At first sight it might seem curious to compare Greece with Britain for all the obvious reasons. However both countries have the dubious honour in succession, despite the undecided elections in Spain and the bank crisis in Italy, of becoming the two weakest political links in the ongoing European crisis. Consequently there have been significant developments in Greece which reflect on the current British malaise and that are worth exploring.
A commanding feature of Greek social and political life has been the development of self-organising movements of enormous size and significance. What has now become 'Solidarity for All' started when militants from the city squares movement began to help the creation of practical, self-managed responses to austerity in health, education and food, in 2013 and 2014. By the end of 2014, 3 million people were participating in 'solidarity, not charity.' The Greek anti-fascist movement and the movement in defense of immigrant communities and refugees started well before this, in the 1990s. The movement to defend immigrants blossomed to become the centre of one of the greatest examples of humanity that Europe has seen in the incredible response created in Greece, where over 60% of its 10 million population have been involved in helping and supporting the recent flood of refugees into Europe.
The emergence of Syriza, a coalition of the largest parts of the left in Greece, rose independently of Greece's social movements to become the chosen expression of the Greek people's hostility to continued, relentless austerity. In practice Syriza floated above the rising wave of the movements, but maintained their distance and independence from them. They facilitated (and largely continue to allow) the work of the movements. For their part, Solidarity for All and the others were happy to keep their distance from Syriza and later the Syriza government, especially as they did not wish to substitute in any way for the necessary responsibilities of the state.
In January 2015 the Syriza leadership embarked on an attempt to split the EU leadership, ameliorate Greece's debt and restart economic growth. They had an ambitious domestic programme of defending pensions, restoring the minimum wage, bringing the 'unregistered' into the health service and blocking privatisation.
In July 2016 Syriza called a referendum on a new and draconian 'memorandum' as their efforts to divide the EU leadership failed. The Syriza leadership did not campaign for 'No' and were as surprised as the rest of Europe's leaders when the Greek people voted exactly that. Today Syriza implements the EU memorandum in the same way previous austerity measures were implemented and which caused the overthrow of past governments. They nevertheless won a second election in September 2015. The left split from Syriza, Popular Unity, scored under 3% of the vote and did not get one MP.
What has happened to the mass movements in Greece? Have they broken as Syriza failed - in its return to the status quo and worse in Greek politics?
Extraordinarily, the skeletons of Greece's mass movements have survived. More; the movement in defense of refugees has blossomed. Solidarity for All activists estimate that they are now involved with 250,000 people, of which 160,00 are refugees. The refugee movement is not countable, but organisers of the occupation of Hotel City Plaza in Athens, which now houses 112 women, 92 men and 185 children and feeds 900 per day, describe 10 similar initiatives across the city and hundreds across the country as well as thousands of day to day actions by the Greek people in general. In the inimitable way of Greek activist's clarity of political language, they demand 'Hosting' and not 'Holding' for refugees. The anti-fascist movement is now focused on the major trial of Golden Dawn leaders for murder, having helped fight out the Golden Dawn attempts to establish 'no go' areas for refugees and immigrants in parts of Athens and other cities.
However, and despite the continuing commitments, there are significant differences of view as might be expected on future political perspectives, both in and between the various Greek movements. The large scale, basic, political unity of the left has broken up. Inevitably there are many voices to be heard within Greece's popular left but three basic approaches can be identified.
On June 6, 2016 Parliament passed a law to include an extra 2 million into the health service - not including those without social security numbers. Among Solidarity for All, particularly among those who have the skills to volunteer in the clinics, this final implementation of the Syriza promise to bring 'all' into the national health system has given a certain credence to the much referred to but otherwise rarely visible 'Parallel Programme' of the government. The argument follows that the Syriza government has two programmes, one forced on it by the EU and the other that comes from its initial commitment to anti-austerity. More importantly the Syriza government is now legitimised by the September 2015 elections. It is therefore argued that the relations with the Syriza government remain completely independent but pressure on the implementation of the Parallel Programme is justified. The authority of the July 2015 referendum has thereby been superseded.
The second approach regards Syriza now as carrying out the programme of the right - which the traditional right in Greek politics could not get away with. This both renders the previous criticism of and rejection of the old right wing, including PASOK, as voided, which is deeply negative, and strongly suggests that their previous political line was the only alternative, thus bringing forward the day when the rejected, old, right wing political forces can return 'with a bang.' Such militants argue that the popular self-organised movements have to build up their strength and create the future political instruments needed by the Greek people. The implications are that the referendum was a defining moment when Greece should have repudiated the debt, refused the memorandum and created its own currency. Therefore the September elections were part of a potentially dangerous retreat.
Meanwhile Antarsya, the coalition of the far left, which garnered 49,000 votes in the September 2015 and no MPs, and which is prominent in the Anti-Fascist work through Anti Fascist Action and the Greek Communist Party with 5 MPs have, from the outset, characterised Syriza as a Social Democratic Party and remain hostile to the government and to parts of the social movement. Both organisations continue to compete to form new revolutionary parties as alternatives to the governmental parties and any kind of membership of the EU.
Are there lessons for the left in Britain in all this?
Brexit has concentrated the long-term political crisis in Britain. Until the full economic consequences of the current European and global slow-down become clear, Britain's political evolution will remain unstable. In the case of the Labour Party, its decline brought on by Blair et al has already sped up to the point of self destruction, which can only be halted by the transformation of the party though its new members, the support of militant unions and the Corbyn leadership.
In other words, any hope for Labour, as a mainstream party, rests in the movements of the left, the unions, the anti-war and the anti-austerity movements and its new membership, taking the party into their grasp and building a new base among the 60% of Britons who see themselves as working class.
This may be a minority action in the first instance. Labour right wing MPs may well settle more comfortably in a National government brought on by the coming keener winds of globalisation. But an initial consolidation of a left political current of a million and more is a tremendous prize, an enormous investment into an uncertain and unstable future.
In short, the movements in Britain must shape their political project, now, and not assume that their independence and mass activity will of itself produce the spontaneous conditions for another, different, more immaculate conception (as the Greek CP and Antarsya seem to imagine.)
The movements in Greece predated Syriza, a party that emerged out of their success but which had not been created by it. In Britain, the successful renovation of the Labour Party may only be at the very beginning of the concrete steps needed to get to a real mass party of the working class that can lead on the testing, the fight with and the removal of the current political and economic systems. But without this first step, taken now, Britain's political (and coming economic) crises, will promote a much more dangerous direction.
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