Left Horizons are sharing this recent article (14th August) from the socialist website “The Struggle” as we believe it makes some very valuable points about the future of the Labour Party in the context of the recent upsurge in trade union and other workers’ action to defend their standards of living. We also generally agree with their perspectives for the future and the conclusions they draw from those. We publish it here as a contribution to this vital discussion of the way forward for socialists in the movement.
The article was originally published under the title “The Struggle Against Labouring in Vain” by Rhys Jameson which can be seen here.
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It is proving to be a hot summer of strikes as workers desperately attempt to keep pace with escalating inflation. While numerous trade unions ballot its members for action, the leadership of the Labour Party after initially standing aside from the RMT dispute, claiming that a serious party of government doesn’t join picket lines, faced uproar in its ranks after sacking the shadow secretary for transport Sam Tarry, who did. How have we arrived at a situation where the Labour Party is seemingly distancing itself from the actions of organised labour? What does this mean for the trade union movement and how workers protect themselves from exploitative employers? We look at what effects these strikes and the ongoing cost of living crisis will have on the internal life of the Labour Party and its electoral prospects.
A small child will pray to Jesus for a bike, but no matter how hard they pray Jesus will never send them a bike and so they grow disillusioned with Jesus. Eventually, they will realise that what they need to do was to just take a bike and pray to Jesus for forgiveness instead. The Labour Party, it transpires, is a bit like that too. You implore them for seven years for a £10 per hour minimum wage, and it never happens. So, eventually, you have to threaten to strike – or actually go on strike – to get a decent pay raise, but when you win it they will forgive you. Currently the working class is learning that lesson.
The TUC cost of living demonstration held on18th June and the RMT series of rolling one day strikes that began on the Tuesday immediately after have reignited the smouldering embers of discontent at the rapidly deteriorating living standards of working class people, and changed the focus of working-class resistance from the political front in the ranks of the labour party to the industrial axis. There, with or without unions, workers are now confronting their employers in growing numbers. Many important and sizable actions are going on right now but many, many more unions are balloting for industrial action with little doubt as to the nature of the result, the sole question being merely the size of the majority for strike action.
Decades ago, when capitalism was growing and profits were high, optimism for the future was the common attitude among the strategists of capitalism and the right wing, who believed they had a historical mission. They had great thinkers, charismatic orators and engaging writers who between them articulated the aspirations of large sections of the working class. The outlook was that as capitalism grew it would be able to grant further concessions to the working class and bit by bit improve the lives and opportunities for all based on setting aside small amounts of the vast profits created by the workers. This promise of reform helped too in creating a large degree of social peace, with the reforms that had already been granted – such as the NHS – taking much of the sting out of the exploitation of capitalism, and the promise of further reforms blunting the cutting edge of class antagonisms.
The breadline or the picket line
Now capitalism is staggering from one economic crisis to another and buckling under the pressures these crises are creating. Reforms, be they better standards of living for the working class or more robust action to prevent global warming are viewed with horror by the capitalists as they seek to squeeze ever greater amounts of value from workers and cut corners on production. Increasingly it is becoming an either-or choice; either we can have capitalism or a habitable planet, but we can’t have both. Equally workers now have a straightforward choice as to which line they choose, the breadline or the picket line.
It is now seven years since Corbyn was swept into the leadership of the Labour Party. At the time you could almost have forgiven the right wing for being taken by surprise, cocooned as they were in the Westminster bubble. So far removed are they from the lifestyles, the pressures and concerns affecting the working class that at election times or other occasions when they deign to walk among us they’re about as incongruous as Sleaford Mods performing “Jobseeker” at ‘The Last Night Of The Proms’. But seven years is a very long time to be in denial. They should really have woken up and smelled the coffee by now and realised that some significant policy changes were needed to alleviate the suffering being inflicted on ordinary people by the crisis of capitalism. Surely, but no. They continue to cling to the wreckage of neoliberalism that struck an iceberg in the credit crunch of 2008 and still to this day they continue to show more faith in the capitalist market to solve the problems caused by…well, the capitalist market, than all the saints in heaven ever showed in their lord and saviour.
Between 2015 and 2020, when the conflict between the elected leadership of Corbyn, and the right wing in the PLP and in Labour HQ was raging at its peak, the affiliated trade unions did their best to stay out of it. They limited themselves to restraining the left to preserve the status quo, which helped the right-wing enormously. This was the best option for the trade union’s leading layers, enabling them to face both ways in that conflict and prevented that left /right dispute from spilling over into the unions and threatening their own positions. It also aided them in damping down any moves by the workers to take matters into their own hands on the industrial front. The constant refrain of ” be patient and wait for a Corbyn-led Labour government” was also supplemented with mock concern that any direct action would only serve to undermine Corbyn and the left in the labour party, when in fact industrial action would have enormously strengthened the hand the left held in the party. The people who the trade union leaders feared would have been undermined by industrial action were of course themselves.
