The Case for a New Mass Workers' Party [Back]
2. Channelling the anger
THE SOCIALIST PARTY believes that Blair has succeeded in his aim of transforming New Labour into a capitalist party, although the process of consolidating it as such will continue.
As early as 1995 we first raised the call for a new mass workers’ party. Such a party, we argued, could unite together trade unionists, unorganised workers, socialists, young people, direct action, environmental and community campaigners, oppressed groups and all those looking for an alternative to the left of New Labour.
A credible alternative
A NEW WORKERS’ party could politically channel the anger and discontent which working class people and layers of middle class people feel towards New Labour.
Thousands of ‘traditional’ Labour voters feel alienated. This found expression, for example, during the fuel protests in September 2000, when underlying discontent and a feeling of betrayal about the NHS, education, privatisation, low pay, inequality and many other grievances rose to the surface and coalesced around the issue of fuel prices.
For a time it looked as if the New Labour government was on the rocks. In the end they recovered in the opinion polls. But if there had been a sizeable alternative to the left of New Labour, the outcome could have been very different.
The same was true after the Hatfield rail disaster. If a mass working class party had existed it could have channelled the wave of revulsion which was felt against privatisation, organising mass protests around the country in favour of re-nationalisation of the railways.
Because such an alternative hasn’t existed, however, electorally thousands of people have voted with their feet. New Labour’s historic, second ‘landslide’ in the 2001 general election was achieved with the support of just 25% of potential voters.
Forty-one per cent of registered voters (17 million people) refused to vote, the lowest turnout for over 80 years. In council elections in some areas in the north of England, turnout has fallen to as low as 10%. It’s in working class areas which Labour used to rely on for support, that people are most likely to register their discontent by staying at home. ‘Why bother to vote? They’re all the same’, is heard more and more on the doorsteps in every election.
But where a serious alternative has been on offer, the outcome has been very different. "Britain is in the grip of a new form of politics", wrote The Financial Times after the local and regional elections of May 2000. What they meant was that the old allegiances were breaking down and that alternative candidates to the established political parties could not only gain creditable votes but could even win.
Ken Livingstone stood as an independent against the official New Labour candidate Frank Dobson in the May 2000 London mayoral election and won. In terms of his policies Livingstone is no longer ‘Red Ken’.
Socialism is a word that rarely forms part of his vocabulary these days. He has praised the capitalist market as "the most efficient way of distributing and exchanging goods" (Evening Standard, 19 October 1999) and before and since his election he has gone out of his way to prove that he is ‘big business friendly’.
But the perception of Livingstone amongst many of those who voted for him and supported his campaign, was of a radical, anti-establishment candidate who was prepared to stand up to Blair and New Labour.
Socialist candidates have also won some important victories. In Scotland the then Labour MP Dennis Canavan, having been banned from standing as a Labour candidate for the new parliament, was elected as an independent socialist member of the Scottish parliament (MSP). And Tommy Sheridan became the first MSP for the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). In England, the Socialist Party has six elected local councillors, three in Coventry, two in Lewisham and one in Preston.
The 2001 general election appeared to be a ‘no change’ election. But under the surface an explosive situation is brewing in the workplaces, communities and also the electoral plane. In Wyre Forest, retired consultant Dr Richard Taylor won 58% of the vote campaigning against the downgrading of Kidderminster hospital. This is a sign of things to come.
The Green Party, viewed by many who vote for it as a radical alternative, won 166,477 votes standing in 145 seats across Britain. And on an all-Britain basis, nearly 300 candidates from the Socialist Party, the Socialist Alliance, the Scottish Socialist Party and Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party, polled 188,814 votes between them.
Judging by opinion polls, abstention rates and simply talking to working class people on the doorsteps in elections, it’s clear that a vacuum exists to the left of New Labour. A new workers’ party, offering an alternative to the pro-market policies of the three main establishment parties, could give political expression to the discontent which already exists and will intensify in the future.
Anti-capitalism
A CAMPAIGNING PARTY could also act as a pole of attraction to a growing layer of radicalised young people. Inspired by the anti-capitalist movement which took place against the WTO/IMF meeting in Seattle in 1999, a small but significant number are beginning to question capitalism as an economic and social system and are searching for an alternative.
