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Democracy and the Labour Party

Stage-managed spectacle

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This year’s Labour conference confirmed once again that the union tops work hand in glove with the party bureaucracy. Charles Gradnitzer reports

Conference got off to a democratic start, with 65 out of the 132 contemporary motions being ruled out of order before it had even begun.

At least seven of these motions noted the August Care UK strike in Doncaster and committed a future Labour government to implementing a living wage for NHS workers. One might be forgiven for thinking that these motions were ruled out of order due to the machinations of New Labour or Progress types. However, there are five union officials on the seven-member conference arrangements committee (CAC).
Obviously the majority of the CAC’s members do not think a motion that commits the Labour Party to immediately bringing in the living wage should even be allowed on the priorities ballot (although, of course, even if it had been timetabled for discussion, it would likely have been gutted during a compositing meeting).

This depressing beginning set the tone for the conference, which, as most people on the left will be aware, is a well choreographed, stage-managed spectacle. Smarmy speeches are delivered by shadow cabinet ministers; prospective parliamentary candidates are called to speak, one after the other, by a chair who pretends not to know their name; and on those rare occasions when one of the plebs is allowed to go to the podium the regional director is on hand to help write their speech.

The good

On the first day of conference the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty had organised a lobby to highlight the arbitrary rejection of motions on the national health service and to demand that the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy model motion was included in the priorities ballot.1

The NHS, having come out on top in the ballot, was scheduled for debate and the CLPD model motion emerged from the compositing meeting totally unscathed, with all its demands left in place. Unfortunately, however, the motion was quite unambitious, aiming to “end extortionate PFI charges” rather than abolishing PFI altogether and writing off PFI debt, as other motions on the NHS aimed to do. What exactly constitutes an “extortionate” charge is left open to interpretation.

The health and care composite was carried, but, as with the NHS motion that was passed unanimously in 2012,2 it is likely that the motion will be ignored by the Labour leaders, who have no intention of taking privatised services back into public ownership unless they are “failing”.

All three of the CLPD’s rule changes received the backing of the NEC and so were approved by conference. The first ensures that no member of parliament and no shadow minister can be elected to the CAC, the second stipulates that two of the CAC members should be directly elected by the membership of the party, and the third lays down that the ‘three-year rule’, which has historically been used to stop CLPs submitting rule changes, now only applies to rules that have the same purpose rather than the entire section of the rule book.

While these are small victories, compared to the mammoth task the CLPD has set itself of restoring Labour Party democracy and handing power to the members, they nonetheless put the left in a better position to make further democratic gains in the future – you never know, we might actually get to debate leftwing policy at conference.

The bad

These gains were more than outweighed by the speeches of various shadow ministers. Ed Balls was booed and jeered by some when he announced that he would be raising the retirement age, means-testing winter fuel allowance and capping child benefit, but this soon gave way to rapturous applause when he announced that a Labour government would restore the 50p top rate of tax and introduce a ‘mansion tax’ on properties worth over £2 million.

Most of these announcements were nothing new – they were contained in the ‘final year policy’ document, which had not only been available online from the end of July and had been physically mailed to delegates, but, just to make absolutely sure, was handed out during delegates’ regional briefings at the start of conference. However, while the FYP document pledged to raise the retirement age, what was new in Balls’ speech was the announcement on winter fuel allowance and child benefits. In this way the policy-making process, which had been going on for the last five years, was totally bypassed and the proposals could not be voted on.

By far the most sick-making speech of conference was delivered by the shadow defence secretary, Vernon Coaker.3 Coaker began by telling conference that Britain stood for progressive values, such as humanitarianism and internationalism, before thanking his team for campaigning for our “successful and developing” defence industry. He cited the occupation of Afghanistan (responsible for the deaths of some 21,000 civilians) as an example of the UK’s progressive, humanitarian and internationalist role in the world. Britain, he claimed, had helped to improve women’s rights and bring stability to Afghanistan. Other examples of Britain’s humanitarian role included dropping aid in Iraq “alongside US air strikes” to stop Islamic State – “a brutal terrorist organisation which poses a threat to Britain”.

Taking identity politics to the point of absurdity, he confirmed that Labour would introduce an Armed Forces (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill in the first parliament after its election. This would make “discrimination” against or “abuse” of members of the armed forces a crime on a par with racism and sexism. He ended by informing us that Labour is “the patriotic party, the party of Britain”.

He was followed by shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander, who implicitly compared Russia to Nazi Germany by claiming that “no country had seized the territory of another European country by force since 1945”.

The ugly

Awkwardly delivered, full of cringe-inducing anecdotes about various people he had met and containing very little we did not already know, Ed Miliband’s speech was inoffensive and unsurprising. With the exception of the windfall tax on tobacco companies, it did not reveal any policy that had not been included in the NPF document, which had been publicly available for two months.

As everyone knows, the leader was widely criticised for forgetting the section, in his carefully crafted and endlessly rehearsed speech, where he was meant to deal with the deficit and the economy. What was more telling, though, was that he failed to mention the policy on immigration contained in the NPF document. While wrapped in empty platitudes about immigration being good for the economy and promises not to engage in a rhetorical “arms race” with Ukip, Labour’s policy is to “bring it under control” by introducing a “cap on workers from outside of the EU” and prioritising “reducing illegal and low-skilled immigration”. Moreover, Labour plans to do “more to tackle illegal immigration” by introducing “new powers for border staff”. At present, the “situation is getting worse, with fewer illegal immigrants stopped, more absconding, fewer deported and backlogs of information on cases not pursued”.

Neither Miliband nor any of his shadow ministers talked about this aspect – hopefully they would have been booed off the stage had they done so. Mind you, since the policy document runs to some 218 pages, few would have actually read it.

Futility

This parody of a conference is not just an indictment of the Labour Party, but reflects the dire state of the unions and the wider labour movement.

The unions have 30 representatives on the national policy forum – which, among other things, pledged to increase the retirement age, give more powers to the UK Borders Agency, make being rude to members of the armed forces a crime, and continue to spend billions of pounds on Trident. They also comprise more than 70% of the CAC, which, as I have already noted, blocked more than half the motions submitted by constituency Labour Parties. Finally, the unions have half of the votes at conference and typically vote en bloc, meaning that they could, if they wanted to, prevent a lot of this policy from going through.

