Socialist Outlook : SO/12 - Summer 2007

Britain

Blair’s legacy: Building an alternative to new Labour

Alan Thornett

Alan Thornett looks at Blair’s Britain after ten years of a new Labour government.

Blair might want his legacy to be the ‘peace dividend’ in the North of Ireland or his fraudulent claim to be committed to tackling climate change. But this deliberately avoids what history will remember him for.

This conveniently ignores his blood-soaked legacy as the Prime Minister who launched more wars than any of his predecessors. It ignores his disastrous role in the invasion of Iraq and his pandering relationship with George Bush. It ignores his comprehensive embracing of the neo-liberal agenda, his attacks on the welfare state, and on the public sector. It ignores his attacks on civil and human rights. It ignores the state racism built into his administration reflected in its treatment of asylum seeks and migrants.

It also ignores his retention, or rather his enthusiastic support for, of the Tory anti-trade union laws that have given employers such a massive weapon against the unions. It ignores his recasting of the relationship between the Labour Party and the employers, which turned Labour fully into a party, even the party, of big business.

The Sunday Times April 29th headline trumpeted: ‘Super-rich treble wealth in last 10 years’. It underlines something painfully obvious - that Britain under Blair has become a haven for the super-rich. They are created domestically by new Labour’s pro-business agenda, others come here for the tax advantages of that same agenda. It reflects the scandalous fact that the gap between rich and poor widened under Thatcher and then Blair for the first time since the turn of the 20th century.

It hardly needs saying, therefore, that Blair ranks as the most disastrous and reactionary Labour Leader since Ramsey McDonald. He was successful, of course, in winning an unprecedented three terms of office. But this was a result of his ability to shift the electoral base of the Labour Party away from its traditional working class bastions and to embrace a major part of middle England – traditional Tory territory. In many Labour areas support for Labour collapsed.

This was absolutely clear by the time of Blair’s second election victory in 2002, achieved by winning a wide swathe of former Tory strongholds and increasing alienation (and abstention) in the traditional Labour areas. It was the lowest turnout in a general election since 1918. Labour’s vote fell by over 2 million, in the biggest shift from Labour ever.

Some background history

Not that Blair’s ‘achievements’ were all of his own making. The decisive factor in the creation of new Labour was the defeat of the 1984/5 miners’ strike by Thatcher. The long-term effects of this prove it to be the most damaging single defeat suffered by the trade unions in Britain in the 20th century. Union membership was halved as a result of it. But the loss in power and influence and in activists was even greater. The unions have still hardly begun to recover 22 years on. The defeat gave the nascent anti-union laws their destructive teeth, and it produced new Labour as its direct political reflection.

As a result of that defeat (and those targeted in its wake) strike levels in Britain plunged to historically and disastrously low levels and have stayed there for nearly 20 years, opening the door to a massive attack on the gains achieved by working class struggle during the post-war period.

New Realism

The primary responsibility for the situation today, therefore, rests first and foremost with those trade union leaders who were responsible for the defeat of the miners. These include the TUC and its cringing General Secretary of the day Norman Willis and those trade union leaders who allowed the miners to be isolated when their strike could have been won by united action. Responsibility also lies with Neil Kinnock who as Labour Leader fought to keep the miners isolated and who started the counter-revolution in the Labour Party.

These betrayals were perpetrated under the banner of New Realism. This was based on the spurious idea that industrial militancy in the 1970s had opened the door to the Tories and that the lid had to be kept on strikes levels if Labour was to get back in power. It rejected the idea of the independent interests of the working class on which the miners’ strike had been fought arguing that what workers needed to cultivate was joint interest with their employers.

Social Partnership

By the 1990s the situation in the unions was even worse. New Realism gave way to Social Partnership – an even more pernicious form of class compromise. The TUC promoted it vigorously at every level. It was no longer compromise but capitulation. They argued that employers were too strong to challenge, particularly backed up by the anti-union laws. The most important thing was to make the employers successful - and if that meant sacrificing the workforce then it was a price worth paying.

There could hardly have been a more damaging set of ideas as far as the interests of the working class were concerned. Even those unions that did not fully embrace them, failed to challenge them and the TUC was able to present them as the perceived wisdom of the movement.

Under Social Partnership unions lost members and failed to recruit new ones. What was the point of joining an organisation that insisted it had no interests separate from those of the bosses? The revolt against the Tory pit closures in 1992 opened up an opportunity to challenge all this, but the official movement refused to take advantage and the moment was lost.

This was the situation Blair inherited in the unions when elected leader. New management techniques were wreaking havoc in the workplace and union leaders did not have the faintest idea how to deal with the new stage of capitalist globalisation that was moving jobs around the globe at will.

