The future of the left: in the London HQs or the provincial grassroots?
Andy Beckett recently wrote in the Guardian about the future of the left and in particular the left outside of the Labour Party, a substantial, if disparate grouping although certainly united on a key issue like Palestine.
Letters in response to Beckett make interesting and sometimes infuriating readers.
My Fletter (unprinted, no complaints, the Guardian have printed a lot for me) makes the point that its where the left comes from that is perhaps really important for the future
Why disunity on the left spells trouble for Labour | Labour | The Guardian
Andy Beckett is right that Keir Starmer’s Great Moving Right Show means there is ample space to the left of Labour for a new socialist political project. This need not be only or even purely electoral but in that arena a common point is that with a first past the post system its very hard to make a breakthrough in Westminster politics. Yet with Labour and the Tories mustering only 60% of the vote between them that is not quite right and explains why there is space for Green, Independent Left and Reform MPs in the Commons.
Beckett also makes the point that in the last 20 years or so there have been a number of attempts to build a new left force. Some have achieved success but none have been sustained. Historically there is nothing unusual about this. After the demise of Chartism around 1860, there were attempts to develop a successor but until the Social Democratic Federation, the Fabians and the Independent Labour Party in the 1880s and 1890s did any really come off.
Looking at the ILP, founded in Bradford in 1893 E P Thompson made the point that it was founded not in London Head Offices but in those ‘shadowy parts known as the provinces’. Neither did it originally arise with a specific electoral focus but grew out of struggles for better wages and conditions for a range of workers in the North of England. Building from the bottom up worked even if when the Labour Representation Committee was formed in 1900 those London HQs did feature.
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