LONDON — “Our campaign starts from how to mobilize millions to defend the interests of working people,” Peter Clifford, the Communist League candidate for the Manchester Rusholme constituency told a candidates’ debate July 2, during the recent parliamentary elections. “The CL explains that workers need our own party, a party of labor.”
“Yes, we do!” has been the enthusiastic response of many workers that CL campaigners have met, Clifford, a member of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, said. He was one of the CL’s two candidates in the July 4 general elections, along with Pamela Holmes, standing in the Tottenham constituency in London.
“In the last two years, over 2 million workers have joined strikes and other union actions. Worker resistance needs a political instrument. Many workers know that nothing basic will change for our class — whatever the election outcome,” Clifford said. Two days later the opposition Labour Party ended up ousting the Conservatives.
“We’re facing unending attacks on living standards. The opening guns of World War III are sounding louder. The debate between Labour, Conservative and other capitalist parties is about how best to push their crisis onto our backs,” he said.
Days after the election the new prime minister, Keir Starmer, attended NATO’s Washington summit. He praised the role of the 1945 Labour government in NATO’s founding and reiterated his government’s “unwavering commitment” to the imperialist-led military bloc.
“The new government will act for big business — just as the Conservatives did,” student William Taylor told the Militant. Taylor joined Clifford to campaign at the postelection Durham Miners’ Gala on July 13, where union leaders lined up to tout the end of 14 years of Conservative administrations.
In the final week of the campaign, Holmes soapboxed along the busy Tottenham High Road, engaging in discussion nonstop with passersby.
Attracted by what he heard, rail worker Theodore Onye came out of work during a break June 30. “I campaigned for Labour’s Tony Blair in 1997,” he told Holmes, but discovered “Labour governments don’t serve workers. We need our own party.”
Onye took campaign literature to share with co-workers and got a Militant subscription and Cuba and the Coming American Revolution by Jack Barnes, Socialist Workers Party national secretary in the U.S. The CL was the only party campaigning in defense of Cuba’s socialist revolution and pointing to what it shows about the capacities of workers and farmers to take political power, including in Britain.
Another worker who got a subscription was teacher George Whittle. “I’m 27 years old and I’ve never had a regular employment contract — all agency work,” he said. Over 4 million workers are trapped in such setups, most with no sick or holiday pay, insufficient hours and no union. It’s the sharp end of assaults on working-class living standards that have seen real wages decline since 2008.
Others that CL campaigners spoke with pointed to the strains that low pay and anti-social work shifts put on family life, to hospital waiting lists of 8 million, to the lack of housing and rising personal debt.
Over three weeks CL campaigners sold 30 subscriptions to the Militant and over 50 books by communist leaders. “We printed an election flyer which was distributed to each household in the two constituencies where we stood,” Holmes said.
Fight against Jew-hatred
Hamas supporters from the middle-class left, the Muslim Association of Britain and an organization called The Muslim Vote backed dozens of “independent” candidates. Each demanded the U.K.’s imperialist government boycott Israel as part of their pro-capitalist program.
Five of these “independents” were elected to Parliament. Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South lost his seat to “independent” Shockat Adam. Ashworth says he had to seek refuge in a vicarage after being chased by Adam’s pro-Hamas supporters.
“Workers we met during the campaign strongly rejected these actions, including many Muslims,” Holmes said. “A bicycle delivery worker was enraged by a local ‘independent’ and requested CL flyers to distribute.
“We received an email from a retired office worker, Angela Smith, asking about our views on antisemitism. She sent it to each of the 10 Tottenham candidates but received just two replies – ours and one from Labour’s David Lammy, saying he’d get back to her.”
After talking with CL campaigners about the party’s opposition to all expressions of Jew-hatred, Smith bought The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class, one of 26 people to do so during the campaign. “Now I have someone I can vote for,” she told Holmes.
Rulers’ political crisis
Labour’s election victory will not usher in a period of stability for the U.K.’s capitalist rulers. Starmer is the fifth U.K. prime minister in as many years. Behind the rulers’ political crisis lies the impact of the world capitalist disorder and its wars, combined with the crisis — and decline over decades — of British imperialism.
Despite winning a big parliamentary majority, Labour’s vote in England was the same as in 2019 and lower than 2017. “Working people rejected the Conservative government,” Clifford said. “And they rejected the Scottish National Party, reduced to just nine MPs from 47.” Most of all they rejected the crisis capitalist rule puts on them.
The Conservative vote dropped 20% from 2019. Founded in 2021 out of the Brexit Party, Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K. took 14.3% of the vote. The Liberal Democrats and Greens also increased their vote.
At the NATO summit Starmer proclaimed, “Britain belongs on the world stage.” Such declarations are met with skepticism by many in the ruling class, including the military top brass. The rulers’ armed forces are half their 1990 size, with outdated weapons and depleted ammunition. Starmer says he will boost military spending.
The growth per capita of the U.K.’s capitalist economy has flatlined over the past 20 years. Investment has stalled and productivity declined against the rulers’ rivals. Government debt stands at a huge 100% of Britain’s gross domestic product. There’s nothing the government will do that won’t have negative consequences for the working class, something many workers sense.
“Starmer can only carry out his pledges through more attacks on workers’ living standards at a time of a world crisis and when the retreat of the labor movement is over,” Clifford said. “This will create greater interest in the need for independent working-class political action and opportunities for building the Communist League.”