FACED WITH the Tory onslaught on the welfare state and the continued ascendancy of the new realists in the Labour Party, the left doesn't just face a crossroads. It faces two decisive choices.
• Firstly, is it possible to accept that the labour movement be silent about the need to forge a labour movement alliance to defend and extend welfare Key to office Such a campaign - for full employment, for real jobs not 'Citizen's Service' stop-gaps, for a restored NHS, for decent pensions and more - can be Labour's key to office and the labour movement's most effective means of self defence?
• Secondly, is it possible to ignore the need to regenerate a united current in the labour movement that will defend the movement's historic principles against any attempt at pacts, bipartisanship or coalition?
Poverty is a central fact of life in Britain today.
According to the British Medical Journal, death rates amongst the poorest are as high as those of the 1950s. Amongst the under-20s, unemployment runs at over 20 percent, double that of older workers.
Over 68,000 16 and 17-year olds have no income at all. Living standards for Britain's poorest are back to the levels of thirty years ago.
Minimum wage
Consider how burning the need is for a minimum wage. Transport union leader Bill Morris says that a £4-a-hour minimum is essential (at least!). John Prescott - the 'left' of Labour's leadership - says there is no need to put a figure on it!
The GMB's John Edmonds, has spelt out Labour's need for a "coherent set of values", like full employment.
But the Party leadership won't touch it with a ten-foot pole because it means committing themselves to promises on spending which may alienate their would-be friends in the City!
The Labour leadership can see that the economic situation in Europe is such that we can't maintain the established welfare rights without cutting the profits of big business. Labour's current leaders just won't call for it. The bosses won't give it away.
Edmonds and Morris are right to demand concrete proposals: but they must be forced to turn their words into action.
They must put the resources of their unions behind campaigns against these Tory attacks and for the Labour Party to adopt an economic policy which breaks the economic consensus and defends and extends the welfare state. There is a wide current of opinion in the labour movement that can be united in advocating real jobs, decent welfare rights and real social justice.
Europe
The remarkable success of the Act together against Unemployment!' campaign in France (AC!) shows how it is possible for the rank and file of the trade union movement to mount such. a campaign.
We need to build up local and national initiatives - defending health services and welfare rights, against cuts in local government services and the voluntary sector, against privatisation and for the building of new homes and the creation of real jobs with trade union rates of pay.
We need a broadly-based conference of the labour movement and users of the welfare state to build up a national movement.
The resources and the experience of the whole labour movement can start to lorge a broad movement involving trade unionists, young people, singel mothers, pensioners, the unemployed and other users of the welfare state.
Trades Councils and union regions need to be organising for marches and working conferences on the issues of welfare rights and full employment.
It's too important a fight to be left to Labour politicians. As queues of those in poverty grow longer, more radical policies are vital