Socialist Resistance: Jeremy Corbyn win would be a 'victory for the whole left'
A Corbyn rally in Bristol.
By Socialist Resistance (Britain)
July 31, 2015 – Socialist Resistance, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal – The Jeremy Corbyn campaign for the Labour Party leadership is a remarkable phenomenon. He stands a very good chance of winningunless the Labour Party establishment can turn around the tide over the next six weeks.
As things stand, the tide remains with him. The Labour leadership is like a rabbit in the headlights. Large numbers of people, young people in particular, are joining Corbyn's campaign and people are flocking to his rallies and campaign events. Many are signing up to Labour as registered supporters or as affiliated supporters through their trade unions. (According to Labour List in late June the figures were registered supporters: 9115, affiliated supporters: 3788 while the number of full members has also grown significantly since the general election.)
The support from inside major trade unions for Corbyn’s candidacy has been extraordinary.
Labour has always been different from many of its fellow social-democratic parties in having the direct affiliation of trade unions. Fourteen unions are affiliated and historically they have tended to act as a force against the left and to support the leadership establishment of the party. But the two largest trade unions affiliated to the party – Unite and Unison – have now endorsed Corbyn.
Unite, led by Len McCluskey, was not a particular surprise as the union had been following a more left-wing line in recent years, but the nomination of Corbyn by Unison is a major change in the situation. Unison is a major public-sector union that has talked a lot against austerity and cuts to benefits and services, but has rarely organised action. At one time in the recent past Unison had the largest affiliated membership of the Labour Party and over one third of its million plus members are on its "Labour Link" mailing list. A consultation exercise over the leadership election of Unison’s 12 regions showed that nine of them wanted Corbyn nominating.
The Communication Workers Union is also a major national union with more than 200,000 members. It not only nominated Corbyn, but general secretary, Dave Ward, took to YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_b3Vh-EkSg&feature=youtu.be) to motivate its members to register to vote for Corbyn on the grounds of his policies and to signal a move to the left and against austerity in the party.
Corbyn also has the nominations of several smaller unions, such as the Bakers Union, transport union TSSA and the train drivers' union ASLEF, while the other large affiliate, the general union GMB, has declined to nominate any of the four candidates – a blow for the right.
Following the Collins’ review of 2014, trade unions no longer have the say they used to have in the Labour leadership election. Corbyn also has the nominations of several smaller unions, such as the Bakers Union, transport union the TSSA and train drivers union ASLEF, while the other large affiliate, the general union GMB, has declined to nominate any of the four candidates – a blow for the right.
As we near the closing date for supporting nominations, Corbyn also has a massive lead in nominations over his rivals from local party branches (Constituency Labour Parties – CLPs) with over 130 nominations (from 600+) compared to around 100 for other challengers.
Corbyn’s campaign has made major inroads into three areas – traditional party members organised in constituencies, affiliated trade unionists and new, overwhelmingly young, members and supporters of the party. This is a profoundly radicalising development, whichever way the vote goes.
New possibilities
If Corbyn wins and sets off in an anti-austerity direction major new possibilities will open up including a probable split by the Blairites. If he loses he will have encouraged and radicalised a lot of young people and trade union activists, strengthened the left in the Labour Party, and exerted leftward pressure on whoever does win.
Tony Benn failed to win the deputy leadership of the Labour Party in 1981 (albeit by a tiny margin) after a massive campaign with a big and vibrant Labour Left and a large and militant trade union movement in a period of industrial militancy. Now Corbyn is on the cusp of winning the Labour leadership with a (more or less) non-existent organised Labour left, a very weak trade union movement and historically low strike levels.
Some of the factors involved are clear. Labour lost an election that it clearly could and should have won—and the reason it lost was because it tailended the Tory cuts agenda. This was followed by Harriet Harman’s appalling decision not to oppose the Conservative government's budget (which ended up with her position outflanked to the left by the Liberal Democrats and pro-British Union parties). All the other contenders for the Labour Leadership not only supported her in that but further collapsed into the Tory agenda by toeing the line that Labour had lost the election because the campaign had been "too far to the left" and that the progressive policies that it did adopt should now be dropped.
Conviction politics is playing a role in this. People inside the Labour Party and outside find it a breath of fresh air to find someone in the Labour leadership contest who says what they mean and means what they says in a non-egotistic way.