Now with the right wing back in charge of the labour party it is their turn to return the favour The trade union leaders were no doubt expecting from the shadow cabinet was some kind of vague gesture of solidarity, coupled with mild platitudes expressing the sentiment that the worker’s case will be looked on sympathetically when Labour is in power. Instead they got callous hostility to workers whose living standards are being rapidly eroded whilst profits soar.
That the leadership of the Labour Party openly came out against strikes and forbidding shadow cabinet members to show even basic solidarity with the working class in a struggle by appearing on picket lines was too much even for many members of the shadow cabinet. That stance especially the sacking of Sam Tarry, shadow Transport secretary, spectacularly backfired on them and they had to beat a hasty retreat after they briefly united large sections of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), the Trade Unions and the travelling public against themselves.
PLP Grudging support for workers’ struggles
The PLP has always needed to be dragged into adopting even the most grudging support for any workers’ struggles, so it is no real surprise that they are less than enthusiastic about any struggle being waged against austerity or the cost-of-living crisis. A sober analysis of the party’s actual role in the past struggles shows that the Labour party leadership never supported the great miners’ strike of 1984/5 or the general strike of 1926. In fact, despite the pictures circulating on social media of Shirley Williams and other luminaries of the ghost of right-wing past, there never was a ‘golden age’ when Labour didn’t fall well short of the aspirations of the working class.
The right wing currently has nothing of substance to offer the working class. The best they can do is empty, meaningless rhetoric and a parliamentary leapfrog. They have reneged on policies to renationalise rail and the utilities right at the exact moment when it was obvious to every right-thinking person that the only way to put a stop to the runaway profiteering of privatised rail and utility companies was precisely to renationalise them.
Despite their great devotion to capitalism, the right wing has nothing to offer the capitalists either, certainly nothing the capitalists cannot currently get in spades from the Tory government. It is not the sincerity of the prayers of the faithful that moves the capitalists, it’s the amount of money on the offering plate that is decisive. Unlike Blair and Brown, who pre-1997 had on offer PFI (a sort of payday loan programme to pay for new schools and hospitals, with rich dividends for the lenders) cutting the red tape from financial markets (allowing all sorts of sharp financial practices in the stock market that would usually be regarded as fraud) and demonetising Britain’s gold reserves (selling it off cheap to brokers at a city of London car boot sale). However, after twelve years of Tory austerity for the poor and handouts for the rich everything of value has already been looted and no one in their right mind will grant Britain any more easy credit. If this were fiction rather than fact Britain has now almost reached the stage of the Bamboo Lounge in “Goodfellas”; the money has been laundered, the protection rackets paid off, the stolen goods moved through one door and immediately out the other, and the debts racked up with suppliers. No more can be stolen and the only remaining option is to burn it down for the insurance money.
The right-wing in Labour are currently loyally grouped around the leader Starmer in much the same manner that their opposite numbers on the conservative benches were formally loyally grouped around Johnson. Both saved their MPs from Corbyn but perhaps Starmer should not expect to dine out forever on the back of that salvation. As the example of Johnson shows, gratitude has a shelf life that is shortened considerably if the recipient then puts those politicians in fear of losing their cushy berth. Since Gordon Brown had the less than brilliant idea to cover the losses made by the bankers in 2008 and then gave all of our money to speculators so they could continue gambling, the right wing has not put forward one single suggestion to solve the principal problem in society, restoring growth. This makes the right-wing a doomed group because they have nothing to offer society at large, they have no way to end the ferment in society, restore growth in the economy, or show a way out from the morass that British capitalism post-Brexit and Covid finds itself in.
Weakness and fear – not strength and confidence
Even they know it, and that is precisely why they are resorting to expulsions in the party. It is a sign of weakness and fear, not strength and confidence, to silence your opponents by administrative decree rather than answering them in debate. If they believed that they had a mission or a real purpose, if their neoliberal politics were anything other than a thin veil for their own careers and pockets, then they would be able to stand up and defend their ideas. Why else would they have dressed themselves up in the garb of “Corbynism without Corbyn” if not in order to get elected to the leadership of the Labour Party? They had no intention of carrying out Corbynism even under Corbyn so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that they have now jettisoned all the 10 pledges of Corbynism after managing to get rid of the man himself. But here is the rub, they have no policies of their own to replace those of Corbyn. Like Mister Micawber they hope that in the fullness of time “something will turn up” but until then say your prayers and “Nil Desperandum”.
