The net widens

Defend The Left – against all bans and proscriptions!

On Tuesday March 29, Labour’s National Executive Committee added three more organisations to the four left groups it had proscribed in July 2021. We have to agree with Norwich South MP Clive Lewis who Tweeted about a “slide to authoritarianism”

This represents a further tightening of the noose around socialists in a party which is veering sharply rightwards. Rather than debating political differences in a democratic fashion, the leadership is now expelling members – not for any demonstrable rule-breaking behaviour – but simply for associating with groups deemed unacceptable by the current regime.

Despite objections from some of the 11 CLP and union representatives at Tuesday’s meeting who voted against, 20 NEC members cast their votes in favour. We can therefore expect more retrospective auto-exclusions based on ill-defined “support” for banned groupings. The process is far from transparent and there is no official data, but we know of people having their membership “terminated” for no greater crime than liking or sharing social media posts, often from before the groups concerned were banned.

Two of the newly proscribed organisations, Labour Left Alliance and the Socialist Labour Network, have connections with two of those already banned – Labour in Exile Network and Labour Against the Witchhunt. All have drawn down the wrath of the Starmer leadership for challenging the narrative about rampant antisemitism in the party under Corbyn.

The third new proscription – the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty – falls into a different category however. It has been banned (according to Labour List) for being a Trotskyist entryist organisation. Far from challenging the deployment of antisemitism allegations to attack pro-Palestinian socialists, AWL has been at the forefront of promoting it. So much so that “We Believe in Israel” supremo, NEC member Luke Akehurst, has praised the organisation and spoken at some of its public meetings.

Hence the need to massage the NEC’s definition of “support” in AWL’s case in order to give Akehurst a free pass.  As Alex Nunns points out, the proposal to proscribe the AWL takes great care “to exclude from punishment anyone who has attended their events only in order to debate with them.”

Does the same exclusion apply to debating with all the proscribed groups? If not, the party will be guilty of differential treatment which must be open to challenge.

When proscriptions began in July last year, it was made clear that this would be a rolling programme. More groups would be targeted – and so another three have now been added to the list. Anyone for whom a connection to any of these groups can be found, however remote, will themselves be a likely target.

JVL as a group is not currently on the list, but we have no doubt that our members and supporters are very much in the firing line. The same applies to Momentum, Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and any other groups or individuals who exhibit some independence of mind and desire to preserve the socialist, internationalist principles associated with Jeremy Corbyn.

We call on everyone who values a democratic Labour Party to join us in a collective effort to resist the imposition of antidemocratic bans and proscriptions and to restore open discussion and debate as the means of resolving political differences.