This demonstrates the futility of any strategy that calls on the unions to break from Labour in order to … forge a second Labour Party. The unions are not simply complicit in passing reactionary policy through conference: they sit on the committees that produce these policies in the first place and act as enforcers for the party bureaucracy to prevent even moderately leftwing policy from being discussed.

We need to be ambitious. The best outcome of the May 2015 general election is not a Miliband-Balls government that carries out Labour cuts, as opposed to Con-Dem cuts. Such a government can only but demoralise Labour voters and create the conditions for an even more rightwing Tory government.
Better to fight for a transformation of the unions, the co-ops and the Labour Party so that they can become weapons in the class war and vehicles for socialism. Meanwhile, let’s stop pretending that a capitalist Labour government is preferable to a capitalist Tory government l

Notes

1 . www.leftfutures.org/2014/08/time-to-get-your-contemporary-motions-in-for-labours-conference.
2 . http://l-r-c.org.uk/news/story/labour-conference-votes-to-restore-the-nhs.
3 . http://press.labour.org.uk/post/98135471954/speech-by-vernon-coaker-mp-to-labour-party-annual.

Nationalism and internationalism

Nation, class unity and political strategy

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Despite the ‘no’ vote in the Scottish referendum the national question has not gone away. Roger Freeman argues for self-determination and a federal republic

Unlike the narrow economism that passes for common sense on too much of the left, the LPM does its best to take a Marxist approach to the UK state. As a minimum demand – ie, within the technical limits imposed by the capitalist system – we emphasise, bring to the fore, class (as opposed to sectional) demands that challenge the logic of the market, such as the provision of health, education and benefits based on need. We give no less emphasis to political demands which challenge how we are ruled. Hence we demand the abolition of the monarchy, the secret state and the House of Lords; we demand a people’s militia, disestablishment of the church of England, election of judges, etc.

What about the national question? Once again we take an approach which seeks to forge class unity and challenge how we are ruled. Hence the demand for the abolition of the acts of union, self-determination for Scotland and Wales, and a federal republic of England, Scotland and Wales (the initial form we envisage working class rule taking in Britain).

Doubtless, John Major, Tony Blair, Peter Hain, Gerry Adams and Alex Salmond have unwittingly done us a great service here. They have shown that the UK constitution is neither timeless nor natural. It is plastic, a product of historical making and contemporary remaking. What has been rearranged from above can be transformed from below.

While there must be an objective dimension when it comes to assessing what is and what is not a nation – eg, a common territory – that hardly means discounting what people think. The coming into being of a British nation in the 18th century cannot be put before the palpable feelings of masses of people in Scotland and Wales today. Millions sincerely believe they are nationally disadvantaged, held back or even oppressed. A subjective factor that only a hopeless dogmatist would discount and therefore fail to harness by offering positive solutions.
Unity

Those who rigidly adhere to third-worldist anti-imperialism cannot possibly bring themselves to countenance self-determination for ‘unworthy’ peoples – the most obvious example being Israeli Jews and the British-Irish in the six counties of Northern Ireland. Given its junior role in founding, administering and exploiting what was a vast British empire, that should logically include Scotland too. After all, historically even “left-of centre”1 Scottish nationalists sought not to end that empire, but demanded, as a “mother nation”, equal rights with England to rob and plunder it.2

Interestingly, though the motivations are transparently different, a similar argument can be heard coming from cosmopolitan liberals. According to the ethical philosopher, Allen Buchanan, self-determination for non-oppressed nations risks endless fragmentation. Unless there has been “a long train of abuses”,3 there ought to be no justification in international law for the “right of self-determination”.4 Only if “serious injustices” have occurred can a case be made for secession as a “remedial right”. Without that safeguard, without that restraint, every region, every community, every street could claim their right to self-determination and thus bring about the complete breakdown of society. Territorial integrity must therefore be upheld.

Marxists are not interested in preserving the unity of capitalist states, but in winning allies and neutralising enemies. After all, the Bolsheviks were prepared to grant self-determination even to the Cossacks. Not, of course, because the Cossacks were deserving, kind and suitably oppressed. No, on the contrary, they were the tsar’s chosen oppressors. A privileged military estate or caste. But that is exactly the point. The Bolsheviks needed to split, if possible win over, the Cossacks. Hence they started to treat them as “an ethnic or national group”.5 Without such a shift the camp of revolution could only but be weakened and the counterrevolution strengthened. In March 1920 Lenin can be found delivering a thoughtful speech on the international situation to the first all-Russia conference of working Cossacks.6

So the demand for self-determination is not some unwarranted sop to petty bourgeois reactionaries, or an unrealisable panacea, a cure-all for capitalism’s national antagonisms. Rather self-determination is one of many weapons in the armoury of Marxists. If properly applied, it advances the interests of the working class.

One can legitimately debate whether or not the Basque country, Kosovo, Quebec, Kurdistan or Scotland tick all the boxes of a classic bourgeois nation. The main point in each and every such case is what people inhabiting each specific territory think. We neither invent nor ignore national movements. We positively deal with problems where they exist, overcome national resentments, conflict and antagonisms by ending involuntarily unity and move towards voluntary unity through the struggle for socialism. That is how the positive dialectic runs, and through winning a wider and wider democracy the majority needed to secure the proletarian revolution is engaged, organised and made ready for decisive action.

Having left no room for doubt that the right to self-determination is fundamentally a political, not a moral question, let us proceed. To state the obvious, when Marxists advocate Scottish self-determination it is not the same as advocating independence.

An oft used metaphor is divorce. Saying a woman should have the legal right to split from her husband is not the same as recommending that contented wives should end their marriages. Of course, as shown by the September 18 referendum, Scotland is far from contented. If Scotland is really ‘better together’ with England why did 45% vote to finish the 300-year union? What was a marriage of convenience has clearly soured.
Scotland, as a matter of principle, ought to have the right to freely decide its own future. That is elementary democracy. However, it does not follow that Marxists are indifferent to how that right is exercised. The unacceptable status quo must be ended. Nowadays it fuels division and disempowers the working class. That is why the various left-loyalist ‘no’ campaigns were so badly mistaken. The marriage has to be renegotiated and renewed on a democratic, socialist basis.

Marxism favours the closest possible voluntary unity of people in general and workers in particular. That means accepting the right of people in Scotland to vote for whatever constitutional arrangement they happen to choose. But at every stage Marxists should resolutely fight for their programme.

