In his famous book, 1984, writer George Orwell created a new language which was used by power. In this aspect, his novel, written in 1948, was a completely accurate forecast of the Royal address to Parliament.
On 27 May 2015, the Queen's speech, not written by the Queen but delivered by her to all the political representatives of the UK, elected and unelected, established the magisterial idea that a set of rank, sloppy and vicious measures, churned out by Tory machine men and women, were imbued by some higher order. These Tory manifesto pledges become the aims and the property of the whole ruling estate. This is the mechanism by which the wishes of less than 25% of Britain's potential electorate changes into a holy writ, guiding a new regime. It is all tosh of course. Cameron's followers will organise the royal speech in a dozen different ways, depending on how to best fight the class struggle. But every twist and turn will be painted up as part of the holy message, decided by the voters of Swindon and turned into the Holy Grail via Her Majesty's remote and pedestrian reading style.
On and on it goes. Her Majesty's ludicrous headline for the royal quackery was that the speech was for 'working people.' The Queen is about the only part of Britain's archaic political system that represents working people even less than the Tories. Meanwhile the Tory 'thinkers' have two ideas about the use of the term 'working people' and its valuable association with the Tory party - a party led by millionaires and establishment grandees; first it is aimed at undermining UKIP's populist appeal, which now threatens Tories in some constituencies much more than the traditional Labour Party. Second, it is designed to set the working part of the working class against the benefit receivers, even though those, in their majority, are also working!
The greatest absurdity of all is that this speech 'for working people' has now defined union strength as hostile to 'working people.' Unions are to be curbed, with rules on trade union action requiring voting thresholds far beyond those needed to ensure the legitimacy of a government; where scabbing is to be assured and encouraged and where individual pickets will face criminal action. None of the many suggestions by the unions for reform of the ancient, isolated voting system have been even recognised as part of the debate. The Royal message is that working people obviously don't need unions. (We wait to see what the new candidates for Labour leadership and the SNP leaders say about their intentions to overturn this latest Royal gift to to working people.) But in the meantime it worth pointing out a basic fact.
The Department for Business Innovation and Skills published information from the Office for National Statistics in May 2014 for the previous two years. This publication showed that public sector employees have a 19.8% higher wage than their non-union counterparts. In the private sector the gap in favour of trade unionists is 7%. It continues;
'Trade union members in both the public and private sectors saw a rise in average gross hourly earnings between 2012 and 2013. Private sector non-members saw a broad stagnation in their average hourly earnings over the same period, while public sector non-members experienced a reduction.'
Besides the obvious; that being in a union increases your wages, there is the opposite point; that not being in a union means that your wages 'stagnate' (are cut through inflation) or actually reduce more than inflation. We have the proof of the experiment. Without unions working people do not receive better living standards. Nobody in charge gives away potential profit. Owners of capital and managers of state functions want workers to cost less and work more. Indeed, if 2012 and 2013 are typical, unions are the only way that 'working people' might improve their lot. And now we come to the Orwellian centre of Her Majesty's peroration. 'For working people' does not mean for the gain or advantage of working people. 'For working people' means working people should have less wages and little or no benefits. If it means 'for' anything connected to working people, it is 'for' a new set of working people; working people who work for love! (Or, more accurately, fear. Which in today's working world often turns into the same thing.) Her Majesty and the Tories want to reinvent working people! That is what they are 'for.' And as declining union membership shows, that has already happened for millions.
So what remains of the unions as organisations that will potentially act to defend members' living standards is to be binned; 'for (the aim of getting the type of) working people (we need).'
Wednesday 27 May 2015
Thursday 21 May 2015
Labour in peril - starting with its leadership candidates
'The truth is that Labour recovered (votes) amongst middle class voters but has suffered a cataclysmic decline among working class voters.'
'This pattern has continued over the last 10 years.'
All of the current Labour leadership candidates 'have argued that what lost the election was a failure to tap into the hopes of “aspirational” voters. There is not a shred of evidence for their argument.'
'Labour’s electoral base (on May 7) was by far the most middle class we have secured in our history.'
The comments in quotation marks come from an article written by Labour MP for Hemsworth, John Trickett (3% swing from the Tories to Labour) in the New Statesman (13 May.)
Trickett's article uses House of Commons Library figures to back his point.
Using the social / economic categories found in the Census, this is how Labour's votes read.
2005, the ABs voted 28% for Labour, the C1s 32%, the C2s 40% and the DEs 48%.
2010, the ABs voted 26% for Labour, the C1s 28%, the C2s 29% and the DEs 40%
2015, the ABs voted 27% for Labour, the C1s 30%, the C2s 30% and the DEs 37%.
3 million working class voters (not abstainers) lost to Labour over the three elections. (Blair started it. Miliband managed to push the ABs and the C1s up a bit from 2010.)
While the Labour Party has been chasing the 'aspirational' new man and woman, it has been losing its working class base. The SNP in Scotland and Ukip in the North of England have been winning a significant part of it over. And while the SNP has many faults, a right wing racist party that pulls upwards of 2 million of its nearly 4 million votes from England's white working class is a fearful prospect.
Ukip's 121 constituency second places were evenly spread between Tory and Labour seats. Ukip picked up the bulk of the decayed support for the Lib Dems in those seats. They have certainly taken over as spokespeople of the anti-Westminster revulsion as the Liberals crashed across large parts of England. Both the Labour Party and the Tories remain distrusted, even hated parts of the Westminster establishment - especially among traditionally Labour working class voters.
None of Labours' would be new leaders understand the complex class polarisation happening in front of their eyes but, in a period of growing inequality and economic decay, instead they hunt for the chimera of a vastly expanding new middle class to base the future fortunes of the Labour Party on. Labour already owns as much of the middle and upper classes as it will ever get. It should instead (but it won't) attend to its foundations.
Wednesday 20 May 2015
And what did the left outside Labour contribute on May 7?
You can argue, from the point of view of the struggle against austerity, that the left outside Labour made an historic breakthrough on May 7. Certainly the SNP's 1.5 million votes in Scotland and their 56 MPs, the 1.2 million votes for the Greens across the UK and the 182 thousand General Election votes in Wales for Plaid Cymru have put opposition to austerity at the centre of the political mainstream, at Westminster as well as in Scotland and Wales.
Labour had the opportunity to take the lead in a British wide anti-austerity alliance. Such a bold and principled move in the politics of Britain would have recomposed the entire British political landscape at a stroke. (And changed their own party's fortunes dramatically for the better.) But perhaps inevitably, Labour spent their time denouncing, and trying to defeat, the parties outside Labour that stood against austerity because - they might let in the Tories, (whose policy was also more austerity!)
Nevertheless, British politics have changed. It is still possible to build a wider anti-austerity alliance across the country and, in due course, overturn the new austerity government. A total of 11.9 million voted for Labour or for anti-austerity parties. 9.2 million voted Labour. It is of course impossible to know whether those millions were voting to continue austerity as Labour proposed, or whether they 'held their noses' on that point, thinking that Labour had the only chance against the hated Tories. It is at least reasonable to assume that Labour's voters believed there would be less austerity with a Labour government than with the Tories. And now those millions have to protect themselves and their society. They have a fight on their hands. Surveys of Labour voters demonstrate that they share very little of the sectarian hatred for the SNP in particular or the anti-austerity parties in general, that was exhibited by Milliband et al.
11.1 million voted for the Tories. They have become a government. As a result, in part because of the Labour leadership's sectarianism and political fear of the establishment, after the election the anti austerity alliance will have to continue to make its force felt in action, in mass mobilisation, in a British wide movement on the ground. The Peoples Assembly and its alliance with key unions, leads that movement of action today. And the alliance it has already created can expand much wider in the new political situation; further in to the unions, now fighting the austerity government for their democratic rights; bridging to the Greens in their struggle against the multi-nationals and the waste of our resources; with the SNP over funding for the NHS and the rights of the Scots to repel austerity in Scotland; with Plaid over sufficient funds to maintain the welfare state in Wales. The June 21 Peoples Assembly demonstration will give the first signal of an anti-austerity movement that has been not victorious but significantly strengthened by the, albeit limited, democratic expression of the people on May 7
And what of the rest of of the left outside Labour?
The Socialist Party electoral front, the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), played no roll whatsoever in national politics or the anti-austerity struggle in the election. With the exception of ex Labour MP, Dave Nellist, who achieved 1800 votes and 3.9 % of the votes in his constituency, TUSC's 135 candidates scored 36000 votes in total; about 266 each. It is difficult to see the TUSC's campaign as anything other than a small party building operation. The 13 Left Unity candidates did considerably worse.
In practise this proportionately huge effort by a small number of people who, in constituency after constituency were virtually unknown, many candidates with little or no particular reputation, is also an exercise in sectarianism, albeit on the margins.
There is a different quality to the efforts of some of the independent candidates, particularly the candidacy of Louise Irvine who stood for the NHS Action Party in Jeremy Hunt's constituency. Representing the successful battle to save Lewisham Hospital, Louise Irvine scored nearly 5000 votes (8.5%) with a campaign which was seen as different, independent and of national significance (viz the Daily Mirror coverage.) It surfaced nationally around the real issues for the NHS - critical given the fairground, NHS-giveaways employed by both Labour and the Tories by the end of the campaign. People who followed the election now know that there is a serious argument about NHS long term funding and there are serious people out there who are making it. The result in what is usually seen as a right wing, write-in seat, proved that leaders who come from a credible struggle and background can make a significant impact in most political territory. Such credentials and specific purpose are a clearly preconditions for any real impact by candidates who are both outside Labour or the anti-austerity parties in electoral politics just now.
The famous supposed 'vaccuum' left by Labour's turn to the right has in real life, now started to fill. Since Scargill tried to create his own version of the 'lost' Labour Party in the mid 1990s there have been various attempts, some healthier than others to 'fill the gap.' Well; that particular story is over. No schematic abstraction conjured by scholars of the left has worked and now there is a new situation. A small suggestion; perhaps Left Unity and TUSC should consider seeking organised fusion on an anti-austerity basis with the Greens in England, Plaid in Wales and and either the SNP or a shortly to emerge, Scottishised Labour Party in Scotland? There is a fight to be had. A movement to defeat austerity to be built. New 'tribunes of the people' to emerge. Better not to waste time and effort.
