This will develop regardless of us.
It was the case even under New Labour Mark One.
After the 2002 national FBU strike, the union’s conference overwhelmingly voted to disaffiliate from Labour in 2004.
Later, in 2012, the FBU backed TUSC candidates in the London Assembly elections.
Also in 2004, the RMT, having supported Scottish Socialist Party candidates in Scotland, was expelled from Labour.
Yet these developments took place, as this document has outlined, in a period less favourable for the creation of a new party than the one we are going into.
Today the combination of economic crisis, resurging trade union militancy, widespread support for broadly left or socialist ideas, and the hopes that were raised by Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party combine to create the conditions for huge struggles over this issue.
Our party has a vital role to play.
That does not mean to say, of course, that the outcome of those struggles can be predetermined.
If, when, and what kind of party or parties form will be decided on the basis of the living class struggle, not least our role in it.
Without question the majority of the trade union leaders, perhaps all, will resist steps towards a new party.
Fundamentally, they see the limits of the trade union movement’s role as putting pressure on the capitalist class and capitalist politicians.
They cannot conceive of the working class taking power and rightly see, in this era of capitalist crisis, a new party as a step in that direction.
‘We have to continue to back Labour, or we will get something worse’, will be the argument.
And then when that won’t hold some will argue that a new more left Labour leader is on the horizon.
Starmer being booted out on the basis of events is perfectly possible.
However, a new Corbyn is not posed as his replacement.
Frightened by the ‘accident’ of Corbyn’s leadership, the representatives of the capitalist class now have a firmer grip on New Labour Mark II than was ever the case with its first incarnation.
Other union leaders, however, will turn to arguing that unions should ignore politics, and instead rely only on their industrial muscle putting forward a form of syndicalism.
However, as Sharon Graham, who has previously lent on this argument, is finding out, you can ignore politics, but it won’t ignore you! Unite is currently running a campaign for the nationalisation of energy.
Starmer is not going to do it, which is bound to raise the need in Unite members’ minds for a political party that does fight for that.
No two situations are the same, but the situation that is ahead in Britain does have some similarities with that which faced the Trotskyists in the US in the late 1930s.
Although only around 16% of the US workforce was in a trade union, there had been a major wave of strikes, far more bitter than anything we have yet seen, and the need for the working class to have its own party was, as Trotsky explained, “an objective fact in the sense that the new trade unions created by the workers came to an impasse – a blind alley – and the only way for workers already organised in the trade unions is to join their forces in order to influence legislation, to influence the class struggle.”
In 1938, again writing about the US, Trotsky argued that what kind of party would be formed couldn’t be predetermined – on the contrary he sketched out “three possibilities”, but explained that reality would probably be more complicated than any one option.
His possibilities included an “opportunistic but sufficiently centralised party, directed by fakers and careerists”, which would be able to exclude revolutionary forces, whereas in a period of heightened class struggle the opportunists were less likely to be “strong enough to eliminate us”.
The former possibility did not mean, of course, that Trotsky was arguing against the call for a new party, which he saw as “absolutely necessary” and the “only road for us in this situation”.
He argued against the equivalents of the small groups today who accuse us of being opportunist and wanting a ‘Labour Party Mark II’, saying that to fight against opportunism by “blocking a progressive step which can produce opportunism is a very reactionary policy, and sectarianism is often reactionary because it opposes the necessary action of the working class.”
We could also list a multiplicity of options for a new party.
The longer that the trade union leaders resist taking steps towards independent working-class representation, the more the pressure will build from below.
In that situation our forces, fighting alongside others for a new party, whilst leading by example in both the industrial and the electoral fields, as well as community work, would be a considerable attraction to growing layers of the working class.
Industrial, youth and community campaign work should all be considerations for branches when deciding their approach to standing in elections.
It is likely that trying to limit our success will be a central factor in impelling sections of the leadership of the trade union movement into political action.
Against the background of economic crisis and our growth in membership and influence, it would be difficult for the leadership to exclude us from a new party based on a section of the trade union movement, although that wouldn’t stop them trying.
However, it is also possible that some other kind of new left formation will develop, without active participation of the organised working class and without adequate democratic structures, to which the trade union leaders could try to abdicate responsibility.
Jeremy Corbyn is more likely to stand as an independent in the general election, but a party launched around him, led and organised by top-down figures from the ‘Corbynite apparatus’ which failed to organise the mass campaign to transform Labour under his leadership, could be such a formation.
It is also possible that a catalyst figurehead or group for some type of left formation could arise from other origins, or that new, sectional, or single-issue parties could develop.
For example, in the absence of a mass workers’ party, involving all sections of the working class and standing in solidarity with the Palestinian movement, it is not difficult to imagine a Muslim-based party making gains.
We will have to respond however events develop, at each stage raising a programme that points towards the working-class conquering power.
Even in the best scenario for us and the working class – of the speedy development of a party based on the trade unions and young people, with a democratic structure, and in which we can participate as an organised force to advance our programme – that will not be the end of the story.
In this era of capitalist crisis, within such a party there would inevitably be ferocious debates on the way forward, between those who accepted the constraints of the capitalism system, and those fighting for the socialist transformation of society – and within the latter on what programme is needed to achieve it.
Betrayals, splits and instability would therefore be part of the experience of such a party.
But that would also offer enormous opportunities for the workers looking towards such a party to draw revolutionary conclusions, on the basis of experience and our intervention.
In conclusion, we have correctly raised this demand for a quarter of a century, but it will come into its own in the class struggle in the years ahead.