Under our specific circumstances the federal republic slogan fits the bill perfectly. It encapsulates the democratic right to self-determination and the radically transformed unity of the working class in Britain against the Cameron-Miliband-Clegg devo-max constitutional monarchy. In addition, the demand for a federal republic encapsulates the unity of the working class in Britain against the divisive nationalism of Salmond, Sauter and Sheridan.

Notes

1 . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Party_of_Scotland.
2 . The policy committee of the National Party of Scotland – one of the forerunners of the SNP – passed the following resolution on November 17 1928: “The party, having regard to the large contribution made by Scotland in building up the British empire, is desirous of increasing the affairs of the empire to the extent her contribution warrants and, as a mother nation, thereby demands complete recognition of her rights as such in the empire … the party cannot, in these circumstances agree to acquiesce in any situation that does not permit of a mother nation excursing her right to independent status and her right in partnership in that empire on terms equal to that enjoyed by England.” In other words, Scottish nationalists wanted a partnership based on the model of Austria-Hungry after 1867 (resolution quoted in C Kidd Unions and unionism: political thought in Scotland 1500-2000 Cambridge 2008, p287).
3 . American declaration of independence 1776.
4 . AE Buchanan Justice, legitimacy, and self-determination Oxford 2003, p331.
5 . P Holquist Making war, forging revolution Harvard Mass 2002, p121.
6 . See VI Lenin CW Vol 30, Moscow 1977, pp380-400.

_____________________

For a federal republic
Motion proposed by Labour Party Marxists

As declining post-boom British imperialism attacked post-war concessions, in the absence of a viable socialist movement resistance in Scotland and Wales often took a nationalist form, deploying a mythologised past.

We socialists stand for:
● working class internationalism, not cross-class national unity; unity with the world’s working class, not with our ruling class;
● opposition to all forms nationalism, exclusiveness or superiority; in particular, British/English national chauvinism and Scottish or Welsh nationalist narrow-mindedness: these obscure the fundamental antagonism between labour and capital;
● replacing the hierarchy of capitalist states by world socialism – working class rule – in transition to classless, stateless, communist society: socialism cannot survive in one country or continent;
● the voluntary merging of nations; the right of all peoples to fully develop their own culture; a democratic solution to the national question, wherever it arises, through upholding the right to self-determination, including the right to merge, stay together or separate.
As the immediate democratic solution to the national question in the UK, we socialists stand for:
● unconditional support for the right of the people of Ireland to reunite: the struggles for socialism in Britain and national liberation in Ireland are closely linked;
● replacing the existing UK constitutional monarchy, along with its House of Lords, established church and secret state, with a radical federal republic of England, Scotland and Wales, with the right of Scotland and Wales to secede.

 

The left

LRC: Inclusivity and intolerance

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Some leading Labour Representation Committee members are displaying an unhealthy aversion to dissenting views. Stan Keable attended the final meeting of its outgoing national committee

Andrew Berry, chairing the Labour Representation Committee national committee on October 4 in the absence of John McDonnell, kicked off the meeting with a gratuitous attack on me and my report of the previous, September 6, NC in Liverpool.1

What goes on at NC meetings is normally reported only to committee members in succinct minutes, which are likely to reach very few of the membership – who, unsurprisingly, remain uninvolved in the organisation and continue to drift away. My suggestions to the Labour Briefing editorial board, of which I am a coopted member – that the organisation should use its own journal to report and publicise the discussions and decisions of its own leading committee – have fallen on deaf ears, or been rejected as necessarily “boring”.
NC meetings are open to rank-and-file members to attend as observers and, time permitting, they can speak in discussion (but not vote, of course): an openness of which the LRC should be rightly proud – if only the members knew about it (and knew when and where the meetings take place, and what is up for discussion). But, if these are not closely guarded secrets, they might as well be. On this occasion, I was again the only observer.
Comrade Berry was “disgusted” by what I had written, which he characterised as “misrepresentation” and “a deliberate attempt to undermine the LRC”. A report of the NC should be “decisions only”, and he warned that my right to attend future NC meetings might be withdrawn if I persisted. He did not allow me to respond to this bureaucratic bullying, but Graham Durham – new to the NC as a delegate from Brent and Harrow LRC – came to my rescue: for him, the report was “legitimate”, and any perceived misrepresentation can be corrected by replying publicly in the Weekly Worker or on the Labour Party Marxists website – something he has done himself in the past. And, I am glad to say, NC member Val Graham, who was name-checked in the report, did in fact post a comment to clarify her own viewpoint.
Honest reporting of the state of the organisation, and honest and open political discussion, are preconditions for its survival and development. Doing this publicly is the way to draw healthy forces into the LRC, into the struggle to transform the Labour Party. The failure to report, the concealing of political differences, the denial of real problems – these are the most effective ways to “undermine” not only the LRC, but the working class struggle for socialism in general.
Unfortunately, comrade Berry’s view does seem to be the majority opinion on both the NC and the Briefing editorial board – although no decision was taken on the matter. The meeting was evidently inquorate, anyway, with only 10 present during Berry’s diatribe, rising to 13 later, during voting on the NC’s statement to be submitted to conference.
One EB member had told me off in a private message, saying my report gave a “distorted impression” and was “unhelpful”; and commenting: “You have let us down”. Here is my reply, which I posted to the EB discussion list:

That is not my intention – I have no interest in wasting my life peddling falsehoods. If you have a different view to me, I suggest you send a letter for publication in Weekly Worker – or in Briefing – rather than telling me off in private, which is inherently an unhealthy form of debate.
I don’t think I have given a distorted impression. If you believe the only problem with Briefing is [a comrade’s] temporary sick leave, then it is you who has a distorted impression, in my opinion. The financial difficulties and dwindling and ageing personnel are quite real, and the future of Briefing is by no means guaranteed. Likewise the LRC itself – as stated clearly by John McDonnell.
What is ‘not helpful’ in overcoming these difficulties is keeping quiet about them: not reporting them fully to LRC NC, to Briefing readers and to LRC members, and thereby involving them all in the necessary discussion – not just about immediate practical problems, but about LRC political strategy, and the role of Briefing as its journal.

