Last week, nearly 10,000 people attended an
outdoor rally in Liverpool to support Jeremy Corbyn’s bid to retain the
leadership of the labour Party. The day before 2,000 turned up in Leeds and
before that again another 3,000 attended a rally in Hull. Membership of the
British Labour Party has shot up to nearly 600,000.
All of this is a testimony to the appeal that real left wing politics has today. In the nineties the Labour Party was captured by Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’ politics which proclaimed that the ‘class war was over’ and that the party had to adopt an overt pro-market position. In short, the type of politics which still dominates the Irish Labour Party and its main union backer, SIPTU.
(Labour’s new leader, Brendan Howlin has criticised Corbyn while its former TD, Pat Rabbitte has denounced him as ‘essentially Trotskyist in his disposition’. Meanwhile SIPTU’s President, Jack O’ Connor, claimed that unions should not be an ‘antagonistic voice’ to management but should rather seek to ‘minimise employer hostility’.)
Corbyn represents a shift away from this type of failed policy and that is why he is so popular with Labour Party members. He campaigns on policies that are not entirely dissimilar to People Before Profit’s own platform.
All of this is a testimony to the appeal that real left wing politics has today. In the nineties the Labour Party was captured by Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’ politics which proclaimed that the ‘class war was over’ and that the party had to adopt an overt pro-market position. In short, the type of politics which still dominates the Irish Labour Party and its main union backer, SIPTU.
(Labour’s new leader, Brendan Howlin has criticised Corbyn while its former TD, Pat Rabbitte has denounced him as ‘essentially Trotskyist in his disposition’. Meanwhile SIPTU’s President, Jack O’ Connor, claimed that unions should not be an ‘antagonistic voice’ to management but should rather seek to ‘minimise employer hostility’.)
Corbyn represents a shift away from this type of failed policy and that is why he is so popular with Labour Party members. He campaigns on policies that are not entirely dissimilar to People Before Profit’s own platform.
- He will bring in legislation to
force companies with more than 250 workers to both recognise and automatically
negotiate with unions.
- He will raise corporation tax
to fund the abolition of student fees. Currently, the average student in
Britain leaves college with £44,000 in debt after paying annual fees of
£9,000.
- He will establish a national
investment fund to help create jobs.
- He wants to ban zero hour
contracts and change company law to stop directors taking out huge sums
for their pensions while sacking workers.
Jeremy Corbyn’s big problem is the apparatus of the Labour Party. The vast majority of its MPs hate him, precisely because he represents a break with the political consensus that upholds the British elite. The full time officials in the party have done everything to gerrymander the vote on the leadership election by disbanding local branches that are too radical and excluding members who joined in the last seven months before voting.
They want to replace Corbyn with Owen Smith, a former lobbyist for Pfizer and a figure who uses a mild left rhetoric to cover his more right wing instincts. For example Smith’s programme to address the concerns of those who voted for Brexit is to suggest that there are too many immigrants in some areas.
This is why the re-election of Corbyn will only be the first step in the revitalisation of left wing politics in Britain. It may lead to a split off of the Blairite wing of the Labour Party – or, if they remain, a continual campaign to undermine Corbyn.
Moreover, if Corbyn’s is facing such opposition before coming to office, one can only imagine the difficulties that stand in his way if he was ever Prime Minister. The BBC and even the supposedly soft left newspapers like the Guardian and Mirror are already running a smear campaign against him. If he ever got to lead a government, the full might of British capitalism would be deployed to undermine his policies.
This is why the advance of the left will need to move beyond the Labour Party membership to engage the mass of workers and encourage them to fight for themselves. This will mean the creation of a different type of party to the current Labour Party.
In the past Labour occasionally adopted a left rhetoric while staying ever loyal to the power structures of British capitalism and its imperialist ambitions.
That no longer fits with the current situation. What is now needed is a party rooted in struggle, promoting ‘people power’ and workers action as the way to win. How such a radical left party will emerge in Britain will become a key question after this leadership election is over.