A party for the millions – not the millionaires
Join the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party
AFTER THEIR disastrous showing on 4 May, New Labour now has fewer
councillors than at any time since 1973. Tony Blair is clinging to
power by a thread – as Labour MPs and councillors realise that their
own careers are a risk if they let Blair continue in office much
longer.
Hannah Sell, Socialist Party executive committee and
assistant secretary CNWP
But the press furore about the infighting that dominates New
Labour’s inner-circle ignores the real issue. New Labour is not only
unpopular because of Blair but because of ‘Blairism’ – the relentless
diet of cuts, corruption, privatisation and warmongering that Gordon
Brown and the ‘Brownites’ are just as responsible for.
More than 60% of the electorate did not vote on 4 May. While a
section of ‘traditional’ Tory voters could express their anger with
New Labour by returning to the Tory fold, it was a very different
story for the majority – the working class – who were effectively
silenced in this election.
Where credible socialists, and other anti-cuts and
anti-privatisation candidates stood, they received a good response.
The Socialist Party, for example, came out of the election with seven
party members as councillors. However, in the vast majority of seats
around the country there was no candidate who opposed the sell-off of
the NHS, or the raising of the retirement age, or the destruction of
comprehensive education.
The need for a new mass party of the working class is now more
urgent than ever. This is the lesson that the Socialist Party has
drawn from this election and we will be helping to step up the
Campaign for a New Workers’ Party (CNWP), which was initiated in
March, as a result.
Local launch rallies are planned in nineteen towns and cities
across the country and at every trade union conference. To date
almost 1,800 trade union and community activists have signed the
‘declaration for a new workers’ party’ and we are driving to reach
5,000 in the coming months.
The far-right racist British National Party more than doubled its
number of councillors to 46 in this election. They did so by falsely
posing as a party of the ‘white working-class’. In fact they are
nothing of the sort. Where they have been elected they have voted for
cuts in services and increases in council tax just the same as the
big three parties.
But for as long as there is no major national party that fights
against this brutal profit-hungry system and for decent jobs, housing
and pensions for all working-class people, the danger that these
racists succeed in dividing worker against worker will remain.
Most of the trade union leaders still argue it is possible to
transform New Labour. Yet, since 1997 trade union leaders have given
over £100 million of their members’ money to New Labour, and the
government has remorselessly attacked their members’ interests.
In the CNWP we will be saying that the unions should stop funding
New Labour now – and begin to build a party that will fight in their
members’ interest.
A few union leaders, such as the RMT general secretary Bob Crow
and PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka, have correctly said that
Labour is finished as a party of the working class and that a new
alternative is needed. However, not even the best of the national
union leaders have taken active steps towards the foundation of a new
party. But there isn’t unlimited time. The longer there is a delay in
the foundation of a new party, the harder it will be to effectively
undermine the BNP and their ilk.
On different issues working-class people are beginning to fight
back. Just weeks before the election over one million local
government workers were forced to strike action to defend their
pension rights against the New Labour government and the
Tory-controlled Local Government Association. Tens of thousands have
taken part in local demonstrations against NHS cuts.
As working-class people become involved in struggle the need to,
and more importantly the possibility of, building a new party becomes
more widely understood.
You can get in touch with the CNWP by emailing [email protected] or
by writing to CNWP, PO Box 858, London E11 1YG
Website:
www.cnwp.org.uk
