|
|
Towards a new workers’ party
For ten years, the Socialist Party has raised the
need for a new party of the working class. With each step further to the
right by Blair’s New Labour, that need has become more pressing. This
year’s Labour conference – its anti-union stance and total rejection of
democratic decision-making – reinforced that view. PETER TAAFFE explains
the reasoning behind a new Socialist Party initiative.
NEW LABOUR’S 2005 conference signified another, and
perhaps decisive, nail in the coffin of this party as a specifically
working-class party, at least at its base. This had been preceded by the
Gate Gourmet strike, with gangster-type employers getting away with
sacking low-paid workers, using Margaret Thatcher’s vicious anti-union
laws, which have been kept in place by Tony Blair’s government. The Iraq
disaster is also decisively rejected by the British people, with 51%
demanding a withdrawal of British troops. This is against the background
of the accelerating privatisation of the National Health Service (NHS),
massive opposition from teachers and parents to the setting up of
academy schools, and a threat of strike action from public service
workers against proposals to ‘extend’ the retirement age.
The whole situation with regard to the moribund and
increasingly discredited ‘New Labour’ party leads to one conclusion: it
is urgent that all genuine labour movement and socialist leaders and
activists immediately take steps to form the basis of a new mass
workers’ organisation.
The Socialist Party concluded some time ago that the
Blairite counter-revolution against the socialist aspirations and
internal democracy of the party had transformed it into a British
version of the Democrats in the US, another pro-big business, capitalist
party. Moreover, there is a wide recognition amongst the ranks of the
propertied classes that New Labour is the most effective guardian of
their interests: "So far, so good. Within reason, we have a business
friendly government", said Christopher Beale, chairperson of the
Institute of Directors, quoted in The Financial Times.
A significant body of working-class and socialist
opinion has shared our analysis. Unfortunately, this is not true of the
majority of trade union leaders who, along with the left-wing Campaign
Group of MPs and others, cling to the brave hope that if not socialism
at least ‘social democracy’ will be resurrected from the ashes. That
perspective suffered a devastating blow at the conference in Brighton,
which was presided over by Blair and Gordon Brown wielding a neo-liberal
club to crush any lingering hopes for a genuine swing towards the left
within the party. So demoralised are the local constituency Labour
Parties that one third did not even bother to spend the £500 necessary
to send a delegate. This did not stop 15,000 journalists and other media
riffraff, big-business lobbyists, place seekers and others from
attending what has become a pro-capitalist junket.
The total disconnection of the Labour Party tops
from the working class was highlighted by the disgraceful ejection of
the 82-year-old refugee from Nazi Germany, Walter Wolfgang, for daring
to shout out ‘Nonsense!’ at Jack Straw’s claim that those who opposed
the Iraq war were "pro-Nazi sympathisers".
This incident triggered an avalanche of
denunciations of New Labour, its leadership and organisation. The
pent-up resentment of New Labour burst out. In the 1970s and 1980s, such
attacks by the media were quite common. As Labour shifted leftwards and
in a socialist direction, the mouthpieces of big business routinely
denounced the party. While rabid right-wing journals like the Daily Mail
sought to exploit this incident in favour of the Tories, most of the
criticism now came from ‘radical’ and left-wing commentators, usually
self-serving apologists for Blair and Co in the past. The Daily Mirror,
for instance, in an editorial (Insults are Last Straw), stated: "If
there were any fascists at Labour’s conference, it was the stewards who
threw out an 82-year-old man who shouted ‘Nonsense!’ at Mr Straw".
Incidentally, Walter Wolfgang interjected from the visitors’ gallery; so
cowed were the ordinary delegates that not one of them joined him in his
initial protest.
Twenty years to the month, the Daily Mirror cheered
on Neil Kinnock in his infamous denunciation of Militant (now the
Socialist Party). Paraphrasing the words used by Kinnock, who is now a
millionaire: ‘You start by expelling Militants for fighting for
socialism and you end up with the grotesque chaos of manhandling and
ejecting an 82-year-old protester’. We warned that the process of
expelling the five members of the Militant Editorial Board and the
heroic Liverpool city councillors could end with the destruction of the
Labour Party as a genuine working-class party. Our predictions have been
borne out to a much greater extent than could have been envisaged.
