Socialism in the Time of Pandemics
This is the draft statement to be submitted by LRC’s National Executive to our forthcoming Conference in September. Members will have the right to submit amendments in the usual way.
1. The Corbyn Heritage
Leadership and growth of the party
Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership saw a transformation of the Labour Party. Labour is now the biggest political party in Europe with more than half a million members. Hundreds of thousands campaigned and rallied in the 2017 and 2019 general elections, many of them young people drawn to active involvement in politics for the first time. Compared with the dead Blair/Brown years the Party buzzes with political discussion and debate and has moved markedly to the left. Corbynism began with a rejection of the dominant ideology of austerity and has progressed to develop a coherent alternative political programme. Our Chair Matt Wrack declared his election to be: ”The chance of a lifetime.”
Corbyn’s election as a rank outsider in 2015 came as a bolt from the blue. None of the signs looked favourable. Since 2010 the Labour Party leadership had meekly acceded to the necessity of austerity. Trade union membership had halved since its peak in the 1970s and the number of strike days lost was very low. This low level of class struggle, which continued after Corbyn’s election, represented a key contradiction for the new leadership. It is clear in retrospect that Corbyn’s election represented a belated rebellion against the consequences of the 2008 Great Recession, the biggest economic shock for thirty years.
Internal party sabotage
Jeremy was faced with a hostile Parliamentary Party (PLP) and bureaucracy nationally and in the regions. They relentlessly sabotaged any move to democratise the Party and move policy to the left. The left was constrained by the undemocratic rules and structures of the Labour Party. The allegations in the report leaked in April demonstrate the scale of these attempts to undermine a socialist leadership and membership. Despite this, Corbyn emerged strengthened from a revolt by the PLP after a new leadership contest in 2016. In the 2017 election Labour won almost 10% more in the share of votes - the biggest gain since 1945.
Though Party Conferences moved markedly to the left in 2018 and 2019, there was no clear commitment to open selection of MPs, a key requirement if the Corbynist gains were to be consolidated and advanced. Corbyn himself, in league with the trade union barons, accepted a process less democratic than open selection. The promise of the democracy review was not completed.
Letting down the membership
The Party’s disciplinary processes remain a disgrace. Members accused of breach of party rules cannot rely on due process or natural justice. Full time officials regard themselves as unaccountable. Many Labour MPs still believe they have a job for life and need take no account of the views of the membership. The Party still needs root and branch review in the interests of democratisation.
In particular the treatment of BAME people, historically some of Labour’s most loyal supporters, needs to be urgently addressed – especially in the wake of the serious and disgraceful targeting of Black women, peddling of misogynoir and anti-Black sentiment revealed in the leaked Labour Party report in April. The lack of a meaningful response, or commitment to a detailed course of action by the party leadership – while publicly stating their condemnation of the responses of both President Trump and the UK government to the police brutality seen in cities across the US two months later – smacks of rank hypocrisy.
While Starmer and Rayner expressed “complete solidarity with those standing up against police brutality towards Black people” in both the US and UK following the murder of George Floyd, they continued to wilfully ignore the systemic racism in our own party. These issues have given rise to a number of open letters to the party leadership from BAME members and allies. So far (early June) there has been no response. No wonder that BAME members are leaving in droves saying they feel “politically homeless.”
Lack of attention to communities
There are valid criticisms of the 2019 campaign. It unleashed enormous enthusiasm, but that elan was not channelled into the ‘left behind’ traditional Labour-voting working class areas where it was most needed. The programme was generally popular. Even Tory voters favour the renationalisation of the railways. It can be argued that presentation of, and therefore engagement with, our key messages was poor.
The result in December was crushing, though not as bad as has been presented. Labour has fewer MPs than at any time since 1935 but the number of votes was actually higher (10.3m) than in 2005(9.5m – when Labour won) or 2010 (8.6m). The word from the main stream media was that Jeremy Corbyn made Labour unelectable. This verdict was widely swallowed, including by some Labour activists. Inevitably a mood of demoralisation set in, with an 80 seat Tory majority and a strong possibility of another five years with Johnson as PM. This mood has led to a tendency for the left within the Party to splinter.
