Whistling In the Wind

Sharon Graham Tries To Replace Class Struggle With Ineffective Whinging

As the dismal farce that is the general election gets underway some union leaders have been shocked to discover that Sir Keir Starmer might not be a friend to the working class. Having already signed the cheques and handed over millions of pounds of their members money to the Sir Keir and his (not so) merry men Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham has discovered that a knight of the realm may be a bit untrustworthy. So what do the recent grumblings of Sharon Graham regarding the labour party manifesto reveal? When considering this two crucial things must be understood. 

1. That this is ineffectual grumbling long after the even that will affect precisely nothing. Sharon Graham, and the rest of the Unite leadership already gave the labour party what amounted to a blank cheque when they voted to continue their affiliation to this wretched party. The sole sanction that the unions have with regard to the labour party is their ability to stop paying for the labour party’s costs.  If the unite leadership is not willing to do that then all of their whining is utterly without consequence. 
2. The problem for the union leaders and the labour party more broadly is that the party is a spent force in terms of its ability to actually appeal to the working class and this has been the case ever since the mid 1960s.  

We will deal with the second point first in order to better understand why the first point matters.  The labour party was formed by a combination of trade union leaders and petit bourgeois socialist groups. It was not a mass organisation of workers from the very beginning but in fact an organisation that represented the upper end of the working class and certain sections of the petit bourgeoisie.  It was never an organisation of militant workers dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism. It was always an organisation dedicated not to bringing the working class to power but one that was all about (initially at least) winning certain reforms from the capitalists.  

The labour party was never meant to be a serious threat to the capitalist order in Britain and all of its leaders from Keir Hardie to Keir Starmer have all understood that.  At certain points in its history the labour party has been pushed into adopting more radical policies than it would have preferred to by a radicalisation of the working class. The adoption of the original Clause 4 was done under the influence of the October Revolution of 1917,a clause that every labour leader ignored until Blair did away with it.  The labour party was forced, again to adopt a much more radical programme when the working class made clear its determination to improve its situation and the fact that millions of workers had been inspired by the example of the USSR after the end of WW2. The 1945-51 labour government and its reforms are the high water mark of the labour party but it was still nowhere near sufficient and certainly was not about bringing about socialism.  

What 1945-51 actually represents was the most the ruling class were prepared to concede under the pressure of the working class. They employed the services of the Labour Party in order to be a reliable force that would act, with the assistance of the union leadership, against further working class militancy. The reform period was thus not about advancing the working class but about managing the working class and making sure all revolutionary impulses were suppressed.  The high point of reformism was thus marked by the political and industrial leaders of the labour party and trade union movement uniting together to preserve capitalism. They continued to do this even after the reform period came to a decisive end after 1951. There followed 13 years of Tory led consolidation of capitalism followed by the decisive re-emergence of the capitalist crisis after 1964. The trade union leaders have, at each stage, sought to make sure that class struggle stayed within manageable limits. In that sense Sharon Graham’s role is the same as her predecessors the problem she has is that whereas the Transport & General Workers Union leaders of the 1940s and 1950s could point to the period of reform as “proof” that the labour party delivered for workers now Graham and her cohorts cannot point to anything of substance. 

What Starmer (and by extension Graham) are presiding over now is reformism without reforms. What is left of the labour party is the most important part of it, that of the role that it plays in managing or suppressing class struggle. What is gone forever is the capacity of British capitalism to allow any reforms. This is why Starmer dumped every promise he made to the trade unions and the remnants of the labour party membership. The British capitalist class have made it clear to Sir Keir that they will not tolerate even the mildest of changes. Sharon Graham can complain all she likes but unless she is prepared to undo the 120 year long relationship the trade union leaders have with the labour party and, by extension, the capitalist class then all of her complaining is simply whistling in the wind.