14 Andy Newman runs the website and is a member of Respect. In this article he surveys the state of the Labour Party and proposes that Respect should engage in a debate with Labour and others to promote the idea of public ownership. New Labour's collapsing coalition ANDY NEWMAN
ast year a You Gov poll
revealed that 15 million
people self-identified as Labour voters, but one-third of them said that they would not vote Labour under present circumstances. Since then Labour's woes have got worse.
The Labour Party's problems are acute in the poorest areas of Britain, but paradoxically these are still the seats it is most likely to win at the next general election. In the main the poorest will not vote to register their protest, and there remains a residual loyalty to the traditional social democratic memory of the Labour Party to turn out sufficient votes to retain these seats.
So although the left correctly focuses on Labour's failure to turn out the working class vote, the general election will also be lost by Labour failing to hold the vote of the managerial and professional middle classes who are essential to winning the marginal seats in England. Even among these voters the Tory victory will not be based upon a positive vote for a political alternative, but weariness and disillusion with Labour.
The key thing to understand here is that whereas over the whole country it will be the Tories who defeat Labour, within some specific constituencies the victor who will be whichever party manages to present itself as the best placed front-runner as the SNP did in the Glasgow East by-election.
Labour's working class electoral base has never been convinced by Blairism. The advantage of Respect is that in Tower Hamlets and Birmingham Hall Green, a significant sector of these voters are prepared to back our candidate, in the expectation that they may win. Winning these MPs is our entry ticket to the huge debate that will take part as the Labour Party and wider labour movement who will be traumatised when the Tories win the next election. New Labour and Thatcherism Traditional Labourism believed in a mixed economy, where the state sector underpinned the strategic infrastructure for private commerce to prosper; it also believed in direct state intervention for social improvement-through the NHS, social services, state schools, etc.
For example, a fairly representative thinker of the Labour left, Stuart Holland, argued that the failure of the government between 1964 and 1970 in fighting poverty was because the private sector had failed to be profitable or NEW LABOUR & RESPECT innovative enough and the government had not been bold enough in "harnessing the market power" of the private sector through strategic nationalisation, but more importantly through a state planning agency that would guide the private sector towards society's priorities.
Labourism relied upon a collective ethos, hence the alignment of Labourism with the trade unions and cooperative movement. The collective ethos reflected the idea that society had a purpose, of eliminating injustice and inequality. This provided a context for those who might wish to see a more fundamental transformation of society towards socialism. because the ideals of public ownership and social equality already had wider currency. It also provided a political legitimacy to trade unionism as being more than sectional self-interest; it was also part of a movement against exploitation.
When Blair argued that he would resist dogma, and steer a middle course between Thatcherism and traditional Labourism he was signally underestimating the degree to which Thatcherism was not "dogma", but a root and branch ideological, philosophical and political rejection of the ground that Labourism was built upon.
Thatcherism had a firm foundation in the polities of Friedrich von Hayek who believed that true freedom only exists in conditions when the individual alone faces and participates in the market. The other pillar of Thatcherism is the economic of Milton Friedman, who believed that all government efforts should be directed towards dismantling controls over the market.
New Labour accepted these ideas that individual liberty was best expressed by individual consumers interacting through the market, so they lost faith in the power of government to directly provide services. Instead of seeing the role of government as directing
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NEW LABOUR & RESPECT the economy and providing a collective sense of purpose and vision of an improved society alongside practical help to alleviate poverty and restore dignity—a traditional Labourist approach—New Labour stumbles from one wheeze to another, everything is spin and news management. The New Labour coalition History shows that the Labour Party has never managed to win a government majority based only upon the votes of the working class.
The genius of New Labour was to invent an electoral strategy to solve that problem by triangulating around the concerns of swing voters in marginal constituencies, linking its fundamentally right wing emphasis on individualism and social conformity with meaningless froth about modernity and coolness.
Jon Cruddas points out what this means: "Yet to whether the policy mix developed to dominate a specific part of the British electoral map actually compounds problems in other communities with different histories and contemporary economic and social profiles" In other words, New Labour's assumption that Thatcherite policies were the only way to secure middle class votes ensured that there were no radical social-democratic policies to alleviate real social problems for the working class.
