Blairite Entryism

In London, right wing Labour councillors have been encouraging members of other parties to join Labour to vote Smith.

The past week in politics has been dominated talk of ‘entryism’. The idea that hard left activists, people who had never subscribed to the Labour Party’s democratic path to socialism are seeking to attack the party from within; joining Labour in droves to prop up the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, the unlikely revolutionary leader.

I am not a member of the Labour party, never have been, and do not plan to become one. I am not hugely concerned about every detail of Labour’s current struggles.

However, I do care that politics should be accurately reported.

To read any account of the current leadership contest you would be forgiven for thinking that the only people who had joined the Labour party over the past year were Trotskyites, members of the hard left who have seen their opportunity to flood the party and take it over.

The acute fear that hard left ‘entryism’ conjures in many Labour MPs has a long history and perhaps it is for that reason we have seen no coverage of how supporters of the ‘anyone but Jeremy’ camp have been organising to pack the Labour party with anyone who will vote against him. But that is not to say it isn’t happening.

A few weeks ago I received a begging e-mail from three Labour Councillors in Oval Ward, Lambeth. The email was sent the day before the close of applications to pay £25 to vote in the Labour leadership election. It asked me to join the Labour party to vote against Jeremy Corbyn.

The email itself made some extraordinary claims as to what might happen to Lambeth Council in the wake of Corbyn being returned as leader.

We could return to the 1980’s when a hard left Labour council in Lambeth spent more time discussing national political issues than actually running the council.

There was even a suggestion that the bins may not be collected and Lambeth would be plunged into debt as a new group of councillors refuse to balance the books.

What was interesting is that the email is addressed to everyone, whether they are Labour voters or not.

Indeed, they seem to have sent the e-mail to anyone who they could get hold of an email address for. Former Liberal Democrat councillors and council candidates received it. Local members of the Conservative Party received it. It appears that anyone who had previously corresponded with them about anything received the email.

To be clear the three Labour councillors were asking people who they knew were not Labour voters, indeed who they knew to be members of other political parties, to join the Labour party; not because they believed in the party, but for the sole purpose of assisting them to get rid of their leader.

It shows just how far (to the right) the Lambeth’s Labour party have come since the early 1980s, when they were a fully subscribed member of the militant tendency.

Indeed, many of today’s Labour councillors in Lambeth would probably find themselves more at home in Teresa May’s Conservative Party than a party led by Jeremy Corbyn. If he wins, one does wonder whether any of them may apply. At the very least, one would think that Labour’s Oval Ward councillors will find their position untenable, given their now very public views on the chaos that will engulf the borough.

But the internal politics of Lambeth’s Labour group aside, as the email below makes clear, entryism is not a tactic on which the hard left have a monopoly.

If you enjoyed this article please do show your appreciation by hitting the like heart at the bottom of the page, and sharing it on your networks.