What we think

Blair’s long goodbye

TONY BLAIR’S final speech to Labour Party conference was greeted with
wild applause. Delegates hoisted ‘homemade’ placards declaring ‘TB 4 eva’
and ‘we love you Tony’. Outside the Labour Party conference his speech
will have been greeted rather differently.

Tony Blair is now even more hated than Margaret Thatcher was in her
final months in power. Despite the positive gloss he tried to put on his
departure at the Labour Party conference, in reality he is being forced
out because Labour MPs and councillors believe he has become a liability
for the Labour Party, and therefore for their careers.

However, the New Labour machine is making a mistake if it believes
that ditching Blair will simply solve their problems. It is not only
Blair, but Blairism, which people are fed up with. Blair claimed in his
speech that New Labour spoke for all of the people, yet he defended
privatisation of public services, the occupations of Iraq and
Afghanistan, and his close relationship with George Bush – all of which
are extremely unpopular with a majority of ‘the people’.

New Labour ‘project’

Gordon Brown, who remains the most likely successor to Blair, used
the conference to emphasise again that he will continue the New Labour
‘project’ and is singing from the same hymn sheet as Blair on the
central foreign and domestic issues. His ‘radical’ proposal for a new
independent board to run the NHS will in reality be a further
acceleration of privatisation, which Brown has promised to "intensify".

While it is clear that there is, as Peter Mandelson described it, a
"fissure" at the top of New Labour, and a deep-seated hatred between the
‘Blairites’ and the ‘Brownites’, there are virtually no ideological
differences. Like rats caught in a trap, the squabbles at the top of New
Labour have nothing to do with principles and everything to do with
politicians trying to rescue their careers.

Nonetheless, there will be some workers who are hoping against hope
that Brown is only pretending to be a Blairite, and will reveal his
‘true socialist’ colours once elected.

Unfortunately, their illusions will be quickly shattered as Brown
continues with the anti-working class, pro-big business policies he has
pursued as chancellor. New Labour today is a party of the billionaires
that does not, in any sense, represent the interests of working-class
people.

Blair in his speech emphasised the continuity between New Labour and
the Labour governments of the past – pointing out, for example, that in
1969 Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, tried to introduce anti-trade
union legislation in the form of the misnamed "In Place of Strife" Bill.

Blair argued that the difference then was that Wilson did not dare to
go ahead. In a sense Blair was right. The tops of the Labour Party have
always acted in the interests of big business. Nonetheless, Labour
governments in the past were forced to respond to the pressure of the
working class.

In 1969 a series of strikes put the government under such pressure
that the cabinet openly split and Wilson was forced to retreat. Today is
a very different situation within the Labour Party – where the Blairites
have completely insulated themselves from the pressure of the organised
working class in the form of the trade unions.

While the trade union vote still has power at conference, the
conference itself has no decision-making power at all! As was the case
in recent years the trade unions will succeed in inflicting some defeats
on New Labour at this year’s conference. Already a motion on the rights
of agency workers has been passed in the face of government opposition.
However, as with last year’s ‘victories’ on trade union laws,
privatisation and council housing, it will not make one iota of
difference to government policy.

Empty shell

NEW LABOUR today is an empty shell. Its official membership has more
than halved since 1997, and its active membership is as little as ten to
twenty thousand. Sixty thousand people marched in Manchester on the eve
of the conference – opposing the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan,
cuts in the NHS, and demanding that Blair should go.

But those issues will barely be discussed in the hallowed halls of
Labour Party conference. Even, or rather especially, the question of the
Labour leadership. It is consuming the New Labour apparatus but the last
thing that they wanted was for it to be openly debated on the conference
floor. As a result seventeen motions on the Labour leadership were ruled
out of order.

Nor will there be genuine debate on more serious matters. According
to the Labour Representation Committee resolutions have been ruled out
of order on: Iraq, Trident replacement, the council housing ‘fourth
option’, nuclear energy, trade union laws, Venezuela, incapacity
benefit, school admissions policy, party political funding, and Thames
Water! As the socialist has explained before, the democratic structures
which had previously at least allowed the working class a voice within
the Labour Party have been completely destroyed.

The Socialist Party does not believe that New Labour can be
‘reclaimed’ and argues that the only way forward for working-class
people is to build a new party that actually stands in their interests.
Since 1997 Labour has lost four million voters – the vast majority of
these are working-class ‘traditional Labour’ voters who have been
betrayed by New Labour’s big business agenda. A party that stands in
their interests – for the millions not the millionaires – is needed.

Since 1997 the trade union leaders have given more than £100 million
of their members’ money to New Labour. It hasn’t bought them a fiver’s
worth of influence. While the billionaires get knighthoods and cut-price
public services in return for their ‘dodgy loans’ trade unionists get
kicked in the teeth.

However, the majority of trade union leaders are still mistakenly
arguing that New Labour can be changed. If they are sincere in this,
those in affiliated trade unions should support John McDonnell MP’s
campaign for the leadership, as the only candidate who stands on a
programme that is in the interests of trade union members, in that it is
against cuts, low pay and privatisation.

While we do not think John McDonnell’s campaign will succeed, given
the pro-big business nature of the Labour Party, we will call on those
trade unionists that have a vote in the election to vote for him.

However if, as we unfortunately expect, the Labour leadership contest
confirms Labour cannot be reclaimed, McDonnell and the other Labour
lefts should draw the necessary conclusions from this and throw their
weight behind the building of a new mass workers’ party.