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The coronation of Gordon Brown
The long wait is nearly over. Tony Blair is
leaving and it will be good to see him go. Any sense of jubilation,
however, is tempered by the fact that his successor, Gordon Brown, will
continue with his basic programme: public services will be cut,
anti-union laws will stay, and inequality will increase. PETER TAAFFE
writes on the significance of the transition.
THE DEPARTURE OF Tony Blair after ten years in power
is an important turning point in political developments in Britain. His
replacement, Gordon Brown, represents a continuation of the ‘ancien
regime’, the substitution of ‘New Labour’ by ‘New, New Labour’! But it
also represents a psychological break in a changed British and world
situation. Shakespeare’s Malcolm declared of the Thane of Cawdor in
Macbeth: "Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it".
Blair’s political death, however, will not enhance
his reputation. The manner of his exit, after remaining in the political
departure lounge for a seemingly interminable period, summed up his
disastrous reign, certainly for the labour movement. Rather than the
‘crowd asking for more’, suggested by his small coterie, he has been met
with derision, catcalls and boos from almost all sides. The
‘uberBlairites’ are correct when they claim that he was forced out by
the Brown-inspired ‘coup’ before the last Labour Party conference.
Blair’s government, which began to the strains of
Things Can Only Get Better, ended with a mere 22% of the population
believing he had done a ‘good job’. Five million voters have deserted
Labour since 1997. Even the so-called Blair landslide of 1997 was
achieved by New Labour polling just 30.8% of the electorate (13.5
million). This has progressively shrunk in subsequent general elections
to 24.2% in 2001 (10.7 million) and 21.6% (9.6 million) in 2005. Labour
Party membership in this period has officially dropped by 50%, an
underestimate of those who have deserted its ranks. The number of
ex-Labour members is now greater than the official party membership!
If there was any lingering doubt as to the massive
unpopularity of Blair and Blairism, that was dispelled by the results of
the Scottish, Welsh and local elections in May. These were, in effect, a
referendum on him and his policies: the disastrous Iraq war, a more
zealous privatisation programme than the Tories, the failure of more
‘market-driven’ policies in the NHS, and an incapacity to tackle the
searing poverty and inequality which scars Britain, part of Thatcher’s
legacy.
The local elections were a chance to punish Labour
for its failures, resulting in the lowest Labour vote in Wales since
1918, and in Scotland the lowest since 1955. In parts of the South,
Labour was virtually wiped out in local government, in the same way as
the Tories are in swathes of the North such as Liverpool, Manchester and
Newcastle, where they do not have a single councillor. Labour lost 500
council seats in total, the Tories gained over 900. There would have
been an even greater collapse in the Labour vote but for the fear of a
Tory revival. Where that prospect was a ‘safe alternative’ – in Scotland
and Wales for instance – voters felt free to punish Labour with a vote
for the nationalists – the Scottish National Party (SNP), or Plaid Cymru
in Wales.
The lesser evil?
THE POLITICS OF ‘lesser evilism’ manifested itself
in this election, which may be a portent for the next general election.
In fact, there was an element in these elections of what has been seen
recently in Europe and the USA. Galvanised by the threat of brutal, open
right-wing capitalist parties holding on to or with the prospect of
coming to power – Berlusconi in Italy, Sarkozy in France, Bush in the US
mid-term elections – an electoral, distorted class polarisation
resulted. This has led to increased turnouts, sometimes significantly
so, as in the case of Italy and France which witnessed the biggest
percentage turnout since 1981. Voters are ‘against’ candidates; there is
little positive support and enthusiasm for the policies of the
‘progressive’ or ‘social-democratic’ opposition, or expectation of
decisive change by the working class and sections of the middle class.
Nevertheless, they hope against hope that the
so-called ‘centre-left’ will not go as far as the openly right-wing
parties in attacking living standards and carrying through neo-liberal
policies. They are, however, invariably and cruelly disappointed, as in
the case with the present Prodi coalition in Italy.
The same phenomenon will also be revealed in the
aftermath of the next presidential elections in the US if the Democrats
are returned. These parties are basically similar to the ‘liberal’
progressive parties which existed in Britain, for instance, before the
rise of the Labour Party as a distinct workers’ party. Moreover, some of
them, also like the capitalist liberal parties of the past, retain an
element of ‘social democracy’, or the illusion that they do. This leads
to the masses, who do not consider entering them, voting for them as the
‘lesser evil’, unless there is a viable alternative.
