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Report from London: How Corbyn defied all odds
By Marcel Cartier
Jun 14, 2017
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Report from London: How Corbyn defied all odds
The following article was written by a socialist activist living in
London who participated in the Corbyn-led Labour campaign for the June 8
general election.
What a difference two years can make. I recall being at a major
anti-austerity rally in the summer of 2015 in front of Parliament put
together by the People’s Assembly Against Austerity (a coalition of
progressive organizations created to fight against social cuts initiated
by the Conservative Party after their return to power in 2010 alongside
the Liberal Democrats). Speaking at the rally was an MP from Islington
North who represented the far left-wing of the Labour Party – some may
even say ‘fringe’ left – Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn was considered the odd one out, the MP you could rely on to come
to your anti-war rally, your picket to defend the National Health
Service, the demonstration for nuclear disarmament. You could rely on
him to vote against his own party as he did time and time again,
ruffling the feathers of the establishment on both sides of the
Parliamentary aisle. Corbyn received a rapturous applause for his
principled stance on behalf of the common people, as was the case for
any speech he made anywhere. As the demonstration wound down, a Labour
volunteer passed me a flyer for Corbyn’s campaign to become the next
leader of the party.
A close friend of mine looked at it and said, “it’s great that he’s
running. Too bad he has no shot of winning, though.”
We were the early naysayers, but we fixed up quickly as his odds of
winning were slashed week by week. Now, on June 9, 2017, it’s the
establishment of his own Party that is pleading for forgiveness and
eating a slice of humble pie. It’s the mainstream media that has to
concede that its attempts to undermine Corbyn have been futile – they
maybe even helped to fuel his anti-establishment, radical agenda since
people clearly no longer trusted them to tell the truth. Not only did
Corbyn win the 2015 Labour leadership contest in more than convincing
fashion, he held on against the attempts by the Parliamentary Labour
Party to depose him in a vote of no confidence, winning an even bigger
mandate as Party leader in 2016.
When Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap election in April, the
pessimists or self-immolationists in Labour said the party would be
dealt its worst defeat since 1931. May believed this narrative too,
entering into the election with such arrogance and conceit that she
barely found it necessary to campaign, taking a condescending attitude
towards voters.
Here we are today, with Labour under Corbyn – the supposedly
unelectable, fringe radical stuck in the 1970s – seeing the biggest vote
increase for the party since 1945, and coming within reach of becoming
the next Prime Minister. How wrong everyone has been.
The Debacle of “New Labour”
It is important to frame just how significant the past two years have
truly been. The Labour Party suffered a humiliating loss in the May 2015
election, in which its leader Ed Miliband was thoroughly thrashed and
the Conservatives secured a majority in Parliament, prompting his
resignation and paving the way for a government that could deepen the
cuts started by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government
set up in 2010. The 2015 election was marked by major indifference by
most young people I spoke to. In fact, I barely paid attention to it
myself, finding it all too similar to capitalist elections in the United
States in which Democrats and Republicans duelled it out, but at the end
of the day there was nobody to truly vote for.
Some voted strategically, choosing the ‘lesser of two evils’ in Labour
that had grown increasingly similar in outlook to the Tories since Tony
Blair took the helm of the party in 1996, rebranding it as ‘New Labour’
and moving the party further away from any pretence of socialism and
toward a centrist ‘third way’ (in fact, in a bitter twist of irony for
Blair, he said when taking the reigns of Labour that year that ‘you
really don’t have to worry about Jeremy Corbyn taking over.’)
New Political Forces Gain Momentum
What was most evident about the 2015 election is that progressive people
didn’t vote with enthusiasm, unless they cast their ballot for the Green
Party that had used the crisis of neoliberalism in Labour to their
advantage, becoming at that time the fastest growing Party in Britain.
After all, Labour had been discredited, rinsed long ago of any semblance
of the ‘democratic socialism’ it claimed to represent. Trade union
leaders spoke of the Greens as possibly replacing Labour as the party of
the working class.
On the opposite side of the political spectrum, a xenophobic populist
party billing itself the UK Independence Party that had split from the
Conservatives had come out of the margins of politics and won the 2014
European election on a platform of holding a referendum to withdraw from
the European Union. It seemed that the centre-left and centre-right that
looked increasingly similar to one another were losing ground in the UK
as everywhere – the crisis of the establishment was being manifested in
people urgently looking for alternatives to address to their very own
personal crises. The centre couldn’t hold much longer.
