Keir Hardie and the Labour Party of today

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Keir Hardie was a socialist of the old school and founder of the Labour Party, however not of the kind that we know today and this can be seen from address of his below.

“I shall not weary you by repeating the tale of how public opinion has changed during those twenty-one years. But, as an example, I may recall the fact that in those days, and for many years thereafter, it was tenaciously upheld by the public authorities, here and elsewhere, that it was an offense against laws of nature and ruinous to the State for public authorities to provide food for starving children, or independent aid for the aged poor. Even safety regulations in mines and factories were taboo. They interfered with the ‘freedom of the individual’. As for such proposals as an eight-hour day, a minimum wage, the right to work, and municipal houses, any serious mention of such classed a man as a fool.

These cruel, heartless dogmas, backed up by quotations from Jeremy Bentham, Malthus, and Herbert Spencer, and by a bogus interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution, were accepted as part of the unalterable laws of nature, sacred and inviolable, and were maintained by statesmen, town councilors, ministers of the Gospel, and, strangest of all, by the bulk of Trade Union leaders. That was the political, social and religious element in which our Party saw the light. There was much bitter fighting in those days. Even municipal contests evoked the wildest passions. And if today there is a kindlier social atmosphere it is mainly because of twenty-one years’ work of the ILP.

Scientists are constantly revealing the hidden powers of nature. By the aid of the X-rays we can now see through rocks and stones; the discovery of radium has revealed a great force which is already healing disease and will one day drive machinery; Marconi, with his wireless system of telegraphy and now of telephony, enables us to speak and send messages for thousands of miles through space.

Another discoverer, through means of the same invisible medium, can blow up ships, arsenals, and forts at a distance of eight miles.

But though these powers and forces are only now being revealed, they have existed since before the foundation of the world. The scientists, by sympathetic study and laborious toil, have brought them within our ken. And so, in like manner, our Socialist propaganda is revealing hidden and hitherto undreamed of powers and forces in human nature.

Think of the thousands of men and women who, during the past twenty-one years, have toiled unceasingly for the good of the race. The results are already being seen on every hand, alike in legislation and administration. And who shall estimate or put a limit to the forces and powers which yet lie concealed in human nature?

Frozen and hemmed in by a cold, callous greed, the warming influence of Socialism is beginning to liberate them. We see it in the growing altruism of Trade Unionism. We see it, perhaps, most of all in the awakening of women. Who that has ever known woman as mother or wife has not felt the dormant powers which, under the emotions of life, or at the stern call of duty are even now momentarily revealed? And who is there who can even dimly forecast the powers that lie latent in the patient drudging woman, which a freer life would bring forth? Woman, even more than the working class, is the great unknown quantity of the race.

Already we see how their emergence into politics is affecting the prospects of men. Their agitation has produced a state of affairs in which even Radicals are afraid to give more votes to men, since they cannot do so without also enfranchising women. Henceforward we must march forward as comrades in the great struggle for human freedom.

The Independent Labour Party has pioneered progress in this country, is breaking down sex barriers and class barriers, is giving a lead to the great women’s movement as well as to the great working-class movement. We are here beginning the twenty-second year of our existence. The past twenty-one years have been years of continuous progress, but we are only at the beginning. The emancipation of the worker has still to be achieved and just as the ILP in the past has given a good, straight lead, so shall the ILP in the future, through good report and through ill, pursue the even tenor of its way, until the sunshine of Socialism and human freedom break forth upon our land”.

Keir Hardie was first elected to Parliament in 1895 and was integral to the founding of the Labour Representation Committee (later the Labour Party) in 1900, becoming its first leader in 1906. On April 11th 1914 – just a little over one hundred years ago – Hardie attended the twenty-first anniversary of the formation of the Independent Labour Party in Bradford where he gave the address above.

Despite the fact that the present-day Labour Party is about as far removed from socialism and Hardie's ideas and ideals they will always claim that they are his children, basically. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth.

The Labour Party of today and the majority of its (leading) members would not know socialism if it bit them in the proverbial butt and those of the ordinary membership who claim that their Labour representatives do also must examine as to whether they have the lightest idea of what socialism truly is and is all about.

It is not only about free health care but a great deal more. In fact those socialists that went before understood it even better, such as Owen, and those who stood for the Co-operative Commonwealth.

