THE POLITICAL bankruptcy of the Labour Party is now matched by its financial bankruptcy as, under the leadership of Keir Starmer, it has become nothing more than a cheerleader for the Tories and capitalism, and is determined to rupture any remaining links with the working class.
Yesterday, Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) discussed plans for large-scale redundancies of its full-time staff in a desperate attempt to save the party from financial ruin.
At least 90 jobs, about a quarter of Labour staff, are to be axed following a dire report on the party’s finances entitled ‘Organise to Win’ – a report commissioned by the leadership under the guise of getting the party ready to fight the next general election.
In fact, it was really about how to try to prevent the freefall in Labour’s finances, especially following the cut in funding by the Unite union last year which voted to cut nearly £1 million to the party.
At the time of this cut, Unite general secretary Len McClusky warned Starmer there was a lot of anger amongst workers over the ‘direction’ the party was heading down and that the union’s support must not be ‘taken for granted’.
The party’s financial collapse has been accelerated by the haemorrhaging of party members and their subscriptions.
Starmer was elected as Labour leader in April 2020 with the right-wing confidently predicting that replacing left-winger Jeremy Corbyn would result in a sharp increase in party membership.
In fact by November 2020, according to the party’s own electoral records, Labour had lost over 50,000 members.
The thousands of workers and young people who joined, enthused by the socialist rhetoric of Jeremy Corbyn, walked away when the right-wing re-asserted their domination and ousted him with a concerted campaign of vilification.
Those members who remained, still harbouring the hope that it could be changed from within, have been given a harsh lesson at the hands of the leadership which has conducted a mass campaign of expulsions and suspensions of any member or group that dares raise any criticism of the right-wing and its support for Tory policies.
Also on the agenda for yesterday’s meeting was the proposal to expel four ‘left groups’ – Socialist Appeal, Labour in Exile Network, Labour against the Witchhunt, and Resist.
These groups are accused of the heinous crime of maintaining that the anti-semitism witch-hunts used to attack Corbyn and his supporters were politically motivated by the right-wing, along with the equally terrible crime of promoting socialist ideas within the Labour Party!
Unite slammed the proposals saying:
‘While working-class communities are continuing to bear the brunt of the sickness and employment worries made much worse by Conservative mishandling of the pandemic, Labour is abandoning the field of battle against this government to turn its fire on its members instead.’
The Labour Party has abandoned the entire working class and youth instead positioning itself as a fully bourgeois party upholding the interests of the bosses and bankers against the interests of workers.
In turn, the working class are turning their backs on the Labour Party as the disastrous results in the recent by-elections proved conclusively.
The Labour Party was formed at the beginning of the 20th Century by the trade union movement which founded and funded it as the political wing of the unions fighting for the rights of workers.
Starmer is determined to break this link once and for all, and to complete the transition for Labour to become an open collaborator with the Tories in inflicting the full weight of the capitalist crisis on the backs of workers and youth.
Unite took the first step last year, now it must be completed by every union affiliated to Labour breaking from the party and cutting off all funding.
This is the way forward today for the working class and its organisations – to completely break with the Labour Party and to go forward to rapidly building up the Workers Revolutionary Party to organise bringing down the Tories, seizing the power through smashing the capitalist state, and going forward to a workers’ government and socialism.
