Labour Transformed is a new post-Corbynista Labourist organisation made up of Novara Media and The World Transformed , etc. See how they plan to coopt social movements and turn leading militants within it into advocates/candidates for Labour, a similar scenario to how Syriza subverted the Greek social movements
https://labourlist.org/2019/12/what-went-wrong-on-december-12th-answers-from-labour-transformed/?fbclid=IwAR07ly6JW4hjvo91NnDPfiYHMqG_ocLxGoGMiNmieuALzQ4T0ojHaAhSsSs
https://labourtransformed.org/post/foundational-principles/
Sounds familiar? Has someone been reading old Solidarity?
It would not surprise me. "Novara Media" already claims to be "autonomists" and influenced by the "operaismo" movement. But in reality it is like they just take the more modern "culture war" ideas from people like Bifo, the actual working-class and its militancy don't seem to matter.
One of the main people behind this is apparently ex-Plan C, so that's propably where the misappropriated Solidarity reference comes from.
Whoever it is, a shame they seem to have got stuck on "as we see it", it seems like going one step further and reading "as we don't see it" might do them a bit of good. Or indeed just going back and reading "as we see it" but not skipping over point 4, come to think of it.
And as R Totale recommends above with preferably mark 2 of both those texts as here:
https://libcom.org/library/Revisions
Even the old UK Solidarity group for all it's faults would be squirming over that lot.
Dyjbas
Also, ex-WOMBLES, ex-anarcho-primitivist, ex-council communist etc.
Ah, great, the anarcho liberals have a new vehicle from which they can chastise and shame anyone that doesn’t fall in line with their deluded orthodoxy.
Oh d'you mean the fellow who spent his weekend at Fast Forward this year making an absolute tit of himself moaning about everything and has spent most of the last 24 months whinging about anarchists being too negative/not being able to read the popular zeitgeist?
Between him and Novara's hilarious attempt to "learn lessons" by variously suggesting maybe "we" (not "they") should be building rep with the rednecks* and ditching calls for free movement it's been a right old shit-show this week.
====
*As a former countryside lad "throw the rednecks a bone" is what I hear whenever London media pundits start pretending to give a fuck about the countryside — as though they've ever seen a cow outside a walking holiday or have *any* intention of personally committing to recovering socialism outside cities.
Here are the notes from the inaugural meeting of Labour Traumatised:
https://labourtransformed.org/post/inaugural-meeting-notes/
Hmmm....
The standard "Trotskyists, please go away" clause
ajjohnstone
Holy shit. They pretty much plagiarized it. Been a while since I read it, but to my memory it seems nearly word for word.
Normally I wouldn't care about that, if they were actually sticking to the spirit of the document they plagiarized rather than betraying it.
Ok, I just googled the "As We See It" document. Here's what it says:
Damn, that's close.
R Totale
Fuck reading point 4, they could have just finished reading the sentence that they plagiarized! If their goal really is to steer social movements towards the Labour Party, that's some hardcore mystification right there!
Lucky Black Cat
Yeah, and what's wild is that, as far back as 1972, they (Solidarity, not this lot) had already felt the need to write "As We Don't See It" as a follow-up document precisely for the benefit of people who insisted on completely misreading the original one.
Solidarity
The more things change, the more they stay the same, etc.
I'd like to ask what Libcom posters think will be in store for the Novara Media operators. I guess that they do have a stake in the business of Labour Transformed?
Also, now that Corbyn is dead in the water, what will the future hold for the likes of Owen Jones, Aaron Bastani and Ash Sarkar? Will they be perceived as still relevant in the eyes of the media?
I guess that depends on who will be the next leader of the Labour Party?
Well, considering all their recent hard work, a well deserved holiday should be their priority. I’d like to suggest some exotic location that is easily accessed via the Bermuda Triangle!
