On the Call to "Reclaim the Labour Party"

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

On the Call to "Reclaim the Labour Party"

John Edmonds’ Retirement Speech

GMB Votes to Review Donations for Labour MPs

John Edmonds’ retirement speech on Sunday was at one with those who are urging workers to deny their experience of a continual fight to end their marginalisation and to forget or not consider the history of the Labour Party.

Reclaiming the Labour Party suggests to the workers that this is their political struggle, and that to return to the status quo ante before the Blairite coup is the end of the matter, or at least a step forward for the working class movement.

Reclaiming it for true "socialist values" begs the question of what those values are. In other words, it sidesteps the debate amongst the workers as to what actually favours their interests, how to take control of what is produced, how their rights may be guaranteed and how the destruction of society can be halted and the situation turned around.

If the goal of the workers’ struggles is socialism, if the aspiration of humanity is a new society in which their concerns are of paramount importance and in which they decide the direction of the economy, how can it be suggested that a return to a situation where workers are having to continually wage their struggles in defence of their living conditions and against exploitation is a step forward? It has to be summed up that today, the rich and powerful are demanding that the workers do not even have independent interests, and that the general interests of society must be served by "Making Britain Great Again", uniting for "Britain’s interests", which means accepting no agenda but that of the monopolies and competing in the global market. Whatever reclaiming the Labour Party might mean, that agenda would still remain.

When miners’ leader Arthur Scargill summed up the direction the Labour Party was heading and founded a Socialist Labour Party, it was a declaration of the principles of some ideal "Old Labour" Party. The Labour Party has had its own history, which has culminated in it being in power today to implement in its entirety the programme of neo-liberalism. Its history is bound up with the fact that it has never broken from old conception of parties being elected to power while keeping the working class and people disempowered. It is breaking with this old conception which is now the critical task of the workers’ movement.

At this time, when the workers’ experience since Labour came to office in 1997 has been one of intensified crisis, of "reforms" which deliver social programmes to the rich, of the British government being an active participant in tearing up international law and waging war in the Balkans, in central Asia and in the Middle East, not to mention its interventionist role in Africa and elsewhere – at this time the calls to reclaim the Labour Party have the role of subverting the workers summing up this experience. The financial oligarchy and the monopolies have needed a government in power to carry out the agenda of neo-liberalism and globalisation, and New Labour came to power to fulfil that role. It has meant that very quickly the "Third Way" rhetoric with which the Labour Party sought to justify its coming to power has itself gone into crisis, and needs to be "renewed" to re-foster credibility.

The call to reclaim the Labour Party therefore seeks to divorce the tasks of the workers from present-day world developments, from the objective unfolding of the crisis and of reaction all along the line. If the "Third Way", on the crest of which New Labour came to power, represented the sowing of illusions in the conditions of the anti-social offensive, of globalisation and impending world recession, where the working class is marginalised, the crisis of these illusions is an opportunity to draw important conclusions that there is an alternative and that the workers must end their marginalisation. The call to reclaim the Labour Party has the effect of blocking the workers from seizing the initiative themselves.

A crucial task faces the workers, that of building a Workers’ Opposition, a mass political movement among the workers against the anti-social and warmongering programme of the rich, who are getting richer and more rapacious and reactionary. They must build their unity around the programme of investments in social programmes not tied to paying the rich and for a government which is anti-war and breaks with the crimes of the past. As part of this task, the workers themselves must become political in their own right and elect their own representatives to parliament. As a whole, they must fight for their vision of a new society, a Britain united around socialist values which are forward-looking, in which the workers are the leaders of society, opening up a path for the progress of all the people.

In his final speech as leader of the GMB trade union, John Edmonds, who will stand down from his post of general secretary at the end of the week, told its annual conference that the government had been involved in "shameful" moves to block key workers’ rights.

He accused the Labour government of ganging up with business bosses to deny workers their rights

The leader of the GMB – which represents over 700,000 workers – referred to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s deal with Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi last year to weaken European proposals on employment rights as being evidence of the government’s negative attitude to workers.

"I get the persistent feeling that this Labour government feels more comfortable with the employers’ agenda than with ours." He went on to ask, "How else can you explain the government’s willingness to line up with the employers on a range of issues from stopping protection for agency workers to information and consultation?"

"Surely a Labour government should be supporting working people, not denying them their rights and," he said.

Edmonds also hit out at the leadership of the party, who, he claimed, had forgotten that "it was the trade unions that held the party together in the 1980s".

"It was the unions that kept the party afloat when all those millionaire friends that the government has recently discovered would not have donated a used bus ticket to Labour Party funds," he said.

John Edmonds gave the call to "stand by our principles" and fight to reclaim the Labour Party "for those socialist values that we believe in and declare so strongly from this rostrum".

At its congress in Blackpool on Monday, the GMB union voted to review donations to individual constituency parties, withdrawing cash if an MP does not share the union's "aims, values and priorities". Up to 30 Labour MPs could be stripped of financial support in this move.

About 100 MPs supported by the GMB will be invited to interviews by a panel. Although the GMB still gives the Labour Party near £1 million a year, the union cut central donations to Labour by £500,000 two years ago.

The Labour chairman, Ian McCartney, appealed for a more sympathetic hearing from workers as the new leader of the GMB, Kevin Curran, signalled he is to work closely with the TUC's so-called "awkward squad".

Kevin Curran has launched a review of Labour links and said that British workers are still denied basic rights and that the minimum wage is too low.

He described himself as a "critical friend" of the government.

"We need to engage fully with our communities and bring the Labour party back to the values that we have never departed from," Kevin Curran said. "Let's never forget that we are the party, not No 10."