Minutes of the September 6 NC meeting were circulated, and – with a few minor statistical corrections – show that I have not “misrepresented” the condition of the organisation. With 13 NC members present, the meeting is confirmed as “inquorate”, and the first item was “Discussion on reasons for inquorate NCs”. Membership and affiliation stats are given as follows: “2,200 members (sic!) on database (paid up 601, 30 students, 28 affiliates) – email chasing up 878 emails sent out, 379 opened it, 38 renewed (4%) …” And only one local group is functioning in London: “Local London groups not meeting at sub-Greater London basis (bar Brent/Harrow, meeting weekly).”2
“Naming people” was wrong, according to comrade Berry; in other words, quoting what NC members say, what positions they take on political matters. And Michael Calderbank explained that “these are not open, public meetings” – they are “delegate meetings”; and it “inhibits debate if people” [representatives of other people] cannot “raise points in confidence”. Michael, this is the opposite of accountability! Should representatives really be unaccountable for their actions and the opinions on which they are based?
These comrades are either elected by and accountable to annual conference (AGM), or delegates representing and accountable to local LRC groups or affiliated trade unions and other organisations. So when we LRC members and delegates from affiliated organisations come to vote, at the forthcoming LRC AGM (November 8), in elections for the national committee and the Labour Briefing EB, we are supposed to do so in blind ignorance of the political positions taken, during the previous year, by individual members of the national committee and the Briefing editorial board.
I am sorry to say that the NC statement incorporates this bureaucratic approach in the ‘LRC culture’ section of its political statement, intended to eliminate ‘bad behaviour’, which is allegedly driving people away. I urge conference to reject or amend it. The best of intentions is first set out – encouraging “participation, solidarity and comradeship”, offering an “open, inclusive and mutually supportive atmosphere”, and striving “to preserve freedom of political debate”. But we must “simultaneously refuse to tolerate any behaviour which … threatens the basic unity and togetherness of the LRC”.
The statement introduces, apparently for the first time, the power of the NC to “suspend or terminate LRC membership … subject to the right of appeal to the LRC’s AGM”. In my view, this goes without saying, and should give no problem, if exercised appropriately. However, point 3 of the “Examples of such behaviour” listed in the statement is a tailor-made bureaucratic weapon for stifling the desired “freedom of political debate”: “Wilfully misrepresenting the views of the LRC, its elected national bodies or officers, whether to other LRC members or the wider public, by any means; including but not limited to word of mouth, in writing, in printed publications, or online via electronic or digital communications or other social media.”
Labour Party Marxists will, of course, continue to report openly as a matter of principle, and will ignore any bureaucratic instruction to shut up. If comrades are ‘misrepresented’, whether “wilfully” or otherwise (who decides?), they have the right and duty to correct what they perceive to be inaccurate. “Freedom of political debate” must include the right to report, and comment on, the views of other comrades.
Notes
1. See ‘A crisis of soul-searching’ Weekly Worker September 11; or http://labourpartymarxists.org.uk/lrc-a-crisis-of-soul-searching.
2. I do need to make a correction to my last report, however. The deadline for 100-word maximum amendments to the NC statement, and to motions, is November 1 – not October 25, which is the deadline for nominations (accompanied by a 100-word maximum election address).

Trade unions

In service of Miliband

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Labour’ annual conference (Manchester, September 21-24) confirmed once again that the union tops work hand in glove with the party bureaucracy. Charles Gradnitzer reports