Seriously though, I think Jones is pretty well established, and I think Sarkar was on Have I Got News For You the other night though it may have been a repeat. Maybe they’ll flatline for a bit but I predict they’ll be fully established mainstream figures at some point. Sorry, it’s a depressing thought, eh?
Personally, I find these putrid fucks more repugnant than any of the Eton crew - they help drive the march of the zombie liberals, make claims to radicalism that are about as opaque as glass crystal and perpetuate the authoritarian hive mind of the anti working class liberal left.
I wish a pox on them but I suspect cushy editorships and high salary BBC jobs are far more likely.
They'll probably follow David Graeber in becoming BBC pet leftists wheeled out as required for Question Time & Radio 4 etc.
Battlescarred
depressing stuff, pretty bizarre strategy in 2019 though, the radical left is tiny as are 'social movements and anarcho-etc'scene'', i mean that might have made some sort of sense during occupy or the student protests etc but right now its pretty thin pickings for frontism
seems more like an attempt to cobble together a strategy to seem relevant rather than anything coherent, hence the plagiarism etc
So how do "revolutionaries" who post on Libcom propose to win back militants from the Corbynite Labour party milieu or, if the ones lost in Labour are beyond salvation, winning, inspiring and developing a new generation of young militants who are not snared in the parliamentary road to socialism? All I see on Libcom is "bitching" about Novara types without any serious new alternative proposals.The blood loss over the past few years (to the Labour party and Scotland yards special branch) has been considerable and has, imo, lead to the "death" of the "revolutionary left" as we know it (well that and the over night collapse of the London anarchist book fair).
Awesome Dude
Bitching about Novara Media types? Why the fuck not? They are disingenuous, anti working class authoritarians that sought to hysterically shut down anybody that questioned their orthodoxy during the run up to the election. So yes, I’ll bitch about them.
If all you see on Libcom is bitching about these people then you need to look a bit harder, for example...
https://libcom.org/blog/every-challenge-can-be-overcome-6-ideas-getting-started-13122019
So what are YOU suggesting? I hope not, but is it continuing along the path of reformism with Labour Transformed? Though continuing is perhaps the wrong term - the dead end was reached decades ago and all that’s really happened is that the ‘radical’ liberals have marched on the spot and shone a light on whoever the Messiah of the day is. Yeah, I know Blair is castigated now, but I haven’t forgotten many of the current bunch(who are now disposing of Corbyn) shouting about how Blair was the greatest opportunity we’ll ever have.
Fucking hell, this whole episode has been so breathtakingly cringey that were I to ‘bitch’ for the rest of my life it wouldn’t even begin to cover the depth of my disdain for those that preached from on high for yet another capitalist emperor whilst dog piling anybody that spoke out of turn.
Edit: I realise that my comment is a little aggressive - I don’t mean to attack you or anyone else really, it’s just my best attempt at expressing how furious this whole episode has made me.
Anyways, I know nothing about you, I dare say you’re doing more than I am(not difficult), so sorry if it seems as though I’m making ill judged assumptions.
Awesome Dude is a sound guy, I always enjoy talking with him, which happens every few years.
rat
Yeah, I’m sure, so once again sorry for my aggressive comment. You understand though, right? Lol, triggered to fuck!!!
Noah Fence
I'm not advocating support for the dilettante Phd students who write for Notes from Below or their opportunistic attempt, by initiating Labour Transformed, to fool activists in Momentum that might be seeking a home for their radical political positions (or increasing revolutionary tendencies).
My own position, on the Labour party and it's supporters, is closer to the views expressed in this excellent pamphlet that I believe was authored by comrade Bob Miller (a.k.a Knightrose on Libcom) formerly of Subversion group (1980s) and AF North:
Labouring in vain: a critical history of the Labour Party
But I suppose the problem is that while there are a good number of militants who predicted the current plight of the Corbynites, for number of reasons not taken seriously enough by British militants (such as active counter-subversive measures by the secret state) we just have'nt been in a position to effectively propagandise our ideas or offer a pole of attraction to any new working class militants seeking to escape the parliamentary road to socialism.