In Britain, this was manifested in these elections
particularly where the Liberal Democrats or Tories, as well as
coalitions of these parties, have presided over local cuts sanctified by
the New Labour government itself. Faced with no real mass left
alternative, some workers opted to support New Labour candidates in the
vain hope that this will prevent the slash-and-burn policies, the
destruction of the elements of the welfare state which still remain at
local level.
All Thatcherites now
BLAIR’S ‘EMINENCE GRIS’, Peter Mandelson, declared
on the departure of his hero that under Blair’s direction Labour had
become a "normal social-democratic party" on the pattern of the rest of
Europe. Nothing could be further from the truth. In words and deeds, New
Labour has broken with the ideas of social democracy: defence of the
welfare state, gradual reforms and improvements in living standards,
state intervention as a lever to increase the share of the working class
at the expense of the rich and powerful. New Labour has gone over hook,
line and sinker to the anti-state ‘greed is good’ philosophy of
neo-liberalism and Thatcher.
Under Brown’s economic regime, Britain has become a
‘tax haven’ for the rich. The average company director pockets in a day
what a worker earns in a year! If there was any doubt about the real
character of New Labour, Mandelson added in the Evening Standard: "No
Labour Party manifesto would now propose to repeal Mrs Thatcher’s trade
union laws, reverse privatisations or remove the right to buy a council
house… That has been Blair’s success in building on what was good in
Thatcher’s mixed political legacy, with the result that, in a sense, we
are all Blairites [read Thatcherites] now".
A further indication of just how far New Labour has
moved from defence of the welfare state was shown by the Financial Times
approvingly quoting the recent comments of Jim Murphy, government
minister for welfare reform. He "declared that Britain’s welfare state
‘will never’ pay benefits high enough to lift people out of poverty,
adding that he didn’t think it should". It went on to comment: "Work, he
declared, was now ‘the only route out of poverty in the UK’. A decade
ago, such remarks from a Labour MP would have caused a riot". (2 May)
The pitifully low wages on offer in Britain for unskilled jobs do not
provide an escape route out of poverty. Moreover, the latest figures
show a rise in unemployment.
New Labour bureaucracy
GORDON BROWN’S ELECTION was a ‘Stalinist’ exercise
in machine politics and arm twisting. This, together with the failure of
John McDonnell to even get on the ballot for the leadership contest,
reinforces the arguments of the Socialist Party that New Labour
represents a decisive rupture with the Labour Party of the past. At
bottom, it was a workers’ party, albeit with a pro-capitalist
leadership. The mass of the working class and particularly trade
unionists, we argued, could move to ‘reclaim’ it at certain points of
heightened struggle and class tension.
Brown’s coronation shows that this is no longer a
viable option. While not on the scale of Stalin’s triumphs in elections
– he once received 101% of the vote – Brown nevertheless received 313
nominations, to ensure a ‘single candidate’ election. New Labour’s
parliamentary group displayed all the features of Rabbie Burns’s "Wee
cowering, timorous beasties" as they succumbed to Brown’s henchmen’s
suggestion that a vote for McDonnell would be construed as a
‘career-ending’ step. The toadies who constitute the overwhelming
majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party duly fell into line.
They, together with the reduced band of Labour
councillors, now constitute a privileged caste, separated from and
impervious to the plight of the working class. They are utterly
incapable of reflecting the palpable discontent at the government’s
polices. Their slavish support of the ‘leader-in-waiting’ also reflects
the material stake they have, with careers in parliament and quite
lavish ‘expenses’ at local council level, in maintaining the status quo.
A chasm separates these creatures from the ‘Old Labour’ councillors and
MPs of the past who did, on occasions, champion the hopes and
aspirations of working-class people.
Just as power is vested in a tight-knit cabal
nationally around Blair, so at local level a ‘cabinet’ takes the
decisions and New Labour councillors are often just ciphers. This was
recently on full display, for instance, in the council chambers of the
London Borough of Waltham Forest. They were invaded by ‘dinner ladies’
armed with rolling pins, and their supporters, including Socialist Party
members, absolutely furious at the arbitrary proposal to completely end
all school meals in the borough’s schools. This is the first such step,
but probably not the last unless it is defeated, taken by a council
anywhere in Britain. When confronted by the furious crowd, the New
Labour councillors scurried away, bleating that they ‘had no power’ to
prevent this attack on the health of children in the borough and the
jobs of the school meals staff. Subsequently they were compelled to
undertake a volte-face, with the council leader, after a magnificent
local demonstration, declaring that the school meals service was ‘now
safe’.
