22.05.1997

Hope springs eternal

Around the left

Still filled with the joy of a Labour government, much of the left comes over as a bit confused as to whether New Labour’s election victory should have us all dancing round maypoles in glee, or scrambling to the barricades. Of course the truth is that most of the left wants it both ways, to proclaim it ‘our victory’ - celebrating the spirit whilst simultaneously attacking the flesh of New Labour, as if a difference can be gleaned.

All this has produced some curious editorials with the latest ending sermon-like with: “Hope, the great fructifier, the precondition for everything else, came back to Britain like spring on May Day!” (Workers’ Liberty May 1997).

The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty editorial echoes themes common to much of the left - workers voted for the tradition of Labour, not Blair: “The weight of a hundred years of political tradition of what ‘Labour’ meant in politics for so long, outweigh the bleak ‘New Labour’ message Blair spent most of the campaign spelling out.” So even though Labour has been clear it will carry on where the Tories left off, workers still expect more. “The fall of the Tories has unleashed what is for the ruling class and the new government a dangerous mood of expectation.” Yes, that ‘crisis of expectations’ again. Workers’ Liberty even goes as far as to draw a parallel with a period of mass working class mobilisation:

“In France, in 1936, the election of a ‘Popular Front’ government that intended to do little for its supporters, triggered a semi-revolutionary general strike. The working class in one bound forced tremendous concessions from the bourgeoisie, and its state. History does not repeat itself, but unleashed hope does work wonders” (ibid).

The left wants to conjure up some miracle cure for the lack of working class organisation and combativity, and at the moment it is the Labour government. Unfortunately we are not in France in 1936, when workers were demanding their rights not just through the ballot box but with mass strikes and sit-ins throughout the country.

But never mind, because ‘hope’ will cure all for Workers’ Liberty. It is this sort of psychological, therapeutic theme which has given many of the left’s columns a semi-religious ring. There is no practical evidence of the working class reorganising itself, but it is just bound to feel better with a dose of a Labour government.

“Hope is a commodity more precious than government promises, or, for that matter, government deeds. When those raised up now to unwarranted hope in the new government learn that they can’t rely on Blair, they may carry that hope over into doing things for themselves and develop out of it a belief that it is possible for them to do things. A belief that many things, long thought impossible, really are possible now that the heavy tombstone of Tory rule has been shifted.

“Hope will stimulate and liberate desire. Desire and hope will stimulate action.”

Thomas Carolan, in an article in the journal discussing the tasks of the left, sees the main dividing line between those who just shout ‘build the revolutionary party” and those who “while building an organisation of Marxists - campaign in the trade unions and the working class for the perspective of a mass trade union-based workers’ party”. This debate is no doubt welcome and in the case of Workers’ Liberty seems to reflect a genuine attempt to grapple with their tactics in relation to New Labour in government, a party in whose slipstream they have long swam.

It is nevertheless difficult to believe Carolan’s confident prediction that

“the left will develop and reshape around the axes of conflicting answers to this question and in the struggles which the Labour victory in the general election and the return of Hope that has accompanied it, will help generate”.

You might think that after such an outpouring of joy from the left over New Labour’s victory the boycottist Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! would provide some sort of welcome relief.

Unfortunately the very peculiar editorial in June/July’s issue only indicates the danger of turning the boycott tactic into a principle and employing it in a passive way, in a period of working class defeat and illusions in bourgeois parliaments, rather than when the class is smashing down its doors.

So while the editorial does not mention the socialist candidates who stood in the election at all and while there were no mass demonstrations against the election demanding genuine change, FR!FI! still claims that “abstentionism in working class areas was a small but positive class response” and that “potentially, such abstentionism marks a step forward, however small”.

Somewhat dishonestly the column also claims that “The majority of the left made their choice and sided with Labour and middle class privilege.” Again with no mention of the Socialist Labour Party, the Socialist Party, the Scottish Socialist Alliance or the CPGB, who all stood candidates. But then the Revolutionary Communist Group has always been at pains to prove that the organised working class is made up only of privileged middle class people who could never be truly revolutionary, so in this election it was the people who stayed at home that were the most important.

Nevertheless FR!FI! is not immune from its own variation on the ‘crisis of expectations’ thesis, with those privileged teachers and nurses who voted Labour into power being at last proletarianised as a result of New Labour in government. No doubt FR!FI! expects Labour to be particularly vicious, since before the election it dubbed its manifesto “The road to social fascism” Hence:

“Those working, in particular in the state sector, in education, local government and the health service, will suddenly find that there is no promised land, no favours because of their privileged status. They too could face the threat of being condemned to share a life of poverty and oppression. Such conditions will force the working class to create new forms of organisation to defend its interests.”

The seeds of the future for FR!FI! are the Liverpool dockers, Reclaim the Streets and the Hillingdon hospital workers - all militant and at times inspirational struggles, but hardly phenomena which taken together could be described, as FR!FI! does, as a “new movement”. Its strategy for the future then is for socialists and communists to “provide the ideological and political weapons which can ensure that this new movement extends its influence”.

Another case of business as usual, it seems.

Helen Ellis