But New Labour also failed to understand that the voters that it caricatured as "Middle England" had many of the same economic and social insecurities as the more traditional working class. The down-turn in the economy has produced a credit crunch, crisis levels of personal debt, worries about unemployment and house repossessions, that affect the middle classes. Having spent over a decade emphasising that the only difference between Labour and the Tories is that Labour is less dogmatic, more efficient and more pragmatic, they are very vulnerable to a shiny new Toryism.
The reason that the neo-liberal right have been able to consolidate their coup in the Labour party was because they predicated their approach on the need to win elections, and advocated a credible strategy for building a political coalition that could meet that aim. By so doing they were able to win over sufficient support from "Old Labour" and the trade unions to isolate and rout the political left within the party.
It is indeed a characteristic of neo-liberalism that
SHES OF THE UK ELECTORATE Rue Britannia
www.ruebritannia.co.uk it self-perpetuates itself by undermining the economic and social bases of those forces that can oppose it. The victory of the Blairite right meant that not only did the national Labour Party actively promote neoliberalism. but it consolidated the defeat of the centres of strength that the Labour Left held in local government. Left social democratic policies by local government were seen as part of the unelectable legacy of the past. (The biggest joke of Tony Blair's reign was the party standing Frank Dobson against Ken Livingstone in 2000, because Livingstone was "unelectable".)
What is remarkable is the degree to which traditional Labour Party values of social ownership and equality have been almost completely marginalised from mainstream political debate. Even Ken Livingstone's broadly progressive administration in London was largely powerless to propose any economic alternative to the market. The change in society In December 2006 trade union membership stood at just 28.4% of the workforce, and this includes
TODAY'S SPECIAL, KILLED JUST FOR SIR'S EXTRA PLEASURE... IT DIDN'T STRUGGLE MUCH EURO RALYTRANN RESTAURNY UK HEALTH TENICRATION CONTROL @SAFET
RECS the membership of staff associations. Membership of TUC affiliated trade unions stands at just 16%, only just higher than individual gym membership at 14%. What is more, the general level of class consciousness and trade union experience has sharply declined so that even when unions do recruit members they struggle to find workplace representatives.
The proportion of society that is selfconsciously working class is diminished, and there have been huge changes in social attitudes, and in cultural
15 diversification, that have led to the traditionalist left being increasingly marginalised.
The common retort to which is that many of those who don't see themselves as working class objectively still are, and if there was a higher level of class struggle then their political attitudes would change; but this puts the cart before the horse. The vast majority of trade unionists including many activists -see trade unions pragmatically as the mechanism for ensuring better pay and conditions and increased dignity at work, and as a constraint to the profit system, not as part of an alternative to it. Therefore the majority of industrial disputes EU IMPORT TARINE HUMAN RIGH ДВа remain sectional, even though isolated acts of solidarity can occur and are appreciated.
Similarly, while the current retreat of the left is partly attributable to the terrible defeats of the unions during the Thatcher era, it is also true that those trade union battles lost to a certain extent because they occurred during the unfavourable political climate of Thatcherism. Class struggle was not sufficient to reverse the political tide, even when the unions were stronger.
As Angela Davis has explained, political change
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16 comes about when there is a mass popular belief that society is both unjust, and must and can change; in such a politically charged atmosphere protestsincluding strikes burst their banks as they become perceived not as sectional but as part of a wider nationalpopular dynamic towards change. Organised labour may have unique power, but to be effective for political change requires a broad popular consensus to already be in place that such change is desirable-which means a political coalition wider than the small section of society who are already class conscious.
In fact we have seen a series of major political challenges, from the miners' strike, to the poll tax, and the campaign against the Iraq war where there have been major upswings of political opposition without it leading to any permanent advance for the left, who are locked into a chronic cycle of secular decline in both numbers and influence. What do we need to do? Any attempt to build a pluralist and inclusive opposition to New Labour must recognise that the tension between New Labour's neo-liberalism and the trade unions, the increasing age profile of Labour's electoral support, and the effect of the Iraq war are causing a complicated period of decomposition, and a very protracted one.
