The Challenge Today - The Future Is in Our Hands!

Northern Region, Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

Stephen Guy, Chairman of the DMA at the Big Meeting 2022

The 138th Durham Miners Gala takes place on Saturday, 13 July 2024. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the 1984 Miners' Strike, and the organisers say that the theme of 'Solidarity Forever' is to run through the Gala, and that all those speaking at the Gala had direct involvement in the Miners' Strike or are organising in defence of workers today. They have also taken a stand in supporting an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and in supporting the Palestinians against the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The speakers include union general secretaries Christina McAnea, Matt Wrack and Mick Whelan, plus Ian Lavery, a former miner and president of the NUM, Alan Mardghum, Durham Miners Association (DMA) Secretary, and Heather Wood from Easington, who played a leading role in the women's support groups throughout and beyond the strike.

Durham Miners Gala parade 2023

Stephen Guy, chairman of the DMA, said: "It was solidarity within our mining communities and from the wider labour movement that sustained the strike against all odds for a year. It is this solidarity that will enable us as a movement and a class to meet the challenges of today. Forty years on from the strike, it is remarkable that the Gala has not just survived but is thriving again. It is an inspiring spectacle and a beacon of hope. The Gala points the way to a better world. I look forward to seeing the streets of Durham once again packed with good people on the second Saturday in July. Solidarity forever!"

Today, we march in our thousands, in the columns of the heritage miners' banners and those trade union banners of the workers fighting for their interests today, that Enough Is Enough! Let us continue to discuss and plan to meet those challenges and build the solidarity of the workers fighting for their interests and build the opposition against the system of direct rule by the rich. The cartel party system we are faced with has not been changed by the General Election other than the hated Tory government vote collapsed to enable the Labour Party led by Keir Starmer to be elected with almost the same programme.
Murton Lodge BannerThe vicious anti-social offensive against the rights of the people, against their livelihoods and privatisation of public services, remain in place and must be challenged every step of the way. At the same time, the support of the government for Israel's genocide in Gaza and escalation of NATO's dangerous proxy war in Ukraine against Russia remains and must also be challenged with all our might. It is the working class and people's forces themselves who have the interest in bringing into being new forms which truly empower them to solve the problems at home and fight for peace in the world.

As we march we also reflect on the resistance and solidarity of the heroic miners' strike 40 years ago and what it means today. Earlier this year in March, at the 40th anniversary of the start of the 1984/5 strike, a moving march took place in Dodworth, near Barnsley, Yorkshire, with a rally at the Dodworth Miners Welfare. Arthur Scargill, former leader of the National Union of Miners, was the guest of honour, and what he had to say is not without significance. Firstly, he issued a statement prefacing his speech by condemning the mass slaughter by Israel of Palestinian people in Gaza, including children and the unborn, as nothing less than genocide. He said the perpetrators should be arrested and jailed for life. Then in his speech Arthur Scargill honoured the miners and their families of 1984/5 in their fight, forces which included "our young miners who were in every sense fighting for the future - and the magnificent Women Against Pit Closures who were at the forefront of our struggle". He concluded: "It is a privilege to be here today with all of you who took strike action in 1984 and you who supported our strike: You marched into history, and entered the pantheon of working class heroes and heroines."

As we reflect on the battle of 1984/85, let us therefore continue this legacy with the fight for our future today. The time is now for the working people to renew and strengthen their organisations fit for the challenges of today. The time is now for working people to stand firm and speak out in their own name. The time is now for working people to adopt their own outlook and their own programme of building the opposition to paying the rich and to the ruling elites' pro-war agenda which wants to consume our youth in imperialist war. This challenge for working people is exemplified in the Murton banner contingents that have over many years come to the Gala with so many youth, and with the motto emblazoned on their banner, "The Future Is In Your Hands"!

Build the Resistance! Build the Voice of the People!
Take up the Need to Renew the Political Process!
Together We Can Achieve Success!

In what has been hailed in the media as a "landslide victory", the Labour Party under Kier Starmer won an outright majority in the House of Commons in the July 4 general election.