The myth of ‘electability’
Keir Starmer cashed in on this mood in his leadership contest to make Labour ‘electable’. His main rival from the left was Rebecca Long-Bailey. Her campaign was slow to get going, dull and uninspiring, and she was not clearly committed to left policies. She made mistakes that upset her natural supporters on the left. Rebecca’s campaign was like the race between the tortoise and the hare. She affirmed that she would press the nuclear button and accepted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. This conflates antisemitism with any criticism of the state of Israel and was widely used to attack Jeremy Corbyn, a doughty supporter of the Palestinian cause.
Challenging Starmer’s version of ‘unity’
Keir Starmer pledged during the campaign to stand by the programmatic advances that had been made in the Corbyn era. The appointments he has made and positions adopted since becoming leader suggests strongly that he wants to tack to the right. We should not accept this process as inevitable. The Corbyn programme was enormously popular. We must defend it vigorously, and we will get widespread support. The ‘Don’t Leave, Organise’ campaign can be critical in holding the forces of the left together within the Party and hanging on to the gains of the past five years as best we can. They were HUGE gains, since the left has not been in charge of Labour for almost a hundred years
Learning from mistakes of the past five years
Did Jeremy make mistakes? Of course he did. Everyone does. We, as loyal Corbynistas in the LRC, criticised Corbyn who, pressured by the trade union barons, accepted a process less democratic than the open selection called for by the majority of the membership. That spiked the move to Party democratisation. How important were these mistakes?
We must remember what a weak position Corbyn – and the left in general – was in, with a hostile PLP and Party bureaucracy, and unprecedented vilification from the media. Frankly his conduct as an individual has been heroic. The fundamental problem was that he alone was unable to overcome the forces ranged against him in our movement. He was in a very weak negotiating and bargaining position.
There was an irreconcilable contradiction between the need to transform the party and build a radical democratic grassroots movement and the need to reach an accommodation with a right wing PLP. The leadership feared a right wing split off from the PLP would make an election victory more difficult and yet to abandon the grassroots would be to give up in advance on the chance of a lifetime of achieving a radical Labour government.
It was a mistake to fail to facilitate the building of an independent grassroots movement. It was a serious error to defend Corbyn’s supporters from the witch-hunt by accepting the narrative of what were grossly distorted and politically weaponised allegations of antisemitism which helped to divide and demoralise the Labour left
The most fundamental mistake made by Corbyn’s team was increasingly focusing on triangulating Brexit policies and parliamentary procedures rather than mobilising and educating the rank and file. To combat that would have required a giant mobilisation leading to a wholesale democratisation of the labour movement – a mammoth task that the left failed to achieve.
We live in unprecedented times. Johnson’s administration looked set fair last year for five years of government with very little opposition in sight. Now, with the onset of the pandemic and the prospect of economic collapse, they must know they are on the rack. What of the opposition? Unfortunately under Keir Starmer the PLP seems by a majority to accept the role of a ‘loyal opposition’, playing Parliamentary games with the Tories. But of course it’s not just up to them. The threats facing the labour movement are vast. But so are the opportunities, if our movement is prepared to take advantage of them.
2. Covid-19
The Covid-19 crisis is both a public health emergency and a looming economic catastrophe. It is the overwhelmingly important issue confronting the working class in 2020 – a life-and-death concern for millions. The Johnson administration has shown reckless incompetence in dealing with the pandemic, leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths. Yet, at the time of writing, they still have considerable public support, though this is slipping. It is natural in the face of a sudden and unexpected crisis for folk to ‘rally round the flag’. However, passive support can very easily turn to active opposition as the lies and inadequacies of the government become plain to all. We can play our part in raising awareness of the intentions, failures and lies of a government whose policies had directly led to 130,000 early deaths – even before C-19 hit us.
Nor is public health the only issue. The economic crisis produced by the pandemic (possibly as severe as 1929-33) confronts millions of working class people with destitution even if and when the virus has been defeated. Clearance could take years. At the same time there is a growing mood of social solidarity and the setting up of mutual aid groups all over the country inspired by the shared misery of the Coronavirus, a mood that has been compared with the spirit engendered by the experience of the Second World War that led to the Labour landslide in 1945. Never again! This is obviously a mood that could be transformative and on which socialists can build. The future offers potential. It is ours for the taking, but we must gear up to take advantage of the opportunities.
On the other hand the capitalist class has different plans. Which outcome will prevail? A section of the Tories seem set on a murderous course to leave lockdown altogether – back to ‘business as usual’, risking a second spike of the virus. They want in effect to trade working class people’s health and lives against bosses’ profits. This is already setting up a conflict on the terms of coming out of lockdown, in addition to the battle to get adequate protection such as PPE for key workers, and the stakes could not be higher. The fact that the damage done by the virus is so much worse to usually low paid key workers shows clearly that we are NOT all in this together.