A non-contest
THE SAME FEATURES were evident in the leadership
‘non-contest’. Even the pleadings of ‘liberal opinion’, Guardian writers
and their like, for Gordon Brown to ‘lend’ some MPs to John McDonnell to
ensure at least a semblance of a contest, went unheeded. Brown was
utterly impervious to such democratic sensibilities, dismissively
commenting that the failure of the ‘hard left’ McDonnell to get on the
ballot was a clear manifestation of the ‘rejection’ of the left’s
policies. In the one hustings, at a London Fabian group meeting, the
reforms promised by McDonnell, which undoubtedly would have represented
a step forward, were rejected by Brown as "unaffordable". This is the
very terminology used by Thatcher and Major against his policies of
Labour reformism before the advent of New Labour. This was a clear
expression of the fact that Brown, just as much as Blair, will stamp on
any attempt of the left to ‘reclaim’ the Labour Party.
Will the trade union leaders challenge this? They
were, in fact, equally desperate to prevent McDonnell from appearing on
the ballot paper. His programme is unlikely to have resonated with the
‘Labour rank and file’, at least in the constituencies, as he argued.
These bodies are largely empty, their membership restricted in the main
to demoralised and cynical New Labour councillors, or organically
pessimistic trade union officials and their hangers on. In a recent
Labour Party conference, 80% of the ‘constituency’ delegates voted
against even discussing the Iraq war! This while thousands demonstrated
outside the hall and society at large was convulsed by the horrors
inflicted on the Iraqi people by the Blair-Bush war.
Paradoxically, it was in the trade unions and among
some workers and young people outside of the Labour Party that
McDonnell’s campaign did find an echo. This could have been reflected in
the ballot if it had taken place. It would have put trade union leaders
like Dave Prentis of Unison, as well as Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley
of the new union Unite, on the spot. Pressure would have undoubtedly
mounted for these union leaders to support McDonnell, whose policies are
more in line with the official policies of the trade unions and
particularly with the rank and file.
Notwithstanding our opposition to the proposition of
John McDonnell and others that the left could breathe new life into the
moribund and empty shell of the Labour Party, we supported, particularly
in the trade unions, the idea that, if it came to a vote, McDonnell
should have been supported. We did this, despite some hesitation and
even doubts within the ranks of the Socialist Party, in order to go
through this experience with leftward-moving workers and test out the
viability or otherwise of the idea that Labour could be transformed.
The best outcome would have been for McDonnell to
have accumulated enough votes for a real leadership contest to take
place. It would have led to debate and possible ideological turmoil –
not so much in the Labour Party but in the wider labour movement.
McDonnell would not have won but out of such a battle the beginning of a
coherent left could have emerged. But ‘hope springs eternal’. McDonnell
and his supporters, despite the non-contest, now argue that with just
one more ‘heave’ New Labour can be transformed. This is quite false. Mao
Zedong’s long march of the 1930s was a stroll in the park compared to
the task of transforming New Labour.
Any Labour left?
REFUSING TO FIGHT for the ‘crown’, the trade union
leaders have instead concentrated on the position of ‘dauphin’, the
mostly meaningless position of deputy leader, which gave the hapless
John Prescott the semblance of power. Their preferred candidate is John
Cruddas, a former Blairite fixer and liaison between the cabinet office
and the trade union leaders.
With the stamp of New Labour still all over him, he
has nevertheless been compelled to come out with some surprising
admissions which flatly contradict everything that New Labour, including
Brown, has been arguing for the last 15 years. He wrote in The Guardian:
"We were wrong about class. That is why we have lost votes". He admits
"a significant movement away from us [New Labour] among workers in the
public services; amongst black and minority ethnic voters; and amongst
those described by marketing experts as ‘urban intellectuals’; and a
huge shift away from us among working-class voters especially manual
workers".