I swear April Fool's Day comes earlier every year: https://blackroselabour.uk/about/
Just saw this myself.
I would write it off as a farce — but these days — I guess anything goes.
On twitter they seem to imply a connection with the LSC of the DSA, and it does feel a bit like an Americanization or internet-ification(which is dominated in large part by the US) of radical politics. Their "reading list" is very spread-out and most of it does not seem compatible with entering into the Labour Party. Their only motion under the "motion" tab is one about wanting like the same drug laws as Portugal...
More of the vague talk about organizing but no apparent strategy...
Their website has the same template as the DSA-LSC. Very, very strange, and if I were part of Black Rose in the US I'd be pretty shitty with them that they're using that name.
Also, from their website, "civilian's rights?" The fuck is that?
https://blackroselabour.uk/motions/
[...]
Ah...
Well, that's just the way it is.
So a kind of 'anarchist entry-ism' to compete with the Trots?
Spikymike
I was thinking along these lines - bearing in mind the ban on the AWL, expulsion of various Trot activists, etc, it would presumably be pretty simple for the Labour Party's Trotfinder General or whatever they're called to put a similar ban on this formation and expel anyone publicly identified with it. Except I'm not sure they'd bother, they might just not see it as enough of an issue to be worth dealing with.
Anyway, I enjoyed how the reaction to their formation announcement seemed to be split down the middle between people who'd never heard of libertarian socialism being baffled by the idea of libertarian socialism, and people who had heard of libertarian socialism being baffled by the idea of LSists being in the Labour Party. Also, this made me laugh.
Spikymike
Could be the other way around, while trot entryism is a well documented, over the years I've noticed a sort of counter tendency where people join the party, have their illusions shattered by its reality, but through its proximity to the "left" are exposed to other ideas and develop along them, but it takes awhile (sometimes never) for them to break off.
Apart from the Communist Party of Britain most people I've met in the UK who tell me they're Communists or Leninists and aren't Trotskyites have been long standing members of the Labour party. And so was the two Maoists. And several years a go a member of the local labour party who subscribed to the Weekly Worker and described himself as a democratic communist joined the Anarchist federation, stayed in both for about two weeks then ditched both to join the Socialist Party of England and Wales because they agreed to send him to something called Cadre school.
I suspect given how closely its copying the DSA libertarian group and how incoherent the sites content is, this might be a one person band or very small group of people who have just discovered this stuff, like it a lot but haven't really thought it through, yet.
I'd say this thing will probably burn out long before it gets to be a problem for the labour party's internal organs, unless it taps into a lot of other frustrated party members.
From conversations(if you can call them that) with the people touting this around the Internet, it’s very clear that this is a shambolic, ill thought out affair with none of them able to answer any challenges to their proposal.
Surely, if they gained any traction, they won’t of course, but let’s say they did and they started making a noise, the PLP would stamp all over them, right?
The whole thing is cringy and hilarious in equal measure. It’s about as credible as all those edgy conservatives hoisting their black and yellow flags and calling themselves anarchists.
Reddebrek
This is probably closest to my reading of it as well.
Would add that I hope the formation burns out before the individual people in it do. Feels fundamentally different from Novara (or Labour Transformed) in that it's non-careerists following a very poorly thought out strategy to reform the Labour Party and lobby for single issue policies within it, vs. careerists following a (relatively) successful strategy to build their own careers.
I'm not in the AF anymore but someone who was a Labour Party member would not have been allowed entry into the AF for sure. So either they kept extremely quiet about their LP membership or they just said they were in the AF without it being true. Whereabouts was this person?
Who is claiming to have had dual membership of the AF and the Labour Party?
See Reddebrek's post. Pay attention!
It's not enough to criticise recuperation of radical statements, which anyway has been constantly happening for over 100 years.
