LARAF: A hostile takeover with narrow prospects
On Saturday, Labour Against Racism and Fascism (LARAF), a grassroots initiative set up last autumn, was gutted of political promise by the Momentum/Morning Star bureaucrat nexus and their hangers-on. The behaviour and (anti-)politics of those in the winning faction will by now be sadly familiar to many activists in Labour since 2015. This anti-democratic impulse and its advance through all facets of the ‘mainstream’ Labour Left is central to the Corbyn project’s accelerating degeneration into statist bureaucratism and a smothering of the political dynamism it at first contained. It must be exposed and fought.
What happened
The first meeting of what was to become LARAF, called in October by a group of activists in South London and advertised to all London CLPs, was attended by representatives of 17 CLPs and 8 trade unions from across London. Activists presented a broad array of ideas about what the new initiative should stand for, originating in a shared desire for more robust anti-racist organising than had been on offer from the Labour leadership and trade unions. The discussion showed that the meeting had attracted a group far beyond the ‘usual faces’, and held the possibility of a diverse regional initiative joining up community-based efforts across London.
The next meeting appointed a volunteer interim steering group with an administrative remit to create basic communication channels, encourage activists to write for our website about local campaigns, and build for a public meeting and committee election in the new year. The meeting agreed without dissent that LARAF should be a friendly but critical and independent voice fighting for more consistent anti-racist politics in the Labour Party and building community anti-racist campaigns. Activists from Lewisham spoke about their work to combat the racist and inhumane implementation of the government’s ‘no recourse to public funds’ (NRPF) policy at a local authority level, often by Labour-led councils. The meeting agreed to support the growth of the campaign against NRPF into a London-wide, cross-borough effort.
When an antifascist counter-demonstration against Tommy Robinson and the new UKIP was called at short notice in December, the volunteer steering group successfully coordinated a visible bloc of a dozen or so CLP banners on the march — the first time in any of our memories that Labour members had marched together on a militant demonstration opposing the far right. With this modest achievement, the campaign put itself on the map and into a good position to build for a public meeting drawing in activists new and old to give the initiative a mandate and build it into a fighting force.
Disagreements within the interim steering group which could have been resolved in a comradely manner began to rankle when a narrow majority on the seven-member volunteer committee started enforcing decisions with far-reaching political consequences under the guise of ‘effective administration’. There was disagreement about when to call a public meeting and its aims, with the majority arguing for a focus on antifascist street mobilisation, and the minority favouring a meeting focused on political discussion, giving grassroots members ownership over the campaign, and selecting several priority campaign issues to organise around. When I summarised both sides of this disagreement for an internal e-list of supporters, asking for input on dates and focus of the meeting and intending to take a steer from the membership, someone immediately sent an anonymous email ‘on behalf of the steering group’, calling a meeting and committee election on their terms.
The next few weeks saw a litany of troubling incidents (some of which have also been reported by fellow outgoing committee member Simon Hannah), including shutting down the internal e-list, sexist attitudes to the partners of steering group members, unilateral removal of ‘Trots’ (also known as Labour Party members) from the e-list, and an unjustified refusal to publish an inoffensive article by a supporter which the committee had previously asked them to write. While rigorously enforcing completely unaccountable control of the initiative, those now running the show simultaneously displayed a paralysing inability to themselves do the work necessary to building an effective campaign. They stopped updating the facebook page, let the blog lie dormant, and were unable to produce an agenda within a week’s notice of their scheduled meeting, eventually having to reschedule it.
This internal impasse presented a depressing inside view when compared to appetite for the initiative from the broader movement. When the idea of LARAF was raised at community meetings, it was repeatedly met with enthusiasm, resources, and commitment, which subsequently had nowhere to go. Activists from other parts of the country were keen to start up branches and get involved, only to have their emails go unanswered by the steering group. Campaigners against NRPF who thought LARAF had endorsed their efforts tried to circulate a motion and other campaign materials they had prepared, met by the nasty surprise of an error message after the e-group had been shut down.
