This crisis is clearly reflected in the Labour Party and particularly at the top. Gordon Brown has been gravely wounded by events and it’s clear that the Blairites are positioning themselves for a leadership bid at some stage. John McDonnell is absolutely correct in telling them basically to ‘put up or shut up’. Further more many trade unionists and labour activists will echo John’s view that we need a political change, rather than simply a change of face.

Already in opposition

On the ground there are extremely clear reasons for this. One of the outcomes of the meltdown for example is that Labour has lost ground throughout the country in local councils. Trade unionists are already having to deal now with Tory and Liberal administrations, or coalitions. In large parts of the country Labour is already in opposition. New Labour is running into the sand. A Labour defeat will have serious implications for jobs and services in the public sector and for workers conditions throughout the whole of society. Make no bones about it the bosses are going to try to make the working class pay the price for the crisis in capitalism, and its going to get worse as the economic crisis deepens.

A new Tory government would be a significant defeat for working people. The Labour Party remains the political expression of the organised working class, despite the attempts of Blair and Mandelson to break the link with the trade unions and create a British version of the US democrats. There are some activists who take the view that the Labour Party is a bourgeois party now and that it needs to be replaced. We disagree with that argument, which completely misunderstands both the class character of the party and its internal dynamics.

Squandered

Basically if the Labour Party didn’t exist we would have to fight for the establishment of a workers party based on the trade unions. We would be calling for a socialist programme, to defend jobs and services and to transform the lives of working people. But the fact is that the Labour Party “warts and all” is here now. The last few months will go down in history as the inglorious decline of Gordon Brown, who is in a situation which echoes the tailspin that John Major fell into after Britain collapsed out of the ERM. But the truth is that the last year is the real legacy of Tony Blair, a right wing programme tied to the coat tails of British and world capitalism in crisis. The right wing have utterly discredited themselves and have squandered 3 landslide election victories. The right “reformists” in the Labour Party have always reflected the pressure of the ruling class on the labour movement. Their crisis is a reflection of the crisis of the whole system. But that is only half of the story. The British labour movement also has a fighting tradition that periodically, under the pressure of the working class as it moves into action is always reflected in the Labour Party.

It’s been a warm summer, with strikes throughout the public sector in the schools, colleges, among civil servants and councils, most recently in Scotland where the action was more closely coordinated than in England. The likelihood is that the next couple of months will see a continuation of action on the industrial front. But unless that action is combined with a turn to the political front as well, then the job of trade unionists will become far more complicated and difficult. There has been a lot of talk about united and coordinated action and a significant amount of table thumping on behalf of the trade union leaders. But if they are serious about getting Labour to change course then they need to consider how they are going to do it.

A clear focus

The idea of reclaiming the Labour Party is a clear focus. But it needs to be more than a slogan. If Labour stands an earthly of winning the next election it needs to change direction and implement a socialist programme. But on a practical basis, it’s time to stop the rot at a local level. The struggle to defend jobs and services, to fight PFI and privatisation needs to be fought politically inside the party as well as outside. At the same time we need to democratise the party, rolling back the counter reforms and attacks on the membership that were so vital to the Blair project.

Far from disaffiliating, the trade unions should be rebuilding their links to the party at every level. The target should be to reclaim every ward, every constituency and every region of the party. At present, where they exist, the political structures of the unions tend to be mere shells, dominated by the bureaucracy. They need to be transformed to reflect the aspirations and needs of working class people.