This year’s Labour Party conference got off to a democratic start, with 65 out of the 132 contemporary motions being ruled out of order before it had even begun.
At least seven of these motions noted the August Care UK strike in Doncaster and committed a future Labour government to implementing a living wage for NHS workers. One might be forgiven for thinking that these motions were ruled out of order due to the machinations of New Labour or Progress types. However, there are five union officials on the seven-member conference arrangements committee (CAC).
Obviously the majority of the CAC’s members do not think a motion that commits the Labour Party to a living wage for Unison members in Doncaster, who are currently staging “one of the longest strikes in the history of the NHS”,1 should even be allowed on the priorities ballot (although, of course, even if it had been timetabled for discussion, it would likely have been gutted during a compositing meeting).
This depressing beginning set the tone for the conference, which, as most people on the left will be aware, is a well choreographed, stage-managed spectacle. Carefully crafted speeches, bereft of political content, are delivered by shadow cabinet ministers; prospective parliamentary candidates are called to speak, one after the other, by a chair who pretends not to know their name; and on those rare occasions when one of the plebs is allowed to go to the podium the regional director is on hand to help write their speech.
The good
On the first day of conference the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty had organised a lobby to highlight the arbitrary rejection of motions on the national health service and to demand that the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy model motion2 was included in the priorities ballot.
The NHS, having come out on top in the ballot, was scheduled for debate and the CLPD model motion emerged from the compositing meeting totally unscathed, with all its demands left in place. Unfortunately, however, the motion was quite unambitious, aiming to “end extortionate PFI charges” rather than abolishing PFI altogether and writing off PFI debt, as other motions on the NHS aimed to do. What exactly constitutes an “extortionate” charge is left open to interpretation.
The health and care composite was carried, but, as with the NHS motion that was passed unanimously in 2012,3 it is likely that the motion will be ignored by the Labour leaders, who have no intention of taking privatised services back into public ownership unless they are “failing”.
All three of the CLPD’s rule changes received the backing of the NEC and so were approved by conference. The first ensures that no member of parliament and no shadow minister can be elected to the CAC, the second stipulates that two of the CAC members should be directly elected by the membership of the party, and the third lays down that the ‘three-year rule’, which has historically been used to stop CLPs submitting rule changes, now only applies to rules that have the same purpose rather than the entire section of the rule book.
While these are small victories, compared to the mammoth task the CLPD has set itself of restoring Labour Party democracy and handing power to the members, they nonetheless put the left in a better position to make further democratic gains in the future – you never know, we might actually get to debate leftwing policy at conference.
The bad
These gains were more than outweighed by the speeches of various shadow ministers. Ed Balls was booed and jeered by some when he announced that he would be raising the retirement age, means-testing winter fuel allowance and capping child benefit, but this soon gave way to rapturous applause when he announced that a Labour government would restore the 50p top rate of tax and introduce a ‘mansion tax’ on properties worth over £2 million.
Most of these announcements were nothing new – they were contained in the ‘final year policy’ document, which had not only been available online from the end of July and had been physically mailed to delegates, but, just to make absolutely sure, was handed out during delegates’ regional briefings at the start of conference. However, while the FYP document pledged to raise the retirement age, what was new in Balls’ speech was the announcement on winter fuel allowance and child benefits. In this way the policy-making process, which had been going on for the last five years, was totally bypassed and the proposals could not be voted on.
By far the most sick-making speech of conference was delivered by the shadow defence secretary, Vernon Coaker.4 Coaker began by telling conference that Britain stood for progressive values, such as humanitarianism and internationalism, before thanking his team for campaigning for our “successful and developing” defence industry. He cited the occupation of Afghanistan (responsible for the deaths of some 21,000 civilians) as an example of the UK’s progressive, humanitarian and internationalist role in the world. Britain, he claimed, had helped to improve women’s rights and bring stability to Afghanistan. Other examples of Britain’s humanitarian role included dropping aid in Iraq “alongside US air strikes” to stop Islamic State – “a brutal terrorist organisation which poses a threat to Britain”.
Taking identity politics to the point of absurdity, he confirmed that Labour would introduce an Armed Forces (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill in the first parliament after its election. This would make “discrimination against” or “abuse” of members of the armed forces a crime on a par with racism and sexism. He ended by informing us that Labour is “the patriotic party, the party of Britain”.
He was followed by shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander, who implicitly compared Russia to Nazi Germany by claiming that “no country had seized the territory of another European country by force since 1945”.
The ugly
Awkwardly delivered, full of cringe-inducing anecdotes about various people he had met and containing very little we did not already know, Ed Miliband’s speech was inoffensive and unsurprising. With the exception of the windfall tax on tobacco companies, it did not reveal any policy that had not been included in the NPF document, which had been publicly available for two months.
As readers will know, the leader was widely criticised for forgetting to talk about immigration and the economy, although these subjects were covered by Ed Balls, who also promised “fair movement of labour, not free movement of labour”, and reiterated the 2013 policy that, for every skilled foreign worker a big firm hires, they must also take on an apprentice.
What was more telling, though, was what he failed to mention about the policy on immigration contained in the NPF document. While wrapped in empty platitudes about immigration being good for the economy and promises not to engage in a rhetorical “arms race” with Ukip, Labour’s policy is to “bring it under control” by introducing a “cap on workers from outside of the EU” and prioritising “reducing illegal and low-skilled immigration”. Moreover, Labour plans to do “more to tackle illegal immigration” by introducing “new powers for border staff”. At present, the “situation is getting worse, with fewer illegal immigrants stopped, more absconding, fewer deported and backlogs of information on cases not pursued”.
Neither Miliband nor any of his shadow ministers talked about this aspect – hopefully they would have been booed off the stage had they done so. Mind you, since the policy document runs to some 218 pages, few people would have actually read it.
Futility
This parody of a conference is not just an indictment of the Labour Party, but reflects the dire state of the unions and the wider labour movement.
The unions have 30 representatives on the national policy forum – which, among other things, pledged to increase the retirement age, give more powers to the UK Borders Agency, make being rude to members of the armed forces a crime, and continue to spend billions of pounds on Trident. They also comprise more than 70% of the CAC, which, as I have already noted, blocked more than half the motions submitted by constituency Labour parties. Finally, the unions have half of the votes at conference and typically vote en bloc, meaning that they could, if they wanted to, prevent a lot of this policy from going through.
This demonstrates the futility of any strategy that calls on the unions to break from Labour in order to … forge a second Labour Party. The unions are not simply complicit in passing reactionary policy through conference: they sit on the committees that produce these policies in the first place and act as enforcers for the party bureaucracy to prevent even moderately leftwing policy from being discussed.
Without a thoroughgoing, democratic transformation of the unions, combined with a programme of political education, any attempt to split the unions from Labour would either fail or produce something similar to the current Labour Party, which is not and never was a vehicle for socialism.
Notes
1. The Guardian August 9.
2. www.leftfutures.org/2014/08/time-to-get-your-contemporary-motions-in-for-labours-conference.
3. http://l-r-c.org.uk/news/story/labour-conference-votes-to-restore-the-nhs.
4. http://press.labour.org.uk/post/98135471954/speech-by-vernon-coaker-mp-to-labour-party-annual.

The left

LRC: A crisis of soul searching

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The Labour Representation Committee’s leadership is anticipating a ‘make or break’ annual general meeting on November 8. Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists reports

The 21st century version of the Labour Representation Committee1 was formed in 2004 as a response to the domination of the party by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s New Labour. It is now enveloped in a crisis of self-doubt. Membership secretary Norrette Moore reported to the national committee meeting in Liverpool on September 6 that individual paid-up membership was down by about a quarter to 601, plus only 30 student members and 28 affiliated organisations. She did not name the latter, but reported, worryingly, that 151 organisations had not (yet) re-affiliated this year. Furthermore, 837 reminder emails to previous individual members had produced only 37 renewals. Chairperson John McDonnell said that individual membership had previously held steady at about 800 for a few years, so we are “200 light”. He characterised the forthcoming November 8 annual general meeting in Friends Meeting House, Euston, as a “make or break” event, and said that the executive committee wanted the AGM to focus on debating the LRC’s strategy. That will be the subject of the NC statement to be submitted to the AGM. Each affiliate and local group can submit one motion (deadline: October 3), and one amendment to either the NC statement or to a motion (deadline: October 25).The optimistic vision of a flowering of local, campaigning LRC groups has not materialised. With the honourable exception of Sussex (whose comrades were busy at the national NHS demo in London on September 6), the weekly discussion meetings of Brent and Harrow, and a small Leeds group, there was little to report about local organisation. The Greater London LRC meetings still consist of individuals, not delegates from local groups, as had been hoped.Comrade McDonnell’s series of “people’s parliament” discussion meetings in a House of Commons committee room had been packed, showing that “there is a constituency out there for our ideas”, but the LRC had not achieved a high profile and needs to find a distinctive role. And the organisation had not found fresh young blood to replace its ageing cadre, he said. Previous joint secretary Andrew Fisher, who had played a major role in running the LRC, now has young children and was busy in his role as policy officer for the PCS union. Likewise, LRC protégé Owen Jones has found fresh pastures.

Surprisingly, the NC did not discuss the similar crisis afflicting its journal, Labour Briefing, which is facing both personnel and financial difficulties. There was no report of the August “emergency meeting” of its editorial board.

