Engine for Socialist Change

Vince Mills

Whatever the alleged benefits the war has brought New Labour in terms of better relationships with the US; it has exposed and undermined the Blairite project with key sections of middle class liberal support. Even in the Labour working class heartlands, where support for war has been more predictable, another interminable and intractable war after the blood soaked fashion of Northern Ireland will receive less and less understanding and support.

Consequently, we can probably for the first time see an end to Blair and his entourage at the head of the Labour Party. Can we see an end Blairism? By that I mean the set of globalist neo-liberal policies and approaches that not only set New Labour off in their joint crusade with the US to make the world safe for capitalism, but has also seen a flood of domestic `reforms' and `modernisations' designed to re-shape British society.

These have included the PFI, privatisation, and attacks on benefits, workfare approaches, private sector management of public services, foundation hospitals, and antipathy to unions and so on. This list is not exhaustive but it is instructive. For if we accept that the most politically significant privatisation, taking the Bank of England out of governmental control, was instigated by none other than Gordon Brown, the most likely successor to Blair, we have to acknowledge that the changes in the Labour Party leadership ignore the extent to which the Party has itself been changed.

Perhaps the high profile and electoral success of New Labour and its project has blinded us to the undeniable fact that these changes are not recent although New Labour has certainly accelerated them. They are part of a long process of change and more specifically of decay in the relationship between the Labour Party and the working class in Britain. In Scotland in particular I think that its genesis might be the disaffiliation of the ILP in 1932, which had a genuine grass roots base in local communities despite its avowal of socialist politics. We might like to see a Labour Party that is rooted in communities advocating social change to working people through local branches and constituencies at city, district, Scottish and UK level. But we have to concede that for a long time the Labour Party has not only failed to do that, but in many places, has been little more than a shell very often used as an electoral vehicle, sometimes for small family groups and sometimes, as in the eighties, for organised factions.

The following quote is not contemporary, it is from Ian Wood's collection of essays about Scottish Labour and this essay is describing the 1940s.

`The NEC had to disaffiliate the Glasgow Burgh Labour party memo by Taylor was scathing: only seven CLPs could be said to function; a further five had spasms of activity; in three there was no organisation at all: `There is an absence of Party spirit and team work in most of the CLPs and the general attitude of querulous criticism of every party action is encouraged by the lead given by the Burgh party which invariably plays to its disgruntled individuals with a grudge against life.'" It may be of little comfort to know that our problems are not new but it should at least make us aware that what we seek to do in the Labour Party is not to return it a golden age that never existed.

Actually the Campaign for Socialism faces a much more demanding task. We need to re-build the community of socialists that the ILP strove for. Our task is not primarily the survival or revival of the Labour Party as such. It is re-establishing the importance and relevance of socialist ideas. For us the Labour Party can act as a vehicle for those ideas, but it is not, as we know only too well automatic. But the very difficulty we face in overcoming the deep social and political conservatism of many working people requires the presence of party which allied to the trade union movement can bring about a fundamental change in attitude in the majority of ordinary people's minds should it be won to radical politics.
It could be argued that continuing to argue for the relevance of the Labour Party in the face of the new project being offered by the SSP, is diverting energy and failing to accept the inevitable death of Labour as a party capable of radical politics. To accept this position two things would have to be the case. The first is that the SSP can indeed develop a politics capable of winning the support of a wide range of socialist activists. This would depend, secondly, on the SSP describing a feasible road to socialist transformation outwith the main. Given the history and current development of the SSP and the extent to which it has moved from its radical roots, it is difficult to predict precisely how the SSP will look in ten years time. It has to be said, however, that the signs are not good. This is not because the SSP has tried to foist a version of Trotskyist transitional demands on the Scottish electorate, quite the reverse. In an effort to win members and support the SSP is in ferment. There are two dominant characteristics in the current development of the SSP. The first is common to many groups on the left. It is a defence of what could pejoratively be called mindless activism and gesture politics. I say pejoratively because from the SSP's point of view this might serve them well. For example on Dungavel the SSP's Rosie Kane bailed out Mercy Ikolo, her daughter Percie and took them to live in her house. The SSP's press release contrasted this with the Lib-Lab executive's inhumanity: "Dungavel could be closed within a week if the Lib Lab coalition was prepared to show a fraction of the humanity of Rosie Kane."

Like the call to MSPs to bail out and house the residents of Dungavel, this kind of activity leans more on Victorian do-goodism than socialist political action. The idea is surely to change how the state acts not to ameliorate the negative effects of state action by individual acts of charity. Of course the headline grabbing and generally good press that the SSP has received might obscure that truth to many in the SSP. It certainly does little to help build a core of thinking socialists whose activity is guided by theory.

Nor is this a one-off. In a long article about Rosie in the Sunday Herald she articulates the superiority of action over politics:

`I ask her whether, for her, politics is a heart or a head thing. "It's a where-I-come-from thing," she says. "It's a where-I-live thing. It's a community thing. I'm no' a political anorak. I don't know what Marx said at 4am in the Kremlin, I have no idea, nor do I seek to know, all I know is things like they're building a big, f***ing motorway through the community I'm living in and it's minging. I think it's important to know the history of socialism, it's important to know what happened before, and I will eventually. But I think what's really important is that I know where I came from, what my experiences are, what my children's experiences are, what my parents', my community's experiences are, and then eventually tie that up with the bigger picture. But I do not apologise for not understanding Trotsky."

