TUSC’s first steps
THE EARLY EFFORTS to
establish working class political representation did not meet with easy
success. In his first contest as an independent labour candidate, in the
1888 Mid-Lanarkshire by-election, Keir Hardie sometimes lost the then
standard ‘vote of confidence in the candidate’ at his own public
meetings. At a time when most trade unions supported the Liberal Party,
the governmental alternative to the Conservatives, workers would
frequently shout him down for ‘splitting the vote’. That was not the
response received, however, by the candidates of the Trade Unionist and
Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in May’s general election, even if the votes
they won were no greater than the pioneers of the early Labour Party.
That TUSC’s vote would be
squeezed in the context of a polarised general election was recognised
by its participants when it was formed in January this year. The
‘Americanisation’ of British politics, with the capitalist New Labour
party no longer seen by workers as ‘our party’, has created a deep sense
of powerlessness amongst millions of working class voters. A report by
the Department for Communities and Local Government, published without
comment during the election, revealed that just 22% of people now feel
they can at all ‘influence decisions affecting Britain’. (The Guardian,
30 April) What is this if not an expression of the effective
disfranchisement of the working class, in the absence of a mass workers’
party that had the confidence of the working class to fight on their
behalf?
An upsurge of workers’
struggle, which will come, could dramatically transform that
consciousness – and create the basis for a new workers’ party to develop
with mass traction. But, in this election, TUSC could not fill the
vacuum. Those workers who did come out to vote – and the turnout rose in
this election from 61% in 2005 to 65% – plumped for ‘the lesser evil’
against the threat of the Tories. Creditable votes were won by TUSC
candidates in Coventry North East (1,592), Tottenham (1,057) and Glasgow
South West (931) but generally TUSC polled no higher than Socialist
Party and other left candidates had in previous elections.
The main purpose of TUSC,
however, was to reach the most militant workers, in the trade unions and
the unorganised as well, with the arguments for independent working
class political representation. And in this it achieved some important
successes. Twenty-one TUSC candidates were officially endorsed by the
executive committee of the most combative industrial trade union in
Britain today, the Rail, Maritime and Transport workers’ union (RMT),
and a similar number of RMT branches backed and donated to local
campaigns. Outside the RMT, support was won for individual candidates
from branches of the Communications Workers’ Unions (CWU) and the GMB
and UNITE general unions, and the Scottish region of the Fire Brigades
Union. This follows – and, indeed, deepens – the process started by the
formation of the No2EU-Yes to Democracy coalition, backed by the RMT,
which contested last year’s European elections.
The TUSC steering committee
includes, in a personal capacity, the RMT general secretary Bob Crow,
and fellow executive member Craig Johnston; the assistant general
secretary of the PCS civil servants union, Chris Baugh, and the union’s
vice-president, John McInally; the vice-president of the National Union
of Teachers, Nina Franklin; and the recently retired general secretary
of the Prison Officers Association, Brian Caton. Amongst the TUSC
candidates were nine branch officers of the UNISON public sector union,
a CWU branch secretary and an assistant secretary, a University and
College Union branch secretary, and three RMT branch officers. These
latter included Bill Rawcliffe, the RMT senior steward at Jarvis Rail,
who only decided to stand, after a mass meeting of rail engineering
workers, when Jarvis went into administration on March 25th
and made 1,200 workers redundant.
Significantly, it was not
until the Jarvis workers decided to stand a candidate that Bill received
a concerned phone call from his local New Labour MP Ed Miliband! This
fear the capitalist politicians have of workers taking ‘politics’ into
their own hands is just a hint of what a trade union-based workers’
party could achieve in the future, in beginning to change the balance of
forces in favour of the working class.
TUSC exists precisely to be a
‘Doncaster on a national scale’, in other words, a banner available to
be taken up by workers moving onto the political plane. The steps that
were taken in this election – small though they were – on the road to
re-establishing independent working class political representation,
alone justify the TUSC campaign.
The outcome of the election,
with a Tory-Lib Dem government and the Labour Party now in opposition,
does not change the task that TUSC has set itself. The character of the
Labour Party, transformed in the 1990s into New Labour, has not been
changed by the election vote. There was, in some areas, a return – very
limited at that – of its working class vote, out of fear of the
consequences of a Tory government. A detailed survey of voters conducted
by Greenberg Research confirms this, concluding that people "voted
Labour to defend public spending" but that there was no "ideological
content" to this, "no vision that brought people to Labour". (The
Guardian, 17 May). How could it be otherwise after 15 years of New
Labour consciously counter-posing itself to ‘Old Labour’ as a
pro-market, ‘business-friendly’ party? The actual result still saw the
biggest fall in seats for Labour since 1931, the lowest share of the
vote since 1983, and 4.9 million fewer votes cast for Labour than in
1997.
Most important, however, is
the fact that the nature of a party is not determined just by the
composition of those of vote for it – otherwise the US Democrats would
arguably be a workers’ party (and the 19th century Liberals
too). Another critical factor in the dual character of ‘Old Labour’ as a
‘capitalist workers’ party’ were the possibilities that existed in its
structures for its working class base to assert their interests against
the party’s pro-capitalist leaders. Those channels were systematically
destroyed in the past two decades and the election result has not
changed that. The crisis of working class political representation
persists and will be starkly revealed in the events ahead, as the new
government unleashes its ‘savage cuts’.
While all analogies are
limited, because different conditions effect how social processes
unfold, Hardie found himself contesting the 1888 by-election as a local
miners-nominated independent labour representative because the Liberal
Party, then in opposition to a Conservative government, refused to
accept him as their candidate. Other ‘labour representatives’ had been
allowed as Liberal candidates on other occasions but Hardie’s
candidature had developed out of bitter strike movements against local
Liberal-supporting mine-owners and was not acceptable to the Liberal
Party leadership. In the ‘Greek-style’ battles to come, with the new
wave of Labour-controlled councils, for example, passing on Tory-Lib Dem
cuts, the prospect of independent trade union and anti-cuts candidates
will grow.
TUSC emerged out of
discussions by those involved in the No2EU election coalition –
launched, it should be remembered, just 15 months ago – which in turn
was a response to an upsurge in workers’ struggle in early 2009,
particularly the Lindsey oil refinery construction workers’ strike and
RMT battles against European Union directives undermining workers’
rights. No2EU, involving the RMT, the Socialist Party, the Communist
Party of Britain, Solidarity–Scotland’s Socialist Movement, and others,
worked on a ‘federal’ basis, with decisions being reached by broad
consensus while each participant had the right to produce their own
material supporting the coalition. The Communist Party, which was an
active member of No2EU, eventually decided not to be involved in TUSC –
while the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), after some debate, was invited
to join in March – but the consensus method of organisation was carried
on into TUSC. While discussions will no doubt take place on the best way
to organise the coalition as it develops in the future, certainly for
the next period the federal approach must continue.
By continuing to group
together in an electoral coalition the most militant leading trade
unionists in Britain today, TUSC can be an important catalyst in
furthering the process towards independent working class political
representation.
Clive Heemskerk