He correctly identifies "that manual workers still
account for close to 40% of total employment". If you add in clerical
and secretarial work, the traditional labour force stands at 15 million,
approaching two in three jobs. The number of computer managers, software
engineers and programmers has risen slightly, "but the real growth has
been in the service sector, with the huge expansion in cleaning and
support work and caring occupations. In short, in the past 15 years
there has been no revolution in employment. In terms of the demand for
labour, the key growth areas have been in traditional, often low-paid
jobs, mostly carried out by women". This is a welcome, if belated,
admission of the correctness of Marxist criticism of the ‘post-Fordist’
nonsense – ‘we are all middle class now’ – peddled by New Labour and
their shadows in the past.
Cruddas also points out that it is "here, amongst
groups that we thought were of declining importance, that the shift from
Labour has been greatest". These voters, in the main, "did not go to the
Tories, they went to the BNP and other nationalist groupings, the
Liberals and Respect. Or they simply stayed at home. In fact, the only
group where Labour support has actually grown between 1997 and 2005 has
been the professional, administrative and executive classes".
In fact, Respect candidates on average received
roughly the same percentage as the Socialist Party’s in the recent
council elections, gaining about 15% of the vote where they stood
compared to 13% for the Socialist Party. In the two regional lists in
Wales in which both parties stood, the Socialist Party gained more
votes. Moreover, Respect clearly draws its votes narrowly, not on a
class and socialist basis but predominantly from one section, the Muslim
population. The Socialist Party on the other hand, presented a clear
socialist alternative.
The diagnosis of John Cruddas has some merit but
where, apart from some obvious broad generalities, are the remedies to
the problems of the millions who have cut away in despair from New
Labour? Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of Unite, has also
identified some of the issues which have detached millions from New
Labour: "Growing inequality, the loss of manufacturing jobs,
privatisation of public services and, of course, Iraq". He adds: "If
under new leadership, the party can reconnect on these issues we can
surely stop David Cameron’s march on Downing Street". (Financial Times)
Will the ‘new leader’, Brown, accept this agenda? He
has been at the wheel of the New Labour ship with Blair for ten years!
In that period, as a raft of recent reports and polls has admitted,
inequality is just as great as it was under Thatcher. The trade unions
are still crippled by the most anti-union laws in the whole of Western
Europe. There is, moreover, absolutely no mention or expectation by
Woodley that Brown would dismantle the anti-union laws. Without the
power to undertake solidarity action – outlawed by laws that Brown
supports – we can have reruns of the Gate Gourmet dispute, whose workers
were shamefully let down because of a cowardly refusal by the union
leadership to defy the anti-democratic, anti-union laws and call for
mass solidarity.
The stance of Woodley and other trade union leaders
amounts to whispering in the ear of Brown, via a deputy leader, hoping
for concessions which, in the main, will never materialise. This
government ‘listens’ to junior doctors over their contracts, to the
Catholic Church over ‘faith schools’, to the housing industry over the
ill-fated ‘home information packs’ and it backs away. It bends the knee
to the CBI, the bosses union. But it never listens or retreats
before trade union pressure unless it is confronted with the threat of
actual strike action.
The crises in the National Health Service (NHS) and
education will continue under Brown, as will the level of the pathetic
minimum wage. This is against the background of a spiralling up of the
cost of living, with food prices rising by at least 6%. This is while
Brown imposes a 2% wage rise offer to public-sector workers. A Financial
Times Harris Poll in May showed that the vast majority of voters do not
believe that health and education have improved in the past ten years,
dominated as much by Brown as Blair. Eighty percent of those asked said
that hospitals were either no better or worse than in 1997, with 72%
seeing no improvement in schools.
Brown will be undoubtedly be compelled to retreat on
some of the more unpopular aspects of Blair’s policies. It is expected
that he will make some concessions on the NHS, perhaps cutting back the
hospital closure programme – with £500 million hospital debt due to the
marketisation process approved by Brown himself. He may stop the closure
of some accident and emergency departments, but he will not retreat on
the so-called Public Finance Initiative (PFI), which will leave a
crippling legacy through the massive repayment programme it involves.
Brown has also flagged up the need for urgent action to correct the
catastrophic housing situation, the result of the virtual end of the
house-building programme (the construction of council houses has dropped
99% under New Labour) and spiralling mortgage payments fuelled by rising
interest rates. But his programme for house building will not signify a
return to a serious programme for council or social housing.
