Editorial
The second term as farce …
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history, warned Karl Marx, are doomed to repeat them. Millions of Labour voters fell into precisely this category when they turned out again in June to give Tony Blair a second chance to deliver reforms which has spent years explaining he does not support.
If Blair’s first term can now be seen as political tragedy, the second is already coming back as farce, with ministers and MPs brazenly stuffing their own pockets with massive pay increases, waging war on public services, the disabled and civil liberties, and acting more arrogantly than ever.
Roy Hattersley, from the safety of the House of Lords, really did speak for wide sections of Labour supporters when he described his desperate hope prior to June 7 that – against all the odds – a second term Blair government would be closer to Labour’s traditional politics than the first.
And his loud groan of frustration, as soon as Blair and his team made it clear that they were determined to implement every right wing pledge in their 2001 manifesto, will have been echoed across much of the country.
Of course Hattersley has been left stranded by the party’s rapid move to the right. His politics have not changed: he is just as opposed to socialists and the left as he was when he helped Neil Kinnock drive through the witch-hunt against Militant in the late 1980s, paving the way for the subsequent Blair offensive against Clause 4.
But his offer to lead a crusade to win back the Labour Party for social democracy is not just a way of increasing his already lavish earnings from journalism: it is part of an unravelling of the Labour bureaucracy.
This is driven by the tensions of a second term in which the party is in office with another unprecedented majority, but people recognise that its traditional policies, which still hold the loyal support of millions of working class voters, are even further than ever from being implemented.
Hattersley is not the only one uttering dire threats and hoping that Blair’s team will take notice and concede before they are called to take any action.
Just weeks after Labour secured its first-ever second term with a massive majority, union leaders have been queuing up to demonstrate their independence from Millbank and their commitment to public services.
Before the election, we had the historic vote of the Fire Brigades Union to democratise its Political Fund. This started from the increasingly popular view that union funds should not support a party that attacks the union, but went on to argue that funding should be given "to support candidates and organisations whose policies are supportive of the policies and principles of this Union".
UNISON, too, announced that it had lopped £250,000 from its election contribution to New Labour, not least because of ministers’ determination to press ahead with the controversial Private Finance Initiative in the NHS and local government.
Since the election, there has been even more debate. UNISON’s conference decision to mount a year-long "review" of its links with Labour was followed by TGWU leader Bill Morris floating the idea of working with the Lib Dems to challenge government policy, and even GMB chief John Edmonds proposed to cut contributions to the Labour party – to fund campaigns in defence of public services. The rail union RMT voted down a right wing motion which proclaimed continued loyalty to Labour.
Indications that none of these threats is likely to force a change of line from ministers included the decision to remove two high-profile Commons committee chairs for the "crime" of outspoken criticism of the government.
One of them, Gwyneth Dunwoody, has (as chair of the Transport committee) been a consistent thorn in the side of ministers, who have not only refused to renationalise the railways but are intent upon bulldozing through more privatisation – of air traffic control and the London tube.
But her willingness to speak out against her removal underlines another common feature of this post-election unravelling process: the resistance to Blair’s control freakery and reactionary policies has not been led by the Labour left, which has in the main maintained the low profile it has adopted since 1997, but by the exasperated and slighted traditionalists, by "old Labour".
The most powerful speeches in winning the vote for a review of the Labour link at UNISON conference came not from the usual suspects on the hard left, but from Labour Party members furious at the way the union’s funds have been used to bolster policies which attack its members.
So far to the right has Blair’s team now travelled, that almost anyone committed to the party’s traditional reformist policies will be to their left. But this does not mean they are all now ready to break from the Party and join the Socialist Alliance. Before many of these people make a break, more lessons have to be learned – the hard way.
Socialists should therefore support their demands, and work wherever possible with Labour Party members to build broad campaigns at local and national level – on such issues as defence of comprehensive education, opposition to student fees, opposition to privatisation and PFI, and opposition to New Labour’s attacks on asylum seekers, civil liberties and disabled people.
This year’s lobby of Labour Party conference, centred on opposition to privatisation and PFI, should be seen as a chance to link up with trade unionists and Labour Party members who share the widespread revulsion at these New Labour policies.
We should support every fight against Blairism, while building the broadest possible base for the Socialist Alliance as an alternative for those who conclude that they cannot win.
While we fight for maximum debate in the unions on the Political Funds and the politics of New Labour, our immediate aim is not disaffiliation from the Labour Party – because at present there is no alternative party which could plausibly bid for national-level union affiliations.
The danger is that under these conditions a disaffiliation from Labour would lead to a depoliticisation of the unions.
Our aim is to raise more political discussion in the unions, and in particular to spell out clear political criteria for use of political funds, to ensure the unions are not tied hand and foot to financing a party which increasingly sees itself as a party of big business and global capital.
The objective must be to follow the FBU example, and establish the right for every union to fund parties and candidates whose policies are in line with the needs and aspirations of union members.
This is very different from the objectives of Hattersley and the union bosses, who clearly want to put themselves at the head of the resistance in order to limit its political development.
By contrast, socialists will support the widest possible resistance to Blair, in the knowledge that the more people become engaged in active struggle, the quicker they will learn the hard lessons that enable them to break from Labour and embrace a socialist alternative.
This second term may already be a farce: but it’s no laughing matter. The sooner the debate gets serious in the labour movement the sooner the real fightback can begin.