The reason Teresa May, Britain's Prime Minister, survives in office, is nothing to do with her abilities. The Tory Party and Britain's movers and shakers are scared of a Corbyn led Labour government, or rather what a Corbyn government might unleash, so May stays on. But Britain's politics are now more fragile that at any time since the rise of a mass Labour Party at the turn of the 20th Century. Unexpected eruptions in the once impermeable Tory Party (viz an arrogant Foreign Secretary or the exposure of another Cabinet sex-pest) become more and more possible.
The class discipline of the Tory Party in government is as shaky as at any time in its modern history. And a Corbyn led Labour government is the practical alternative. But even a Corbyn led Labour Party - as it stands - cannot become the solution.
It is overwhelmingly obvious that the interest of Britain's working class, inclusive of virtually all who must work to have an income, is to get this wretched Tory government out. But then the question arises; how can the Corbyn Labour Party succeed? How can it stand against a ferocious Capital strike; alienation from all other Western leaders and most of the rest of the planet's rulers; let alone the sabotage plotted by its own bulk of MPs?
The answer, in general, is of course that the success of Corbyn's leadership will depend on the mobilisation and organisation of British people - essentially the British working class people. That is the source of any substantial change for the better in Britain. But expressed just as that, such a magnificent truth, left alone without a context, turns into an achingly empty abstraction. A mass movement for a new government is critical. No progress will be made without it. But we leave the political struggle inside the Labour Party at our peril. The movement both outside and at the base of Labour requires sharp political thinking and action to break through the barriers.
There are many hurdles ahead for a left government but there are basic steps that the Corbyn leadership must take in order to give realistic support to a movement of working class people for decisive change. A mass movement against all forms of austerity may be the key condition for initial success against the Tory government but that is only the beginning. Certain critical political steps are required from the Corbyn leadership to fuse the new government to the mass movement to nourish both and to help build the self-organisation of a new class trying to break from what they experience daily as a failing system.
On November 4 Corbyn wrote out to all Labour members and supporters. His first words were;
'When I ran to be Labour leader, I said I wanted to transform our party into a movement.' He went on to praise the sharp increases in Labour support seen at the last General election.
Momentum, Labour's pro Corbyn left wing, sent out a rejoinder.
'Today, the Labour Party launched the Democracy Review. The review represents the most significant opportunity to radically transform the structures, culture, and balance of power of the party in modern history, and we want as many of you to feed into it as possible.'
These are fine, organisational aims. But they express a political absence - even weakness that must be addressed, whether through regional conferences, open public discussions and debates or a vast, emergency gathering across Britain of any and all who want to see the Tories out and radical change as an alternative.
Examining some of the political steps urgently needed must start with Labour, Corbyn's Labour, and Scotland. Winning a Labour government majority could become difficult, depending on the Scottish vote in a snap General election. Along with the continuing disastrous Labour policy supporting Britain's nuclear weapon, Trident, the British Labour party still has the most juvenile policy on the Scot's right to independence. The current weakness of Scottish Labour is entirely caused by Labour's decades of Tory policies but also by the failure of the party to support the Scots' right to self determination. Corbyn has stated recently that he supports such a right. But that is barely at the beginning of the need for a (rapid) process to revolutionise Labour's approach to Scotland. Labour must offer a solution to this question. Currently it is dividing working class opinion in Scotland, a working class that had made a great leap forward in the Independence debate regarding the sort of country that should be built, into those who feel the issue is over, and those who distrust Corbyn as 'nothing new.'
Corbyn and Kezia Dugdale, Scotland's Labour leader up to August this year, talked about promoting a federal solution across Britain. But this was dropped as a result of the siren calls of key British union leaders, who sincerely believe that Labour, offering a more radical social and economic program than the SNP, would shake mass working class voting in Scotland back into its traditional shape thereby solving the problem by denying it exists.
This will not do. Scottish labour (small l) is, as a result of a two year national debate about their country - amongst other reasons - at the very pinnacle of popular political understanding in Britain. They have studied the direction of their country and society. They are aware of the great levers of power and influence. The British Labour Party must learn from this experience, whether or not people voted for or against independence. Historically, in its formation years, Labour supported self-determination for the Scots. That is the starting point for a renaissance for Scottish Labour today. Such a position implies that it is the Scots and the Scots alone who determine if, when and how any referenda on sovereignty are called. Tying that clear call to a genuine and radical anti-austerity program (putting the SNP leadership to shame) would regroup Scottish politics.
Second, how to raise working class benefits, wages and incomes? Here the Labour leadership have (rightly) offered a vast, new program of public investment which will stop Britain's Capital investment strike and rebuild productivity. Wage caps will be gone. Public service workers will be allowed to seek increases. The top 5% will be properly taxed. The minimum wage will rise and the removal of the most recent Tory measures taken against the unions will be annulled.
All this is a big shift. But it does not address the kernel of the problem of working class income.
Working class incomes are, fundamentally the product of a contest. Trade unions in Britain did not wither away because modern techniques changed work. They were smashed to pieces and chained up. That meant they could not contest for the collective support of the new labour and new industries - where the payment of labour was systematically reduced over decades in relation to profits, managerial incomes and shareholders.
Collective organisation, unions, are the self organised measure that working class people take to resist the tremendous and endless efforts of owners and their wealthy hangers on to extract more production, more profit, with less labour costs. There is no denying that, like the post war Labour Party itself, great unions built even greater towers of internal privilege and self-interest, where self preservation of privileges and perks often rolled over the needs of the union's ranks. But there were many dramatic exceptions, when unions like the Miners NUM took action to defend the income of nurses. And on the 'shop floor' the daily defence of union members saved millions from poverty and worse.
Today, all the anti-union legislation of the past must be rescinded. To succeed in the fight to increase working class incomes, unions must be released from tyrannical laws. A new union movement can be built, by those who fight for each others decent existence. Like a new successful, radical Labour Party, the unions need a total democratic overhaul to win the new millions who labour. But unions are in the end, in this society, the primary self-organised route to the increase of working class incomes and Corbyn's Labour must set them free. That is the real and decisive step for Labour to 'transform itself into a movement.'
Finally the vile, sexist, chauvinism of Britain's main political institutions are available for all to see on any TV at any Prime Minister's question time in Parliament, as red faced buffoons bellow and honk - particularly at women MPs. The mass media have tried to capture the battle by women against their treatment from (male) power in politics but have not succeeded. The point that is emerging from this latest wave of struggle against Britain's woefully backward institutions - is how far they are effectively obstacles to modern social progress!
Labour's creditable efforts to reform itself under Corbyn will mean relatively little if they are not a part of a program to reform Britain's political institutions, most urgently its Parliament. How can Parliament lead society against oppression when its leaders and its organisation effectively promotes sexism and institutional racism; generally blocks working class people from representation, continues to fertilise a vast swamp of Lords; all in the context of a tsunami of austerity for the rest? All this needs root and branch reconstruction.
In this field too, Corbyn's Labour Party must take the issue to the people and their movements. Every vote should count. Until the political culture changes then we need quotas to ensure that women, that people of colour, that working class people represent our society in our political life. Corbyn's Labour has to play a key role in all this. But it will be the movements underway, the defenders of the NHS, the fighters for decent wages, the voices raised against racism that will re-inspire Britain's political institutions. 'None so fit to break the chains as those who wear them.' (Connelly.)
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