• MARTIN Plaut’s long instruction on Labour Party history (The left-right battle in the Labour Party has history, July 29) let the cat out of the bag with his last paragraph: “Given Labour’s history, and the far-left’s determination to ‘capture it’, this is not a battle the [sic] Labour can duck as it reaches out to win the support of the British public.”

While he didn’t answer my question directly as to whether Sir Keir supports the expulsion of socialists, I get the idea that he does endorse the expulsion of what Plaut’s faction see as the wrong kind of socialists.

He cites the tradition of Keir Hardie who “was anything but an ideologue” but then goes on to justify why Labour should “battle” certain groups of socialists.

It is a position that not only goes against Hardie’s politics but also has a tone of proprietorial arrogance about it: it’s our party and you are not welcome.

Hardie who would not have unilaterally decided “what kind of socialism Labour should follow”. He wasn’t an authori­tarian, dictatorial leader.

As a delegate representing over 50,000 Scottish miners, Keir Hardie attended the Marxist International Congress in Paris in 1889. (He became leader of the Independent Labour Party from its creation in 1893.)

He also opposed the First World War on principle: “When every other voice is silent it is necessary that we should make it known that we are opposed to war on principle as well as on the account for which it is being waged.”

The work and activism amongst the working class of Hardie and other socialists – including many Marxists, such as Annie Beasant, Eleanor Marx, Ben Tillet, John Mann, HM Hyndman and John Burns – helped trade union membership increase from one million five hundred thousand to over two million in the last decade of the 19th century.

Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, following in this tradition of unity, revived the party’s mass appeal with membership growing to over half a million, debts paid and money in the bank.

Under Sir Keir, despite his statement of April 2020 that “our party needs to unite and … turn our back on factionalism” (The London Economic, April 5, 2020) the party is losing local and by-elections, members at 250 a day and the support of trade unions such as the GMB which has cut funding to 108 MPs.

I’ve no doubt that Martin Plaut is an asset to the Labour Party, Sir Keir and the institutions that support the current direction of the party. However, the “British public” have shown they do not support this factionalist, narrow reconstruction that offers very little to working-class people.

While Sir Keir failed to commit to a pay rise of more than 2.1 per cent for NHS workers (a real-term cut given inflation) the Conservatives trumped him and eventually offered 3 per cent. Many Labour members and supporters felt they should receive 15 per cent.

No wonder lifelong socialists and activists are leaving the party in droves.

PHIL VASILI
Lissenden Garden, NW5