While there are flaws in many of the programs of those old socialists and those that followed it is possible by combining the good from all programs and by thinking up our own ways to create true socialism where everyone gets a fair chance and where everyone is – yes – equal. Where everyone has a home, has work, or is free to pursue his or her own calling as to making a living, but where everyone works in one way or the other; where work is seen as a duty and as a honor. Where health care is first of all true health care and not a business with sickness and where everyone has a right to treatment as and when needed free. Where man and Nature are at the center and not corporation, economy and profit. Where there are no more masters and slaves. It can be done but not with the system we have at present and that includes that of political parties.

© 2014

Labour will only succeed as a pro-business party: Ed Balls

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

In an interview with the Financial Times in January 2014 Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, stated that “Labour will only succeed as a pro-business party” and this is where he shows his true colors and they are definitely not the Labour red and it shows how far that the party has traveled since its inception as a party for the trade union movement and how far it has gone off course.

There is already an abundance of pro-business parties at Westminster, more than enough of them, one should think. The three main parties are already vying with UKIP to be the most pro-business party, and Labour is no exception here. To many, the sight of the traditional workers party turning gamekeeper leaves the socialists and those of the working class scratching our heads.

It would appear that Ed Balls is stuck in the Westminster bubble where the needs of the City of London take priority over the needs of the rest of the country and he needs to get out and see real life for a while. And he is, that must be said, not the only one in that party who needs to do so. They need to immerse themselves in the lives of the people, the working class who they are meant to represent, and see what life it truly like.

There are many self-proclaimed socialist in the Labour Party who would not know what socialism is meant to be even if it bit them in the proverbial backside. They would not even recognize it.

Socialism – and that is what the true Labour Party was based upon when it was founded as a political party by the Unions – is about the people, the working people, the working class, and about the peasantry and not about aiding and abetting the capitalists. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It must be ended.

For too long the Labour Party and its cousins, the so-called Social-Democrat parties in Europe (and elsewhere), have tried to play Socialism Lite, trying to create “capitalism with a human face”, as they refer to it. Sorry, it does not work and will never work. The corporations will see to that, and that includes the corporations called governments. Capitalism will never have a human face regardless of what any of those parties will try and try to tell the people.

All the Social-Democrats everywhere, including Labour in Britain, have been doing is tinkering around the edges and always mindful not too upset the business community.

Nothing against business, but it has to be business where the means of production are in the hands of the workers and the farmers and not where they are in the hands of either private exploiters, national or international corporations, or indeed the state, as was done under so-called socialism in the countries that adopted the Stalinist approach. State capitalism is not socialism. That means no nationalization of businesses with the possible exception of the vital utilities such as electricity, gas and water.

Neither capitalism per se, nor nationalization, that is to say state capitalism, under the guise of people-owned companies, is working or has worked, as far as business is concerned and the rights and incomes of the workers and peasants. Only when the means of production are owned by those who use them and produce the goods and services will a change come about in the condition of those who work in the shops, workshops and factories and in the fields and forests, and will turn those workers from slaves to owners. No nationalization can and will ever do that.

For far too long, during the the twentieth and now in the twenty-first century have we interpreted socialism as businesses being owned by the state. That is not what the term “means of production in the hands of the workers” means. It means what it says, namely that the means of production must be owned by those who do the work and not owned by the state or any private individual or group of people.

Those who interpret the term “means of production in the hands of the workers” as the businesses being owned by the state remind me of the people who love to interpret the Bible in similar ways that suit them and who manage to read stuff “between the lines”.

The problem also is political parties per se and the Labour Party is no exception there in that a party will always force its members to, especially when they are part of the government or opposition, vote along party lines and will not allow them to vote according to their consciences or the brief they have received from their constituents or even the grassroots of the party. The truth is that if Labour moves any further away from its roots and the working class it will not succeed but fail, and fail miserably.

Unless, and I say that even though I advocate the destruction of the party system altogether, the Labour Party returns to its roots, to socialism and total support of the working class it is not fit for the purpose and thus the working class will need to find a new way and leave that party far behind.

The trade unions should remove their support for this party now and tell it where to go for it is, after all, the party that the trade unions gave life to. It must be allowed to flounder and be cast upon the waters to sink if it is not willing to return to its roots and its values.

But, the trade unions, more than once, themselves have abandoned the workers for political gains, especially the TUC, and we of the working class must never forget that either. Too many of the leadership of the unions love their power, love to exert it and fear to lose it and to that end are prepared to make all manner of compromises, leaving the workers out in the cold.

Let's not forget who stabbed the miners in the back in 1926 and even in the Thatcher era. It was the TUC. The congress of the trade unions, that it is purported to be but which it, apparently, is not.

We already have a Tory Party and we don't need a pink version of the same. The country and the working class of this country need a true red organization that will bring about true socialism for the working class where the means of production truly will be in the hands of the workers. We need a true worker ownership of the means of production and not state capitalism, under whichever guise it masquerades. But, alas, the Labour Party of today would never understand that and neither does the British Communist Party, alas, nor any others.

© 2014

The problem with the British Labour Party

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The problem with the British Labour Party is that is has been infected with a Blairite ideology for the best part of 20 years, and that when the pack is reshuffled, and Blairite ministers are kicked to the kerb, they are just as likely to be replaced by other Blairites and left-wing Tories, to give them the correct name.

The party, in fact, has lost its way and has become nothing more than a slightly left-wing Tory party and has left the working class in the lurch and, in fact, betrayed the working class and the Trade Unions that created the Labour Party.

Personally I do not believe that the Labour Party, the formerly British party of the working class, can be reformed; neither from the inside nor from the outside, and the working class of Britain needs to look for another way. I say “another way” not another party to further its interest and finally bring about the changes that are necessary to put the means of production into the hands of whose who do the work. However, nationalization of industry and businesses and a planned economy is not the answer. This only creates, as Albert Einstein put it in his essay “On Socialism” that a planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. Nothing could be added to that.

Any such organization of the working class must be and has to be answerable to its members and the working class as a whole and not be “staffed” with career politicians and those looking for an easy job.

The British Labour Party no longer is representing the working class as far too many of those that are in position of leadership have never have done a real day's work in their entire lives. Many come from upper middle class to even better backgrounds and have been to the schools of the elite, such as Eaton and nothing ever that comes out of Eaton will benefit the working class.

Tony Blair, the man who basically destroyed the Labour Party as it was, and that almost single-handed, may have been, as it has been suggested, an establishment plant, tasked with destroying the party of the British working class.

The Labour Party of today is bleeding members left, right and center (and no, this has nothing to do with political leanings) and the leadership seems incapable to understand why this is so. Rather to work to retain the real working class grassroots within the party they are more interested in getting the center left and center right to become Labour members.

Ever since the later 1970s the Labour Party has stopped representing the British working class and, maybe, already before that time, though it then still had some true Socialists within its ranks and those of the leadership.

John Smith was a true Socialists though inspired by his Faith and the teachings of Christ while others were more inspired by the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin. While John Smith died a far too early death others were expunged and purged by the Blairites and others hellbent on purging the party of all that believed in true Socialism.

We need a new organization of the working class in Britain and not a new Labour Party or a reformed Labour Party as political parties will always make compromises in order to get elected. The working class needs an organization to lead them and then must take its own steps to change the country into a worker and peasant state, finally breaking the rule of the junkers and the aristocracy. Chance would be a fine thing though.

© 2013

Labour has deserted the working class

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

RMT general secretary Bob Crow has accused Labour of deserting the working class and called for a new political party rooted in the trade unions after Ed Miliband promised Labour would cap benefits spending if elected to office.

The fact is that Bob Crow is absolutely right when he said that the Labour Party has deserted the working class and is did that already under Tony Blair when “New Labour” was created and under Ed Miliband with the “One Nation Labour” it is getting worse still.

The Labour Party now, under Miliband, is having a tiswas with the trade unions because it has been accused of being in the pockets of the trade unions and thus they are going to cut their nose off in spite their face and want to distant themselves from the movement that gave the party birth.

Labour has moved so far to the right that it is difficult to differentiate between that party and the Tories and one could, as I have done before, refer to them as the left-wing conservatives while the Lib-Dems are middle ground conservatives. The once party of the working class, Labour, has become a party full of toffs and people who have never done a real day's work in their lives and are about as far removed from the working class and the lives of the real working people as Moscow is from Cape Town; further probably.

The Labour Party rose out of the trade unions and the movements of the working class but, since Blair, has been stabbing the working class in the back. Ever since the death of John Smith the Labour Party has been leaning further and further to the right and deserted the working people more and more.

It has to also be said that many of the trade unions today are about as democratic as the Stalinist Soviet Union and thus are not suitable to create a new party of the working class. The working class itself – from within itself – has to bring about a new party of the working class. One with true values of socialism and democracy and which puts the interest of the working people above everything else.

What This country needs, and not this country only, is a party of unity of all those on the left, whether in a party or not. A true Socialist Unity Party that truly will be representative of the working class. The Labour Party in the UK, in the same way as the Social Democrat Party in Germany, and other, has long ago lost the mandate.

While it might be possible to resurrect a true Labour Party as was intended by the founders of the Labour movement a unity of all true socialist parties would make much more sense and would create a better power base and the trade unions, after being reformed and brought back to democracy and honesty, could be an integral part of it.

© 2013