In his presentation of the project, Jeremy said,

‘We will be looking to analyze issues; to organize with, connect, and empower groups that exist already, and to support big campaigns for change. We want to cooperate, not compete, with others. For example, we’ve had messages of support for the launch so far from the Orgreave Truth and Justice campaign in Yorkshire as well as trade unionists in Bolivia and the USA. And connecting up those campaigns, seeing the big and small pictures at the same time, is so important.

We will work with unions and social movements to build a network of campaigners, grassroots activists, thinkers, and leaders, to share experiences and generate ideas about solutions to our common problems.
We will combine research and analysis with campaigning and organizing. And we can build on the popular socialist policies developed in the Labour Party over the past five years.’

There will be a global launch for the Peace and Justice Project in January. It is a new and exciting initiative and as Jeremy says, it is ‘unknown territory’ for us all. Some things are immediately clear. This will not be a project for Labour Party members alone but one which can unite countless thousands who share Corbyn’s vision of a better, fairer society – and who are willing to get active to make it happen. Many of us outside the Labour Party had hoped when Momentum was first formed that it would bring socialists together both inside and outside the party and play such a role. Those hopes proved illusory especially as the struggle inside the Labour Party to establish Jeremy’s leadership unfolded and the shutters came down on non-party members. The Peace and Justice Project will unite socialists inside and outside the Labour Party in a developing network.

It will also be an international project bringing together campaigners for peace, and social and economic justice across the world. There is often a parochialism to political campaigning in Britain which Peace and Justice has jettisoned. Rafael Correa, the former President of Ecuador, spoke on the launch video and other supporters include Yanis Varoufakis, Ronnie Kasrils, a leading member of the ANC and the SACP, and Daniele Obono, a member of the French National Assembly. Already the European Left Party has sent solidarity greetings and this internationalism will be at the heart of the new project.

Within a day of its launch it was clear that Peace and Justice had struck a chord in our political life. Tens of thousands of people joined up. Social media support groups appeared and local groups began to form.
We are seeing what Tariq Ali has called ‘a sniff of spring’. This new project appears at a time when the Labour Party leadership is intent on the complete eradication of the left from the party. The deputy Labour leader, Angela Rayner, has called for thousands of party members to be suspended. Corbyn himself was suspended from the party in an outrageous and apparently pre-planned attack on the whole left. A disciplinary panel readmitted him only for Starmer to unilaterally suspend him from the PLP by withdrawing the whip. When party members sought to challenge this through their CLPs they were suspended themselves. Starmer is driving the party sharply to the right and more than 50,000 members have already left in disgust.

10,000 turn out in Liverpool, not for one man, but for hope, for a vision of a better way, and an end to the politics of the few and the demonisation of the many.

With the Labour Party under Starmer’s leadership preoccupied with internal battles, it has done nothing to seriously challenge the criminal policies of the government which are blighting people’s lives on so many fronts. A coherent left alternative is urgently needed to break out of the political impasse that is preventing a popular radical left narrative emerging. The challenges we need to address are many and serious: the pandemic has already killed more than 1.6 million people worldwide and left the same number with debilitating illness; the global economy is on life support suffering not only from the disastrous economic effects of the virus but also from the fallout of the 2007/8 crash from which the western capitalist economies have yet to fully recover. We face a devastating ecological crisis, and in political life, despite the defeat of Donald Trump in the US elections, the far right retains huge support. In Britain this far right politics is expressed through the Brexit process and we see the rise of a poisonous nationalism which could grow in strength in 2021 as Britain adjusts to life outside the EU.

The Peace and Justice Project can be part of building a powerful alternative to both a right-wing Tory government and a failing centrist Labour Party. But it will do it on a different basis – not repeating the new party initiatives of previous times. There have been numerous calls for Jeremy to lead a breakaway from the Labour Party and he has been clear that he is determined to remain within the party – he has been a member for more than 50 years and has no intention of resigning. But he has also been clear that he will fight for his politics: he will do that inside the party as we have seen, and he has always done that outside the party too. That is the great strength of Jeremy and the reason for the massive support that brought him to the leadership of the Labour Party. Corbyn personified a deep desire for radical social change and this was expressed in the hundreds of thousands of new members who flooded into the party in 2015 and after. It is also the great strength of this initiative: campaigns, movements, members of parties, non-affiliated activists – all can come together, united with the political passion that was generated during Jeremy’s leadership.

