https://socialistaction.org/2019/12/29/british-election-a-victory-for-the-far-right-a-crisis-for-the-left/
British Election: A Victory for the Far Right. A Crisis for the Left
Socialist Action
/
15 hours ago
By NEIL FAULKNER and PHIL HEARSE
(Socialist Action publishes this article as part of the ongoing
discussion on the meaning of the recent overwhelming Conservative Party
election victory
and the future prospects of the defeated British Labor Party of Jeremy
Corbyn. The article originally appeared in the new publication Mutiny,
http://www.timetomutiny.org)
The British ruling class has much to celebrate. Their party – the party
of the rich and the corporations – has won its biggest majority since
1987. Our
party – the party of working people – has suffered its worst result
since 1935.
They are right to celebrate. Millions of working-class people, many of
them in once rock-solid Labour seats based on traditional industry and
union power,
have voted for the party of the bosses. This is the story in many former
mining constituencies, where the victims of Thatcher’s destruction of
the coal
industry and the National Union of Miners (NUM) have now come full
circle and voted for Thatcher’s party. It is a story repeated in a
swathe of ‘Red Wall’
old industrial centers in the North and the Midlands.
The profiteers are celebrating with a share-price hike. The Tory
tabloids are running triumphalist headlines: ‘Rejoice! Boris set for
thumping majority’
(Daily Mail), and ‘The British Lion Roars for Boris and Brexit’ (Daily
Express). Michael Gove bragged that the British people had rejected
Corbyn’s ‘division,
extremism, and anti-Semitism.’
Johnson himself – a racist bully, serial liar, and self-serving
narcissist in the Trump mold – has proclaimed ‘a people’s government’ of
‘one-nation Tories’:
the party of the elites masquerading as a party of people against
elites. The implication, perhaps, is that the rest of us are ‘enemies of
the people’.
Indeed, it is clear that ‘one-nation Conservatism’ has acquired a new,
darker, more sinister meaning, one with echoes of 1930s-style fascist
plebiscites.
The shallow commentators of the mainstream media – Laura Kuenssberg,
Andrew Neil, Nick Robinson, and many others – are puffed up with smug,
self-satisfied,
‘told-you-so’ sneers at the very idea of a social-democratic alternative
to the chaos, misery, and greed of neoliberal capitalism.
And the Labour Right are resurgent, unleashing a torrent of vitriolic
attacks on Corbyn, blaming him and the Left for the defeat, preparing
the political
offensive they will now mount to destroy the Labour Party’s
social-democratic character and turn it back into an identikit Blairite
neoliberal party.
The demonization of Corbyn
The struggle continues. It will be harder now, but it continues. First,
though, we must analyze what has gone wrong. Socialists have to stare
reality in
the face. They have to understand the world in order to organize to
change it. Here is our view on what we think has gone wrong.
The election result is a massive setback for the working class and the
Left. It will mean a deepening of neoliberalism under a hard-right
government, threatening
the living standards and democratic rights of millions. Every part of
the public sector and welfare state will be under attack.
An historic opportunity to implement a radical, anti-neoliberal
alternative has been lost. This has happened because of the frantic and
unprecedented campaign
of vilification against Corbyn, Labour, and the Left – by the
increasingly reactionary mass media and the Tories (of course), but
also, from almost Day
One of Corbyn’s leadership, by the Labour Right. A large majority of the
PLP (Parliamentary Labour Party), some right-wing union leaders, much of
the old
party apparatus, and of course the right wing of the party at regional
and local levels have all contributed to this.
Crucial planks in the anti-Corbyn slander campaign have been some
Guardian and Observer columnists, as well as journalists on BBC2’s
Newsnight and Channel
4 News. The relentless media hounding of Corbyn has been one reason why
many working-class, middle-class, and student voters abandoned Labour.
Throughout his leadership, Jeremy Corbyn has been hampered by having a
big majority against him in the PLP, and no secure majority in the
Shadow Cabinet
or, for much of the time, on the Labour NEC.
The failure of conciliation
In response, the path chosen by the Labour leadership was to conciliate
and compromise with the Right. This did not work. Even though the 2016
Owen Smith
leadership challenge was a fiasco, the Labour Right did not give up –
not for one moment.
The Corbyn team, however, refused to unleash the potential of Momentum
and other left-wingers in a campaign to de-select right-wing MPs. This
would have
led to civil war inside the party, of course, but an open civil war – as
opposed to the permanent, backroom, semi-clandestine campaign against
Corbyn waged
by the Right.
