New Left of Labour Political Party?
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It is worth recording that the Communist Party of Britain, the legitimate political heir of the old CPGB, is changing its policy of how it advises workers to vote.
In the June issue of their paper Unity, their General Secretary Robert Griffiths is reported as saying that
“it was clear that the traditional advice to vote Labour where no Communist is standing could no longer apply”
and that there were “a growing number of socialist, progressive and Communist candidates” who would deserve support in future elections.
This represents a major change of policy on their part.
Incidentally, the same issue confirms that the CPB now supports the present Chinese government saying that “China are now building a modern socialist nation”.
If you believe that you’ll believe anything.
It looks like the New Left of Labour Political Party is on:
https://x.com/zarahsultana/status/1940850950681554996
In case the twitter link doesn’t work, Zarah Sultana MP has announced in the past hour her resignation from the Labour Party to “. . . co-lead the founding of a new party [with Jeremy Corbyn], with other Independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country.”
If they’ve got any sense, they’ll try and come up with some sort of electoral understanding with the Greens or they will end up sinking each other.
Sounds cynical but I wonder if the upper echelons of the Starmer leadership, staring at an electoral annihilation at the next general election, will consider doing their own ‘French Turn’?
No, not a reference to Trotsky’s French Turn of the 30s but the French Turn of the mid-80s where an unpopular French reformist government passed legislation to change the electoral system to a form of PR to ensure that Mitterand’s Le Parti socialiste weren’t completely wiped out at the 1986 National Assembly elections.
The Daily Mail today is reporting
“a poll last week found that a new Left-wing party led by Mr Corbyn would attract 10 per cent of voters and pose a fresh challenge for Sir Keir Starmer.
The survey by More in Common showed, if the ex-Labour leader were to front a new party, it would be backed by one in 10 voters.
At the same time, Labour’s share of the vote would drop from its current 23 per cent to 20 per cent – leaving Sir Keir’s party on the same level of support as the Tories.
In a further split on the Left of British politics, the Greens would drop from 9 per cent to 5 per cent if Mr Corbyn took the helm of a new party.”Polls are what they are worth and generally come up with the answer those who commission them want but this doesn’t seem unreasonable, i.e., 10 percent and that support from such a party would come from people who currently would vote Labour or Green.
Of course the new party has not yet been formed and Sultana has only announced that she will “co-lead” moves to form such a party. If formed, it will have to work out how to deal with the Trotskyist groups who will “enter” it en masse. See how the SWP has reported it:
Andrew Feinstein announces left alternative at Marxism Festival
As to the Greens, it will depend on who wins the leadership election there and whether it’s the leftwing candidate Zach Polanski who claims that the Green Party already is a “socialist party” (some Trot groups are already in it). My guess is that he won’t as the Greens have more in common with the Liberals and won’t want to alienate voters in the ex-Tory seats they won in the general election. They are pathetic wishy-washy lot anyway. We’ll see.
Let’s hope that the new leftwing reformist party doesn’t include the word “socialist” in its name.
It probably will include the word. There must now be more “socialist” parties in the world than Christian churches!
I don’t know about the UK Greens, but the European Greens are gung-ho for rearmament. Hell, we know how great for the environment modern weapons are!
Some idea of what may be the aim and policy of any new party fronted by Corbyn might be gained from a leaflet being distributed in Islington, his constituency, at the moment.
In a council by-election last November Corbyn endorsed the candidate Jackson Caines who stood as an Independent (we stood as well). He did quite well and will be standing again in the ward in next May’s full council election.
He and his supporters are currently distributing a leaflet attacking the Labour government’s record and declaring:
“In Islington we are a building a real political alternative; a grassroots movement dedicated to the redistribution of wealth and power to benefit working-class and marginalised communities.”
This echoes what Labour promised in its manifesto for the February 1974 General Election, to:
“Bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families.”
Labour won that election but were unable to bring this about because it was incompatible with the operation of the economic laws of capitalism. So what makes Caines and Corbyn think that a mere “grassroots movement” will be able to succeed better than a government with the power of the state machine at its disposal?
There is no mention of the imperative need to get rid of capitalism by replacing class ownership by common ownership so enabling production to directly satisfy people’s needs to replace production for profit.
Mind you, that could be a good thing as any such commitment to socialism would be hollow as the new party would in practice be campaigning just to try to make things slightly less bad or even just to try to prevent them becoming worse. The reformist treadmill.
Here’s the latest statement from Corbyn and Sultana:
https://x.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1948343121839825056
Fairly moderate Old Labour stuff.
It seems people, including those who know of the SPGB, and who have read something of Marx and others, will go out of their way, and go out of their way, and yet again go out of their way, to avoid our case, no matter how devastating things get under capitalism. They’ll come up with ever more reformist parties and ever more reformist dead-end, repeated projects to hide and avoid the urgency of real socialism. And this is true on the street too, and not just among “the Left.”
It’s been 24 hours since Corbyn announced his party and there hasn’t been a Trotskyist group splitting out from his new party yet. Is this a new world record?
The SWP is already marshalling its members and supporters to “enter” the new party:
“Socialist Worker hopes that a new left alternative is a broad and pluralist umbrella, which the revolutionary left can be part of and stand candidates under. (…)
Socialist Worker supporters should sign up for updates at yourparty.uk”Can left seize time after Corbyn and Sultana announce new party?
So is the RCP:
“The RCP calls on all our supporters and readers to throw their weight behind this new venture, and to get organised with us to help equip this party and movement with the revolutionary programme needed to bring about “real change” (…) The immediate task for socialists and communists is to sign up to Corbyn and Sultana’s party, enthusiastically promote it, get stuck in, and help channel this energy towards revolutionary aims.”
https://communist.red/corbyn-and-sultanas-party-takes-off-the-system-is-rigged-fight-for-revolution/
Watch out for more Trotskyist groups issuing in the coming days similar calls to “enter” the proposed new party.
“China are now building a modern socialist nation”.
If you believe that you’ll believe anything.
*****
Yes. The trouble is that most people just take that as so.
Most people are not in-depth thinkers, are not interested anyway, and go by common usage, names and labels.They don’t know what socialism is, don’t care; so why wouldn’t they believe it? And that goes for most Chinese too.
SPEW too, via its front organisation TUSC, has decided to “enter” the new party. Note that some 275,000 have signed up so far.
It’s on! New party call hits 275k sign-ups in 24 hours. Join the fightback now!
For a good criticism of their approach — they want to revive the old Labour Party —
see:“History does not repeat itself except as farce. The SP attempt to replicate the formation of the Labour Party is futile and uninspired. A trade union party or born-again Labourism, rather than a socialist party which aims to abolish capitalism, would take us back to the failures of the past and not carry us forward to a socialist future.”
Not sure, though, that it can be said that the ILP “initiated” the Labour Party.
SPEW too, via its front organisation TUSC, has decided to “enter” the new party.
…………………………………..It’s wishful thinking, I suppose, but does this mean we can we can look forward to SPEW dissolving as a political Party and thereby relinquishing its claim to be the “Socialist Party”? Can one political party exist inside the shell of another and still function as an independent party?
The Kuomintang couldn’t, not for long.
So these Trots can join numerous parties simultaneously? Trotsky wouldn’t even have allowed that, I don’t think.
On the contrary. It was Trotsky himself who initiated this in 1934 when he instructed his followers to “enter” the French equivalent of the Labour Party (not all of them obeyed):
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