Labour had the opportunity to take the lead in a British wide anti-austerity alliance. Such a bold and principled move in the politics of Britain would have recomposed the entire British political landscape at a stroke. (And changed their own party's fortunes dramatically for the better.) But perhaps inevitably, Labour spent their time denouncing, and trying to defeat, the parties outside Labour that stood against austerity because - they might let in the Tories, (whose policy was also more austerity!)
Nevertheless, British politics have changed. It is still possible to build a wider anti-austerity alliance across the country and, in due course, overturn the new austerity government. A total of 11.9 million voted for Labour or for anti-austerity parties. 9.2 million voted Labour. It is of course impossible to know whether those millions were voting to continue austerity as Labour proposed, or whether they 'held their noses' on that point, thinking that Labour had the only chance against the hated Tories. It is at least reasonable to assume that Labour's voters believed there would be less austerity with a Labour government than with the Tories. And now those millions have to protect themselves and their society. They have a fight on their hands. Surveys of Labour voters demonstrate that they share very little of the sectarian hatred for the SNP in particular or the anti-austerity parties in general, that was exhibited by Milliband et al.
11.1 million voted for the Tories. They have become a government. As a result, in part because of the Labour leadership's sectarianism and political fear of the establishment, after the election the anti austerity alliance will have to continue to make its force felt in action, in mass mobilisation, in a British wide movement on the ground. The Peoples Assembly and its alliance with key unions, leads that movement of action today. And the alliance it has already created can expand much wider in the new political situation; further in to the unions, now fighting the austerity government for their democratic rights; bridging to the Greens in their struggle against the multi-nationals and the waste of our resources; with the SNP over funding for the NHS and the rights of the Scots to repel austerity in Scotland; with Plaid over sufficient funds to maintain the welfare state in Wales. The June 21 Peoples Assembly demonstration will give the first signal of an anti-austerity movement that has been not victorious but significantly strengthened by the, albeit limited, democratic expression of the people on May 7
And what of the rest of of the left outside Labour?
The Socialist Party electoral front, the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), played no roll whatsoever in national politics or the anti-austerity struggle in the election. With the exception of ex Labour MP, Dave Nellist, who achieved 1800 votes and 3.9 % of the votes in his constituency, TUSC's 135 candidates scored 36000 votes in total; about 266 each. It is difficult to see the TUSC's campaign as anything other than a small party building operation. The 13 Left Unity candidates did considerably worse.
In practise this proportionately huge effort by a small number of people who, in constituency after constituency were virtually unknown, many candidates with little or no particular reputation, is also an exercise in sectarianism, albeit on the margins.
There is a different quality to the efforts of some of the independent candidates, particularly the candidacy of Louise Irvine who stood for the NHS Action Party in Jeremy Hunt's constituency. Representing the successful battle to save Lewisham Hospital, Louise Irvine scored nearly 5000 votes (8.5%) with a campaign which was seen as different, independent and of national significance (viz the Daily Mirror coverage.) It surfaced nationally around the real issues for the NHS - critical given the fairground, NHS-giveaways employed by both Labour and the Tories by the end of the campaign. People who followed the election now know that there is a serious argument about NHS long term funding and there are serious people out there who are making it. The result in what is usually seen as a right wing, write-in seat, proved that leaders who come from a credible struggle and background can make a significant impact in most political territory. Such credentials and specific purpose are a clearly preconditions for any real impact by candidates who are both outside Labour or the anti-austerity parties in electoral politics just now.
The famous supposed 'vaccuum' left by Labour's turn to the right has in real life, now started to fill. Since Scargill tried to create his own version of the 'lost' Labour Party in the mid 1990s there have been various attempts, some healthier than others to 'fill the gap.' Well; that particular story is over. No schematic abstraction conjured by scholars of the left has worked and now there is a new situation. A small suggestion; perhaps Left Unity and TUSC should consider seeking organised fusion on an anti-austerity basis with the Greens in England, Plaid in Wales and and either the SNP or a shortly to emerge, Scottishised Labour Party in Scotland? There is a fight to be had. A movement to defeat austerity to be built. New 'tribunes of the people' to emerge. Better not to waste time and effort.
Tuesday 19 May 2015
A turning point for the trade unions?
Comments about the impact of the extra-Labour Party left in the May 7 General Election will have to wait even further.
The Labour leadership battle has already moved into one of the
The Labour leadership battle has already moved into one of the
'Dark places' that Labour Party MP Jon Cruddas perceptively judged the party will need to explore.
Facing the fact that many, perhaps most Scottish members of Britain's largest union Unite voted for the SNP and against Labour, Unite leader, Len McLuskey has said that the union's policy of affiliation to the Labour Party might need to be reviewed, and would be, in any case, up for discussion at the coming annual conference of the union. He added
'The party needed to prove it was the “voice of organised labour” or else the “pressure will grow” for Unite to rethink its affiliation.' - (Politics Home, May 18.)
McLuskey is using his coming union debate in an attempt to exert his own pressure on Labour's leadership candidates towards a more pro union stance - and away from the resurrection of Blairism. In reality it is extremely unlikely that the Unite conference will overturn the union's traditional position on Labour affiliation. Indeed, speaking on BBC Radio Four's World at One (May 18), Mr McCluskey rubbished his own previous threats
'Some of the stuff the media writes is frankly daft. This idea that we're considering disaffiliating from the Labour Party is nonsense, we're not considering that at all.' You can fool some of the people ...
McLuskey knows, and always has known that - with the exception of a Scottish minority - most delegates to the conference who have strong views about affiliation to Labour will share the traditional outlooks of the Labour left and the Morning Star (the paper that reflects the views of Britain's tiny British Communist Party). In that world disaffiliation from Labour would be seen as a mortal sin and characterised as 'dividing the labour movement.'
Nevertheless, Mcluskey's initial comments brought down a storm of criticism from all quarters. It was enough to cause him to retreat immediately (as usual) but the door he opened will not close. And among the angry noise there was a key point made about the future of Labour by Labour peer Margaret Prosser, a former union leader in the Transport and General Workers Union, forerunner of Unite and Labour treasurer, who said it was
'Completely silly' of Mcluskey just to focus on organised labour, as she believed he had done.
'The idea that the whole focus of Labour's proposal or offer ought to be around organised labour is just daft,' she said.
'We have to be able to say that the government, a Labour government is going to be there for all kinds of people.' Although her intention was to shut down the argument about organised working class influence on Labour policy she inadvertently but sharply revealed the impasse that paralyses the modern Labour Party - including every one of its prospective leadership candidates so far. All of them already say that the party was not pro-business enough in the last 4 years, that it should support the EU referendum, continue with austerity, stand for 'aspiration' and recognise that Labour overspent before the last election.
How on earth can the Labour Party be 'reduced' to or even 'mainly be' the voice of the organised working class? That is what Margaret Prosser is asking. The organised workers account for 26% of all workers in Britain. That means that 74% of people who are economically active are not connected with unions. The Labour Party will always lose elections if it only, or even mainly relies on, or just seeks to represent, union members - goes the argument. This was the material essence of the New Labour set of ideas. All the self styled 'middle way' ideology adopted by Blair and co., rested on demographic facts like these. The Western European working class, in this utterly superficial view of reality, was dissolving into what US Presidents have called since the 1940s the American middle class. And the middle class are not collective by instinct. They want themselves and their families to be rich!
'The party needed to prove it was the “voice of organised labour” or else the “pressure will grow” for Unite to rethink its affiliation.' - (Politics Home, May 18.)
McLuskey is using his coming union debate in an attempt to exert his own pressure on Labour's leadership candidates towards a more pro union stance - and away from the resurrection of Blairism. In reality it is extremely unlikely that the Unite conference will overturn the union's traditional position on Labour affiliation. Indeed, speaking on BBC Radio Four's World at One (May 18), Mr McCluskey rubbished his own previous threats
'Some of the stuff the media writes is frankly daft. This idea that we're considering disaffiliating from the Labour Party is nonsense, we're not considering that at all.' You can fool some of the people ...
McLuskey knows, and always has known that - with the exception of a Scottish minority - most delegates to the conference who have strong views about affiliation to Labour will share the traditional outlooks of the Labour left and the Morning Star (the paper that reflects the views of Britain's tiny British Communist Party). In that world disaffiliation from Labour would be seen as a mortal sin and characterised as 'dividing the labour movement.'
Nevertheless, Mcluskey's initial comments brought down a storm of criticism from all quarters. It was enough to cause him to retreat immediately (as usual) but the door he opened will not close. And among the angry noise there was a key point made about the future of Labour by Labour peer Margaret Prosser, a former union leader in the Transport and General Workers Union, forerunner of Unite and Labour treasurer, who said it was
'Completely silly' of Mcluskey just to focus on organised labour, as she believed he had done.
'The idea that the whole focus of Labour's proposal or offer ought to be around organised labour is just daft,' she said.
'We have to be able to say that the government, a Labour government is going to be there for all kinds of people.' Although her intention was to shut down the argument about organised working class influence on Labour policy she inadvertently but sharply revealed the impasse that paralyses the modern Labour Party - including every one of its prospective leadership candidates so far. All of them already say that the party was not pro-business enough in the last 4 years, that it should support the EU referendum, continue with austerity, stand for 'aspiration' and recognise that Labour overspent before the last election.
How on earth can the Labour Party be 'reduced' to or even 'mainly be' the voice of the organised working class? That is what Margaret Prosser is asking. The organised workers account for 26% of all workers in Britain. That means that 74% of people who are economically active are not connected with unions. The Labour Party will always lose elections if it only, or even mainly relies on, or just seeks to represent, union members - goes the argument. This was the material essence of the New Labour set of ideas. All the self styled 'middle way' ideology adopted by Blair and co., rested on demographic facts like these. The Western European working class, in this utterly superficial view of reality, was dissolving into what US Presidents have called since the 1940s the American middle class. And the middle class are not collective by instinct. They want themselves and their families to be rich!