Let us be explicit. What has been defeated in the general election is an
attempt to get a radical left government into power on the back of a
parliamentary
party strongly opposed to it.
That defeat has also been caused by the chronic inability of the Corbyn
leadership to stand up to the Right inside and outside the party on two
crucial
issues.
The anti-Semitism smear
First, the decision not to resist the smear campaign on anti-Semitism
has been a disaster. For those who launched this campaign, the primary
objective
was to prevent a pro-Palestinian government being elected, and to
de-legitimize pro-Palestinian activism. The abject refusal to
simultaneously combat anti-Semitism
and to fight the smear campaign was a disaster. ‘Roll with the punches
and it will all go away’ has been a catastrophic mistake.
In the face of the anti-Semitism smear – which began with the attack on
Ken Livingstone in 2016 – the Corbyn leadership has not so much fudged
as capitulated.
If you don’t run, they can’t chase you. But the Labour leadership ran,
and the onslaught – from the Tories, the Liberal Democrats, the
Blairites, the gutter
press, the BBC, even The Guardian – has been relentless ever since.
The ludicrous notion that Corbyn is an anti-Semite, that Labour is
institutionally racist, that the party has allowed anti-Jewish hatred to
flourish in
its ranks has been mainstreamed. And the conflation between
anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism has been such that the party leadership
has attempted to silence
all criticism of Israel and shut down any solidarity with the
Palestinians among the membership: a pitiful betrayal of
internationalism and the oppressed
in the face of a right-wing lie that has grown and grown because it has
never been effectively challenged at the top.
The Brexit fudge
Second, the failure to take a clear and comprehensible stand on Brexit
has been disastrous. The whole campaign for a referendum on Europe was
the banner
behind which the Tory Right united to win control of the Conservative
Party. With the financial support of millionaires like Aaron Banks, and
media support
from The Mail, The Sun, and other right-wing rags, this campaign worked
brilliantly.
Labour and the unions split on this issue, as whole sections of the Left
failed to grasp the meaning of the European Union (EU) Referendum. The
Labour
leadership should have adopted a pro-Remain position, with a clear stand
on free movement and for international working-class solidarity. The
attempt to
‘unite the class’ by fudging the argument failed totally. The lack of a
clear position meant losing voters among both Remainers and Leavers.
Jeremy Corbyn
has been undone not by uncompromising leftism, but by an attempt to
conciliate the incompatible.
The election outcome, and Labour losing significant ground in former
working-class bastions, is not just the outcome of recent events, but a
continuation
of the attrition the party has suffered as a result of all the defeats
since the miners’ strike of 1984-5. As industrial towns and mining
villages lost
their main workplaces, poverty and neglect compounded the loss of union
membership and the decline of the influence and culture of the labour
movement
more generally.
This is the background to the ‘left behind’ syndrome in medium and
small-size towns. As it became more and more difficult to claim
unemployment benefits,
millions were forced into insecure, zero-hours, low-wage, non-union
jobs, often with no pension and no sick pay. The working poor are
everywhere in the
left-behind towns, and their demographic make up is often skewed as
young people leave. What remains are depressed (and depressing) towns
with dreadful
housing, neglected streets, and shut-down shops.
The Blair-Brown governments from 1997-2010 did little to break this
vicious circle, despite Labour’s tax credits and minimum wage. The
result was the growing
influence of the Far Right, with the British National Party (BRP)
winning council seats in Stoke and Barking, followed by a surge of the
United Kingdom
Independence Party (UKIP), which won 17% of the vote in the 2009
European elections. This new right-wing electorate then went first to
the Brexit Party
and now has swung behind the Tories.
The role of nationalism, racism, and xenophobia in the 2016 Leave
campaign and in the 2017 and 2019 Tory general election campaigns is
obvious. When Johnson
attacked immigrants for treating Britain as if it were their own
country, he was not only making an open appeal to racism, but repeating
the reactionary
propaganda of the Far Right. Just as in Italy, Germany, and France –
and, of course, the United States – the rightward turn of conservatives
like Johnson
is mainstreaming the politics of the Far Right.
Voting for the enemy
To grasp the overall meaning of what has happened we need to step back
and take a broader historical view. Johnson’s Tories represent a
far-right, ultra-neoliberal,
nationalist-racist government of millionaires and bigots.
