By Claire Laker Mansfield, Socialist Alternative (our sister organisation in England, Wales and Scotland) 

The final countdown has begun. With less than a week left of election campaigning, Corbyn and Johnson took part in the final televised head-to-head on 6 December. The debate revealed a contrast that could barely be clearer.

In some ways, Johnson’s posh-boy debating society demeanour illustrated his contempt for working-class people even more clearly than what he actually said. A relentless repetition of the actually vacuous phrase “get Brexit done” –  tortuously shoehorned into just about every answer he gave – substituted for any real engagement with the issues being raised by the audience: the NHS, austerity, racism and so on.

Corbyn, on the other hand, while not one of the slick public school performers who have dominated the mainstream capitalist parties for decades, spoke with authenticity and determination. Despite constant interruption and the former chair of the young Conservatives as the typically unfair and biased BBC interviewer, his main message – offering an alternative to austerity and hope of a better future – will have shone through for many of those watching. Unsurprisingly, polls showed viewers overwhelmingly considered that Corbyn came across as more ‘in touch’ with ordinary people than Johnson.

But despite his reasonably strong performance in this and other debates, there is still an uphill battle to see Corbyn elected prime minister in the coming week. The effects of the mistaken approach of the Labour leadership, as well as that of Momentum, have taken their toll during this campaign. What’s more, whatever the outcome of this election, unless there is a dramatic change in approach, they threaten to continue to do so in its aftermath.

Corbyn’s first retreat was made as far back as 2015. Under pressure from the Blairite right, whose aim from day one was to prevent Corbyn from ever seeing the inside of Number Ten, he abandoned his historic position of opposition to the EU as a capitalist club – the natural conclusion of which would have been to head an internationalist, anti-racist leave campaign, posing the need for a socialist Europe.

The result of this mistaken approach was to allow Johnson and Farage to cynically position themselves as the anti-establishment insurgents, despite their own exceptional wealth and privilege. The challenge posed by this approach has become especially apparent in the north of England, where Labour is fighting to maintain votes in areas where a majority voted leave.

Ever since 2015, in a hopeless attempt to appease Labour’s right, one concession after another has been made to their demands. At every stage, retreats by Corbyn have only emboldened his opponents. One Blairite MP, whom Corbyn even gave a position in the shadow cabinet, is now standing as a Lib-Dem candidate against Labour.

Many more Labour right-wingers, including those remaining in the party, are engaged in open sabotage. Many are working hand in hand with the rabid, right-wing billionaire press, aiming to slander and undermine Corbyn as an anti-semite, despite his consistent record of opposition to racism in all forms. This is despite the fact that Corbyn’s opponent, Boris Johnson, built his journalistic career on base, dog-whistle bigotry.

The scandalous role played by the state broadcaster, the BBC, will also have been noted, especially by the thousands of workers and young people who have been active participants in the Labour campaign. Systematic negative coverage of Labour’s campaign, with Tory party spin angles making their way into BBC headlines, have exposed the role of this institution in protecting the interests of the capitalist class.

But despite all of these tremendous challenges, Corbyn could still win this Thursday. To do so he needs to go all out. He needs to unapologetically call-out the pernicious intervention of the billionaire class, particularly via the media, in seeking to undermine the prospects of an anti-austerity, pro-working-class government being election. He needs to call mass rallies, in marginal seats, building on the momentum which has already been generated to put thousands on the streets to kick the Tories out.

Corbyn needs to adopt a combative stance when asked about the future. Whatever the outcome on Thursday, the battle will not be over. Should Labour emerge as the largest party in a hung parliament, Corbyn will face immediate pressure to water down parts of his programme in order to ‘get on board’ pro-capitalist parties to allow him to form a government. He should resist such pressures, instead daring those who have claimed to oppose cuts in this election campaign to vote against an anti-austerity budget which he proposes.

Should he form a government, these pressures would only be the beginning. The vicious anti-Corbyn campaign we have witnessed in the last month would not only continue, it would intensify. That’s why mobilising working-class people is so essential. Corbyn will find no friends in the capitalist press whether right-wing or liberal. He will likely face economic sabotage by the rich – with capital flight threatened, closures posed, and demands for him to drop his plans for nationalisation and increased taxes on the rich.

The only force upon who Corbyn can rely is that of workers and young people – a mobilised and active working class. Corbyn must use the last days of this campaign to prepare this force for what is coming – win or lose. Because either outcome should signal the start of a major, mass mobilisation. A mobilisation to end austerity, to defend precious public services like our NHS, and to end the rule of the billionaire class.

Only a socialist society – one based on public ownership of the major monopolies and a democratic plan of production – can offer a bright future for working-class people and our planet. This is the message of hope which Corbyn must champion.

The post British elections – Final countdown appeared first on Socialist Party (Ireland).

The Conservative victory at the general election is a major setback for the working class and youth of Britain. The bumbling bigot Johnson will whip up prejudice and launch further attacks on our services, livelihoods and environment. This will meet with resistance which we will support and help organise.

Local ‘conferences of resistance’ should be convened everywhere, by trade unions, climate strike bodies and local Labour parties where those are on the left, drawing together all those who are fighting back or who want to fight back. To mount the most effective resistance we need to understand the reasons for this election result.

This was not a Trump-like victory. Trump mobilised a base – organising mass rallies, for example. Contrastingly, Johnson boycotted debates and hid in a fridge! The Tory share of the vote was 43% (up 1% point, gaining 300,000 votes) with no Boris surge. Compared to 2017, when Labour surged to 40%, the turnout was slightly lower and Labour’s vote fell by 2.5 million and its share to 32%. Substantial parts of Labour’s vote went to the smaller parties.

The savage media onslaught against Corbyn and Labour exceeded everything to date. This was not limited to the traditionally Tory press. At the BBC, which covered the campaigns in a scandalously biased way, it was as if all pretence of impartiality had been completely abandoned.

In the light of this pernicious press campaign, some people are likely to conclude that there’s nothing that can be done in the face of such forces. Worse, others could even accept the idea that it’s necessary to move towards the right to become ‘acceptable’ to the capitalist media and to ultimately win elections.

This is not true. In fact, every single ‘centrist’ defector from Labour and the Tories embarrassingly lost their seat in this election. Corbyn got more votes than Miliband in 2015, Brown in 2010, or Blair in 2005. Socialist ideas have not been and cannot be buried in a period of global crisis and revolutionary movements.

The colossal swing of voters under 44 towards Labour, and particularly young people under 24, is the music of the future. The youth climate strike movement has the potential to grow rapidly with Johnson in government. We do not embrace the ‘generation wars’ idea fed by the liberal media and some on the left. But we do see the huge opportunities for struggle by young people. The climate strike movement should convene climate assemblies around the next wave of action, for a real discussion about the way forward against a government of climate-deniers.

The right will argue that this defeat shows that it is impossible for left ideas to win support at the ballot box. We would strongly disagree with this. The recent experience in Seattle, where Socialist Alternative City Council Member Kshama Sawant decisively beat her Amazon-backed opponent to win a key election for the left and working class, shows what’s possible. Amazon and Jeff Bezos poured in over $1 million dollars to attempting to defeat Kshama. But Socialist Alternative beat big business by mobilising mass campaigns on rent control, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, housing and much more. This shows the sort of methods – revolutionary methods – that can win elections against the 1%.

Corbyn’s policies popular

The ideas which Corbyn put forward were popular and will become more so. But in this complicated period it is not enough to just have some popular policies. For them to be implemented, it’s necessary to have a mass organisation capable of getting round the capitalist media to take them directly to the whole working class. This means building an organisation which is not focussed solely on elections and parliament, but which is also campaigning all-year-round in defence of ‘the many not the few’. It requires being actively connected with struggles such as those currently being waged by postal workers, university staff and the climate strikes movement. Labour has not been sufficiently transformed from its Blairite past for it to have been capable of that kind of approach on a consistent basis in the last months or years.

The Tories’ real agenda is a savage right-wing assault against the many for the few. They do not have a mandate for their policies, and the Tories in general and Boris in particular lack a stable social base of support. This is clear when you compare this government to those headed by the likes of Trump in the US, Bolsonaro in Brazil or Modi in India.

In Britain, we have seen up to half of voters changing their allegiance at election time in recent years. This was a prominent feature in this contest, with many traditional Labour voters ‘lending’ their votes to Johnson in the hope that he delivers on his promise to “get Brexit done”. The endless Brexit saga has undoubtedly frustrated millions of people who want it to be sorted out. This weariness and cynicism was tapped into by Johnson who promised a return to normality.

Brexit election

It wasn’t automatic that this was the ‘Brexit election’. As the polls narrowed once Labour started its campaign, evidence showed that the NHS was the biggest issue for the most voters, followed by the economy for male voters. Labour had some popular answers on those questions but was unable to cut through the tidal wave from the Tories and the media about Brexit. Nonetheless, it would be wrong to suggest that the press campaign was the only reason that this was the case.

Since 2017, Labour has not organised any serious mass campaigning, and when the election was called the party was often sluggishly organised on the ground despite the enthusiastic surge of thousands of activists to try to help. Mass canvasses and some large rallies were organised. But there were nowhere near enough rallies, and they were often held as semi-secret ticket-only events which tend to lose the impact on wider society.

The half-million-strong membership was not mobilised systematically enough – though many thousands did take part during the course of the campaign. There has not been sufficient engagement with the mass of society except for door-knocking in the last few weeks. While Corbyn spoke at the huge earth strike that took place in September and the Labour leadership has offered support to workers taking action, there was not enough connection built with the struggles which are taking place by young people, among university staff and in Royal Mail. While some Labour candidates did this off their own bat, the Labour leadership ought to have played a far more active role in both supporting and helping to initiate struggle against austerity. So the Labour manifesto was unheard by many voters, while everyone knows Boris ‘will get Brexit done’.

Some Tory voters will most likely desert the party within a matter of months. Johnson is likely to suffer a backlash like Trump, with falling approval ratings, especially because, similar to his American counterpart, he is no statesman. Nor will he be able to deliver Brexit in a way which fully satisfies the Brexiteers without angering huge swathes of the population.