Throughout the 1990s young people mobilised around many single issues; environmental issues, anti-racism, animal rights, women’s rights, human and democratic rights, third world poverty, debt and exploitation. Seattle was important because, for the first time on a relatively large scale, single issue campaigners came together with workers organised in the trade unions, in a single movement. Significantly, they began to identify a common enemy and cause of the problems which they were fighting against – capitalism.
In the 2000 US presidential elections, Ralph Nader, standing on the Green Party ticket, mobilised these already radicalised youth and workers behind his election campaign and inspired many others in the process. Over 2.7 million people voted for his clearly anti-big business agenda.
"The only distinction between Bush and Gore", declared Nader, "is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when the big corporations knock on the door".
His programme was anti-corruption, and called for a minimum wage of $10 an hour, union, minority and women’s rights, and universal health care. Thousands attended his rallies across the US: 16,000 in Madison Square Gardens, New York, 12,000 in Boston and Minneapolis, and 10,000 in Seattle.
Overall Nader won 3% of the vote, but scored more than 5% in eleven states including 10% in Alaska. Five per cent of 18-29 year olds voted for him. This following a campaign which cost just $8 million compared to the $3.4 billion that the Republicans and Democrats spent between them. Thirty per cent of those who cast their vote for Nader said that if he hadn’t been standing, they wouldn’t have bothered to vote at all.
Nader is not a socialist, but his radical programme inspired thousands of young people, workers and sections of the middle class. His campaign showed the massive potential which exists for an independent third party. Socialist Alternative, the sister party of the Socialist Party in the US, has called on Nader to organise a conference of all radical forces; unions, women’s groups, community and minority organisations, socialists etc, to discuss the formation of a broad, independent, radical, Left party.
Such a party, if it were formed, would represent an enormous step forward for workers and youth in the US, who for too long have had only the ‘twin evils’ of the pro-big business Republican and Democratic Parties to choose from. Nader’s campaign gives a glimpse of what could be possible in the US, and in Britain too, in the future.
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The Case for a New Mass Workers' Party
3. Is the party really over?
SOME ON THE Left do not agree with our call for a new working class party. Tony Benn, for example, agrees that New Labour is a pro-big business party.
"It is a fact", he stated, "that you cannot find anywhere in Britain more powerful advocates of market forces and globalisation than in the party that describes itself as New Labour". However he disagrees with the idea of a new workers’ party. "Instead of forming new parties", he said, "we have to build the whole thing up again from the bottom". (Labour Left Briefing, November 1999)
Even some outside the Labour Party do not believe that New Labour is an out and out big business party. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has opposed the call for a new mass workers’ party. Socialist Worker editor Chris Harman wrote:
"In Britain ‘the project’ of the Blairites since the mid-1990s has aimed at… recasting the Labour Party as a version of the Democratic Party… But they have not yet completely succeeded in doing so, and the base of Blair’s party still remains rather different from that of Clinton and Gore’s, however close their policies might be… Even today trade union leaders are directly represented at the conference and on the executive of Britain’s Labour Party". (Socialist Review, September 2000)
This analysis led the SWP to advocate a vote for New Labour in the 2001 general election in constituencies where socialists and ‘radical left’ candidates were not standing.
‘Modernising’ the party
IT’S TRUE THAT formally the link between the trade unions and the Labour Party remains in place.
But the nature of that relationship has fundamentally changed. In the past workers could make their voices heard through the party structures. They could pass resolutions at the annual party conference and have a decisive influence over policy.
In 1978, for example, a supporter of Militant (forerunner of the Socialist Party) from Liverpool Wavertree constituency Labour Party, moved a resolution at the Labour Party conference, rejecting the 5% pay limit which the Labour government had imposed on workers. Delegates voted in favour of the resolution, decisively breaking Labour’s ‘social contract’ with the unions and paving the way for a huge wave of industrial struggles.
Now Blair’s ‘modernising reforms’ have neutered any effective opposition and closed those democratic structures off. Prospective candidates, democratically elected by Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs), have been undemocratically removed by a leadership clique at the top of the party. The Parliamentary Labour Party is overwhelmingly made up of loyal Blairite clones.
Back-bench MP Stephen Pound graphically summed up their outlook when he said,
"I’m a cringing coward. I always vote the way they tell me to vote. I’m a balls-achingly, tooth-grindingly, butt-clenchingly loyal apparatchick". (The Observer, 7th May 2000)
Of course there have been back-bench rebellions, over issues such as welfare and privatisation of air-traffic control and, early in the second term, the composition of parliamentary select committees. In the case of disability cuts as many as 100 MPs defied the New Labour leadership.