Forty years on, they represent an acceleration of the
counter-revolutionary project launched by Thatcher in 1979: a rolling
back of the post-war gains
of working people, a brick-by-brick demolition of the welfare state by
cuts and privatization, a wholesale redistribution of wealth from the
majority to
the corporate rich – only now, after a decade of austerity and social
decay, the neoliberal program is laced with much heavier doses of
nationalism, racism,
and scapegoat politics.
The blunt fact is that millions of working-class people – millions more
than before – have voted against their own interests for a viciously
anti-working
class party of the rich and the corporations.
Labour offered a radical program in this election – a program of social
reform the implementation of which would have represented a substantial
improvement
in the lives of millions of ordinary people.
It is true, of course, that the Labour Party historically has not been a
consistent representative of working-class interests. Again and again,
when forced
to choose between ‘national interest’ (i.e. the interest of British
capitalism) and class interest, it has chosen to bail out the system by
attacking its
own supporters with cuts in wages, welfare, and public services.
But that does not alter the fact that Labour under Corbyn has been an
expression of the traditional aspirations of the labour movement for
greater equality,
democracy, and social justice. A vote for the Tories was a vote for
reaction. A vote for Labour was a vote for radical social reform. Yet
well over half
the people who stood to benefit from the social reforms in the Labour
program (however modest) voted against the party.
Labour’s electoral decline
It has not always been like this. We are witness to a historic collapse
in the Labour vote. It peaked in October 1951, when the party won half
of all votes
cast. Working people constitute about 80% of the population. This means
that six out of every ten working people voted Labour in 1951. In the
December
2019 general election, the party won less than a third of all votes cast
– which means that only four in ten of its ‘natural supporters’ voted
for it.
This reflects a long-term decline in the core Labour vote since its
high-point in the immediate post-war years. Why has this happened?
A wider process is under way. Old parties are in decline. Electoral
blocs are fragmenting. Traditional allegiances are more fragile. New
parties are emerging.
How people vote is much more volatile and unpredictable. Instead of a
‘cold war’ between two solid electoral blocs – a progressive bloc around
a social-democratic
party rooted in the working class, and a reactionary bloc around a
conservative party of the middle class – we have a kaleidoscope of
parties, with each
election creating new configurations.
This process has gathered pace in the neoliberal era, with the hollowing
out of civil society, the atomization of society, the retreat into
privatized
worlds of competitive individualism and neurotic consumerism. Deep
processes of social disengagement and alienation are at work.
This affects political parties. No longer rooted in strong civil-society
organizations, they become relatively free-floating collections of
technocrats,
careerists, and opportunists. Elections resemble game shows. Politicians
are packaged as celebrities. Policies are all about spin. This lack of
rootedness
of the political system is a large part of the explanation for the
collapse in standards in public life and the epidemic of lying,
corruption, and manipulation
by the political elite.
Contributing to the trivialization of parliamentary politics is the
shriveling of the state as an economic actor. Globalization – the
domination of the
world economy by giant conglomerates straddling the world and stashing
profit in tax-havens – has reduced the internal role of the state to the
provision
of basic infrastructure and the policing of the working class.
The state does not manage capital: it serves capital. Governments do not
serve the people: they manage the people. This is the deepest root of
‘the democratic
deficit.’ Whatever they say, governments do not act in the interests of
society: they act in the interests of the system.
The smashing of the unions
These generalizations apply in a very particular way to the working
class. From the late 19th century up to the 1980s, trade unions were the
primary expression
of class identity in modern capitalist societies. Class consciousness,
class organization, and class struggle were reflected most immediately
and strongly
in trade union membership, rank-and-file organization in the workplaces,
and strike action.
Trade union membership peaked in Britain in 1979, when there were 13
million members, an estimated 250,000 shop stewards (directly elected
workplace representatives),
and a total of 29 million strike-days. This immensely powerful workers’
movement was the basis for the major shifts in wealth that occurred
between 1945
and 1979. It was also the basis for the solidity of the Labour vote in
‘traditional’ working-class areas – in practice, areas with strong union
organization.
The British ruling class set out to smash this movement. The Thatcher
government of 1979-90 was a class-war government determined to break the
unions,
privatize the public sector, and redistribute wealth from working people
to the corporate rich. This they did. The decisive battle in this
essentially
counter-revolutionary effort was the year-long battle against the miners.
