26.09.1996

Stuck in the past

Around the left

There is much excitement on the left today. There is also an equal amount of bewilderment and, in some quarters, a sense of fear. Tony Blair’s ‘rediscovery’ of the Liberal roots of the Labour Party and ‘socialism’ - and the suggestion that New Labour wants to break the links with the unions - has certainly put the cat among the pigeons.

Workers’ Liberty, published by the Alliance for Workers Liberty,is distinctly rattled by the recent turn of events. It sheds tears of nostalgia for the good old “living, thinking, responding labour movement”, which is being “replaced by a vacuous personality cult which wet-blankets, smothers and bureaucratically stifles anything higher than its own Dead Sea level of awareness and concern” (September).

To some extent, this is true. But when has this not been the case with the Labour Party, the true object of the AWL’s concern? Workers’ Liberty worries, quite unnecessarily, that Blair “may not even win the next election”. However, it endeavours to be optimistic. Yes, Labour will be elected, and the journal concludes with a ‘feel-good’ note:

“The job of socialists now is to prepare for the inevitable effort by the bedrock labour movement to reassert itself. In the first place we tell the truth to the labour movement: the Blairites are preparing a disaster for us!” (my emphasis).

So everything will turn out OK in the end, according to Workers’ Liberty. However, Socialist Worker is not so sure. The editorial firmly believes talk of

“breaking the Labour/union link is not just the fantasy of a small group, but something the hard core of ‘New Labour’ wants to achieve ... To break that link would be a serious step backwards. It would make Labour like the SDP or like the Democrats in the United States” (September 21).

Naturally, Socialist Worker recognises, “Labour has never properly represented the needs of workers” and that we need a “party which, unlike Labour, fights for workers’ interests, irrespective of what the bosses’ system will deliver”. But as sure as night follows day, the SWP will continue to argue that it is “essential to defend the idea of class organisation and union links with Labour. The alternative is the situation in the United States, two bosses’ parties.”

Another possibility never occurs to Socialist Worker - ie, the emergence of a workers’ party which benefits from the cutting of the ‘historic’ Labour/union links. Hardly surprising, as the SWP wants to all but ignore the Socialist Labour Party and seems content to remain stuck in the past.

Don Preston