How to fight back

Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership is a disaster. The Labour government is battered by one scandal after another — usually of its own making — and confronted with a crumbling economy it has no clue how to fix. Labour’s economic strategy, if we can call it that, consists of tinkering with building regulations and red tape while hoping that projecting an image of “grown-ups in the room” will bring back economic growth. Fat chance! Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves have no vision or ideas of their own, lack any talent at pretending otherwise and live on wishful thinking and borrowed time.

Buffeted by the urgent needs of the country, the demands of big capitalists and a growing right wing, Labour is teetering on its tightrope. The last budget gave a little bit to big businesses, a little bit to workers and public services — too little to make any difference, but just enough to anger everyone. The result is that Starmer has set the record for the biggest post-election fall in approval rates of any prime minister in the modern era.

The terrain could not be better for Reform UK and the forces of right-wing reaction. The election of Trump in the US has marked a profound shift and a definite end to the liberal era. The last liberal-centrist governments are now falling one after the other, from Trudeau in Canada to Scholz in Germany. Personifying the confidence of the right, Elon Musk has made Starmer’s downfall his personal goal, using any club he can find to beat him — even hitting Farage in the process for not being right-wing enough.

But beyond the international political wind, all the weaknesses of Labour are paving the way for Reform. Immigration has reached an all-time high, Labour’s budget has succeeded in angering farmers and small business owners, and the government is pursuing a net zero policy which is destroying what is left of industry. The Vauxhall car plant in Luton has announced its closure because of EV quotas, putting 1,100 workers on the scrap heap. This adds to other closures, like the Grangemouth Refinery in Scotland, and the mass layoffs at the Port Talbot steelworks in Wales. All of this and more is pushing millions into the arms of the right wing.

But even more significant in the rise of the right is the fact that all the trade union leaders are supporting this weak and hated government. Those who are supposed to represent the working class called to vote for Starmer in the last election. RMT general secretary Mick Lynch, who virulently denounced leftists who refused to back Starmer, is now retiring after having channelled discontent into Labour. The TUC applauded the budget, praising Reeves for delivering “an economy that works for working people” (tuc.org.uk, 31 October 2024).

If you are a member of Unison, you are being bombarded by propaganda celebrating the “new deal for workers” — this damp squib which barely changes anything. NEU leaders have hailed Reeves’s pay rise of 5.5 per cent while schools remain in ruins. Even oh-so-militant Unite leader Sharon Graham welcomed the budget. While Graham and other trade union leaders did criticise Labour, they remain loyal to this anti-worker government. All their criticisms are in the framework of propping it up, milking every last drop of illusions that Starmer supposedly represents an “opportunity” for workers.

So, we have a weak and hated Labour government, clueless as it faces the country’s deep problems, presiding over declining living standards and about to be battered by economic and geopolitical shocks. We have the entire leadership of the trade unions backing this lot. We have a growing mood of apathy and despair in broad layers of the population. And those reaping the fruits of discontent are Reform UK and other reactionary elements.

To be sure, Reform and Co have no more solution to the country’s problems than Starmer does. They, too, are wedded to the interests of the City of London, the main parasite sucking up all the resources and deindustrialising Britain. But they have the advantage of being outside the mainstream and enjoying real support among working-class voters. This makes them an even more potent threat to Muslims, immigrants, trade unions and public services.

For militants, trade unionists, socialists and all those who want to fight for the working class, the question now is what to do. How do we fight back in this context?

The source of apathy and despair

It should be quite obvious, particularly for those involved in trade unions, that we are facing tough times ahead. Yet most of the British left is in complete denial, telling people (and themselves) a bunch of fairy tales about how great prospects are. We advise readers to look at our article “"British far left in cloud cuckoo land”.

While it is key to understand that the period is difficult, this does not mean giving up. Some leftists do this by burying their heads in the sand, reading theory and history and waiting for “better times”. This is just a fancy way of doing nothing, which only cedes the initiative to the right wing and the useless trade union leaders.

To pretend that everything is alright or to do nothing are not options. To go forward, it is important to understand what leads many workers to apathy, despair and right-wing reaction. Contrary to what liberals say, the problem is not merely racism, social media and the right-wing press. Confronted with impoverishment, many workers do not see any way forward to better their lives. They do not see the possibility of pushing back against the unbearable status quo through the common struggle of workers against the bosses. They end up believing that nothing can change and try to better their lot by sucking up to the boss, elbowing co-workers and opting for right-wing demagogy. Since society is not moving forward, turning against a section of it — usually Muslims or trans people — is easy. For many, it comes to make some sense that deporting millions could at least give them a bigger slice of the shrinking pie.

