The debate on the need for a new mass party of the working class, and how it could be helped into being, has taken another step forward since the initial post-election discussions referenced in last month’s Socialism Today editorial (The First Lightning Flashes And What To Do, Issue No.280, September 2024).
Although there were no journalists present at the event, the Guardian newspaper reported a gathering held on September 15 to discuss the possibilities for a new party. Attended by, amongst others, the former Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, the former North of Tyne Combined Authority mayor Jamie Driscoll, the mayor of Tower Hamlets Lutfur Rahman, and the film director Ken Loach, it met under the banner of ‘Collective’, a self-defined network of those seeking to ‘build a mass socialist movement as the foundation for a new left political party’.
The conference organiser was Karie Murphy, from 2016 to 2020 the chief of staff of Jeremy Corbyn’s office during his time as Labour leader. Corbyn himself was present although, as the Guardian reported “a source close” to him saying, “his attendance was not an official endorsement”, and that he was there to “listen to and share a variety of views about the way forward for the left”. This followed his warning in an earlier Guardian Opinion piece that without grassroots organisation in the working class – in both communities and the workplaces we would add – creating “a new, centralised party, based around the personality of one person, is to put the cart before the horse”. (12 July 2024)
Others present also raised concerns about timing and the weight of the forces actually involved at this stage, including Jamie Driscoll and the former African National Congress (ANC) member of the South African parliament, Andrew Feinstein, who polled 18.9% of the vote standing as an independent candidate against Keir Starmer in his Holborn & St Pancras seat in July. But nevertheless the debate on the ways and means to a new party is definitely in progress and a further meeting is planned for later this month.
Launching without Corbyn?
The Socialism Today editorial pointed to a number of unresolved issues that had arisen in the Collective discussions since the election, which have been further elaborated in a report produced by the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (at tusc.org.uk), the electoral alliance co-founded by the late general secretary of the RMT transport workers’ union Bob Crow, which the Socialist Party participates in. Most immediate is whether a new party should be declared and structures put in place in the next few months without, at least initially, the central and public involvement of Jeremy Corbyn, or that of any trade union. The September conference, which did not reach its proposed agenda item on ‘organised labour, the foundations of a new party’, unfortunately failed to squarely address this question.
What has been clear from the debate around this issue, however, is that many advocates of an early declaration, including some of the candidates who stood in the general election and their supporters, have exaggerated expectations of how easy it would be to replicate the best of the performances achieved by the independents in July in other constituencies and other electoral contests. That would be so even with Jeremy Corbyn fully engaged, and certainly so if he has an arms-length role only.
In particular, there has been little accounting of how much the shift from Labour by workers and others from a Muslim background in opposition to Starmer’s Gaza stance contributed to the best results. And how that could be consolidated and expanded to other sections of the working class, and what this means programmatically, tactically and strategically for those fighting for a new workers’ party.
Winning the Muslim vote
It has not just been Muslims, of course, who have protested at Starmer’s acquiescence with the slaughter of the Palestinians, and nor is the discontent with Labour of workers from a Muslim background limited to that. But, as a Savanta poll for the Hyphen Muslim news site found during the election, while one in five of Muslim voters ranked Gaza as their main concern, with 44% having it among their top five, the equivalent figures among all voters were 3% and 12%. (The Observer, 16 June) The poll also recorded that 86% of Muslim voters who ranked Gaza as one of their main concerns were considering voting for a pro-Palestinian independent.
In the 92 parliamentary constituencies where a tenth or more of the population identify as Muslim, Labour’s vote fell from 2.41 million in 2019 to 1.58 million in July, a drop of 34%. If this had been a uniform trend across the whole of the working class it would have meant a fall in Labour’s vote from 2019 of well over three million. But at that point this section of workers were ahead of other layers in turning alienation and anger with Labour into an alternative vote.
It meant that four ‘Independents for Gaza’ MPs were elected in those seats and other candidates pushed Labour close. The best results for independents promoted by the Collective were also achieved in these constituencies too, polling significantly higher than in other seats they contested: an average 15.8% share compared to 3.4% elsewhere. These latter were credible candidates but even sitting councillors, in Southport, Liverpool, Oxford and Suffolk for example, were not able to breakthrough. Jeremy Corbyn won in Islington North – actually the number 92 constituency on the list with a 10%-plus Muslim electorate – but he, of course, has a unique authority.
It is important to register too that The Muslim Vote organisation, established in late 2023 to marshal opposition to Conservative and Labour politicians supporting Israel’s war on Gaza, also backed Liberal Democrat and Green candidates in July, sometimes against Collective-promoted candidates. Muslim Vote representatives attended Collective meetings before the election but not since and the organisation is committed to not back any particular party but to have “the Muslim voice heard across the political spectrum” and engage with those from “all political persuasions who want to genuinely work with us” (themuslimvote.co.uk).
Implicit in this is the false idea that the interests of working-class Muslims could be met by bargaining with parties ‘of all political persuasions’, including pro-capitalist ones. But this idea can only be persuasively answered by workers’ organisations, above all, the trade unions and authoritative leaders of the workers’ movement heading a workers’ party, showing that the working class can be united with a socialist programme that challenges the capitalist system in the interests of all.
Such a task will not be easy even with Jeremy Corbyn centrally involved. But there is a clear risk of a failed launch if his full engagement has not been secured or significant support won within the unions.
Organise a wider debate
Events are daily preparing the ground for the idea of a new, mass vehicle of working class political representation to gain ever-wider support, including in the trade unions, as workers digest the experience of Starmer’s Labour in office.
But soberly assessing the social forces involved, timing, perspectives for different strata and how they will evolve, the role of the unions and also that of authoritative individuals as a catalyst, will be critical to the success or otherwise of a serious move to a new workers’ party. Questions about the structure of a putative new party, at least in its initial stages – an inclusive federal ‘umbrella’ coalition involving unions, social movements, community campaigners and different socialist parties, or a narrower, ‘top-down’ organisation based on plebiscitary methods – also need to be addressed.
That will almost certainly require more and wider discussion across the movement than some in the Collective process wish. But sometimes haste really can be the enemy of speed.