The first “No Ceasefire No Vote” conference of independent ex-Labour councillors and MPs coincided with the launch of a new organisation, Collective, on March 2nd, 2024.
Collective has been established by Pamela Fitzpatrick (former Labour candidate for Harrow East) and Julian Scholsberg (a co-author of Bad News for Labour Antisemitism, the Party and Public Belief).
Its website makes the correct observation:
“Something is happening in Britain. Over the past 12 months millions of people have taken to the streets all over the country to protest against an unprecedented cost of living crisis, the climate emergency and an unfolding genocide backed by both the government and official opposition.”
Collective will back independent campaigns “laying the foundations of a mass movement that will eventually transform into a new political party.”
It is worth noting that Pamela Fitzpatrick is a director with Jeremy Corbyn of his Peace and Justice Project. She has announced she will stand as an independent candidate in Harrow West having previously served as a councillor in the constituency.
So there’s good reason for viewing Collective as potentially being Corbyn’s electoral vehicle, currently run by allies in anticipation of his formal launch as an independent candidate for the Islington North seat he has held for decades.
5 Demands
The problem confronting the workers’ movement in Britain is that its party has again come under the control of the Blairites. The alternative economic and political strategy which the Labour leadership adopted between 2015 and 2020 has largely been abandoned now the Labour Right is restored.
Rather than urge a break from Labour, the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs has tried to remain in place until the party is in government, at which point they may be free to kick up a fuss. But the faction set up to back Labour’s left leadership, Momentum, has been hollowed out by the departure of many Labour members.
Though it has yet to make apparent its position on the remaining Labour Left MPs, we might assume given the proximity to Corbyn that Collective hasn’t written them off just yet.
Collective cites the five demands of the Peace and Justice Project as the basis for its politics, along with the call for the British establishment to back an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
The five demands are
1. “A REAL PAY RISE FOR ALL”
“Everyone has a right to live and work with dignity. That means giving nurses, teachers and public sector workers an above-inflation pay rise, implementing a minimum wage of £15 per hour, banning zero-hours contracts and reversing cruel benefit sanctions.”
2. “GREEN NEW DEAL”
“Alongside water, rail and mail, it’s time we put energy back where it belongs: in public hands.
“Democratic public ownership will empower communities, bring prices down and kickstart a Green New Deal that invests in sustainable energy.”
3. “HOUSING FOR THE MANY”
“Housing is a human right, not a commodity – everyone deserves a decent, safe, warm and affordable place to live.
“We need an immediate rent freeze and reduction, an end to no-fault evictions and an urgent mass council home building programme.”
4. “TAX THE RICH TO SAVE THE NHS”
“It’s time to end outsourcing, invest in a fully public system of universal healthcare and build a National Care Service. [...]
“We can give our public services the money they need by introducing a wealth tax, raising income tax on the top 5% of earners and making corporations pay their fair share.”
5. “WELCOME REFUGEES AND A WORLD FREE FROM WAR”
“We must work towards a world of peace, free from nuclear weapons where conflicts are resolved through diplomacy and negotiation. We need a humane migration system based on dignity, compassion and care, which gives asylum seekers the right to work, healthcare and housing.”
Why these demands?
The Peace and Justice Project’s demands are economic, they make no call for the restoration of democratic rights eroded under the Tories – including trade union rights undermined under both Tory and Labour governments – nor is there a call for the immediate introduction of a fairer voting system with proportional representation in parliament, or the more radical need for a constituent assembly to establish a democratic republic. There is a reference to “democratic public ownership”, which hints at the need for workers and citizens to have a role in the management of services and industries.
Arguably, the focus on “bread and butter” issues which was the focus of Corbynism’s first iteration is now too narrow. The broad dissatisfaction with the political system in Britain, and the widespread disillusionment with the government and the major political parties, mean that democratic demands aren’t a distraction but a partial explanation for why reformism isn’t possible at this time.
But these demands do represent a “common sense” among activists and members who have left the Labour Party since Corbyn ceased to be its leader – and the demand for a National Care Service is one that the public service union UNISON, which is affiliated to Labour, is raising in the run-up to the general election.
Notably, there’s no call for a “New Deal for Working People” which the Labour-affiliated unions have united around and which is championed by Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner. It may be that Corbyn believes it is something which a Labour government might deliver given that Rayner is not easily sidelined by the Labour Right as she was elected as deputy leader and could call for a challenge to Starmer if her policy agenda is threatened.
Corbyn might have hoped that he could negotiate his way back into the parliamentary Labour Party. He worked with former Unite leader Len McCluskey to this end. But as McCluskey has said publicly, Starmer is not a man of his word and therefore cannot be negotiated with in good faith.
