Socialist alliances
Daring to dream that things could be better
Uniting sections of the left in what will be the biggest challenge to Labour for over half a century was always going to find its hecklers and critics.
So it was little surprise that the national press launch of the Socialist Alliance campaign for the general election, which seems likely to involve 100 candidates in England, should have come under fire – from the incorrigible, hopeless sectarians of the Spartacist tendency on the one side, and the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee on the other.
It was no surprise either that the hostile ultra-leftism of the Spartacists [aka ‘Workers Tannoy’!] provided useful ammunition for Toynbee’s predictable efforts to devalue the importance of the Alliance as a qualitative new factor on the left of British politics (Guardian, March 2).
It was only by focusing on questions raised by this insignificant and peripheral sect that she was able to claim – despite all the evidence to the contrary – that the left remains locked in its long-standing state of fractious and factional disunity.
This also enabled her to drag in an allusion to the hilarious parody of such absurd divisions in Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’.
In fact the growth of the Socialist Alliance, and the experience in a number of areas of the success that can be achieved when the previously divided left finds ways to work positively together, signals at long last the possibility of moving beyond the futile factionalism of the past.
There are signs that the Alliance is creating a framework in which remaining areas of political disagreement can be discussed constructively.
Obviously this type of work is anathema to the parasitic ultra-left, whose whole existence depends upon exploiting the work and struggles of others and divisions among other organisations.
But what is it that Polly Toynbee finds so objectionable about the Socialist Alliance?
Her article shows that it is she who is locked in the past. Long after the demise of the right-wing splinter group that formed the SDP in the 1980s (and of which she was a part), she is still working out her anger at those on the left who in the 1980s and early 1990s fought for socialist policies within the Labour Party.
Hostile
She is still hostile to those who challenged witch-hunters and "modernisers" like Neil Kinnock, who preferred to see the health workers, print workers, miners, and left-led councils like Liverpool and Lambeth defeated in struggles against Thatcher’s government than to lead any fight that might weaken British capitalism.
Toynbee’s criticism of the "dotty left" Alliance political platform is effectively to complain that it is not a Kinnock-style "new realist" campaign, based upon fine-tuning the existing capitalist economic system, or on rejuggling taxation, interest rates and money supply to make small-scale changes.
Branding the Alliance a "coalition of dreamers," she ridicules the idea that we should demand an end to poverty, improved pensions, free nurseries and childcare, renationalisation of rail and buses, or abandoning immigration controls.
"How will it be paid for?" she demands – as if the Alliance was seeking to claim that it is an embryonic government about to take over tomorrow, and as if New Labour’s policies of privatisation, PFI and subsidies for rail operators were not all ruinously expensive.
Toynbee herself rails against those who attack the New Labour government’s policies: "How dare Dave Nellist and Mark Steel talk of ‘Labour cuts’ just as more money than ever before comes on stream?"
Perhaps Toynbee herself should check out what is happening up and down the country, as health authorities and Trusts struggle to balance the books after three brutal years of Tory cash limits, as councils slash jobs and privatise services for an umpteenth successive year, and as schools face four-day weeks after years of pathetic pay rises for teachers.
Perhaps she should look at the Further Education colleges axing jobs to balance their books, or the Universities staring down the barrel of deficits as students reject the opportunity to stack up debts of over £22,000 a time to collect a degree, after New Labour scrapped the remaining grants and imposed tuition fees – a step even the Tories never attempted.
Maybe she should also check out Labour’s massive privatisation of council housing, or the NHS Trusts which will be forking out billions to private sector development consortia for lack of government capital.
Minimum wage
And how would Ms Toynbee fancy eking out an existence on Labour’s much-vaunted £3.75 an hour minimum wage (or even £4.10) – or, worse, on the wretched pittance allocated to asylum seekers under New Labour’s vicious voucher scheme – which is worse than the Tories?
Strangely, however, the final section of her article goes on to underline the fact that there are very obvious ways in which even a Labour government could raise the cash for many of the radical policies demanded by the Socialist Alliance.
Even the right wing Fabian society has embraced the call for progressive taxation of wealth and high incomes, she admits. And even Labour’s own pet think-tank the IPPR has called for more taxes on the rich.
Toynbee’s final sentence exposes the naivete of her political approach and undermines her whole critique of the Socialist Alliance.
"Why," she (speaking for many Labour supporters) asks, "is Labour always happier to disappoint its own ranks than offend those interests who will never support Labour anyway?"
Capitalism first
For those who support the Socialist Alliance, the answer is clear: Labour is a party which supports capitalism first, and reforms for its own supporters only where possible.
The Socialist Alliance, by contrast, to use the phrase mocked by Toynbee, is the party "for the millions, not the millionaires".
It is a party which rejects the "new realist" view that things can only change a little when big business and the super-rich allow, and which boldly spells out a different set of policies for a new type of society, based on meeting need, rather than maximising profit.
Toynbee calls in vain for Blair’s party to show "vision", but rejects the Socialist Alliance because we dare to dream of something better, and to fight to build political support for that vision.
With Labour, the working class has had a century of voting for the "lesser evil", only to be betrayed and ultimately ignored: with the Socialist Alliance working people are being given a credible chance to vote at the next election for the policies they want and need.
Now that really is something new!