We publish here a letter from Darrall Cozens, longstanding member of the Coventry NW Labour Party and President of the Coventry TUC (personal capacity), who comments on the upcoming elections and points out the options facing the Labour leaders: either fight for a genuine socialist alternative, or carry out cuts and see support for the party wither even further.
We publish here a letter from Darrall Cozens, longstanding member of the Coventry NW Labour Party and President of the Coventry TUC (personal capacity), who comments on the upcoming elections and points out the options facing the Labour leaders: either fight for a genuine socialist alternative, or carry out cuts and see support for the party wither even further.
In these last few days before the elections on May 7th, one thing is certain – and that is uncertainty. The Tories and Labour are neck-and-neck in the polls and the likelihood is that no party will gain an overall majority, so post-election political bargaining is another certainty. You would have thought that after massive cuts to the living standards of ordinary people under the guise of austerity, the Tories would be punished and the Labour alternative miles ahead in voting intentions. Far from it.
On Wednesday, April 8th, Ed Miliband spoke at Warwick University before a carefully selected audience of Labour Party members and the media. I had gone along in the hope of asking a question about how we were going to enthuse the core supporters of the party if all we were offering was the same austerity measures, but at a slower pace. Seven questions were allowed and they were only from the media and all of them were hostile.
Why hostile? Ed Miliband had announced proposed changes to the tax status of non-doms, the rich who are resident here but who claim that their main domicile is in another country. This ruse, perfectly legal, allows them to escape paying tax on overseas earnings. They include “notables” such as Roman Abramovich, Lord Ashcroft, Sir Philip Green and Lewis Hamilton. So the media, the hired propaganda merchants of the rich, had a field day attacking Labour for promising to introduce a mild measure that would end this bizarre 200-year-old system and thereby affect a tiny amount of the ill-gotten gains of the rich.
On subsequent days, however, Labour’s popularity shot up to a 6-point lead over the Tories as, according to the pollsters, 59% of the public backed the proposal to end the non-dom status and only 16% were against. Was this not a siren call to Labour? If you take measures, even timid ones, against the rich whose system triggered the crisis of 2008, but who have got away scot-free in terms of cuts to living standards that ordinary mortals have faced, you will be supported massively.
This poll advantage, however, was not to be sustained. Within a couple of days we were back to parity in voting intentions for both Tories and Labour as the Labour leadership strove might and main to “convince” the same press hirelings that they were “fiscally responsible”, that their spending plans were all costed and would not involve any actual increases in overall borrowing. After all, had they not shown how responsible they were when they went through the voting lobby in the House of Commons with the Tories to carry out an extra £30bn of cuts during the next Parliament?
The Tories hope that they will be re-elected as they have begun to overcome the economic crisis. The problem is that the crisis has not been overcome. On April 10th, Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, urged developed and “emerging” economies to cooperate to put an end to sluggish growth worldwide. She wants “sustainable” and “inclusive” growth that “cuts national debts and tackles high unemployment.” (The Guardian, April 10th)
But there is a problem. When the world economy was expanding at a far higher rate than now, the richer countries and the rich within them took the largest slice of the pie and the so-called emerging economies took the crumbs. Now, in a period of sluggish growth, each economy will try to protect its share, so cooperation under capitalism is a pipe dream.
This is also the case within the UK. As it emerges from the recession, the rich are piling up the wealth while the majority are still suffering real cuts to living standards. From 2008 to now the richest 100 families have seen their net worth increase by £15bn, an average of £150m per family! For public sector workers it has been a real cut in income of between 10 and 15%, and for most workers around 9%. So the only way under capitalism to restore living standards for those at the bottom is by reducing living standards of those at the top. That is what the ending of non-dom status could achieve – a slight dent in the wealth of the richest to help the poorest. In theory… yes. The reality is that the few £100s of millions raised by this measure would be used to pay down the deficit, and for workers, especially those in the public sector, it would be a continuation of wage freezes, job cuts and the disappearance of vital public services.
In this election, millions of working class people will hold their noses and vote Labour in the hope that the Tories will not be re-elected. However, their hopes will be quickly dashed as Labour’s programme promises more of the same. The non-dom saga raised expectations amongst potential Labour supporters, only for reality to set in.
Yet, it could be so different. A full-blooded programme to tackle the ownership of wealth and power, a programme to put an end to the chaos of capitalism, a programme to ensure that the wealth created by the labour of working class people was at the disposal of society at large which could democratically decide how that wealth was spent – such a programme would enthuse Labour supporters, would ensure a massive Labour majority to enable it to carry out its policies. What is sadly lacking, however, is such a programme and a leadership prepared to carry it out.
The lessons from Europe are clear. When labour parties, that is social democratic parties, are in power and carry out austerity policies to save capitalism, they alienate the basis of their electoral support, see hundreds of thousands of members desert the parties and create a political vacuum in to which step different forces offering an alternative for working class people.
At this moment in time the Labour Party in England and Wales still has significant reserves of support amongst the working class. The life experiences of millions of people during the next five years could very easily see this quickly disappear as Labour carries out the same austerity policies. In Scotland, Labour is languishing far behind the SNP, even in formerly staunch Labour areas. Labour is seen as a party of the Establishment for its joint campaigning with the Tories and the Lib Dems, the proponents of austerity, in the Better Together campaign. Without large numbers of seats for Labour in Scotland, a majority Labour government is nigh impossible.
Remember the lessons of Blair. In 1997 Labour was elected with a massive majority. By 2010, after 13 years in office, it was ousted at the polls. It had lost five million core voters and over half of the Labour Party membership as supporters and members drifted away in disgust at Labour Party policies and Blairism. The blame for that was correctly laid at the door of the leadership.
In the coming period we will see how long it takes for some of Labour’s new members to desert the ship as further austerity measures hit the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest. How will the anger of millions be reflected in the labour movement? Will the trade union leaders finally respond to this anger and begin to fight to defend their members’ living standards as workers are still being made to pay for a crisis they did not cause? Will the trade union leaders act on previous threats to desert the Labour Party and create another political voice for labour in protest at Labour’s austerity policies?
The Labour Party in government will disappoint those layers who are hoping that by voting Labour they will see a cancelling out the sufferings that millions have endured under this government. This could mean the beginning of the end for Labour as a mass party representing working class people. If that happens, as with Blair, we will lay the blame firmly at the door of the leadership of the Party.