Nonetheless this is the first Tory government with a substantial majority since Labour lost in 2010. The newly elected Tory MPs are probably in the Johnson mould as he did what Corbyn didn’t and dealt with his oppositional MPs by expelling them. Johnson will rule in a chaotic and populist fashion, but it is now less likely that the Tory party will collapse by itself while it is supported by the capitalist class. Central to determining the fate of this government will be the intervention of mass protest and the workers’ movement.

Johnson has secured the interests of the capitalists, many of whom felt threatened by a Corbyn government, though some of the ruling class are not convinced by Johnson. While this is not likely to be a government of instant crisis, neither will it be one that solves any underlying problems either. It faces multiple political crises including a likely huge surge for Scottish independence as well as the potential rise of new forms of sectarianism in Northern Ireland and in Welsh nationalism.

The national question

In Scotland, while the SNP surged, the Tories fell back despite opinion polls which claimed they would hold their positions. Labour collapsed to one MP. Labour’s position on the national question in Scotland – including its opposition to independence and Corbyn’s failure to give support to a referendum on the question – was ultimately to blame for this.

The demand for Scottish independence by one means or another, and for a second referendum, will almost certainly carry increasing weight, as illusions in independence to escape from Tory rule will grow enormously. While the SNP have been able to increase their support, ultimately their pro-capitalist politics will mean they are unable to meet the aspirations of those who elected them. It is also likely that they ultimately betray the struggle for genuine independence, especially should achieving it prove impossible through the SNP’s preferred means of a Westminster-sanctioned referendum.

In the Spanish state, a relatively strong, right-wing government came unstuck over the movement for national rights in Catalonia. The response of the Tories in becoming even more English nationalist will fan the flames of independence, and potentially even the flames of religious sectarianism with a unionist appeal to some Scottish Protestants.

Socialist Alternative defends the right to self-determination. We support a referendum on independence. In the next period, our role will be to advocate class unity against sectarianism, and workers’ struggle against the British capitalist state machine which will not easily grant meaningful political independence to Scotland. Socialist Alternative stands for independence on a socialist basis, to address the huge social problems facing the Scottish working class. We argue for a voluntary federation of socialist nations and regions across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, in which the rights of minorities are fully guaranteed. We stand for a voluntary socialist confederation of countries and peoples of Europe, in a socialist world.

In Northern Ireland, both main parties – the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein – saw a significant fall in their share of the vote (5.4% and 6.7% respectively). Brexit partly explains this, with Protestant voters punishing the DUP for propping up a Johnson government which negotiated a withdrawal agreement that will put a border down the Irish Sea, while a layer of Catholics tactically switched from abstentionist Sinn Féin to other parties because they wanted MPs who would actually go to Westminster to oppose Brexit and Johnson. However, voters also punished both parties for the ongoing political stalemate, as we approach the third anniversary of the collapse of the devolved Stormont Assembly, and by extension for the crises in health, education and rising poverty.

The smaller parties increased their votes across the board, especially the Alliance Party, sister organisation of the Lib Dems, which got an 8.8% increase. This self-described non-sectarian party takes a strong Remain position over the EU. It won one seat and is an emerging as a third ‘centre’ pole of attraction.

Despite their neoliberal policies, this reflects a search for an alternative to the sectarian parties. Independent labour and trade union candidate Caroline Wheeler won a modest but significant vote in the sectarian battleground constituency of Fermanagh & South Tyrone, a positive indication of the potential for anti-sectarian left politics to develop.

There will now be renewed talks aimed at re-establishing the devolved Assembly at Stormont, and the main parties will be under increased pressure to do a deal in light of the election results. However, the Assembly parties and politicians have no answers. Re-establishing the power-sharing institutions would show them up, against the backdrop of an increase in industrial struggle and potential struggle against any attempt to roll back the decriminalisation of abortion and on other social questions. A restored Stormont administration would be racked with crisis, under pressure on class questions but also from the sectarian forces which the main parties rely upon but are unable to fully control.

Brexit will continue to have an impact. It has the potential to increase sectarianism, creating further problems for the Tory government. This is the first time since the establishment of the Northern Ireland state that Unionist parties don’t have a majority of the MPs, as the DUP lost two seats to nationalists in the face of a ‘Remain alliance’. Many Protestants will feel threatened by the loss of the Unionist majority, the idea of a border in the Irish Sea and Scottish independence.

On the other hand, Sinn Féin are increasingly pushing the question of a referendum on the reunification of Ireland – commonly known as a border poll. This demand will increase among nationalists, due to Brexit and the Tory government. The trade unions will need to move into action against sectarianism and for workers’ unity, and our sister organisation in the North, the Socialist Party, will be looking at how it can push forward the project of building a cross-community, working-class political alternative in the coming period.

Capitalist crisis building

The current slow-boil economic crisis threatens to break into an outright recession in the next period. Even now, the service sector is sluggish while manufacturing and construction are declining. If the working class is better prepared politically for a new crash than it was in 2008, the ruling class will have inevitably learned nothing – preparing another huge crisis but one with potentially more serious consequences for them and their system.

The Tory government can be caught flat-footed in its response to this. Any attempt to go on the attack against workers’ living conditions in the mould of the Thatcher government could lead to a mass revolt, of a similar nature to the gigantic Poll Tax rebellion in the late 80s and early 90s, where 18 million people refused to pay up.

The Brexit trade deal negotiations will drag on for some time to come. So far, Johnson has only got a withdrawal agreement, not an exit deal. The questions on border controls remain, especially in relation to Northern Ireland and migration. Then there are the future trading arrangements to be agreed with the EU, as well as potential trade deals to be struck with the US and the rest of world along with customs arrangements. These are all issues which the government will have to deal with and over which it can easily lose support on both sides. All Tory options will lead to attacks on workers’ living conditions.

Potential for mass struggle

Under this government of climate deniers, it is likely that the ongoing youth climate strikes will continue to be built and mobilised. Young people understand the need to fight not just the climate emergency, but the big business interests that lie behind it. The call for ‘system change’ has been twinned with a growing anti-capitalism among youth. Socialist Alternative will throw itself into building this movement, mobilising for the strikes. This will ultimately need to be linked to a mass movement of millions of working-class people and youth, mobilised around a clear demand for a socialist Green New Deal.

Public services face further catastrophe and collapse. NHS waiting times are at a record high, Accident & Emergency departments are in meltdown, and hospitals are at full stretch. Some health-workers will be feeling despondent, but we, in collaboration with other NHS campaigners, will be looking at how to fight back in the new year. If or when a deal is reached on pharmaceutical companies’ access to the NHS then there will be further anger and the basis for further struggle.

Social care has been cut to the bone and cannot recover under a Tory government, while huge cuts and privatisation have left the probation service unable to cope. A Tory law-and-order ‘lock-them-up’ response will worsen the already profound problems in the prisons. There will be community resistance to attacks on public services.

Fighting the right

With the election of a more blatantly right-wing populist Tory government, there is a serious risk of bigotry and discrimination increasing. This could mean a rise in physical attacks on all those that the Tories seek to single out – women, LGBTQ+ people, Black and Minority and Ethnic people and migrants. This would be tacitly encouraged by the government and Tory MPs, as they try to shore up their shaky electoral base with anti-migrant policies, and potentially even through attacks on women’s reproductive rights.

The kind of struggles we saw in the US against Trump’s immediate attempts to introduce discriminatory policies – with the huge women’s marches and airport protests against the so-called Muslim ban, in which our co-thinkers Socialist Alternative played a major role – will come here too if Johnson goes down the same road.

Where attacks happen we support immediate community protests in defence and response, reaching out to other local communities, unions and left-led Constituency Labour Parties, in order to build demonstrations that could stamp them out.

There is a very real danger of increased divisions between migrant and non-migrant workers. Some of the smallest trade unions have shown that the most oppressed workers can be unionised and mobilised in struggle for equal pay and a living wage. This is the best answer to the divisive narrative of migrants ‘undercutting’ wages. It is urgent that the biggest trade unions wake up and start seriously organising migrant workers in unorganised workplaces, linking anti-racist campaigning with the need to defend jobs in the private and public sectors through unity and struggle. When Johnson disappoints over Brexit, then the far right can start growing again in an organised way.

A number of these factors will combine at a certain stage for a major catastrophe with the government. Johnson has not yet remade the Tory party as fully in his image as Trump has with the US Republicans. The social base for this government is less solid than Trump’s support. And because British capitalism is globally a lot less important than US imperialism then the capitalist class, both here and especially elsewhere in the world, are less inclined to put up with Trump-style stupidity from Johnson.

Labour’s heartland losses

In this election, Labour saw a repeat of what happened following the Scottish independence referendum, losing seats in a number of its traditional ‘heartland’ areas. These losses have a number of causes. Among them is the ongoing issue of the role of Labour-run councils in passing on Tory austerity. Their continued slashing away of services, along with the legacy of Blairism, has contributed to declining turn out and growing disillusionment with Labour over a long period.

More specifically to this election, Labour also lost a large number of votes from some of its traditional supporters because of Brexit. Corbyn’s attempt at a compromise position, arrived at under huge pressure from Labour’s right to adopt a wholesale Remain stance, ultimately failed to do what was necessary. To win this election, Corbyn needed to unite voters who supported both Leave and Remain on the basis of an independent, working-class approach to this question – as well as to all others. The failure to do so has opened the door to right-wing populism to fill the vacuum.

Role of the Blairites

This mistake, as with so many others that have cost Corbyn since 2015, was ultimately rooted in his doomed attempt to square the circle with the Blairite MPs in the Parliamentary Labour Party, whose pro-austerity, pro-imperialist politics ultimately represents the interests of the capitalist class. This has allowed the right within Labour to conduct a sustained and slanderous campaign of sabotage – seizing on every possible opportunity to attack and undermine Corbyn’s leadership.

Far from this campaign being suspended for the duration of the election, it was instead intensified. Even Corbyn’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth stabbed Corbyn in the back two days before polling day with his leaked ‘joshing’ with his Tory friend. Ultimately, failing to take on the ‘Red Tories’ handed seats held by right-wing Labour MPs and ex-Labour MPs to the blue Tories.

The Blairites are to blame for some of the heaviest defeats. Dudley North now has an 11,000 Tory majority and was held by Ian Austin – an arch-Blairite MP who resigned from Labour and campaigned for a Tory vote in this election. In Bassetlaw, John Mann gifted the Tories a 28 percentage point majority. In Redcar the MP was an open anti-Corbyn right-winger and now the Tories hold it with a 3,000 vote majority. In Barrow-in-Furness, John Woodcock helped the Conservatives to a 14 point lead. In Bury South where Labour lost by 1%, Blairite Ivan Lewis ran as independent and got 2% of the vote.