It is also clear that Scottish politics are also a part of this development, not just the radicalising influence of the independence referendum, and the rise of the Scottish National Party (SNP), but also the role of the SNP MPs inp arliament since the election. They have been in effect the real opposition for the Tories, as shown in the vote against benefit cuts where the SNP’s 55 votes outnumbered the votes of 47 Labour MPs, led by Corbyn, who defied the leadership.
The recent "maiden" speech in parliament by new SNP MP Mhairi Black, at 20 years of age the youngest MP for centuries, challenged the Labour Party to oppose the Tory benefit cuts and declared Tony Benn one of her heroes. The YouTube video of that speech became one of the most watched parliamentary speeches in Britain ever, as it clocked up millions of hits online, many from young people.
This is not to say that everything Jeremy Corbyn is saying is right. He seems to have nothing to say on the environment or on electoral reform—which are massive issues since the last election.
A few months ago it seemed unlikely that Corbyn would even get on the ballot paper. He only secured the necessary 35 nominations of MPs with two minutes to spare and after a number of right-wing MPs agreed to nominate him, ostensibly to give the opportunity for Andy Burnham to appear as a middle-of-the-road candidate rather than the most left-wing person in the race.
Massive gulf
Of Corbyn’s nominators only 18 followed him in voting against the benefit cuts. The gulf between the parliamentary party and the base of the membership in the trade unions and the party at large is massive. A Corbyn leadership would struggle to fill the shadow cabinet meeting room with his handful of MP supporters and there is a danger that he would become a hostage to the parliamentary party if he did not organise more extensively his supporters in the party at large.
While the left in the Labour Party have created a strong united challenge, the right wing is in disarray, with allegations against each other descending into puerile abuse such as calling each other "morons" in public. Right-wing MPs are openly talking about a "coup", overturning a Corbyn leadership by the parliamentary party alone, or even a split modelled on the creation of the short-lived Social Democratic Party (SDP) of the 1980s (not a glorious example to emulate).
Victory for the whole left
A Corbyn victory, or indeed coming a close second, would be a victory for the whole of the left. It would open up the political situation in Britain and radicalise a lot of people—particularly young people. Whether it splits the Labour Party or not it would create completely new conditions for anti-austerity politics in England.
Left Unity has rightly welcomed Corbyn’s campaign from the beginning understanding its significance and its progressive dynamic. The conditions for the creation of a new left-wing alternative in Britain exist now more than ever. A key task of the coming period will be to unite all those forces that believe in challenging austerity, climate change and resisting the Tory government and its implementation of the neoliberal consensus.
A change in the Labour Party leadership would have a massive effect, but in order to become really significant and sustainable it also needs to reach out and link up with the millions of people who voted Green, SNP or Plaid Cymru (or the smaller socialist groups) in the general election, those who support Left Unity and especially the millions of young people resisting austerity.
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Corbyn's supporters flock to rally
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/03/jeremy-corbyn-bid-labour-leadership-momentum-supporters-flock-london-rally?CMP=share_btn_link
The Guardian 3 August 2015
Jeremy Corbyn's Labour leadership bid gathers pace as supporters flock to rally
Ken Livingstone and Brian Eno join 1,500 activists in Camden to hear Corbyn talk about investing in the NHS and the economy as campaign snowballs
Excitement over Jeremy Corbyn’s bid to become Labour’s next leader reached a new peak as around 1,500 supporters flocked to the leftwinger’s biggest rally yet amid intensifying Blairite attacks on his campaign.
So many people attended a rally in Camden on Monday night that the 66-year old MP for Islington North had to address several hundred supporters in the street standing on top of a fire engine. He then rallied hundreds more in two spillover rooms and finally 800 people packed into a main hall, all filled with belief that the favourite with bookmakers and pollsters to succeed Ed Miliband will win next month.
The candidate entered the hall on Monday night to earsplitting cheers and a rock star’s welcome and looked momentarily bewildered as he approached the stage in his characteristic open-neck yellow shirt and baggy brown slacks. It was jarring for a man who eschews celebrity politics in favour of low-key community organising. After attracting large numbers of young volunteers and supporters, Corbyn showcased another flank of his supporter base: grassroots activists he has attracted through decades of involvement in campaigns from CND to Stop the War. There were also scores of older Labour activists who remember Tony Benn and Michael Foot and have been re-energised by Corbyn’s insurgent campaign.
