By Jeremy Dewar
THE LEFT is celebrating the gains of Jeremy Corbyn and four other pro-Gaza MPs. But whether or not they form a parliamentary group or link up with the remains of the leftwing Labour Party Socialist Campaign Group, they have little in common. Indeed the independents relied far more heavily on the mosques for their victory, than on the labour movement.
Corbyn’s call for a movement based on popular assemblies is a left populist gesture, which has been tried before and never succeeded in delivering ‘people’s power’ whether in Cuba, Venezuela or Spain. It is a localist diversion from what is really needed: a workers’ party, fighting for workers’ power.
The Communist Party of Britain (Morning Star) and Counterfire are likely to renew their call for the Greens to be part of a new popular front, on the model of the French New Popular Front. But despite their strong showing and four MPs, the Green Party has no organic links to the working class and has a utopian programme of reconciling capitalism and the environment.
Their manifesto claimed that ‘small and medium businesses’—not workers—‘are the lifeblood of our economy and our communities’. A proposed 1% wealth tax was their only real distributive measure. And their progressive social measures in Bristol Central and Brighton Pavilion were notably missing in their other two successful campaigns.
Their proposal to nationalise water and energy merely amounts to buying government shares in the existing companies, rather than expropriating their assets so we can democratically plan the transition away from fossil fuels. Divestment, carbon taxes and tax breaks will not meet climate change targets on their own.
New party
Previous attempts at uniting the left to form a new party—the Socialist Alliance, Respect, Left Unity—all failed: politically because they did not base themselves on a clear action programme to deal with the real needs of the working class; organisationally because they failed to attract real mass forces, particularly in the trade unions.
Hopefully gone are the days when grifters like George Galloway can call the shots. His combination of demagogy and reactionary social policies faded badly under the glare of publicity. But there remain others, like the SWP and Revolutionary Communist Party, formerly Socialist Appeal, who falsely tell their members that they are already the party the working class needs.
They are not. No such party yet exists. But there is urgency to create one under a Starmer regime that will deceive and demoralise and eventually open the road to a right wing backlash. These forces are deepening their grip, vying with each other to lead a racist, populist right wing opposition to Labour. If the left doesn’t get its act together and put pressure on the Labour government, then the right will.
Only by gathering the forces of working class opposition to Labour and directing them in a united front against the government can we begin to build a party that can not only resist the coming attacks on our class, but destroy capitalism and the imperialist system that stand behind Starmer and Reeves.