The second issue is related to political stances and opportunism. The SSP have decided to pursue an undiluted and aggressive support for Scottish nationalism in a determined effort to challenge the SNP not just for the radical elements of nationalist support but also for those who want a hard line Independence position. These are currently mounting a bitter challenge to the tepid leadership of John Swinney. Alan McCombes, widely recognised as the main ideologue of the SSP recently
produced a document titled `After May 1: which way forward towards independence and socialism?' Despite the Scottish National Party's lack of success in the last Scottish parliamentary elections the thrust of the document is that the mood for Independence in Scotland is not dissipating. He argues that the SSP should be taking the lead in the Independence movement by setting up an organisation similar to the Constitutional Convention, which developed the model for the Scottish Parliament.

According to the left wing critics inside the SSP who produce the Weekly Worker: `What it effectively calls for is not an "independent socialist Scotland", but independence, full stop.'

The trajectories for change in the SSP then are set. The mode is gesture and activist politics played out for a hungry media. The message is an independent Scotland minus any Connolly type insistence that this is indivisible from socialist change. This is hardly a serious programme for socialist transformation. Indeed it is hardly a programme at all. It is tempting on the Labour Left to assume that a shift by the leaderships of the affiliated Trade Unions will by itself bring about the conditions for a move in the Labour Party to the left. I have argued something close to that position myself on the assumption that the leaderships were changing because of grassroots pressure to dump Blairism.

I would now be more cautious about that argument, largely because the extent to which fundamental changes in the mood of trade union members have, or are, actually taking place is still unclear. The defeat of the left wing leader of ASLEF Mick Rix is instructive.

The rail drivers' leader was defeated by 4,500 votes to 3,200 by right wing challenger Shaun Brady. Whatever might be said about bosses' support for Brady and divide and rule tactics by his Brady's supporters (Virgin train drivers, for example, are paid more than other companies and may have resented Rix's desire for a return to national bargaining). It demonstrates the ASLEF left still has a problem convincing fellow members of the importance of Trade Union leaders taking a political stance.

Furthermore and significantly, just under half the electorate bothered to vote. But the figure of a 49% turn out is high compared to the 15% who voted in the ballot that elected Kevin Curran to the GMB leadership, or the 20% that voted in the T&G election that saw left winger Tony Woodley returned to power.

For many in the union left convincing Trade Union activists to take on the task of transforming the Labour Party may seem a less important target than convincing their own membership of the need to support union structures and Democracy, Devolution as well as building Union membership. Like Labour Party activists Trade Union activists already feel stretched in sustaining union activity at current levels and are often faced with new and complex demands such as the lifelong learning agenda.

Meanwhile the need to build membership grows ever more important and despite halting the decline, unions in Scotland as elsewhere in the UK, are finding it difficult to recruit. In 1980 1,090,839 Scots were members of trade unions but by 1997 this had fallen to 800,000 - from well over half the Scottish workforce to about a third. The latest figures (2002) on union density suggest that 34% of the Scottish workforce are union members.

This does not mean that left wing union activists cannot work with left wing Labour activists on policy forums, Labour conferences and so on. However, it means that Trade Unionism after 25 years of neo liberalism remains in something of a crisis and that socialists in CfS should acknowledge this. This means among other things attempting to win people into unions and to win unionists to socialism. Trade unions are a key constituency for socialist ideas. And trade unions are not the only constituencies we can appeal to. Students have had a raw deal under New Labour. Deferred fees mean debt. Student loans mean debt. And despite the rhetoric, getting a degree does not guarantee a decent job. Making higher education mass education has increased the number of graduates seeking work in an economy increasingly dominated by low skill, low pay organisations. In these conditions employers can ratchet up the qualifications required for jobs that do not actually require that level of learning. This phenomenon, known as underemployment, blights the working lives of many young and older graduates.

Students are not the only constituencies who are open to a different vision of society. Young people in general are now being demonised and seen as the source rather than the symptom of a desolate society. Older people are expected to eke out a meagre existence on a miserable pension. The reward for longevity is to be treated as a burden.

Even those in reasonably well paid work are often in debt to meet the rising cost of modern living. Hundreds of thousands are one pay cheque away from poverty and in today's flexible, easy to sack economy, they live in constant anxiety.

But very few of these see the Labour Party as the way to change their conditions and fewer still are actually members. The CfS needs to acknowledge that constituencies for change, some Trade Unions excepted, are not within the ranks of the official labour movement and yet the official labour movement with the electoral clout to change society is the only effective means to bring about these very groups need to win a just and equal society.

Given all this and without abandoning our continued efforts to change the Labour Party, the CfS must reach out beyond its Labour's ranks to those groups in society who will see the relevance of socialist solutions. This precisely what we have been doing in the anti housing stock transfer movement, the free school meals campaign and the Scottish Coalition for Justice not War. But now we must approach these campaigns intent on winning activists to our ranks. That way we can begin to build an ideological counter to the base that supports not just Blair but the neo-liberal ideas he promotes. Unlike small socialist parties we have in the Labour/Union alliance the engine for radical reform. But first we must replenish its ranks with those convinced of the need for socialism.