If these people had been dealt with earlier they would not have caused this problem. Instead they were left in place. In some areas, Labour party members took matters into their own hands and ousted some especially pernicious Blairite MPs. Nonetheless, the Labour leadership, the treacherous tops of Momentum’s undemocratic leadership, most of the trade union leaders, and in some places also the constituency activists, failed to oust the Blairites collectively with mandatory reselection or individually through the trigger ballot process.

The capitalist press has tried to explain this result by posing a divide between ‘lefty middle-class youth’ in the metropolitan areas, against a uniformly more right-wing, and especially ‘socially conservative’, working-class. This is completely inaccurate. Where the Tories have made gains, their majority has often been extremely narrow. In north west Durham, left-winger Laura Pidcock lost her seat by only 2.5%. This contrasts with the huge margin of losses by right-wingers in nearby seats such as the 11% Tory majority in Sedgefield.

In 2017, McDonnell argued that Labour would have won if the campaign had continued for another fortnight, which was probably true. These seats would be held by Labour MPs now if the campaign had not stopped in mid-2017 for two years.

The 2017 vote was taken for granted and it was not there when Labour went back to it. Union leaders and the Momentum leadership, together with the right-wing of the Labour party, pushed Corbyn into a non-credible position on Brexit which was widely seen as a Remain position, not least because Keir Starmer was free to put forward a Remain position in the media as Labour’s Brexit spokesperson. Corbyn didn’t sufficiently explain what ‘pro-worker’ policies he would campaign for in renewed negotiations with the EU. What’s more, he came across indecisive when he wouldn’t commit to supporting his own negotiated Brexit deal in a referendum offering the option alongside Remain. He also didn’t successfully expose the neoliberal nature of the EU and which progressive policies would require a left government to defy EU rules in order to implement.

Additionally, mistaken positions held by Corbyn and a section of the left – although not including our forerunner organisations such as Militant – in the past on conflicts such as Northern Ireland or the Middle East were used against Corbyn to some effect. Whereas Corbyn comes from a tradition on the Labour Left that tended to side with one national group against another – genuine Marxists fought for, and continue to fight for, united working class struggle across national, religious and ethnic divides whilst resolutely defending the right to self-determination, pointing out that capitalism provides no answer to sectarian conflicts.

Combative approach needed

Corbyn’s failure to adopt a more combative, class-struggle based approach, coupled with the weak and unclear position in relation to the EU, has allowed the Labour right to shoehorn him into a position of appearing indecisive to a large portion of the working class in Britain.

The great Militant-supporting Labour MP Pat Wall once said ‘we need leaders of our movement as ruthless in defence of our class as Thatcher is of theirs’. We need leaders armed with clear Marxist ideas that are devoted to their class and able to act decisively when the situation arises, not least against the likes of the Blairites who have achieved what they wanted to achieve in sabotaging Corbyn from winning the election and now going on the offensive for a change of leadership.

Leadership contest

We think it was a mistake for Corbyn to have announced he will step down, and even worse for McDonnell to have volunteered his and Corbyn’s resignation before the election in the event of a Labour loss. Without a sufficient mobilisation of the left rank-and-file membership in the CLPs, there is a serious risk of a change in leadership marking a shift away from the most radical aspects of Corbyn’s policies. This has to be resisted strongly and all socialists must make a clear stand for socialist ideas against the Blairites’ offensive.

Now we need Corbyn to use his remaining time most usefully, not just to oversee the leadership election but to help transform Labour from a primarily electoralist organisation into a struggle-based party. Unite the Union leader Len McCluskey is right to pin the main blame for the defeat on the Brexit position and to advocate retaining anti-austerity and class policies, but he is absolutely wrong to attack the manifesto and Corbyn personally, including for his ‘failure to apologise for anti-Semitism’. These criticisms can only help the right, avoid addressing what kind of campaign was needed and, incidentally, the almost complete absence of much of the trade union movement from any mobilisation to assist Labour winning the election.

Momentum and John McDonnell’s grouping in the Labour party are responsible for a lot of the current mess and will likely encourage the next leader, even if they are drawn from the left, to move to the right of Corbyn. Any candidate from the right or the so-called soft-left, including some of the names currently floated like Emily Thornberry or Lisa Nandy, would be merely a device for moving Labour back to the Miliband era and wasting all of what is left of the potential from Corbynism. Remainers like Thornberry, supported on occasions by McDonnell, bear a huge responsibility for the election defeat.

The most left-wing potential candidate seems to be Rebecca Long-Bailey. Any real left would-be leader needs to stand by all the pro-working-class policies contained in the manifestos of 2017 and 2019 plus the more radical conference policies passed since Corbyn was elected leader. They need to support struggles including strikes and demonstrations. And more than that, they need to be prepared to mobilise struggle against austerity without waiting for someone else to do it. Where struggle is taking place now, such as in the climate strikes and university strikes, a new leader would need to be prepared to actively mobilise for it. Crucially, with more punishing austerity on the way under a Johnson government they must call on all Labour-run councils to fight cuts instead of implementing them.

Labour’s parliamentary left, including the new Corbynista MPs, will now be tested out. They should organise themselves as a distinct pole, alongside playing a part in organising and mobilising at rank-and-file level.

An important lesson of the last three years while Corbyn has been leader, is that of those over 150 weeks, only about 30 weeks have been used to actually campaign in public on a large scale. Instead, most of this time has been spent with Corbyn’s leadership focussed on the goings-on in parliament, and in attempts to appease the Blairite saboteurs in the Parliamentary Labour Party.

If those 30 weeks show how polls can be narrowed in the 2017 and 2019 elections, then another 120 weeks spent engaging in the living struggles of workers and young people, as well as campaigning for socialist policies that could offer an alternative to the misery of austerity, would have allowed Corbynism to take root far more deeply among the working class. Such an approach would have increased Corbyn’s own confidence to take on the right and resist their attempts to hem him in. It would almost certainly have led to a different outcome in 2019. Genuine socialist change cannot ultimately be achieved through electoral politics alone.

Next year’s local elections will likely see a backlash against the result of this election and quite possibly whatever the Tories have managed with Brexit. By then, the further damage they intend to public services will also be clearer. Labour now should urgently select left candidates to resist the inevitable Tory attempts to smash what’s left of local government services. At the same time, they should set about ‘no-confidencing’ what’s left of the Blairites. Most of all, the left and the ranks need to start mobilising independently, immediately engaging with supporters and discussing how to resist the Tories, linking up with fighting sections of the wider movement in local conferences of resistance.

With few exceptions, the trade union tops and bureaucracies were fast asleep for the last few months. They bear significant blame for this result. Having said ‘wait for Corbyn’ while pushing a pro-EU line and blocking mandatory reselection, and drifting to political lobbying approach, there was no serious attempt to fight Tories when the government was in crisis and no serious attempt to mobilise their memberships to campaign for Labour at the general election.

Most of these leaderships have been found completely wanting and the movement needs new leaders representing a completely new era of resistance. Faced with a further round of austerity, many workers may turn towards workplace struggle in order to defend themselves from the onslaught.

Mass movements on the horizon

We can gain a glimpse of our possible future by looking to the movements developing internationally. Revolutionary movements in Hong Kong, Lebanon, Iraq, Chile, and others all show the potential that exists. All have been spearheaded by young people.

The private sector now faces utter deindustrialisation with whatever trade deal is agreed in or out of the EU. Boris investment promises are worthless. Unite has to start fighting in a coordinated way across sectors and between disputes or it will lose its base bit by bit. The public sector faces obliteration in local government by a Tory party which hates it, and the NHS faces being opened up to private companies completely.

In Unison, the largest public sector union, it is urgent that the right-wing general secretary and NHS service group leaderships are replaced at next year’s elections by those willing to fight, and that the left unites around one candidate for general secretary.

Developing a serious base of workplace activists will be an immediate priority for the trade union movement. The National Education Union has proposed a campaign of ‘winning in the workplace’. Socialist Alternative agrees with the spirit of this, but we are keen to see detailed plans for how to make this a reality. A recent statement by Communication Workers’ Union leader Dave Ward, hit the right notes. He correctly points out the that trade unions are the “first line of defence” for working-class people. With the CWU in the frontline taking action over attacks on postal workers, it’s vital that a movement of solidarity is organised to support them.

Key practical steps necessary in most unions include: training reps properly (in some, at all) in how to deal with viciously hostile employers, organising industrial action, delivering support for reps from the officials and wider structures, having branches based on workplaces and centred on workplace activists, clear structures which deliver reps a voice in the union structures, meetings organised in ways which assist reps to attend and a serious battle for facility time where necessary.

The most fundamental role of a union is resisting workers’ immediate employer on basic workplace issues. If done seriously this will bring forward a new layer of fighting workers who can then be integrated it with union branches and renew the structures of the movement.

More anti-union laws are certain, as Johnson has outlined. The trade union leaders should resist these and the union ranks and left need to demand action. Since the tops weren’t prepared to fight against the Tories’ last Trade Union Act, we cannot expect much from most of them unless there is colossal organised pressure from the base.

Where action is blocked legally then unofficial action will be needed, in local disputes and wider ones. The tactic of workers in the US of using the ‘mass sickie’ when the mass strike is not possible is something which has potential to catch on in Britain. Unite’s policy of not repudiating action called by stewards unofficially, and of removing a constitutional commitment to obey the law, needs to be adhered to and extended to the rest of the movement. It needs to be translated into practice which again means rebuilding the workplace activist layer numerically and in terms of ideas and resources.

In this new period there will be an anti-Tory backlash and a determination to struggle. The scale of media onslaught including the liberal media shows need for a different kind of party and struggle to social-democratic electoralism. Since Thursday night, we have already received well over 100 applications to join, attracted by our two videos, two leaflets and very widely shared social media posts, as well as our public activity.

Socialist alternative campaigned energetically to see a Corbyn-led Labour government elected. Our members took part in mass canvassing sessions with the Labour party and raised our ideas and offered our material to a friendly audience. Equally as importantly, we also ran an independent, clearly socialist campaign in support of Corbyn, through which we sold over 1100 copies of our publication.

