Tom Watson’s portrayal of Momentum (Trotskyist infiltration putting Labour at risk, 10 August) bears no resemblance to my experience of Momentum in Bristol. Meetings are large (200-300 people) and consist of a diverse group working respectfully together to reach out and build a bigger, stronger, anti-austerity party. Participants of all ages include new and longstanding members; long-term activists who are considering joining Labour for the first time; and people previously disaffected with politics. I am myself a lifelong activist who has never before found a party that I could support.
This blossoming of political involvement is mirrored in our Bristol West constituency party. At this week’s nomination meeting, about 400 members shared a range of opinions about the two leadership candidates. It was democratic, interesting, lively and inclusive, resulting in an overwhelming vote of support for Jeremy Corbyn. Momentum plays an important role in building Labour, and Tom Watson’s plans to destroy the new democratic structures of the party would be disastrous and are totally unnecessary.
Charlotte Paterson
Bristol
• Tom Watson is quite right, Trotskyite entryism always ends in disaster with the institutions they swamp being destroyed. In the 1960s, at the end of 13 years of Tory rule, the Young Socialists were a vibrant and highly active part of Labour throughout the UK. In Glasgow, every one of the 15 constituencies had a vigorous YS branch. We met regularly to listen to guest speakers and discuss politics;, on Sunday evenings we took our message to large crowds with a regular open-air meeting on the corner of Sauchiehall Street; we had an annual debating contest between YS branches (our speaker Paul Foot came second to a shop steward in the Rolls-Royce aero engine factory); we went to the theatre; we danced and sang.
By the end of the decade it was all gone. Out of the insular bubble of London Trotskyist politics a series of groupings eyed the YS and its easy avenue into the party. First, they sent new members, who then sought office and began inviting “star” speakers like Ted Grant, Gerry Healey and Ted Knight. Next came the internecine battles between themselves and with the original YS members. We fought our corner – but it took a toll and with the inevitable Transport House purge of the “militants” went the YS. It took decades for Labour to risk sanctioning another youth wing.
Alasdair Buchan
Brighton
• Greetings, comrades, from the soviet of South Cambridgeshire, where there have been recent surges in membership in the hard-left villages of Orwell, Barrington and Shelford, and entryist hordes rampage through the lanes of Cottenham and Girton. Our membership has indeed nearly quadrupled since the 2015 general election. Many of these new members were attracted to the party by Jeremy Corbyn. We supported his nomination in the leadership challenge. We are united by a desire for a fairer and more just society, but also by a frustration at what is happening to our party in Westminster. There is a diversity of views as to how this can be resolved. When we are allowed to meet again as a constituency party there will be a healthy debate over the party’s future. No bullying, no victimisation. Just a joint resolve to fight Tory austerity.
John Beresford
Chair, South Cambridgeshire constituency Labour party
• It would be of great assistance to rank and file members if the NEC could issue “Spot the Trot” guidance. As we assemble in our increasingly crowded local meetings attended by apparently ordinary people, what should we be looking for? Do these infiltrators rant and rave or sit in sinister silence, have bushy moustaches or straggly beards? Should we be suspicious if they seem overly enthusiastic about the return to socialist policies advocated by Jeremy Corbyn? If these are the criteria, they probably apply to the vast majority of the membership. It certainly applies to me, though not the beard and moustache.
Karen Barratt
Winchester
• Tom Watson appears to be unaware of the thousands who have joined (not “entered”), or re-joined, the Labour party, because they want to be part of a movement against austerity; against further privatisation of public services; that supports a foreign policy that is against western domination and especially is against the replacement of Trident. My local branch (and there must be hundreds similar), which was virtually moribund, has been revived with the joiners and is certainly not been manipulated.
Rae Street
Littleborough, Lancashire
• I was privileged to sit in parliament for two years with Michael Foot. His commitment to socialism was faultless, he was a tremendous intellectual and one of the finest orators of the 20th century, but nevertheless he was not prime minister material and the public made their judgment quite early in his leadership. The internal self-indulgences of the early 1980s granted 18 years of Conservative government with three recessions, record unemployment, child poverty and homelessness. Those with the power and influence to prevent a repeat should look to their consciences.
Terry Rooney
Labour MP, 1990-2010 Bradford North
• Curious that accusations of entryism are always aimed at the left, considering that the most pervasive episode of entryism in Labour’s recent history was the incursion of the Mandelson tendency in the 80s and 90s. Hundreds of middle-class political careerists supplanted working class MPs after finishing school. This spawned the neoliberal/New Labour aberration that bankrupted the party financially, politically and spiritually. I left the party in 1996 for the Greens with thousands of others when it became only too apparent how authoritarian, intolerant and controlling the Blairites were inclined to be.
Alan Marsden
Penrith, Cumbria
• The leadership election brought a glimmer of hope that there might be an opposition again, after years of a politics in thrall to “there is no alternative”. The job seemed plain: get the alternative worked out, ready for the next election. But no, it seemed a good time to fall apart instead. An alternative to the Thatcherite “settlement” isn’t “Trotskyist”; it’s simply human.
David Gibbs
Alfreton, Derbyshire
• One of your correspondents (Letters, 8 August) makes the oft-repeated claim that Corbyn can’t win voters over. Actually, that’s his job, my job and every Labour member’s job. Corbyn doesn’t know your relatives, friends, neighbours, workmates. You do. Talk politics to them.
Eddie McDonnell
Manchester
• It is hardly surprising that Tom Watson “yearns for … a leader chosen by the old electoral college that existed after 1981” (Editorial, 9 August). If that system were adopted today, the vote of one Labour MP would equate to the votes of approximately 2,500 individual party members. I have been a “well-meaning leftwing member” of the Labour party for almost 40 years and can categorically state that no “entryist” has ever tried to take advantage of me.
Paul Hewitson
Berlin, Germany
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