Corbyn’s Movement – and Revival of Socialist Politics
Nobody could honestly have predicted just two short years ago that the
Corbyn phenomenon would become the new vehicle for the anti-austerity
struggle and for the rejuvenation of radical politics in Britain. Corbyn
himself was said to be a rather uncharismatic figure, though today I
doubt seriously anyone would make the same claim. He wasn’t really
interested in running for the Labour leadership to begin with, and
apparently only did so because the so-called ‘hard left’ always put
forward a candidate at times like this and now it was his turn to do so
– and as is characteristic of Corbyn, he did so as his duty to the
people he has been elected to represent in Parliament since 1983. Then,
he won.
The next year, he won by an even bigger margin after the vote to leave
the EU allegedly meant he was unsuitable to continue in his role after
he backed remaining in the bloc. Still, tens of thousands of young
people joined the Labour Party, creating the largest political
organization in Europe backed by those drawn to the socialist program of
Corbyn and his allies.
It was precisely these young people that made the difference in the
general election of June 8, with a reported 62 percent of 18 to 25 year
olds casting a vote. Traditional Conservative strongholds such as
Canterbury – held by them since 1918 (yes, 99 years!) – swung over to
Labour as a result of this surge in youth participation. Energized by
Corbyn’s platform that was embodied in the Labour manifesto ‘For the
Many, Not the Few’ that called for the abolition of university tuition
fees and student debt, for major funding of the National Health Service,
and for the building of one million new homes among other key points,
the youth finally saw in Corbyn someone sincere, genuine and eager to
listen to their hopes, dreams and desires – and not merely talk the same
old political talk they had become sick of.
The Power of Being Genuine
On this point, it’s worth sharing the story of the first time I had a
proper conversation with Corbyn. This was in 2016, and I could sense
that he was tremendously busy, running from meeting to meeting at his
constituency office building he shares with organizations such as the
Stop the War Coalition and Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign, among other
activist groups. Yet, he always managed to say hello to you with a smile
in the hallway – even if it was just brief acknowledgement that you were
there. I was struck by this quite rare characteristic, all so uncommon
among those who have spent their life in political office.
When I had the opportunity to properly speak with him, he wanted to know
about my take on the Trump phenomenon and recalled fondly his time in
the United States when he addressed the massive anti-war rallies in 2003
organized in Washington D.C. and San Francisco by the ANSWER Coalition.
He remembered traveling to Nicaragua for the first time in 1985 at the
height of the Contra War, and spoke of how from that point forward he
could never waiver in his struggle to fight the evils of U.S. and
British foreign policy across the world. The biggest takeaway from that
meeting, however, is that he was genuinely interested in knowing what my
views were.
This was on full display throughout the spirited and phenomenal campaign
he ran. When asked on live television about what leadership means to him
and what characteristics of leadership he possesses, he refused to speak
about his personal attributes. He spoke of the collective, spoke of
listening to the people, and spoke of never ‘being so high and mighty’
to be a know-it-all.
Then he said something that resonated with people up and down the
country ‘you can learn from everybody. Everybody knows something that
you don’t.’ This is how he proved he’s more than up to the task of being
a people’s champion, and quite possibly a people’s prime minister.
Monumental tasks confronting the left
Despite the fact that Labour technically lost, they really won. More
importantly, however, the notion that hard left-wing policies would be
unpopular, or that you couldn’t charge to victory on that basis, was
thrown to the side. The naysayers in and out of the Labour Party are now
mute.
Of course, the struggle for the soul of Labour is still in full swing.
Corbyn’s position as leader of the Party is secure, and provides a
strong basis for his socialist policies to be deepened. The debates
within the radical and revolutionary forces outside of the party are
sure to intensify. Some rightly point out that Labour cannot be the
vehicle for the revolutionary transition to socialism, and on this basis
refuse to participate within the party on any level. Others make the
same argument about the reformist nature of the party, yet believe that
it can function as a sort of united front for the radical left to engage in.
One thing is certain at this point – Corbyn has changed the face of
British politics, pushing the conversation starkly to the left and
opening up major new possibilities for revolutionary struggle. His
leadership and the campaign he ran threw in the dustbin of history the
idea of the ‘third way’.
Corbyn, europe, Labour Party, uk
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