I am very sympathetic to those who wish to continue fighting for socialism inside the Labour Party. I am not opposed to people remaining within the Labour Party, nor will I do anything to undermine their struggle, but I now think that it is also important to focus on, and attempt to organise, those party members who have dropped out or left in disgust. Remember, there has been a huge collapse of Labour Party membership. This reflects the great number of Labour voters who feel that the party has abandoned them.
Can we organise those who have already left? I would reject the arguments of those who think you must stay in the Labour Party at all costs even if the original reasons for being in the party no longer hold. People need to think for themselves in the new conditions that are developing, rather than engage in rather arcane arguments among activists about whether or not the new Partnership in Power structures of the Labour Party can be used for left-wing purposes. You see, even a Parliamentary rebellion double or triple the size of the one over lone parent benefits will not stop Blair, because of the size of his majority. The more I look at the situation, the more convinced I am that a public stand has to be made in defence of the poor, the unemployed and those on benefits. They are the people who will suffer most as a result of the attack on the welfare state, and right now they do not have a voice. The left ignores these developments at its peril.
In our Euro-constituency we have carried out a survey of the opinions of Labour Party members, 4500 of them. We have found that the vast majority support the stand I have taken on benefit cuts, and interestingly 42% of Labour Party members think I am right to consider standing as a protest candidate against the government rather than endorsing its attacks on the poor. Only around 20% think that would be wrong, while the rest have not come down firmly one way or another. There is enormous support in our area for resistance to the Blair agenda.
My long-term assessment of the situation is that there will be a challenge to the Blair leadership, and either the Labour Party will succeed in removing Blair and replacing him and his private team of aliens and SDP converts, or the labour movement will have no alternative but to start on the long and difficult road to the foundation of a new party.
Obviously, we cannot predict what will happen. It seems to me that a number of outcomes are possible. If the left is able to organise effectively and link up with broad forces in the labour movement, we may be able to evict Blair. That is by far the best thing for us to do. Then we could all reunite in the struggle to revalidate the Labour Party as a socialist party. But we can’t be certain of that outcome. There are many other possibilities.
The question of the relationship between the unions and New Labour is of great strategic importance. At the moment the union leaders are hoping and waiting for legislation on trade union recognition. The unions are now very weak socially. They are hanging on by the fingernails, hoping and waiting for the legislation. If they don’t get effective reforms in this area, they could simply get weaker and weaker.
The irony here is that Blair is going to try to give the union leaders a version of the anti-union Taft-Hartley laws in the USA, which will very likely reduce union membership and lead to more derecognition. Blair has a quite deliberate goal of diminishing trade union power still further. So he will try to present proposals effectively to derecognise unions as legislation for union recognition.
I don’t, of course, disagree with the need to win the unions away from support for Blair’s policies. I think there will be a movement building up to limit the massive financial support the unions give to Blair and to replace the carte-blanche support with more targetted campaigning initiatives.
My fear is simply that the unions may not move in the here and now. Right now we have a duty to defend the poorest in our society from the attacks emanating from the government — a government that has turned out even more right-wing than my worst fears.
