I understand Corbynmania because I was, for a while, a Corbynista, although, in 1981, we called ourselves Bennites. Young and politically naïve, brought up by centre-left parents, I could see the Tories had their tails up, Labour seemed to have lost its way with the old guard running the party. The hard-left seemed so refreshing. Sound familiar?
When Tony Benn announced his candidacy for deputy leader in 1981 I resolved if he won I would join Labour. He lost but I joined anyway: Norwich South CLP and the National Organisation of Labour Students. Wiser souls told me a left-led Labour party could never win. I was as dismissive of them then as I, in my turn, am dismissed by Momentum activists now.
At the October 1981 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament rally in Hyde Park, I literally jumped for joy, whistling and applauding Benn’s inspirational speech. During the 1983 general election, I leafleted the Bowthorpe estate three times with my mates Mark and Mel and did a 12-hour shift knocking up on polling day.
During Michael Foot’s campaign visit to Norwich local students members accompanied him in a walkabout through the city to St Andrew’s Hall. He was introduced as ‘our next prime minister’ to a rally so large it would have been the envy of Labour’s current leader. We cheered and clapped when, by arrangement, the yellow t-shirted People’s March for Jobs filed in at the back. I truly believed that the country had changed and in a few days would kick out the hated Margaret Thatcher and save us all. Everyone believed it, or said they did.
Political education can take many years; instant revelation is rare in politics. I did not really notice my views were changing. A few years later I realised the first sign had been that polling day when a Labour party member with a dog on a lead chased me out of his garden shouting obscenities at me.
Since 1906 at least one of Norwich’s two parliamentary seats had been Labour. The local party had been the first to employ a full-time agent and was renown for campaigning, but there were too many ‘I’ll read the leaflets’, and ‘I haven’t made my mind up yet’ replies than could be squared with that proud history. Being frank, I was too inexperienced then to understand I was being lied to.
When the polls closed we downed pints of Adnams in the biggest Labour club in the country, and the results started to come in. There was genuine shock when Norwich lost both its Labour MPs. At around 5am, I stumbled back to the university as the sobering realisation dawned that we faced many more years of Thatcher.
Today, too many people say hundreds of thousands of left-leaning people having ‘joined’ the Labour party demonstrates the country has changed. They dismiss those who think a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour party is unelectable as failing to understand the phenomenon. This is not the 1980s, they say, the world has changed. Well, it has changed, but not in the way they think.
I witness Labour’s daily humiliations in print, broadcast and social media; it still shocks me. Unprecedentedly, over 80 per cent of Labour MPs have no confidence in Labour’s leader. The front bench has many more vacancies than filled posts. Things have become so bad that a few decent Tories have stopped laughing at us long enough to point out that a healthy democracy requires a functioning opposition to scrutinise the government.
Parliamentary activity is to be subjugated to a new ‘social movement’ of rallies and meetings in alliance with Labour’s opponents. Ask them to join you on doorsteps meeting some of the 99.33 per cent of the electorate that did not vote for Corbyn last year and you will be told you are a Tory and to leave the Labour Party, often by people who stood for, or supported, TUSC or the Greens in 2015.
All is not lost though. Many 2015 Corbyn voters are disillusioned, expressing buyer’s regret. Well-known left figures like Chris Mullin and Danny Blanchflower have jumped ship. Even Owen Jones is asking difficult questions of Corbyn supporters.
Those who care about the Labour party and the good it has done for millions of people here and abroad are not going to walk away like in the 1980s. They will work tirelessly to remind members in every branch in every constituency until a working majority of the membership knows that in our 116 year history Labour has only won five working majorities ever: 1945, 1966, 1997, 2001, 2005. They do not need to know those dates, nor know the names of the Labour leader-turned-prime ministers who won them but they should know why we won them. It had nothing to do with attendance at rallies. That much hasn’t changed.
————————————
Ian McKenzie is Secretary of Lewisham East CLP and a former Special Adviser to Ann Taylor and John Prescott. He tweets at @iMcKenzied
————————————