As reported in today's Guardian, the latest sectarian ruptions in the Labour Party have being triggered by an attempt to ban neo-liberal group Progress, made up of those associated with Blairite thinking in the party.
The Labour Party has always been a broad church, it is only by being a broad church that you can build a large enough member base to be able to campaign effectively to win elections. Labour are not alone, the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Greens all have groups within their parties campaigning for their party to take a particular direction.
Progress is not the only group or policy forum in Labour, there are others such as the Labour Representation Committee, Labour Left of which I am member, Blue Labour and until recently Compass was a pressure group of Labour members, and I'm sure there are other policy groupings I've failed to mention.
If we try and enforce one view within the party you will end up causing the sort of splits we saw in the 80s which created the 'Gang of four' who left to create the Social Democratic Party or the banning of Militant Tendency which resulted in members leaving to create Militant Labour and eventually the Socialist Party.
Let us not fall down the Life of Brian route and cause splits within the party encouraging members to leave and campaign elsewhere. We see that with the parties to the left of Labour who continually split into smaller and smaller factions incapable of affecting any real change. Let us have sensible debates about policy and not force our opinions on others through censorship.
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