THE Oldham by-election did not go according to the ruling class-Tory script. There was no collapse in the Labour vote. Corbyn was not sacked as its immediate outcome, and the new leader in waiting, one Hilary Benn, neatly nominated by the Tory cheers at his 100% pro-imperialist speech, winding up the debate on the Syrian intervention, was not able to take over the leadership.
In fact, Labour won with a 10,722 vote majority and a 63% vote share. UKIP was devastated, so certain was Farage of victory, while the Tories came third in the by-election, with their vote share down by almost 10%, to 2596 votes.
The hangman’s rope was well and truly soaped by the Corbyn debacle at the House of Commons the day before on Syria, but it is Benn and the Tories that got the heave-ho. The reaction against the right wing has been so intense that some MPs have been complaining that they face mass harassment.
How did the ruling class, and its opinion polls get it so wrong, when they were so certain that they had cooked Corbyn’s goose on the Wednesday and all that was left was to enjoy the taste of the feast on Thursday night.
They got it wrong and showed that they have not yet grasped what is happening in the UK as a result of the huge changes being caused by the world crisis of capitalism. Everything about Corbyn looked like an accident waiting to happen.
He was put forward accidentally as a candidate for the Labour leadership, and appeared to have no backing at all. It was seen as a necessary nod towards bourgeois democracy, but a bit of a cynical joke.
But the accident of him standing actually allowed the necessity of the working class to find a way forward to express itself, when hundreds of thousands joined the Labour Pary or paid £3 to vote for him as leader with more votes than all the other candidates put together.
His accidental standing allowed the revolutionary necessity of the masses to express itself in a way that has partially unhinged the state. This same revolutionary necessity has now revealed itself over the war in Syria. The right wing bossed and bullied Corbyn into a position where he accepted that being against the war in Syria was not party policy, that MPs would not be whipped and could vote as their bourgeois consciences dictated. This coincided nicely with the requirements of the British ruling class. To rub salt into Corbyn’s wounds Benn summed up the debate to the cheers of the Tories.
The ruling class parties were over the moon. After Corbyn was defeated in Oldham, Benn would be the new leader of the Labour Party and would of course work hand in hand with the Tories against the working class. They had won! In fact the ignorance of the arrogant ruling class and its agents was revealed when the Tories were hammered out of sight.
Workers took advantage of the Oldham by-election to show their determination to reject the Tories and UKIP, and opt for a class struggle against the Tories, despite all of the weaknesses of the Corbyn leadership. Corbyn was surprised and the ruling class was confounded, and not for the last time!
Now it is the right wing of the Labour Party that is complaining of feeling threatened and asking the police for protection against their constituents.
The essence of the situation is that the working class and the masses of the youth are now coming forward and are determined to defend their jobs, wages and basic rights against all Tory attacks.
Just look at Hunt, the great would-be dictator. He said that talks were out and dictatorship was in. However the junior doctors are getting ready to carry out their strike action if he does not give way
Directly ahead are the anti-union laws that seek to put an end to the right to strike, but in reality will stoke up a revolution. The ruling class is now not so confident as before. It is rattled. This rattling is causing, all of a sudden, a number of its scandals to become public property.
The reality is that capitalism and its rotting ruling class is ripe for overthrowing. Now is the time to join and build up the WRP and the YS to provide the revolutionary leadership to put an end to British capitalism with a socialist revolution.
