Vladimir Derer: is his argument is still valid today?

Whether socialists should work inside the Labour Party is as relevant today as it was three decades ago.

I remember back to a winter’s evening in the mid 1980s when Vladimir Derer addressed a meeting in the Exeter City Library. The gathering wasn’t heavily attended, with only a handful of Labour left people from Exeter and the south Devon area, plus a couple of activists from the non-Labour Party sects, communist and Trotskyist. Derer had already passed the height of his influence and the majority of Exeter Labour Party had by then already turned their backs on him.

To the younger generation today, Derer’s name and work are not well-known; yet in the 1970s and early 1980s he was the organisational driving force behind the move to the left in the Labour Party. Earlier, in the 1950s and 1960s, the Labour Party had been comfortably in the grip of leaders who pursued mild social amelioration from inside the Parliamentary party. But by the early 1970s several things had changed: economic growth had faltered, so hard choice about who got what had to be made; power in the trade unions had partially shifted to radical shop stewards; and the constituency Labour Parties were gaining an influx of young left-wingers. The situation was ripe for change.

Derer believed that the key to socialist reform lay in and through the Labour Party. His thesis was both articulate and simple: in the advanced capitalist countries no new socialist parties had emerged as a significant political force since the formation of the Third International in the 1920s, and therefore effective socialist activity could only take place inside the prevailing party of the centre-left, by which he meant the Labour Party in Britain. Opportunities (not opportunism), he argued, were few and far between and had to be seized when available. Such an opportunity was now presenting itself.

The problem, though, with the Labour Party left in the 1970s was that it ranged from left-wing social democrats though to revolutionary Trotskyite groups, so building a unity based on policy was impractical. Yet, the party could be moved leftwards by democratisation: if the rank and file elected and controlled the leadership, then the result would a left-wing party. To that end the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy was formed in 1973 and Derer became its secretary in 1974. The drive to the left was by means of an intra-party struggle for party democracy.

The left reached its peak of influence in the Party in 1980. In 1981 the tide turned: Tony Benn failed in his attempt to take the deputy leadership and the right regained control of the Party’s then influential National Executive Committee. Though the final reckoning wasn’t fully apparent until a few years later, the left had lost the fight for the Labour Party; and the steady march to the right had begun.

Is Derer right today?

On the question of an alternative socialist party to the left of Labour, Derer was certainly correct. No new Left Party has established itself even after Labour abandoned social democracy in 1990s. The Green Party is hardly socialist and remains fixed in niche partly of its own making. George Galloway’s ephemeral Respect Party was both a parody and betrayal of socialist values.

But what of the Labour Party itself? Is it still a tool that could potentially be used for socialist ends? The fact is that since the early 1980s, amidst a global climate of market fundamentalism and a home-grown Thatcherite inheritance, the Labour Party has been transformed both in policy and in its organisational structure.

Until the 1990s the policy divide in the Labour party was mainly about two economic policies. Labour’s right believed, economic conditions permitting, in taxing, spending and regulating to ameliorate the conditions of working people. The left believed economic power (more nationalisation and worker’s control) was needed to change the ways of capitalism, if not to abolish capitalism all together. But some kind of compromise between the two positions was clearly possible, even if difficult to achieve.

Blair’s importation of New Labour changed all that. Whereas both the old Left and Right believed that social equality was desirable, New Labour embraced market fundamentalism and sought to fit everybody into these capitalist structures. Social democracy in Britain was dead.

Life inside the party fundamentally changed, too. Since the eighties, but particularly since the arrival of Blair and New Labour in 1994, the Party structures have been de-democratised, conferences choreographed from above; meaningless forms of consultation have replaced intra-party elections. Worse still, the Left has vacated the Party leaving a membership consisting of municipal careerists and mindless hangers-on. When Labour lost office in 2010, with its lowest share of the poll since 1983, it was empty and irrelevant in face of the financial crisis.

In 2010 Labour had its first contested leadership election in sixteen years. In a feeble reaction against the excesses of New Labourism, its members – and particularly its trade union members - opted for Ed as opposed to David Miliband. The new leader has proved not just personally ineffective, but is also surrounded by a team of people like himself who made their careers during New Labour’s neo-liberal years in government. For this reason, the Labour leadership – whether we still call them today New Labour or not – are utterly hamstrung in their ability to stand up for working people.

So is Derer’s thesis still valid? On the one hand the Labour Party is far from totalitarian, and there is room for agitation at local level which would have more perceivable influence than activity in any of the remaining micro-parties. But on the other hand, one has to sit with and campaign for people who promoted and excused the Blair and Brown governments. Participatory democracy is minimal and if one works inside the party there is a need to contend with both the contempt of right-wing inside the Party as well as the independent left outside of it. This sense of being caught between a rock and hard place is the fate dealt to the handful of remaining socialist MPs such as Jeremy Corbyn.

For what its worth, I believe that by the mid 2000s, if not before, Labour had turned a corner. It is no longer possible to be the left-wing of a party which is no longer left-wing in any meaningful sense. However hard it is, I believe that today work has to go into building a new left party simply because New Labour is too compromised as a progressive force on account of its record in government 1997-2010.

So on balance, Derer, I believe, is no longer correct. But I am not so sure as to deny that he still could turn out to be right in end.

Note

My comments concerning Vladimir Derer are based on what I personally heard him say and on the academic literature about the Labour Party Left in the 1970s and early 1980s. I do not know Mr Derer personally and know nothing of his views after that time, nor indeed whether he is still living.



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