The rescheduled LARAF meeting on the 19th January saw the steering group’s internal tactics pay off, with a full slate of Momentum full-timers and parliamentary staff elected to the new committee by their mates who had not been to any previous meeting, based on a structure proposal which had not been discussed or approved by any meeting. The meeting was not advertised outside of the email list, despite repeated written requests for a facebook event or website post which could be shared publicly. A black woman activist who I met at a local Momentum meeting, with no known affiliation to any other group, emailed LARAF asking if she could get involved and stand for the steering committee. She was summarily dismissed with a cursory ‘registration for the meeting has now closed’. She was not encouraged to attend any other meetings, and her request to be added to the mailing list was ignored.
A group of Labour Party activists were barred from entering the meeting on the day because they didn’t register on the Eventbrite, under the farcical justification of ‘protecting the meeting from fascist infiltrators’. The fact that the attendees were known and committed Labour activists, all happy to show their membership cards, fell on deaf ears. Two people manning the registration desk who had not so much as sent an email on the organising group before were now responsible for excluding activists who had attended every meeting since the initiative began, with the excuse that they were ‘just following instructions’. After several activists walked out in protest at this decision, the remainder of the meeting voted not to discuss a proposed statement of political aims, instead proceeding to elect the Momentum slate on a structure without any political accountability to the membership. To sign and seal the takeover, an endorsement from the Morning Star was duly issued.
The politics of process
Those responsible for these deeply demoralising events often refuse to acknowledge publicly that they are waging a political battle. They couch their actions in language of effectiveness, risk-management, and ‘building a mass movement’. This organisational method, be it intentional or passive, means a rejection of the hard work necessary to build a new initiative into a true membership-led fighting force with the power to challenge the status quo and influence events.
The obfuscation of political disagreements through the misuse of process and insider manoeuvring is not an ‘organisational’ disagreement akin to a petty spat among colleagues, as some of them disingenuously claim. It is by default a betrayal of the members and activists without pre-existing organisational resources who wanted to build something new. It represents an endorsement of leadership as a conferred, indefinite status rather than a temporary expression of the membership’s will, with all the stifling of debate and conservatism this entails.
There is also the mendacious claim that these kinds of tactics are necessary to cater to the lowest common denominator of activist, to allow for ‘organisational unity’ and ‘mass appeal’. This amounts to a rejection of democracy, and of any purposeful organisation prepared to have robust political debates, develop an independent line based on shared principles, and then fight for it with resolute action. It implies the deeply patronising and profoundly incorrect assumption that members who have not made careers in the political elite are incapable of real political thought and cannot be taught how to organise. It is also the dismissal of the importance of raising political consciousness through debate and membership responsibility, a capitulation to the idea that it is better to have fewer politics and cater to everyone, than to develop independent political positions and risk having to convince people of the organisation’s view.
LARAF might continue to exist as a mailing list, sending out calls for people to attend demonstrations organised by others, pushing petitions and statements for people to sign, or organising the occasional utterly uncontroversial event. It might get some good press coverage from the section of the commentariat now sitting on its committee, and turn out a handful of the same old faces to a few decent events. But it will not do the unglamorous work of standing in the cold on street stalls, leading discussions at small community meetings, writing text for leaflets, wrangling with different opinions about next steps, preparing documents for democratic meetings, or drawing new people into positions of responsibility. Nor will it risk any genuine political impact by publishing robust and critical analysis of current events or Labour policy. With this approach, it will soon prove itself incapable of building the real-life manifestation of the ‘positive political alternative’ which its new leadership is so practised at rolling off their tongues.
We don’t need this version of LARAF — it adds nothing to existing mailing lists and electoral turn-out machines, in addition to actively excluding and demoralising newer activists. Unless LARAF can show evidence of a different approach, activists should jettison the dead weight of the party bureaucracy, continuing to organise informally with the ethos of authentic network-building on which LARAF was first conceived.