Labour must watch its left flank in months to come – new party Left Unity is on the move
Left Unity, the new party founded in November with the support of Ken Loach, held its first national conference in Manchester this weekend. This article by Salman Shaheen first appeared at the New Statesman.
Left Unity is the hottest thing on the left right now. In a few short months, it has attracted more than 1,800 members. With a new member joining every 10 minutes over the weekend, the party is going from strength to strength.
On Saturday, Left Unity held its first national conference in Manchester. After a day of open, democratic debate around a series of motions sent in by branches and members around the country, the party agreed that it would launch its challenge to the Tory-led government and weak Labour opposition by campaigning against austerity, poverty pay, zero-hour contracts and privatisation.
Left Unity is committed to introducing a mandatory living wage and a 35-hour working week with no loss of pay to support people struggling with their work-life balance.
It will campaign to bring the railways and the energy companies back into public ownership, policies that big business-backed Labour will not even consider even though they are supported by the vast majority of British people. The best Miliband is willing to offer, despite rightly pointing to a cost of living crisis, is a temporary price freeze on energy bills. But neither the energy companies nor the railways – which could only ever be run as monopolies in private hands – have delivered the promised and overly vaunted choice and competition that the deified ultra free market philosophy would have us believe gives the best deal for consumers. Bringing them back into public ownership would not only allow such companies to be run in the interests of their workers, but also their consumers, the poorest of which are being crippled by soaring costs.
The party committed itself to defending the NHS from creeping back-door privatisation, to campaigning against the bedroom tax and campaigning to build a million new affordable, spacious social homes while reigning in rocketing private rents.
Conference supported a push not only for many more green jobs, but many more purple jobs as well. The term refers to jobs in the caring sectors which are being remorselessly cut by local authorities as a result of national government reductions in their funding. Left Unity not only wants to reverse those cuts, but significantly expand the public sector, ensuring that labour necessary for society no longer faces low wages and increasingly casualised and precarious conditions of employment. These are jobs which are critical to support disabled people, the sick and the rapidly growing numbers of older pensioners. They are also jobs in childcare, which the party agreed should be provided free to all those with children below school age. Fundamentally, the purpose of purple job creation is to free women from primary caring responsibilities which have led to their concentration in part-time work, discontinuous labour, and involuntary underemployment. Ending segregation of the labour market where women are consigned to low pay and underemployment to enable them to provide care for children, sick, disabled people and the elderly, these jobs will enable men and women to work in this sector. This is a step towards ending women’s unpaid personal labour at home, allowing their full participation in employment and their access to education, personal development and economic independence.
Left Unity is opposed to fracking. As yet, the evidence for the safety of pumping chemicals into the ground to extract gas from shale is sketchy. And even if, in the fullness of time, fracking is proved safe, it ties us into further exploitation of fossil fuels, hampering efforts to bring carbon emissions down and distracting us from the need to be massively expanding renewable energy.
Now that Left Unity has agreed a core set of policies, the hard work of campaigning can begin. The party has had an encouraging start for an organisation that emerged from nowhere to be built from the bottom-up by independent activists fed up with the political status quo. But for Left Unity to succeed, it will now have to turn outwards. It will need to campaign on the streets, in the workplaces and in the unions. It will have to support – not hijack – local campaigns across the country to save hospitals and libraries, to shut down fracking sites, to oppose the bedroom tax and to stop the racist EDL. Only when Left Unity has done all of these things, when it has actively tried to make a difference to the lives of poor, vulnerable and oppressed people, will it have the right to ask for their vote.
Ukip may be making the headlines as we approach the European elections next month, threatening to steal thousands of votes from the Conservatives and forcing them to watch their right flank. But Labour will have to watch its left flank in the months and years to come. Because Left Unity is on the move.
