Back to basics

JVL Introduction

In this article Talal Hangari looks the recent bout of bans and proscriptions and reminds us of the affront to elementary principles of natural justice and free discussion that they represent.

This isn’t a ‘broad church’, but a leadership clique with one clear goal – to crush the left.

Hangari provides a historical perspective on this current debacle, affirming clearly that ‘Labour should support, not limit, free debate and discussion among its members. The only rational way to conduct politics is to ground our positions on truth, and the only way to find truth is to allow the broadest possible range of views to be expressed in the party.’

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Talal Hangari, author of this article, was expelled from the Cambridge University Labour Club in May 2021 for criticising the IHRA definition of antisemitism. (Yes, you read that right!)

This was despite the intervention of Kenneth Stern, the lead author of the IHRA definition, who wrote that he ‘agree[d] with the main argument’ of Hangari’s article and ‘hope[d]’ his ‘suspension [wa]s overturned and the matter dropped’.

Free Speech and the Labour Party: A Historical Perspective

 Talal Hangari

The Left-Liberal tradition has tended to prize rationality in its approach to politics. A corollary of that commitment is adherence to the principle of freedom of expression, which received perhaps its most forceful expression in J.S. Mill’s seminal On Liberty. The only way to know that your beliefs about a subject are justified is, Mill wrote, ‘a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.’  If you have any interest in rationally investigating the truth value of a claim, you should be open to the possibility that, as a fallible human being, you might be wrong. It follows that you should allow others to express their views and debate with, rather than suppress, those who differ with you. But even granting that you’re right about an issue, you should acknowledge that wrong opinions often contain a portion of the truth, and to ignore (or worse, censor) those opinions is to lose out on the truth they might contain. Furthermore, the certainty of your own views does not endow you with the right to decide that no one else should be exposed to opinions you find objectionable.

Labour’s National Executive Committee recently repudiated these elementary principles by voting to proscribe a number of organisations associated with the Labour left, automatically expelling supporters of those groups and sending a clear message to ordinary members: Labour is not a broad church and will not tolerate dissent. It is by now obvious that Keir Starmer’s rhetoric about ‘unity’ in the party leadership election was fraudulent; Labour has unmistakably lurched to the right.

Unfortunately, Labour’s use of draconian disciplinary measures to accomplish factional political objectives will not surprise those familiar with the history of the party. Neither will the use of such measures to attack the Labour left in particular, which has overwhelmingly been the target of proscriptions and arbitrary restrictions on free speech over the years.

The 1950s and ‘60s saw fierce divides in Labour over issues including nuclear weapons, military spending, and further extensions of public ownership. Nye Bevan, the architect of the NHS during the post-war Labour government, emerged as a spokesman for the left in parliament and frequently criticised party leader Clement Attlee in the Commons. Bevan was popular with the membership, but was disapproved of by most Labour MPs and the right-wing union leaders. Mere debate was judged to be an insufficient remedy for his criticisms; instead, the PLP voted by 188 votes in favour to 51 against to prevent Bevanite MPs meeting separately from the rest of the PLP with restrictive standing orders, accusing them of being an ‘organised, secret’ ‘special group within the party’. According to Harold Wilson, then a Bevanite MP, the right-wing of the PLP continued with their own separate meetings.

In 1955, the Shadow Cabinet recommended that the party expel Bevan over his opposition to nuclear weapons tests (a position which large numbers of members agreed with—the 1960 party conference voted in favour of a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament) and his vocal criticisms of the front bench. In the end the motion to expel Bevan was voted down by the NEC, but the attempt is just one of many examples of the shocking contempt for free expression that has pervaded the party at its highest levels for decades. A working-class socialist and lifelong supporter of the labour movement was deemed by senior party members to be outside the margins of reasonable discussion.

Alongside expulsions, proscriptions have been an enduring tool of the Labour right to limit free speech within the party. The Militant Tendency, a Marxist organisation which published its own newspaper and had been part of Labour since 1964, was proscribed by the NEC in December 1982. As a ‘Trotskyite entrist group’ it was deemed ‘ineligible for affiliation to the Party’; hence in 1983 the five members of Militant’s editorial board were all expelled. The fact that Marxists have constituted an important part of the labour movement throughout its history was irrelevant, and the existence of organised factions on the right of the party did not precipitate similar action against them. The NEC’s ability to selectively apply the rules for political purposes is clearly in tension with the rights of ordinary members, especially when a number of NEC positions are not accountable to CLPs.

Keir Starmer has followed the same playbook as his illiberal predecessors. The right-wing of the party have a clear goal: crush the left. It began with Starmer’s cynical firing of left-winger Rebecca Long-Bailey from the front bench for approvingly retweeting an interview in The Independent. Then there was the suspension of Corbyn, followed by his half-hearted reinstatement (laughably, he is now a member of the Labour party who sits in parliament but not a Labour MP). It is clear that Labour has drifted to the right, but contrary to the declarations of anti-Corbyn voices, there has been no concomitant increase in the party’s electoral chances. Starmer’s approval rating is lower than Boris Johnson’s, and Labour continues to lag behind the Tories in the polls. This is during a pandemic in which the Conservatives have overseen the preventable deaths of thousands while simultaneously enriching the British elite. There is a lesson here: Starmer should stop attacking Labour members and get on with providing some semblance of an opposition to the Tories.

Labour should support, not limit, free debate and discussion among its members. The only rational way to conduct politics is to ground our positions on truth, and the only way to find truth is to allow the broadest possible range of views to be expressed in the party. The fact that veteran activists and even MPs have often been the target of disciplinary measures highlights how partisanship and factional allegiance have been valued over this principle. Admittedly, there is some ambiguity about what it means to support the widest latitude for free expression within a political party. Fine judgements may at times be required, and decisions should be made democratically and with reference to the specific facts of any particular case. That caveat aside, there is no question that the NEC’s recent decision, and many similar decisions throughout the party’s history, have unjustly alienated members who believe in Labour’s principles, political programme, and wish to see it succeed in general elections. The party should be much more open to discussion and disagreement than it has been to date.