The NUM was the strongest union in Britain. Thatcher prepared for a
showdown and provoked an all-out strike by imposing a drastic
pit-closure program.
Some 150,000 men, supported by their families, communities, and the
wider trade-union movement, remained on strike for a year, despite
paramilitary police
violence, courtroom frame-ups, and a barrage of anti-union propaganda in
the media. The eventual defeat of the strike sent a shock-wave of
demoralization
and despair across the British labour movement. We have never recovered.
For almost three decades now, the strike rate – the essential measure of
class-based resistance to the bosses and the system – has bumped along
close to
rock-bottom. Trade union membership has halved, and the vast majority of
union members today have no experience of workplace-based activity – for
most,
a union card is little more than an insurance policy in case of need.
This could change. The unions could rise again. If large numbers of
workers came into action, if they kicked over the anti-union laws and
their do-nothing
leaders to mount all-out strikes, organize mass pickets, and spread the
action, a workplace insurgency could take off. But right now, we live
with the
consequences of the breaking of union power: a collapse in
consciousness, confidence, and combativeness which has severely eroded
the class base of the
Labour vote.
The legacy of Blair
Tony Blair’s attempt to turn the Labour Party into an alternative
pro-capitalist party – a party of counter-reforms like National Health
Service privatization
– was one consequence of the defeat of the miners. The effect was to
deepen further the sense of alienation from Labour in traditional
working-class communities.
Repeated sell-outs in the 1960s and 1970s had already damaged the
relationship between party and class, but until the 1990s Labour had
remained essentially
a party of social-democratic reform. This ended under Blair, and the
electoral consequences have been permanent, most obviously in Scotland,
where Labour’s
betrayals of the class interests of its own supporters have resulted in
its effective replacement by an alternative social-democratic party in
the form
of the Scottish National Party.
The election of Corbyn to the leadership in 2015 represented a sudden
(and wholly unexpected) reassertion of the party’s social-democratic
character, halting
and reversing its creeping neo-liberalization under the Blairites. But
the hollowing-out of union power – the decline of the working class as
an organized
industrial force – has meant that the social foundations of Corbynism
have been much weaker than, say, those of Bennism in the 1980s, or
Bevanism in the
1950s.
In this election, nationalism and racism has performed its historic role
yet again: splitting the working class and blocking socialist advance.
Ever since
the French Revolution, two broad sets of ideas, one reflecting the
interests of the ruling class, one the interests of the working class,
have confronted
each other: nationalism, racism, imperialism, and militarism form one
set, equality, democracy, internationalism, and peace the other.
Socialists have
been involved in this struggle for hearts and minds for 250 years; and
whenever we compromise, wheedle, dodge, ‘triangulate,’ reactionary ideas
gain traction.
It is likely that the Johnson government will face an economic crisis
soon, and certain that its fairy tales of funding for the NHS and
infrastructure
investment will come to little or nothing. We are in for an ugly period
in politics, where new space will be created for fascists and racists,
and where
bitter battles to defend living standards and the welfare state are
certain. There will also be a fierce struggle inside the Labour Party,
with the Right
blaming the Left for electoral defeat and on the offensive to regain
control.
David Rousset was a revolutionary socialist who lived through the black
night of the mid-20th century. He was a Holocaust survivor.
Disappointment is a
trifle,” he later wrote. “Disappointment is a luxury we cannot afford.
The dilemma is simple but imperative. Whether to submit to mere fortune
or to understand
and take action.”
Hundreds of thousands have protested in Britain against Brexit, Trump,
and climate catastrophe in the last few years. Millions are protesting
across the
world against austerity, corruption, and dictatorship. On one side are
the rich, the corporations, the police, and the fascists; on the other,
the mass
of ordinary working people, led by the radical youth, black and white,
women and men.
We face climate catastrophe, creeping fascism, and corporate power. We
face the nationalism and racism of Brexit. We face a regime of
speculators, privatizers,
and landlords.
So we must organize, mobilize, and fight.
Neil Faulkner and Phil Hearse are joint authors, with Samir Dathi and
Seema Syeda, of Creeping Fascism: what it is and how to fight it.
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December 29, 2019
in Uncategorized.
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--
___
Carl Sagan
“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind
and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says
everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the
fallibility of all the human beings involved?”
― Carl Sagan