Salman Shaheen is Principal Speaker for Left Unity
15 comments
15 responses to “Labour must watch its left flank in months to come – new party Left Unity is on the move”
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Left Unity hasnt got a chance so long as it hitches its wagon to daft green ideas such as the anti fracking protests. Fracking is a proven safe technology thats been in use for many years without much in the way of problems … Problem is you have an ideological attachment to these things as opposed to a cold hard reasoned stance which sees the benefits both environmental and economic of fracking …
The conference decided that even if fracking is proved safe, we should instead be investing in renewable energy to bring down carbon emissions. In the long term, it’s the poor across the world who suffer most from climate change. But we want cheap energy too. That’s why we would renationalise the energy companies to do away with their gross profiteering, which is not linked to the cost of energy production, but the scale of greed in private monopolies where companies know they can get away with it because consumers don’t have any other choice.
You would be better off helping the poor of the world to industrialise and become rich , then they could afford the infrastructure we have and help them adapt to any deleterious outcomes … Why this instead of ? Why not as well as ? Im all for generating as much energy as possible by any means necessary …be that nuclear , solar , gas , oil or coal …
This “daft green idea” is taken rather seriously by Angela Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democrats whose own MPs were somewhat vocal in joining other parties (and popular opinion) when their former (and since deseated) pro-business coalition partners The Free Democrats suggested the idea a year ago. Since the election, the new coalition agreement – now with the Social Democrats – says:
“According to available studies on its environmental relevance, the fracking technology in unconventional natural gas production – particularly in shale gas production – is a technology with enormous potential risks. The effects on humans, nature and the environment are scientifically not yet sufficiently clarified. Drinking water and health have absolute priority for us.”
This is only two years after the renowned environmentalist and left-wing ideologue Nicholas Sarkozy had this to say on the French Position:
“Development of hydrocarbon resources underground is strategic for our country but not at any price,” Sarkozy said during a visit to Ales in southern France. “This won’t be done until it has been shown that technologies used for development respect the environment, the complex nature of soil and water networks.”
(Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing_by_country#Germany and http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-04/france-to-keep-fracking-ban-to-protect-environment-sarkozy-says.html)
Left to you we wouldnt have had north sea oil or gas because of potential problems
In order to get my vote and i suspect , the votes of other ex Labour voters , Left Unity will have to show that its for making the poor richer … Not embracing the folly of the austerity for all approach of the greens …Heres a newsflash ..us woorking class folk want cheap energy , we like consumerism , we like foreign holidays and cheap flights … We do not like hair shirts …got that ?
Michael, take a look at our expansive, major new infrastructure /jobs creating programme , Welfare services safeguarding, just adopted Economic policy strategy, and it should reassure anyone that Left Unity is definitely not falling into the trap of accepting any of the arguments and tenets of Austerity, either from a fallacious “it’s necessary to reduce the deficit” economic perspective , or from the equally fallacious “the planet is doomed if working class people have a high standard of living” arguments either.
It is not technically or politically impossible to pursue an expansionist, job and wealth creating, mass housebuilding, good quality job creating, regional regeneration, economic strategy, whilst still building environmental responsibility into the heart of such a programme. For a start there is plenty of socially unnecessary production “fat” to be trimmed from, for instance, the arms industries and the huge grossly exorbitant luxury goods sectors meeting the demands of the 1% of super-rich, which can be diverted to socially useful production, before we even start to increase our production for the majority via smarter and more environmentally sustainable energy generation and production methodologies.
“hair shirt, ration-book socialism” is quite obviously a complete no, no, as a policy to build a mass party with working class. It certainly doesn’t appeal to me. Socialism always has, and always will, require the creation of material abundance for the majority – whilst abolishing the obscene overconsumption of the world’s resources by a tiny minority. However , to deny that capitalism, and its short-termist production and consumption methodologies and priorities has set our planet well on the path to environmental disaster through depletion of resources and severe damage to our biosphere would be to hide our heads in the sand. This wasn’t an issue that our socialist forebears payed much attention to. We have to today. We have to embrace environmental responsibility and the potential for radical emerging technologies to enable us to eventually achieve a society of material abundance – whilst safeguarding the environment we bequeath to our children too. Surely not an impossible goal for a species as technologically brilliant as ours undoubtedly is – once freed from the bondage of the capitalist system and its greed-based irrational priorities ?