Authoritarian grip
NOW, EVEN FORMER pillars of Blairism and apologists
for him at every turn in the past have begun to turn on him. For
instance, Polly Toynbee – once of the right-wing Social Democratic Party
– stated in The Guardian: "Brighton has exposed Labour as a sham,
deserted by its members… Labour is in danger of becoming a phantom party
- a self-perpetuating oligarchy given absolute power by only 25% of the
electorate through a perverted voting system that will, with a swing of
the pendulum, deliver the same power to an equally unrepresentative Tory
clique". Brian Reade in the Daily Mirror went further: "The Labour Party
conference is about as pointless as a surfboard in an ice rink".
Commenting on the end of the conference, he wondered "how to stop
collapsing in hysterics when they sang the Red Flag. From mass-produced
prompt cards".
Membership of the party has officially halved from
(a fictional) 400,000 in 1997 to 200,000 today, which is a gross
exaggeration of the reality of the Labour Party on the ground. The
police-type atmosphere which prevailed at the conference affected not
just the unfortunate Walter Wolfgang but anybody who showed the
slightest dissent from the leadership. Another octogenarian was
audacious enough to wear a t-shirt proclaiming ‘Bush, Blair, Sharon, to
be tried for war crimes, torture, human rights abuse’, and lower down,
‘The leaders of rogue states’. He was stopped and searched and, like
Walter Wolfgang, was interrogated by a police officer under Section 44
of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. He was forced to fill out a form and
the police officer interrogated him on the grounds that he was ‘carrying
a placard and t-shirt with anti-Blair info’ on it. A Guardian journalist
concluded: "So now we know. For the Sussex police, at any rate, an
anti-Blair slogan is grounds for suspecting terrorism".
This underlines the organic connection between the
reactionary policies of Blair and Blairism on a political level
reinforcing an authoritarian grip and thuggish methods to suppress even
a flicker of an internal debate in the Labour Party. Prior to the
conference, resolutions and separate discussions on Iraq – ‘don’t
mention the war’ – were ruled out. On the National Executive Committee
(NEC) of the party no recommendations were made, for the first time in
its history, on how to vote on vital issues such as the legalisation of
solidarity ‘secondary action’ by trade unionists.
The Gate Gourmet dispute has underlined the
absolutely vital necessity to eliminate Thatcher’s anti-union laws,
which prevented effective solidarity, ‘secondary action’, to ensure
victory to these workers. The absence of such powers for the working
class, combined with the failure of the Transport and General Workers’
Union (TGWU) leadership to organise effective solidarity action in
defiance of authoritarian anti-union laws, has ensured the partial
defeat at least of the Gate Gourmet workers in the aftermath of the
conference. Even Roy Hattersley, no friend of militant trade union
action in the past, came out in favour of lifting the restrictions on
such action. But a succession of Labour ministers before, during and
after the conference stated bluntly that they would not heed the call of
the unions on this issue.
This is just another measure of how far to the right
the Blair leadership has gone. The Independent’s Steve Richards, after
the Labour and Tory party conferences, commented: "These Conservatives
[David Cameron supporters] respect and admire Mr Blair far more than
some of those who attended the Labour conference last week". Tribune,
the organ of the left in the Labour Party, also commented: "Mr Blair’s
bravura performance won praise from some delegates as the most
Thatcherite leadership speech since the Tory leader left office". (30
September)
Labour & the unions
YET TRIBUNE TAKES some sustenance from the fact that
the conference defeated Blair and his NEC on solidarity action, the NHS,
housing and other issues. Ninety-nine percent of the trade union vote –
which only accounts for 50% of the total votes at the conference now,
down from 90% in its heyday – voted for this basic trade union
principle. This should be no surprise given that a big factor in the
building of the Labour Party itself at the beginning of the 20th century
was precisely on an issue like this. The Taff Vale judgement, with its
threats to financially punish if not completely cripple the trade
unions, was important in pushing the trade unions to support its own
party, the Labour Party.