Under pressure some MPs will reflect the concerns of working class people, either because they still have some principles left or because they are worried about losing their seat at the next election. This can even result in temporary small concessions as with the increase in pensions or the minimum wage. But in the future, as an economic crisis bites, New Labour will step up its attacks on welfare, public services and the lives of both working and middle class people.
Inevitably in that situation future ‘rebellions’ will take place. There could even be splits with a group or groups of MPs deciding to leave the party or risking expulsion by defying the leadership. However this is likely to be quite a complicated process. Both Dennis Canavan and Ken Livingstone broke with New Labour to stand as independents. Canavan has flirted with going back into the Labour Party and Livingstone is begging the New Labour leadership to reinstate him.
Any left splits or ‘splinters’ from the Parliamentary Labour Party are only likely to happen in response to huge extra-parliamentary protests by working class people. And the weakness of the Left means that any splits would be quite small, certainly nothing like the 1930s when as many as 30,000 members in the Independent Labour Party (ILP) turned their backs on the Labour Party itself.
They could of course play some role in the formation of a new workers’ party in the future but it’s unlikely to be a decisive one. It will be new forces moving into struggle in the workplaces and communities which will play the main role in building a new mass party. And it’s to these forces outside of the Labour Party that ex-Labour MP’s and their followers are likely to look for points of support.
Decline of the Left
THERE IS NO cunning left-wing plan to reclaim the Labour Party for working class people.
The Left is numerically weak and has no clear political alternative to Blairism. The main left organisation, the Grassroots Alliance, has seen its vote in the elections to the National Executive Committee (NEC) decline every year since 1998. Turnout in the year 2000 was half the average figure of previous years and it declined further in 2001.
The highest-placed Grassroots Alliance candidate polled just 24,000 this year, compared to the 83,000 votes won by Ken Livingstone when he famously defeated Peter Mandelson in the 1997 NEC elections. A Labour Left Briefing resolution to its annual general meeting in November 2000, admitted that "the left in the Labour Party remains small and isolated". Its only ‘strategy’ is to wait and see, hoping that something will turn up or that the tide will turn; which of course is no strategy at all.
The 2000 Labour Party conference revealed just how weak the Left now is. Traditionally individual delegates elected from local constituency parties have been to the left of trade union delegations. But in the controversial debate on pensions, constituency delegates backed Blair and Brown and voted 64% to 36% against restoring the link between pensions and earnings. The unions, on the other hand, voted 84% to 16% in favour.
The class background of individual Labour Party members has significantly changed. A survey carried out in 1999 found that 64% of members were white-collar professionals and just 15% working class. The Labour Party, stated The Observer, "is the natural party of the middle class". This has been reinforced by the 2001 general election result, with the Labour vote tending to be firmer amongst the middle classes while falling in working class areas.
Disillusioned rank and file members have been leaving the party in droves. One member explained why: "My CLP suffered a surge of resignations from members citing the bombing of Serbia, the Asylum Bill, tuition fees for students, and public sector pay restraint". (Labour Left Briefing, November 1999) Labour Party membership had fallen to only 280,000 by the time of the 2001 general election, less than when Blair took over the leadership in 1994.
In Blair’s own Sedgefield constituency, a group of activists left New Labour and formed a ‘Campaign for Labour Representation’. One of the group, Richard Wanless, a nurse, stated,
"Labour Party membership around here is haemorrhaging. It’s because Tony Blair has become remote and out of touch… Blair… no longer speaks the same language as us. I work at the sharp end of the NHS and can tell you it’s a disaster. Manufacturing is dying, the car industry is on its knees, and there is still high unemployment in Labour’s heartlands. It’s why I quit the party and helped set up the new campaign". (The Times, 11th May 2000)
In this situation how exactly can the ‘tide turn’? Where are the members, structures and mechanisms through which change could come about? The trade union vote at the annual party conference has been reduced from 90% to 50%. More importantly, the power that conference had to democratically decide policy has been removed and replaced by ineffectual ‘policy forums’.