Now we are encouraging everyone who is angry about the election result and keen to organise to fight back and win: contact us, talk about joining us, get organised together with us. Let’s mobilise for the struggles that are already taking place. Let’s organise conferences of resistance to bring them together. Let’s discuss the need for socialism, and the revolutionary politics ultimately needed to achieve it. Workers and young people are central to that. Don’t mourn, organise!

The post Vicious Tories win with lies – but mass struggle looms on the horizon appeared first on Socialist Party (Ireland).

by Daniel Waldron

Almost exactly three years after its collapse in the wake of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scandal, the Northern Ireland Assembly reconvened on Saturday 11th January and elected a new Executive. This followed an agreement between the DUP, Sinn Féin and the British and Irish governments, entitled ‘New Decade, New Approach’. Speaking after talks with the party leaders, Boris Johnson said he could see, not Tony Blair’s ‘hand of history’, but “the hand of the future beckoning us forward.” In reality, the deal is a case of déjà vu. Like its predecessor ‘agreements’, it fudges the key contentious and divisive issues – storing up instability for the future – while recommitting to a neo-liberal vision of cuts and privatisation, albeit with some window-dressing promises of investment and concessions.

The key factor which pushed the main parties back into the Stormont institutions was growing public anger at the ongoing deadlock – during which Assembly members continued to be paid – while health, education and other public services slipped deeper and deeper into crisis. Northern Ireland has the longest health waiting lists in the UK, with a staggering one in six of the population currently waiting for a hospital appointment, while the Royal College of Surgeons has said parts of the NHS here are at “the point of collapse”. Meanwhile, schools are under huge financial pressure, with even basics like toilet roll having to be donated by staff and parents.

This anger – as well as issues around Brexit – was reflected in the recent general election result, with both the DUP and Sinn Féin seeing their share of the vote fall. However, it was also crystallised through the strikes of tens of thousands of health workers, demanding equal pay with their colleagues in Britain – a parity broken by the DUP’s Jim Wells in 2014 and not restored by subsequent Health Ministers, including Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill. The strikers also demanded urgent action to tackle understaffing in the NHS, with 7,000 vacancies currently open, including 3,000 nursing positions. This campaign has garnered overwhelming public support. Faced with the prospect of a fresh Assembly election where they would likely be punished further if the impasse continued, the DUP and Sinn Féin felt it was in their best interests to do a deal. This shows the impact which united working-class struggle can have.

Health crisis and workers’ struggle

The agreement commits the new Executive to ‘resolve’ the issues underlying the health strikes and also ongoing industrial action in education. The British government has offered an extra £1 billion to address these and other questions, although Sinn Féin Finance Minister Conor Murphy has said this falls “way short” of what is necessary and accused Johnson & Co of acting in “bad faith”, which could create an immediate impasse.

The new Health Minister, Robin Swann of the UUP – who, along with the SDLP, have left the ‘opposition benches’ and retaken their seats at the Executive table – has made an offer to health workers which would restore parity with English staff. The leaderships of Unison and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) have suspended further planned strikes and announced plans to ballot their members on the deal.

Socialist Party members in health have argued that parity should be with Scottish workers – the highest paid – as a step towards levelling up across the UK. Also, nothing of substance has been offered with regard to tackling staff shortages, beyond an agreement to create 900 additional nursing and midwifery undergraduate places over the next three years – meaning 300 extra staff would be trained three years from now, less than 10% of what is needed immediately. This offer comes alongside a restated commitment to ‘restructure’ the NHS here, as envisaged in reports like Bengoa – that means further inappropriate centralisation of services, cuts, outsourcing and privatisation, all the more ominous with Boris Johnson now in power and eyeing a free-trade deal with the United States. A similar process is to take place in education.

While the new offer represents a step forward and reflects the pressure the strikes have placed on the politicians, continued determined and united action can win further concessions and send a warning that fresh attacks on our NHS and other services will be resisted tooth and nail. The Socialist Party advises Unison and RCN members to reject this deal and calls on NIPSA and Unite to stand firm and fight for more.

Austerity continues

There is no commitment in the deal to address the demands for pay justice of civil servants also engaged in industrial action, or of public sector workers more broadly. Instead, there is talk of further “reform” of the civil service and “rationalisation” of arms-length bodies – that is, job cuts and outsourcing – as part of the neo-liberal project of ‘rebalancing’ the economy in favour of the private sector. This will only enrage civil servants due to strike on 24th January, who should draw confidence from the impact of the health strikes. It remains to be seen if the re-established Executive will seek to use its powers to cut corporation tax – lobbied for by the DUP and Sinn Féin – which would be paid for through further cuts to our public services.

Already, the possibility of introducing domestic water charges – a prerequisite for full privatisation of the service – has been mooted by the DUP’s Edwin Poots and Alliance leader Naomi Long as a potential string attached to additional funding by the British government. If moves are made in this direction, it should be resisted through a campaign of mass non-payment, alongside trade union action, which saw off this threat in the past here and defeated similar regressive taxes in the South. The fact that the leaders of both the DUP and Sinn Féin felt the need to distance themselves from the comments of their Executive colleagues shows they are nervous about going down this route, which would lead to a confrontation with working-class communities.

The ‘mitigations’ package agreed after the DUP, Sinn Féin and Alliance voted to give the Tories the power to implement their welfare ‘reform’ programme here is to be extended beyond the previous cut-off point of March this year, which would have created “an unprecedented crisis in terms of child poverty, hunger, debt, rent arrears and mass evictions”, according to Professor Eileen Evason. The mitigations have given some protections to existing claimants, although the cuts have already cost many families thousands of pounds and driven some into desperate situations, leading to an increase in housing precarity and reliance on food banks. There is no guarantee that these limited measures will be secured indefinitely, never mind a reversal of these draconian benefit cuts.

Rights won in struggle

While the introduction of same-sex marriage by Westminster has effectively been accepted by the DUP as a fait accompli, we could see attempts to roll back on the recent decriminalisation of abortion. These victories were not simply handed down by benevolent MPs but were products of grassroots struggle. None of the main parties support the right to choose. Key figures in Sinn Féin have signalled their preparedness to reach a compromise on this issue. In a recent interview, Conor Murphy said his party supports abortion only “under very limited circumstances”, reflecting the hypocrisy of Sinn Féin, who were forced to posture as pro-choice in the context of the Southern repeal referendum because of the overwhelming demand for change. Anything less than access to abortion on the NHS in Northern Ireland for everyone who needs it must be met with mass protests and civil disobedience to secure full reproductive rights.

There was much speculation in advance of the deal about reform of the Petition of Concern mechanism, which means a piece of legislation requires backing from a majority of both Unionist and nationalist MLAs in order to pass, if 30 MLAs sign a petition to that effect. This was originally intended as a safeguard for the interests of the minority community around contentious issues, but was abused by the DUP to block marriage equality and also shield Ministers from criticism. The agreement stipulates that a Petition of Concern can no longer be used with regard to the role of Ministers and will now require support from representatives from at least two parties – academic, given that no party has 30 MLAs since the number of seats was reduced in 2017. Other than that, there is only a vague promise that parties will use it only for “its intended purpose” and “in the most exceptional circumstances and as a last resort.” This is in no way binding and the mechanism can again become a source of paralysis and a means to block further progress on LGBTQ rights and other questions.

The agreement commits the Executive to introduce carbon emissions targets in line with the Paris Climate Accord. However, the appointment of Edwin Poots of the DUP – a party with a long history of climate change scepticism – as Minister for the Environment will raise doubts about the seriousness of this commitment. Exploration licences for oil, gas and minerals were granted across large swathes of Northern Ireland last year. This poses the threat of the introduction of fracking – which even the Tory government was recently forced to suspend in England due to earthquakes being caused – as well as other environmentally destructive extractive industries, which Poots and the Executive would have the final say on. Community campaigns are already resisting these industries in a number of areas.

Working-class struggle can win victories

The absence of Stormont ministers over the last three years, and the lack of a generalised movement against austerity and poverty across the UK, has acted to dampen the potential for industrial struggle in the public sector in Northern Ireland, with workers seeing no clear pressure points for action. That dam finally burst in recent months, with the development of battles in the civil service and particularly in health. This is reflected in “New Decade, New Approach”, which pledges to improve workers’ rights, including banning zero-hour contracts, something previous Executives refused to do. The re-establishment of the Executive provides an opportunity for the trade union movement to now go on the offensive on pay, jobs, workers’ rights, investment in public services and other issues, to secure victories for the working-class from a devolved government which is clearly susceptible to pressure from below.

In the past, the movement’s leadership has sought to prop up the Stormont institutions, including corralling workers’ struggles at crucial junctures, seeing themselves as being in a form of ‘social partnership’ with the pro-capitalist and sectarian local parties. This has delivered only deepening poverty and misery, while allowing sectarian tensions to develop. That approach must go and be replaced with a strategy of using the collective power of organised workers and the wider working class to take on the Stormont politicians and the Tories in the interests of our class.

Continued sectarian polarisation

Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill – now Deputy First Minister – said in the Assembly chamber she hoped the deal would deliver “a stable power-sharing coalition” with “no surprises”. However, the new Executive will likely have a limited honeymoon period and faces clear pitfalls of a sectarian character going forward. A return to the relative stability of 2007-2017 is essentially ruled out.

While it does nothing to fundamentally address the economic and social questions facing ordinary people, neither does the deal create solutions to the divisive and contentious questions relating to culture, identity and the legacy of the conflict. Instead, in time-honoured tradition, it simply kicks the substantive issues further down the road, where they wait to create fresh instability in the institutions when they finally have to be faced.

Language rights

The key remaining stumbling block in the negotiations to date had been the question of Irish language rights, with Sinn Féin demanding a stand-alone act which the DUP declared to be unacceptable. The new agreement – via three separate amendments to the Northern Ireland Act – makes some symbolic changes. Irish and Ulster Scots are to be given ‘official status’, with translation services introduced to make all government documents available in both languages, as well as the simultaneous translation of Stormont proceedings. Centuries-old legislation prohibiting the use of Irish in courts is to be repealed.