Because where are the alternatives? The trade union leaders have not lifted a finger to seriously better workers’ conditions and position themselves as any sort of fighting force. Let’s be clear: Outside the small circles of leftists who watch Novara Media and drool over Mick Lynch, most workers think that the trade union leaders are a waste of space. And rightly so. Most hear about the union once a year when pay claims arrive, only for union officials to disappear again. In many workplaces, the union exists only on paper, with no weight on the shop floor to defend workers on a day-to-day basis. Meanwhile, most workplaces have no union at all.

Many of our readers will have had the tough conversation of trying to convince co-workers to join the union only to be asked, “Why?” The response is often difficult. It can cost 20 quid a month, a chunk of it goes to Labour and the union doesn’t do a damn thing. Talk about a hard sales pitch.

Yet the trade unions remain the only organisation workers have to collectively fight back. In the end, in the face of coming attacks on services and living standards, they will be the only line of defence for workers. But this is not how they are acting today. The reason is that the unions are led by spineless bureaucrats who, co-opted by the bosses, usually have more in common with Starmer than with the workers they’re supposed to represent.

What about the forces claiming to be for socialism and the working class? Most of them cling to Labour or finished figures like Jeremy Corbyn. For the last decades, the left has merged so much with the liberal wing of the upper and middle class that it is now largely discredited in the eyes of workers. For many, a socialist is someone who supports the EU and “green” taxes like ULEZ, calls everyone who even questions immigration a “racist”, or glues himself to the motorway (see “To build a workers party…you need workers”). It is no wonder that many are turning their backs on the left and the trade unions. For workers bled by inflation, the only people out there who seem to be fighting are Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson.

It is necessary to understand these dynamics in order to fight back. Otherwise, one just falls into cynicism, as if all could be explained because “people are backward”. Ideas reflect the conflict of classes and are shaped by living forces. The rise of the right and the current dire situation are conditioned by a dramatic drop in living standards and important changes in the world — like the decline of the US Empire, which, in the ruling class, is provoking a shift away from liberalism and into right-wing reaction. However, crucially, the situation is also conditioned by the total failure of the official leadership of the working class to provide a progressive alternative to the current crisis. This is true in Britain just as elsewhere. So, let’s look at this a little more.

The main obstacle: the union bureaucracy

The 2022-23 strike wave was a tremendous opportunity for the trade union movement to go on the offensive, deal a blow to the hated Tory government and get back into a fighting position after years of defeat. But the leaders of the trade unions refused to do that. They disorganised the strikes and made sure they would remain as inefficient as possible because they feared more than anything throwing the government into crisis. The result was largely a defeat. Isolated strikes got pay rises already eaten by inflation (RMT, NEU, RCN, etc), and many unions came out of the strikes weak and crippled. Think of the UCU and the CWU, where swathes of militants were victimised and demoralisation swept through the membership.

The strike wave also revealed the organisational weakness of the trade unions. Many unions did not even have a strike fund. Many organised only a tiny fraction of workers and competed with multiple other unions, negotiating separately. Everywhere, crossing picket lines was widespread and accepted. Decades of defeat and misleadership have hollowed out what used to be bastions of working-class power.

The defeat of the strike wave was a boost for Reform UK and the right wing. Remember, during the winter of 2022-23, everyone was talking about the cost-of-living crisis and how to save the NHS and the schools. A year later, nothing had changed, but no one was talking about these anymore.

So, when the pro-Palestine movement erupted, the trade unions played zero role in it. Union leaders knew very well that any concrete action for Palestine would draw the ire of Keir Starmer and the Labour Party tops, who support Israel to the hilt. Occasional solidarity speeches aside, they sat on their hands and the movement, despite widespread support, remained impotent and has now lost its momentum. Then, the union bureaucrats all poured money and resources into electing Starmer’s government.

Last October, the trade unions, particularly the NEU, massively publicised the Stand Up to Racism (SUTR) march against Tommy Robinson’s demo in London. This was necessary. But the politics of the demo had the strong smell of a pro-government rally. This explains why, despite the mobilising efforts of the unions, the base did not turn up and the right wing had larger numbers. In fact, there were probably more workers with Robinson than with the unions. This was an implicit vote of no confidence in the union leaders and the Labourite left, and a sinister warning.