McLuskey offers no answer to any of this. Today he stands by affiliation to Labour not because within the framework of the Labour Party he can answer Margaret Prosser's challenge, or confront politically Labour's leadership candidates on their lurch rightwards. His only riposte to the new Blairites is that a million plus Scots voted for a different party who stood to the left of Labour! It is not the most obvious step from there to support affiliation to Labour and then promote one of its emergent pro-austerity leaders - whoever they are - as the Unite leadership inevitably will.
Returning to the Blairite thesis, because this sort of thinking was so limited in its scope and, at the same time, totally depended on identification with a notion of successful 'trickle down' capitalism, the ten years of Labour's Blairism pushed the Labour Party into an historic cul de sac that has proved disastrous for Labour in the longer term and which has now come to threaten its very existence. There has been no 'trickle down' since the term was invented in Reagan's US in the 1980s. The crisis of 2008 has simply accelerated further the 25 year gap between rich and and the rest. And while the content of employment has changed, work attracts less and less return whilst the social wage is also being dismantled. Result? Labour's rank failure to stop the rot when in government; and so now we see In Labour's heartlands that abstention has started to shift en mass, to desertion.
Neither the traditional left of Labour, nor its right wing are able to reverse the 'hollowing out' now going in British Social Democracy. None of this is the same as saying that Britain's political crisis does not embrace ruling class politics. On the contrary. But the decline of British social democracy as has been argued in previous blogs, is currently the sharpest aspect of great changes unfolding in British politics in general.
What then should the left unions do now?
Let's start at the beginning. If the 1945 Attlee government was the pinnacle of success of the British Labour Party in the last 115 years, what then was the greatest moment for the British trade unions? Speaking about the role of the whole of the trade union movement it was certainly not 1926 or the Miner's strike of 1985/6. From the point of view of its impact on the whole of society it would be hard to argue against the historic milestone represented by the union's foundation of the Labour Party. When unions founded the Labour Party, calling for working men's representation in Parliament, they amounted to 2 million in 1900, 2 million in 1905 and 4 million by 1914. That is to say 11%, 11% and 20% of the total workforce in Britain in those successive years. (Even in 1945/6 unions only organised 32% of workers.) Today, union activists are used to the terrible comparison made between today's union membership which is only half of what it was at its peak in 1979. (52% of Britain's working population were unionised compared today with only 26% of workers today.) But the 1979 peak of union membership turns out to be the exception to the norm and certainly was not a point where unions led society as a whole.
In countries with a great militant tradition like France, trade union membership has always been (more political) but smaller than in Britain. The leadership for the whole of society that the trade unionists took when they founded the Labour party in Britain was at a relatively weak point, numerically speaking. It is not then the size of the trade union movement that necessarily determines whether or not it can help 'win' most of society to its purpose, it is rather its political culture, determination, policy and its actions.
Trade unions remain the single biggest voluntary organisations in the UK. Surely the question faced today by unions and their members is first how to defend their independence, from another wave of anti-union, anti-democratic laws, second from political organisation that does not represent them or, for that matter, any of the new working class. Of course unions should disaffiliate from Labour. (They could donate funds to parties for specific purposes should their members want.) And unions could then begin the fight for the new representation of the new working class in Britain, that Parliament has not represented for decades, authoritative working class candidate by working class candidate if necessary.
Trade unions remain defencive organisations, but it is what they defend that catches or misses the moment. Defence of Britain's democracy by rebuilding it, electorally, for ordinary people; defence of the new working class in society by battling for the Living Wage and a maximum wage, defence of the social wage, helping to sponsor a peoples' bank for lone and family workers and for growth, full time children's care for all, and defence of the union from the government's attack on democracy - will make unions heard across a wounded and confused society.
Re centring a new working class; such a union movement would echo their great forbears and begin the political process of once again calling together those who begin to know that we need a new type of society.
Returning to the Blairite thesis, because this sort of thinking was so limited in its scope and, at the same time, totally depended on identification with a notion of successful 'trickle down' capitalism, the ten years of Labour's Blairism pushed the Labour Party into an historic cul de sac that has proved disastrous for Labour in the longer term and which has now come to threaten its very existence. There has been no 'trickle down' since the term was invented in Reagan's US in the 1980s. The crisis of 2008 has simply accelerated further the 25 year gap between rich and and the rest. And while the content of employment has changed, work attracts less and less return whilst the social wage is also being dismantled. Result? Labour's rank failure to stop the rot when in government; and so now we see In Labour's heartlands that abstention has started to shift en mass, to desertion.
Neither the traditional left of Labour, nor its right wing are able to reverse the 'hollowing out' now going in British Social Democracy. None of this is the same as saying that Britain's political crisis does not embrace ruling class politics. On the contrary. But the decline of British social democracy as has been argued in previous blogs, is currently the sharpest aspect of great changes unfolding in British politics in general.
What then should the left unions do now?
Let's start at the beginning. If the 1945 Attlee government was the pinnacle of success of the British Labour Party in the last 115 years, what then was the greatest moment for the British trade unions? Speaking about the role of the whole of the trade union movement it was certainly not 1926 or the Miner's strike of 1985/6. From the point of view of its impact on the whole of society it would be hard to argue against the historic milestone represented by the union's foundation of the Labour Party. When unions founded the Labour Party, calling for working men's representation in Parliament, they amounted to 2 million in 1900, 2 million in 1905 and 4 million by 1914. That is to say 11%, 11% and 20% of the total workforce in Britain in those successive years. (Even in 1945/6 unions only organised 32% of workers.) Today, union activists are used to the terrible comparison made between today's union membership which is only half of what it was at its peak in 1979. (52% of Britain's working population were unionised compared today with only 26% of workers today.) But the 1979 peak of union membership turns out to be the exception to the norm and certainly was not a point where unions led society as a whole.
In countries with a great militant tradition like France, trade union membership has always been (more political) but smaller than in Britain. The leadership for the whole of society that the trade unionists took when they founded the Labour party in Britain was at a relatively weak point, numerically speaking. It is not then the size of the trade union movement that necessarily determines whether or not it can help 'win' most of society to its purpose, it is rather its political culture, determination, policy and its actions.
Trade unions remain the single biggest voluntary organisations in the UK. Surely the question faced today by unions and their members is first how to defend their independence, from another wave of anti-union, anti-democratic laws, second from political organisation that does not represent them or, for that matter, any of the new working class. Of course unions should disaffiliate from Labour. (They could donate funds to parties for specific purposes should their members want.) And unions could then begin the fight for the new representation of the new working class in Britain, that Parliament has not represented for decades, authoritative working class candidate by working class candidate if necessary.
Trade unions remain defencive organisations, but it is what they defend that catches or misses the moment. Defence of Britain's democracy by rebuilding it, electorally, for ordinary people; defence of the new working class in society by battling for the Living Wage and a maximum wage, defence of the social wage, helping to sponsor a peoples' bank for lone and family workers and for growth, full time children's care for all, and defence of the union from the government's attack on democracy - will make unions heard across a wounded and confused society.
Re centring a new working class; such a union movement would echo their great forbears and begin the political process of once again calling together those who begin to know that we need a new type of society.
Wednesday 13 May 2015
The values of politics
Comments on the contribution of Britain's non-Labour left to the May 7 General Election will need to wait. 'Values' have been bursting out all over Westminster and some weeding is required.
Step forward Sajid Javid. He is the Tory's new Business minister. He replaces that man of the people and ex Shell boss, Vince Cable. On the morning of 12 May he announced on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he was 'passionately' in favour of free enterprise but,
'Not in a position at this point to decide what deregulation exactly would be.' However he knew about a bit of regulation that would, perhaps, help sate some of his his passion for free enterprise and which was a priority. Then, without much prompting, his passion erupted in comments about 'strikes' as he called them. (Not disputes.)
'We've said there will be a minimum threshold in terms of turnout of 50% of those entitled to vote, we've also said that when it comes to essential public services at least 40% of people (of the entire workforce) need to vote for strike action'.
The new Business Secretary added that the ban on the use of agency staff during a strike would be lifted.
Sajid Javid made no reference to the election of the May 7 Tory government on 37% of the 66% of voters eligible to vote. The Tories' 'victory' would not meet the public sector criteria for a 'valid' strike. The Tories are 6 million votes short. In the 2001 General Election, Blair formed a government based on 40% of a 59% voter turn out. There were no objections from the Tories, and yet that election came perilously close to failing even the new private sector criteria for strike action.
How is it that the UK's new Business Secretary and his political allies do not apply the same criteria to workers' organisation as to business or to politics? And even should industrial action pass though his hoops, he is promoting organised strike breaking to attack the democratically decided worker's action from another angle anyway.
Even the constricted democratic norms that apply to Westminster are unavailable to labour organisations. Working class democracy is a contradiction in terms. It can challenge 'existing', enfeebled democracy, as did the self organisation produced by the Miner's strike of the mid 1980s. It is therefore not valid. It should be illegitimate. Only 'enterprise' is to be 'free.' It does not require any democracy at all.
And then there is David. The other Miliband broke his silence and from New York peremptorily set the agenda for the contest for the new Labour leader.
He told us that his brother Ed and Gordon Brown before him had been forced into turning backwards. They had not built on the success of New Labour. They had not embraced voters'
'Aspirations' and not promoted 'inclusion.' Since then, these two words have turned into a mantra for Labour's candidates, for pundits and for all sorts of commentators and hangers on.
Aspiration is not hope for the future. It is a desire - for yourself or those that you are close to. It is a state of mind similar to personal ambition. What David is telling us here is that the atomisation and defeat of the working class in the UK means that the big majority of people now only care about themselves and their families. They no longer consider or take responsibility for others, even others who may be like themselves. And that these feelings are reinforced by the breakdown of large scale industry and traditional communities. People want to 'get ahead' and the main means of doing that is their own initiative.
In David's book inclusion however has its own peculiar meaning. David says that now people all want to be rich, then we have to include those who are rich. And to include people who are rich, Labour needs to support them, praise them, cheer them on and welcome them in the shared leadership of society.
