Pluralists – we can be nicer to each other

By Tom Miller / @tommilleruk

It’s been very difficult to watch and play a small part in some of the anger that has been directed at Compass in recent weeks. For long stretches of the 2000s it was the only thing that convinced me there was any hope for the democratic left. It kept me sane, and occupies a bit of a sentimental place in my heart.

It’s difficult to end up publically debating against people like John Harris who I know and respect, despite thinking he was wrong in ‘So Who do we Vote for Now’, and is wrong again now. I would like to think that we can believe others are wrong without being over-confrontational or caricaturing their position. Five years ago I was getting especially sick of being told I hate freedom for opposing the Iraq war, or that I didn’t want middle class people to vote Labour. John could never reach those sunny heights of obnoxiousness and disrespect, but post-split, I already feel that he is being pretty unfair, if his recent bit in the Guardian is indeed about the people who opposed Compass opening up membership.

As if people like me would run about with microphones, demonstrate and pay membership fees for years, and then suddenly leave because we were always fundamentally disagreed with the organisation we were members of. Perhaps we just feel differently about how those principles should be made real. For someone rightly keen to describe themselves as a pluralist, I would say that finding space for people to disagree without mischaracterising them should be high on John’s intellectual priority list.

I disagree with John, but I am certainly not from the ‘Labour ’til I die’ camp. It’s the sort of populist thing that loads of people say, some genuinely, some because it’s meant to be great to say at selections. Perhaps personally I’m cycnical, but it seems silly to commit in perpetuity to something that will not return the favour. Nor am I one of those because of family or local loyalties. I am not even Labour because of its past, but because of its potential future. Because I am a believer in it, not because I am a follower of it.

Labour is, as I see it, the first vehicle for my values. Maybe one day it won’t be. Already, there are other campaigning vehicles which I am happy to combine with it.

There are some which I think don’t go well together with it, or will lack success. I have now crossed that boundary with Compass. People like this are not knuckle heads or blind institutionalists – we just believe in Labour’s mission and its capacity to be held accountable by the people who depend on its progress, and worry about that being jeopardised. That doesn’t mean that we all rely exclusively on Labour. I just don’t feel that John Harris gives that much space. It’s not like it would be difficult for him to take seriously the objections that some of the people who have resigned. Instead, he has been a bit patronising. I rate John as both a thinker and a journalist, so I think that’s a shame.

I for one am pro-AV, insofar as I believe it would represent a step forward from First Past the Post, and towards a voting system that represents what the population actually want in terms of how their parliament is to be composed. I quite like the Green Party as a spur to Labour, though I wish they would work more closely with us in parliament, and in places like Brighton where they have effectively stopped a progressive council emerging because they don’t like the idea of going in with Labour (hardly pluralism in action there either).

The idea that we all think that Labour can survive without any outside movement expanding and organising, without working with other parties where we agree, and without taking others seriously – well, it’s a bit offensive. Why would we?

We might disagree over membership rules, but if John had grabbed his camera and vox popped some of us before writing his article, he would find that many of the people who have resigned were also people who worked hard to build exactly that kind of engagement, through organisations such as Progressive London, and in the wider movement. As if we all believed that we want to rely simply on “little more than a small hardcore of activists, a few hundred MPs and what remains of the Labour movement”.

I don’t even think the uber-tribal soft-right trade unionist faction, Labour First, believe in that. And they’re probably the group of people closest within Labour to the views that John paints.

Even then, it is pretty high minded to formulate tactics and a message that give the impression that people like this simply do not need to be engaged with, persuaded, or indeed listened to. Though often wrong, they are sometimes right. If sometimes misguided on the way forward, they are well rooted and have genuine intentions; by and large, partisan maybe, they are hard working campaigners in real communities.

Us Compass leavers are not them, but I myself don’t see why they should be ignored by the centre-left on some dogmatic basis, just as with greens and left liberals.

If Compass wants to continue to fight battles within the Labour Party, it’s going to need its generals to be a bit less dismissive and complacent, especially of its natural party allies. It will also need its pluralists to be a bit more tolerant of others who disagree with them. In the long term, it’s useless arguing with positions that people don’t actually hold, even if it does afford you the intellectual comfort of having a pop at them.

We can be much more constructive than this. Labour is a necessary but not sufficient vehicle for the values of the centre left. If we’re to have a Labour Party with any appreciation for pluralist values at all, that centre left could do with setting a better example of how that works in practice.

Let’s work together where we can, and learn to disagree with a bit of grace.