In a speech that promised nuclear disarmament, nationalised railways, an NHS free of privatisation and an economy driven by billions of new state investment in manufacturing, he told his supporters that the movement they were part of had been “brought together on the basis of hope, on the basis of determination and on the basis of democracy”.
He said he wanted to “bring about a country that doesn’t thrive on inequality”.
Jeremy Corbyn speaks from the top of a fire engine outside the Camden venue. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian
“All over the country we are getting these huge gatherings of people,” he said. “The young, the old, black and white and many people that haven’t been involved in politics before. Is it because they want to see something different in society? Real democracy.”
He weaved through the history of the Chartists, suffragettes, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the CND and the miners’ strike. It might have lacked the polish and rhetorical punch of his rivals – Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall – but he received a two-minute standing ovation which erupted into a chant of “Jez we can!”
“It is not what he says, it is what he stands for,” one of his volunteers said.
The rally was also one of the clearest signs yet of the bitter civil war now raging inside Labour.
Jeremy Corbyn speaks on stage in Camden, north London. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian
Some of the biggest cheers went to attacks on the Blairite wing of the Labour party, rather than the Conservatives, by former London mayor Ken Livingstone and Mark Serwotka, head of the Public and Commercial Services Union. Chris Leslie, the shadow chancellor, was singled out after his Monday morning assault on Corbyn’s “starry-eyed, hard left” economics and Tony Blair’s comment that “if your heart is with Corbyn, you need a heart transplant” was booed. Serwotka, who is awaiting a heart transplant himself, weighed in against the former prime minister’s comment.
With all but one of the main bookmakers still putting Corbyn on course to win (William Hill edged Burnham ahead on Monday after a spate of bets), Corbyn’s camp is braced for more attacks. There was a taste at the weekend of what may be to come when Lord Kinnock, who is backing Burnham, savaged the “malign purposes” of the “Trostskyite left”.
Corbyn’s fans shrugged all that off. “He’s connecting because he’s offering people hope,” said Livingstone. “No more austerity or austerity light.”
Brian Eno, the composer and music producer who was at the rally, said he hadn’t seen as many people queuing since he last went past Madame Tussauds.
“I’m really looking forward to the first transatlantic summit between Jeremy Corbyn and Donald Trump,” he joked in reference to another unlikely candidate bidding for high office – in America.
The rally came as Corbyn’s snowballing campaign came close to raising £100,000 in small donations, with cash flowing in at the rate of £1,000 a day. Over the weekend he addressed packed rallies in Liverpool, Coventry and Birmingham.
Outside the London rally, the stalls hawking far-left tracts, socialist newspapers and £15 “Jez You Can” T-shirts did brisk business.
Nathan Taylor, an unemployed graduate selling the far-left Socialist Appeal newspaper (headline: “Revolutionary mood sweeps across Europe”) could hardly believe the sudden popularity of his political position.
“It’s really exciting for all of the groups like us who normally spend our time on university campuses and now have the chance to tap into the mainstream,” he said.
His colleague, Stella Christou, a 23-year-old Greek graduate, drew comparison with the Syriza movement in her home country.
Alistair, a 29-year-old Stop the War activist, was one of many entering Labour politics by way of one of the campaign groups Corbyn helps lead.“New parties and new figures are emerging throughout Europe and now it is happening here,” she said. “They are shaking the foundations of traditional social democracy. Jeremy Corbyn is bringing together the disaffected, demoralised and apolitical people.”
“Corbyn offers the possibility of a government that you feel you can have a conversation with,” he said. “Until now many people have seen government as coercive, aggressive and boring.”
Others just saw Corbyn’s analysis that economic inequality has run out of control as common sense.
“I am not a lefty,” said marketing executive Leo Scott, 30. “But I think he puts forward the sensible views of a wide spectrum of people in a fair way rather than those of the powerful and wealthy.” His friend, Fay Milton, 34, a musician, said Corbyn was “only the second politician in my whole adult life with whom I’ve agreed on anything they’ve said”, the other being Green MP Caroline Lucas. “I mainly agree with his position on setting things right on anti-austerity,” Milton said. “I’ll watch him tonight and join Labour tomorrow.”
Petra Dando, 49, a housing activist, welcomed the changes Corbyn could bring about. “We have had the same people at the top for so long, the Coopers, the Jowells, the Harriet Harmans,” she said. “At last here’s a guy speaking our language.”