Underlying economic weakness
THE REPLACEMENT OF Blair by Brown has already
resulted in a small electoral ‘bounce’ of 3% for Labour in opinion
polls. This may be immediately sustained on the basis of further
concessions or, at least, the promise of such. But Brown’s options are
severely limited, hedged in as he is by the weakening of the British
economy. As he never hesitates to stress, Britain has experienced a
15-year growth in the economy, with a quarter by quarter advance. This
is not down to the economic wizardry of Brown or New Labour. It is a
combination of factors largely outside his control: the forced
devaluation of the pound on Black Wednesday in 1992 under the Tories,
the world economic upswing, the product of capitalist globalisation and
the entry of China, Eastern Europe and Russia onto the world market,
with the resultant flow of cheap goods, which has kept down prices in
key sectors such as clothing.
The expansion of financial services and investment
of British capitalism abroad has also played a part in increasing the
tribute extracted. Increased profits have also flowed from migration
with its cheap labour, which has filled out the coffers of big business.
Overall, this has meant the cutting down of the share of the working
class of the wealth it produces, helped by the brake on struggle
exercised by the conservative officialdom of the British trade unions.
But, as with Spain at the beginning of the 20th
century, this growth has masked a ‘slow inglorious decay’ of British
capitalism. Its place in the world, its ‘clout’, has declined – witness
the poodle-like behaviour of Blair towards Bush. Alongside of this has
gone the astonishing underlying collapse of British capitalism as a
leading manufacturing economy with a high-paid, highly-skilled labour
force. This has been recently underlined by the figures provided by the
Department of Trade and Industry. This shows that the "supply of people
with qualifications at any level outstrips employer demand by almost
five million. Yet there is a shortage of four million people to fill
jobs that require no qualification in all sectors from service
industries to manufacturing". Such is the de-skilling of the British
economy that the bosses do not want ‘overqualified’ workers but
unskilled drones on slave wages.
The only conclusion to be drawn from this is that
Britain is no longer an ‘industrial nation’, at least not a major one.
As Larry Elliot, economics editor of The Guardian, commented: "It is
deeply unfashionable to mention the state of Britain’s current account".
But the UK deficit in goods is currently 6% of GDP and the rise in the
value of the pound, particularly compared to a devalued dollar, will
further undermine the weak competitiveness of British manufacturing
industry. From this, Elliot summarises: "Britain is no longer an
industrial nation. Is this worrying? Well it scared the life out of me,
but not it seems the government. The fantasy is that we can cope with
living beyond our means at a national level through the profits
generated by the city and by building up Britain’s ‘knowledge economy’.
Yet, a £7 billion trade deficit [in March] suggests we have some way to
go; hardly surprising since the fastest-growing job in the 1990s was
hairdressing and the UK now has a bigger slice of its population working
as servants as it did in 1860".
Public-sector opposition
A BROWN GOVERNMENT could be overwhelmed by an
avalanche of the stoked-up discontent of the working class, manifested
through trade union struggle. Civil servants, through the PCS union, are
already engaged in a battle over job losses, as well as the attempt to
limit pay increases, including the magnificent strike on 1 May. This has
been matched by another victory of the left – with Socialist Party
members playing a crucial role – in recent PCS national executive
committee elections.
On the public sector, Brown may be compelled to
initially bend with the wind as he and Alan Johnson did on the issue of
pensions, at least for the PCS and to some extent teachers. He may
concede a small increase over the 2% limit. This may be enough to
satisfy some union leaders – not the PCS we hasten to add – who may then
seek to dissipate the pressure building up for a common front of all
public-sector workers, including the demand for a national demonstration
and coordinated action against Brown’s arbitrary limit.
The growing discontent is reflected in the pressure
within the post office union (CWU) for action on pay as well as the
scandalous closure of 2,500 post offices. This could provoke both rural
and urban ‘uprisings’ of frequent post office users like pensioners, who
will now experience extreme difficulties. Brown, like Blair before him,
could also be looking for an excuse to defeat one public-sector union
like the PCS in a head-on struggle, to cow other public-sector workers
and the unions as a whole. Blair was planning such a brutal offensive
against the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) in 2002-03, but this was cut
across by the Iraq war.
Shifting political climate
A BROWN GOVERNMENT could also face a crisis of
legitimacy, both in Scotland and Britain as a whole, by the advent of an
SNP government in Edinburgh (see article on page eight). While Brown
promised and may wish to crush the SNP, deny it resources and funds, he
has to be careful not to further alienate from New Labour an already
disenchanted Scottish electorate which could give further support to the
SNP minority government. SNP leader, Alex Salmond, will seek to
introduce popular measures which, if they are thwarted by Brown, will
result in him appealing to Scottish opinion with some probable success.