The Peace and Justice Project is in many respects a continuation of that movement but it is also a fracture because Labour’s new leadership is in the process of driving out those who have shared Corbyn’s vision and supported his leadership. As the right straight-jackets the left within Labour, limiting its ability even to bring motions, radical left politics can find untrammelled expression – with the wider movement – in this new initiative. Under these conditions the appearance of the Peace and Justice Project constitutes an essential response – it is not a new political party but a determination to fight on the central political questions come what may. It represents a partial break with Labour in order to support the struggles of the working class.
We cannot say in advance how this project will unfold. But what we can say is that it is necessary given the situation we face. I urge socialist campaigners to constructively engage with the hope and the possibilities that are contained within this new movement. We should not prejudge its outcome. Yes there will be hurdles to cross and political weaknesses to be overcome but this is a real opportunity for the left to drive forward the politics of change in the interests of the many.
Let’s build something important together.

‘The number one objective right now is to save my people. We need to close down.’ Christian Smalls, Amazon warehouse employee who led a shutdown in New Jersey.

When society stands on the cusp of great change, or even the possibility of that change, there is generally a disconnect between the objective possibilities of the time and the thoughts in the minds of the people facing those changes. In retrospect, it can seem that there was an inevitability to the change; historians have produced countless books explaining why the French Revolution or the decline of the Roman Empire or any other event in history were inevitable given the specific conjuncture. But no doubt it didn’t seem like that at the time.

Many of us experienced this in a small way when we opened our windows that first Thursday to ‘clap’ and shout for the NHS. Would we be alone? And then a minute later we realised that millions of people were doing it, prepared to act and show their support for our health workers. Of course they would!

We cannot know in advance how events will unfold and it would take a brave or foolish person to predict what will happen. No doubt future historians will admonish us for not having seen the ‘bleeding obvious’, but when you’re in the middle of it, it can be hard to see the wood for the trees, let alone the plains beyond. But we do know the outcome of today’s events will be shaped by its participants, humankind makes its own history.

When it’s necessary to act we often don’t understand what’s possible in the new situation. We may try and pursue strategies from the past, replicating known methods, when a historical turning point has been reached which demands something new. For the organisations and institutions of social democracy, which is an intrinsic part of the existing system, the tendency is always to try and return to the times when labour had a bigger share of the economic cake, via the welfare state. For some decades now that approach has been unworkable, following the massive industrial defeats of the 1980s, the trashing of Keynesianism and the onset of neo-liberalism. If the labour and trade union leaderships continue to stick to that approach it will fail to embrace the possibilities that a new period of heightened social confrontation has opened. It may imagine that it’s possible to return to previous forms of labour relations: that in this period of crisis where we are ‘all in it together’ the return of ‘beer and sandwiches’ with the government may be a harbinger of better things. The Labour Party may be relieved at once more being feted and taken seriously by those in power but there are grave dangers in accepting co-option; they risk sharing the blame for the debt tsunami that threatens to engulf this system. It is a mistake to seek solutions which are anchored in the experience of the past for the political and economic problems we face now; these can no longer – even to the limited extent that they have in the past – serve the interests of the working class.

These political limitations are no less true of those on the radical or revolutionary left, of which I count myself part. Our organisations are often tied to past structures and methods of political work which were appropriate for previous times and wholly different circumstances. They have become ossified and stuck. At worst, we treat organisational forms as a fetish, as if they are our politics, rather than a means of facilitating them which must change according to the context we face. There is a desperate need for renewal to engage with this new period; we don’t need shackles from the past. Crucially though, even more important than the recasting of the organisational form is the revitalisation of Marxist theory, its re-reading for today’s crisis with all its implications. How we grapple with these questions must be driven by the closest engagement with the struggles now unfolding. We must support and engage with every step forward taken by working people to defend their interests.

