Questions of the Myopic Kind
“Because something is happening here. But you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mister Jones?” — Bob Dylan — Ballad of a Thin Man
Owen Jones has posed a series of questions to supporters of Jeremy Corbyn and in the spirit of fraternal debate I will attempt to answer them. Before getting into the answers though I must say a few things regarding the tone and content of the piece. Firstly, given that Jones has (rightly) emphasised the organic link between Labour and the trade union movement in the past, it is odd that he does not mention the trade unions at all. This is also odd given the role they’ve played in defending Corbyn’s leadership and the potential that this leadership has to revive a genuine Labour movement again. Secondly regarding the tone of the piece. No one sensible would deny that the Corbyn-McDonnell leadership has not made mistakes both in terms of policy and tactics. I would argue though that a lot of these stem from Corbyn trying to appease the right in the PLP, a plan doomed to failure. Supporting Corbyn against the coup is not a matter of cheerleading for him but one of using the opportunity his leadership provides to rebuild the political arm of the Labour movement. That’s what unites many of us backing Corbyn, that we recognise the potential here and the fact that if Corbyn was deposed or loses to Smith then that will be a defeat for the working class movement. What Jones’s piece proves most of all though is just how powerful socialisation is as a force. What his piece reflects is not that the guardian has “got to him” or that he’s been paid off. The reality is that he has joined that strange world of the media elite, a group that goes to the same parties, only talks to itself and is able to regurgitate it’s received wisdom as newspaper columns. All his writing on the leadership question reflects is a man who has been totally taken in by this, who sees no real roll for the working class in the Labour Party other than as voting fodder and has no interest in or understanding of the class struggle both in the unions and more widely. This shows most glaringly in just how unaware Jones is regarding how quickly things are developing on the ground. He repeats the tired complaint of the Labour right that the new Labour Party members “aren’t active”. I’ve heard this from right wingers myself and it’s easily addressed. The coup against Corbyn has motivated the biggest movement of people to become active in the Labour Party post 1945. In Manchester we organised a 3000 strong demo at short notice against the coup. We then followed this up a week later by organising a mass meeting attended by around 350 people all of whom wanted to get active and organised in their constituencies. They didn’t just want to do the standard “door knocking” though, they wanted to actively change the local parties into campaigning organisations. Since the suspension of all local party meetings there have been very well attended pro-Corbyn meetings across Manchester and Trafford, again bringing together older campaigners with people totally new to political activity. This is the basis of a new type of party, that will break with the tired old and failed tactics of which both Jones and the Labour right are so fond.
As Jones posed questions though I will attempt to answer them.
1) Poll Numbers
Jones cites recent polls putting Labour a country mile behind the Tories and Corbyns personally bad polling as a factor that needs addressing. Before we can address it though we need a real explanation as to why this is. The polls before the coup put Labour dead level or slightly in front of the Tories. The coup changed a that and it was done in the way that it was in order to inflict maximum damage on the party. There is also the matter of the medias campaign of misinformation against Corbyn, his supporters and the left In general. So bad polls at the moment are something that are very understandable. To turn it around though will take two things. Firstly we need to make sure we go around the mainstream media as much as we can. Direct personal experience is the best way of convincing working class people that a Corbyn led Labour government is in their interests. This means changing the way that campaigning is conducted by the Labour Party. From endless door knocking and leaflet drops we must evolve to a point where every ward Labour Party is an active campaigning organisation. In some areas this is starting to happen as the left now clearly has the numbers to start to force the issue here. The attempt to transform the local Labour Party’s will run into opposition from an entrenched right wing but that’s a political battle that we must win. If the opportunity presented by Corbyns win is to be maximised then we need to be running as an anti establishment force. That means reaching people through local campaigning, supporting strikes, calling mass demonstrations and supporting radical justice movements such as Black Lives Matter. It also means running as an opposition force to entrenched, right wing Labour Party councils who are (rightly) despised by the working class in the areas they have run for decades with no tangible benefit to the local population. In terms of turning negative polls around the benefit of Labour becoming a mass movement is that if it is big enough it changes the party from just being about the leadership to being a direct personal experience in terms of people being connected with by a campaigning involving a friend, work colleague, family or community member. If you can do this (and run an efficient social media operation to back this up) then the negative media portrayals can not only be overcome but we can also break the power of the corporate media to shape hostile narratives.
2) The vision thing
Jones complains that there is no clear vision coming from the Corbyn leadership. I don’t think this is entirely accurate as Corbyn has policies which poll as being very popular, what is needed though is a clear narrative. The rejection of austerity is a crucial starting point and this is where I disagree with Jones. He argues that Mcdonnells adoption of Osbornes “fiscal rule” regarding deficit reduction renders this as equivalent to Milibands policy. This is clearly untrue. Mlibands time in office was marked by torturous policy u turns, failed attempts at spin and moments of utter confusion. Let’s not forget that Ed Balls went into the last party conference before the election promising austerity and committed to deficit reduction via spending cuts.
