THIS Labour Party conference has been different in that the members of the Party and the trade unions have taken it over, and turned it from the Blair-Brown model of a conference where resolutions were banned and at the centre was a parade of allegedly ‘great leaders’ with their prepared orations and instructions as to what the Party would do in the period ahead. There was no democracy!
This year there have been masses of speakers from the floor with only one guest speaker allowed, London mayor Sadiq Khan, on the strength of his action against Uber. What has happened is, that in the ten years since the great crash, the masses have been pauperised while the rich have become very much richer. The masses have been forced into active politics where they have lifted Jeremy Corbyn, a professional protestor, up onto their shoulders, and made asses out of those ruling class clowns that mocked him and called a snap election on the grounds that with Corbyn at its head Labour would be destroyed – instead it is the Tory Party that is staring into the abyss.
The entry of the masses has made for big changes, with even bigger changes to come.
The first gain from the rise of the masses, which began with the 2016 referendum result, has been the shattering of the Tory Party.
Another has been the way that at this Labour Party conference, in the course of very lively discussion, the right wing was routed in their attempt to refer back the Labour Party executive’s position that it would carry out the result of the Brexit referendum.
The conference was preceded by a right wing-organised pro-EU demonstration, where on the first day there was an open letter from around 30 MPs, a handful of MEPs, two minor union leaders and one ex-TUC general secretary (Monks) demanding that the UK remain in the EU.
These efforts came to nothing despite the fact that pro-EU delegates were allowed full rein to vent their spleen, and were completely defeated after a full debate – a debate that has not been seen at the LP conference for a number of years.
The highlight of Monday’s conference was the speech by Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi in which she stated: ‘I am here today because I want to welcome the insertion into the NPF (National Policy Forum) annual report section on the Middle East of the key paragraphs of our now ground breaking manifesto which referred to Israel’s occupation and settlement of Palestinian land.
‘I am so pleased that this section has been put back in after being inexplicably omitted from the NPF report. Let me tell you my perspective on this, I am Jewish, I come from a tradition of anti-racist and anti-colonial struggle, a socialist tradition of the international solidarity of the oppressed people. . . It is not only that this year marks ten years of the siege of Gaza with intermediate military onslaughts against its people.
”This year also marks 100 years since the Balfour Declaration when a British Foreign Secretary promised the land of Palestine to the Jewish people, my people. The civil rights of the existing population, that is the Palestinians, were meant to be protected, but that turned out to be an empty promise. We Brits, all of us, have a responsibility for what occurred.
‘So in this policy report we call for an end to Israel’s blockade on Gaza, an end to occupation, of settlements, and the endorsement of the Palestinian state. This is the very least that we should be doing, I say this as a Jew and an anti-racist and a dedicated member of this revived socialist, internationalist Labour Party, and comrades I am not an anti-Semite and conference this Party does not have a problem with Jews.’
This speech has set the tone for the conference. The response of the Labour leaders to the situation has been to come forward with a left programme, to repeal the anti-union laws, renationalise the railways and the Royal Mail, end benefit cuts and the private finance initiative, restore free state education abolishing tuition fees, and bring in a £10 an hour minimum wage.
The response of the capitalist class to the coming Labour election victory will be to collapse the economy and to bring down such a Labour government from the right. Such a crisis will demand that the working class takes the power and expropriates the bosses and bankers with a socialist revolution. There is only one party that is prepared for this struggle. It is the Workers Revolutionary Party. Join it today!
