These are grim times indeed for any socialists still hoping for a chance to "reclaim the Labour Party" from the clutches of Bomber Blair. Last month's dire party conference in Brighton exhibited all of the wellworn symptoms of New Labour's irreversible and terminal decline as any form of voice for working people.
But it also brought fresh confirmation that - despite the fervent hopes of spineless backbenchers and weakkneed union bureaucrats -no signiticant change of course will take place when Gordon Brown takes over the helm.
First the malaise: Labour's conference, the last vestige of the heyday of left Labour activism, is now a gutted Blairite parody, weaker and less relevant than ever.
The party itself is halved in membership from the peak before the 1997 election, with more disgruntled members still leaving in droves: the rush for the exit opposition any increase in the retirement age for public sector workers.
In each case the trade unions have emerged as the unlikely torchbearers for causes which previously would have been led by the Labour left.
Even as they cast their votes in what everyone saw
empty gesture of protest, the union leaders -whose block votes and political funds have created and sustained Blair and New
KE ~1996 h T&G for example mobilised its card vote in support of secondary strike action, while merrily selling out their own members in the Gate Gourmet dispute.
But T&G leader Tony Woodley was not the only one _to flunk the Gate Gourmet test: Gordon Brown's low-key speech to this year's TUC, at which he pointedly refused to give any support to the union cause against this classically vicious employer, summed up his message to all and sundry - that Brown is no more sympathetic to Old Labour or trade union issues than the man he is expected to replace.
The union leadconference, the ers must also carry some of the last vestige of blame for this political impasse. Their weakness encourages Blair's hard line.
UNISON's political challenge to NHS privatisation, for example - following similar motion passed by the TUC - was a stable doorlocking exercise: their Brighton which calls for the policies to be "reviewed", has no connection to any action, or threat of action on the ground to force a halt to the privatisation process.
But while a gesture could at least be made through the four dissident motions, the Party's refusal, yet again, to permit a debate or a vote on the issue of the war and the occupation of Iraq under...TONY BLAIR LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
HS lined the complete contempt Blair's team has for rank and file party activists, trade unionists and anyone who disagrees with them. This point could have been more effectively drummed had the Stop the War march, which on the Saturday prior to the conference mobilised 100,000 to call for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, gone through the middle of Brighton rather than London. The continued decline and degeneration of New Labour will not necessarily catapult recruits to build Respect as a left
Labour's wing alternative: it
necessary tight to win many demoralised the heyday of Labour supporters
and convince them
left Labour
that a serious new activism, is now party can be built a gutted Blairite from the signifiScant but limited parody, weaker base that Respect
and less has so far managed relevant than to establish.
As union leaders ever. pack up their left speeches, roll up their banners and breathe more easily, feeling that the heat is now off after the end of this year's round of annual conferences, Respect must offer union members and campaigners a fighting programmie. Respect must battle to fill the ground abdicated by Blair and Brown, and become the new voice speaking up for working people and the oppressed, and mobilising them to fight back.