So, Labour must embrace aspiration - those who want to be rich, and inclusion - those who are rich. Then the Labour Party will stop going backwards! Once this is the core of the party's approach then you can attach the bells and whistles you need, education, education, education, Iraq war, PPI etc.
Where to begin? What is the key economic/political fact of the last 45 years in the West, most certainly including Britain - a fact so big and irrefutable that even both Milibands have referred to it. It is the impetuous and irresistible growth of inequality. How can any political organisation in the West which purports to stand for the majority, avoid policy, front and centre, on that question? While it is true that much large scale working class organisation has been destroyed, and the proportion of manual labour, and the size of units of production reduced, in the last 45 years the gap between those who must work to live and those that have capital has ballooned. What has already happened in Britain is that those who labour are relatively much poorer than those who do not, when compared with their parents.
How is this fact of life, this material reality of existence reflected in peoples' understanding of themselves and others like them? It is true that much of the older work bonds and shared living spaces have broken up. In part that experience has deflected class consciousness from direct production. But what is it that sustains the deep and abiding support for institutions like the NHS or the need for state pensions, or unemployment benefit? It is the sense that social capital is now, more than ever needed to offset the harsh and often singular experiences of badly paid labour.
This is why the 'aspiration' and 'inclusion' formula of Miliband senior is so hollow. And basic facts of the May 7 election bear this out. A sociological, demographic and economic survey of Scotland reveals a society very similar to England (and not at all just the North of England.) Unless we believe (and some, even on the left do believe) that the idea of nationhood has so overwhelmed the ex-canny Scots that they cannot see their own true political interests, that great forces are now being driven by the power of malevolent ideas alone, that the nationalist SNP leadership do not really believe that their majority vote in Scotland would not, now, produce a majority for independence, then what we see instead is an enormous movement by the Scots, using the best machinery available, against austerity and the Tories. And there is nothing innate in the English that prevents the same.
The new reality of the British, and of large parts of the Western European working class, is that they have, once again to be called together, not in aspiration but in solidarity; not in defence of special interest but in the interests of all who must work to live, not to include the rich but rather to take their resourses back for the social good. The British Labour Party has shown little sign of such an approach for decades. The first shots in the leadership campaign, sadly, show every sign of going backwards.
Step forward Sajid Javid. He is the Tory's new Business minister. He replaces that man of the people and ex Shell boss, Vince Cable. On the morning of 12 May he announced on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he was 'passionately' in favour of free enterprise but,
'Not in a position at this point to decide what deregulation exactly would be.' However he knew about a bit of regulation that would, perhaps, help sate some of his his passion for free enterprise and which was a priority. Then, without much prompting, his passion erupted in comments about 'strikes' as he called them. (Not disputes.)
'We've said there will be a minimum threshold in terms of turnout of 50% of those entitled to vote, we've also said that when it comes to essential public services at least 40% of people (of the entire workforce) need to vote for strike action'.
The new Business Secretary added that the ban on the use of agency staff during a strike would be lifted.
Sajid Javid made no reference to the election of the May 7 Tory government on 37% of the 66% of voters eligible to vote. The Tories' 'victory' would not meet the public sector criteria for a 'valid' strike. The Tories are 6 million votes short. In the 2001 General Election, Blair formed a government based on 40% of a 59% voter turn out. There were no objections from the Tories, and yet that election came perilously close to failing even the new private sector criteria for strike action.
How is it that the UK's new Business Secretary and his political allies do not apply the same criteria to workers' organisation as to business or to politics? And even should industrial action pass though his hoops, he is promoting organised strike breaking to attack the democratically decided worker's action from another angle anyway.
Even the constricted democratic norms that apply to Westminster are unavailable to labour organisations. Working class democracy is a contradiction in terms. It can challenge 'existing', enfeebled democracy, as did the self organisation produced by the Miner's strike of the mid 1980s. It is therefore not valid. It should be illegitimate. Only 'enterprise' is to be 'free.' It does not require any democracy at all.
And then there is David. The other Miliband broke his silence and from New York peremptorily set the agenda for the contest for the new Labour leader.
He told us that his brother Ed and Gordon Brown before him had been forced into turning backwards. They had not built on the success of New Labour. They had not embraced voters'
'Aspirations' and not promoted 'inclusion.' Since then, these two words have turned into a mantra for Labour's candidates, for pundits and for all sorts of commentators and hangers on.
Aspiration is not hope for the future. It is a desire - for yourself or those that you are close to. It is a state of mind similar to personal ambition. What David is telling us here is that the atomisation and defeat of the working class in the UK means that the big majority of people now only care about themselves and their families. They no longer consider or take responsibility for others, even others who may be like themselves. And that these feelings are reinforced by the breakdown of large scale industry and traditional communities. People want to 'get ahead' and the main means of doing that is their own initiative.
In David's book inclusion however has its own peculiar meaning. David says that now people all want to be rich, then we have to include those who are rich. And to include people who are rich, Labour needs to support them, praise them, cheer them on and welcome them in the shared leadership of society.
So, Labour must embrace aspiration - those who want to be rich, and inclusion - those who are rich. Then the Labour Party will stop going backwards! Once this is the core of the party's approach then you can attach the bells and whistles you need, education, education, education, Iraq war, PPI etc.
Where to begin? What is the key economic/political fact of the last 45 years in the West, most certainly including Britain - a fact so big and irrefutable that even both Milibands have referred to it. It is the impetuous and irresistible growth of inequality. How can any political organisation in the West which purports to stand for the majority, avoid policy, front and centre, on that question? While it is true that much large scale working class organisation has been destroyed, and the proportion of manual labour, and the size of units of production reduced, in the last 45 years the gap between those who must work to live and those that have capital has ballooned. What has already happened in Britain is that those who labour are relatively much poorer than those who do not, when compared with their parents.
How is this fact of life, this material reality of existence reflected in peoples' understanding of themselves and others like them? It is true that much of the older work bonds and shared living spaces have broken up. In part that experience has deflected class consciousness from direct production. But what is it that sustains the deep and abiding support for institutions like the NHS or the need for state pensions, or unemployment benefit? It is the sense that social capital is now, more than ever needed to offset the harsh and often singular experiences of badly paid labour.
This is why the 'aspiration' and 'inclusion' formula of Miliband senior is so hollow. And basic facts of the May 7 election bear this out. A sociological, demographic and economic survey of Scotland reveals a society very similar to England (and not at all just the North of England.) Unless we believe (and some, even on the left do believe) that the idea of nationhood has so overwhelmed the ex-canny Scots that they cannot see their own true political interests, that great forces are now being driven by the power of malevolent ideas alone, that the nationalist SNP leadership do not really believe that their majority vote in Scotland would not, now, produce a majority for independence, then what we see instead is an enormous movement by the Scots, using the best machinery available, against austerity and the Tories. And there is nothing innate in the English that prevents the same.
The new reality of the British, and of large parts of the Western European working class, is that they have, once again to be called together, not in aspiration but in solidarity; not in defence of special interest but in the interests of all who must work to live, not to include the rich but rather to take their resourses back for the social good. The British Labour Party has shown little sign of such an approach for decades. The first shots in the leadership campaign, sadly, show every sign of going backwards.
Monday 11 May 2015
What future for the Left in Britain?
This title begs (at least) two major questions: Who are the Left in Britain? And, how will this Left emerge from the May General Election? For deciding where you are going must start from where you think you are now.
The answer to the first question always requires a concrete analysis and judgement rooted in reality. In today's, post 2008 situation it is at least reasonable to draw the left / right boundary as between those opposing and those supporting austerity. Even that notion is controversial. There are class struggle oriented national trade union leaders who would argue right now that the SNP's opposition to austerity is inconsequential in the left / right divide, and that the SNP, because it wants a separate Scottish nation, is indelibly on the right. (And, in comparison, Miliband was presumably on the left?) Nevertheless this argument among some trade union leaders (most of their members in Scotland have already taken their own decision) does not change the main fact of the Western class struggle. That battle is over austerity. Ask the Greeks.
How the left is now emerging from the General Election has already inspired some familiar and some more novel thoughts. Among the latter is Mark Steel's piece in the Independent (May 9). He argues that Labour needed a mass movement like Obama to prevent the effects of negative, anti-Labour campaigning, producing isolation and fear. This opinion assumes that the choices between Miliband and Cameron were in some way similar to the prospects of the election of the first black president in the US, who promised the end of foreign wars, closure of Guantanamo and the first national health service. Austerity versus austerity 'lite' doesn't quite make it.
Most Labour Party leaders who have spoken are rehashing the 'we want Blair' formula, as though we had not already 'had Blair' and learned how poisonous that particular mistake was.
The main point here is that if the Labour Party's discussions about what went wrong remain at the level of the need to salute the aspirant small business person - then they will remain a wet, ambivalent, shifty version of the Tories, competing with them for the magic (but declining) 34% of the voters - and losing. Some Labour supporters have picked up the hesitancy of the leadership over supporting their handling of the economy when last in Government. Yes. Their leader's cowardice on that point could not fail to be noticed. But it was rather Labour's decisive support for austerity in the recent past, now and in the future, that ruined their chances. Unsure, uncommitted, unsafe, Labour's leadership made a major contribution to the victory of the right on May 7. Looking ahead it will be anti or pro austerity that will remain the left/right dividing line, for both the newly elected Labour's MPs and their leader.
The new fact for the future of the left in Britain that has emerged from the election then is that the direct, public and mainstream proposal to end austerity has now got an enormously influential new voice. The SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Greens are explicitly anti-austerity. That is nearly 3 million votes, 60 MPs and a whole country better than the 5 Labour MPs who voted against £30 billion worth of cuts for the new Parliament earlier this year.
Two obvious first steps for the left therefore reveal themselves. First, the mass movement outside Parliament, led so far by an alliance of key unions and the Peoples Assembly, have to make strong links with the opposition to austerity inside parliament. Second, a massive, friendly offensive needs to be directed at the Labour Party to use its election of a new leadership (more than Miliband has fallen, and in Scotland Blairite Jim Murphy is under pressure) to define Labour or those in Labour that want to fight, as part of the new anti-austerity movement.
