Britain: Labour conference under Corbyn - a turning point for the movement

Jeremy Corbyn’s first speech to Labour Party conference has provoked genuine enthusiasm from the Party’s rank and file, keen to break clearly from the Blairite gruel of past years.

Corbyn’s speech was an “old” Labour speech, which attacked the Tories and attacked injustice.  It was seen by many as a rallying cry for fundamental change. “The rich always say the poor should be grateful for what they get. And these days this is justified by economic theory”, he said. “Labour came into existence to challenge this. “Labour says you may be born poor, but you don’t have to stay poor. You don’t have to set limits for your talents. You don’t have to accept prejudice. And you dismiss political leaders when they fail.”

The Tory press and Labour’s right wing will of course be scathing. The speech had none of the slick and refined rhetoric of Tony Blair and the New Labour brand. It was the opposite of this.

Above all, it was a call to the thousands of new members to get active and take control of the party. Everyone should get involved in the debate and the reshaping of the Party in a socialist direction. Corbyn made it clear that policy would be decided not by him or the shadow cabinet, but by the members.

Just before Jeremy Corbyn addressed Labour conference, there was a sharp reminder of the capitalist crisis, as world stock markets fell as fears heightened of China moving ever closer to a slump. It will be such events that will shake up the Party and push Labour further to the left.

This Labour Party conference was entirely different from previous years. Now we have Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell speaking from the top platform! Many delegates feel that we have “got our party back” after 30 years of Tory-lite policies. There is an air of great expectation. But there are also concerns over the growing gulf between the left-moving membership and the right wing Parliamentary Labour Party.

Following Jeremy Corbyn’s historic victory, the Labour Party has been completely turned upside down, with 62,000 joining the party in the space of only a few weeks. A reflection of this new mood is the attendance at the conference of some 3,000 new members who were there as first time observers.

Blairites plotting from the side lines

The right wing, who are still licking their wounds, are not accepting their defeat. Ever since Jeremy Corbyn’s election, there has been a ferocious struggle to isolate and undermine him by the majority of the Parliamentary Party, the bastion of the right wing. They were very vocal in the conference; but this time, rather than from the platform, were largely confined to the fringe meetings and bars. It appears that nothing will be the same ever again. But they will not give up without a fight.

Jeremy Corbyn has been attempting to manage this right-wing opposition by making tactical retreats on Europe, Trident, NATO and other issues. In a gesture of reconciliation, he decided in his speech not to apologise for the Iraq war. But none of this will pacify the Blairites, as they continue in their campaign to oust him. Tom Harris, for example, who lost his Glasgow South seat in the May elections, hopes that Corbyn will be deposed in months. He says an “assassin” needs to be found to rid the party of the new left-wing leader. That is why Corbyn has no alternative but to reach out to the rank and file for support.

The leaked paper from Lord Mandelson, the key architect of New Labour, revealed a similar, but more cautions strategy. In his paper, Lord Mandelson writes: “the general public now feel we are just putting two fingers up to them, exchanging one loser for an even worse one. We cannot be elected with Corbyn as leader.

“Nobody will replace him, though, until he demonstrates to the party his unelectability at the polls. In this sense, the public will decide Labour’s future and it would be wrong to try and force this issue from within before the public have moved to a clear verdict.”

“We are in for a long haul during which time the atmosphere in the party will become increasingly acrimonious at branch and constituency levels.”

He states “we’ll come back when the party gets its act together and is serious again”.

We must take these right wing plots seriously. They are planning to knife Jeremy Corbyn in the back and empty the Party of its new radical recruits. The Blairites want the Party back in “safe hands” for capitalism … and their careers.

This is going to mean a big battle, make no mistake about it. The right wing is very determined and has the full backing of big business, who are afraid of the Corbyn movement.

As a reminder of the real crisis, on the second day of the Party conference, we had the shock announcement of thousands of sackings at the steel plant in Redcar. All that was on offer was the mothballing of the plant in the vain hope that a buyer would come along. Once again, this has brought home the vagaries of the so-called free market economy and is a dire warning to those who wish to operate on a capitalist basis.