Corbyns leadership made a break with that. Miliband might have talked periodically about an alternative economic strategy but didn’t have the movement backing him go enable it to actually happen. Corbyn and Mcdonnell may only ne proposing variations on Keynesianism but that they are proposing is still enough to give the ruling class a political heart attack. They political class have spent thirty years making everyone believe that Thatchers TINA was a real thing, that there could never be an alternative to neo liberalism. That Corbyn has broken with this is important to emphasise because it is why the reaction to him is so frenzied from the political-media class. The ten policies he announced this week are a good points that Corbyn supporters can popularise. The vision may well be set from the top but we win people over to it by having a mass movement to actively agitate for it. This goes on inside the trade unions where Corbyns policies on industrial investment, ending privatisation and investing in new technology will chime with the industrial policies adopted by the conferences of the major unions. By agitating within the unions for support for this agenda we can start to mobilise the 6.5 million strong movement in favour of a Labour government. This will mark a change in the often passive way the movement has behaved in the last two decades. To win people over to this vision will also take active campaigning in every working class community as I outline above. Labour Party members will need to be out there every week campaigning and popularising the policies. To this end we will need to make sure we have as many activists as possible who understand the policies and are able to take the message back into their union branch, community and workplace. This is why it is encouraging to see many local areas now starting political education programmes. The vision will be started by Corbyn but we will win people over to it if we play to our strengths of mass, direct agitation. The message can be refined to a simple two part phrase “Labour is by you and for you”. Frame the Tories as nothing but a rich mans party. Keep hitting that in every interaction, on social media and on conventional media. Keep hitting them on the class questions because that will destroy them. The mass mobilisations of the Corbyn campaign show the potential for mass campaigning in a way not seen for decades. This is what will shape and sell the vision contained within the policies.
3) What is the Media Strategy?
The assumption Jones makes here is that if somehow Corbyn and his team had better relations with the press then somehow he’d get an easier ride from the press. Jones totally ignores the now very well proven media bias against Corbyn in favour of a false narrative around the idea of professionalism. It is not his media strategy that triggered so much press hostility this it’s the policies and also the movement that stands behind him. It is his explicit opposition to austerity, to the anti union laws and to the wars so beloved of the Blairites and their true masters in the British ruling class. Corbyn could have come into work every day wearing a tailor made Savile Row suit and Italian patent leather shoes and it wouldn’t matter. He could be the most charismatic speaker in the world and it wouldn’t matter. The Labour right sees in him the revival of a left that they thought long dead and they and their media friends are desperate to kill it off. So when Sunny Hundal or Owen Jones say that it’s not the substance but the media tactics that’s wrong they are either engaging in a lie or self deception.
The media strategy if anything is something that Corbyn has mastered is his ability to around the establishment media. The mere fact of his survival as leader speaks to this power and the fading power of traditional media. Every single outlet of the corporate media was against him and yet the movement mobilised in his support and found ways to get around the propaganda. Jones of course accuses Corbyn supporters of living in a twitter based “bubble”. That is of course a risk with social media but if anything the criticism applies far more to Jones and his ilk, living as they do in a tiny elite circle telling each other hysterical stories and becoming utterly divorced from reality. The media strategy then must focus on basic things such as regular press releases, media events and hitting the headlines in as positive a way as possible every day. But much bigger efforts must go into going around what is always going to be a reactionary, hostile corporate media. No media strategy in the world is going to change the fact that the media in capitalist society is dominated by corporations and rich families of the global 1% who have absolutely no interest in being fair to parties of even a vaguely reformist nature.
5) People of a certain age?
This is a strange question when you consider who has been joining Labour recently. Many of those are in fact older, rejoiners who left over the Iraq war and over new labour criminalities in the 2000’s. Jones states that this is the group which voted against Labour in the heaviest numbers in the last election. Jeremy Corbyn is correct to say though that these people are subject to the same pressures as anyone else. Their public services have been cut, their wages will most likely be stagnant or only subject to slow growth, they will be being ripped off by the train companies, the energy companies and see their children live life in huge amounts of debt. What Jones seems to be looking for is some kind of think tank inspired phrase that will magically convince this demographic to swing back to Labour. The reality is that it will take hard work by Labour members locally to actually win any particular demographic over.
The factor affecting all of this though is the class struggle itself. We’ve seen mass movements in Greece, Spain and Portugal shake the foundations of capitalist democracy in those countries, even if the movements they produced were flawed. In Britain though we’ve had the Scottish referendum which was the closest we’ve come to that, until now though. The mass movement behind Corbyn has become much more radical than last year and if combined with significant industrial action, mass protest movements and justice campaigns could see Britain experience it’s own far bigger version of the square occupations of Greece or the indignados. If we do see mass strike action as well this will inevitably have huge repercussions in the Labour Party itself. Jones has been caught out and revealed as an establishment figure, cut off from all forms of class struggle and actually someone who fears mass movements as they disrupt his tidy little plan to have a moderate left party run by his new friend Owen Smith. Politics is entering a new phase and those who sought to lead in the last period are the first tossed aside in the new. Farewell Owen Jones, it’s been educational.