An Irish language commissioner will be appointed – alongside one for Ulster Scots, and the establishment of an Office of Identity and Cultural Expression – who will be responsible for drafting guidelines of ‘best practice’. This would presumably include what provisions should be put in place to allow Irish speakers to interact with public bodies and access services in the language, as well as signage. The commissioner’s guidelines would require approval from both the First and Deputy First Ministers, meaning the DUP have an effective veto on the proposals. This is a fresh pitfall awaiting the new Executive in the near future.

In the wake of Stormont’s collapse, both the main parties sought to polarise opinions around the issue of Irish language rights, turning it into a sectarian football in their cynical game. Opinion polls showed a large majority of nationalists felt Sinn Féin should not go back into Stormont without an Irish Language Act while, conversely, the majority of Unionists opposed the DUP agreeing to one. These sentiments prevented a deal being done in early 2018, when the DUP leadership felt unable to sell a draft agreement to their base. Both parties will remain under pressure on the issue. Irish language groups have welcomed steps forward but said the agreement does not go far enough in terms of guaranteeing rights, while the Orange Order has opposed what is contained in the deal, seeing it as disproportionately elevating Irish. Future proposed guidelines have the potential to provoke a renewed crisis at Stormont.

The Socialist Party recognises the Irish language and Ulster Scots as component parts of our shared cultural heritage in the north of Ireland which are not the property of any one community or party. We support the rights of everyone to learn, speak and access public services in these languages, if they so choose, with the necessary funding being put in place. However, we also recognise the sensitivities around language due to the cynical abuse of cultural expression by sectarian forces on both sides over decades, and respect the rights of individuals and communities not to have languages foisted upon them against their will.

Solutions on legacy issues? 

Similarly, on issues connected with the legacy of the Troubles, limited measures have been agreed but the key questions have been left open. There is a commitment that the British government will move ahead with a compensation scheme for victims of the conflict, although who qualifies as a victim remains contentious. Five years after it was first agreed, a new Historical Investigations Unit is to be established alongside other related bodies, tasked with looking into the events of the Troubles. Meanwhile, Unionists have secured an Armed Forces Commissioner to represent the interests of former soldiers and their families.

However, the legitimate demands from victims of state violence – predominantly meted out against the Catholic community – for truth and justice will continue to clash with the perception among many Protestants that there is a one-sided persecution of former members of the state forces, while members of the IRA and other paramilitaries are let off the hook for their actions during the Troubles. The prosecution of ‘Soldier F’ for his role in Bloody Sunday has already provoked loyalist protests. On the other hand, any attempt by the British state to protect those like Soldier F or, more importantly, their superiors – as is indicated by the Conservatives’ manifesto – will likewise provoke justified anger from those communities affected. In her position as new Minister for Justice, Alliance leader Naomi Long will be compelled to balance between these countervailing pressures and can come under fire from her Executive colleagues on both sides, with the potential for heightened clashes to pull the political institutions apart.

Anti-sectarian alternative needed

More generally, the new Executive sits atop a volatile foundation, with demographic changes and related sectarian pressures – which the main parties themselves feed into – threatening to again break open the ground beneath its feet. The Unionist majority is now seriously under question, due to the relative growth of the Catholic community in recent decades, with more nationalist than Unionist MPs being elected in December for the first time in the history of the Northern Irish state. Brexit has acted to accelerate and sharper processes which were already underway. Sinn Féin’s demand for a border poll in the near future is gaining more traction among the Catholic community, who fear that loss of EU membership can potentially see rights and safeguards undermined, particularly under the reactionary Johnson government.

Meanwhile, there is a growing sense of isolation and insecurity among many Protestants, fearing the break-up of the Union – with the rise in support for Scottish nationalism – and feeling betrayed by Johnson’s Brexit deal which will put a regulatory border down the Irish Sea. Fear of being pushed into a capitalist united Ireland against their will can provoke a backlash from sections of the Protestant community in the coming period.

Even largely symbolic issues which emerge can become explosive proxy battles for this wider sectarian tug-of-war between the communities. The main parties – basing themselves upon these opposed aspirations and identities – will not be able to indefinitely walk the tightrope of maintaining sectarian division while also maintaining the power-sharing institutions. New safeguards and bodies aimed at creating failsafes during future crises will not be able to overcome this fundamental contradiction.

DUP leader and First Minister Arlene Foster has said, “we cannot allow society to drift backwards and allow divisions to grow.” But this is precisely what has happened and will tend to continue under the stewardship of the sectarian parties. As the Socialist Party has argued from the outset of the ‘peace process’, no lasting solutions to the contentious issues which divide our communities can ever be achieved while politics remains dominated by forces which have a vested interest in maintaining a sectarian carve-up. When faced with united class opposition, too, their default response is to whip up sectarian tensions, as we have seen time and again. These forces are ultimately leading us towards the threat of renewed conflict, which would be a nightmare for ordinary people.

While the growth of Alliance at the general election reflects an important section of people looking for an alternative to the dead-end of Orange and Green, their pro-capitalist policies offer no solutions to the poverty and alienation in working-class communities which fans the flames of sectarianism. They can be pushed back decisively when sectarian issues again reassert themselves.

The only force capable of genuinely breaking down the sectarian barriers between our communities is the trade union and labour movement, uniting working-class people around our common interests and in opposition to the Green and Orange Tories. The unity in struggle of workers from all backgrounds on the health picket lines, and the huge support they received from across the divide, gives a sense of what is possible. This class solidarity must be given expression, not just industrially, but also politically. We need a mass, anti-sectarian party based on workers and young people which offers socialist policies to address the misery facing working-class people, but which also strives to articulate independent solutions to the issues which divide our communities, based upon mutual respect and compromise.

The restored Executive and its neo-liberal programme is incapable of addressing the economic and social problems facing working-class people. It will face united struggles of workers and young people on a whole range of issues, but it will also be buffeted by sectarian headwinds. Its future is inherently precarious. The key question is whether it is the forces of sectarian reaction which come to the fore in the next period, of whether a class alternative can be built which can fundamentally challenge the sectarian edifice of society here and advance the struggle for a socialist future free from poverty and division.

The post North- New Decade, Same Approach appeared first on Socialist Party (Ireland).

No loss of jobs or income! Put public health before private profit!

The spread of the novel coronavirus Covid-19 has become a major health crisis, unlike anything seen in a century. At the time of writing, around 156 countries have been impacted, with more than 170,000 infected and more than 6,500 confirmed deaths, including 36 in Britain and 2 in Ireland, with those figures likely to rise dramatically.

Capitalist governments have generally been slow to act, weighing up the impact of preventative measures against that of widespread infection on the profits of big business. This balancing act has facilitated the spread of the virus. However, witnessing the surge of infection in Italy – where the government initially hesitated and was then forced to introduce a near total lockdown – other governments are now beginning to implement more developed measures aimed at limiting contagion. The Southern government has closed schools, colleges, childcare facilities and cultural institutions until 29 March, while pubs and restaurants have also been instructed to close for the next two weeks.

Johnson government gambles with people’s lives

The British government’s limited response – reliant largely on self-isolation – is now an outlier, and seems to be based upon merely managing the spread of the virus to achieve ‘herd immunity’, where natural immunity develops among the bulk of the population from exposure. A leaked report from Public Health England suggests that the epidemic could stretch into spring 2021, with 80% of the population being infected and 8 million requiring hospitalisation at some point. Based on even low mortality rates, this could translate into hundreds of thousands of deaths. This underlines the callous disregard of the Tories for the lives of ordinary people. Growing evidence of re-infection in areas severely impacted by the virus calls the whole concept of herd immunity into question.

Stormont Executive divided – Take action now!

The Northern Ireland Executive is clearly taking its lead from Westminster, hesitating to take the kind of preventative measures seen elsewhere. Last Thursday, Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill issued a joint statement saying now was not the time for schools in the North to close. However, O’Neill broke ranks less than 24 hours later, reflecting the contradiction in approach, North and South, and also growing pressure from below. Many schools are closing voluntarily, with Queen’s University moving to online lectures. The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation has called for an immediate shutdown in education. Similarly, some pubs are closing for Saint Patrick’s Day, but no broad policy has been put in place.

Internationally, the evidence shows that early social distancing measures are key to limiting the impact of the virus on human health. In the context of Ireland, there is an obvious contradiction in having widely different measures in place on either side of the border. However, in the South, mandatory closures have resulted in mass lay-offs, with private sector workers being asked to accept a significant reduction in income, while other workers are now faced with finding alternative childcare arrangements.

Poverty not acceptable price to pay

Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced that statutory sick pay will be made available immediately to staff who have to self-isolate, rather than after a four-day delay. However, workers earning less than £118/week on average are not eligible, and statutory sick pay amounts to only £94.25/week. This – and the demands of bosses – can pressurise workers who are ill to come into work when they should be self-isolating, risking the spread of the virus.

Bosses may seek to implement mass lay-offs in order to defend their profits. The collapse of Flybe has already led to the loss of 100 jobs at Belfast City Airport, with more jobs and the future of the airport itself at risk. Workers in precarious sectors like hospitality and retail are particularly under threat. Colin Neil of Hospitality Ulster said pub and restaurant owners were open to a prolonged shutdown if advised to do so, saying their concern was “not about profit”, but then asked: “If we close, how do people put bread on their table?” This is illustrative of the approach bosses will seek to take.

Workers must not foot the bill

For socialists, the bottom line is that no worker should be economically worse off because of this crisis. The working class has suffered enough over the last decade of austerity, while the super-rich have hoarded more and more of the wealth we create. The six wealthiest people in the UK have as much wealth as the poorest 13.2 million. The billionaires and big business must be made to foot the bill for the necessary measures to deal with this epidemic, not ordinary people.

The trade union movement – representing almost 250,000 workers here – must lead the way in defending the interests of the working class in the context of this crisis. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions should immediately establish bodies to monitor government and employer handling of the crisis and demand appropriate action to safeguard the health and economic interests of working-class people.

The Socialist Party calls for:

• Take action now: Emergency investment needed in our NHS to ensure staffing and resources are maximised. Close schools, colleges, pubs, restaurants and other non-essential workplaces. Appropriate, free childcare facilities must be provided for essential staff.
• No loss of pay: Guarantee full pay for all workers forced to take time off work to self-isolate, care for children or due to shutdown. For those on zero-hour contracts, this should be based on average earnings. Where small employers demonstrably cannot afford this, pay should be subsidised by the state through emergency taxation on the super-rich and big business.
• No job losses: Demand an immediate moratorium on redundancies and sackings for all but gross misconduct. Firms which threaten bankruptcy or permanent closure should be brought into public ownership.
• Public health before private profit: Where feasible, all workers must have the right to work from home. No coercion of those with underlying conditions or caring responsibilities to attend. Appropriate sanitation, social distancing and personal protection equipment must be made available in all workplaces, with trade union supervision.

