Osmond Chiu writes: ‘Labor’s branch-stacking scandal has turned attention to the organized ALP factions. While factions are decried as Cold War remnants or as patronage machines, the reality is more complex. ‘ This is a heavily edited reorder of the article.
Read Osmond Chiu’s original full length article: Locking Out the Left: The Emergence of National Factions in Australian Labor – Jacobin Magazine, 27 July 2020
The modern national factional system emerged in the 1980s
The Labor Left is home to a range of worldviews including Keynesian liberalism, militant laborism, Fabian social democracy, New Left social movements, and democratic socialism. The Left sees itself as the conscience of the party, aspiring to lead progressive change from inside the party.
The Right is an alliance of anti-communist social democrats, Catholic and pure-and-simple trade unionists, party officials, and Third Way neoliberals united by a transactional approach governance, aiming to deliver results to their social base. “Whatever it takes.”
Power lies in the state branches. National factions are alliances of these state-based factions.
The emergence of modern factions at a state level
1916 conservative Australian Workers’ Union formed the Industrial Section in NSW.
Frank Bongiorno writes, Labor Lefts “they stretched back to the Australian Socialist League in the 1890s, through the industrial left of the First World War and its aftermath, the Langites and Socialisation Units, and the Hughes-Evans ‘State Labor Party’ with its Communist affiliations.”
Formalized in 1979, the NSW Right (known as Centre Unity) emerged from a grouping of party officers who, since 1939, controlled the branch via an extremely gerrymandered state conference.
1955 – The first of the present factions, the NSW Combined Unions and Branches Steering Committee (later the NSW Socialist Left), formed to support Labor leader H. V. Evatt’s efforts against anti-communist Industrial Groups, it moved leftward as moderate elements were incorporated into the party machine.
1970 – The Victorian Socialist Left formed after the federal intervention dislodged the left and union controlled Central Executive.
1971 Federal intervention into NSW introduced proportional representation, transforming and institutionalizing the Steering Committee as an internal opposition to the NSW Labor Head Office.
I1976 Tasmanian party reform led to Broad Left dominance, leading them to formalize in 1983.
1978 Queensland a broader reform group of the 1970s cohered into a Left around then-senator George Georges.
1982 The ACT Left Caucus was formed after a left-leaning candidate failed to be preselected.
The creation of a national factional system
1950s An informal national left; Paul Strangio says, the “Left [was…] little more than a small enclave in the federal caucus.”
1959 Tom Uren writes there was no organized group of left MPs, “although a loosely knit grouping considered itself of that persuasion, it consisted mostly of anti-Catholics, although some members were militants or socialists.”
Late 1950s–’60s An older, traditional left had a majority on extra-parliamentary bodies, such as the Federal Executive. When the Groupers left to form the Democratic Labor Party it helped keep the Left’s extra-parliamentary majority through the 1960s.
1974 Former parliamentary left convener Ken Fry noted the Left was centered around Tom Uren and Deputy PM Jim Cairns, a leader of the Vietnam Moratorium movement. It did not meet regularly and it responded to events ad hoc.
Late 1970s the Left become the most organized grouping across the labor movement.
1977-79 unsuccessful attempts to corral state anti-Left groups into a national grouping at National Conferences.
1979 The Left held a National Conference majority
Early 1980s Graham Richardson wrote that “the Left was the only national faction.”
1981 Left lost its Conference majority.
1981 ALP National Conference introduced proportional representation into WA and SA. It was feared this would benefit the Left. State machines no longer fully controlled national delegations, making factional representation in other states more important.
1980s Left only held around two-fifths of Conference delegates.
1884 Centre-Left alliance based in the non-factionalized states like SA and WA, an alliance of parliamentary supporters of former leader Bill Hayden and smaller state party officials who feared loss of influence in the move away from equal state representation at National Conferences.
Over two years, the caucus and every state branch became factionalized. Left and state-based anti-left factions then developed national structures, the Right effectively formed as an anti-Left, pro-Hawke coalition.
The Hawke government
Formal factions within Caucus and the creation of separate Inner and Outer Ministries were justified as mechanisms to manage conflicts. The Left was largely locked out of Cabinet.
Though the Left held around a third of the caucus the first Hawke Cabinet included only a single left minister, Stewart West, who resigned over uranium mining. Victorian left-wing MP Brian Howe was excluded and given the position of the most junior minister. Caucus decision-making power was diminished, factions hardened and non-aligned MP numbers declined.
