Editorial of the Socialist issue 1314
By slashing benefits for disabled people – nakedly ‘out-Torying the Tories’, acting with the ‘cold cruelty of the British capitalist class’ – Keir Starmer has added yet more fuel to the burning hatred of his government.
Trade union leaders, many of whom months ago were heralding this Labour government as being ‘ours’, are now compelled to voice opposition, at least in words. On the issue of welfare reforms, as well as backsliding on workers’ rights, among other things.
At the general election, Unite the Union made the decision to not centrally fund the Labour campaign and instead sponsored 109 individual candidates, with donations worth £646,000. The RMT transport union, not affiliated to Labour, donated to 24. Around 200 in total received over £2 million of trade union funding.
The unions should now be contacting those MPs to instruct them to vote against Starmer’s welfare reforms. Bring them in to meet with the unions’ lay leadership bodies and receive instruction as to how they are expected to fight on the side of the working class in parliament.
It should be the over six million-strong trade union movement – which gave a glimpse of its organisational and fighting capacity during the strike wave – that should lead in building the socialist opposition to Starmer. Starting by organising a weekend demonstration, in its own name, in opposition to Labour austerity.
With important trade union elections taking place, this summer could see large public sector trade unions such as Unison, PCS and NEU, with new left leaderships or with the left strengthened. At the same time, public sector pay deals and struggles against job losses are set to come to a head.
National trade union demo
A national trade union demo could play a role – similar to a pre-strike mass meeting – in beginning to unite struggles across the public sector, developing in the direction of future coordinated public sector strike action.
Labour politicians are clearly already under pressure. Left-wing Labour MP Richard Burgon posted on ‘X’, formerly Twitter, that he anticipates a “mother of all rebellions” from MPs over welfare cuts. There has been a whole rash of Labour councillor resignations over this issue and others. Not to mention the Independent Group of MPs which includes Jeremy Corbyn, elected in opposition to Starmer’s support for the Israeli state’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinians.
All of this without working-class pressure, at this stage, being harnessed and organised. It is the trade unions that have the social weight and authority do so, as the launch of Enough is Enough showed at the start of the strike wave, led by then RMT general secretary Mick Lynch at that time heading up national strike action.
At that stage there was huge enthusiasm for the idea of Enough is Enough developing into a new political party fighting for the working class. Something which the trade union leaders at its head consciously avoided.
Enough is Enough, Peoples Assembly, the Peace and Justice Project, Owen Jones’s We Deserve Better, the Collective, Assemble, Coalition of Resistance, various groups of independents… have all come into existence in the vacuum of mass working-class political representation. At the local elections on 1 May, the first major electoral challenge for Starmer’s government, however, there will be no mass working-class political alternative on offer.
There will be around 100 candidates standing as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), which the Socialist Party participates in, still just a modest step towards the mass vehicle for political representation that the working class needs. It is nonetheless a clear working-class banner. Fighting trade unionists and socialists prepared to back TUSC’s core pledges still have time to join the stand.
Experience of Starmer’s Labour government is forcing the need for the working class to have its own mass party onto the agenda. The Socialist Party will continue to fight for the trade unions to take a lead and play a central role.
