Jeremy Corbyn and deputy leader Tom Watson. Photo: Gareth Fuller / PA Wire/Press Association Images. All rights reservedThe highly entertaining Labour leadership contest has taken a bizarre turn, with the party’s deputy leader Tom Watson claiming to have evidence of “Trostkyist” infiltration into the Labour party and leader Jeremy Corbyn accusing Watson of talking “nonsense”. The reality is that they are both talking nonsense: of course there are “Trotskyists” in the Labour party (and former Communists, anarchists, Liberals, Greens and even Tories – both signed-up members and ideological sympathisers, such as Tony Blair). But it’s also nonsense for Watson to claim that among the thousands of new Labour party members who joined to support Corbyn, there are caucuses and factions that will “end up destroying the institutions that are vulnerable, unless you deal with it.”
Watson appears to be ignoring the history of the Labour party, which was created (rather than destroyed) when several progressive groups, including the Independent Labour party, the intellectual and largely middle-class Fabian Society, the Social Democratic Federation and the Scottish Labour party, came together in the late nineteenth century. Their aim was to provide political representation to the growing urban proletariat and working class males, who had recently been given the right to vote.
However, even in those early days the more radical elements within Labour gave the leadership grief. During the First World War, mainstream Labour supported Herbert Asquith’s Liberal-led war-time coalition government, whereas the Independent Labour party was instrumental in opposing conscription through organisations such as the Non-Conscription Fellowship, while a Labour party affiliate, the British Socialist Party, organised a number of unofficial strikes.