Conference lagging behind the wider mood

Despite the shake-up of the last few months, the Party conference is still lagging behind the real mood amongst workers and youth. Most of the delegates were chosen by the “old” Labour Party, before Corbyn’s victory and the great recent influx of Corbyn-supporting members. That is why the issue of Trident nuclear weapons was not discussed and was left off the agenda, despite the issue being voted on in Parliament before the next conference.

Incidentally, most of the big unions were behind the move not to discuss Trident, including the GMB and UNITE. “We are pleased there is no threat to the tens of thousands of workers in the defence sector”, explained the GMB. Len McCluskey said he supported Trident, as he wanted to defend jobs and communities. But there would be no job losses. Corbyn has correctly said if Trident is scrapped, not a single job would be lost, as we would diversify these industries to produce socially-useful things. It is also a fallacy that nuclear bombs will provide security to communities, because, if used, they would destroy the entire planet.

Jeremy Corbyn defended the scrapping of Trident in his speech to conference. But this issue will now be raised in Parliament next year when its renewal comes up. The problem for the rank and file of the party is that the decision will now be in the hands of the right-wing Parliamentary Party, where Corbyn is in a tiny minority.

Elsewhere, Labour conference voted to renationalise the railways, which was extremely symbolic.Manuel Cortes, the general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA), welcomed the move. Cortes, whose union hosted the Corbyn leadership campaign, saw the move to renationalise the railways as part of a wider political development.

The TSSA leader told the Labour conference: “Yesterday we had a magnificent new shadow chancellor telling us that we are the anti-austerity party. Well, today when you vote for this statement. We are also the anti-neoliberal party - because privatisation, deregulation, they all come from the same neoliberal tool box that gave us financial deregulation and brought our economy to the edge of the abyss. No more I say.”

No alternative under capitalism

The highlight of the conference’s second day was the speech of John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor. What a refreshing difference compared to the speeches of Ed Balls and Alastair Darling! In his first conference speech as shadow chancellor, McDonnell won a warm reception when he said that Labour was now an anti-austerity party. He insisted Labour’s plan to “balance the books will be aggressive”, and appeared to indicate that the bulk of the funds will come from higher growth, ending corporate tax evasion and reducing benefits for big business. In the process, he said that austerity was a political choice and not a necessity.

“Where money needs to be raised it will be raised from fairer, more progressive taxation. We will be lifting the burden from middle and low-income earners paying for a crisis they did not cause,” he said.

Britain’s bosses, however, were not very happy with any interference in their profit-making. John Cridland, the CBI director general, said: “The overall impression of this speech was of rather more intervention in the world of business and the economy.”

While John McDonnell’s vision is certainly radical, especially in comparison his predecessors, it nevertheless attempts to resolve the crisis on the basis of capitalism. While we would want to be “aggressive”, especially against the tax evaders, and stand for affordable housing, a living wage, more investment in health and education, etc., we also recognise that capitalism cannot afford these reforms.

We would disagree that austerity – which we all oppose – is simply a political choice. Every government in the world - conservative, liberal or socialist - is embarking on austerity at the present time. It is the capitalist system that dictates to governments and not the other way around. The Holland government in France came to power promising radical measures to tax the rich, but ended up adopting austerity. The same was true of Tsipras in Greece. It is not the individuals who decide, but the laws of capitalism. That has also been the experience of Labour governments in Britain, which promised reforms, but ended up carry through counter-reforms.

“We need to prove to the British people we can run the economy better than the rich elite that runs it now”, McDonnell said. However, the task of Labour is not to run capitalism better than the Tories. Keynesian policies are not enough. We need to learn the lessons of the past.

Defend Corbyn! Fight for Socialism!

Only a bold socialist programme can harness the resources of the economy, by talking over the 150 major monopolies and banks, and planning them in the interests of the majority and not the profits of the few.

This conference is a milestone. It marks the end of Blairism and New Labour. The heirs of Blair were by and large confined to the fringes. The Party can now re-engage with the working class, which had lost confidence in it. The task ahead is to defend Corbyn against the right wing and to fight to ensure that decision making is placed in the hands of the membership.

Above all, the debate will now open up as to which way forward for Labour. The new slump and the deepening crisis of capitalism will bring socialism back onto the agenda. This conference marks a turning point in the process of transforming the Labour Party into a genuine socialist party. The Marxist tendency around Socialist Appeal will play its full role in these momentous events.