HANNAH SELL introduces this special edition of Socialism Today, which draws together a selection of articles from 2015 on Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party leadership and the lessons from it for the ongoing struggle to achieve mass, working class socialist political representation.
The lives of billions around the globe have been turned upside down by the coronavirus crisis with, for many, no prospect of a return to how it was before. The pandemic and resulting lockdowns have enormously exacerbated and deepened the economic crisis that was already on the horizon. Working class people face a new era of mass unemployment, pay cuts and attacks on working conditions as capitalism enters its steepest slowdown since the 1930s.
In an immediate response to this prospect trade union membership has soared in Britain, as many workers look to collective organisation as a means to defend their interests. There has not as yet, however, been any equivalent turn to a collective political alternative. The Labour Party has not seen any noticeable surge of new members. On the contrary, a significant layer have torn up their party cards, angry at the triumph of the preferred candidate of the capitalist class, Keir Starmer, in the 2020 contest to replace Corbyn. Clearly Labour under Starmer is not seen as a potential bulwark against the coming storms. Nor is there any other party in the running to play that role on a mass scale. Does this leave workers fatally unprepared for what lies ahead?
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