It is an absolute scandal that such questions should
even need to be debated in a party which some still claim represents
working-class people. The resolution was won by 70% to 30% and leading
trade unionists claimed they were "pleased" because a "significant
section" of constituency delegates voted in favour. But 60% of these
alleged ‘representatives’ of ordinary working-class people from the
constituencies voted to maintain the outlawing of effective trade union
action.
The history of the Labour Party is littered with
examples where the leadership ignored conference decisions, even when it
was a genuine working-class party at the bottom. However, on decisive
issues, particularly those which directly affected the working class,
the specific weight of the trade unions was sufficient to force the
leadership either to back away or to be broken. In 1969, the government
of Harold Wilson infamously tried to introduce the In Place of Strife
anti-union laws. The opposition of the trade unions and the working
class, in demonstrations but also within the labour movement and even
the cabinet, meant there was a majority against Wilson, which forced him
into an ignominious retreat.
On the other hand, in 1931, Ramsay MacDonald’s
austerity programme of savage cuts in public expenditure came up against
the rock of working-class and organised trade union resistance.
MacDonald could not push this through and therefore broke with the
Labour government and the labour movement, forming a national government
with the Tories. Blair does not need to do this today for two reasons.
This government is, to all intents and purposes, a ‘national
government’, the best that the British capitalists, from their point of
view, can expect at this stage. Secondly, the trade unions are
effectively politically neutered while the Blairite iron grip is
exercised over the party at all levels. Even the present 50% share of
the vote that they possess is a target for yet further weakening. One
Blairite minister after another lined up following the conference to
vilify the unions and warn of further changes to the constitution.
Blair stated that, "in the old days… the
constituency delegates were the kind of crazy ones and the trade unions
were the force for stability". The clear implication is that the trade
unions and the working class are the new ‘crazies’ for daring to fight
for their rights and conditions. In the light of this, even lefts hardly
believe their own statements about the possibility of changing the
Labour Party: "There was only one decisive conclusion in Brighton this
week. It was that, after years of de facto truth, the Labour Party
leader and the officials who serve him made it unashamedly clear –
conference does not matter… This year the government, and its supine
Sherpas in the party structure, not only treated trade union and
constituency delegates with the customary derision of a cat with fleas,
this year they openly paraded their distance from the real people who
are the Labour Party". (Chris McLaughlin, Tribune, 1 October) The
forlorn hope of Tribune is that: "We can only hope that the spirit and
the purpose will return". But not for Mark Seddon, erstwhile editor of
Tribune, who has voted with his feet and gone to join al-Jazeera with
David Frost!
The Campaign Group, however, is determined to go
beyond mere ‘spirit’. It is considering putting up a ‘stalking horse’,
an alternative candidate to Blair, in the run-up to the 2006 Labour
Party conference, if he is still at the helm at that time. To do this it
will need the support of at least 20% of Labour MPs, 71 in total. At the
moment, it claims that 36 are on board. Given the saturation of the
Parliamentary Labour Party with unreconstructed Blairites, this target
is problematical to say the least.
The Brown succession
EVEN IF IT is successful and a contest for the
leadership is thereby triggered, what is the purpose, who is the rival
to Blair that can shift Labour decisively to the left and, crucially,
what will be the programme and conditions of the left for supporting an
anti-Blair candidate in any election? As Tribune shows, the New Labour
project is unreconstructed Thatcherism. This applies not just to Blair
but to Brown too. He declared in the Sunday Times before the conference:
"The programme of reform [read counter-reform - PT] and modernisation
will continue when Tony steps down". Brown wants "more home ownership,
more asset ownership. He wants – some claim – to be more Thatcherite
than Blair". (Jackie Ashley, The Guardian)
The Daily Mirror, commenting on his party conference
speech, declared: "In a snub to unions and old Labour, the chancellor
said there would be no lurch back to the left. Instead, New Labour must
‘dominate’ the centre for years to come". In other words, Brown, while
he might soften some of Blair’s brutal language and may even back away
eventually from British involvement in Iraq, in substance will carry out
his programme of more privatisation, including the further dismantling
of the NHS, greater PFI (privatisation) projects and the whole
neo-liberal programme which has underpinned the government since 1997.
