Half way there
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Quote:“ we called for the Labour Party to renationalise the train-operating companies and what not, and all they have turned round and said is that they’ll just allow public-sector bids,” he said. “That’s mad, a mad idea. They’re doing it because they said they don’t want to upset business. That’s a good working-class party, isn’t it, that doesn’t want to upset business?”
– Mick Cash, General secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union…
Cash is disillusioned now by the way that the Labour Party is run by former special advisers and researchers who have spent their entire working lives in politics. He wants to create a party which would bring into Parliament people with experience of the world outside.Quote:“When you seek to create an alternative political force, it’s not just about having money, it’s also about having an organisational structure and about having a good set of policies and getting stuck in on the ground – having local parties, and councillors, and stuff like that.Cash could be the next union leader subjected to the kind of vilification that Crow, or Unite’s Len McCluskey, have endured. He says he is ready for that.Quote:“They’ll villainise anybody, if it suits them, because they’ve got their own agenda,” he said. “What I expect to do is represent RMT members, and if that means the Daily Mail make me a villain – fine.”Half way to where? To forming a Labour Party Mark 2 to fail in the 21st century just as the existing Labour Party failed in the 20th century! Personally, I don't think he'll go very far in that direction any more than Len McCluskey will. More interesting is whether the RMT will drop its support for TUSC, leading to the demise of yet another reformist outfit and leaving SPEW's strategy in tatters.Anyway, here's SPEW's comment on the result:http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/19321/01-10-2014/continuing-bob-crows-legacy-after-rmt-electionWe've come across politically a couple of the losing candidates: Steve Hedley (who called us Mensheviks at one TUSC election meeting) and Alex Gordon (who headed the petty nationalist No2EU list in London in the recent Euroelections).
If the unions can jettison their Labour Party baggage and then have to create a new political party this will (as you often say) result in a space for ourselves to inject socialist ideas.It means returning to the fundamental debates and discussions on principles and purposes that we peripherally engaged with when Left Unity began but on a wider scale hopefully. It means another challenge for us to raise the bar in the poitical exchanges. An opportunity for us to make our case when there is an audience in a receptive mood to listen and attract attention from those already on the well-trod path of rejecting the status-quo.I agree with you in the end that it will be some sort of variant of the existing Labour Party being formed in the end.. but if some unions seek to raise the question of what is a working class party and how it should act in workers interests they open a Pandora's Box which may well be to our advantage if we respond with a bit more than a short leaflet and occasional Standard article or Blog post. It is as always a matter of getting our voice heard even if most turn a deaf ear. Not everybody will. That is why i looked upon the report a bit positively…and it is a change for me to see the glass half full
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