All of this said, the Labour Party remains the principal arena of working-class political activity, the single most important place where any working person can go and take part in politics on a local and national scale. If socialists are not present in the local parties then the role that we would have played explaining the meaning of events and articulating the mood of dissatisfaction of the working class will be eagerly seized by those members who echo the right wing at the local level, the same people who are now often reduced to a clique around councillors. They argue the toss about the personal merits and the ‘talent’ of the right-wing MP, work to set the tone of meetings, pick off ones and twos who might speak out, and their effect is to move the party further to the right.
The right wing has managed to defy gravity for a long time. This was possible mostly because of wealthy donors who bankrolled their campaign against the left in the party. Now, against all expectations, they have regained the leadership of the party and they seem to have no idea what to do. There is of course a good reason for that: they don’t. This has lead to poor results at national council elections and by-elections, and woeful media appearances – including the quite incredible scene of Starmer cowering behind his security as comrade Audrey White, the woman who started the fight against sexual harassment at work, called him out on his betrayal of the city of Liverpool by writing for ‘The S*n’ newspaper.
These shortcomings of the right wing have all been studiously ignored for the moment by the media who fear drawing attention to the rights failings will give encouragement to the left to stage a resurrection. The right wing, lacking any means of taking society forward, have no means of winning people over to their stance, of gaining new recruits, of inspiring support or of conquering new points of support. This means that they are confined to those people who have a vested interest in maintaining the current status quo, which is largely themselves, and for that very reason they are stagnating. They are so bereft of ideas that even those who they expel from the party receive no reason as to their expulsion, thus fuelling even greater anger at these injustices in the ranks of the labour movement. There was a time when to have been expelled from the Labour Party was a badge of shame, those who were expelled having been found after a fair hearing to have committed some nefarious act that brought the labour movement into disrepute.
Now to have been expelled is a badge of honour meaning that the recipient of that expulsion is a hard-working, honest socialist who, no matter how seemingly unlikely, represents a real threat to the positions and consequent incomes of the ruling right wing. The right wing have built their position on sand, holding on to control of the administration which then in turn controls the selection of MPs and councillors, either by tilting the table at the selection process or direct imposition of its own candidates. They have over the last few years reinforced that position with yet more sand. Their little sand bunker is susceptible to movement, and the rights wing’s fortress in the party’s administration will be subject to massive subsidence as the working class moves against capitalism. Picking off activists in ones and twos will not prevent this.
Experience of triumph and disaster
The ongoing crisis of capitalism and the class struggle that follows from this is exposing the right-wing to a level of scrutiny they never faced when they were an opposition in the PLP sabotaging Corbyn’s leadership. The key gain from the last seven years for socialists has been the emergence of an involved mass membership in the party that has experienced, first-hand, triumph and disaster. Those experiences will serve them well in the coming period. The right-wing have no solutions to the plight that is facing working people; in fact they seem to have no idea that the working class face such difficulties, focussed as they are on their own income and prestige. Their role in undermining the Corbyn project, the stifling of the membership and the sabotage of two elections has been laid bare to all who have seen and experienced it for themselves. Try as they might to fortify their beleaguered position in the party, they know that they are outnumbered and that that time is not on their side.
There is no lead for Labour in the polls, despite the Tories being deeply unpopular but that feeling is still not translating into support for Labour. There are at least three possible outcomes for Labour in the next General Election, all of these outcomes represent real future problems for the leadership of the Labour Party. Firstly, in the unlikely event that Labour loses even more seats and votes there is likely to be furore in the Party of the sort that was seen in 2015 after the election defeat. Secondly Labour gains seats but not enough to win, this is probably the best outcome as far as the leadership is concerned as it will strengthen its hand inside the party but not put them in state power with all the responsibilities that come with that, there would also be a challenge to the leadership from within the right wing. Thirdly winning power, this would put them in the most difficulties of all the options, after a honeymoon period they would be under enormous pressure to ameliorate the endless problems that working class people face that are insoluble under capitalism, there will be an great level of expectation on them that they will clearly not be able to live up to which will ignite further struggles with the left.
We face the prospect of an election in Britain, most likely in late 2023 or early 2024. The Tories will wait until after the boundary changes increase their chances and then act as early as possible to take advantage of their latest “I am not Boris” leader’s honeymoon period. This is at a time when the crisis in Britain is of such a magnitude that there cannot be one person in this country who is not affected by it and desperately desires someone, anyone, to come forward and solve it. This is where we are with the Labour Party that seemingly lacks drive and determination to oust the Tories who are clearly on the ropes. Here we are a year or eighteen months away from a general election and despite the level of ferment in society we socialists still have to be concerned that there is no widespread feeling that Labour could easily win a general election if it were held tomorrow. This is where the right wing leading the Labour Party has brought us. We face that general election with possibly the most woefully inept leadership that Labour has ever possessed who are seemingly content to just stand aside and offer no robust opposition so that the Tory government can carry on with more of the same policies that have brought this level of suffering to working people. This needs to change, Labour can only win a decisive majority by returning to socialist policies.