Blair’s ‘reforms’

It was clear from the start, however, that Blair was not just another, more right wing, leader but that he represented a radical departure from traditional Social Democracy. His project was to transform the Labour Party into something like the US Democrats – who had always been unambiguously capitalist. Blair argued that the split with the Liberal Party, which taken place at the time of the formation of the Labour Party at the beginning of the 20th century, had been a mistake.

He promptly ‘reformed’ the structures of the Labour Party to make it extremely difficult for him to be effectively challenged from within. Labour Party conference, which had previously been the occasion of many sharp public debates, was turned into a show for the media. Its decision-making powers were taken away and replaced by leadership dominated policy forums. The links with the unions were weakened at every level. The result was a collapse of the left inside the Party. Activists were rendered ineffective and many left. Others were expelled or isolated when they attempted to challenge the new regime. By the end of the 1990s the left was overwhelmingly outside of the Labour Party and those remaining inside isolated and ineffective.

Democratic deficit

All this created an acute crisis of working class representation. Not that Labour had ever been a working class party in any real sense of the term, but it was a product of the unions and had represented them in a distorted and inadequate way. Now even that was being destroyed.

This offered the left the possibility of creating something new if it could rise to the challenge. Those breaking from new Labour needed somewhere to go. Although there was a low level of strikes there was a political recomposition taking place which could create a new left formation in the space to the left of Labour. Similar conditions were being created in other parts of Europe.

The big question, however, was whether the left could rise to this challenge. The possibility was entirely there. Even the false starts undertaken by Scargill and the Socialist Labour Party and then the Militant in the early and mid 1990s, when they changed their name to the Socialist Party (SP), were something real and new in the political situation – though their efforts were bureaucratic in the case of the former and half-hearted in the latter.

By the latter part of the 1990s the potential for reorganisation and renewal of the left and the labour movement was further enhanced by the emerging anti-globalisation movement, which stretched from Chiapas to Seattle. It was the first new mass movement after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Seattle was followed by a series of mass demonstrations against the institutions of international capital, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the G8. The World Social Forum in Porto Allegre developed as an alternative to the summits of the bosses in Davos and brought together thousands around the slogan ‘Another world possible’. Hundreds of thousands of young people became radicalised by the ravages caused by international capitalism and its institutions, including the threat it posed to the environment.

New left groups and the ‘awkward squad’

In Britain the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 with a proportional system of election produced a qualitative new development in left organisation - the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), a model of what was needed. The election of Tommy Sheridan to the Scottish Parliament in 1999 meant that the SSP was well placed to make a major impact on Scottish politics. In England the Socialist Alliance (SA) got off the ground in several stages but became fully viable from 2000 when the SWP broke from its isolationist past and committed itself to the SA. The SA continued to develop as a left alternative despite the setback it received when the SP split in 2001.

The most important challenge to the paralysis in the unions in the first years of the new century was the rise of what was called the awkward squad. It was a unique revolt by the rank-and-file against the old Social Partnership orientated trade union leaderships. The most spectacular examples were the election of Bob Crow, as general secretary of the RMT, Mark Serwotka, as general secretary of the PCSU, and Derek Simpson’s defeat of Sir Ken Jackson in Amicus.

The awkward squad phenomenon, which became evident in other unions - not least Matt Wrack’s remarkable defeat of Andy Gilchrist in the FBU – rejected Social Partnership and showed a willingness to take on the employers to one degree or another. It reflected both a more militant trade unionism and a growing rejection of Blairism itself.

Its very existence raised the issue of labour representation, relations with the Labour Party, Labour Party affiliation and the issue of the political fund. A debate opened up in the unions in which the SA and the SSP were able to play a significant role. The RMT’s affiliation to the SSP resulted in its expulsion from the Labour Party. A number of unions cut their donations, the FBU disaffiliated and the RMT was expelled from the Labour Party for affiliating to the SSP.

Anti -War movement

The years 2002 and 2003 saw the rise of the anti-war movement. The demonstration in London on February 15th prior to the invasion of Iraq was the biggest political demonstration in British history. The demonstration on March 28th, following the invasion, was the biggest in British history with a war in progress and British troops in action. The invasion of Iraq created the biggest crisis ever seen inside the Labour Party in a Commons revolt by MPs, 137 of whom voted against it. Huge numbers of Labour Party members opposed the war, many left as a result. The war and the lies told to perpetrate it inflicted political damage on Blair from which he has never recovered.

The radicalisation around the war posed the possibility of a wider left unity than the SA had been able to deliver. The expulsion of George Galloway - the anti-war movement’s most prominent and uncompromising leader - from the Labour Party opened the way for the launch of Respect. Galloway was the first Labour left MP in modern times to make a break with Labour. Respect had the potential, from the outset, to reach out to the anti-war activists (including the young activists and the Muslim activists) and to parts of the wider movement the SA had failed to attract. Because of its origins in the anti-war movement it undoubtedly had a greater resonance electorally in sections of the working class than any previous left party.

