If there is one thing that worries me particularly about Jeremy Corbyn and his core team is that it appears the notion of solidarity is driven by whether it is convenient to their cause.
The recent contrasting statements on Labour Party staff is a case in point (bold my emphasis):
Exhibit A (Jeremy Corbyn 23rd August 2016)
I am not telling you anything new when I say that working in politics can be stressful at times. However this has been exacerbated at times by attacks on individuals or groups of staff in the national media. In my own view, that is totally unacceptable. It is only right that elected politicians recognise that as party staff, you do not have the right of reply in the media and often have to operate in a political landscape over which you have limited control.
You therefore must not be used as a political football by anyone in the party. I hope you all feel that if you are put in difficult or unacceptable circumstances, you can raise the issue with your line manager, other senior members of staff, or your trade union representatives.
Exhibit B (John McDonnell 25th August 2016)
The decision by Labour party officials to suspend the bakers' union leader, Ronnie Draper, from the party and deny him a vote in Labour's leadership election over unidentified social media posts is shocking, and appears to be part of a clear pattern of double standards.
Unfortunately for McDonnell, it appears that Draper has fallen foul of the NEC ruling on proscribed words when he tweeted about "deselecting traitors" on 29th June 2016.
The NEC, as Iain McNicol pointed out to McDonnell, is the elected body which determines how Labour Party rules are applied. It is not in the gift of party officials who funnily enough have "limited control" of the "political landscape". McNicol in his role as General Secretary of the Labour Party is defending his staff from being a "political football"
What is striking about John McDonnell's intervention in what is being described as #LabourPurge2 is that he cannot find solidarity with workers in his own party. Instead because they are not aligned with his own interests, they are accused of "double standards".
If we reflect on the task at hand of the understaffed and underfunded compliance unit within Labour HQ, they are operating to arbitrary simple rules as laid down by the NEC to ensure that, as far as possible, everyone voting is a supporter of the Labour Party's aims and values. Given that last year's leadership election saw boasts ranging from Tories to Socialist Worker Party members that they had participated, a tightening up of the process isn't unexpected to manage an electorate of 600,000.
The problem is that simple rules can make for crude results. This is most obviously seen in soft left floating between the Green Party and the Labour Party as there are natural overlaps in values here. Tweeting support for a Green candidate in a previous election shouldn't automatically result in exclusion. Irony and nuanced opinion can also be crushed under the simplistic application of the rules. I have sympathy for those caught up by such rules who should be welcomed into the party.
I maintain solidarity with party workers who have a thankless task applying the will of the NEC.
While the rules are simplistic, I don't consider the NEC decisions unfair given the task at hand and the undercurrent of nastiness that surrounds the party currently. Learning lessons around making the process fairer to encourage inclusion whilst maintaining the values of the party is something the NEC needs to look at after September.
I don't have much sympathy for Ronnie Draper. It is hard to reconcile Labour values such as solidarity with tweeting about "deselecting traitors".
Solidarity requires the gift of support without expectation of reciprocation as well as recognising common cause. If you tweet about traitors then you're denying both of those attributes. The point of the Labour Party is that it is a broad coalition where people come together under common cause even if they disagree on the methodology to achieve it. Strength comes from being able to vigorously argue opinions without casting aspersions on others motivations.
If you attack MPs or councillors or members for being 'traitors' then what you are saying is that you only offer support if they agree with your opinions - it is entirely conditional. That's not solidarity. That's not the behaviour of a broad coalition. That's not seeking common cause. That's not the behaviour of a social movement.
My question to John McDonnell is how do you expect me to have solidarity with Ronnie Draper when he doesn't have solidarity with others?
The problem with such behaviour is that there is always the next 'traitor' to identify. We see that in the variety of abuse sent on social media whether misogynistic, homophobic, ableist, antisemitic, Islamophobic etc. All these are deemed acceptable if against the 'cause'.
Far from being a social movement, this behaviour will exclude and narrow itself further. If you're queer, disabled, female, Jewish, Muslim, black, foreign then you'll be asking yourself when do I become the traitor if my viewpoint doesn't fit?
The thing with solidarity is that it requires generosity of spirit. Something that appears missing from the current atmosphere. Instead there is a clear disconnect between the words of inclusion and the actions of exclusion that come from the current leadership and its more vocal supporters. Such actions have consequences which includes how rules are applied in leadership elections.
Far from being "double standards" as John McDonnell claims, the #LabourPurge2 is entirely consistent with the lack of generosity that has come with the convenient conditional solidarity that McDonnell and Corbyn offer.
Funny that.