Some of this can be brought together in the most important demonstration since the anti-austerity campaign in Britain began. On June 20 the Peoples Assembly have called the first national demonstration against the new austerity government. This is not just an opportunity to lick our wounds. Yes, we are starting again, but not at the beginning. The demonstration is a great new opportunity to begin to open up the new anti-austerity alliance across Parliament and the wider country.
Next blog: What did the far left and independent candidates achieve?
The answer to the first question always requires a concrete analysis and judgement rooted in reality. In today's, post 2008 situation it is at least reasonable to draw the left / right boundary as between those opposing and those supporting austerity. Even that notion is controversial. There are class struggle oriented national trade union leaders who would argue right now that the SNP's opposition to austerity is inconsequential in the left / right divide, and that the SNP, because it wants a separate Scottish nation, is indelibly on the right. (And, in comparison, Miliband was presumably on the left?) Nevertheless this argument among some trade union leaders (most of their members in Scotland have already taken their own decision) does not change the main fact of the Western class struggle. That battle is over austerity. Ask the Greeks.
How the left is now emerging from the General Election has already inspired some familiar and some more novel thoughts. Among the latter is Mark Steel's piece in the Independent (May 9). He argues that Labour needed a mass movement like Obama to prevent the effects of negative, anti-Labour campaigning, producing isolation and fear. This opinion assumes that the choices between Miliband and Cameron were in some way similar to the prospects of the election of the first black president in the US, who promised the end of foreign wars, closure of Guantanamo and the first national health service. Austerity versus austerity 'lite' doesn't quite make it.
Most Labour Party leaders who have spoken are rehashing the 'we want Blair' formula, as though we had not already 'had Blair' and learned how poisonous that particular mistake was.
The main point here is that if the Labour Party's discussions about what went wrong remain at the level of the need to salute the aspirant small business person - then they will remain a wet, ambivalent, shifty version of the Tories, competing with them for the magic (but declining) 34% of the voters - and losing. Some Labour supporters have picked up the hesitancy of the leadership over supporting their handling of the economy when last in Government. Yes. Their leader's cowardice on that point could not fail to be noticed. But it was rather Labour's decisive support for austerity in the recent past, now and in the future, that ruined their chances. Unsure, uncommitted, unsafe, Labour's leadership made a major contribution to the victory of the right on May 7. Looking ahead it will be anti or pro austerity that will remain the left/right dividing line, for both the newly elected Labour's MPs and their leader.
The new fact for the future of the left in Britain that has emerged from the election then is that the direct, public and mainstream proposal to end austerity has now got an enormously influential new voice. The SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Greens are explicitly anti-austerity. That is nearly 3 million votes, 60 MPs and a whole country better than the 5 Labour MPs who voted against £30 billion worth of cuts for the new Parliament earlier this year.
Two obvious first steps for the left therefore reveal themselves. First, the mass movement outside Parliament, led so far by an alliance of key unions and the Peoples Assembly, have to make strong links with the opposition to austerity inside parliament. Second, a massive, friendly offensive needs to be directed at the Labour Party to use its election of a new leadership (more than Miliband has fallen, and in Scotland Blairite Jim Murphy is under pressure) to define Labour or those in Labour that want to fight, as part of the new anti-austerity movement.
Some of this can be brought together in the most important demonstration since the anti-austerity campaign in Britain began. On June 20 the Peoples Assembly have called the first national demonstration against the new austerity government. This is not just an opportunity to lick our wounds. Yes, we are starting again, but not at the beginning. The demonstration is a great new opportunity to begin to open up the new anti-austerity alliance across Parliament and the wider country.
Next blog: What did the far left and independent candidates achieve?
Sunday 10 May 2015
Why did Labour collapse in the UK election?
All the media commentators say that Cameron achieved a surprise major victory. When Labour leader Wilson won a similar number of seats in October 1974, he, and the media of the day, thought it was a disaster - and it was. The political commentators all say that the two major problems for Cameron's regime will be the union with Scotland and the relationship with the EU. For what it is worth Miliband did try to make the EU referendum an issue - but failed. In reality neither of Cameron's massive dilemnas were raised in a major way by anybody else - including the political pundits, during the campaign. Nor was the ongoing global economic crisis discussed. (China's exports - reduced by 6.4%, and imports - reduced by 16.2% this month and overall trade by 10.9% year on year. The EU is stagnant, etc.) Leave aside the growing number of old people; the desperate underfunding of social services; the exponential split between rich and the rest; the renewal of Trident; Britain's appalling productivity; the lessons of Britain's most recent wars; the election was mostly fought (in England and Wales) on non issues, (do political leaders lie; did Labour cause the UK's economic mess; will the SNP run Labour etc.)
What does the election result tell us? It tells us first that Britain's political crisis is still with us. Indeed it has got worse. There is an accelerated crisis of the political system itself - Conservative MPs needed 33,230 votes each; Labour, 39,650 votes; UKIP, 3.8 million votes; Greens, 1.2 million votes and the SNP, 76,800 votes per MP. (This figure is a division of the voting population of Scotland. It is absurd to measure the SNP vote by total UK voting population - as most of the London based media has.) These figures illustrate a bizarre - and dangerous situation. What does the British establishment believe will happen to 3.8 million UKIP voters who are unrepresented in Parliament? What conclusion will some of them come to and where will they go? UKIP is not yet a fascist party. It has no official mass movement that carries out their racist and reactionary programme on the streets - not yet. Among a host of poisonous problems, another Golden Dawn is being built by the utterly self-serving agreement between the Tories and Labour to hang on, as long as they can, to the current sclerotic system of voting.
In one of Miliband's last speeches he remarked that Labour's defeat had come from 'the rise of two nationalisms.' He meant that the SNP in Scotland and the large number of UKIP voters, as well as Cameron's attempt to rally the English voters against any SNP invasion of Westminster, had overwhelmed the Labour vote, first in Scotland, then in England. In fact Labour and Miliband's disaster came from the same political crisis which infects the Westminster voting system. Westminster based social democracy has run out of steam.
The SNP ran on an anti-austerity ticket in Scotland. It was successful because the bulk of ex-Scottish Labour voters did not believe that Labour would defend them against austerity. They thought , correctly, that Labour supported austerity. Some, including on the blind-sided British left, believe that it was all a trick in Scotland by the SNP to get an early re-run of the Independence referendum. But as the SNP leaders patiently explain, an early vote on independence is likely to produce the same result as before. The SNP realise that the coming Holyrood elections and the results of Britain's EU referendum are the real staging posts to a new shift of Scottish opinion on independence. While oil prices are low, and global economics look shaky, another early round of the independence battle looks extremely unlikely. Fatally, Labour did not take up the challenge of this particular 'nationalism.' It could have openly embraced the proposal of an anti-austerity alliance; won back some ground in Scotland; changed the terms of the debate in England.
To compare the SNP with UKIP and Cameron's 'Englishism' is insulting drivel. The 'national' impulse in Scotland comes from the desire to defend a multi-cultural society, to enhance equality, to get rid of nuclear weapons and all of Britain's global military pretensions and to get out from under the Scottish Labour rotting canopy that smothered Scottish radicalism for decades. UKIP and now Cameron's nationalism is another beast entirely.
Miliband's Labour lost because it never fought the nonsense that the 2008 economic crisis was somehow Labour's fault. Why? Because it did not want to tell the truth - that the City of London - and its criminal behaviour, nearly brought the house down. The City is 20% of the economy and central to British capitalism. Take it on and you are in a fight about what sort of economic, social and political system you should have. And that is not what British social democrats can or want to do. Labour lost also because it 'compromised' with austerity. That is an understatement. For long periods in the last parliament Labour was in competition with the Coalition about who could make the most cuts. Nobody believed, especially in Scotland, that Labour had changed its spots. No. It was not that Labour was vulnerable to the anti-austerity SNP that lost them support; it was that nobody believed them - either way, when they tried, at the last minute, to sing from both hymn sheets.
So; in the end, Labour's catastrophe had nothing to do with swirls of reactionary nationalism in Scotland; nothing to do with a middle England demographic that now includes only self-seeking (read 'aspirant' in the new Labour parlance) builders and dog groomers. Do the academic half-wits who brew up this concoction imagine that Scotland is still choked full of industrial workers and council houses? It has everything to do with a dying social democracy that is fragmenting (as it already is in the case of the SNP and as it will in the case of the new Labour MPs at Westminster) and dissolving (in the case of ex-Labour UKIP voters in Tyneside.) It is the 'working class' part of Britain's political crisis.
Next blog; what happened to the left outside Labour and the SNP and what could the left do next?
What does the election result tell us? It tells us first that Britain's political crisis is still with us. Indeed it has got worse. There is an accelerated crisis of the political system itself - Conservative MPs needed 33,230 votes each; Labour, 39,650 votes; UKIP, 3.8 million votes; Greens, 1.2 million votes and the SNP, 76,800 votes per MP. (This figure is a division of the voting population of Scotland. It is absurd to measure the SNP vote by total UK voting population - as most of the London based media has.) These figures illustrate a bizarre - and dangerous situation. What does the British establishment believe will happen to 3.8 million UKIP voters who are unrepresented in Parliament? What conclusion will some of them come to and where will they go? UKIP is not yet a fascist party. It has no official mass movement that carries out their racist and reactionary programme on the streets - not yet. Among a host of poisonous problems, another Golden Dawn is being built by the utterly self-serving agreement between the Tories and Labour to hang on, as long as they can, to the current sclerotic system of voting.
In one of Miliband's last speeches he remarked that Labour's defeat had come from 'the rise of two nationalisms.' He meant that the SNP in Scotland and the large number of UKIP voters, as well as Cameron's attempt to rally the English voters against any SNP invasion of Westminster, had overwhelmed the Labour vote, first in Scotland, then in England. In fact Labour and Miliband's disaster came from the same political crisis which infects the Westminster voting system. Westminster based social democracy has run out of steam.