Yet some trade union leaders, such as Derek Simpson
of Amicus, hailed Brown’s speech as "clever" in the hope that he is the
new saviour of the trade unions: "[Brown] spoke about the renewed
citizenship and equality, words we haven’t heard in a long time. That
shows he has been listening to trade unions and working people. It
suggests a party led by Brown would undergo evolution rather than
revolution". (The Guardian, 27 September) This is the considered
judgement of a professed member of the ‘awkward squad’ who is no longer
very awkward. Moreover, it is made in the teeth of evidence that shows
that, on Brown’s watch as chancellor, a massive polarisation between
rich and poor has taken place, poverty has worsened since 1997, and a
bleak prospect for working people looms given the deterioration in the
British economy under Brown’s stewardship.
In fact, the wheels have quite markedly begun to
come off Brown’s economic chariot. He himself admitted in Washington
that he will have to scale down his growth rates for this year and
probably next year as well, with growth rates the lowest for 12 years.
Retail sales are falling at the fastest rate for two decades. One in
five retailers anticipates that trade will worsen over the coming
months. The slowdown in house price increases has meant a decreased
inclination to buy goods, reinforced by rising fuel prices, which have
undermined household budgets, with the result that "people feel less
well off than a year ago". (The Independent) This journal concludes: "It
is now hard to see how Britain can avoid an economic slowdown over the
next two years".
A combination of factors, not least soaring energy
prices, has enhanced the prospect of a general slowdown in world
capitalism. Unemployment has begun to creep up in Britain while the
bosses continue to make record profits. While the immediate situation
will be difficult for British workers, the medium and long term could be
catastrophic. The collapse of manufacturing industry – there will be no
factories in Britain by 2028 according to the TGWU – continues apace
with little to put in its place, either in the production of real wealth
or of jobs. The ‘sucking sound’ of jobs disappearing from Britain to
China, Eastern Europe, etc, and these countries’ conditions coming to
Britain in the form of cheap labour, mean that the future is bleak for
British workers.
There is no possibility of arresting this
development on the basis of blind faith that the Labour Party can act as
an effective instrument to defend and enhance the position of
working-class people. There is no realistic prospect of its
transformation to fit the needs of the situation. That was underlined
by, amongst many, Colin McCabe, a representative of the artistic
intelligentsia who have clung to New Labour up to now. Writing in The
Observer, he announced his resignation from the Labour Party following
the conference after 41 years of membership. He simply said of Blair:
"You lie as you breathe". (2 October)
He was answered by Dennis McShane, the Blairite
former minister: "Please think again comrade". His defence of Blair was:
"I was in France and Germany. Both countries would die to have a Tony
Blair leading them out of high unemployment…" Yet only a matter of
months ago the French and Dutch working classes showed in the EU
constitution referendums what they thought of ‘Blairism’! The massive
‘No’ votes were as much a vote against ‘Anglo-Saxon’ neo-liberalism,
symbolised above all by Blair, as against the EU constitution itself.
The German working class has also seen what Thatcherism-Blairism has
inflicted on British workers and want none of it.
Labour’s origins
THOSE WHO STILL cling to the faint hope that Labour
can be ‘reformed’ are re-running the arguments, in a different
historical context, of those adherents to the ‘Lib-Lab’ philosophy who
tried to capture the Liberal Party for the working class in the latter
part of the 19th century. Keir Hardie, the founder of the Labour Party,
only emancipated himself from liberalism gradually. The brutal
experience of the inadequacies of the Liberals convinced him to break
from them and form the Scottish Labour Party in the 1880s. This was
followed, in the 1890s, by the Independent Labour Party (ILP). In 1893,
120 delegates met in Bradford to form this party, which incorporated a
number of different trends, including the Fabians, five delegates from
the Social Democratic Federation (SDF – nominally Marxist but without
the support of either Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels) and representatives
of Engels himself, the continuer of Marx’s ideas in this period.