The electoral coup was secured with a share of the vote of only 33.7%, which, as has been pointed out by many commentators, is less than that achieved by the party under Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 (40.0%). The share of the vote of the Labour Party in the 2015 election had been 30.4%, winning fewer seats than in the 2010 election.

Also, the turnout of 59.9% was historically low - the second lowest in a century, the lowest being in 2001 in conditions of widespread disaffection after New Labour's first term in power - significantly below the average this century so far. Which all means that just 20.2% of the electorate voted Labour: nearly 80% did not. It cannot be said that they have a mandate. In fact, Labour and the Conservatives combined received votes from just 34.4% of the electorate. The election represented a widespread rejection of the biggest parties in this sense.

The large parliamentary majority won by Labour is a result of the first past the post system and is more precarious than it might seem from its size alone; the majority could quickly be converted into its opposite. Falling turnouts will only make the situation ever more unpredictable. Whilst in the present election, polls agreed with the general outcome of a large Labour majority, as a foregone conclusion, the details and the actual distribution of the seats was not so well predicted. This trend has been characterised in some quarters as due to the "volatility" of the electorate, but it could be more accurately said that it is now the cartel party system which is in flux and being rejected. The number of seats actually won by the Conservative Party and then the smaller parties were only correctly predicted in the broadest terms. In fact, the Conservatives received significantly more seats than had been predicted by polls. Although all indications were that there was going to be a Labour landslide, it cannot be said that predictability was really a feature of the election, and the ordering of the second to fourth places was especially uncertain.

The vote was largely a rejection of the devastating effects of the all-round anti-social offensive that took place while the Conservatives were in office. This time, there was a wholesale abandonment of the Conservative Party after their record in government over the past 14 years, a period that saw the final end of equilibrium in parliament.

Equilibrium had already gone into crisis with the fall of New Labour and the election of the Coalition government in 2010 as a way of bolstering the system at that time. This growing crisis culminated in Theresa May's inability to win an overall majority and her "strong and stable government" that was anything but, and her replacement by Boris Johnson. With Johnson came the constitutional crisis and the overturning of taboos and norms, and an electoral coup was engineered in 2019 on that basis. This was followed by an escalating factional chaos in the Conservative Party and the government, and the short-lived premiership of Liz Truss proved the final straw from which the Party never recovered. The July 4 election has set the seal on that period. It was itself part of that disequilibrium and its result reflects the continuing unfolding crisis of the cartel party system. On the part of the electorate, it reflects the dissatisfaction, disillusionment, disenfranchisement, disgust, and widespread disaffection with representative democracy.

Independent candidates at the National March for Palestine - July 6 2024

This election was marked by the participation of a large number of independent candidates (459), who received over half a million votes in total. Jeremy Corbyn, who stood as an independent, deserves particular note for winning in Islington North by a huge margin (24,120 to Labour's 16,873). Labour in fact lost five seats to independents, due in large part to its stance on the genocide in Gaza. It is also noteworthy how many votes were won by the Workers' Party, which incidentally did not win a single seat while winning over 210,000 votes - a share of the vote much larger than various parties that did. In the north of Ireland, Labour did not stand any candidates, and Sinn Féin now holds the majority of MPs.

This time around, what is evident is that the old illusions of the Labour Party do not exist in the same way as in the past, particularly given the experience of Blair and Brown, and especially amongst the youth. In the workers' movement, even amongst the organised working class and the big unions, it is different from the past. The struggle under the banner of "Enough is Enough!" continues. The fight for an anti-war government continues. The workers' opposition exists, the resistance exists, and this is where the real opposition lies.

What the election points to is the need for new decision-making forms, arising out of the movement and its opposition. How do people in localities, in their workplaces and in the movement think, analyse, and directly decide based on their own independent outlook? What do people need to do to keep developing that consciousness and their organisation, so that the new democratic personality continues to come into being and develop, and take concrete forms? What is revealed by this election is the need to leave the Old behind. The striving of the people is for people's empowerment and democratic renewal, and the 2024 general election is pointing the way forward and highlighting this crucial need.