The SNP ran on an anti-austerity ticket in Scotland. It was successful because the bulk of ex-Scottish Labour voters did not believe that Labour would defend them against austerity. They thought , correctly, that Labour supported austerity. Some, including on the blind-sided British left, believe that it was all a trick in Scotland by the SNP to get an early re-run of the Independence referendum. But as the SNP leaders patiently explain, an early vote on independence is likely to produce the same result as before. The SNP realise that the coming Holyrood elections and the results of Britain's EU referendum are the real staging posts to a new shift of Scottish opinion on independence. While oil prices are low, and global economics look shaky, another early round of the independence battle looks extremely unlikely. Fatally, Labour did not take up the challenge of this particular 'nationalism.' It could have openly embraced the proposal of an anti-austerity alliance; won back some ground in Scotland; changed the terms of the debate in England.
To compare the SNP with UKIP and Cameron's 'Englishism' is insulting drivel. The 'national' impulse in Scotland comes from the desire to defend a multi-cultural society, to enhance equality, to get rid of nuclear weapons and all of Britain's global military pretensions and to get out from under the Scottish Labour rotting canopy that smothered Scottish radicalism for decades. UKIP and now Cameron's nationalism is another beast entirely.
Miliband's Labour lost because it never fought the nonsense that the 2008 economic crisis was somehow Labour's fault. Why? Because it did not want to tell the truth - that the City of London - and its criminal behaviour, nearly brought the house down. The City is 20% of the economy and central to British capitalism. Take it on and you are in a fight about what sort of economic, social and political system you should have. And that is not what British social democrats can or want to do. Labour lost also because it 'compromised' with austerity. That is an understatement. For long periods in the last parliament Labour was in competition with the Coalition about who could make the most cuts. Nobody believed, especially in Scotland, that Labour had changed its spots. No. It was not that Labour was vulnerable to the anti-austerity SNP that lost them support; it was that nobody believed them - either way, when they tried, at the last minute, to sing from both hymn sheets.
So; in the end, Labour's catastrophe had nothing to do with swirls of reactionary nationalism in Scotland; nothing to do with a middle England demographic that now includes only self-seeking (read 'aspirant' in the new Labour parlance) builders and dog groomers. Do the academic half-wits who brew up this concoction imagine that Scotland is still choked full of industrial workers and council houses? It has everything to do with a dying social democracy that is fragmenting (as it already is in the case of the SNP and as it will in the case of the new Labour MPs at Westminster) and dissolving (in the case of ex-Labour UKIP voters in Tyneside.) It is the 'working class' part of Britain's political crisis.
Next blog; what happened to the left outside Labour and the SNP and what could the left do next?
Wednesday 6 May 2015
What can the SNP do for you?
British citizens vote tomorrow. But, whatever some might hope, the vote is not the end of the political process. It will not clear mainstream party politics out of people's lives, It will not solve Britain's political crisis. It will make it worse.
A third or more of eligible voters will not vote. 15% of voters (nearly 4 million) say they are voting tactically and not for the parties that they support. 25% of voters who do vote will vote for non mainstream parties. (That was 10% in 2010.) Groups of newly elected MPs from different parties will bear almost no relationship to the numbers of people in the country who voted for that party. One party will, almost exclusively, represent the whole of Scotland. The largest party may be unable to form a government. Any government formed may have to rely on two parties or more - and without complete coalition arrangements. If the Tories squeeze a tiny overall majority they will lead us into political war, including their own civil war, over Europe, and almost immediately. The whole of the people of the UK, voting or not, are still further away from being genuinely represented in Parliament since winning the franchise, despite all the anxious bru ha ha of the election campaign and with the exception of the Scots. It's a dire mess.
In this context, the election in Scotland does look like a model of clarity. A highly politically educated section of the British Isles population have taken a decisive step in a broadly common direction. This seems to be a solid rock in Britain's political landscape for some time to come. But in fact, the coalescence of a large part of the Scottish working class around the SNP is simply the most dramatic aspect so far of the seismic fissures apparent within British Social Democracy, which itself is a determining element with the country's wider political crisis.
In various European countries social democracy has collapsed or is collapsing, the most obvious current example is in Greece. Italy and Spain do not now have a mass social democratic party as such. And now in Britain social democracy teeters on the edge. Naturally real life is an immensely complex and ever changing drama. And there are always different levels of explanation. However, there is a merit in underlining the simplest and most general observations as references, as they can start what inevitably will turn into a much richer discussion as it rises to the level of the concrete. In that problematic, two dates, 1989 and 2008, immediately suggest themselves as key turning points for western European social democracy.
!989 of course marked the end of the USSR. The impact of the USSR's existence on modern world history will be debated for centuries. For our purposes we need only recall what Lord Boothby said about the drastically radical programme of the post war Attlee government.
'If we do not give them reform, they will give us revolution!'
Despite Attlee's stance as a cold war warrior, the immense fact of the existence of a victorious USSR a few hundred miles away, gave pause to those in Britain (and the US) at the time who were shocked to the core about the nationalisation of the 'commanding heights', the 'giving away' of Empire and the cornucopia of free spectacles and false teeth now flowing down over all parts of the British population. In this atmosphere, Social Democracy could be successful, could restrain capitalism - 'for fear of something worse!' (It is notable that a similar reform programme was absolutely not available as British forces were demobbed after WW1, despite huge labour militancy, when the Russian Revolution was in its chaotic and crisis driven infancy.)
As Western Europe got richer and the obvious failings of a bureaucratic dictatorship in the USSR became more visible in the last quarter of the 20th century, the reforming programme of European Social Democracy began to be tailored to suit the new conditions. The emergence of France out of Guallism, and Spain and Portugal out of decayed fascism, plus a rich Common Market, meant that Social Democracy was the vehicle of choice for Common Market sponsored reform for a few years. And Scandinavian countries maintained high welfare models with weak ruling classes until globalisation. But by 2008 another great shift took place which turned a trickle of Social Democratic compromises with capitalism into a raging avalanche. Western banks nearly collapsed.
What was immediately exposed was the already great, and now accelerating, gap between those who have to work and the rich - who had turned the banks into their instant fortune making machines. And every Social Democratic party across the West joined their insistent call, that wage earners and those relying on the social wage must pay - to keep the system running. It proved a crossed Rubicon for the British Labour Party, especially in Scotland.
In Scotland working class people are voting SNP because it has presented itself as the real anti-Tory party, and it is against austerity. Labour are crippled by their own march into the lobby with the Tories, to set in law another £30 billion of cuts in the first three years of the new parliament. The SNP is becoming the new Scottish Labour Party, courtesy of the old one. It is now leading on the call for a British wide anti-Tory, anti-austerity alliance.
But does this successful manoeuvre by the SNP mark a change in the prospects of Social Democracy generally in its historical goal to find partnerships inside capitalism for reform and welfare? The SNP is of course of great significance in the evolution of Britain's current political crisis. It could quite quickly accelerate the decomposition of Miliband's parliamentary Labour Party as well as resurfacing the call for proportional representation. A left current will almost certainly grow inside the newly built SNP itself - especially if it wins an outright majority in the Holyrood elections. And that is one key sign that even the currently ecstatic SNP will not escape the unbridgeable contradictions facing the whole Social Democratic experiment in the West.
Under certain conditions as History demonstrates, Social Democracy can achieve real advances for the working classes and for society in general. The argument is now clear that such conditions show no sign of emerging in the West in general and in western Europe in particular. Where Social Democracy has not already died it is busy transforming itself into US Democratic style parties, whose basic offer is that they can manage capitalism 'better;' that have entirely broken from any commitment to a social and political base within a working class that it continually attempts to organise and renew.
The SNP will face this fact as its project of setting up another small Scandinavian country founders, and that is another political step that the Scots, in due course, will have to take. For now Britain's political crisis is full of possible dangers - for both main classes but for now the crisis is to be welcomed. Rebuilding a genuine working class movement is urgent but becoming more possible. As the murderous old Chairman once put it;
'Heaven and earth are in chaos. The prospects are good.'
Well ... they are better than they were.
A third or more of eligible voters will not vote. 15% of voters (nearly 4 million) say they are voting tactically and not for the parties that they support. 25% of voters who do vote will vote for non mainstream parties. (That was 10% in 2010.) Groups of newly elected MPs from different parties will bear almost no relationship to the numbers of people in the country who voted for that party. One party will, almost exclusively, represent the whole of Scotland. The largest party may be unable to form a government. Any government formed may have to rely on two parties or more - and without complete coalition arrangements. If the Tories squeeze a tiny overall majority they will lead us into political war, including their own civil war, over Europe, and almost immediately. The whole of the people of the UK, voting or not, are still further away from being genuinely represented in Parliament since winning the franchise, despite all the anxious bru ha ha of the election campaign and with the exception of the Scots. It's a dire mess.
In this context, the election in Scotland does look like a model of clarity. A highly politically educated section of the British Isles population have taken a decisive step in a broadly common direction. This seems to be a solid rock in Britain's political landscape for some time to come. But in fact, the coalescence of a large part of the Scottish working class around the SNP is simply the most dramatic aspect so far of the seismic fissures apparent within British Social Democracy, which itself is a determining element with the country's wider political crisis.
In various European countries social democracy has collapsed or is collapsing, the most obvious current example is in Greece. Italy and Spain do not now have a mass social democratic party as such. And now in Britain social democracy teeters on the edge. Naturally real life is an immensely complex and ever changing drama. And there are always different levels of explanation. However, there is a merit in underlining the simplest and most general observations as references, as they can start what inevitably will turn into a much richer discussion as it rises to the level of the concrete. In that problematic, two dates, 1989 and 2008, immediately suggest themselves as key turning points for western European social democracy.
!989 of course marked the end of the USSR. The impact of the USSR's existence on modern world history will be debated for centuries. For our purposes we need only recall what Lord Boothby said about the drastically radical programme of the post war Attlee government.
'If we do not give them reform, they will give us revolution!'
Despite Attlee's stance as a cold war warrior, the immense fact of the existence of a victorious USSR a few hundred miles away, gave pause to those in Britain (and the US) at the time who were shocked to the core about the nationalisation of the 'commanding heights', the 'giving away' of Empire and the cornucopia of free spectacles and false teeth now flowing down over all parts of the British population. In this atmosphere, Social Democracy could be successful, could restrain capitalism - 'for fear of something worse!' (It is notable that a similar reform programme was absolutely not available as British forces were demobbed after WW1, despite huge labour militancy, when the Russian Revolution was in its chaotic and crisis driven infancy.)
