(Monday 04 February 2008)
MALCOLM BURNS witnesses John McDonnell challenge the Scottish left to seize a golden chance for progress.
LABOUR MP John McDonnell told a packed meeting of socialists in Scotland that the growing crisis in global capitalism provided the left with its greatest chance of progress in decades.
At a public meeting in Glasgow on Saturday, after the AGM of the Scottish Labour left's Campaign for Socialism, Mr McDonnell said that the dominance of the neoliberals and neoconservatives who have been in charge for the last decade was rapidly coming to an end.
"The opportunity for the left arises because new Labour's analysis is now looking hollow - and not just their theoretical analysis," he said.
"It's because of the impact of the capitalist crisis on people's real lives.
"There's no point in us as Labour saying: 'Look at the improvements over the last 10 years' - people just don't believe it."
The Socialist Campaign Group MP said that socialists in the Labour Party needed to look outside it to make common cause with campaigns springing up over a broad range of issues today.
"Political structures have become ossified," he added, "but politics is going on."
Mr McDonnell explained that democracy in the Labour Party has been largely closed down.
"Selections are fixed, the policy forums have no votes, deals like Warwick are made in back rooms and then never adhered to, the parliamentary Labour Party is controlled by patronage as MPs climb over their own grannies to get up the greasy pole," he said.
"But, on the ground, outside Parliament, most people didn't believe in Blair and they don't believe in Brown.
"Outside, in the real world, politics goes on. Everywhere you go, political campaigns are breaking out."
Among examples of "creative forces of protest," the Hayes and Harlington MP listed the campaign over the third runway at Heathrow, in his constituency, but also across London and the south-east.
"I've had public meetings of a thousand people in places like Chiswick and Putney.
"And the Heathrow Climate Camp was an extraordinary experience for me.
"I learned more about the environment from that than from all the debates in Parliament and my own reading."
Mr McDonnell told the meeting that women's groups were organising again to reclaim the night and campaigns on asylum rights were not just taking on the government's repressive actions but exposing the BNP.
"When the Saudi dictator was here last year, it was young people, it was the Socialist Youth Network of the Labour Representation Committee who hounded him across London.
"And, in industrial disputes, trade unions are discovering again that they are a social movement.
"PCS is expanding despite cuts in jobs, RMT are up 50 per cent. The unions that are winning are the fighting unions.
"It's buzzing out there, but what is the organisational form we need at this key moment?"
The Labour Representation Committee was established to bring together members and organisations to refound the Labour Party from within, he argued.
This has been attempted over five years but hasn't worked.
"Working in the Labour Party isn't going to work on its own," he argued.
"We need to work outside it as well. We need to campaign by campaigning."
MR McDonnell said that socialists in the Labour Party needed to build "bonds of solidarity" with socialists in other parties and none and with single-issue campaigns.
"There is an amazing opportunity for renewal on the socialist left. In 10 years' time, if we haven't taken it, we'll be kicking ourselves."
Subscribe to the Morning Star online
For peace and socialism - the only socialist daily paper in the English language
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment