According to Hedges', 'the purging of Corbyn and his supporters effectively emasculated the left within the Labour Party.' Questions Hedges and Asa Winstanley fail to answer in their discussion include whether or not Corbyn is so different from others of Labour's left, past & presentt. What of Michael Foot, honest John Smith, and the former darling of the Left and current Lord Neil Kinnock? James Callaghan was also of the Left and as Prime Minister presided over the winter of discontent. And, more importantly, why given Labour's predictable and lamentable track record, would Corbyn have been any different?
JC would not have saved us. His pledges amounted to nothing more than another spin on the reformist misery-go-round. They included expanding jobs and a million new homes being built over five years. Yet when did a Labour government ever leave office with unemployment lower than when it started? After World War II (Labour has supported all wars since WWI - so much for the peaceful foreign policy pledge!) Bevan promised to solve the housing problem....Other pious pledges included 'security at work' (recall the use of troops as strike breakers against the dockworkers) and a secure NHS. Labour Minister Bevan felt more secure with his own private physician, and with the introduction of charges for dental and optical services he resigned. Tuition fees? That was Labour too. The odds on them being reversed were never good. The climate change pledge? That was more hot air. Free transport? No, nothing more than the possibility of an expanded publically-controlled bus network.
Labour governments have carried out every anti-working-class action which the Conservatives have gone in for: they have supported wars; initiated the British atom bomb; sent in troops to smash strikes; established the vicious Special Patrol Group and set them on the picket lines at Grunwick; passed racist immigration laws; imposed “monetarist” expenditure cuts leading to the closure of hospitals and other vitally needed services. They have left power and, above all, the ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution in the hands of a parasitic capitalist minority. The record of Labour governments is one of total subservience to the needs of capital — of the rich and powerful and privileged — against the material interests of the class which produces, but does not possess.
We would be wise to heed what Debs said over a century ago. 'I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, someone else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands' (Speech in Detroit, 1906).
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