Surely the main problem is that the nature of such statements make them open to recuperation. The original "As we see it" is vague and general and is typical of organisations wanting to win people over on the basis of some simplistic abstraction. Anybody who has anything worthwhile saying doesn't need to state "As we see it" or "Where we stand" or whatever general definition of themselves that reduce their activity to relatively obvious (at least for those who want the abolition of capitalism) lowest common denominators that just unite people round this lowest common denominator. "Whatever activity increases the confidence, the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity, the egalitarian tendencies and the self-activity of the working class and whatever furthers its political consciousness" should be implicit and inherent in any precise developments of such a perspective. Whilst such necessities can be made explicit, taking them out of the context of an account and/or analysis of a precise situation or contradiction makes them easily adopted by those who have no desire of making them have any practical meaning whatsoever, and no idea of how to. They just become nice turns of phrases aimed to recruit because in many ways these "As we see it"s were/are intended to recruit when they were created by people with more radical perspectives. More radical but not so radical as to reject the idea and desire to recruit, to want members. Kind of radical versions of advertising.
Anyone who genuinely want to contribute to increasing "the confidence, the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity, the egalitarian tendencies and the self-activity" of themselves and the working class as a whole will not be looking for such platitudes to inspire them to do so.
I realise that paying any attention to any twitter drama is always a terrible idea, but I was quite entertained to learn that one of the main Black Rose Labour people also crosses picket lines. I didn't really think you could get much less coherent when "Labour Party anarchist" is your starting point, but that person might just have managed it.
Might as well ask this here as anywhere: I realise the correct answer is "pay no attention at all and thank your lucky stars that you're not a labour member so you don't have to deal with any of this stuff", but can anyone give a simple answer as to what the difference between Forward Momentum and Momentum Renewal is?
I mean I really can't be arsed but Renewal seems to have the Novara lot on board FWIW.
I've had a quick skim of both and it's all socialism, community organising, trade unions, democracy in the Labour Party whoop whoop we can do this stuff?
I got confused which was which when flipping between browser windows, so I doubt you are alone in posing this question.
Perhaps, and hear me out on this, they are basically the same but composed of different people who can't stand each other?
Labour Transformed are getting behind Forward Momentum according to their Facebook.
I remain baffled.
Just to make it even more confusing "forward" definitely sounds more like a "Let's go ahead carrying on doing the same stuff"-type name, and "renewal" sounds more like a "Let's change some stuff" name, but from what I can understand Lansman and the existing leadership are behind renewal, which feels quite conter-intuitive? Anyway, I suppose the likelihood of my street's whatsapp group splintering into rival pro-Forward and pro-Renewal factions is quite remote, so I think I probably don't need to worry about keeping track of which is which too much. And with that, I can get back to archiving the papers of the British section of the IWA, an organisation which has definitely never suffered from any bitter faction fights that are totally incomprehensible to outsiders.
Ah, now a group called Momentum Internationalists is organising within Forward Momentum which is working witthin Momentum which is working within the Labour Party. Reminds me of the matryoshka Russian dolls.
What tendencies do these people actually come from? The slogan of "Democracy, Class Struggle & Internationalism" sounds very specific.
If you open up the Momentum Internationalists matryoshka, you'll find Workers' Liberty nestled inside (Shachmanite/third camp flavour trots, if you're not familiar). But as noted above, MI are just one faction within FM, if you're asking about the broader politics of FM, or indeed MR, as a whole then your guess is as good as mine.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Trickyjabs/status/1266721502499606529
Labour Is Losing Black Members Over Allegations Of Anti-Black Racism
Recently saw there's some push back against the AWL https://twitter.com/MomAgainstAWL/status/1272819253062905856?s=20 I initially read that as Mom's against the AWL before realising its another Momentum grouping.
Wait how's the AWL organising within Labour? I thought they banned external orgs participating like that after the whole Militant thing.
