John Lister’s review of Mark Perryman’s Compass ‘Think Pieces’ pamphlet ‘We’re all in this together’ is taken from the upcoming issue of Socialist Resistance. There was quite a bit of discussion around the original posting on this so if you feel moved to comment do try to avoid going over old ground.
To judge from this barely coherent 5-page pamphlet, Mark Perryman appears to live in what folk singer Burl Ives once described as the “Big Rock Candy Mountain”, in which there are cigarette trees, lemonade springs, a soda water fountain, the hens lay soft boiled eggs, and ‘a bum can stay for a year and a day and won’t need any money’.
In today’s brutal political conjuncture, with the melt-down of Labour’s traditional support, rock-bottom levels of trade union struggle, a nascent racist right and a congenitally divided political left, Perryman’s fantasy world undeniably has certain attractions.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could just teach the world to sing, and form a big broad political alliance linking up all the people we seem to agree with, without any conflict or clashes, and ensure that they could work together in perfect harmony?
In fact wouldn’t it be even better if instead of having to go through the uncomfortable process of political debate, the fragmentation of existing parties, and the formation of a new one to represent the working class, we could just clump together all the existing parties, and groups within parties, that we agree with – and ignore the fact that those parties each have their membership structure, discipline, and bond of loyalty which holds on to their members even when they disagree on very big questions.
Who could disagree that this would be lovely? And who would prefer Perryman’s stereotypical vision of the “leftist” alternative, an equally spurious, but entirely negative world, in which he sees:
“Slogans confused with principles, the scattergun politics of self-righteous denunciation of others, devoid of any sense of self-awareness and their own weaknesses, no compromise as the beginning, middle and end of any political conversation. Together these spell the fast track to the jaws of defeat and irrelevancy…”
Of course there are ultra-lefts in British politics, and those whose view of a workers’ party we find sectarian and unconvincing. There are those on the left whose recent and historic track record is of dividing rather than uniting, of splits motivated by sectarian interests, of building front organisations rather than alliances, of deciding campaign priorities and activities purely in pursuit of maximising their own membership.
But that does not by any means characterise everyone to the left of Mark Perryman, many of whom also reject his caricature notion of leftist politics: nor does Perryman appear to allow any possibility of the sectarianism on the right wing of the movement, that same sectarianism for example which has been behind the adamant refusal of the Green Party leadership up to now to strike any electoral alliance or collaboration with Respect or any party to its left, even in wards and constituencies where it has no hope and no actual campaign.
Perryman, who was for a brief period co-opted on to the Respect National Council after the departure of the SWP, is writing for Compass, a loose, leftish grouping which emerged after the ignominious collapse of the Campaign Group of MPs, and which is dominated by political figures clinging to the wreckage of the post-Blair Labour Party, including Labour MPs, and former SDPers such as the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee.
Compass is not a rallying point for those breaking from Labour so much as a collection of those still seeking to regroup, “reclaim the Labour Party”, lobby Brown for less unattractive policies, and draw in support from those who are already gone to the left of Labour. Its recent conference even included Brown’s Deputy, Harriet Harman and other Ministers from Brown’s government.
Perryman lauds this grouping, but studiously ignores the significant political moves in the unions, notably the RMT’s central role in the recent No 2EU electoral initiative, and the proposals from the civil service union PCS for a possible electoral challenge to Labour.
Perryman singles out people who he claims are moving towards his views – Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas, Respect Party leader Salma Yaqoob, John Hilary from War On Want, and a Red Pepper “left academic”, and concludes:
“Different responses, same idea. The ideals and values that seek to preserve the best of a social democracy effectively dumped by Blairist-Brownite Labour”
Yet the ideas are clearly not the same at all.
Caroline Lucas is not subscribing to “the best of social democracy” (whatever that may mean) but leading the Green Party; Respect’s Salma Yaqoob spoke strongly in the Compass conference denouncing New Labour and calling for unity behind left candidates at the next election, while none of the leading Labour Party figures in Compass has shown any inclination to break from electoral support for Labour.
Perryman’s even more fanciful ideas reach even further, imagining a new “left” including Vince Cable and some of his fellow Liberal Democrats – all of them doggedly loyal to the third party of British capitalism.
Of course it is tempting to speculate on what might be done if all those with any kind of socialist ideas could magically get together. It’s like making a list of how you would spend a lottery win – and about as useful.
Perryman argues that: “The urgent need is to construct a politics that provides space for ideals that we all share, to produce practical and effective outcomes”. What are these shared ideals?
He goes on:
“And if such a space is to be taken at all seriously this must connect to an agency of change which seeks out the best-placed representatives of these ideas to attract the best possible support.”
This is Harry Potter politics. How will such an “agency of change” appear magically in the midst of such a divided “movement”? Who among Perryman’s chosen allies supports this idea?
Missing entirely from Perryman’s pipedream is any political basis on which the various diverse forces might be drawn together in any kind of cooperation. Yet this is the key issue: as long as the call for unity rests only on abstractions and aspirations it will fail to break the existing party structures and leave British politics largely unchanged.
The People’s Charter, despite its obvious limitations, at least has the vi
rtue of being supported by most currents on the political left and by trade unions including the RMT, while containing enough solid content to incur the wrath of spineless union bureaucrats who reject any real challenge to Brown and New Labour.
The Charter could form a useful basis on which Labour’s handful of left MPs could work with the best of the union leaders and activists, and on which campaigners within the large affiliated unions could take up a political fight to break the stranglehold of the link to Labour which has helped weaken the unions and destroy the Labour party.
Perryman’s cherished “core values of social democracy” may once have been in the “mainstream” in the Labour Party of Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson, but they have now been cruelly exposed as inadequate, and sunk beyond recovery by the New Labour project and now the economic and political crisis.
What is needed now, to give a basis to restore the spirit of socialism, social solidarity, internationalism and class struggle, is a left based on an alternative programme, and strong enough to draw the best elements from the Labour party, the unions, the political left and the Greens into common activity.
We need a left that will not take refuge in wishful thinking, but unite in the fight to stop the war and withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, support the Palestinian struggle, oppose racism, fascism and Islamophobia, and defend trade union rights, public services, and the rights of migrants and refugees.
And we need a combative, confident, active, democratic left that can translate this into an electoral challenge to take these issues to the widest possible public. We should find ways to work side by side in unity with those from any party who support this fight.
At the end of Perryman’s 5-page offering straddling two very different camps, it is hard to tell which side he is really on: but from his vantage point on Fantasy Island, it doesn’t really matter anyway.
Liam redux 
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