lf we are to transform the fortunes of the left, we must begin by understanding not why we are irrelevant – because we are not  – but why we are marginal despite being relevant 

 (p.xiii)

ACR has previously reviewed the first edition of this book published in 2022 – see here.  Chessum has now added a chapter 7 and conclusion that includes new analysis and reflection about the period from 2019 to the Summer of 2024 after the Labour electoral victory.  His latest contribution to the debate on the left is well worth engaging today. 

The book is worth reading because it is written by a political activist who came to age in the anti-austerity stuggles of the 2010s. He was a student leader of the National Campaign against Fees and Cuts .  Later he was prominent in the Corbyn project, Momentum, the anti-Brexit Another Europe is Possible campaign and was an RCN organiser in the mass nurses strikes at the end of the Tory government.  So he provides the viewpoint of a new political generation and a close practical experience of the Corbyn project and of trade union activity. As an internationalist he is unafraid to offer trenchant criticisms of the historic left leadership inside and outside the Labour Party.

Some lessons of the 2022/3 strike wave

Public sector strikes were the biggest this century with more than 5 million strike days. Strikes were popular and majorities managed to overcome the restrictive strike laws and win majorities for action.  Outside the public sector unions, Unite, under the new leadership of Sharon Graham, took a lot of successful action.  The Royal College of Nursing even hired new organiser including people like Chessum from the left.   Anti-austerity campaigns of the early 2010s are compared with the more recent strike wave.  He says the unions did little in the former campaigns but in the latter the community campaigning was much weaker. Although I think Chessum over-eggs the extent and depth of the earlier campaign particularly the Don’t Pay project, this is a good point.

The debacle of the Enough is Enough project exemplifies his point. Launched by the RMT train workers union it got an online signup of 600 thousand.  Big rallies were held attended by thousands. But no local branches were encouraged or set  up and it remained a centralised operation. The organiser seemed to want to keep close control.  It was a passive click and support movement in the end and disappeared quickly. 

As for the strike wave the bosses were coordinated and knew the government had their back so did not back down. On the other hand there was little coordination or leadership from the TUC. The strikes continued over a long time, but lacked intensity. For Chessum it also showed the relative decline of the organised left – both Corbynista and the left groups.  Nevertheless the legacy of the strike action could still be important.  Will the unions challenge a Labour government this winter if the public sector pay awards represent a pay cut?

Contradictory legacy of long neoliberal offensive

We can neither repeat Corbynism nor return to the streets without a project for political representation, we need to open a debate about the kind of left we want drawing on the lessons of recent mass movements (not just recent mass movements but international experiences too and previous left parties).

The deep neoliberal offensive of Thatcher, left largely unchanged by Blair, has left two contradictory consequences according to Chessum:

1. An overreach by the ruling class which has restricted its ability to auto correct. Indeed the existential crisis of the Tories, the rise of reform and Starmer’s adherence to neoliberal fiscal rules is current confirmation of this point.  He argues correctly ‘there is a greater gap between the dogmas and obsessions of the political elites and the concerns of the public than any time in living memory’.  Media talk of the end of the two party system and general disillusionment with politics also reflect this.
2. The second legacy of the extreme neoliberal offensive since Thatcher has been ‘the undermining of the British left and its institutions to such an extent that we lack the ability to form stable political projects or offer meaningful resistance to attacks on living standards. This structural weakening is expressed by declining trade union membership, the weakness of rank and file organisation and the decline of the radical left’.

One ray of hope the author recognises is a leftward shift in opinion among those in their twenties and thirties which we saw in support for Corbynism and the woeful Tory scores among these demographics.  He accepts this trend could be reversed but perhaps he slightly overplays this point since surveys have shown contradictory opinion among the younger generation – both wanting radical change but also favouring authoritarian solutions. Farage is attracting increasing, albeit minority, support now among these age groups.

Opportunities were missed during the Corbyn period to renew this left and he correctly-criticises the turn made by the Momentum leadership away from organising both among Labour and non-Labour members towards a mostly electoral project. He tartly defines Momentum as: ‘ a left NGO run by professionals using a database, branding and a strong social media game’. 

Again events in the real world have borne out this analysis as key members of Momentum’s leadership like Mish Rahman have abandoned the project and membership of the Labour Party. It does not really have a network of local groups, its membership is much reduced – it got barely ten thousand to vote for left candidates in last year’s NEC elections. It still plays a useful role helping to organise what is left of an active left in Labour.  However, given the Starmer leadership’s iron grip, it is a thankless task focussing on ‘organising socialist candidates’ to compete with the machine. Debate and even regular meetings are being closed down in most constituencies.