Respect’s election results

Respect stood in every constituency in England and Wales in the 2004 Euro elections polling 1.7% of the overall vote (250,000 votes) with some very big votes, particularly in East London. In the London Assembly election Respect polled 4.5% - just short of winning a seat.

In the General election in 2005 Respect stood in 26 seats. George Galloway won in Bethnal Green and Bow. He was the first MP to be elected to the left of Labour, and in a separate party to Labour, since the Communist Party won two seats in 1945. Young Muslims, in particular, from the large Bangladeshi community, flocked to his campaign. Nine of the other candidates saved their deposits. Salma Yaqoob came just short of winning a seat in Birmingham.

In local elections in 2006 Respect won 3 seats in Newham and 12 in Tower Hamlets, polling 86,000 votes (23% of the vote). Salma Yaqoob won in Birmingham Sparkbrook with a massive 49% of the vote.

The end of an era

So what is the balance sheet of all this at end of the Blair era? What is the situation in the unions, where is Respect going? Is an alternative to new Labour being built? The answers to these questions are mostly a tale of lost opportunities.

In the unions the awkward squad no longer exists, at least as a phenomenon across the unions representing something new. Bob Crow and Mark Serwotka are still there of course and represent an important class struggle line in the unions - as does Jeremy Dear in the NUJ. Matt Wrack has yet to make his mark in the FBU. But the awkward squad has largely failed. They have not been able to break the mould or to significantly challenge the employers or the government. In the big general unions things have returned more-or-less to ‘normal’. Compliance with the law has become the automatic default position in the big unions. The essence of leadership is to pick the right battle and to see it through uncompromisingly. This has not been the case in any major dispute.

The key example of this failure was the British Airways strike when baggage handlers struck in solidarity with Gate Gourmet workers who had been sacked. It brought the whole BA operation world-wide to a standstill. The first thing T&G leader Tony Woodley did was to quote the law and tell them to get back to work. Those who led that strike are now themselves sacked. If the employers are not made to pay a heavy price in such a strong situation the anti-union laws will never be changed.

Nor has Respect fulfilled its potential. It has had good election results and won important support amongst anti-war Muslims, but its membership has declined and it cannot be regarded in any genuine way as a politically pluralist party. It cannot fill the space to the left of new Labour or win the trade union left on that basis.

Unfortunately the key players in Respect - the SWP and George Galloway - insist that Respect stays as a loose coalition. The SWP does not want it to be a party because they are not prepared to lower their own profile. George Galloway does not want it to be a party since that would require greater accountability. Nor do they want Respect to publish its own newspaper. But if Respect does not have a commonly developed political line sufficient to produce its own publication how can it have sufficiently developed political line to run its work, be a political alternative to new Labour, or have a group of MPs in Parliament or councillors in a local council? Such groups, without an agreed and discussed body of politics behind them would fall apart at the first test.

The failure to build a left alternative to its full potential, of course, is not just the fault of the SWP and Respect, but of the left in England as a whole. The failure of the Morning Star to join Respect, in deference to their ‘reclaim Labour’ position, and the destructive actions of the Socialist Party played their part as well.

Nor can the failure to build a left alternative be separated from the failure of the awkward squad to meet its potential. The regeneration of the unions and the construction of a political alternative to the left of Labour have always been inextricably linked. Just as the rise of trade unionism at the end of the 19th century raised the issue of independent political representation, the demise of the Labour party objectively raises the need for a new party to play that role.

The awkward squad - with the important exceptions of Mark Serwotka (who has supported Respect throughout) and the RMT affiliation to the SSP in Scotland - were reluctant to grasp that particular nettle. It was a circular problem. They were wary of the domination of the SWP, yet the SWP were always going to be dominant until the unions got involved. Bob Crow and the RMT have tried to resolve the problem with their call for a new shop stewards movement. But this cannot address the central issue of political representation – useful as it may be at the trade union level.

Now we are faced with the post-Blair situation it is hard to see how the situation in this regard will not get worse. New Labour will not go out with Blair - that is inconceivable. It was never just based on Blair, it was based on a major defeat of the trade unions. Whatever else Brown does therefore he will continue the new Labour project is all its essentials - the neoliberal agenda and all it implies will remain in full force.

Although several former members of the awkward squad present Gordon Brown as the answer to the problem of the unions, they are going to be badly disappointed.

Alan Thornett was a leading activist in the car industry for many years and is a leading member of the ISG, British Section of the Fourth International, and sits on the Executive Committee of Respect.

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