Compass: in need of direction?

I attended the Compass conference today. There were various panel speakers but the most interesting speakers were Ruth Lister and Polly Toynbee (her new bookon the rich does sound fascinating).

Lister gave a detailed account of economic disparity under NL by emphasising that the gap between the rich and poor has widened under NL than under the Tories. 

A squirming Harriet Harman was on the panel who deflected the discussion by reminding us about how bad the Tories were/are i.e. Section 28 and also their emphasis on the sanctity of marriage therefore discrminating against lone parents.

Harman also spoke, briefly, about an impending Equality Bill, equality panel (a talking shop that will produce lots of meaningless guff…You need action now not waiting around 18mths, which means coming up to an election!!!!!!)  and all-women short-lists for parliamentary seats. But a very big glaring omission was NL’s wholesale attack on the poor. NL may not have the same ideological emphasis on traditional family values like the Tories but attack the poor they do including lone parents.

Harman mentioned gender inequality in the abstract, but one very pragmatic solution would be universal free childcare. Not a peep from Harman about that nor condemnation of neo-liberalism nor from a tense Ed Miliband who spent his allotted time wandering up and down the platform giving us his big ideas.

Both squirmed equally when Derek Simpson spoke about how disgraceful that Labour has not repealed the anti-trade union laws to rapturous applause! This shows a lot of political agreement in the audience for truly fair society.

What also caused a similar level of applause was when Ruth Lister mentioned if the government is serious about eradicating child poverty then they should impose a progressive taxation system.

The Briefing/LRC meeting was very positive, vibrant and attended by around 150 people and the discussion was on inequality. Mick Shaw (FBU), Tony Benn, Christine Shawcroft and Suresh Grover all mentioned the widening gap between rich and poor, discrimination, oppression, driving down public sector wages, NL idolising the market, criminalisation, demonisation and stigmatisation of sections of society.

The overwhelming demands of better pay, social housing, free education, free univeral childcare and a progressive taxation system and the audience was very receptive of these demands.

Unfortunately, John McDonnell didn’t turn up as he waned to make a stand against the Compass MPs (Trickett resigned) for voting for 42 days.

I think he made a mistake as he could have related to the audience, would have gained support and built upon the profile of the LRC. I can understand why John chose not to attend as frankly if I was in his position I woulda have been pissed off as well with these so-called left MPs and in the scheme of things did it matter? Yes and no, it was indeed a tactical error but that’s all, a tactical error that can possibly be rectified.

Later in the day, I listened to Jon Cruddas and his way forward for the centre left, which according to him, is occupying new ground and going from strength to strength.

His analysis included the “empirical facts facing the orthodoxies of New Labour”. He admitted that NL was in political free fall, that the the Tories have replaced the space vacated that emphasises empathy.

The essence of social democracy, reclaim the word aspirational. Working together for a consistent coalition. And then rattled off a list of social democratic demands. All great demands Jon, but how are you planning to put them into action? And he omitted dealing with the crisis of neo-liberalism.

During the day, Compass had the likes of Harriet Harman, Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander on the platform (I mean, I know this is supposed to be a broad church but it seems like any old right-wing minister is allowed on the platform) along with left social democrats like Ken Livingstone. It was ideologically strange, with its quick fire round of panelists, Q&A sessions, trendy visuals, glossy literature….but where was the political substance?

I wished they had given more time to Guardian journo John Harris because at least he was entertaining and gave some insightful analysis, Danny Dorling and Helena Kennedy than to desperate NL ministers who squandered the time (as one person said in the Briefing/LRC workshop he was hard pressed to find any difference between Ed Miliband’s speech and what David Cameron has been coming out with!). So why give these NL apologists a chance? Will they be influenced by the discontented audience angry at by NL’s constant failure, selling out core working class voters, the unrelenting attacks on the poor and the worshipping of corporate capitalism? Will they go back to Gordon Brown and put pressure on him to steer away from becoming ever more right? As if!

My own view of Compass is that we need to work with the base, the activists. Demonstrate we can build alliances and constructive ways of working together, it doesn’t mean we are uncritical. Working at the activist level is much more important. The activists are more important and I’m certainly not interested with working with an MP who came up through the ranks of the TU bureaucracy, may talk left when it suits him who speaks about NL being in political freefall but votes to maintain it on 42 weeks. What is Cruddas’s game? Helena Kennedy, so I heard, took him to task over him voting for it. His reason was that he didn’t want to undermine Gordon Brown…..

I walked away wondering what kind of confused political project invites Ed Miliband, Douglas Alexander (my interpretation of his speech was kinda, “you’re either with us or against us”), Harriet Harman (the woman who talks equality yet she who abolished the lone parent rate of Child Benefit), Ken Livingstone, Bea Campbell, Polly Toynbee etc? An assortment of jornalists, TU bureacrats, soft left MPs, NL apparatchiks and academics. Where were the activists?

Compass was damaged when 2 of their leading lights voted for 42 weeks. The long manifesto style wall poster at the conference suggests a fairly standard list of social-democratic measures juiced up with some borrowings from the Obama campaign “the new politics of hope must start with idealism…” (and end where?). The gyrations of the leading Compass MP’s suggests the grubby compromise and caving-in to the authoritarian guardians of the corporate interest of New Labour will be the result.

What is the political trajectory of this unstable and volatile “democratic left pressure group”?