Alongside them were members of the Scottish Labour Party, various local
labour associations and a few trade union branches. Significantly, only
the SDF at national level officially refused to join in this first step
forward for political representation of the working class because it was
"not revolutionary".
The aim of the ILP was to launch a struggle for
independent labour candidates but it also stood for "collective
ownership and control of the means of production, distribution and
exchange". Hardie’s election as MP for West Ham and later for Merthyr
Tydfil was linked to the objective change in the situation of British
capitalism at that stage. It was increasingly unable to provide more
than a few crumbs to the working class from the very rich table of
British imperialism. While a certain ‘aristocracy of labour’ was able to
maintain itself and even go forward for a time in the latter part of the
19th century, the great mass of the working class, kept on slave wages,
were increasingly dissatisfied. The discontent burst out in the strikes
of the match girls, gas workers and dockers, and the creation of new
unions. As is well known, the socialists, particularly Eleanor Marx
(Karl’s daughter), played a key role in the development of the
leadership of some of these unions.
The British working class has special
characteristics, sometimes only edging forward slowly and ponderously.
Engels once commented on this: "One cannot drum theory into them
beforehand but their own experience and their own blunders and the
resulting evil consequences will blunt their noses up against theory and
then all right. Independent peoples go their own way, and the English
and their offspring are surely the most independent of them all.
Insular, stiff-necked obstinacy annoys one often enough, but it also
guarantees that what is begun will be carried out once things get
started". (11 January, 1890) Given the changing composition of the
working class and its renewal, through immigration from many different
sections of the working class worldwide, perhaps this is not as dominant
a characteristic of the British working class today but features of this
undoubtedly still exist in their outlook.
In the 1890s, it took the defeat of a strike of the
miners for them to turn to the political plane and elect Hardie at
Merthyr, providing him with a parliamentary seat for the rest of his
life. The same empirical approach was evident in the creation of the
Labour Party itself. The Taff Vale judgement by the House of Lords in
favour of the railway bosses, with its swingeing financial impositions,
was decisive. Up to then, many trade unions had stood aside from the
idea of independent labour representation, relying on their industrial
strength. This judgement posed the necessity for political action which,
in 1900, (a year before Taff Vale) had brought together socialists and
trade unionists in the Labour Representation Committee (LRC).
Unfortunately, it led to the defection of the SDF once again because
"this body was not sufficiently socialist". There are parallels between
anti-union legislation then and now, the only difference being that it
is maintained by a ‘Labour’, yes a Labour government, and not an openly
proclaimed capitalist one.
The process of forming the Labour Party was not neat
and tidy but involved a coalition, a federation of different trends and
tendencies which were gradually brought together on a national scale.
For instance, the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain started a separate
fund in 1901 for its own candidates, but remained tied to the Liberals
for a number of years after. A similar step could be taken by trade
unions and others now, alongside attempts to form a new workers’ party,
faced with a similar dilemma to that of our forefathers. As the
Socialist Party has often stated, for the first time in 100 years the
working class in Britain has no mass political representation. It is
necessary to have the same courage as the pioneers who saw the need for
independent working-class representation, fought for it and organised to
realise it.
Some trade union leaders have posed the necessity to
emulate them. Bob Crow, leader of Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT), for
instance, has courageously and consistently warned that there is no
future for working-class people or socialists within the Labour Party,
and a new party needs to be created. He has stated that the RMT will
call a conference of trade unionists and political parties in the New
Year to explore the possibilities of a new party. The Socialist Party
welcomes such a step, which is the absolute minimum necessity today. The
RMT has, moreover, abandoned its attempt to maintain the link with
Labour at national level, which is also a significant step forward.