At the same time, the advent of the nationalist
government in Scotland (the configuration of the new government in Wales
is not clear as we go to press but a minority Labour administration is
likely to remain in office) could lead to a rise in anti-Scottish and
Welsh sentiments in England. Socialists will implacably oppose this,
fighting for the unity of the working class while defending the
legitimate national rights of the Scottish and Welsh peoples. As a
‘Scottish prime minister’, with a number of prominent Scots in his
cabinet, Brown’s government could be adversely affected by these
developments.
Brown’s replacement of Blair may be a case of the
‘king is dead, long live the king’, in terms of the general policies of
the government. Nevertheless, it signifies a psychological change in the
political climate of Britain. The stoked-up frustration and anger in the
working class will be manifested in a greater preparedness to struggle,
which could compel the reluctant trade union leaders to head up a
movement of opposition to the government. Whether or not this takes
place is partly dependent on the economic situation. The gathering
global economic storm clouds will impact on Britain, because of its
integration into the world economy almost as never before.
Brown may even cut and run for an early general
election. If he delays too long, he could suffer the fate of other
‘mid-term’ replacement prime ministers, like Callaghan in 1979. He
famously delayed the general election for six months, consequently
facing a massive industrial wave in the ‘winter of discontent’. This
alienated millions and laid the basis for Thatcher’s victory with all
the terrible consequences for workers that flowed from that. Even if
Brown goes for an early election, there is no guarantee that New Labour
under his stewardship will be successful. The Tories, under Cameron,
have tried to shed a lot of the Thatcherite baggage. The abandonment of
support for new grammar schools is a token of this but also recognition
that they are not really necessary now because Blair and Brown’s academy
programme is a ‘rose by any other name’.
All the official parties, including the Liberal
Democrats, are neo-liberal to one degree or another, in their policies
and general political stance. Dave Nellist, the chairperson of the
Campaign for a New Workers’ Party and Socialist Party councillor in
Coventry, was correct when he described them as the "three wings of what
is, in effect, one [capitalist] party". They will not, however, unify
into one political party, preferring to maintain the illusion of
political differences. The capitalists need to ventilate opposition to
their rule by rocking the parliamentary cradle from ‘left’ to ‘right’
and back again in an electoral game of ‘ins’ and ‘outs’. But these
parties huddle together in that narrow strip of the so-called ‘middle
ground’.
In so doing, they are ploughing the ground for the
emergence of new and massive political forces offering change,
particularly a new mass workers’ party. One of the factors delaying the
emergence of such a formation is that Britain in the past 15 years has
not experienced severe economic rupture. However, the growth seen in
this period has been lopsided, overwhelmingly favourable to the rich,
with the generation of tremendous anger because of the stress,
inequality and injustice for the majority of the population.
This discontent, like an erupting subterranean
explosion, has to, and will, go somewhere. The far-right can make
significant gains, particularly with the rise in unemployment clearly
taking place and the deterioration of social conditions, especially if a
left fighting alternative is not provided. The BNP did not gain
substantially in these elections (see article on page ten) but it has
built a platform in some areas that could lead to significant growth,
particularly with the failure of New Labour and Brown’s government.
On the other hand, the basis for a new mass workers’
party has been prepared by the events of the last decade and a half. The
discontent of the working class will not be manifested within the
existing New Labour structures, contrary to the hopes of John McDonnell
and the left still clinging to the wreckage of New Labour. There was a
flicker of hope perhaps that Labour could be ‘reclaimed’, kindled by
McDonnell’s campaign. But those hopes have now been dashed for most
people, as was indicated by a letter which appeared in The Guardian when
it was clear that New Labour was a one-candidate party. The
correspondents, in just two lines, introduced a ‘reality check’,
concluding after Brown’s coronation, "Ah well, saves us having to rejoin
what used to be the Labour Party"!
There is no time to lose in a fruitless attempt to
resuscitate the living dead. It is now urgent that the efforts of
workers, young people, trade unionists, women and the oppressed ethnic
communities move from below, if the trade union leaders will not, to
build a powerful force for a new political voice of the working class, a
new mass workers’ party.
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