Readmit The Socialists - For A Federal Labour Party

The Socialist received a letter over the summer from a reader questioning our application to work with the Labour Party in an inclusive federation. Socialists always welcome serious debate on the strategy and tactics we should employ, and so we asked Dave Nellist, the former Labour MP who is now a member of the Socialist Party national committee, to make a contribution.

The Socialist Party wants to see the battle against Tory austerity strengthened, and socialist measures taken to improve the lives of millions of working class people. It was for those reasons we welcomed the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader.

In addition to the welcome changes Jeremy started to make in Labour Party policies, particularly during the general election, we think there are organisational changes needed if Labour is to be transformed into a party that represents the interests of the working class. One of those should be the expansion of Labour’s federal structure to invite affiliation of organisations such as the Socialist Party.

Adrian is worried that our campaign for affiliating the Socialist Party to Labour would be creating “a party within a party” and that’s why “Neil Kinnock expelled Militant”.

Even with the space of this article, it’s not possible to explain fully the background to the 20-year battle big business and its supporters in the press and the Labour Party itself waged against Marxist and socialist ideas, which had been part of Labour’s structure and history from its very foundation. We would seriously recommend a reading of “The Rise of Militant” by Peter Taaffe which covers this in detail.

Expulsions

The attack on Militant supporters was fundamentally ideological, not organisational. It was started by the Observer newspaper in 1975, when Harold Wilson was party leader, and was because of growing support for socialist and Marxist ideas in the Labour Party - in particular for the idea of widespread public ownership, and of workers having greater control and management of publicly run industries. This was a challenge to the control of society by big business and its supporters.