a multistate review forced UnumProvident to reopen hundreds of thousands of rejected insurance claims. Commissioner John Garamendi described UnumProvident as, ‘an outlaw company. It is a company that for years has operated in an illegal fashion.
In 2003 the DWP launched its Pathways to Work pilot projects. They would be the forerunners of the kind of ‘active welfare’ system promoted by UnumProvident and the Woodstock academics. At the Labour Party conference that year UnumProvident organised a fringe meeting with employment minister Andrew Smith and health minister Rosie Winterton. In her speech, Joanne Hindle, corporate services director for UnumProvident, spelt out the future direction of Pathways.
NEW Labour are a criminal organization. They are murderers, liers,bullies, only in politics to make money for themselves and hold power.
"Labour has been hijacked by a bunch of ultra-conservatives. It's bad for democracy."
EAST LONDON ADVERTISER - Thu, 05 Apr 2007
You stand NO chance off winning the NEW Labour leadership, NO CHANCE. Yet you are still in NEW Labour,what does that tell us, it tells us all we need to know about you.
jon you are now spot on!
It's worth joining as the Blair/Brownite factions are thinning out now so we could have more power than we think sooner than we think. Although the Blair/Brown faction appear to have lot of suport within Labour theier actual activists seem to be dwindling and may soon be little more than their own staff.
Seb,
Interesting post, although I'm not sure why you've thrown words in like "smash" etc - not to attract radicals I hope?
Being new to politics I'm not sure how small this "rump" will be. Even though the number of active councillors are much reduced due to the actions of the hegemony, the full activist section of the party have some power at selection stage. And I'm sure they will watch their local MP at nomination stage for future reference. I haven't met any activist yet who does not want some return to socialist ideals.
But I'm sure we all agree that change is required for the party to survive. Like many voters in 97 my thoughts were that New Labour was a set of new faces not a transformation to the right.
Please also explain your reference to wooden BBQ sticks - there's vocab and then there's obscurity :-)
I wish people had listened to John's warnings... it hardly fills me with great joy that there are 38 new Conservative-controlled councils across the country. And allowing Tory councillors to gain power (who, if nothing else, will be far more right-wing than your average Labour councillor) is not sending the right sort of message to Tony Blair.
Remember this as well... it was not a massive swing to the Tories which lost Labour so many MP's in the last general election but rather a small swing to the Lib Dems and a large drop in turnout. This suggests voter disillusionment to me rather than a real desire for the Tories to gain power. And all the talk about the Tories gaining 40% of the vote is really neither here nor there, since voter turnout is ALWAYS extremely low in midterms. With all this in mind, we have to keep an active base and we have to increase the membership - my hopes are that John Mcdonnell's left alternative will provide us the chance of a fourth election victory on the kinds of terms that real Labour members and the unions desire.
And one other thing - I completely agree with John that one very good piece of news from the election is that the BNP did not make any headway. They were boasting of a possible 40-60 more councillors but ended up gaining basically nothing. It's good that a sizeable portion of the public were not fooled this time but at the same time it's important to be constantly vigilant against any fascist advancement. I implore everybody to simply share with friends and family what is publicly known about the BNP - anyone can go on their website and look at their policies of forced registration for immigrants, politicised teaching of white British history in schools, a separate education system for "ethnic" children so that they can be taught their own culture, keeping immigrant families with small children under house arrest ( the latter they presented as a kindness of all things...)
Above all else, we must oppose fascism - look at what it did to Europe in World War 2 - and the best way to do this is to present a left pro-working class alternative so that racist fascist organisations cannot blame the hardships of innocent working class people on scapegoated minorities.
smash is traditional left jargon word but not one that John often uses just for sake of it don't worry he's not loony though he's left and humanitarian
I completely agree with the sentiments that Damien had said.
To George Dutton: I share your anger towards NEW Labour but you have to remember that Labour has been hijacked by a small faction of members from the right of the party that I believe thrived on the frustration and desperation of Labour members to get back into power. Tony Blair and his cronies including Gordon Browns lot not only lied to the country but also to the party itself and decided to completely ignore the wishes of party members and instead cosied up to big business and the neo-cons in America.
John didn't sign up to this agenda and you can't change the party by leaving it, the opposite must happen. Left-wingers and moderates need to stay in the party and recruit more members and claim the party back from the right wing.
You simply can't do that on the outside.
Anyway about the campaign, I saw Meacher on Andrew Marrs breakfast show on Sunday saying that he believes that there have been talks about his faction and Johns faction uniting. I think if this is to happen then I think John should lead it, he has more grassroot support and a bigger headstart.
John will lead the left candidacy, judging from feedback from MP's and those already on the endorsements page. Michael agreed on Marr's program that the numbers will decide and I think it would be great if he will join us.
Pretty sure Blair is behind the Reid resignation. Blair intends that GB's reign is a short one and will starve him of heavyweights to run the departments - thus we may see more C*ck-ups in the next months. He also wants to give the impression that Reid wouldn't work for GB if he were the last man on earth - so he's expecting other Blairites to follow Reid.
His next step will be ANOTHER leadership election after the failed GE - but then of course all of us and many others will have departed - so it won't then be NEW Labour it will be EX Labour.
