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The second section of a two-part article from a senior figure in the labour and trade union movement who joins the debate on Left Unity and urges those involved in Left Unity to consider that we might be wrong.
Impact of the Crisis
However, it could well be argued that the economic crisis changes the calculations and has, or will shortly, create the elusive “political space” for a new party of the left. In a sense the answer to this has already been supplied. The strength of the left in all countries in Europe is less than it was in easier times a generation ago, as measured by election results. It is, of course, a reconfigured left with some of the old polarities superseded. But the old saw that economic crisis favours the right before the left appears to have some merit still.
In fact, the assumption that economic slump equals a boom for socialism has little historical evidence to support it. The last crisis of this severity in Britain saw off, inter alia , the last party of substance which remotely corresponded to the two-and-a-half initiative Left Unity is championing – the Independent Labour Party. Squeezed between the Labour Party, with no socialist head but a substantial trade union body at the time, and the Communist Party advocating revolution, it incrementally disintegrated.