Vast changes in the economy and society are already in process and have much further to go. Who will benefit – the bosses? Or can we use the crisis to create a new settlement to the advantage of the working class? The onset of the virus has intensified the class struggle, not cut across it. We enthusiastically promote the People’s Charter against Covid-19 as a defence of working people in the teeth of the virus.
3. Brexit
Since the surprise victory of the ‘Leave’ supporters in the 2016 referendum, Brexit has been a key issue in British politics. It has the capacity to divide the working class. Though there were Lexiters (left wing advocates of leaving the EU) the Brexit campaign was dominated by right wing politicos, many of whom saw the opportunity to tear up regulations on labour rights, consumer protection and environmental laws to turn Britain into a wild west capitalist casino. Johnson opportunistically backed Brexit.
From 2016 Jeremy pledged to respect the referendum decision, while putting forward a programme to protect the interests of the working class. At the 2019 Conference the Party became committed to a second referendum, a confusing position which proved difficult to defend in the 2019 election. Johnson campaigned on the snappy but misleading slogan, ‘Get Brexit Done.’ 2019 was widely seen as a Brexit election, dominating all other issues.
Britain is due to leave the European Union in December. Desultory negotiations are taking place at present. There is the severe danger of a no-deal Brexit. Whatever our views of the EU (and it is not a social democratic utopia) leaving without a deal would give a head to the right wingers who see leaving as a golden opportunity to move to a completely deregulated capitalist economy (sometimes called Singapore on Thames). This is a threat to the entire labour movement and must be fought. Moreover a no-deal Brexit could well pass under the political radar, while most of us might justifiably think the government should be more concerned with saving lives from the virus. A trade deal with the USA could also be rushed through with little or no scrutiny, leading to lasting damage to environmental protection, food standards and workers’ rights – as well as our NHS, despite the smoke and mirrors the Tories apply to questions around our health service.
4. The Ruling Class and the Tories
For many years there has been a broad consensus between the main political parties in Britain on a wide range of issues. Along with the intervention of the establishment media, this has protected the status quo, challenging, undermining and crushing policies and direction that the few deem too radical to accept. A notable exception was the creation of the welfare state and in particular the NHS – no wonder the establishment (including New Labour) has worked to dismantle it since day one.
Since the crisis of 2008 the long-standing consensus has been breaking down. We celebrated the election of Corbyn and the renewal of the Labour Party as a mass force for socialism - which represented a split by the left from that rotten accord.
The election of Johnson as leader of the Tory Party signalled the emergence of right wing populism as a significant force in British politics. Johnson rode the Brexit wave, widely seen by its supporters as an anti-establishment movement. This quintessentially establishment figure presents himself as a rebel and a ‘man of the people’, not a representative of the capitalist class – of which he is of course a highly privileged and connected member.
Divide and rule – the racist seeds of Empire
For centuries the Tories have been the most successful ruling class party in Europe. They had the advantage of a massive empire, which has left us the dregs of the wretched prejudices of racism up to the present day. The Tories have since deliberately blown up and manipulated this backwardness – blaming BAME people for the rottenness of their system. The Grenfell Tower fire and the rampant racism shown by the Windrush affair (engendered by years of the Tory ‘hostile environment’) is part of the tradition we have to combat. Violent right wing extremists remain a menace to all vulnerable and minority groups, but the increasingly mainstream drift to blaming other sections of the working class such as black people rather than the failings of the capitalist system comes from the ruling Party, which is increasingly nurturing a cesspit of backward prejudices inherited from the imperialist era.
In the past the Conservative Party conducted its arguments in private - ‘not in front of the children’ – based on the certainty that they could reckon the future of imperial Britain in centuries. Today’s Conservative government conducts itself differently - run by political inadequates who don’t really know what they should do next month. Their relationship with the ruling class is semi-detached, and on issues such as how fast to implement withdrawal from lockdown they are clearly split and clueless.
5. Environment
“From the standpoint of a higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite as absurd as private ownership of one man by another. Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors...and, like good heads of the household, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition.” Marx
The most serious threat to the planet, and to the existence of human life on earth, is the climate emergency. There is no doubt that human activity, in particular through excess emissions of green- house gases, is largely responsible. Capitalism has historically been based on burning fossil fuels. This must stop if the earth is to survive.
