On The Origins Of the Labour Party
Keir Hardy MP
As Left Unity was formed to build a new party of the working class surely one of the priorities of this task is to learn the lessons of the history of the Labour Party to examine how it failed in its task of achieving socialism.
I am presenting these two articles by Bill Hunter written about how the Labour Party was founded and analysing the various strands that contributed to its make-up. It is written from a Marxist viewpoint as Bill is a life long socialist and fighter for the working class. These are very important articles and very relevant to our present situation and also in that they are a true record of the history of our class which is so often buried in calumnies, distortions and outright lies. They also contain a very clear warning on the dangers of opportunism and lack of political clarity. – Frank Fitzmaurice
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4 responses to “On The Origins Of the Labour Party”
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Frank, I’ve read both these articles, and have to say that I’ve discovered nothing that isn’t very well covered in innumerable other studies on the formation of the Labour Party, and its well documented from-birth political shortcomings and unswerving collaboration with the interests of the British capitalist ruling class.
What lessons do the posters of this article wish us to learn from it in the particular context of Left Unity though ? It’s a pity that isn’t at all clear. It is claimed this article is written from a “Marxist viewpoint” . However, the concluding few paragraphs in the addendum to the article is clearly written from a viewpoint which whilst prepared to acknowledge some “shortcomings” (bureaucratic distortions ?) in the history of the USSR – nevertheless accepts it unreservedly as being a genuine “socialist ” state – and is in undisguised awe of its “achievements”. Sorry but I see Stalinism everywhere historically as a gross murderous bureaucratic collectivist dictatorial system of rule – equally as murderous and toxic to the working class as fascism, built on the corpse of workers power. It has nothing at all to do with genuine democratic socialism, or genuine Marxism, and I would be very cautious about accepting any analysis of democratic radical socialism from this tainted source.
Nevertheless my original question still stands – what is the implied connection suggested by the posting of this article, between the undoubted class collaborationist history of the Labour Party and our new radical socialist Left Unity Party project ?
Guessing game where is this paragraph from? Tory, Labour, UKIP or Green Party candidate?
“If parents chose to fulfil the prophesy of multi generational laziness their benefits would be replaced by vouchers which could only be spent in one place. Training for parents would be available.”
“Those entrenched in disrespectful behaviour would be channelled to appropriate terms of ‘boot camp’ style activities, and filtered back into the mainstream system when appropriate. Older children would learn good parenting skills.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/pippa-bartolotti/creating-the-generation-w_b_926434.html
We might have something to learn from the founding of the Social Democratic Federation in 1881 and the Independent Labour Party in the following decade. The ILP had 30,000 members by 1914 and, despite right wing defections, kept its opposition ot war and militarism throughout the Great War. Why the ILP subsequently lost out to the Labour Party within the working class is of more relvance to LU than gazing into the foundation of the Labour Party, which was narrowly electoral from the outset.
Comrades
Have always preferred the development of the German SPD which at least was revolutionary and had a massive series of political debates involving comrades from many countries in the years up to 1914. The politics of the Labour Party were at a lower level by several orders of magnitude by comparison. The debates in the Spartacusbund/KPD from 1918 onwards are also of real value as major issues in organising in the workers movement in western Europe are covered. Britain just does not have a mass, properly political, leftist movement in its recent history.