Vince Mills: An Alliance for Change
Over the last couple of years, in contrast to the continued hollowing out of the Labour Party — both its radical policies and its democratic processes — there appeared to be increasing hope in building support for a radical if not socialist alternative, outside the Labour Party. Community-based resistance to austerity was on the rise. Enough is Enough, alongside existing groups like the People’s Assembly and emerging locally based groups like Power to the People in Glasgow mobilised effectively in the community so that demonstrations and actions engaged many more people than just the “usual suspects”.
This developed alongside sustained industrial action in the Railways, Health Service, Local Authorities, Postal Services and many other smaller workplaces, often with significant success. There even seemed the possibility that these two could be brought together. Mick Lynch, General Secretary of RMT, for example argued at the TUC for: “Community action coupled with industrial action, we’ve got to get people on the streets in support of industrial action, in support of public ownership and in support of public services and redistribution of wealth.”
For the success of such a bold development, however, there needed to be already in place either a popular pre-existing structure capable of bringing coordination and coherence to a wide range of demands and approaches that at times can come into conflict, or alternatively, a new structure was forged through joint campaigning. In this case neither happened. Those closer to the People’s Assembly and Enough is Enough may be able to offer better insights as to why this was so, but in any case the context has now shifted significantly: some of the key industrial disputes have been settled; Unite has developed its own community-based approach; government intervention mitigated some of the worst aspects of the energy rises and inflation has begun to fall, enough to take the urgency out of community-based responses. Whether this remains the case has yet to be seen.
In thinking about how we build this aspect of anti-capitalist resistance in the future, we need to treat seriously building long term structures like the Peoples Assembly that can sustain activity and a presence when activity is low and be there to coordinate and lead when community anger and action demands it.
Whatever the limitations of the anti-austerity groups that grew up in response to the cost-of-living crisis, one of their great strengths in Scotland, was how they brought together activists who had supported independence and those who had opposed it, to advance their common hostility to capitalist greed.
This appeared to open up the possibility of a wider alliance that would have brought together all those who wanted radical change, including constitutional change, but did not necessarily agree on the nature of that change – I mean those who want a more empowered parliament and those who want independence. Had such an alliance developed it might have been possible to build a Scottish wide campaign, for example, against the Scottish Government’s cuts budget. There was no such campaign despite the likely calamitous nature of that budget on public services.
It is not too late for such an alliance to emerge. However, there are major obstacles. There are those on the left who believe that independence is now a busted flush and there is no need to build such an alliance, that hostility to the Tory and SNP neo-liberalism will be enough to forge left unity. On the other side there are attempts to re-ignite the passion and energy of the “Yes” campaign especially the anti-austerity, anti-establishment version of it, despite or perhaps because of, the almost total absorption of the independence movement in the SNP. Those advancing this perspective are exclusivist also, believing that only by delivering independence can radical advance be achieved.
It remains worth while to try build such an alliance but simultaneously the Labour Left especially in Scotland, needs to insist that the Labour Party in power produces changes to the Scottish Parliament’s powers to enable it to deliver democratic control of the economy in Scotland, as well as properly funded and publicly owned services.
And that takes us to the Labour Party itself. How do we deal with this current leadership besotted by the City, enthralled by imperialism and dismissive of democratic practice. Gaza has at least shown cracks in the leadership edifice. We have recently and unsurprisingly learned that the Muslim vote is deserting Labour. Even in Scotland where the Scottish leader did call for a ceasefire, many Muslim Labour Party members will tell you that it was too little, too late and some have resigned in protest. But there are many Labour Party members who are not in the Muslim Community and not on the left who are dismayed both by the political direction and cavalier attitude to democracy that our leadership has adopted. We need to make common cause with them and with the affiliated Unions who are willing to take a stand. This means that if you are not already active in your union, you should be, especially if it is affiliated to the Labour Party.
Such an alliance could easily constitute a powerful force for change in the Labour Party and if, as Mick Lynch argues, this could be linked to trade union and community campaigns outside the Party, it could be unstoppable.
Vince Mills is member of the Red Paper Collective.