Nick Halsall
The working class is angry, and we have every reason to be. Wages are squeezed, housing is broken, public services are crumbling, and the rich still come out on top.
On the substance, the left is correct. It is right that wealth is created by workers and captured by capital. It is right that poverty, insecurity and social breakdown are not accidents, but the result of political and economic choices. It is right that the bosses use racism, nationalism and scapegoating to divide people who should be fighting together. It is right that ordinary people need collective organisation and political power of their own.
So why does the left keep losing?
The answer is not that the working class has stopped caring about politics, nor is it that the right has somehow discovered solutions to the crises people face. The answer is that being correct is not enough. The left can tell the truth about society and still fail if it can’t turn that truth into organisation, credibility and power.
That failure has many forms. Labour, the party founded to represent the working class, no longer acts for us. It speaks the language of ‘restraint, stability and responsibility’ far more fluently than it speaks the language of class, exploitation or struggle. It still wants working-class votes, but not working-class pressure. It wants the support of unions, but not the disruption that comes when workers actually fight.
That is why its relationship with parts of the workers’ movement has become so strained. A party that keeps workers at arm’s length when they are in struggle cannot seriously claim to represent us.
But Labour is only part of the story. The wider left has also failed, and that failure has been costly. Too many projects have been launched with big claims and weak roots. The working class looking for a serious political home do not see confidence in this.
The left often mistakes moral clarity for political strength. It assumes that exposing injustice and telling the truth is enough. But politics doesn’t work like that. Our opponents are not defeated just because we have the better analysis. They are defeated when we build forces capable of challenging them in workplaces, communities, unions, campaigns and elections.
People need a political vehicle for their anger. If that anger is not organised around class, solidarity and collective struggle, it will be organised around resentment, nationalism and blame.
The populist right doesn’t grow because it has answers for working-class people. It grows because it knows how to occupy the vacuum. It takes real grievances and redirects them away from bosses, landlords and the system itself, and towards migrants, refugees and anyone else who can be turned into a scapegoat.
The Greens may appeal to some people alienated by Labour, and they may take better positions on climate, civil liberties and other important issues. But they are not a socialist answer rooted in working-class power. Their politics too often rest on moral appeal, and a broad progressive coalition that softens the central fact of class conflict. For socialists, that is not enough. What is needed is the politics of power, organised labour, class independence and confrontation with capitalists.
If the left wants to stop losing, it has to stop imagining that correctness will save it – it must build! That means organisation in workplaces and communities. It means unions that fight, and political structures that back them. It means a party that belongs to its base instead of managing it from above. It means class politics that can resist establishment pressure.
Being correct matters. But winning requires organisation. And without organisation, the vacuum will always be filled by those most willing to exploit anger, fear and despair.
The battle over Unite’s direction has real political importance. The Executive Council elections will matter not just for the union itself, but for the wider left. They will help decide whether or not Unite continues along a path of greater militancy and conflict with Labour. For anyone serious about rebuilding the left on working-class lines, what happens inside Unite matters.
- Nick is branch secretary of Unite Hinkley Point C Construction Branch SW/8257, writing in a personal capacity
