By-Election Spotlights Ongoing Crisis

Editorial by Ken Ferguson, Voice Editor

AS COMMENTATORS reach for that grievously overworked “historic” superlative and outbid each other in the significance stakes it might be useful for Voice readers to take a moment to examine what information all three by elections gave us.

First and clearly most significantly the Makerfield result is clearly a personal triumph for Andy Burnham who polled more votes than all his opponents added together.

The result also terminated the Starmer premiership.

However even Labour loyalists confirmed that had it been any other Labour candidate defeat would have been a real possibility and heavy reliance on Burnham’s “King of the North” persona would not necessarily have the universal appeal needed to revive an on the ropes Labour government.

History is, after all, littered with the ghosts of saviour leaders who didn’t deliver, from the learned Michael Foot to fake left Neil Kinnock, to unrepentant warmonger Tony Blair and the hapless “Vow” author Gordon Brown. It’s a hard but oft repeated lesson for socialists which must cut through the euphoria of defeating the racist forces of Reform/Restore and the prospect of dumping the deeply unpopular Starmer to the hard question of policy.

Burnham’s record

As we anticipate the near inevitable Burnham entry to Downing Street its worth re-reading the pieces on, putting it politely, Andy’s policy flexibility set out in a number of recent Voices.

Turning to the two Scottish by elections in Aberdeen and Arbroath the former is the first Tory by election victory since the 1960s while, just down the road in Arbroath the SNP held the seat with a healthy first past the post majority.

In Arbroath there was — as with the Tory victory in Aberdeen — a substantial right wing vote was recorded with the combined Tory/Reform vote running the SNP tally close. However digging a little deeper signs of the ever present crisis come into view.

In Aberdeen the Tory victory was, according to the pundits, a rejection of any curbs on drilling for oil and gas and an endorsement of the Trumpian call to “drill baby drill” against a background of mounting job losses in the North Sea.

Set against these very real losses the slogan about a “Just Transition”away from carbon fuels — famously described by the late Alex Salmond as set to male Scotland the “Saudi Arabia of renewables” — consistently failed to deliver.

Indeed in the pages of the Voice and in SSP publications, we have repeatedly warned that the workers in the North Sea must not become the equivalent of the thousand of miners brutally sacked as coal was abandoned and the subsequent CO2 reductions trumpeted by politicians who closed the pits.

Rather we have campaigned to make the Just Transition a reality through public ownership of our renewable resources, re-training of oil workers to construct maintain and develop the structures and infra structures required to make the transition a reality.

This possibility remains a real alternative but it requires an end to using government spending and state power simply to bribe oil and other energy firms to exploit our natural resources for profit and instead introduce a planned industrial policy.

Elsewhere in this Voice we carry material developing such an approach. Such a policy would see both our existing skills base utilised and fresh skills developed in a green based re industrialisation providing skilled full time jobs.

Public opinion matches left wing policies

Indeed, in many ways, the need for such an approach lies at the heart of the social, political and economic crisis which has developed and grown over the years since the 2008 crash.

Both public opinion and the forces broadly of the left share large areas of agreement on and support for the policies which begin the serious task of breaking the stranglehold of the super rich and taking the road away from profit and towards a society based on the needs of people and planet.

Such a programme would include:

• End the war drive, slash arms spending, scrap Trident

• Fight austerity, tax the rich

• Save the NHS, end PFI and privatisation

• A mass drive on council house building

• £15-an-hour minimum wage for all workers over 16

As survey after survey has shown there is wide public support for such an approach. The question is, who will deliver it?

Despite the fireworks around Burnham, Labour long ceased to have a real claim to be the workers party and Burnham’s own record of ducking and diving fails to inspire. In recent elections, the electoral support won by left parties was extremely modest, while the attempts to launch the Your Party alternative finished up more Groucho than Karl Marx.

Yet we are faced with an ever accelerating climate crisis, war ravaged countries, and poverty, is the lack disease and epidemics stalking the globe.

What prevents action at a national and international levels is the lack of the existence of a coherent mass movement such as those who opposed the Vietnam war or those who ended apartheid.

South Africa: Council of the Left

In this issue, we carry a detailed report from what may be an exciting way to escape the difficulties of winning unity and progress developed by a range of forces fighting for change in South Africa under the banner of the ‘Council of the Left’.

Although they won democratic liberation in 1994, South Africans still face the rule of capitalism, Neoliberalism and the market, and have opened a process that puts the construction of a programme to achieve this before party affiliation.

Indeed, their approach stresses that nobody is asked to leave their existing organisation in order to participate in this process.

This approach is a long standing position of the Scottish Socialist Party and we will carry regular reports on the progress of the Council of the Left