Things can only get better,
Can only get better,
Now I’ve found you…
Thus chirped the pop-song; the Labour Party’s theme tune as they returned to government ten years ago. It was the soundtrack that promised rewards to the middle classes who voted them in, but nothing for the poor.
In the run-up to the 1997 election charade Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! said: ‘vote Labour and there will be no change…In fact it will be more oppressive, more racist, more anti-working class than the Tory government’ (editorial FRFI 135). This was not a guess or a long shot. It was statement based on analysis and history, which led us to conclude that:
‘[Labour] is far better placed than the Tories to mount a concerted attack on state welfare spending. It will continue with a bipartisan foreign policy and will maintain its support for the loyalist ascendancy [in Ireland]. It will retain all existing immigration controls. It will not repeal either the Asylum Act or the Jobseeker’s Allowance.’
How right we were! The welfare state is in crisis, with the National Health Service and state education being dismantled to facilitate privatisation by the back door (see page 3). Immigration controls have been tightened and asylum seekers made destitute, detained and deported (see page 16). Labour’s adherence to a neo-liberal agenda has seen budget after budget favouring big banks and companies in the financial services sector (see this page).
‘Things are not getting better’, said a military expert about the British occupation of southern Iraq: ‘The British are aggravating tensions just by being there.’ The first six years of the Labour government saw more imperialist interventions than during 18 years of Tory rule. Labour has committed us to an era of perpetual imperialist war: occupation without an exit strategy, as Labour shifts troops from Iraq to Afghanistan (see pages 1 and 4); war without rules, without human rights, without the Geneva Conventions, in which private mercenaries reinforce national armies. War in which those branded as ‘enemies’ are flown secretly around the globe, tortured and held indefinitely in concentration camps like the one at Guantanamo Bay (see page 6). War in which words like ‘bringing peace and stability’ and ‘the democratic world’ fall from the mouths of those threatening to use the ultimate weapons of mass destruction to halt Iran’s nuclear energy programme (see page 5).
So much for all those who claim to have been ‘betrayed’ by Labour, that this is ‘not what they voted for.’ It is precisely what they voted for. It is what social democracy has to offer in a period of crisis in the capitalist system. Ten years ago we concluded: ‘There is no choice for the working class but to begin the fight to establish its own independent political organisation and to assert its own interests against those of the rich and powerful. The message is: don’t vote –
organise!’
Sadly, but predictably, the British left did not agree. Consequently, they struggle to explain the last decade of escalating racism and imperialist aggression by Labour. They call the disintegrated anti-war movement a ‘success’, claiming that: ‘in five short years we have got rid of our Prime Minister over the question of the war’ (John Rees, Socialist Workers’ Party leader). They set up ‘alternative’, not oppositional, electoral parties (Socialist Alliance, Respect, Scottish Socialist Party, Solidarity) – all fellow travellers of Labour, joining the charade instead of rejecting it. They make unprincipled alliances with ‘left’ Labour MPs. They organise and police demonstrations to control public anger. They claim that Britain has been reduced to a mere colony of the US, cynically opposing the policy of war without exposing how war is necessary for British as well as US imperialism (see page 11).
And now, when things are getting worse than ever, many on the British left have exceeded themselves in stupidity, blatant opportunism and reaction with their latest strategy: rejoin the Labour Party to support Labour MP John McDonnell’s leadership challenge! The Stop the War Coalition (STWC) has become a platform in the bid for leadership of the most racist and imperialist Labour government in history. At the STWC demo on 17 February, McDonnell declared: ‘We want a British Prime Minister that speaks independently for Britain and does not parade around the world like some personal Vice President of the USA.’ Another leadership contender, Michael ‘Four Homes’ Meacher, told the STWC ‘People’s Assembly’ on 20 March: ‘We should establish our own agenda of peace – not the George Bush agenda of a “war on terror”.’
Since its foundation in 1914, the Labour Party has stood for ‘social imperialism’. There is no sign that these ‘left’ candidates for leadership will end this tradition. Unperturbed, Rees welcomes the McDonnell campaign on behalf of the SWP, stating that: ‘whenever there is a gain for the left, whether inside or outside of the Labour Party, it is a gain for the whole of the left.’
The hypocrisy of this SWP leadership is boundless – whilst encouraging reactionary Labourites, it condemns socialist Cuba and hesitates to support the growing anti-imperialist, popular, revolutionary movement in Latin America, which had Bush on the run during his whistle-stop tour of the continent (see page 6). Cuba and Venezuela are in an international vanguard, their example is demonstrating the superiority of socialist cooperation and militant anti-capitalism (see page 7).
Don’t sink in the quick-sand of parliamentary politricks, rise up on the wave of anti-imperialist resistance across the globe. Don’t believe the lies of opportunists, apologists and compromisers, link arms with those committed to building a better world. Join us in the fight for socialism!
Send us your contributions, both written and financial to:
FRFI BCM Box 5909, London WC1N 3XX
FRFI 196 April / May 2007