The lesson here is that the Labour Right has no material interest in the content of reformism, only its form – the attainment of public office affords career opportunities for the faction after public service and the implementation of privatisation policies during it, which accounts for the corporate interest in New Labour and now Starmerism.
Any appeals to working-class unity to defeat Tory policies will fall on deaf ears, the Labour Right no longer has a strong enough base within Britain’s organised working class to anchor it to proletarian reality.
But there was and is a rationale for Corbyn focusing on the policy proposals rather than party organisation: it demonstrates that his leadership of the party was not about power for its own sake and that he remains committed to “getting the Tories out”.
Labour’s success in recent years is in large part due to the economic consequences of Britain lacking a growth strategy capable of delivering for the broad mass of the population and the political consequence of the nationalist fix of Brexit eliminating a source of blame capable of uniting sufficient numbers of voters behind the Tory government.
Among Labour’s voting base, including those drawn to it from other parties, there’s a basic expectation that the party in government will do something about falling living standards. However, the Labour Right does not have any ideas capable of reversing the decline nor any experience in mobilising large numbers of people to become active in pursuit of making those ideas a reality. This creates a situation in which parties “to the left” of Labour like the Greens – or capable of positioning as such in the case of the SNP – may not lose support as they did in the 2017 UK general election when Corbynism was emergent.
Enough is Enough?
If Collective is Corbynism 2.0, we should not expect the left-led unions to get on board as they did with the Corbyn Labour leadership.
Corbyn launched the Peace and Justice Project in 2020. At the time, many were expecting that this might be it, a new party. And the Enough is Enough campaign launched by the RMT union and Tribune magazine in 2022, was viewed in much the same way. It too had five demands, and notably attracted the affiliation of the Green Party. But its function was as much about shoring up the position of Labour Left MPs and signalling to the Labour Right that the union movement could – if it wanted to – pull the plug on the party.
The left union leaders, such as Unite general secretary Sharon Graham, have focused on industrial battles in workplaces rather than expending any political capital in publicly attempting to win control of Labour from the Blairites/Starmerites. But ultimately, pay rises across the economy can only be won if the government ceases to use legislative measures to hold down pay by threatening ever more anti-union laws – and if the central bank is pressured by a new government to abandon its approach of making Britain’s workers pay for the external pressures of inflation on the UK economy.
We’ve had years of this kind of swirling around, avoiding the party question. It’s not been completely wasted though, the Enough Is Enough campaign helped to generate broadly supportive public opinion towards the strike wave throughout 2022 and 2023. And although most workers got real-terms pay cuts, those in unions didn’t get cut as badly.
The political approach has been to hold back on a frontal challenge to Labour. And when the party was behind in the opinion polls and it looked as if the Tories were going to be in office for at least a decade, there was some merit to this as a position based on class solidarity.
But the victory of the Workers Party in Rochdale – and the likelihood of the Greens picking up a second seat in Bristol after the general election – points to the potential for a “left of Labour challenge” to put pressure on an incoming Labour government before it takes office.
How is Collective different?
If Collective turns out to be a means of coordinating “left of Labour” electoral interventions in which Corbyn participates – and it is not just a few of his allies striking out on their own – many will ask why he has not done this sooner. But what if it is just that Corbyn hasn’t previously assumed leadership of a new electoral project because he didn't need to do it to win representation in Parliament?
Corbyn may have hoped he could replicate Ken Livingstone’s campaign to become London mayor and be readmitted to Labour after having successfully stood as an independent. This could put the project in a much weaker political position than anything that currently exists. Whatever one says about Galloway, he has built a membership party based on a left-reformist programme and not merely his appeal as a leader.
It has been argued that irreconcilable differences on the left prevent this kind of alliance-building from above taking place. In media terms, this is possibly a good thing. Drama over competing left lists means that a left voting bloc is at least being discussed as something which exists among the electorate.
Collective may limit its membership to groups of independent socialist councillors and ex-Labour MPs/candidates who are now standing as independents. The value of this arrangement to independent politicians is that they maintain control of their little projects and can run as progressive localists. It’s a method the LibDems used to be able to deploy with some success in urban constituencies and which the Greens are now using in Labour’s strongholds to build up representation in local government.
On the other hand, Collective’s website declares itself in solidarity with Transform, which is a fusion of the Breakthrough Party and Left Unity. And these are comrades who are eager for a mass party to be formed and have been working to that end through mergers and alliance-building.
“Corbynism without Labour” means that Corbyn himself is free to ally with the Workers Party and with TUSC. He could issue a personal list of endorsements on a cross-party basis, perhaps even including the Greens in their target seats in Brighton and Bristol. But whether Corbyn can succeed in breaking from Labourism remains to be seen.