The LRC’s existential crisis seems paradoxical at a time when New Labour is a tainted brand and the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance, which the LRC supports, is celebrating “the best left result since the mid-1980s”2 in the recent elections for the party’s 33-member national executive committee. In the battle for the six constituency Labour Party seats, the CLGA slate won four places and 55% of the votes cast. Kate Osamor was elected for the first time, along with incumbents Ken Livingstone, Ann Black and Christine Shawcroft, while Pete Willsman and Darren Williams were the closest runners-up. Only the CLGA had put up a full slate of six, while the rightwing Labour First stood just two candidates – Ellie Reeves, who came third after Livingstone and Black, and Luke Akehurst, who lost his seat. The two Progress-backed Blairite candidates gratifyingly failed to make it, showing that money is not yet everything in the Labour Party.

However, we should not exaggerate the effect of this small left advance – the CLGA has won four out of six constituency seats on previous occasions, in 1998 and in 2006, but that did not stop Blair going to war or the introduction of his government’s neoliberal economics. And in August left MP Dennis Skinner was voted off the NEC, where he had sat throughout the New Labour years as one of the three representatives elected by MPs and MEPs. The fact that he was tolerated for so long surely only demonstrates how unimportant the party’s NEC is to the Parliamentary Labour Party and the professional, pro-capitalist, careerist politicians who dominate it.

Poor attendance

I had travelled up to Liverpool to attend the NC meeting as an observer. As an individual member of the organisation (I am also a member of the editorial board of Labour Briefing), I was able to speak, but not vote. In any case, only a dozen NC members turned up, so the committee was inquorate and could take no decisions. This has often happened when meetings were held outside London, but the previous meeting in July was in London, and that had been inquorate too. So decision-making falls to the smaller executive committee.

Unite delegate Judith Atkinson asked, “Why the poor attendance?” and John McDonnell, chairing, made this the main topic of the NC meeting. He set the tone by saying that he had been asking various (unnamed) activists whether they thought the LRC should continue, and had mostly received only a hesitant and half-hearted ‘yes’.

North West Unite youth activist Tom Butler wondered why his union seems to have “pulled the plug” on the LRC – perhaps referring to the several absent Unite NC members. Susan Press responded that Unite was now funding “campaign weekends”, which may be more attractive to their activists than anything the LRC can put on. More to the point, I think, the Unite bureaucracy can manage perfectly well without the LRC, and now that the Defend the Link campaign against the Collins proposals is over, it does not want to rock the boat before the general election.

Susan Press also claimed bad behaviour and hostile arguments in the LRC had driven people away. Islington councillor Charlene Pullen, she said, had walked out of the organisation because of the “hostility” she encountered in the two annual conferences she had attended. One wonders whether she would walk out of council meetings when faced with hostility from Tory councillors. In fact, as I recall, the councillor was barracked from the floor for voting for cuts – albeit as part of Islington Labour’s ‘dented shield’ policy (‘a Labour cut is a better cut’) – which some comrades (Graham Durham, among others) had thought incompatible with LRC membership, and indulged in some pointed heckling.

Of course, disruptive behaviour should not be allowed to prevent discussion. But attempting to ban heckling, announcing that it will not be tolerated and anyone engaging in it will be removed, as successive LRC conference chairpersons have done (including comrade Press, I recall), is counterproductive and dangerous. Have we forgotten how comrade Walter Wolfgang was manhandled out of a New Labour conference? He expressed his opposition to the Iraq war … by heckling. Behind the charges of bad behaviour is the desire to silence unwanted critics.

Val Graham (Chesterfield) made a similar complaint. She had been on the receiving end – presumably on the LRC’s or Briefing’s Facebook page – of “accusations”, she said. For example, she had been called “pro-fascist” and “pro-imperialist” in online arguments about Ukraine. Such accusations are indeed serious – but they are not simply mindless insults. They are political epithets, expressing sincerely held views. If they are wrong, they need to be answered, not silenced. Unfortunately, two motions on Ukraine submitted to the NC by Brent and Harrow LRC were not discussed, using the rather convenient excuse that the meeting was inquorate – grounds which could just as well have been used to justify discussing nothing at all.

Desperation

A dozen more comrades joined the NC members for the evening public meeting, and heard Clara Paillard (PCS), Manuel Cortes (TSSA), Ian Hodson (BFAWU), and Sheila Coleman (Hillsborough Justice Campaign). The theme, “A trade union agenda for Labour”, was taken from John McDonnell’s lead article in the LRC’s four-page hand-out for the annual Trades Union Congress. His article complains that “for three decades the proportion of wealth generated within our economy has grown dramatically for capital, but declined for labour.”

But the response of comrade McDonnell and the LRC is one of desperation – hoping against hope that the ‘next Labour government’ can be persuaded or pressurised to defend working class interests, and that the trade unions, dominated as they are by a self-serving bureaucratic caste, will do the persuading.

On the contrary: while we certainly need socialist MPs and MEPs elected on an explicitly socialist programme to act as tribunes of the people, we should not be campaigning for Labour to form a government to run capitalism, which would attack its base, disempower and demobilise the working class movement and thereby pave the way for a yet more reactionary Tory government – a process we have seen often enough, and which should not be stupidly repeated.

The workers’ movement should only attempt to form a government when it has a reasonable chance of defeating the capitalist class and sustaining socialist development – and that will require the active support of the vast majority of the working class and the population as a whole (not just 51% of voters). And it will require that level of support across Europe too. Our present task is the long haul to rebuild and re-educate the movement to reach that level of readiness, and that struggle must be done in opposition to any capitalist government. Given the present appalling condition of the left and the workers’ movement, we need the ‘next Labour government’ like a hole in the head.

For comrade McDonnell, however, “The return of a Labour government provides the opportunity to redress this latest history of exploitation. If the next Labour government is to stand any chance of tackling the grotesque inequalities of present-day Britain, it needs a trade union agenda.” There follows a wish-list of good things the trade unions should persuade Labour to do.

But the Labour-loyal trade union bureaucrats are already ensuring they will not rock the boat in the run-up to May 2015. That is surely why they closed ranks and voted for the rotten compromise of the final Collins proposals. And at the July meeting of the national policy forum the union delegates – all except Bectu – voted down an amendment calling for an emergency budget to reject Tory spending plans for 2015-16 and beyond and to set out a policy of investment for jobs and growth.