BUT, can “working class folk” in the UK/Europe/USA/Japan expect their consumption patterns to remain exactly the same in the future, is a bigger issue altogether. Can we in the “West” all expect to continue to live in a wastefully “throwaway consumer culture” with a pointless new variant of the iPod every year, a, unnecessarily large engined car or two for each family hoovering up a fast diminishing global oil resource, a mass foreign holiday industry based entirely on exploiting the “Third World” low wages and total lack of workers rights of the fellow workers providing the labour for the privileged “first world” holiday makers ? No. A comprehensive Welfare State, good housing, good jobs, a quality environment , education and opportunity for all, – is a right we as internationalist socialists want for all our brothers and sisters worldwide. So, some of the ludicrous consumerist excesses of the “advanced capitalist” societies will have to go as we advance to a more rational, planned, socialist society. That is not the same thing as “hair shirt rationed Austerity though. It’s about becoming a grown up species.
John you give yourself away in the last few paras … Consumerism / consumption to you and a lot of the left these days is a dirty word and say that is why you will not win many votes
This is one of the issues that will define Left Unity. Have we got the courage to follow through on a green, renewable approach or do we listen to the self conceived “cold hard rationalists” who accuse us of acting on ideological grounds whilst reminding us how much they like capitalism,… sorry consumerism?
Whats wrong with consumerism ? The problem for most people is that they consume too little .. Its called poverty and most of us are sick and tired of poverty – we want wealth …dont you get that ??
What’s wrong with consumerism? it is the cause of poverty. it is the reason why people have a problem with consuming too little. the capitalist system is inherently unequal, it will always produce rich and poor. come on man, do a bit of research, there are real substantial reasons as to why these words are ‘dirty’ .
Does anybody know how many left unity candidates are standing in the council elections on 22/5/14?
I’m a member of LU and I have some sympathy with Michael.
If LU wants to go anywhere it has to be a party of aspiration for working people, not just offering better state services to the very poorest (which is admirable and just and I’m wholly in favour of, for clarity).
I think it is disappointing that LU adopted a strong no to fracking. Of course as I was unable to get to the conference – like the vast majority of members – I had no say in the decision.
If fracking is done safely there is no problem with it. Just as if conventional drilling is done safely it doesn’t turn out like the Deepwater Horizon. It should be the safety of fracking which is paramount, not the method of drilling the well. There are tens of thousands of fracked wells around the world – it isn’t a very new technology – and the vast majority have not had problems. Some in the US however have had very serious problems and it is this we should be concerned with.
Support for safe well-regulated fracking does not in any way negate the need for investment in renewables and reductions in emissions.
I am also against the level of £75,000/yr for a 50pc tax rate. Rather than put this level in – if you live in London/have kids/spouse doesn’t work this does not make you `rich` – we should step into other parties’ territory.
We should have the highest 50pc tax rate, let’s say for argument at £155,000/yr.
But we should bring in a 60pc rate and a 70pc rate, let’s say at £250,000/yr and £500,000/yr. Other bands/levels as well if needed. We should aim to show we will raise revenues for HMRC by this method.
By doing this we negate the arguments that will be put to us. A plumber/journalist/carpenter/store manager in London who has a few good years in the middle of his/her working life and earns over £75,000/yr should not be the sort of person we are dissuading from voting for us.
Lack of consumption / consumerism = poverty not the other way around
We all need goods and plenty of them but who’s labour creates the wealth and goods (working people) and who makes societies work but who benefits the most (the rich and powerful). We need a new fairer economic system which we can work out together – now that’s exciting.
If I wasn’t working class and had the bad fortune of being born into the rich and powerful elite I would hope LU would stand in marginals – that would really do the rich and powerful a favour.
Len McCluskey’s comments in the Guardian (12/4) that Unite could consider backing a new workers party after the election could be a game changer. As a democratic socialist I have always tried to think what would be the perspective of the rich and powerful. Yours in solidarity.