By KD Tait
The Tories called a snap election, despite having three and a half years with a working majority, because they know a deeper stage of this crisis is on the way. They know that in these years the negotiations to leave the European union and the effects of a hard Brexit, will generate severe economic economic upheavals.
They guess, correctly, that when the small majority they deceived into voting Leave on June 23 2016, finally wakes up to its consequences they will need a impregnable majority in parliament till 2022 in order to ride out the unpopularity and opposition they will face on the streets and in the communities.
They also want a mandate – a fraudulent and stolen one – to take a once in a lifetime opportunity to break up our NHS, our public education system, our welfare, pensions making them sources of private profit for the few, plus privilege for the better off , but misery and inequality for the great majority of us. That is why win or lose Labour has to stick to Jeremy Corbyn’s policies, embodied in the election manifesto, of ending austerity and cuts, saving the NHS and our welfare system from the privatizing Tories, and mobilizing for action the entire labour movement not only to resist attacks but to re-adopt the goal of a fundamental social transformation of this country.
Another win or lose task is to fight the evil consequences of Brexit; the fomenting of hostility to our sisters and brothers in mainland Europe which is the daily work of the tabloids. Instead Labour and the trade unions have to build stronger links with the labour movement there – with the French workers fighting back against their new President who wants to destroy their social gains and labour rights, with the Greek and Spanish workers fighting austerity and still enormous levels of unemployment. We need together to adopt the goal of a socialist European federation of states than can plan the equalization and development of the continets ecobnomies and work for the development of the countries of the Middle East and Africa that have been devastated by Euroepan imperialist powers and their wars and invasions.
The tragic events in Manchester halfway through the lection campaign show that politics do not stop at the Channel or even the walls and seas of Fortress Europe. Here we have seen a weakness in Labour’s campaign – foreign affairs. Of course Jeremy Corbyn has been a long time supporter of the Stop the War and a principled opponent in parliament of the British and US bombing campaign. He knows the horrendous innocent civilian casualties they cause.
The deaths and maiming caused blowing up of schools and hospitals are just as heartbreaking as the lives lost and ruined in Manchester, even if our media rarely if ever shows them. But the scale of these horrors is far greater than the terrorist carnage in Manchester or Paris or Berlin. It is very good that Labour warns of the danger of divding our communities by islamophobic responses. But it needs to get to the root causes of terrorism not rest content with declaration of national solidarity anddefence of “our democracy”.
This democracy has not prevented the elopment of reactionary movements like ISIS. Labour has not yet said that only the withdrawal of British forces from the Middle East, a halt to arming Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states can leave the people of the region free to settle accounts with their military dictators like Assad or El Sisi, the kings and Sultans and the arch-reactionaries like ISIS.
Until the Manchester atrocity Labour was closing the gasp of the enormous lead that encouraged May to go for an election. Jermy’s campaign on the streets, the positive impact of Labour’s Manifesto was winning back those voters who had drifted away thanks to the relentless media denigration of Corbyn and the equllay relentless endorsement of the this by the Laboy ur right. The enforced unity of a campaign has silnced them to some extent.
But the Labour left must expect and prepare themselves for a renwal of the offensive – especially if Labour loses. The extreme Blair cult and their millionaire backers are openly talking of forming a new “centre” party – even if Labour wins. Some on the left even are touting the need for a coalition with the smaller capitalist parties. But a coalition could only be formed on the basis of the policies oits most right wing component. We have to combat this with a renwed organstion of the left in the party and the trade unions.