British Labour party: A blinkered vision on the Left
20 October 2024
Protest against cut in the Winter Fuel
Payment.
In the aftermath of the British Labour Party conference there was a fair degree of convergence on the Left. The Socialist Workers Party warned correctly that the Starmer policy of austerity offers a way forward towards a far-right government at the next election. On the positive side it noted the many issues that have sprung up:
• The thousands of people
who’ve taken to the streets for Palestine.
• Those who protested in
the wake of the far right riots this summer and want to take on racism.
• Tensions between Labour
and some of the union leaders, such as Unite general secretary Sharon Graham.
“Our task is to bring together those fights and offer a socialist alternative” they said. The Counterfire group saw the vote for winter fuel payments and the role of the UNITE union as an important victory. The way forward is to build an anti-austerity movement and push for action from the trade unions. The Socialist Party also pins its hopes on a revolt by the trade union leaders and points to the nurses’ rejection of the pay settlement.
The first point to be made about these assessments is their extreme optimism, to the point where the facts of the situation are distorted. The major unions have agreed to support the Starmer government in return for a public sector pay settlement and dubious workers’ rights legislation, so a battle in the unions will be just as difficult as a direct fight with the Labour leadership. UNITE boss Sharon Graham has distanced the union from the TUC deal, but does not advance the need for a new workers’ party or going outside a limited trade union approach.
The second point is that the left positions are mostly apolitical. It’s true that many mobilised against racism, but there was no response when Starmer discussed with the Italian government what was essentially a migrant expulsion programme. The biggest challenge to Starmer in the election was genocide in Gaza, but protestors were manhandled out of the conference and Starmer continuously boasts of military intervention in support of Israel. The Ukraine proxy war wasn’t mentioned, even though a Labour team had just come back from Washington DC, where they had proposed strikes deep into Russia.
But there was a more fundamental absence of politics in the whole approach of the Left. Starmer argues that there is a catastrophic collapse of labour productivity in Britain that can only be corrected by restrictions on wages and services. The Left cry of “tax the rich” is an insufficient response. Sections of the UK economy would need to be expropriated. Starmer also hopes to mitigate the trade problems of Brexit. In this he will not be successful, but the point is that the word Brexit does not appear to exist in the Left’s lexicon.
The majority of the Left capitulated to English nationalism or to a neoliberal opposition, hiding behind an imaginary Lexit or what was essentially support for the EU. Now, faced with the tide of reaction that has followed, they are stuck without an alternative. We cannot call for a return to Europe. It is not a democratic structure and it is also decaying under the stresses of economic weakness, capitulation to racism and to the US war drive.
A political alternative is the foundation to a new movement. We should call for a United Socialist States of Europe, restoring the word Socialism to the discussion in Britain and lifting our eyes to the ongoing struggles of workers in Europe. Without a policy, the socialist groups will struggle to go beyond the old we say fight back chant made famous by countless generations of the Socialist Workers Party.