As Western Europe got richer and the obvious failings of a bureaucratic dictatorship in the USSR became more visible in the last quarter of the 20th century, the reforming programme of European Social Democracy began to be tailored to suit the new conditions. The emergence of France out of Guallism, and Spain and Portugal out of decayed fascism, plus a rich Common Market, meant that Social Democracy was the vehicle of choice for Common Market sponsored reform for a few years. And Scandinavian countries maintained high welfare models with weak ruling classes until globalisation. But by 2008 another great shift took place which turned a trickle of Social Democratic compromises with capitalism into a raging avalanche. Western banks nearly collapsed.
What was immediately exposed was the already great, and now accelerating, gap between those who have to work and the rich - who had turned the banks into their instant fortune making machines. And every Social Democratic party across the West joined their insistent call, that wage earners and those relying on the social wage must pay - to keep the system running. It proved a crossed Rubicon for the British Labour Party, especially in Scotland.
In Scotland working class people are voting SNP because it has presented itself as the real anti-Tory party, and it is against austerity. Labour are crippled by their own march into the lobby with the Tories, to set in law another £30 billion of cuts in the first three years of the new parliament. The SNP is becoming the new Scottish Labour Party, courtesy of the old one. It is now leading on the call for a British wide anti-Tory, anti-austerity alliance.
But does this successful manoeuvre by the SNP mark a change in the prospects of Social Democracy generally in its historical goal to find partnerships inside capitalism for reform and welfare? The SNP is of course of great significance in the evolution of Britain's current political crisis. It could quite quickly accelerate the decomposition of Miliband's parliamentary Labour Party as well as resurfacing the call for proportional representation. A left current will almost certainly grow inside the newly built SNP itself - especially if it wins an outright majority in the Holyrood elections. And that is one key sign that even the currently ecstatic SNP will not escape the unbridgeable contradictions facing the whole Social Democratic experiment in the West.
Under certain conditions as History demonstrates, Social Democracy can achieve real advances for the working classes and for society in general. The argument is now clear that such conditions show no sign of emerging in the West in general and in western Europe in particular. Where Social Democracy has not already died it is busy transforming itself into US Democratic style parties, whose basic offer is that they can manage capitalism 'better;' that have entirely broken from any commitment to a social and political base within a working class that it continually attempts to organise and renew.
The SNP will face this fact as its project of setting up another small Scandinavian country founders, and that is another political step that the Scots, in due course, will have to take. For now Britain's political crisis is full of possible dangers - for both main classes but for now the crisis is to be welcomed. Rebuilding a genuine working class movement is urgent but becoming more possible. As the murderous old Chairman once put it;
'Heaven and earth are in chaos. The prospects are good.'
Well ... they are better than they were.
Labels:
Labour and the SNP,
SNP after May 7,
SNP after the election,
SNP's future,
the weakness of Labour
Saturday 2 May 2015
Miliband - the sectarian
If you have had any experience of the British far left in the second half of the twentieth century then you may well have been part of some worthy political initiatives but you will certainly have encountered sectarianism.
'Communists' thundered Marx a century before, 'have no interests separate or apart from the working class as a whole.'
And, indeed, every left group and groupuscule identified the others as 'sectarian.' The problem was that they were all right. It would take volumes to go into the intricacies of all this. Indeed, some people have made it their life's work. The point here is that the term, 'sectarian', was almost indelibly linked to small organisations on the extreme left.
Today, the great (and potentially most deadly) sectarian from the point of view of 'the working class as a whole' is Ed Miliband.
He is not alone with his hubris in mainstream politics of course. From the point of view of the overall interests of the class that Tory Prime Minister Cameron represents he too is a sectarian - elevating his own prospects above everything else in the political universe.
'This is a real career-defining... country-defining election that we face now in less than a week’s time' - he told us in Leeds (30 April.)
Miliband, on the other hand openly purports to stand for 'Britain's hard working people' and those 'without opportunities' in UK society. On May 1st he chose to make a new speech in Glasgow. His target was the SNP. OK in principle. There is a lot to criticise in the SNP's past and in its current politics. But what Miliband was doing was attacking the right of the Scottish people to decide their own future and excluding any form of political alliance with the SNP in Westminster after May 7. And then came his breathtaking sectarianism in its laboratory-pure form; he added that there would be no Labour Government if such a government relied on any pact, alliance, deal or agreement with the SNP - as a matter, he added, 'of principle.'
In the Observer newspaper (April 26) Will Hutton, currently the most able of social democracy's thinkers in Britain, took up the story of supermarket TESCO's decline. He argued it had fallen victim of British capitalism's disease;
'TESCO, like almost every other British plc, has been run as a profit machine.'
Short term raids, takeovers, poverty wages, higher and higher dividends and senior manager salaries and bonuses - they break Hutton's heart. Short term gain for long term pain. How can you deal with these 'get rich quick' owners of capital? Sadly, he has not managed to elaborate in any practical way a social democratic answer to his own question. And here is the parallel with Miliband's 'get rich quick' politics. Miliband believes that if he issues his dramatic ultimatum to Scotland's voters, then they will be forced to turn away from the SNP and back to Labour in this election to avoid another Cameron led government. Labour's traditional base in Scotland would then be recomposed - at least for Miliband's chance at Number 10.
In other words Miliband is demanding from Scottish working class voters that only Labour is allowed, or to be supported in opposing an extreme austerity Tory led government, and that his and Labour's position is more important than the defeat of such a government. Frankly, after this performance, Miliband should not be allowed to take charge of the Labour bus, let alone be given the responsibility for the political fate of working class people across Britain.
Miliband's madness comes, of course, out of desperation. He has no doubt been told by his political advisers that Labour without Scotland is potentially the end of Labour - as they know it. What would be the point of Oxbridge political advisers organising today for Labour (and tomorrow for their own political career) if Labour, this finely honed, anti-democratic, managerial, middle class outfit, was no longer able to insure regular bouts of governmental office? That is the pressure on Miliband from the Scottish working class, currently led by the SNP. So Miliband will take revenge, no 'me' he tells the Scots who are more than willing to join an anti-Tory alliance, then Hell slap it into you, you get the Tories.
All sectarianism is damaging to the working class interest. But Miliband's threats are dangerous, potentially mortal. Not only will Miliband's threats and petulance convince any Scottish waverer and many Scottish 'no' voters, of the absolute necessity of going independent to get rid of future Tory rule, he will stand over the beginning of the disintegration of the modern Labour party across the whole UK, starting with the office seekers, careerists and place holders reappraising their own futures. He will join the lexicon of the other 'heroes' across Europe that have destroyed their own social democratic political heritage as a significant force across society and inside their own working class movements.
A very cold wind is blowing through the Labour forest. It begins to strip away the foliage, the rhetoric, the bells and whistles, making ambition naked - and visible to all. A process is underway which will expose again what exactly remains healthy and fertile among Labour's roots. But this is not just a matter of observation. Surely the whole of Britain's anti-austerity left, the parties, the unions, the campaigns, have the best of reasons to intervene, beginning now, to promote the basis of a rebuilt political centre of the working class.
'Communists' thundered Marx a century before, 'have no interests separate or apart from the working class as a whole.'
And, indeed, every left group and groupuscule identified the others as 'sectarian.' The problem was that they were all right. It would take volumes to go into the intricacies of all this. Indeed, some people have made it their life's work. The point here is that the term, 'sectarian', was almost indelibly linked to small organisations on the extreme left.
Today, the great (and potentially most deadly) sectarian from the point of view of 'the working class as a whole' is Ed Miliband.
He is not alone with his hubris in mainstream politics of course. From the point of view of the overall interests of the class that Tory Prime Minister Cameron represents he too is a sectarian - elevating his own prospects above everything else in the political universe.
'This is a real career-defining... country-defining election that we face now in less than a week’s time' - he told us in Leeds (30 April.)
Miliband, on the other hand openly purports to stand for 'Britain's hard working people' and those 'without opportunities' in UK society. On May 1st he chose to make a new speech in Glasgow. His target was the SNP. OK in principle. There is a lot to criticise in the SNP's past and in its current politics. But what Miliband was doing was attacking the right of the Scottish people to decide their own future and excluding any form of political alliance with the SNP in Westminster after May 7. And then came his breathtaking sectarianism in its laboratory-pure form; he added that there would be no Labour Government if such a government relied on any pact, alliance, deal or agreement with the SNP - as a matter, he added, 'of principle.'
In the Observer newspaper (April 26) Will Hutton, currently the most able of social democracy's thinkers in Britain, took up the story of supermarket TESCO's decline. He argued it had fallen victim of British capitalism's disease;
'TESCO, like almost every other British plc, has been run as a profit machine.'
Short term raids, takeovers, poverty wages, higher and higher dividends and senior manager salaries and bonuses - they break Hutton's heart. Short term gain for long term pain. How can you deal with these 'get rich quick' owners of capital? Sadly, he has not managed to elaborate in any practical way a social democratic answer to his own question. And here is the parallel with Miliband's 'get rich quick' politics. Miliband believes that if he issues his dramatic ultimatum to Scotland's voters, then they will be forced to turn away from the SNP and back to Labour in this election to avoid another Cameron led government. Labour's traditional base in Scotland would then be recomposed - at least for Miliband's chance at Number 10.
In other words Miliband is demanding from Scottish working class voters that only Labour is allowed, or to be supported in opposing an extreme austerity Tory led government, and that his and Labour's position is more important than the defeat of such a government. Frankly, after this performance, Miliband should not be allowed to take charge of the Labour bus, let alone be given the responsibility for the political fate of working class people across Britain.
Miliband's madness comes, of course, out of desperation. He has no doubt been told by his political advisers that Labour without Scotland is potentially the end of Labour - as they know it. What would be the point of Oxbridge political advisers organising today for Labour (and tomorrow for their own political career) if Labour, this finely honed, anti-democratic, managerial, middle class outfit, was no longer able to insure regular bouts of governmental office? That is the pressure on Miliband from the Scottish working class, currently led by the SNP. So Miliband will take revenge, no 'me' he tells the Scots who are more than willing to join an anti-Tory alliance, then Hell slap it into you, you get the Tories.