False starts
THE TIME FOR a new party is not only ripe, to some
extent it is rotten ripe. Millions feel disenfranchised; four million
who voted Labour in 1997 refused to back Blair in the last election. A
crucial factor which allows the bosses to attack with success the living
standards, conditions and past gains of the working class is the absence
of a serious political pole of attraction, a mass party, to rally and
organise opposition.
Steps towards a new party that have been attempted
in the recent past – the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), the Socialist
Alliance and now Respect – have failed or will fail. Arthur Scargill, a
respected fighter and militant, and the SLP, were organically sectarian
from the outset, excluding anybody who did not march to the political
drumbeat or forms of organisation decreed unilaterally by Arthur
himself. The Socialist Alliance floundered similarly on the innate
sectarianism of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) and the manoeuvring
characteristic of that organisation. It refused to accept the
traditional method of the British labour movement in forming new
political organisations, in particular the federal principle. Respect is
too narrow, based upon a section of the Muslim population alienated from
New Labour, with George Galloway and the SWP in its leadership.
Moreover, it also refused at its initial conference to accept the
federal principle, thereby excluding many, including the Socialist
Party.
This means that the wider perception of Respect,
particularly outside of a layer of the Muslim population, can be that it
is exclusive and is not capable of appealing to wider non-Muslim
sections of the working class. This, combined with the intolerance of
the SWP, despite its recent claims to the contrary, means that Respect
cannot develop beyond certain limits. It could win a number of council
seats, for instance in Tower Hamlets, as conceded by a secret Labour
Party dossier about next year’s local elections. But this is against the
background of a possible general "electoral meltdown at next May’s
elections" (Tribune) for Labour in London, which will not automatically
go to Respect outside of areas with a large Muslim population.
A key test for any new formation is whether it can
appeal to a broader layer of trade unionists, socialists,
environmentalists and others, which Respect is not capable of doing. It
has fundamental weaknesses in programme (see the following article) but
its Achilles heel is George Galloway and the SWP’s insistence on
maintaining the narrow criteria for those who can join. The SWP, through
one of its leaders, Chris Harman, speaks about the methods of his party
in new formations, presumably like Respect: "This should not mean
seizing every opportunity to disagree with other people". (October 2005)
This is an example of Harman’s unconscious humour.
The SWP is notorious for precisely seizing every opportunity, not just
to disagree but to attempt to use undemocratic, unacceptable methods to
distort and suppress other people’s points of view and right to organise
for their acceptance. For instance, on the 24 September demonstration
against the Iraq war it tried to get an International Socialist
Resistance (ISR) meeting in Hyde Park called off on the spurious grounds
that it was interfering with the main rally, whose speakers had been
arbitrarily selected by the SWP and its allies. Because of their
approach, Respect will not be able to find a road out of the narrow
enclave into which it has been taken by George Galloway and the SWP.
A new initiative
NOTWITHSTANDING THE false starts of the past, the
prospects for a new formation are good if determined and coordinated
action is taken by genuine organisations and individuals on the left. To
this end, the Socialist Party is prepared to initiate discussions with
others, including Bob Crow, for a conference that could discuss the
steps towards a new organisation which can take the struggle for a new
party significantly forward.
If Bob Crow’s suggestion for a conference takes off,
the Socialist Party and others on the left will undoubtedly seek to
participate. To be successful, however, it must involve the widest
number who are prepared to engage in this endeavour and discuss in a
fraternal, democratic, as well as an open manner, the programme and the
organisation best suited to such a step at this stage. Given the
differences which exist between different organisations it would be a
mistake to immediately set up a party. But a conference could initiate a
widespread discussion which could attract not just the small layer of
active left workers, but touch many more who are inactive at the moment
but are looking for a fighting political party, in order to change the
deteriorating situation confronting trade unionists, the environment,
housing, education, etc.
If there is further foot-dragging, however, in
taking this step, the Socialist Party will seek to initiate, in
collaboration with others, the calling of such a consultative
conference, firstly, and a heightened campaign for a new party. What
programme is required at this stage has been and will be the subject of
intense further discussion. Engels, speaking of the American working
class 120 years ago, stated: "The first great step of importance for
every country newly entering into the movement is always the
constitution of the workers as an independent political party, no matter
how, so long as it is a distinct workers’ party". That is what actually
happened – not, unfortunately, in the US for objective and subjective
reasons – but in Europe and throughout the world in the following
century, including in Britain with the formation of the Labour Party.
