British far left in cloud cuckoo land

Cloud cuckoo land: “a realm of fantasy or of whimsical or foolish behaviour”. There are no better words to capture how the main British Trotskyist organisations view the current period and the prospects of the left in it.

Socialist Party (SP) leader Hannah Sell’s speech last November at Socialism exclaimed how “we are at the start of an upward curve” in terms of workers struggle. She urged socialists to study the 1926 General Strike “because we are heading towards struggle on that scale again”. (Her speech is available on YouTube.) The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) just concluded an important conference whose overarching theme was to “win hegemony on the radical left” by intensifying campaigns in what, they think, are good conditions (Post-Conference Bulletin, January 2025).

As for the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), their founding document from last year described how “Large layers, mostly of the youth, are drawing revolutionary conclusions and are attracted to communism. This is the decisive feature of the period” (“Theses on the coming British revolution”, April 2024). The main article of their December newspaper was a bizarre re-write of Dickens’s Christmas carol, in which “Sir Keir Scrooge”, after adopting right-wing policies, is overthrown by millions of workers storming Number 10.

While each group has its flavour, all believe that the labour movement is in a strong position and that Labour’s unpopularity will directly lead to great opportunities for the left and even a revolution. In the real world, however, what we have is a left increasingly discredited, a trade union movement weak and on the back foot and a growing mood of apathy and right-wing reaction in the working class.

How to explain such a contrast? Is it simply that they are over-optimistic, and we are too gloom-and-doom? No. The role of Marxists is to guide the working class. Your analysis of the period is supposed to inform what you must do. The wrong analysis of the SP, SWP and RCP are all rooted in wrong politics, setting the wrong tasks for workers.

One cannot speak of preparing the fight against Starmer and against the right without a clear understanding of the strength of the enemy and the current position of the working class. What is driving the wild predictions of the far left is that they are minimising and disappearing all the obstacles that stand in the way of advancing the working class. Thus, in this way, they are disorganising the struggle.

Out goes the trade union bureaucracy

First, the grand predictions of the left all downplay the reactionary role played by the trade union bureaucracy, which is propping up the Labour government and will do everything to sabotage struggle. SP leader Hannah Sell knows this. She notes in her speech that “the majority of the leaders are going to continue to attempt to shield the government” from working-class anger, and that “our job is to cohere that anger”. So far, so good. But she then adds:

What does this mean? For Hannah Sell, the decisive element is the “objective process”, not the action of socialists, whose role is merely to speed up events which will happen anyway. The great openings she foresees will not come as a result of socialists mobilising the working class against its current leaders who are shielding the government. Rather, for her, the “objective process” will push a wing of the union bureaucracy to play a progressive role. In other words, she is waiting for a new Bob Crow.

For this, the SP is banking on Unite leader Sharon Graham, a pro-NATO bureaucrat who voted for Starmer, and for whom the SP is campaigning in the upcoming union elections. Thus, rather than leading the struggle against bureaucracy, the politics of the “objective process” amount to chaining socialists to discredited bureaucrats.

Out goes the rise of the right

Second, the belief that objective conditions are opening great opportunities for the left ignores the rise of the right wing and its growing appeal among workers. Socialists now find themselves in competition with right-wing forces for the allegiance of workers, a race we are losing by far. For the RCP, whose trademark is bombast about how the masses are turning to communism, this is a problem. Regarding what to do, RCP leader Alan Woods in his article on Trump’s victory had only this to say: “Once the masses have fully explored the potential of Trumpism and realised its limitations, they will turn in a different direction. The way will be prepared for a massive swing of the pendulum to the left” (In Defence of Marxism, 6 November 2024).

More than a quote, this Thälmann-like approach of “After Trump and Farage, our turn” has become a mantra for RCP cadres. Under the pretext that workers must go through the experience, the RCP has developed a policy of passivity and abstention justified by the need to train cadres for the distant future. Concretely, the RCP has retreated from any serious work in the working class and the bulk of its activities consists of recruiting students who do newspaper sales and discuss dialectics and history.

It is true that a shift to the left could follow the current turn to the right, as Woods says. But this could be a matter of years. And, crucially, it will be possible only if there is a fighting pole in the working class to which workers can turn. Otherwise, the pendulum could swing further right. But this is precisely what the RCP is not building. Behind radical verbiage about communism lies an objectivist policy which leaves the bureaucracy’s grip on the trade unions intact and deepens the schism between the left and the workers.

We urge the RCP to change course. A start would be to send 70 per cent of the 1200 members into working-class jobs and fight to rebuild the trade unions. This is the only antidote to petty-bourgeois radicalism and the only way to safeguard the RCP’s best elements and advance the communist cause.

Out goes the crisis of the left

Thirdly, those socialists who look cheerfully at the coming period must blind themselves to the crisis of the left. As the left is weak, marginal and discredited among workers, for the SWP, this is a sign of future glories. Their recent conference adopted the following goal:

All that is lacking is effort and energy. The SWP believes all it needs to do is more of what they have already been doing. More activism in SUTR, more Palestine Solidarity Campaign. After all, objective conditions are “good”.

If only SWP leaders were attuned to the winds of change, they would realise that the left is discredited because it has liquidated into liberal ideology, which is now dying everywhere under the blows of right-wing reaction. Yet, the SWP’s path to hegemony consists of doubling down on campaigns whose politics are essentially liberal. Far from leading to hegemony, this is a last stand on the hill of liberal activism, which can only bring demoralisation and exhaustion.

SWP members must stop and think. The movements in which they see their salvation are at a dead end because of their liberal politics and their association with the forces of the status quo: union bureaucrats and Labourite politicians. The task at hand is to draw a hard class line against these people. By pledging to continue as the torch bearer for them, the SWP is bound to discredit itself even more.

For many on the far left, the growth of the right means the growth of the left. The weakness of the trade unions means their strength. Union leaders supporting Starmer means they will fight Starmer. The world is turned upside down. Maybe it is out of fear that telling the truth could demoralise. But the first duty of revolutionaries is to say what is, and the greatest crime is to lull socialists into cloud cuckoo land. Because, sooner or later, reality hits like a ton of bricks. Unless they radically change course, the SP, RCP and SWP are in for a rude awakening.