It is perfectly practicable to reverse this trend - for instance renewable energy can nullify carbon emissions; but the transition must be planned, determined and detailed. That will require a revolution in the structure of industry and the economy.
We reject the Malthusian notion that the problem is ‘too many people’, but understand that to feed, clothe and house the growing population of the world adequately requires:
· An assault on the gross inequalities in income, wealth and consumption that scar our planet at present.
· A planned use and husbanding of the earth’s resources in place of its anarchic spoliation all too characteristic of capitalism.
· A woman’s right to control her fertility, access to education and economic and legal independence
Other severe environmental problems such as deforestation, overfishing, air and water pollution, species extinction and soil degradation are also due to the planet’s resources being regarded as free goods.
There has been increasing recognition of environmental problems and a growing awareness that things cannot go on in the old way. We have seen and welcome massive movements such as Extinction Rebellion taking up ‘green issues’. The LRC recognises that planet earth is and will remain our only home for the predictable future, and that taking up and solving these problems is not a separate issue from defending the interests of workers, but a central task of the labour movement and all humanity.
The programme of a green new deal, inadequately campaigned on in the 2019 election, links these environmental concerns with the traditional preoccupations of the labour movement with creating and preserving well-paid jobs, and developing new skills for workers as society evolves. We must use this period of economic crisis as an opportunity to transform our economy in that direction. We must make common cause with the green rebellion. The struggle of XR, school strikes and associated movements is our struggle.
6. The State of the Unions
A significant contradiction when Labour elected a radical leader was that, in terms of industrial action and the ‘muscle’ of the unions, the movement was still in the doldrums, crushed by Tory anti-trade union legislation and with union membership and confidence at an all-time low. That situation has continued – until the recent spike in union membership and direct action as a result of C-19 – with the low number of strikes broken only by a few disputes, such as those of university lecturers and the continued battle against driver-only operation on several rail franchises. Despite several unions lining up in support of Corbyn’s policies, this has not been reflected in a rise of coordinated militancy.
As a result, there has been a rise to prominence of new unions, such as United Voices of the World and IWGB, willing to organise sections of precarious workers which many of the established unions have failed to reach out to.
That is not universally the case with TUC-affiliated unions - with, for instance, BFAWU working hard over years to organise the fast food sector, and RMT the outsourced cleaners and the FBU campaigning to protect both members’ pensions and public safety. The LRC makes no distinction in its support for organising and for their disputes between the ‘new’ and established unions.
However, the unions have undergone growth during the Covid-19 crisis, with workers realising the protection they need, both against the lack of health protection, the threat of job losses and ongoing exploitation. Accompanied by the willingness in some sectors to take protest and even take action against the lack of provision of protection (such as walkouts in several Royal Mail delivery offices) this holds out hope for greater resistance in the future..
Inevitably, any attempt to fight back will come up against the use by employers or the government of the anti-union laws. These have one purpose only – to severely limit the ability of workers to fight for their interests.
Not satisfied with this, the Tories have made clear their intention to restrict the ability to take legal industrial action even further, with their threat to outlaw transport strikes. Unions will have to face up to the fact that, if they cannot take lawful action the only options are either to rollover or to take action regardless. In the latter situation it will be incumbent on us not only to support such strike action but also to argue for other sections of workers to come out in support if legal action is taken against individuals or their unions.
7 The Labour Party and the Unions
One of the many reasons Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were so popular on the left is because of a long history of supporting workers in struggle and campaigns. Even as Shadow Chancellor, McDonnell saw it as natural to turn up on picket lines in support of strikes, whether junior doctors or cleaners at the Department of Business.
What should be second nature for socialists has never been an integral part of Labour Party policies, or even that of many Labour parliamentarians. The ‘norm’ has been that the unions deal in ‘industrial’ matters and parliamentarians with ‘political’ affairs and never the two shall meet (or `interfere’ in the parlance). This is regardless of the obvious fact that the two intersect all the time.
The fight for democracy across the movement has to be taken up in the unions as much as the Party, not just for the sake of winning battles in the Party, but also to ensure the unions respond swiftly and effectively to the grievances of their members.