But the bourgeoisification of the Labour Party has
brought that chapter to an end. While the working class never starts
with a blank sheet, some of the same features, particularly as far as
the new generation is concerned, now exist in Britain, Europe and a
world scale. The formation of the WASG (Arbeit & Soziale Gerechtigkeit,
Die Wahlalternative – Labour & Social Justice Party) in Germany arose
because of the collapse of the traditional political workers’
organisation, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), into a capitalist
formation. The fact that it developed in Germany quicker than in Britain
is an expression of the suddenness, if not the depths as yet, of the
neo-liberal offensive against the German working class at the hands of
Gerhard Schröder’s government.
This new formation is not just a German phenomenon
but has European and British implications. The development of the WASG
is a manifestation of processes at work throughout Europe. Capitalism is
in crisis, resorts to greater and greater neo-liberal policies, which
have engendered opposition and even hatred from big sections of the
working class towards those, the ex-social democrats as well as the
openly capitalist parties, who are implementing these policies.
The search for an alternative can seemingly be
blocked. However, inevitably, a figure – Oskar Lafontaine in Germany –
can give a push to the developments waiting to happen. Before Lafontaine
declared his support, the WASG was formed largely of middle-ranking
trade union leaders, who have not freed themselves from
social-democratic illusions, and specifically opposed socialism. It
could be different in Britain. A new formation is possible if a leading
left figure, like Bob Crow, steps in and provides the impetus. The
Socialist Party will be working energetically for the creation of the
conditions, through a campaign, that can lead to the development of a
new formation.
The federal principle
CONSCIOUSNESS HAS BEEN undoubtedly thrown back,
partly because of the lingering effects of the collapse of the Berlin
wall and the idea of socialism and a planned economy, together with the
effects of neo-liberal policies. It is therefore necessary for any new
formation or party to proceed, in the first instance, with a basic
programme, which can unite significant left forces, appealing above all
to the new generation. In Britain, this would include: no to
privatisation, an end to the war in Iraq and support for independent
working-class organisations there, defence of a democratic NHS and
public ownership of the pharmaceutical companies, the abolition of
Thatcher’s anti-union laws, starting with the ban on solidarity
secondary action, a democratic and socialist programme on the
environment, and demands on housing, etc. At the same time, a socialist
programme, with the aspirations clearly stated for the public ownership
of the ‘commanding heights of the economy’ would be necessary.
Vitally, the form of organisation required at this
stage to enhance the movement would be federal in principle. Enshrined
in any new agreement or constitution would be the idea of inclusivity.
Specifically, all parties and individuals must have the right, while
subscribing to the basic programme and organisation, to argue for their
own ideas, to produce and sell their own newspapers, and to form
platforms to influence the new formation. These are just some tentative
proposals of the Socialist Party in an attempt to initiate a discussion
and campaign.
One writer in the Financial Times summed up the
conferences of the three major parties: "There is one theme that runs
through all of this autumn’s party conferences. It is the crisis of
leadership". He is right. The Liberals, under the pressure of the
worldwide neo-liberal offensive, have moved to the right, embracing
privatisation, the break up of the NHS, etc. Like different kinds of
soap powder, the Tories and Labour Party also offer up leaders and a
programme firmly rooted in capitalist society. There is a profound
crisis of capitalist leadership and its institutions.
At the same time, the working class faces a similar
dilemma, in some senses the worst in its history in Britain, for this is
a crisis not only of leadership but also of organisation. To begin to
overcome this it is necessary to urgently take steps towards the
foundation of a new working-class and socialist formation. This can
begin to offer leadership in all spheres, in the electoral as well as
the extra-parliamentary field, in the struggle to defend and enhance
working-class living standards. In the next period the Socialist Party
will be working energetically to this end.
|