Hi Stewey,
First off..."I share your anger towards NEW Labour but you have to remember that Labour has been hijacked by a small faction"
Stewey a small faction can`t take over a very large political party without the consent off the many.OK it can happen when they tell their members lies but then they are found out and removed. That is NOT what has happened with NEW Labour in ten long years. So what does that tell us? it tells me that NEW Labour is made up off people that just want power for powers sake. All the main parties are playing to the rich south and in the end there will be only one winner and do I have to tell you who they are?. I see the left in the UK Splitting up into different factions when they should be coming together this is due to frustration because there is no true leadership of the left. NEW Labour are two different parties in one, a large right wing party and a very small left wing party and the two don`t mix. They only stay together to make up the numbers so as to gain power. The small left think that gives them a say in what happens? the small left are a joke to the larger part of NEW Labour. To stay in such a party is a waste of time and a total denial of one`s principles. Just by being there gives it support and puts the blood of many on ones own hands.
In Solidarity
George Dutton.
Hi George,
unfortunately what you describe is correct at the present time with New Labour when it comes to politicians within the party being their just for the sake of power. What has happened to Labour is that as the Tory party became ever more right wing (something John Major was not able to stop) over these past 12 years or so, the NEW Labour faction got larger because a large number of Tories defected because new Labour is old tory in effect.
I live in the ST Helens South, the constituency that the tory John Woodward was parachuted into, a safe Labour seat and he continues to represent new labour, and I am disgusted to be represented by such a man.
We are not the ones that are in denial of our principals and neither are the left that continue to remain in the party. It is the new labour blairites and brownites that work to pervert the principals of the party while having no principals of their own except ambition and greed.
If left wing members of the party leave then they lose and the right wing win, as per usual by exploiting the very disillusionment that you and I feel right now.
This is why i hope that John Mcdonnel suceeds because he's had enough and wants the party to get back to its traditional values and that to me is the most principled stand that can be taken in my view.
Don't give up hope.
Hi Stewey,
"Don't give up hope."
An interesting phrase, perhaps Stewey there is no hope,even if we win we will lose...
In the year 2000 while watching the Conservative party conference on television.I can only tell it as it happened...
Outside the conference hall two members of the Conservative party stood waiting to be interviewed (they were not MP`s but were high up`s in the party) they were asked "What is the big talking point on the floor of this years conference" the reply floored me this is what they said...
"It is clear that people don`t know how to use there vote.We left this country in the best economical state it has ever been in and now Labour will ruin it all.The big talking point on the floor is who should be allowed to vote should it be done on academic achievement or given to those who create the wealth or a combination of the two." The other one concurred.
Please note it seems the decision to take the vote away from us had already been decided.
Given that nothing happens on the floor of Conservative party conference without being instgated from above should frighting anyone that cares about democracy.The video of this must still be available in the archives of the BBC/sky.Why I wonder are the Conservative party getting there members ready for a fascist state.After watching the documentary of what nearly happened to Harold Wilson`s government it becomes even more frightening.
Given that today mankind used the total output of three planets and produced a new record in producing CO2 (another new record will be set tomorrow) to keep this capitalist madness going, knowing that all this is unstainable in the short term gives credence to the above. To even think that the right will allow socialism a chance to fix it all may be the greatest madness of all.
http://costofwar.com/
http://www.poverty.com/
Hello George
You've made some good points, and i share some of your concerns. I get extremely frustrated when a Government talks about the economy being in good shape and the country is prospering etc etc, as yes it tends to create more jobs at the lower end of the scale but it's the people who are already wealthy who tend to prosper more. If the country is doing so well then how come so many are working long hours for low wages, or that large numers of pensioners live in poverty and can't afford to heat their homes in winter?, because much of the wealth is sadly kept by the minority.
In 'The Road to Wigan Pier' by Orwell a sentence sums up how i feel about govenment:
"...the type who becomes a Labour MP or a high up trade union official. This last typeis one of the most desolating spectacles the world contains. He has been picked out to fight for his mates, and all it means to him is a soft job and the chance of 'bettering himself'. Not mearly while, but by fighting the bourgeois he becomes a bourgois himself"
It's sad how accurate this is. MPs earn extremely good wages (and expenses!) and many rise on the promise of greater equality, fighting for the poor of society etc but once they're confortable they just conform and bend over backwards for the wealthy in society and their principles soon disappear - they never instigate real change, and to them it's just a well paid career and a comfortable lifestyle. How many wou swap jobs with a factory worker on a production line with a family, working for minimum wage? Not many i'd guess, but they never improve things substantially which is just not acceptable.
I'm also not sure how they can justify the minimum wage at the level it is, considering house prices as they are. My brother bought his house on a salary of £15 5 years ago for a reasonable mortgage and his salary has increased to a good proportion of his mortgage. But if i earnt £15K i could not even buy a small flat on that salary in this area (and it's cheap compared to most areas)... and there is Meacher with his 9 - 11 houses (depending on who you believe). He says he has saved all his working life for them.... well all i can say it must be nice to be in a position to actually do that!!!
Iraq really has really been a disaster for 'democracy' and i use that term loosely. How can a government send troops to war on a lie and against what the majority in society want? Personally that isn't 'democracy' that's a dictatorship! I think MPs forget from their soft jobs they people actually do die in these things.... would they risk their life on a lie?...no, i'm sure they wouldn't so they should not see troops as expendable.
The problem is, unfortunatly, that most people will either vote Labour or Conservative in an election and when both are slaves to big buisness, what choice is there? I'm actually not hopefully of having a truly equal society in my lifetime, but i'm considering joining Labour to fight with others who are still in the party to at least instigate some change, even if it is just a start. If Trident can be stopped, wages increased and troops saved from risking their lives for pointless wars, then hopefully life will not be intolerable for the next generation.
Jon
Hi Jon,
"Iraq really has really been a disaster for 'democracy'"
The truth...
http://www.muslimedia.com/ARCHIVES/features98/saddam.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2qry4x
In Solidarity
George Dutton.
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