An interview with John McDonnell at Dagenham about his campaign for the Labour Party leadership so far

First - the good news, John McDonnell says. The good news from the six months he has spent on the campaign trail through the grassroots is the enthusiasm that people are showing for socialist (let's call them non-Blairite) ideas, and the fact that they're turning out in large numbers to hear them. There was a full house here at the Barking and Dagenham Civic Centre tonight, where McDonnell talked to a GMB branch meeting about the Public Not Private campaign and the million different ways that the private sector is cheerfully ripping off the NHS, local government and any mode of public transport you care to name. 'That enthusiasm is definitely a high,' McDonnell says. 'We have a large coalition of people who are getting organised [at ground and shop level around the campaign].'

The bad news, he says, is the dire state of the Labour Party membership: this might still finish all of them. 'Everybody in the Labour Party is in a state of anxiety about the membership,' McDonnell says. He does look concerned, too, as anybody who a) feels the Labour Party should have a future and b) may shortly be trying to solicit leadership votes from the Party's fast-disappearing members might.

Six months of public meetings and question-and-answer sessions with thousands of everyday punters across the UK has thrown the Party's membership problem into sharper focus than McDonnell wanted, or, apparently, expected. He knew, but now he's having his nose rubbed in it. 'I'm realising how little of the Labour Party is out there. There's almost none of them out there. I'm not joking, you know.' He throws his hands up. 'I'm serious. Half of them have left! '

The party's finances are, likewise, in an appalling state. There are those who say the Party couldn't afford to hold an election. McDonnell is one of them. 'It's much worse than [whatever the Party is saying],' he says. 'Whatever they're saying, it's much, much worse than that. The party is laying off thousands of staff across the country. We know it's much worse than that.'

McDonnell's getting a few heavy hints about the extent of the problem himself. He says that he's been invited round to the Chief Whip's next week to talk about a new initiative which involves leadership candidates such as McDonnell giving 15% of any campaign funds they raise to the party, so that it can afford to run the leadership race. 'Can they do that?' he laughs. 'I don't know - can they do that?' He says he doesn't really care at the moment. 'Even if we have to, we'll still be in credit.' He laughs again.

There is something uneviable in all of this - even disloyal, as some people have said at these meetings - telling people that the Party is an economic and orgnisational shambles, in the hope that they'll see the point of rescuing it by joining it - or rejoining it - and voting for what McDonnell describes as his 'radical new direction.' Other meeting attendees couldn't care less. They say the Blairites are the ones who've sold the Party out, along with the needs of its core membership. They say McDonnell can put the boot into his Party's leadership all he likes.

Certainly, that's the main message that's coming from the floor at these public meetings - 'like probably everybody in this room, I left school when I was 15 and I've worked and worked and worked all my life and now they're are going to take away my pension,' a furious GMB member called Alex Hayworth spat at this evening's event, to considerable applause. McDonnell agreed and said there would be plenty for pensions if 'we lifted the top on National Insurance,' so that the very wealthy paid more tax, and if big business found tax avoidance less easy. He also mentioned the small matter of the obscenely big bonuses paid to City worthies. It's not about generating wealth, McDonnell said. It's about the distribution of wealth. A Labour government is supposed to be about the fair distribution of wealth.

This line of tax-the-rich chat may irritate the hell out of anybody who considers themselves a rational, we-can't-hate-big-business being, but it's going down very, very well at these public meetings, and McDonnell sounds as rational and as reasonable as Blair when he deliver it. People know inequality when they see it. They know it especially when they're on the rotten end of it. It is clear that attendees at these meetings don't see increasing higher-end tax as a regressive step back to Old Labour. They see it as a vital part of shaping the future - as the most logical and reasonable way forward for the less well-off.

At the very least, anybody who has attended these meetings and talked to union and Labour Party (or ex-Labour Party) members knows that McDonnell is right when he says that the Labour Party and its MPs 'will be forced to have a debate [about its shape and future] whether it wants to, or not. They can't ignore the momentum of this [McDonnell leadership] campaign. They're not going to be able to wait [to show their hands] until Blair declares [when he's going to leave]. They're getting that pressure already from their constituencies.'

That is all he will say about the support he has at the moment, in Parliament and otherwise. He won't give numbers. He won't say if his numbers are good, or bad.

He'll talk about Iraq a bit. He won't be drawn on the apparent collapse of the rebel vote on the recent Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru motion for an inquiry into the Iraq War: he prefers to focus, as he probably would, on the 100 MP signatures that appeared this week on the rebel amendment at the end of the Queen's speech. The amendment called for the government to review Iraq policy and to present its Iraq strategy to the Commons for examination. Unfortunately, MPs weren't given a chance to vote on it.

McDonnell says his own strategy for withdrawl from Iraq is taking shape as we speak, in the form of an early-day motion that he is putting together with Jeremy Corbyn. He says an immediate withdrawal doesn't necessarily mean a total withdrawal of Britain: he seems to be saying that some acknowledgement needs to be made of the mess the UK has made there.

'We could have mediators, and human rights advisors, people supporting a civil society. We'd give trade union assistance - a lot of work is already being done to strengthen links between their trade unions and ours. We need people on the ground, to make sure that their oil isn't ripped off anymore. We couldn't be there even as peacekeepers. We can't be there in a military role. We have no credibility. Nobody would tolerate us in that role.'

And of Tony Blair? How crazy is he, exactly? How did he get Labour here? 'I'd say he's a brilliant, whatdoyoucallit, method actor. I don't know him very well. He doesn't strike me as particularly charismatic. He's just a great method actor. How much of it he believes, I don't know.'

Tonight, anyway, McDonnell credits Peter Mandelson with the shambles that is the Party's membership. 'The Mandelson line was build a party around more of a Republican party format, [where you] have the party machine, but fewer of the supporters. The theory was that the party could get away with that, not focusing on the electorate, but having the machine.'

27 November, 2006

photos etc  http://www.hangbitch.com. Sorry, coudn't work out how to upload them.