All sectarianism is damaging to the working class interest. But Miliband's threats are dangerous, potentially mortal. Not only will Miliband's threats and petulance convince any Scottish waverer and many Scottish 'no' voters, of the absolute necessity of going independent to get rid of future Tory rule, he will stand over the beginning of the disintegration of the modern Labour party across the whole UK, starting with the office seekers, careerists and place holders reappraising their own futures. He will join the lexicon of the other 'heroes' across Europe that have destroyed their own social democratic political heritage as a significant force across society and inside their own working class movements.
A very cold wind is blowing through the Labour forest. It begins to strip away the foliage, the rhetoric, the bells and whistles, making ambition naked - and visible to all. A process is underway which will expose again what exactly remains healthy and fertile among Labour's roots. But this is not just a matter of observation. Surely the whole of Britain's anti-austerity left, the parties, the unions, the campaigns, have the best of reasons to intervene, beginning now, to promote the basis of a rebuilt political centre of the working class.
Friday 1 May 2015
Miliband's moment of truth
The last TV 'debate' (April 30 - BBC) between the three main Westminster party leaders before Britain's May 7 General Election saw Cameron, Miliband and Clegg answering questions from a selected and combative audience from the northern English city of Leeds. Each leader, individually and in turn, had 28 minutes to distill their their slogans and soundbites into some sort of honest, fresh-sounding answers.
Surprisingly, Cameron did better than might have been expected. He dropped the 'I'm the only statesman here' pose and came in fighting. And his questioners, mostly on Labour's side, were relatively polite. While the north of England is not good territory for Cameron, the carefully politically balanced audience, meant that some of Yorkshire's otherwise isolated Tories could have a good old dig into the 'bolshevik backstabber', and they snarled and denounced the earnest Miliband, which meant he stayed firmly on the back foot during his session. As for Clegg, after a few denunciations for his U turn over tuition fees from the audience, there did not seem to be much interest.
In other words we were back to the traditional Tory 'stand on your own two feet' versus Labour 'stand up for working people' rhetoric. The game plan (only the three Westminster tyros present) animated the excitable audience. That, and the undoubted poisoned well that is modern politics and politicians, provided an accessible, even comfortable platform for lots of the questioners.
Leave aside how four million plus voters who will be voting for explicitly anti-austerity parties were not represented, except in a few questions about deals and coalitions and entirely negatively in all of the answers. Forget the drastic implications of a first past-the-post voting system, designed to deliver strong, one-party rule, now failing completely in two elections in a row; - in the narrowed down theatre of operations the BBC had acquiesced to, it was Miliband who fared worse. He was brought low when a febrile Tory called him a liar after he said that the last Labour Government had not overspent. Miliband's answer produced a little howl of disbelief from the audience and invective from another Tory. Then Miliband tried to deal with the claim that other countries, Australia and Canada for example, had not suffered from the 2008 crash like Britain. It must, said the now ranting Tory, be the previous Labour Government's debts. For an instant Miliband grasped for the truth. He said that the UK's financial services industry had been a specifically British problem, and then, as though shocked by his own bravery, he slid away and waffled on about the value of rennovated schools and the (disastrous) PFI hospitals built by Labour's spending.
This artificial and arcane encounter in Leeds tells us little about the big new political processes underway in Britain's election. However, it is worth going back to Miliband's particular nemesis. What could he have said to that audience and to the millions watching? The commentators, the pundits, the audience in Leeds all sensed it was a 'turn around' moment. Well, what if Miliband was not Miliband and his party was not what it has patently revealed itself to be; what might have been spelt out that could have shaken the Leeds audience and broken open the election for viewers - in the way that the momentum on the ground of the SNP, the Greens and Plaid already has begun to do?
This is what a different Miliband might have said:
'No. Labour did not overspend; whatever the ministerial twerp who wrote the letter ("there's no money left") being brandished by Cameron said. This particular 'joke' came from Tory Chancellor 'Reggie' Maudlin in the 1960s, who wrote the same thing for the new Labour Government then. It was as stupid as the first time round.
'The banks, hedge funds,tax haveneers and the super-rich crashed our western economy - not to the tune of tens of £billions that UK governments spend, but to the tune of hundreds of £billions. Why was Britain hit so hard? The City of London, including our big banks, organised most of the world's gambling, which soured, then caused the crash. The government had to buy huge chunks of the banks. There was no money left in the ATMs. The government had to print £billions, so industry and transport could still run. Both Labour and the Tories had allowed the City to get away with murder for decades. Then both parties, and the Liberals, were too scared to do anything else but keep it alive.
'The Coalition's austerity and the cuts Labour had started to make - as an answer to all this - were a disaster. Austerity was and remains a simple plan to make the overwhelming majority of the poor, those who need to work, those who need state help, most of us, pay for the crisis. UK living standards for the 99% have dropped and the chances for our young have got worse in the last five years with a promise of more, and worse, to come. Did you read the Sunday Times last Sunday? The rich list? I'll remind you of the Murdoch's Times headline.
"Super rich have doubled their wealth since economic crisis." The wrong people are paying for this disaster!
'You ask what can we do in this election? Simples. Labour are going to lead a Britain wide anti-austerity coalition, together with our SNP partners in Scotland, the Greens, Plaid Cymry and all those organisations and campaigns that have battling away for a different answer. We need to win Parliament on May 7. It will be the start we need to win the changes we require - for a different politics and a different economics. Those that made the crisis and who profit from the crisis will have had their day and will have to pay. And we are not alone. Across Europe we will find millions of friends and allies in our great enterprise.'
Perhaps wild applause?
The trouble with crises is that if you do not truly face them, then you become a part of them.
Surprisingly, Cameron did better than might have been expected. He dropped the 'I'm the only statesman here' pose and came in fighting. And his questioners, mostly on Labour's side, were relatively polite. While the north of England is not good territory for Cameron, the carefully politically balanced audience, meant that some of Yorkshire's otherwise isolated Tories could have a good old dig into the 'bolshevik backstabber', and they snarled and denounced the earnest Miliband, which meant he stayed firmly on the back foot during his session. As for Clegg, after a few denunciations for his U turn over tuition fees from the audience, there did not seem to be much interest.
In other words we were back to the traditional Tory 'stand on your own two feet' versus Labour 'stand up for working people' rhetoric. The game plan (only the three Westminster tyros present) animated the excitable audience. That, and the undoubted poisoned well that is modern politics and politicians, provided an accessible, even comfortable platform for lots of the questioners.
Leave aside how four million plus voters who will be voting for explicitly anti-austerity parties were not represented, except in a few questions about deals and coalitions and entirely negatively in all of the answers. Forget the drastic implications of a first past-the-post voting system, designed to deliver strong, one-party rule, now failing completely in two elections in a row; - in the narrowed down theatre of operations the BBC had acquiesced to, it was Miliband who fared worse. He was brought low when a febrile Tory called him a liar after he said that the last Labour Government had not overspent. Miliband's answer produced a little howl of disbelief from the audience and invective from another Tory. Then Miliband tried to deal with the claim that other countries, Australia and Canada for example, had not suffered from the 2008 crash like Britain. It must, said the now ranting Tory, be the previous Labour Government's debts. For an instant Miliband grasped for the truth. He said that the UK's financial services industry had been a specifically British problem, and then, as though shocked by his own bravery, he slid away and waffled on about the value of rennovated schools and the (disastrous) PFI hospitals built by Labour's spending.
This artificial and arcane encounter in Leeds tells us little about the big new political processes underway in Britain's election. However, it is worth going back to Miliband's particular nemesis. What could he have said to that audience and to the millions watching? The commentators, the pundits, the audience in Leeds all sensed it was a 'turn around' moment. Well, what if Miliband was not Miliband and his party was not what it has patently revealed itself to be; what might have been spelt out that could have shaken the Leeds audience and broken open the election for viewers - in the way that the momentum on the ground of the SNP, the Greens and Plaid already has begun to do?
This is what a different Miliband might have said:
'No. Labour did not overspend; whatever the ministerial twerp who wrote the letter ("there's no money left") being brandished by Cameron said. This particular 'joke' came from Tory Chancellor 'Reggie' Maudlin in the 1960s, who wrote the same thing for the new Labour Government then. It was as stupid as the first time round.
'The banks, hedge funds,tax haveneers and the super-rich crashed our western economy - not to the tune of tens of £billions that UK governments spend, but to the tune of hundreds of £billions. Why was Britain hit so hard? The City of London, including our big banks, organised most of the world's gambling, which soured, then caused the crash. The government had to buy huge chunks of the banks. There was no money left in the ATMs. The government had to print £billions, so industry and transport could still run. Both Labour and the Tories had allowed the City to get away with murder for decades. Then both parties, and the Liberals, were too scared to do anything else but keep it alive.
'The Coalition's austerity and the cuts Labour had started to make - as an answer to all this - were a disaster. Austerity was and remains a simple plan to make the overwhelming majority of the poor, those who need to work, those who need state help, most of us, pay for the crisis. UK living standards for the 99% have dropped and the chances for our young have got worse in the last five years with a promise of more, and worse, to come. Did you read the Sunday Times last Sunday? The rich list? I'll remind you of the Murdoch's Times headline.
"Super rich have doubled their wealth since economic crisis." The wrong people are paying for this disaster!
'You ask what can we do in this election? Simples. Labour are going to lead a Britain wide anti-austerity coalition, together with our SNP partners in Scotland, the Greens, Plaid Cymry and all those organisations and campaigns that have battling away for a different answer. We need to win Parliament on May 7. It will be the start we need to win the changes we require - for a different politics and a different economics. Those that made the crisis and who profit from the crisis will have had their day and will have to pay. And we are not alone. Across Europe we will find millions of friends and allies in our great enterprise.'
Perhaps wild applause?
The trouble with crises is that if you do not truly face them, then you become a part of them.
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