New generations of activists

One feature of the new generation’s political activity which differs from the generation of the 70s and 80s upsurge is a resistance to ongoing political organisation.  Activists will join actions, organise petitions and campaign on many fronts but are more reluctant to join political groups or even regularly attend political meetings. Okay, we can say this is also the fault of the political parties in not relating correctly to their concerns or style of politics but it is a phenomenon that we observe.

However I have noticed recently that nearly all the organised left groups are definitely recruiting new members – we can see this on demonstrations and in the weekend meetings that have been put on. The Greens are also clearly winning lots of new people. This does not mean these groups have returned to their golden days but this is a change.  Palestine has been a big motivator for this as well as the accelerated neoliberal and anti-progressive turn of the Labour party. Labour is not just awful on Palestine and migrants but is not doing much to help generation rent and is attacking democratic rights to protest and trans people.

What is the way out of this impasse?

Chessum tends to see the new layer of activists that he was part of in the 2010s and later in the 2020 industrial  struggles as key to developing a new left. He identifies the anti-hierarchical and strongly democratic credentials of these movements as providing an important contribution to this process. While he may exaggerate the extent of this consciousness and its impact through the movement he was involved in, it is certainly true when he says:

The task for the left in the coming years, then, is to rediscover autonomous action and the capacity to disrupt while building the infrastructure that might make this sustainable. The organisational centres of the movement will have to be non-sectarian, open and rigorously internally democratic, in contrast to what has come before them.

Any new left has to bring about a ‘bottom up transformation of the trade union movement’. For him the trade unions ended up being on the moderate wing of the Corbyn project, blocking Open Selection of parliamentary candidates for example.  However we must recognise that it was a leftwing shift in the trade unions that played as big a role in Corbyn’s victory as the Chessum youth activists did. The author sometimes does not get the balance right on this. 

A lot of his recommendations about a new left project correctly start from the weaknesses of the Corbyn project.  He says there was little or no collective discussion about what a truly socialist or anti capitalist programme might look like. Undoubtedly such a discussion would have opened up deep divisions about the role of the state, the autonomy of workers and the overall strategy of the left.  So a rich democratic internal political culture is crucial. 

However this begs the question about what an acceptable programmatic framework should be if we are building a broad mass left party rather than a revolutionary Marxist one.  For example does such a party need a policy of smashing the bourgeois state or the need for alternative state structures?  The author leaves that debate for another time.

Internationalism not Brexit

Unlike the SWP, Counterfire, the Morning Star or parts of the traditional labour left, Chessum is unrepentant about the need for the left to have recognised the ‘dangers presented by the Brexit project’.  The struggle against the Brexist project of deregulation, nationalism and dividing the left coalition goes on and he argues campaigning for:

• Reasserting working class unity in all its diversity – the fight for liberation and equal rights is not a distraction from class politics, identity politics should not become a term of abuse
• Taking on the anti-migrant content of the Brexit project – this is continuing with Labour’s almost weekly attempts to be as tough on migrants as Reform is – stopping students getting asylum, listing migrants in crime figures, preventing people in boats getting asylum
• A radical economic programme otherwise Reform will continue to build on peoples anger and resentment
• A progressive response to the crisis of meaning fuelling the politics of the culture wars. The legacy of neoliberalism is also about a crisis of alienation, loneliness, atomization , lossof community and purpose.  A new left has to respond to this crisis too.

Corbynism is no rehearsal for a socialist breakthrouigh

Crucial for any new left project has to be an understanding that even if the ‘left own the labour leadership tomorrow, it would simply be repeating a failed strategy, unless it challenges the balance of the situation in some other way’.

This issue is not about whether you choose to be active inside Labour or not but rather your political strategy. Even if you work inside Labour you have to work for a split with the right wing and a radical change in the institutional structures such that calling it the Labour party as we know it would be absurd.  Changing the balance of the situtaon requires a new left project that is independent of labour party structures.

This new coalition has to be broad and cut across party political affiliations and the divisions between revolutionaries and reformists. His conclusion tends to back up the idea that many people are discussing about the need for a new left party to occupy the space open to the left of labour.  What I like about his approach is that it rejects a top down set up with the same old self-appointed left professionals. It rejects a crude counter position between struggles in the workplace/streets and electoral/parliamentary politics.  There is no sectarian shouting at Labour party people just to leave the party and join the revolutionaries.

No doubt Michael will be adding his voice to the difficult discussions about how to launch a new project. Here he does not deal with the local vs national or party versus electoral coalition conundrums currently under debate. However his outline vision of a new mass coalition or party is set along the right lines.

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