SUPPORTERS of Labour leader Corbyn have swept the board in elections to Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee, routing the right wing and giving it a clear message that, as far as Labour Party members are concerned, the Blairites and their supporters are to be dispatched directly into ‘the dustbin of history’.
This decisive election by Constituency Labour Parties of six Corbyn supporters to fill the vacant positions also spells out to Labour‘s right wing, led by the group that walked out of its shadow cabinet, that they will only be able to return to it on their knees.
The NEC must now withdraw its appeal against the recent judicial verdict which found for the five Labour Party members – who challenged the diktat of the NEC that they would not be allowed to vote in the leadership election on behalf of the thousands of LP members who had had their right to vote taken away from them.
The five won their case and now the NEC must withdraw its appeal. In fact, all of the jokes about the lack of leadership provided by Corbyn have rebounded on their authors – since it must now be clear, even to them, that the issue is not whether Corbyn is a charismatic leader, the issue is that the working class has had enough of them and that the destruction of many of its gains in the last ten years has led workers to the conclusion that they must not take another step backwards, and that this is the time, not just to dump the Blairites, but to move ahead to fight for socialist policies to defend the NHS, to defend the Welfare State, to renationalise privatised industries such as the railways and to go forward to socialism.
The plain fact is that the working class has raised Corbyn up on its massive shoulders and is determined to drive forward to change the UK for the socialist betterment of all.
At each stage of this developing process, from allowing him to stand so as to make up a democratic show, to destroying the shadow cabinet, the right wing have been confounded – as Corbyn with the support of the working class has emerged stronger.
The right wing said his election was a joke, but now the joke is on them. Corbyn has even come out on top on the issue of Trident. In the House of Commons debate on the issue, May boldly stepped forward to declare her death wish for humanity, saying ‘yes’ she was ready to press the button to consign millions of human beings to their graves – a deed that would make her history’s foulest mass murderer.
However yesterday, the government’s own watchdog warned that the Trident project faces ‘major risks’. The Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) has cast doubt on the Trident renewal plan, warning that it will vastly exceed its budget and face technical and managerial problems.
‘Successful delivery of the project is in doubt, with major risks or issues apparent in a number of key areas,’ an IPA report to the Treasury and Cabinet Office said. Labour’s right wing may well now not be prepared to go through with the re-election of the leader. They may well break in the weeks ahead after consultations with the leaders of the Tory Party and the leading bosses and bankers to try and provide the Tories with a big majority via a snap election.
However, such a manoeuvre would see the vast majority of Constituency Labour Parties break with their treacherous MPs and remove and replace them at a general election.
Then the shock wave that began with the Brexit vote will turn into a political earthquake, with the election of a left Labour government, led by well meaning reformist socialists who have not the remotest intention of getting rid of capitalism and are incapable of carrying out the requirements of the working class.
What will be required at this crucial stage of the struggle is a really revolutionary leadership, so that the working class will be able to change its leadership horses in mid-stream, a difficult manoeuvre as Trotsky records in his major work ‘Where Is Britain Going?’
There is a not a moment to lose. We urge all our readers to join and build up the WRP and the YS into the much required revolutionary leadership of the coming British socialist revolution.