The post North and Coronavirus crisis: Emergency measures needed appeared first on Socialist Party (Ireland).

By Ann Orr

“The real hero of Jaws is the mayor. A gigantic fish is eating all your constituents and he decides to keep the beaches open. OK, in that instance he was actually wrong. But in principle, we need more politicians like the mayor – we are often the only obstacle against all the nonsense which is really a massive conspiracy against the taxpayer”- Boris Johnson, 2006

The above quote gives an insight into the callous and profit-driven psychology which has driven the Tory government’s Covid-19 strategy. Initially, they talked of not following other governments – including in Italy and the Spanish state – in introducing strict social distancing measures. The very limited measures announced by Johnson last Thursday amounted to people staying home for 7 days if they had a new and persistent cough or a high temperature. The government’s plan was described as an attempt to build “herd immunity”, by which individuals would become infected (up to 80% of the population) and recover to become immune, although growing evidence of reinfection elsewhere calls this whole concept into question.

However, the Imperial College suggested this strategy could lead to 250,000 deaths. They also said that, based on measures announced last Thursday, need for critical care beds would exceed the number of such beds eightfold. A Health Select Committee was also told that there are currently 98,000 beds in the NHS, of which only 3,700 are adult critical care beds. But a leaked document from Public Health England suggested 8 million people could need hospital care over the course of this pandemic, with millions potentially requiring critical care.

Work from home, but send your kids to school.. and the pubs can stay open

Westminster was therefore forced into announcing further measures. They have issued social distancing advice to encourage people to avoid any unnecessary contact with others; home isolation of whole households for 14 days if anyone displays symptoms; over 70s should remain at home and avoid any contact with others; home working is encouraged and people should not go to bars or clubs.

Yet, Johnson and his government are continuing to adopt a laissez-faire attitude. They have not ordered schools to shut; they have not ordered all non-essential businesses to close and implement home-working where possible. These measures are needed if people are truly to be able to avoid all non-essential contact with others.

They’ve bailed out business, now bail out workers!

Of course, this must go along with a guarantee of income. Today, the government also announced a significant package of support for businesses, including rates holidays, grants and government-backed loans. But where is the bailout for workers? Companies must be obliged to continue to give their staff full pay and, where small businesses demonstrably cannot afford this, the state must step in to subsidise them through emergency taxation on the billionaires and big business.

The government should introduce emergency measures to prevent anyone from being cut off from gas, electricity, phone and internet providers and ensure emergency measures for the provision of home heating oil. Instead of talking about bailouts for private industries, this crisis demonstrates the need for key sectors of the economy to be nationalised and run in the interest of human need, not profit. This would also require democratic control by workers of these sectors.

Take over private hospitals! No profiteering from this crisis!

This is an unprecedented crisis but not one that was unimaginable. The issue in managing the response to this outbreak is a question fundamentally of the capacity of the NHS, which has been savaged by years of austerity, underfunding and privatisations. Now, the government is reported to be negotiating buying or renting beds from private hospitals to be able to use them in this crisis.

Private companies should never have been allowed to compete with the NHS, they should certainly not be making a further profit out of this crisis! All private health care facilities should be immediately nationalised with their staff being brought into the NHS and the facilities used to increase the NHS’s capacity to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Capitalism: A sick system

Putting human need, our health, safety, wellbeing and even the lives of working-class people ahead of profit is completely contradictory to the Tories approach. However, this health crisis, with its already unfolding massive economic and social implications, demonstrates that the capitalist status-quo is not working. Even the Tories can be forced to introduce measures that last week would have seemed impossible, such as a freeze on rent and mortgage payments, as has been done in Italy, or nationalisation of private health, as in Spain.

This crisis has already begun to illuminate the class divisions and inequalities in our society, and it is far from over. It is essential that we fight to ensure human wellbeing is put before private profit. That requires a struggle for a socialist future, where the wealth created by the labour of working people is used in a planned and democratic way to meet the needs of all.

The post Britain: Tory ‘herd immunity’ strategy puts millions at risk appeared first on Socialist Party (Ireland).

By Daniel Waldron

“Now is not the time for ideology” – this has been the refrain from the Tory government, echoed by Arlene Foster, as the state has been forced to intervene into the economy in a way not seen since the Second World War due to the Covid-19 pandemic. What they mean is that their ideology of unregulated and profit-driven markets has flatly failed in the face of this challenge.

Faced with a crisis which would cause a collapse in large sections of the economy, and fearful of its social and political impact, the Tories have been forced to guarantee 80% of wages for workers furloughed during the Covid-19 pandemic. For socialists, our starting point is that working people should not pay the price for this crisis, which is not of our making and has been exacerbated by the inaction of capitalist governments – with the Tories and their ‘herd immunity strategy’ a particular case in point – and by the profit-driven approach of big business.

Tory wage guarantee

Most workers will understandably be relieved by the partial guarantee of wages. However, it does not go far enough, and the burden is being placed on the wrong shoulders. There is a real danger that, in the aftermath of this pandemic, the Tories will try to make workers pay the price for this bail out through even more savage austerity and attacks on pay and conditions.

Firstly, workers should be guaranteed 100% of their income. Secondly, wages should continue to be paid by employers from their reserves. Only where small business demonstrably cannot afford this should the state subsidise wages, and this should be funded through emergency taxation on the billionaires and big business.

Thousands of workers in industries like hospitality were laid off before the guarantee was announced, and some companies – like the Hastings Group – have even threatened lay-offs since. There should be an enforced moratorium on all lay-offs and sackings, except for gross misconduct, and mandatory re-hiring of those already laid off. Any firm which refuses should be brought into public ownership and its resources used to help tackle the crisis.

Capitalist myths exposed

We are used to the refrain that “there is no alternative” to the market, that “there is no money” for public services, that nationalisation is unworkable and that mass job losses simply have to be accepted. All these supposed truths have now been completely undermined, with capitalist governments finding huge sums for emergency investment, and nationalisation of key sectors suddenly back on the agenda. It has been demonstrated that austerity, privatisation and the race to the bottom in pay and conditions are political choices in the interests of capitalism, not economic necessities.

Workers, not bosses, make society function

Also, workers previously dismissed as “unskilled”, in order to justify paying poverty wages, have clearly been demonstrated to play an essential role in society, in sectors like retail and food production. These lessons should be noted by workers and young people. It is the labour of working people which creates wealth, provides for people’s needs and allows society to function. The demand for a £12 minimum wage, regardless of age, should immediately be taken up energetically by the trade union movement.

Fight for a socialist future!

When this crisis subsides, we must not accept a return to ‘business as usual’. We need to ensure that it is the bosses and billionaires who foot the bill. We need to struggle which aims to reshape society in the interests of the majority, the working class – breaking from the profit-driven capitalist market. This would necessitate bringing society’s wealth and resources into public ownership so they can be used in a planned and democratic way to meet the needs of all, rather than the super-rich elite. That means a struggle for a socialist future, which would allow us to eliminate poverty and also better equip us to deal with future crises, including that posed by climate change.

The post COVID-19- Government intervention as “free market” fails appeared first on Socialist Party (Ireland).

By Kevin Henry

“Herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad” – that’s how attendees at a private event in February said Tory strategist Dominic Cummings summed up the government’s ‘strategy’ for dealing with Covid-19. In the face of a predicted public health catastrophe and widespread criticism, however, the government has now launched a ‘lockdown’, with people instructed to stay at home and non-essential retailers shut, although many other non-essential workplaces remain open. Emergency legislation containing sweeping new powers has been introduced at Westminster and Stormont.

There is also speculation about possible use of the military in this situation, on the basis of the “military aid to the civil authorities” programme. It is correct to use every mechanism possible to tackle this pandemic. However, the army should play no role in relation to policing communities and the streets. This is particularly important given the history of atrocities and abuse by the British Army in Northern Ireland. Any attempt to normalise the presence of the military on the streets would have serious consequences in the future.

Covid-19 Bill

The Covid-19 bill will grant the government unprecedented powers, with one civil liberties group describing them as the “most draconian powers in peace-time Britain”. For example, the government guidelines on the bill state “the bill will enable the police and immigration officers to detain a person, for a limited period, who is, or may be, infectious and to take them to a suitable place to enable screening and assessment.”

Secondly, it will allow the government to “restrict or prohibit events and gatherings during the pandemic in any place, vehicle, train, vessel or aircraft, any movable structure and any offshore installation and, where necessary, to close premises.”

The bill also includes powers for the police to shut down airports, and weakens safeguards on mass surveillance by quadrupling time-review limits for urgent warrants. The Tories have now conceded to a six-monthly review of these new policing powers, but the additional government powers will last for up to two years.

Socialists and democratic rights

For socialists, this is a very important issue. There is a long history of repressive legislation being introduced under one pretext, but then being used against the workers’ movement at a different point. We know this only too well in Northern Ireland, where measures introduced to “fight terrorism” were used against striking workers. The same was the case with powers introduced in the aftermath of 9/11 and other terrorist attacks across the world. Locally, politicians from all the main parties have been prepared to undermine the democratic right to protest, including with the attempt to introduce the restrictive Public Assemblies Bill on the pretext of dealing with controversial parades. It is for this important reason that Socialist Party member Mick Barry TD opposed similar legislation in the Dáil.

Workers must be free to stand up for public health

This is not an abstract question but concretely linked to the fight against the virus. So far, it seems the British government is broadly following the same path as Italy. There, local authorities have issued thousands of fines to people outside their house without reason, but have only in recent days taken the step to shut down all non-essential workplaces after many workers took action into their own hands. In Britain, cleaners, postal workers, bin workers and many others have taken action in relation to health and safety concerns. Can we trust a Tory government with a record of pushing through attacks on trade unions and democratic rights not to use these measures against workers striking in the interests of public health?