No wonder that in the year 2000, a third of constituency Labour Parties didn’t even bother to elect delegates to the conference. As one member said,
"No one seems to be interested in going along to stand and clap speeches they don’t really believe in… At least now they will have more seats to sell to corporate sponsors". (The Guardian, 14th April 2000)
A delegate from Hackney North and Stoke Newington complained of
"a routine of lengthy ministerial speeches, absurd, over the top, standing ovations and the chair ruling that votes were unanimous, in a manner reminiscent of 1930s Russia". (Labour Left Briefing, December 2000)
Liz Davies, in her book Through the Looking Glass, which details her experiences which led her to leave the Labour Party, describes the National Executive meetings as "easily the least democratic, most stitched-up and most arduously unpleasant meetings I have ever attended".
What about the unions?
COULD CHANGE COME from the trade unions? According to a Labour Research survey (October 2000) dissatisfaction with New Labour is weakening union links with local constituency Labour Parties.
In the leadership’s ‘Twenty-First Century Party’ consultation document, it’s clear that they want to further undermine those links by abolishing constituency Labour Party general management committees (GCs) to which local unions can send delegates.
Even when, on rare occasions, the leadership are overturned at national conference, as in the pensions debate at the September 2000 conference, it has absolutely no effect. Gordon Brown listened politely and then arrogantly ignored everything conference decided.
"It is not for a few composite motions to decide the policy of this government", he retorted. "I am not going to give in to the proposal that came from the union leaders today. We have said quite clearly that we are not going to do that". (The Guardian, 28th September 2000)
John Edmonds, general secretary of the GMB general workers union, complained that trying to get a motion on to the conference agenda was like trying to ‘ride over Beacher’s Brook during the Grand National’. But he and other trade union leaders have gone along with all the obstacles that Blair and co have placed in their way. In reality they share the same pro-market ideology and outlook. In the workplaces they are actively pursuing ‘partnership’, which means telling workers to roll over and let the bosses walk all over them.
In the September 2000 fuel protests they actively sabotaged the movement, pressurising the tanker drivers to go back to work. Bill Morris, leader of the TGWU, even called for his own members to be arrested! They tried to cover their actions by calling it a ‘bosses protest’.
Of course some of the protesters were owners of large haulier companies or large scale farmers. Some drivers even crossed picket lines during the miners strike. But the protest also involved small business people and drivers who were union members.
More significantly, at its height the protest had the support of 93% of the population. It acted as a magnet, bringing to the surface all the discontent people felt against New Labour and moved far beyond the single issue of the price of fuel.
As one trade union official put it, the lesson of the fuel protests was ‘whoever shouts the loudest gets the most’. This was the real reason why union leaders ‘colluded’ with Blair to end the protests. They were terrified that action would become contagious and raise expectations amongst other sections of workers. Their main motivation is to dampen down unrest and hold back workers from taking action. They don’t want anything to disturb their cosy, comfortable lifestyles which are a million miles removed from the members they’re supposed to represent.
Since the 2001 general election some have made noises in opposition to further privatisation of public services. But they have no intention of seriously challenging the Blairisation of the Labour Party. They’ve sat back with arms folded as power has become more and more centralised and democratic structures have been undermined or done away with.
Even assuming that the avenues did still exist for rolling back these changes, the trade union leaders would only move if pushed by a groundswell movement from ordinary trade union members. But all the signs are pointing in the opposite direction.
Even before an economic crisis, several groups of workers came into conflict with New Labour councils and the government. In Scotland, in the year 2000, 80,000 local authority workers went on nationwide strike. They were protesting against a derisory wage offer from the body representing local councils which are overwhelmingly controlled by New Labour.
In Hackney in East London, the council, run by a Labour/Tory coalition faced bankruptcy. Thousands of workers took strike action and joined local people to demonstrate against privatisation and the decimation of local jobs and services.
In Dudley, hospital workers took weeks of strike action in opposition to PFI and the effect privatisation would have on their jobs and conditions. And London Underground workers have also taken strike action regarding safety and privatisation of the tube.
Attacked in this way by New Labour councils, forced into taking action to defend jobs and services, workers aren’t drawing the conclusion that they should go into the Labour Party and change it. Instead they’re beginning to ask, ‘why are our unions giving thousands of pounds to a party which then turns round and kicks us in the teeth?’
Between 1979 and 1997, unions donated a staggering £200 million to New Labour. And what have workers got in return? More privatisation, thousands of job losses in manufacturing industry, and the anti-union laws remaining in place. As struggles intensify in both the public and private sector, the idea of disaffiliating from New Labour and building a new workers’ party will gain increasing support.
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