Here, it seems, we have trade union representatives voting against the policies adopted by their own unions – showing the need to democratise the unions, to make the bureaucracy the servant, not the master, as an essential part of the struggle to do the same in the Labour Party.

If only the front bench will listen and adopt leftwing policies, runs the argument, then it can win enough votes to form a government. The Tory-led coalition government must be got rid of at all costs! A Labour government is the only alternative! But, as Darren Williams writes in the same LRC hand-out, “anything less than a clean break with austerity will put the next government on a collision course with its own natural supporters”. In fact we need much more than a break with austerity. The struggle to democratise and transform our trade unions and party into forces for socialism has nothing to do with putting pro-capitalist Labour politicians into government.

Notes

1. Founded by the Trades Union Congress in 1900 to give working class interests independent representation in parliament, the original Labour Representation Committee went on to become the Labour Party in 1906. Not a socialist party, but a federal party open to affiliation by all working class organisations – trade unions, socialist organisations and cooperatives – until the chimera of clause four ‘socialism’ was introduced in 1918, along with individual membership and constituency organisations. The newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain was denied affiliation in 1920, and bans and proscriptions against communists and the left were gradually introduced. The outlawing of the left was accompanied by freedom for anti-working class rightwing careerists to impose welfare cuts, wage restraint, strike-breaking, anti-trade union laws, imperialist wars and neoliberal privatisation and austerity, while retaining their Labour Party membership.

2. www.leftfutures.org/2014/08/labour-executive-elections-left-win-best-result-since-1980s-with-55-of-members-votes.

Democracy and the Labour Party, Trade unions

Labour: Unions vote to be distanced

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Delegate Charles Gradnitzer reports on Labour’s special conference

As readers will know, the Labour Party endorsed the Collins review at its special conference held in London on March 1. Collins requires trade unionists to “opt in” to become second-tier members of the Labour Party, introduces ‘one member, one vote’ for elections of the party leader, imposes primaries for the selection of the candidate for London mayor against the wishes of London Labour and requires “registered supporters” to pay a fee for the privilege.1

Nobody expected conference to be anything other than a rubber-stamping exercise to give the ‘reforms’ a democratic veneer. The apparatchiks of the Labour Party are such experts in stage-management and stitch-ups, they could make a lucrative career teaching theatre and haberdashery.

In the run-up to conference delegates received numerous letters from Ed Miliband urging us to vote for the reforms. One such letter told the story of Paul, a lifelong trade unionist and figment of Miliband’s imagination, who finally joined the Labour Party after the reforms were announced – on the basis that “until now the party never felt democratic. It never felt like one I could join.” This anecdotal approach was commonplace throughout the entire affair.

One encouraging development before the conference had been the February Young Labour conference, which had narrowly voted to reject Collins. This came as a surprise to many, as Labour Students has often been dominated by rightwing careerists, and prompted Labour Party headquarters to issue a statement explaining that “some people may find change difficult to accept”.2

But there was no chance of that being repeated on March 1, despite the opposition of several groups which turned up outside the Excel Centre. Labour Party Marxists was amongst them, distributing our special bulletin.3 The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy had produced its usual Yellow Pages,4 which comrades from the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Labour Representation Committee and Socialist Appeal were helping to distribute.

Surprisingly, a small contingent from the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition was also opposing the reforms. In a rather surreal scene the comrades – no doubt members of the Socialist Party in England and Wales – followed Ed Miliband in their dust masks, shouting, “Don’t let Labour silence the unions”, as he arrived.5

Inside the hall Miliband used his opening speech to attack the Conservative Party as a bunch of “out-of-touch toffs” and joked feebly that the Liberal Democrats would have their next conference in Nick Clegg’s local garden centre or a telephone box.6 And there were more of those anecdotes. We were told about Tracey, a union member and mother of three who had not voted in 20 years. She feels as though politics does not speak to her. Assuming she is not another figment of Miliband’s imagination or a product of his PR team, it was unclear exactly how these reforms were going to convince “Tracey” to vote for the party, let alone join it.

What his speech lacked was any logic or reason bridging the chasm between his truisms and the reforms he was asking us to vote for. It is perfectly true, for example, that movements change things and that it was the labour movement that won workers’ rights at the beginning of the 20th century, but it was not explained how completely ending collective affiliation or imposing primaries for the London mayoral selection would build on those achievements.

But, of course, making Labour part of a vibrant mass movement is the last thing Miliband wants to do. And his nod in the direction of the party’s reformist past was at odds with his assertion that he found support for nationalisation “worrying”. Even though polls show 70% support for renationalisation of the utility companies and the railways7and such a policy was passed unanimously at the 2013 Labour conference, it is clear that, in a tradition stretching back to the 1924 Ramsay MacDonald government, this policy will be ignored by the parliamentary party on the ostensible grounds that Labour needs to show that it is “fit to govern”.8

Fair and balanced 

When Miliband had finished, a point of order was raised by a CLPD supporter – who was booed and jeered, as she walked up to the rostrum – presumably for exercising her basic democratic right. She asked why there had been no conference arrangements committee report and what had happened to the emergency motions that had been submitted by several CLPs calling for the review to be taken in parts.9

Angela Eagle replied from the chair to the effect that the CAC had met in January, and immediately asked, “Can we please move on?” – to the enthusiastic applause of many. Clearly if the CAC met in January, then it would not have been able to consider submitted motions or actually do any arranging, as the Collins review was not published till February.

Speakers were called in rounds of three and the first six were all in favour of Collins. Their speeches were obviously well rehearsed and followed the same disjointed, truism-cum-‘support the reforms’ pattern of Miliband’s speech.

Several union general secretaries walked up to the rostrum to urge delegates to vote in favour. They included Paul Kenny (GMB), who not eight months ago had opposed the reforms on the Todayprogramme.10 He was followed by Dave Prentis (Unison), Len McCluskey (Unite), John Hannett (Usdaw) and Tosh McDonald (Aslef), who all praised Miliband and called for a Labour victory in 2015.

Eventually Angela Eagle asked those opposed to the reforms to indicate if they wanted to speak, but, despite her promise of a balanced debate and the comparatively large number who had indicated, only six out of 27 people called from the floor were opposed to the review. They included Pete Firmin, political secretary of the Labour Representation Committee, who has written a report of the conference for the LRC website,11 and Dame Margaret Beckett.

