‘Mainstream has galvanised individuals and groups across the party who are looking, not only for a change of political direction, but a shift in the party’s political culture. Both are much needed.’
Since its return to the party in 1975, the ILP has consistently argued that Labour’s success is crucial to any serious attempt to progress radical social change and move towards a democratic socialist society.
As it says in Our Politics (the ILP’s statement of political perspective): “This view isn’t dependent on who is party leader at any given time but is based on our assessment of how radical change can be promoted in a British political context.”
That view has held firm despite the party’s many flaws and failings – in and out of government – over more than five decades. In that time, we have continually worked towards the return and retention of a Labour government, while recognising that “the electoral challenge facing radical parties will always be significant and, given the capitalist nature of our society, we do not underestimate the difficulties of enacting radical policies once in office.”
What’s more, we add: “The extent to which Labour can realise its radical potential will, therefore, depend on the strength and depth of its internal democracy, on the forces and movements that align with it, and on the political space they can open up together.”
Our aim has long been “to encourage Labour to reinvent itself as a more radical party” while arguing that any such reinvention must arise from the grassroots of “an active, participatory, membership-based democracy that welcomes the co-existence of different viewpoints and upholds principles of pluralism, mutual respect and comradeship”.
The crisis of confidence in the current Labour government led by Keir Starmer, and the shambolic state of internal party democracy under his leadership regime, has, we believe, put that “radical potential” under significant strain and led many of us to question whether Labour can remain the vital social democratic agency needed for progressive change.
Under Starmer’s leadership, Labour’s foundation as a broad church of diverse opinions from across the left has been severely undermined. As Ernie Jacques put it so powerfully on the ILP website recently, Labour has “been stripped of its democratic character, its moral compass and its connection to the broader movement that once sustained it”.
Like Labour MP Clive Lewis before him, Ernie describes the party’s predicament as existential. It is difficult to disagree.
Fear & hate
That sense is compounded by the ongoing rise of the far right, a brand of political ideology bent on sowing fear, division and hate within our communities where it is finding fertile ground among a disaffected electorate, not least in those areas where 40 years of de-industrialisation, political neglect and neoliberal policies have been most keenly felt.
The far right’s scapegoating of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers has led us to a critical moment, threatening the underlying tenets and assumptions of liberal democracy upon which any transformative movement towards democratic socialism must be built. The rise of Reform UK is not merely an electoral challenge to Labour but potentially endgangers the social and democratic fabric of our society.
The failure of the left overall – and Labour in particular – to counter the radical right’s populist narrative, coupled with a Tory party and a media establishment seemingly unwilling or unable to challenge their rhetoric, renders many of us feeling impotent in the face of hate.
So where do we find hope?
Some on the left argue we now need an alternative to Labour, a less tainted, more purist socialist party. Yet the most recent attempt to form one has (all too predictably) descended into the kind of factional chaos that’s so often a feature of hard left politics. We see little cause for optimism in these struggles to build a left party outside Labour. Indeed, our own long and varied history provides a salutory lesson on the perils of trying to go it alone.
For us, hope still lies within Labour, among like-minded democratic socialists who have been equally alarmed at the government’s political direction and the leadership’s imposition of central control.
More specifically, we find it in the emergence over the past 12 months, of new energy and organisation on Labour’s so-called soft left, not least with the resurrection within parliament of the Tribune group of MPs, and the rise among party members more widely of Mainstream Labour.
Initiated by Compass and Open Labour, among others, Mainstream has galvanised individuals and groups across the party who are looking, not only for a change of political direction, but a shift in the party’s political culture. Both are much needed.
Vision of hope
Styling itself Labour’s “home for radical realists”, Mainstream’s founding statement echoes many of the values and principles the ILP has long stood for, arguing that Labour must “offer the country, not just a programme, but a vision of hope: a popular, principled and practical left politics for meaningful change”.
This means “putting equity and justice at the heart of everything Labour does,” it says. It means “rejecting an economy based on inequality and environmental destruction, and instead building one that shares the resources our society needs”. And it means rebuilding “our broken democracy … through pluralism and dispersing power as widely and deeply as possible”. These are admirable aims.
Crucially, Mainstream also believes the party’s renewal must start within Labour itself – “unlocking the wisdom, talents and energy of all our members and supporters to lead the change our country so urgently needs”.
We believe Mainstream is a positive and long-needed development on the Labour left and we offer it the ILP’s support. Indeed, we are encouraging ILP members and Friends to join as individuals and, where possible, to play an active role in its discussions, meetings and activities in the months and years ahead as Labour rebuilds.
Of course, we won’t all agree on everything Mainstream says and does, and there are bound to be differences of approach and emphasis. But now, more than ever, is a time to put aside our small squabbles and coalesce around a set of key shared values as we seek to return the party to its roots in its communities and restore a belief in collective endeavour that can counter Reform. A failure to do so at this moment would be unforgiveable.
Andy Burnham’s welcome victory in the Makerfield byelection – and likely rise to become prime minister and Labour leader – comes in the context of this fragile sense of renewal and opportunity. It offers further cause for hope, not only that Reform can be beaten at the ballot box, but that broader change is possible – within Labour and beyond.
Of course, we cannot be complacent, for the challenge is immense. As Will Brown wrote following Starmer’s resignation, Burnham’s was “a rare triumph for Labour against the far right”, and “the threat of a Reform government [still] hovers over everything”.
Burnham himself put it in stark terms after his election: “This is a final chance to change.” We cannot waste it.
—–
Read more about Mainstream Labour here.
Click here to read the ILP’s political perspective, ‘Our Politics’.
To learn more about supporting the ILP, including memebrship, click here.
To read more about the ILP’s history, click here.
See also: ‘After Starmer: What Next?’ by Will Brown.