OK, so who can say which cult-like group Momentum Against the AWL, or indeed Mums Against the AWL, is a front for?
sherbu-kteer: Yep, I believe AWL members are officially banned, so they just have to be "secret members" (iirc AWL stuff always refers to their members as "supporters" to try and get around this), although as they have a fairly distinctive set of politics to argue for and campaigns to push I would imagine that it can't be that hard to identify them. There's at least two other Trot groups active in Labour with varying degrees of secrecy, including the IMT lot who were members of Militant, but when Militant were expelled seemingly just reacted with "no we're not :)".
There seems to have been some drama inside another Labour fraction, Labour Party Marxists, a front for CPGB(PCC) who publish Weekly Worker, over the question of Labour Left Alliance.
What are the actual statues of the party on this? Where do they draw the line between something like AWL and Momentum? The Social-Democratic party in my country has a similar thing where there are like public factions that criticize the party but that fall within the statues but the CWI-faction(it was actually guided in the youth-league by the Young Labour militant group) was purged. The Fourth International(reunified) section also like dissolved as a party and into a "think tank" to enter into both Social-Democratic Party and Left Party(as individuals).
comradeEmma
As I understand it (disclaimer: I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the Labour Party, so not an expert), any other political party that stands candidates in elections is an obvious no, anyone else has to be banned on a case-by-case basis, so there were specific decisions to target Militant and Socialist Organiser/AWL, but I don't think they've ever got around to specifically banning, for instance, Plan C, and would need an official decision to do so.
Fwiw, I think the actual wording is:
I gave up before managing to find a copy of the list of forbidden organisations, though.
Also, had happily managed to miss whatever the latest CPGB drama is about, the claim that "if the CPGB continues its descent into darkness... then that would damage all of the left" seems a tad ridiculously overblown though.
Why are the Novara self-identified 'Communists' permitted membership?
As above, I think the default is that anything not specifically banned is permitted, and tbf I reckon they would have a pretty strong case for arguing that they're a media platform not a membership organisation. I suppose the harsher way of putting it would be to say that if they were ever perceived as being a serious threat by any sizeable section of the Labour bureaucracy then they would be banned, but that hasn't happened, so they're not.
An IMTite made it to the party steering committee of the Swedish Left Party at which point they voted that IMT and its section was a competing party so that they could be purged. So there is absolutely something to that these type of parties only start cracking down when it in some way threatens the status quo of the party.
There was a 1985 discussion on Black Sections in Labour by Sivanandan, Diane Abbot, Stuart Hall, Vishnu Sarma and Unmesh Desai.
Anyone got any thoughts/observations on where all that Corbyn energy goes now? I can't see there being much enthusiasm for anyone sticking with Starmer.
Good question R Totale. I don't really have answers myself, but I would love to hear any analysis from other posters.
On the issue of the Novara Media people being members of the Labour Party — I think that Ash Sarkar said recently that she's not actually a member of the Labour Party — I could have that wrong though.
I did watch a recent Novara video about the Long-bailey sacking, but I don't think there was much in it really.
Maybe people here have already seen this but there is the Don't Leave Organise "broad left network":
https://www.dontleaveorganise.org/
AS ids as a communist, is a fellow traveller of, centres her politics and hangs her journalism on the LP/parliamentary proceedings, uses her non-membership as a 'well actually'.
JB is a member and communist with a high regard for constitutional democracy.
AB is a member, ids as a communist.
There was a point in time early on where Corbyn would get laughed at and disrespected as leader in parliament and I remember this was in contrast to Bob Crow whom I've never seen reactionaries oppose in the same manner. They had to take him and the RMT (which iirc had/has a semi-syndicalist nature) seriously. One could imo say the same for Abbott, etc. v brief extra-parliamentary BLM.