Similarly, like the scenes of crowded trains in London due to cutting of services, some of the measures introduced allegedly to relieve stress on public services can, in fact, exacerbate the situation. For example, the bill removed existing restrictions on public bodies, such as school class sizes and obligations for oversight for mental health patients.

Who is taking this seriously?

Attempts are being made to accuse ordinary people – particularly young people – of not taking this virus seriously. While there can be this or that example pointed to, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of workers and young people are acting responsibly, while many are in the frontline of tackling this crisis. This can be seen in the industrial actions taken on issues of health and safety, but also in the countless “mutual support” groups which have sprung up.

It is capitalist governments and employers across the world who have shown a lax attitude to dealing with the virus and there is a reason for that – profit. This is demonstrated by the lack of broad shutdowns of non-essential workplaces and the criminal lack of mass testing being conducted. Instead of governments who serve the interests of the rich, it is workers who should be in the driving seat in responding to this pandemic, including in determining what work needs to be carried out, how it can be done as safely as possible and how the vulnerable in our society can be effectively cared for.

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By Tom Costello, Socialist Alternative (our sister organisation in England, Wales and Scotland)

Working class people have had to make endless sacrifices under lockdown. Parents have been denied entry to hospitals where their children are receiving treatment. Elderly relatives in care homes have gone unvisited for months on end. And for the vast majority of us, we don’t have the luxury of being able to drive our families out to second homes.

This cannot be said for the likes of Dominic Cummings, whose careless actions have plunged the government into crisis and fanned the flames of growing opposition to the Tory government’s response to Covid-19. A chorus of people, including senior health figures such as Dr Rinesh Parmar of the Doctor’s Association UK, have called on Cummings to resign.

This will not be helped by the comments from yesterday’s live press conference and statement – a rotten car crash of excuses that will do him and the Tories no good at all. It has now been confirmed that, rather than going into self-isolation after suspecting he and his wife had the virus, they instead chose to leave London with their 4-year old son to spend time at Cummings’ parents’ home on a wooded estate outside Durham, blatantly against the guidelines provided by his own government. This was when his wife was already showcasing clear symptoms.

After this government has spent months whipping up hysteria about ordinary people using parks for their daily exercise, Johnson has now done a 180-degree turn, saying that Cummings’ actions were ‘responsible’ and ‘legal’. Clearly it is one rule for us, and another for the super-rich and political elite!

While working people face attacks for using public transport, the likes of Cummings can lie their way through scrutiny. Indeed, the first thing noticed about his story was how contradictory it was. Who in their right mind would, after complaining of reduced eyesight, make an hour-and-a-half drive to and from Barnard Castle, in order to ‘put it to the test’? Driving with suspected eyesight problems no doubt poses a physical threat to the driver and passengers, so why would he take his son with him? If the woods that Cummings was spotted in were part of his parents’ estate, why not drive the remaining short distance back to the house for the toilet break he mentioned? Needless to say, his account of events was full of holes.

This scandal has dramatically undermined much of the remaining public faith in the Tories to protect our health. It proves once again that the Tories cannot be trusted to act in our interests – whether of our health or living standards.

We simply cannot let them get away with this. While Tory figures flout the rules, thousands of workers are being forced back to work without adequate safety measures – all in the aid of private profit. On 1 June, teachers and pupils face being forced back into unsafe classroom conditions. It will be key to support National Education Union members in their fight against unsafe school reopenings – as well as all workers taking a stand to defend health and safety.

This incident emphasises the need for working class people to fight for full democratic control over the measures needed to fight the virus and protect living standards. Most immediately, this means fighting for workers and trade unions to set the terms of returning to work and reopening schools. The trade unions nationally cannot afford to be quiet on this anymore. Workplace committees must be formed by all key workers to make these decisions. There can be no trust in the Tories – let’s send that message to them!

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By Mike Forster (Socialist Alternative- our sister organisation in England, Wales and Scotland)

Thirty years ago, Margaret Thatcher with tears in her eyes ended her eleven year reign as Prime Minister of Britain. A pioneer of neoliberalism, she fought for the interests of her class — the rich, while the working class grew to so hate her, many celebrated when she died.

On 28 November 1990, 30 years ago, Margaret Thatcher tearfully tended her resignation as Tory Party leader and therefore by default, as prime minister of the UK, after 11 years in power. She was forced out by a Cabinet coup against her and realised she was not going to succeed in the event of a leadership challenge. Her departure ended a period of rule which had completely changed the face of British and indeed international politics. It was also marked by huge celebrations in working class communities which had suffered massively at the hands of her brutal policies, but it would be another 7 years before the Tories were finally prised out of office. Thatcher’s reputation and legacy has left a deep scar across the whole face of British society which is still very keenly felt today by successive generations.

Thatcher’s reputation and legacy has left a deep scar across the whole face of British society which is still very keenly felt today by successive generations.

Thatcher’s anti working class government was a by-product of the slow but steady decline of British capitalism dating from the beginning of the twentieth century, but accelerated by the post war recession of the 1970’s. Labour had been in power from 1972 -1979 but in that period had been the first developed capitalist economy to bow the knee to demands from the International Monetary Fund to cut public spending, introduce wage restraint and rein in the power of the unions.

The assault on jobs and the public sector resulted in the infamous ‘dirty jobs’ strikes of 1978 which saw prolonged and coordinated strike action taken by some of the lowest paid workers, including medical staff, gravediggers and foremen against the anti-union policies of the the Callaghan Labour government. This resulted in many workers losing faith in Labour and allowed the Tories to narrowly win the election of 1979, bringing Britain’s first female prime minister to power.

Thatcher — pioneer of neoliberalism

There are many myths around Thatcher’s premiership, one of which was that she commanded big public support. Within a year, she was already the most unpopular prime minister in history. She was presiding over growing unemployment, which rose from 1,5 million to 3,5 million by 1984. She claimed to tame inflation, but although it was over 20% when she came to power, for most of her reign it varied from 5–10%.

The Trade Union movement held mass protests against her attracting hundreds of thousands and the Labour Party actually called demonstrations in Liverpool, Glasgow, Cardiff and London which brought out around 1 million onto the streets. A mood of resistance and defiance hung in the air. Rioting broke out in Bristol, London and Liverpool around excessive racist policing and the development of unemployment hotspots in blighted inner cities.

Thatcher ’s inner circle, which then reflected the interests of Britain’s ruling elite, had changed course economically, ditching consensus politics for harsh monetarist doctrines, the fore-runner of today’s neoliberalism. They advocated shrinking the public sector and dismantling heavy industry in favour of financial marketisation

This approach contradicted the entire history of British capitalism which had become a major world power through manufacturing and industrial development. When Thatcher came to power, manufacturing accounted for 40% of UK GDP which fell away dramatically for the rest of the decade and up to this day, accounting for less than 10% of GDP.

When Thatcher came to power, manufacturing accounted for 40% of UK GDP which fell away dramatically for the rest of the decade and up to this day, accounting for less than 10% of GDP.

Public spending fell from 44% of GDP to just 39% when she left office. Instead the Tories offered tax cuts and a forced reliance on the financial markets. They lifted exchange controls on British currency and foreign capital began to pour into the City of London. Thatcher completed this revolution when the London Stock Exchange was deregulated in 1986 and became one of the largest financial centres of speculation and profiteering in the world.

Although the ‘Big Bang’ in the City created a huge illusion of wealth creation, in reality it was opening the way for the financial crash of 2007–9. Markets became massively over inflated with debt and speculation. Marxists warned at the time, she was sowing the seeds of a major catastrophe. Although this took time to feed itself through, the crash of 2007–09 and today’s deep recession has its firm roots in Thatcher’s monetarist experiment.

This ‘Get Rich’ mentality was positively encouraged by Thatcher, even though it was clearly at the expense of the poorest sections of society. A new brutal and heartless ideology was pursued by Thatcher which led to her declaring. ‘there was no such thing as society’. These ideas have proven to be empty and hollow nonsense when humanity has faced up the Covid pandemic which has required working class society coming back together in heart-warming displays of solidarity and mutual cooperation.

These policies ravaged working class communities. Thatcher was on course for election disaster even as late as 1982. History dealt her an opportunity to play the nationalist card when Argentina invaded the Falklands Islands in the same year.

Thatcher took a serious gamble and chose to dispatch a war armada to allegedly ‘liberate’ the Falklands people from the military dictator, President Galtieri. This was a conflict she almost lost, but Galtieri’s young conscript army proved to be no match for superior air power, but not before Thatcher had ordered the infamous sinking of the Argentine warship, Belgrano, as it was actually sailing away from the conflict, resulting in the loss of over 700 lives.

In reality, Thatcher’s future was intrinsically tied to a military victory and she saw the brutal downing of the Belgrano as necessary collateral damage. The surrender of Argentine troops earnt Thatcher the title of the Iron Lady. In the following year’s election, wrapping herself in the union jack, she swept Labour and its hapless leader, Michael Foot, aside and was returned to power for another term.

Labour’s response

In the early 1980’s, the Labour Party had undergone something of a transformation. The left wing was in the ascendancy and membership grew rapidly. Left union leaders and constituency activists forced through changes to bring in automatic reselection of MP’s, so that members could control who their candidates would be, and a Party veto over the manifesto, putting control over Party decision making into the hands of its conference. The figure head of the left, Tony Benn, called for a mass socialist Labour Party and stood for deputy leader. He narrowly missed winning this position at the 1981 party conference but shortly afterwards, four right wing MP’s deserted Labour to set up a new Party (the Social Democratic Party led by the gang of four as they became known). This calculated manoeuvre, designed to undermine the left, also split the Labour vote in 1983 and gave Thatcher a 144-seat majority!

We have of course seen similar betrayals by the modern-day right wingers who deliberately set out to undermine Corbyn in the election of 2017, betraying their preference for a Tory government over a left led labour Government. These right wingers should go down in the Labour Movement’s Hall of Shame as they paved the way for Thatcher’s onslaught on jobs, housing, the unions and democratic rights.

Thatcher confronts the trade unions

Thatcher set her sights on taking on the might of the British Trade Union Movement. The Tories had never forgotten their humiliation at the hands of the miners in 1972 and 1974, when two successive strikes had forced the Tories to retreat. In 1974, the then Tory leader, Edward Heath, called a general election in the midst of the strike, asking the question, ‘who runs the country, the government or the miners?’. The result was a Labour victory and the Tories were ingloriously kicked out of power.