8. The Issue Facing the Labour Left – Leave or Fightback
Coming not long after the general election defeat, the election of Starmer as leader and the leak of the document exposing appalling levels of bigotry and sabotage in senior levels of the Party machine have angered many left Labour members. Some are leaving in despair, while others see them as added reason to organise against the attempts of the right to reassert themselves as the natural leaders of the Party.
Both to convince comrades on the left to stay, and out of political necessity, we have to organise better than we have in the last 5 years. That means organising democratically at every level, both from the grassroots up, it means linking up with, and being part of, campaigns affecting people’s lives, whether or not they conflict with Party policy or the policy of a local council. It means organising to replace Labour councillors who see their position as a sinecure, as mere managers of the local state, it means democratising the Party at every level, including highlighting when Party officials act to serve one faction or another rather than follow the rules. It means standing up to false allegations of antisemitism, while challenging all forms of racism. In short, it means doing many of the things the left as a whole has failed to do in a coordinated and effective way over the last 5 years.
The leaked document has to be an eye opener for the left. While long-standing activists were aware of how the Party bureaucracy behaves, many were amazed that this had been going on within the Party which had elected a radical leader. The document showed extreme levels of racism and abuse. It is disgusting that BAME people, among the most loyal supporters and Labour voters, were scorned in this way by officials instead of being supported and encouraged to take part in our movement in much greater numbers.
9. Our Programme
The LRC enthusiastically endorsed Labour’s 2017 and 2019 programmes as a clear break from the consensus of austerity. It has to be said that, were they to be implemented in their entirety, Britain would remain a capitalist country. In that sense Labour’s programme is not a programme for the comprehensive socialist transformation of society. Implementation actually would bring the UK back nearer to the European economic mainstream. It is not generally recognised how far extreme neoliberal policies have taken the country to the right.
Britain is the most unequal country in Europe. The gulf between rich and poor is cavernous. The Tories have steadily hacked away at taxes on the rich and corporations. If inequality is to be overcome the rich must be taxed more heavily. The top rate of income tax in 1979 was 83%. It is now just over half that, 46% for those on over £150,000 a year. Moreover inequalities in wealth are more marked even than those of income. There is no wealth tax. Obviously the rich are adept at employing people to hide their wealth and squirrel it away in tax havens, but Labour must commit seriously to a wealth tax.
Though we would unhesitatingly support stronger moves to tax the rich, we do not believe taxation policy on its own can bridge the gap between rich and poor. Apart from the measure of nationalisation of utilities in the 2017 and 2019 programmes (which are generally popular) we advocate nationalisation of the banks. More generally we believe that the commanding heights of the economy should not be in the hands of private shareholders, who thus wield overwhelming economic power. Our aim is social ownership of the major means of production, bringing the possibility of economic democracy, of working people really in charge of their own destiny for the first time.
There are many vital areas of policy where Labour lacks a clear programme. We will play our part in putting forward proposals in order to drive party policy in the direction of socialism. It is also possible that the present leadership of the Parliamentary Party try to roll back progressive policies that have been adopted. In that case we pledge to be in the first line of resistance.
We are for the abolition of all anti-union laws. That would still leave labour with one arm tied behind its back in the conflict with capital. We believe Labour must commit itself to go further and commit itself to positive rights for the millions of workers in insecure conditions, along the lines of A Manifesto for Labour Law, published by the Institute of Employment Rights.
Local authority finance has been devastated as part of the austerity imposed by the Tories since 2010. Some councils are on the verge of bankruptcy and unable to fulfil even their statutory responsibilities. The virus has further drained their revenues and massively increased outlays. We support the campaign to Cancel Local Authority Debt to the Public Works Loans Board, which is picking up support, and could provide a lifeline for council services.
The social care crisis has been laid bare by the pandemic. It is just one aspect of the social infrastructure which needs fundamental reconstruction as part of a programme to heal the sores left by austerity and made worse by the onset of Covid-19.
We stand four square for free movement of peoples and against immigration controls. We are internationalists and will work with other left wing parties and forces for a socialist Europe and a socialist world.
Our main campaign aims must be for democracy in the labour movement – trade unions and Labour Party – and for a socialist response to the global health and economic crisis.
We need a new and different way to configure and organise across the left – a grassroots umbrella network, run democratically by its supporting bodies, to coordinate our actions and our demands, to support and act in solidarity with each other. This approach clearly has wide appeal.
Since events are developing very rapidly, the NEC recognises the need to submit supplementary statements to the AGM nearer the time.
