We publish here two recent letters that we have received from Socialist Appeal supporters in Coventry, which outline and explain the enthusiasm amongst workers and youth for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership campaign. As one comrade writes, Jeremy’s campaign and potential victory represents a “big step forward for our class”.
We publish here two recent letters that we have received from Socialist Appeal supporters in Coventry, which outline and explain the enthusiasm amongst workers and youth for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership campaign. As one comrade writes, Jeremy’s campaign and potential victory represents a “big step forward for our class”.
Vote for Corbyn! Fight for Socialism!
This is an exciting time for those of us born in and after the 1980s. Since we’ve been alive, the closest we’ve come to experiencing a feeling that political engagement actually achieved anything positive, although we may not have been old enough to fully understand it, was during the national hysteria following the initial election of Tony Blair.
Since then, however, Generation Y – synonymous with the phrase “Y Bother” – has been burdened with tuition fees, sold the distraction of celebrity and consumerism, and now that we’re old enough to have families, we’re told we are required to limit our family size to no more than two children.
For people born around the same time as me, the first mainstream opportunity for real political engagement came in 2003 when a two million strong march commenced to speak out against an illegal war. This first glimpse into direct action, the positivity it generated, was ignored, even mocked by the political elite.
Following this we heard an ever more right-wing Labour Party telling us we’ve never had it so good, whilst the Conservatives seemed almost obsolete and intent on echoing Labour, desperate to shake their Nasty Party image.
It worked on some people, and once the Tories returned to power it was less of a switch and more of a natural transition to their ideological attack on everything we hold dear.
But here’s the thing, we are the first generation to have never been offered an alternative. We are the most ignored generation in a life time. Is it a wonder then, that Generation Y is apathetic to the Westminster elite? That we have no concept of political change?
It is for this reason that Corbyn is so popular with Generation Y: the first person in a generation to offer a positive message of change; to stand up for people because of their absolute human worth rather than their perceived value to a society where the odds are stacked against them. Most importantly, the first credible person in a credible position to accomplish those aims.
Kirk Savage, Member of Sherbourne Ward LP, Coventry (personal capacity)
Corbyn and Working Class Organisations
The current election for the leader of the Labour Party has generated a new interest in politics within the working class, with many rejoining the Party to vote for him. The MPs who nominated Jeremy Corbyn at the last minute just to resuscitate an otherwise lifeless election are ruing the day, with polls in late July giving Jeremy a lead.
Already a big donor and a millionaire former Prime Minister are wading in against Jeremy: John Mills in the Guardian newspaper warns of a social democratic split similar to 1981; Tony Blair says that the Party has forgotten how to win and that Jeremy’s supporters need a heart transplant. In addition, of course, we have statements ranging from a generally dismissive attitude to outright opposition in the yellow press.
As this unfolds I am reading Alan Woods’ Bolshevism – the Road to Revolution, and a selection of articles on Marxism and Anarchism with an introduction by the same author. There are recurring themes: efforts to defend ourselves from the attacks of the capitalist ruling class in every sphere of life will give rise to our own democratic mass organisations within which the most advanced workers will be receptive to revolutionary ideas; these mass organisations of the working class are the basis of a workers’ state that under capitalism threatens dual power; only a Party armed with Marxism can educate and guide such organisations in their revolutionary task; and, in order to do this, every opportunity to reach the working class, to raise its subjectivity, has to be grasped, while tactics have to correspond to the mood of the working class and are never written in stone.
History demonstrates that the two bases for revolutionary difficulties and failure have been: seeking to use the capitalist state to advance the revolution; and for the Party to usurp the role of the mass organisations of the working class: witness Chile, Spain, Venezuela and now Greece; the Soviet Union, China and Cuba – Lenin prior to 1917 warned against this error in relation to mass organisations.
So back to the Jeremy Corbyn campaign. It is one of those opportunities for a Marxist tendency to educate and guide within the mass organisations of the class. The majority of the Labour Party membership is working class, depending on a wage for their survival and well being, and closely connected are the trade unions; both mass organisations are increasingly supporting Jeremy Corbyn as Party leader.
A political party which truly represents the working class in capitalist society is necessarily a party of opposition. It would be a big step forward for our class for Jeremy Corbyn to win the leadership with a Party behind him fighting for our class interests, representing organised labour in Parliament from a position of opposition to capitalism, whether as the government or the opposition, especially after our movement has taken so many steps backward in previous years.
John Swift, Unite the Union Rolls Royce Branch, Coventry (personal capacity)
July 25th 2015.