R Totale
I don’t claim any great insights myself but maybe:
1. Corbyn revivalists. Stay in the Labour Party to reignite the ashes of socialism.
2. Newly grown up “realist” types who will have inhaled the fumes of parliamentary politics and will do very well as the new young blades in the party.
3. Burnouts.
4. People who will leave and have terrible politics (trots etc)
5. People who will leave and have good politics.
Hard to get a handle on the proportions of each.
Novara appears to be a mixture of 1 and 2.
Some thoughts from a recentish Labour leaver here: https://www.thecommoner.org.uk/sentenced-to-hard-labour-commentary-on-labour-party/
So it seems that a few people at least can learn, with a bit of help and encouragement, from their experiences as members of the Labour Party under the failed Corbyn project. A step at least in the right direction.
Dyjbas
He's now leaving Labour Party too.
For anyone who's avidly following the Labour Transformed saga, they've now agreed on a "political basis". I've not gone through it in too much detail, but the two main things I picked up are 1) they really like saying "in and against" a lot, and 2) they're now very keen on stressing the importance of "anti-imperialism". Maybe I'm just too kneejerk cynical, but I can't help suspecting that translates to something like "we think the Labour left doesn't spend enough time getting in arguments about Israel and Palestine, we reckon getting in more arguments about Israel and Palestine would be a productive way forward".
It does all feel very timewarpy, a lot of the time they sound like they're still at the peak of Corbynism, not a year or so after that bubble very definitely burst.
R Totale
Nothing posted on their site since 16th August 2020. Kaput?
It seems like there is still new stuff getting published on their site, it just doesn't show up in the articles listing for some reason, but you can find it if you scroll down far enough on their homepage. This is from last week, so it seems like there's still someone out there keeping the flame of anarcho-Starmerism burning.
I've posted a link at #211 on the tail end of the ''Post Trump North American Left Trends' thread which relates to some looking to extricate themselves from the failed Corbynista Labour Party (rather than stick with it) and compares with the disarray in the USA's DSA. Also has cross references to the ''base-building'' strategy mentioned elsewhere on this site.
I thought that Black Rose shit had died a death. When it came about several people I know tried to get me to join - they seriously thought they were on to something, anarchism had found its way into the mainstream! However, when I offered my critique and declared myself absolutely uninterested in having anything to do with this preposterous nonsense, I received exactly the same response as i always get when disagreeing with liberals, namely, accusations of privilege, empty posturing etc and shaming for not doing the right thing by all marginalised groups for the sake of non existent virtues, but this time with one addition - by rejecting Black Rose I had exposed to the world that I was no kind of socialist, least of all an anarchist!
Strange times that we live in...
Even the old UK Solidarity group for all it's faults would be squirming over that lot.
Huh
https://pasttenseblog.wordpress.com/2021/05/06/a-long-lost-communique-from-the-situationist-tendency-of-the-labour-party-1990/
anyone remember these?
I feel like I'd seen the name somewhere before but can't remember where.
I wonder how Labour Transformed are getting on with transforming Labour?
Well Labour has certainly transformed itself from being mild social democracy with a socialist veneer into... a mess?
I am not up to the cut and thrust of parliamentary politics myself, but that IS a radical transformation which could be helpful to people promoting a radical extra-parliamentary movements.
Fozzie
Labour always was a mess, now it’s a mess more publicly. This can only be good news for us as the eyes with recently fallen scales look for other ways to affect change. Unfortunately, the cynic in me can’t help but think that by the time the next general election comes around, the same old ‘must get rid of the Tories, lesser of two evils, blah blah fucking blah’ narrative will drive legions to once more debase themselves at the bloodied alter that is the ballot box.
A year and a half in and they still don’t know who they are:
We’re often asked "What is labour transformed?" So far we've deferred on answering, because we know we haven't yet done the work necessary to offer a definitive answer. We hope to change that through our strategy research project, starting Monday 17th May, at 6pm. DM for details.
https://twitter.com/labtransformed/status/1392896258998771712?s=21