Leaders of the Centre-Left spoke of rejecting “extreme ideological positions” and guaranteeing party “stability.” Lacking a trade union base, support for economic rationalism, Centre-Left figures were instrumental in facilitating the rightward shift, pushed by Paul Keating. This enabled curtailment of the planned social wage-spending associated with the original Statement of Accord, & promoting a neoliberal agenda of deregulation and privatization.
The binding pledge to accept caucus discipline and the combined Centre-Left and Right majority marginalized the Left and did not allow for meaningful dissent. Senator George Georges voted against the Australia Card and resigned before he could be expelled. (Compare to the Socialist Campaign Group in British Labour.)
Left divisions widened the gulf between those incorporated into the Hawke Government and those excluded. Lindsay Tanner described a division between “traditionalists” and “rationalists” that transcended factional boundaries.
1987 The elevation of Brian Howe to the Expenditure Review Committee of Cabinet, symbolized the Left’s incorporation.
The privatization wedge
1986 Hawke Government began agitating for a change in the party’s platform opposing privatisation.
1990 special National Conference changed the party platform to allow privatization (sales of Commonwealth Bank, the airline Qantas, and Telecom.)
The collapse of a number of state-owned banks. Joan Kirner supported the partial privatization of the Commonwealth Bank, which was used to bail out the State Bank of Victoria. Geoffrey Robinson argues this bailout undercut the Left’s opposition to privatization.
1991 The Victorian state Socialist Left split, with one side forming the Pledge faction to oppose privatization. This was followed by a landslide electoral defeat.
1996 the Victorian Socialist Left lost control in 1996 to an alliance between Pledge, another socialist left splinter faction called the Labor Renewal Alliance, and the right-wing Labor Unity faction. The factional fragmentation in Victoria shifting alliances continued.
Mid-1990s, the Left’s incorporation was complete. Caucus elected positions reflected internal factional balance while convention allowed the minority to hold leadership. The significance of uranium mining, defense, and foreign policy issues was lessening.
2004 Right majority ends Centre-Left balance of power in National Conference and National Executive.
Mid-2000s, the Left and the Right were all that remained of the national factional system of the 1980s.
Implications and opportunities
The Hawke-Keating era was federal Labor’s longest period in office. The Left was first locked out of power before being allowed in, only to have their worldview repudiated. It was no longer outside of power but changed by it.
The Left was forced to choose between irrelevance and collaboration. The pledge to not vote against the caucus denied them the option of parliamentary rebellion.
Labor has not returned to its pre-Hawke-Keating economic stance, there has been a gradual shift back towards laborism since the neoliberalism peak in the party.
Any long-term gains require engagement with Labor. Even where the Greens have governed in Tasmania and the ACT, it has been as a junior partner.
The Right’s majority has waned. At the 2015 & 2018 National Conferences, the Right held onto a narrow majority through issue-by-issue deals. There is parity on the party’s national executive.
NSW is the Right’s lynchpin. Change would require a national intervention, and a shift in factional alignments in Victoria and the west.
2014 the Left took control of Queensland with merger of the left-wing United Voice and the traditionally Right-aligned but militant National Union of Workers to form the left-aligned United Workers Union
Loss of a Right majority at the National Conference and on the national executive is the pathway to democratize NSW Labor, a move with far reaching consequences that could trigger a broader realignment within the party.
Related readings
The ALP left faction is just propping up the right – by Harry Stratton, Jacobin, 4 Apr 2021
What are Labors factions & who’s who – by James Massola SMH 14 Feb 2021
Faction composition of Federal ALP Caucus – Feb 2021 [74KB PDF] (table based on Massola SMH 14 Feb 2021)
What should Australia do about its politics being too white? – Osmond Chiu, Pearls and Irritations, 27 Feb 2020
Factions and Fractions: A Case Study of Power Politics in the Australian Labor Party – by Andrew Leigh, Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol 35, No. 3, pp 427-448, 2000 [PDF]
How has ALP factional influence changed since the 1980s? – by Osmond Chiu, Agitate, Educate.Opine, 22 May 2015
What is the factional breakdown at Labor Conferences? – by Osmond Chiu, Agitate, Educate.Opine, 2 Sept 2014
This article has been heavily edited and slightly reordered from the original
Osmond Chiu is a Research Fellow at the Per Capita thinktank and a member of the NSW Labor Policy Forum.
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