Steve Brown argued that the way to win mass support for the Labour Party was through having “good policies”, such as renationalisation, while Richard Johnson said that the move to an opt-in system could lead to a £7 million shortfall in party funding, which could only be mitigated by state funding and so would be unpopular with the electorate.

When it came to the vote, 96% of the affiliates (mainly trade unions) and 74% of the Constituency Labour Parties voted in favour of the reforms, giving a total of 86.29% in favour and 13.71% against.

The closing speech was delivered by Leicester South MP Jon Ashworth, who congratulated Angela Eagle on her “fair and balanced” chairing. Though laughable, this was hardly surprising, coming from a man who was once national secretary of Labour Students.

Reclaim the unions

The opt-in system was originally introduced by the Tories in the 1927 Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act in order to damage the Labour Party and was finally repealed in 1945 by the Attlee government. It resulted in an 18% decrease in party funding.12 Which begs the question: is the Labour Party committing financial suicide? The answer to that perhaps lies in the timetable.

The Collins review establishes an implementation group to oversee the reforms. The timetable given for the transition from ‘opt-out’ to ‘opt-in’ for the unions is five years – well after the next general election. However, if in 2015 Labour is unable to secure state funding for political parties by forming a government either alone or in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, who also support state funding,13 then the whole thing could be dropped.

The other question is, why did the unions overwhelmingly vote to end collective affiliation? Christine Shawcroft, in her report of the national executive meeting that endorsed Collins, said: “I believe that several trade union delegates opposed the report, but felt that they were in a difficult position: as their general secretaries had negotiated the proposals, they didn’t feel they were able to vote against.”

The union bureaucrats were always going to come to a compromise. They were never going to vote against. This is hardly in the interests of their members, as collective affiliation represented a progressive gain for the working class. Those arguing for Collins championed liberal individualism over collective decision-making. But, once a democratic decision has been made by a collective organisation – whether to collectively affiliate to a political party or vote for industrial action – there should be no right for individuals to opt out: ie, to scab, either politically or economically.

In an article entitled ‘Labour has betrayed its roots by distancing itself from the unions’14 Bianca Todd of Left Unity has argued that Labour is no longer the party that reflects trade union values, the party of people like her father, Ron Todd, the former general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union. Since it is now hopeless trying to “reclaim” the Labour Party, disenchanted members should join Left Unity instead.

Leaving aside the fact that the trade unions themselves block-voted for Labour to ‘distance itself’ from them, when has the party ever ‘reflected trade union values’, let alone acted in the class interests of workers? It was precisely because the Labour Party sought to become a respectable party of government, to demonstrate that it was “fit to govern”, that it has repeatedly “betrayed” the working class. Because it sought to manage capitalism (allegedly in the interests of the working class), it had no option but to behave in that way.

So the idea that a Labour Party mark two would behave differently is absurd – not that LU has any hope of becoming one. Left-of-Labour electoral projects come and go, but have never offered a real alternative; they merely promise the same thing – a ‘fairer’ capitalism, thanks to sensible Keynesian management. But how that will happen without Labour’s established voter base and trade union backing is anyone’s guess.

The Labour Party can be neither ‘reclaimed’ – it was never ours – nor sidestepped. Yes, it is possible for the union leaders to demand policies in the interests of their members, but that assumes that those leaders are accountable to their members in the first place. By winning control of our own organisations – first and foremost the unions – we could hope to transform Labour into a different sort of party. But the Labour question must be confronted head on; we cannot wish it away.

Notes

1. www.scribd.com/doc/210583833/THE-COLLINS-REVIEW-INTO-LABOUR-PARTY-REFORM.

2. http://labourlist.org/2014/02/labour-hq-defends-party-reforms-as-young-labour-votes-to-oppose-collins-review.

3. http://labourpartymarxists.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/lpm4_feb2014.pdf.

4. http://home.freeuk.net/clpd/Yellow_Pages_140301.pdf.

5. http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/18236/03-03-2014/tusc-campaigners-cause-stir-at-labour-rules-change-conference.

6. www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/03/ed-milibands-speech-labours-special-conference-full-text.

7. http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/11/04/nationalise-energy-and-rail-companies-say-public/

8. RN Kelly, J Cantrell Modern British statesmen 1867-1945Manchester 1997, p149.

9. www.christineshawcroft.co.uk/nec/20140204.

10. http://labourlist.org/2013/07/paul-kenny-says-wed-be-lucky-to-get-10-of-gmb-members-opting-in-to-the-party-might-such-low-take-up-end-the-union-link-by-default.

11. http://l-r-c.org.uk/news/story/labours-special-conference-report.

12. SJ Lee Aspects of British political history 1914-1995 Oxford 1996, pp94.

13. The Guardian September 6 2013.

14. The Guardian March 3 2014.

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance

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Is there a case for the left to field its own candidates for Labour’s National Executive Committee? Ken Williamson calls for the left to take courage

Only two NEC members, Christine Shawcroft and Dennis Skinner, voted against the Collins review on February 4, and one of the six Unite delegates, Martin Meyer, abstained.

This has caused some confusion on the left. The Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance has chosen a six-strong slate for the next NEC election … and some comrades cannot now countenance voting for Ann Black and Ken Livingstone because they voted for the Collins review. However, backing the slate is common sense: after all, it is the only ‘left’ show in town. And supporting the six does not – must not – mean keeping criticisms private. We need to engage the rank and file in political discussion on every issue, to develop understanding. Withdrawing support from NEC members would be churlish and sectarian – if the left cannot summon the courage to field its own candidates. Nominations are open until June 20. Indeed it would be quite legitimate for us on the left to put up NEC candidates in order to fight openly for our strategic aim of winning active mass support for the political programme of working class socialism, and rebuilding the trade unions and Labour Party on socialist lines as part of that strategy.

In point of fact, that would be the best way to critique the “progressive policies” of the CLGRA slate, which dreams of a leftwing Labour government running a reformed British capitalism (Ed Miliband’s vision), in which funding “improvements in housing, health, education, transport and state pensions” depends on getting the (British, capitalist) economy growing. An Ed Miliband government, like all previous Labour governments running capitalism, will attack our class and undermine and weaken the workers’ movement. Rebuilding our movement from its present politically weak condition must be done in opposition to a capitalist government of any stripe.