J Corbyn defends those who fight for their rights, the oppressed, the homeless, the evicted – and now the world’s refugees.
VIVA CORBYN’S VICTORY AS LABOUR LEADER! DEMOCRATISE THE LABOUR PARTY CONFERENCE! REJECT ANY ATTACK ON SYRIA!
Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour leadership elections by a landslide, and in a first preference vote, something never seen up to now.
The bourgeoisie cannot accept, or even believe, that he gained 59.5% of the 550,000 individuals allowed to vote. Never was there a Party election with such a quantity of participants. He won more votes than Blair in 1977.
When Ed Miliband and some Trade Union leaders accepted arbitrarily the Collins Review on 10 July 2013, they hoped to lessen the class pressure and collective weight of the Trade Unions in the Party. What they obtained instead was the participation of hundreds of thousands of individuals ready to oppose them and fight against austerity.
Many reject the cost of Trident
The immediate program of J Corbyn is: A new investment bank for the development of the country, nationalisations (railways and energy companies) and the use of money saved on Trident to create socially useful products. Further points of his program include rent controls, house building, the integration of social care into the NHS, the return to universal education, grants for students instead of fees, and the end of zero-hour contracts as norm.
About Nato and the British imperialist wars, J Corbyn expressed his opposition previously; now, he seeks to have these matters decided upon in Party debates. He readily condemns the aggressive expansion of Nato Eastwards towards Russia. About the EU, he puts more emphasis on the need to unite the workers internationally than on leaving the EU.
J Corbyn set up his shadow cabinet, perhaps too quickly, with Maria Eagle (who supports Trident and Nato) as shadow defence secretary. However, the capitalist class failed to divide Hilary Benn & Andy Burnham from Corbyn because Benn is now shadow foreign minister and Burnham shadow home secretary. The capitalist class is furious at not having nipped the Corbyn’s team more properly in the bud.
The capitalist media along with army and secret services circles screamed in anger when John McDonnell was chosen for shadow finance minister; but all this achieved was to uncover a certain readiness for a military coup, and the hatred of capitalism towards those who dare oppose its degenerate regime.
The appointment of John McDonnell brings to the Corbyn team the support of Labour members who do not automatically accept the pro-austerity views of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). Along with an increasing number of Labour Left organisations, this helps to contain the counter-revolutionary Blairite organisations (in the Party) like The Resistance.
Corbyn has strong support outside parliament
The group called The Resistance was set up by Chuka Umanna and Tristan Hunt – two Labour MPs closely associated with the secret war of Blair and Mandelson against Corbyn. The general public knows that the Blairites are war criminals who lied over Iraq, and got away with it. Through the publicity the bourgeois class gives to this group, we learn that the Miliband government was receiving donations from multimillionaire John Mill of the international corporation JMP.
The Resistance publishes Mill’s views on the way Labour should conduct its affairs. With the signature of 46 Labour MPs, Mills says, a new election could be started to unseat J Corbyn. Mills reckons that this procedure should only be tried when the Labour ‘moderates’ have had time to adopt a “much more coherent policy”. Meanwhile, he will not hand over the almost £2 million he promised to the Party.
The Corbyn leadership has moved with little preparation but with the confidence of feeling supported by hundreds of thousands. The latter are in the Trade Unions, but also in other organizations of the Left and community groups. J Corbyn is present in most campaigns against the cuts, to defend those with special needs, the homeless, the unemployed, the minorities, the evicted, the women – and now the refugees. He has consistently supported the Palestinian cause and was (until recently) chairman of StopTheWar. He has links also with Trade Union and Left organisations all over Europe and beyond. Unlike Tony Benn or Michael Foot in the past, he has strong extra-parliamentary support.
Free the Party from its parliamentary straightjacket
The election of J Corbyn as Party leader was greeted by the masses with street demonstrations and standing ovations – not least in the ranks of the Trade Unions, as at the TUC Conference. The present team of Labour MPs gave him only 10% support because the PLP is generally a pro-imperialist layer, reinforced under Blair, Brown and Miliband.
The parliamentary Labour Party abstained when it should have opposed the shameful Welfare Reform and Work Bill on 15 July 2015. As this vote took place during the Labour leadership campaign, the whole country witnessed the anti-human and anti-working class policies of the Labour Parliamentary Party. This bill is now impoverishing a further 355,000 vulnerable families, but all that MPs like Cooper, Kendall and Burnham have to say about this is that austerity is needed “to save the country”. To save the interests of the 1%, more like!
Whatever happens now to the Corbyn leadership, the struggle against austerity can only grow stronger in Britain and internationally. The conditions exist now to turn the Corbyn campaign into a consistent anti-austerity tendency in the Labour Party, ready to take the struggle to the Labour-led Local Councils.
Reorganise the National Conference immediately
It is important that J Corbyn himself proposes the reorganization of the Labour Party. His election as leader marks the moment when the imperialist Blairites have been repudiated by the masses, and forced to step back.
The Blairites are already in league with the capitalist class to unseat Corbyn. To remedy this, the Corbyn leadership will have to allow a greater participation of the workers’ and mass organisations in the Party. The political way of doing this is to let the anti-austerity and anti-imperialist sentiment of the masses determine the Party’s policies.
The conditions exist to override the anti-democratic functioning of the (forthcoming) Labour Party Conference. If the Conference Arrangements Committee allows the Birmingham Ladywood CLP’s proposal to be debated (to de-select MPs), and if it allows the CLPD’s[i] promotion of the resolution to scrap Trident, there is a chance that these key proposals will be accepted. If so, one should demand the right to create support committees immediately. This Conference should then be followed by extraordinary Conferences on Housing, the Benefit Cuts, and in opposition to any war on Syria.
The Party must increase its agitation in Scotland and Wales, and its presence in the workplaces. It must open its functioning to Green, Climate and Environmental organizations, as well as those that support the Palestinians, the anti-war movements, the refugees, the unemployed, the homeless and the evicted. It is amongst these people that the Labour Left is going to find the teams required to turn the Party into a fighting force.
The Corbyn election shows that hundreds of thousands of oppressed people are looking for a fighting Labour Party.
The Party must function therefore.
It must bring its banner out in demonstrations, create teams, oppose war on Syria and Iran, organise Labour public meetings and bring out Labour Party newspapers.
Posadiststoday.com – 17.9.2015 and 23.9.2015
[i] CDLP, Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Party.
Note: Atos is the name of a company that organised the Work Assessment Capability for Unemployed or chronically sick persons from 2008 to 2014. Thousands of such persons died or committed suicide during that period after having been found ‘fit for work’ by Atos. The Department for Work and Pensions quietly stopped using the services of that company, but the same system goes on being operated. A recent suicide has been officially attributed to ‘benefits’ (entitlement to support) having being refused to a desperate person.
The photos from top to bottom are: Jeremy Corbyn at a demonstration during his campaign; the picture of a Trident manoeuvre; John McDonnell at an airport demonstration; Jeremy Corbyn supporting a demonstration ‘to scrap Atos’ – and an enthusiastic supporter greeting Jeremy Corbyn in the streets.
