11.08.2022

No time for Sir Keir

With the rise in trade union militancy, all sorts of rumours are circulating about establishing some kind of new left party. James Harvey reports

The upsurge in strikes and protests about the cost of living crisis over the last few weeks clearly marks an intensification of the class struggle, which will have important impacts on the politics and the organisations of the wider working class movement.

Its most immediate effect has been on the confidence and combativity of all sections of the proletariat. In a period of rising prices and growing expectations that this increasing rate of inflation will continue into next year and beyond, it was obvious that the well-organised workers in areas like transport and communications would take action to defend wages and conditions. Their high level of organisation and traditions of struggle, combined with their pivotal economic position, give these groups of workers a degree of bargaining power in their fight with employers. But significantly other groups of workers - in, for example, traditionally less well-organised sectors in the service economy - have also started to join in.

While we do not have a crystal ball to see the exact pattern of events over the next few months, increasing energy bills and rocketing prices for household essentials are likely to keep up the pressure and force more workers into action. Similarly, the rising cost of energy could also see the development of a ‘Don’t pay’ campaign - both as a form of political action to halt price rises and because many of the poorest families will not actually be able to afford to pay their bills.

All of these indications of an intensified class struggle have contributed to something of a revival of the left. The high media profile of RMT leader Mick Lynch and widely-heard arguments that the workers should not have to pay for the bosses’ crises has brought back supposedly ‘old-fashioned’ class-war rhetoric into politics and provided something of a fillip. Questions about the nature of the energy companies’ profits and the real causes of inflation have also encouraged many workers to challenge the arguments of the government and the employers, and think about the nature of the society we live in.

Although there is no automatic connection between industrial militancy, class-consciousness and revolutionary politics, it is probable that support for various forms of left politics will grow in the next few months. Certainly, the growth in strikes and protests can only raise the level of confidence of the left and the wider working class movement after what has been a period of political defeats and demoralisation. The recent spat between Labour leader Keir Starmer and some of his shadow cabinet and MPs over support for strikes and their appearance on picket lines is a distant echo of some of the processes and conflicts going on at the moment at levels of the labour movement.

Contradictory

The tensions within the Labour Party arise from its function as a bourgeois workers’ party: that is, a party rooted in the organised working class within the trade unions, but with a leadership structurally rooted in capitalism and loyalty to the constitutional order. All Labour leaders have played that role historically, but - both for reasons of electoral strategy and personal background as a high state functionary - Starmer is more organically part of the ruling class and its state than even Tony Blair was when he became prime minister! Despite the current strains between the Labour leadership and the trade unions this contradictory relationship still provides the conditions for the spontaneous reproduction of a Labour left, however confused and politically limited it might be.

However, this all depends on the relationship between Labour and the trade unions continuing in its present form and, as we have seen in recent months, that is far from guaranteed. Leaving aside Starmer’s possible strategy of carrying on Blair’s ‘deLabourising’ of Labour and fundamentally changing the party’s relationship with the unions, let us consider how the union leadership sees the link with Labour. Union leaders, no matter how ‘left’ their rhetoric, are bureaucrats - unless they operate under the discipline of the revolutionary party - and therefore see their function as improving the conditions of their members and bargaining with the capitalists for the best price for workers’ labour - not overthrowing the capitalist system.

Politically this means a transactional relationship between the union tops and the Labour leadership: the unions provide financial support and work to elect a Labour government, which in turn is supposed to carry out reforms in the interests of union members and the working class more generally. That is the hope, but, as the history of Labour governments has shown, it has not turned out that way in practice. Still, the reasoning goes, any Labour government is better than a Tory government, and so the pragmatic arrangement continues.

Is it likely to change before the next general election, even if Starmer continues his rightward triangulation and distances himself from the current strike wave? Given the nature of the ‘first past the post’ electoral system and the difficulties in building a viable electoral alternative to Labour in such a short time, it is neither politically possible nor in the interests of the trade union bureaucracy to break with Labour. Much more likely will be attempts to exert pressure on the party through reducing financial contributions or, as Sharon Graham has done with Unite, use the industrial strength of the trade unions instead of ‘playing games at Westminster’ as a way to secure concessions.

Mark two

If the majority of trade union bureaucrats keep up the links with Labour for want of anything better, many on the left see the current strike wave and the obvious dissatisfaction with the Starmer regime as the basis for forming a new workers’ party based on the unions. Rumours and social media posts have been circulating for months suggesting that one or another left figure - usually Jeremy Corbyn or a prominent trade union leader - is about to launch some new party initiative. The tens of thousands expelled, suspended or simply disillusioned Labour Party members are looking for a home, and although many have lapsed into inactivity or single-issue campaigns, others have been energised by the strike wave and the signs of an emerging protest movement about the cost of living. While for some their experience of the defeat of Corbynism and Starmer’s witch-hunt will have turned them towards industrial militancy and syndicalism, others are looking for a political way forward.

Some of the alternatives being put forward are strategically bizarre: how about the revenge tactics of standing candidates in marginal seats to ensure that Starmer does not secure a majority?¹ However, one initiative launched this week - the ‘Enough is enough’ campaign - has quickly picked up momentum and interest on social media.² Linking industrial struggles with community activism and other movements, the campaign - fronted by Mick Lynch and Coventry Labour MP Zarah Sultana, with the backing of the Communication Workers Union, Tribune, Fans Supporting Foodbanks, the Right to Food Campaign, the tenants’ organisation, Acorn, and Liverpool West Derby Labour MP, Ian Byrne - puts forward quite basic demands.

Vague calls for “a real pay rise, slash energy bills, end food poverty, decent homes for all, and tax the rich” will find a response of some kind in the current climate (especially when fronted by the militant RMT leader), but what is the political strategy, beyond ‘campaigning’, that can achieve these motherhood and apple pie demands?³ We are not told, but many suspect (not least in the Labour bureaucracy) that this campaign could be a dry run for a new party that could involve unions such as RMT, plus some purged Labour MPs, and draw in the various fragments of the post-Corbyn Labour left. RMT’s recent withdrawal from the moribund Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition might seem to point in that direction, as do reports coming from local Constituency Labour Parties, where vicious reselection battles and purges of the left by regional office bureaucrats are in full swing.

While the strike wave and the media reputation of Mick Lynch might give this campaign some legs - the regional and local demonstrations could be quite respectable - its politics are likely to be still firmly grounded in Labourism, albeit in a left form. The real question of the moment - the complete break from Labourism and the building of a revolutionary party, committed to overthrowing capitalism and the self-emancipation of the working class - is not even posed, much less answered by what will surely prove to be yet another Labour Party mark two, whatever name it takes.