The Miners’ strike 1984–5

Thatcher’s infamous Tory Cabinet member, Nicholas Ridley, had gone away to plan how the miners might be defeated in another strike. His secret plan was endorsed by Thatcher, including the recruitment of a national strike breaking police force, stockpiling of coal, recruiting strike breaking lorry drivers, withdrawing any benefits for strikers, and giving the government more anti-union powers. The Tories provoked a strike in 1984 by threatening the closure of several pits and the year long strike took hold. This was one of the most bitter periods of class struggle in Britain’s post war history. The ruling class was out to destroy Britain’s most powerful union, the National Union of Mineworkers, rightly described by Militant, the forerunner of Socialist Alternative, at the time as a ‘civil war without bullets’.

The outcome of the strike was a tragic defeat for the miners, but a victory for the NUM would have changed the course of history in favour of our class. It is therefore all the more tragic that both Labour and Trade Union leaders stood by and allowed the British State to inflict this terrible blow. The then Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, condemned picket line ‘violence’, refusing to support their struggle. Calls for general strike action by the TUC were likewise dismissed by its leader, Norman Willis, and the miners were left to fight alone. Despite this, the miners were close to victory; Thatcher later revealed that she had been seeking a way out when the strike was called off. A dignified but defeated union membership marched back to work without a settlement. Thatcher wasted no time in destroying the industry: a workforce of 230,000 has been reduced to less than 4,000 today.

What followed was a rout of other major industrial workplaces and unions: dock, car, steel, print, and engineering workers witnessed large scale closures or privatisation, sometimes after brief and bitter strike action. Unemployment soared from 5.3% to 11.4 % by the mid 1980’s. The number of workers on sickness benefit doubled to 1.6 million, artificially disguising an unemployment figure nearer to 20% of the workforce. Three million manufacturing jobs were destroyed mainly in the Northern heartlands. Union membership slumped from its highpoint of 13.2 million members to an all-time low by the end of the decade of around seven million and fell even further through the 1990’s. Poverty levels soared; whilst the richest 10% saw their incomes rise by 35%, for the poorest sections, incomes fell and the number of children living in poverty increased from 1.7 million to 3.3 million by the time she left office.

There[cg1]  is little wonder that thousands of workers partied all day long when Thatcher died in 2013. She left a bitter legacy of broken homes, communities and families; a scar which has never healed.

Thatcher’s war on local authorities

Thatcher also chose to go to war against Labour Councils, slashing the amount Councils received from central government and imposing legal caps on their ability to raise funds locally. This left Councils with a choice of either choosing to challenge her attacks or carrying out her dirty work and imposing cuts to services or raising rates (local taxes), or even both. Initially an impressive united front of up to 20 Labour Councils combined together to refuse to impose the Tory cuts. There were even mass Town Hall protests called by local Council leaders such as David Blunkett in Sheffield who was then seen as a leading left firebrand. However, one by one, they capitulated to combined legal threats and demands from Labour’s national leadership to ‘toe the line’, choosing in the end to set ‘legal’ budgets which of course meant cuts and rate increases.

Socialist led Liverpool City Council stood out in this process by refusing to bow the knee. In sharp contrast to the other councils, they committed to defy the Tories and to set an illegal or ‘needs’ budget. Their defiance and clear fighting approach inspired the huge support of the working class of Liverpool who heeded the calls to protests and strikes when called upon to support their council. More impressively, the Labour vote continued to go up every year from the beginning of their struggle in 1981 when Militant supporters in the Labour Party assumed the leadership of the Council. In a huge standoff in 1984, during the miner’s strike, Thatcher’s government backed down and gave the Council financial support to carry out their house building and jobs creation programme without a huge rate rise. The Militant inspired Council had proved that Thatcher could be beaten when confronted by determined and militant resistance.

Regrettably, this lesson was lost on the new Labour leadership of Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley who launched a prolonged and disgraceful witch-hunt against the Liverpool Council leaders at the 1985 Labour party Conference. This represented a significant watershed in Labour’s history. The attack on Labour’s Marxist wing did not stop there. Bit by bit the gains of the left in Labour from the early 80’s were whittled away for the next decade until Tony Blair was able to declare he was now leading ‘New Labour’ in 1998. Effective opposition to Thatcher’s counter revolution was therefore tamed and she was able to push ahead with further attacks on the working class. After she left office, Thatcher was asked what her greatest achievement had been and without hesitation, she replied, “New Labour”. No surprise then that she was the first to be invited into Downing Street by Tony Blair when he won the 1997 election.

Privatisation of the public sector

Thatcher was also responsible for extensive privatisation. Key industries which had been in public hands were sold off to the private sector including British Gas and Electricity, British Telecoms, Leyland, Oil, Airways, Steel, Petroleum, and Jaguar followed by the water companies. Other utilities and travel networks followed suit under the John Major government. This obscene sell off represented a massive transfer of wealth from the public sector to the asset strippers and the rich. It was accompanied by the hideous sale of public housing assets to create what she called a ‘property owning democracy’. Throughout the 1980’s, she introduced legislation which allowed council house tenants to buy their own homes, taking just short of one million homes out the public sector and seeing home ownership rise from 10.2 million in 1981 to 13.4 million by the end of the decade.

This brought her temporary support from some former Labour voters who bought into the illusion of wealth creation but the rapid rise in house prices and interest rates throughout the decade priced most of them out the market. The legacy of this appalling legislation is now written large in the huge rise of homelessness and record shortage of social housing.

Thatcher was able to secure a third term in 1987 on the back of a temporary economic upswing fuelled by credit and debt, but which nevertheless created the illusion of rising living standards. In reality, a large section of the working class had been left behind but Neil Kinnock’s appalling leadership of the Labour Party gave the Tories the political space to win again.

The rusting of the ‘Iron lady’

Thatcher became overconfident in her final term. She made the mistake of judging the mood of the masses by their insipid leadership. She chose to introduce the poll tax-an unfair and unequal tax to be imposed on every householder, regardless of income, as a way of replacing the local rates system which levied household income based on house value.

It was a direct attack on workers living standards which they could not afford. The demoralised leadership of the Labour and Trade Union Movement railed against the inequality of the tax, but offered no coherent fighting alternative. Only the Militant, staying true to its class, advocated a mass non-payment campaign. We knew there was a brewing discontent which could easily spill over and crystallise around this tax.

Thatcher’s second mistake was to use Scotland as a guinea pig where the poll tax was introduced a year early. Through community door to door canvassing, anti-poll tax campaigners built up huge anti poll tax unions in every estate. ‘No Poll Tax Here’ window posters festooned inner city tenements. When the poll tax became law in Scotland, one million people had refused to pay making it completely uncollectable. Undimmed, Thatcher pressed on creating an incredible 14 million non-payment army in England and Wales, culminating in huge simultaneous demonstrations in Glasgow, and London on 31 March 1990. Non-payment actually rose throughout the year and sent council finances into turmoil. The tax had dismally failed, and the Tory grandees finally plucked up the courage to have Thatcher removed at the end of the year.

The original Brexiteer

Her other legacy was to encourage hostility and suspicion towards the European Union. Initially she was a strong advocate of the EU and supported strengthening trading ties. However, when that spilled over into closer political union, she began her crusade against further integration. It was this stand which appealed to the rampant right-wing nationalists in her Party and shifted the Party onto a far more hostile attitude to the EU. This approach haunted her successor’s time in office (John Major) who described the nationalist opposition the EU as ‘bastards’. This also allowed Boris Johnson to claim he stands in the tradition of Thatcher which ironically continues to tear the Tory Party apart and helped lead to Brexit.

Lessons

Thatcher was a creation of her time, feared and loathed in equal measure. We study this period because it remains rich in lessons, most notably for the defeats which were inflicted on her by organised socialist forces on the ground. When all too often, we are told that right wing dictators or leaders are all powerful, we should remind ourselves how the Iron Lady was forced back. When inspired and confidently led, working people will always struggle and can win, as we have proved today in Seattle. Regrettably, she was allowed to inflict huge misery and hardship on millions of working people and set a different course for British society which we must never forget. Although still praised and lauded by Tory stalwarts today, her policies also paved the way for huge splits we see today in the Tory Party around Europe and of course the financial ruin in the economy. Thatcher’s period in power paved the way for the massive demise of British Capitalism and with it, the Tory Party.

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By Daniel Waldron

On the anniversary of the first lockdown in the UK, Boris Johnson proclaimed  to Tory backbenchers, “The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends.” The real result of the Tories’ callous, pro-capitalist policies during the Covid pandemic has been almost 130,000 lost lives, one of the highest per-capita death rates in the world. They were reluctant to lock down and rushed to re-open the economy, all because they wanted to minimise disruption to profit.

Ideological delusions

Clinging to dogmatic belief in the superiority of the ‘free’ market and the private sector, they outsourced PPE provision and creation of test-track-and-trace systems, often to Tory cronies with no expertise in these fields. These proved to be unmitigated disasters, leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths while costing the public billions.

The vaccine programme has undoubtedly been a success, but this is despite – not because of – capitalism and greed. The vaccines themselves – including that developed in partnership between Oxford University and AstraZeneca – are the product of huge public sector intervention and subsidies, which allowed rapid research and production. The profits, however, will be the property of the private pharmaceutical giants, who will put the world’s poor to the back of the queue.

The efficient rollout of the vaccine has only been possible because of the existence of the NHS and the self-sacrifice and dedication of tens of thousands of health workers. While the Tories hypocritically joined in the applause for NHS staff, they now intend to thank them for their efforts with a 1% ‘pay-rise’ – while the hoarded wealth of the billionaires and pandemic-profiteers remains sacrosanct.

The socialist alternative

What is true of the Tories is true of the Dublin government and every pro-capitalist government around the world, to a greater or lesser degree. It is solidarity, co-operation and the efforts of working-class people in every essential industry, in every community and workplace which have kept society functioning throughout this pandemic, in spite of the parasitic capitalist system and its never-ending drive for profit above all else. 

This gives a glimpse of what we could achieve, what kind of society we could build, if our wealth and resources were used in a planned and democratic way to provide for the needs of people and planet, not for the profit-margins of billionaires. It also gives a glimpse of the collective power which the working class has to consign both Covid and capitalism to the history books, and fight for a socialist future.

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