What is missing, and what needs to be built. is a mainstream political strand that advocates public ownership, promotes social equality and opposes militarism and war. The gap that has opened for such a development has been the desertion from the field of social democracy by the Labour Party, and the space can only be filled by a party, that promotes change that appeals to voters as realistic and achievable, although also radical and unafraid of challenging the consensus, and hence it must provide a welcoming home for classstruggle socialists.
The huge advantage of Respect is that it has an independent electoral base, and that Respect has had an MP, and several councillors elected on a hard left political programme. This proves that in the most disadvantaged communities the reservoir of support for progressive politics among the electorate still exists despite years of Blairism.
This advantage means that Respect can talk with authority- -we have proven that we can be elected on our political programme. We have a mandate for radicalism. But regrettably we also know that the particular recipe of Respect's electoral success in East London and Birmingham is not readily transportable to addressed in several ways.
Firstly, winning MPs in parliament, and aspiring to run Tower Hamlets council through increasing our number of councillors are achievable aims, but only if the whole organisation of Respect makes this our overwhelming priority. If we don't achieve this, then any other work we may have done in other areas will prove irrelevant. Tower Hamlets Respect needs to develop a comprehensive plan for running the borough, and publicise it widely.
Secondly, we are simply too small and too geographically limited to counterpose ourselves to the Labour Party as an off the shelf alternative. Traditional left models of branches, resolutions and publications run the risk of unwittingly privileging those from a particular political background, and from geographical areas where Respect has less credibility—whereas Respect should aspire to being led by the best experience from our successful areas, and developing experience based upon our elected representatives. Between now and the next election. we should tilt everything towards Tower Hamlets and Birmingham, and the rest of Respeet should see our task as mainly supporting them, and being led by their agenda. though we obviously need to continue to develop the small but important roots we have in places like Manchester and Bristol.
Thirdly, Respect gained a lot of credibility from the way we supported Ken Livingstone in the London mayoral election. While staying true to our own principles, and still promoting our own party, we also showed that we were not indifferent to the broader concerns of the labour movement.
This last point is vitally important. Credible social democratic polities revolve around the question of winning elections and exercising power. What the trade unions want, and what labour voters want, is a Labour government, that is not what we have had for the last ten years.
The significance of Labour losing the next general election is that it will seriously dent the assumption that Labour is electable by becoming more right wing. The New Labour approach to appealing to middle class voters on Tory policies will have been proven bankrupt. If Respect achieves electoral success on a left wing programme in inner city seats that should be strongholds for Labour, then we will have proven in practice that left wing policies are electable, at least in some seats.
It means that we should also be able to enter a debate about what sort of progressive coalition could win a general election, and given the huge crisis that the Labour Party will be in, there is an opportunity for a radical transformation of the political landscape. A radical left party based only upon the traditional working class voters (and even with trade NEW LABOUR & RESPECT union support) can never win a general election on that basis alone, what we need to do is argue for a vision of transformative political change, a progressive rainbow coalition for social justice and equality. Respect's recognition of the importance of protest and class struggle within that process can keep the momentum to the left.
This work must also start now. Respect cannot easily grow geographically or numerically at present, but we can grow in terms of influence and prestige.
For example, although public support for the neoliberal policies of privatisation and deregulation is diminished, this doesn't mean there is yet positive support for nationalisation and public ownership. Higher taxation for the rich, and increased state intervention in the economy are utterly absent from mainstream political discourse.
Respect should be initiating joint work with others, in Compass, in Plaid Cymru, in the LRC and in the Green party, as well as with academics, think tanks, trade unions and campaigners to positively promote public ownership.
There are myriad issues crying out for such an approach: a more compassionate approach to crime, a progressive answer to mitigating concerns about immigration. It does not fall upon Respect to come up with the "correct answers"it is our job to be part of, and initiating, the debate with the rest of the left, as defined in the broadest possible terms.
VOTE RESPECT George Galloway X