All this is to say that the current context of right-wing reaction is not just an objective process but has everything to do with the betrayal of the leaders of the organised labour movement. At every step, it was totally possible to act differently and position the trade union movement as a lightning rod for the massive discontent in society. But this required confronting the whole ruling class, something the union leaders refused to do. Now that they have “their” man in Number 10, they will do their utmost to rein in struggles. And with the rise of Reform UK, they will seek to close ranks behind Starmer, which can only further discredit the trade union movement.

How to go forward

The coming period promises shocks, whether it be Trump’s policies, an economic crisis or the outcomes of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. These crises will hit Britain hard, and the ruling class will make workers pay. With a right wing in an upswing, a discredited left and the trade unions propping up this hated government, the task for socialists is not to launch reckless offensives but to fight to put the workers movement in a better defensive position.

For this, socialists must turn to the working class and fight to improve its most basic conditions. We must seek to engage as much as possible in workplace struggles, as minimal as they may be, with the aim of building and reinforcing the trade unions for what’s coming. In this tough period, a campaign as ABC as organising co-workers to push back against management encroachments and abuses or to turn up the heat in freezing workplaces could be a real step forward.

None of this is new for those active in trade unions. But what is always lost is that this cannot be done without complete opposition to the trade union leaders and their strategy. The union tops will prove to be obstacles in the struggle for even the most basic demands, not only because they support the current government but also because they support the entire system. They will turn every initiative into a routinist dead end and divert any meaningful struggle into an impotent pressure campaign on Labour. The worst thing socialists can do is to associate themselves in any way with these people.

Yet the main mistake militants commit when engaging in trade union struggle is that they always orient towards this very union bureaucracy. Instead of looking to the base of workers and seeking to mobilise them for what’s needed, they look to the upper echelons of the unions. Sometimes this appears easier. The branch rep might be a leftist and look like the only one who cares about the union. But this only reinforces the problem. Most workers are alienated from union activities, which too often are sandboxes for leftists who do not amount to anything. And the one thing union bureaucrats are good at is co-opting honest militants and transforming them into lawyers for their bankrupt strategy. This is the trap many socialists fall into (see “Work in trade unions — their conception and ours”).

This is why any push for improving working conditions must be directed at mobilising the base of the workforce and denouncing the policy and strategy of the union leadership every time they hamper this effort, whether it is their inaction and crawling in front of the government or their pushing for reckless actions without proper preparation. All this must be rooted in the particulars of the industry in question. Workers Hammer is more than ready to assist anyone to push back, and we encourage our readers to have a look at the concrete examples of what our co-thinkers are doing in various unions.

This is the only way to get a hearing from those workers who have become cynical and disgruntled, and who might even have quit the union. To the earlier question of why join the union, this is the response: the union is our only defence, we need to make it fight for us, and this isn’t happening because its leaders are hitching our interests to those of the government and the bosses. We cannot leave our union in their hands.

That is why, as socialists, we are not anti-leadership. The question is what kind? We stand for real socialists leading the unions, and so we are very much against the fakers currently in place. Only with the understanding that ultimately workers must run the country can one lead the day-to-day battles of our class in a progressive direction.

Connecting the struggle for the most basic and urgent demands to the struggle to transform the trade union movement from within is how you can push back against apathy and despair. It is also how we can rebuild the authority of socialists among workers and undermine the appeal of the right wing. You can have all the arguments you want with co-workers who look to Reform UK. But in the end, the rubbish in their heads will clear only if through their day-to-day experiences they can see that the trade unions and collective struggle are the way to resist the destruction of living standards.

This gets to the problem with campaigns like Stand Up to Racism. Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry are tools of the bosses to divide workers. They can be combatted only 1) through common struggle against the rulers and 2) by connecting the defence of minorities with the interests of white workers. But SUTR is a PR campaign designed for the union bureaucracy to avoid doing just that. Its liberal and moralist politics end up targeting white workers rather than the ruling class, the source of racial oppression, which only pushes them towards the right. This is how liberal politics ends up further dividing the working class rather than defending minorities (see “How London liberals fuel the far right”, Workers Hammer no 254, Autumn 2024).

The task now for socialists is to do the painstaking work of rebuilding trade union power. It will not be easy. We are swimming against the stream and are isolated. But it is necessary to fight. Hold on tight and keep the bigger picture in mind. If done right, the preparatory work we do now can better position the workers movement in the battles ahead.