A slowness to move beyond the limitations of past strategies, and to recognise what new action is required, disconnects activists from the unfolding and immediate struggle; it can block the political road, leaving them disorientated and powerless. It will take courage and real political imagination for us to move beyond this stage and rise to the challenges that this situation presents.

COVID-19 is sweeping through the world. Already millions of people have been infected and it will kill hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people. The priority is to do whatever is necessary to save life and stop the virus spreading. It will impact disproportionately on poorer countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa. In many of those countries the virus has yet to take root but it will. I fear for those trapped in the Palestinian territories and especially for the people of Gaza, locked into what is effectively a prison camp. The virus suppression measures that have been taken here will not work in many of the more vulnerable countries with weak health systems and massive overcrowding in the cities and the slums. There people cannot self-isolate and have to go to work every day to get the basic means of survival.

In reorganising our political work in the light of the pandemic, it’s essential that we undertake a rigorous examination of our own organisations and our political work in its entirety. It’s an enormous task even to understand the scale of the collective tasks we have to meet in the coming period and to examine whether we have the necessary political tools to meet them. But some factors are fundamental: international solidarity is at the heart of our work especially in a period where the first response of others will be to retreat into nationalism and xenophobia. The socialist movement is nothing if it is not international and it must be able to respond at that level to the concerns and needs of workers everywhere, whatever struggles they face. This is a time for the left to make its internationalism concrete. For many years the left has paid lip service to organising on an international level but now rebuilding a truly international movement is an existential requirement.

Those millions shouting and clapping for the NHS here are echoed in every country of the world by millions more. This is the time of social and international solidarity. We must find a path to supporting struggles as they emerge: in Tunisia, for example, where there have been significant workers’ protests demanding the government act to defend the people and provide social security during the pandemic; in the US and elsewhere, where there are a growing number of strikes against non-essential work and demanding protection for workers.

Another factor is the urgency of political engagement. There has been some discussion on the left about the difficulty of engaging in political activity during lock down. Some argue there is little we can do until we can get back on the streets, until society returns to ‘normal’. There will no doubt be a time, though possibly not for many months, when public association will return. A yearning for our old lives is a fairly widespread desire, but the changes wrought by this pandemic – both here and throughout the world – make collective action necessary in the here and now. If we treat this period as a mere intermission in our political lives we risk misunderstanding and underestimating the changes that are now taking place globally.

These changes to the everyday lives of millions of people pose real challenges for those on the left who seek systemic change. It is not a question of waiting for the pandemic to be over but of developing and engaging the forms of organisation and action that are crucial now but will also lay the groundwork for what comes next. Unless the left confronts and overcomes particular organisational and theoretical obstacles during this period it will remain on the margins of political life. There is no guarantee of success for our actions but if we do not act there is a certainty of failure and defeat. The one thing though I think we can be sure of is that life can never return to ‘normal’, it can never be as it was before the pandemic. The future will be conditioned by this present crisis and by our actions or lack of them in response to it.

What is also certain is that the pandemic is driving profound changes in the consciousness of millions of people. Some challenge this view by pointing to opinion polls which show significant support for Boris Johnson and Donald Trump but such snapshots of sentiment are ephemeral, contributing little to our understanding of what is actually going on. They certainly shouldn’t be used as a guide to action or as an excuse for class collaboration. This is not, as many on the left would have it, a national crisis; it is a global crisis and therefore requires solutions and action from the peoples of the world: it requires a global health solution. Responding to the virus from a national perspective is part of the problem. Such attitudes have enabled the virus to spread rapidly in Europe. Little was learnt in the West from the Chinese experience, and the effective measures that the Chinese government introduced in order to stem the spread of the virus were largely ignored elsewhere. Racist attitudes played a significant role in that process.

The forces of the far right have strengthened substantially in recent years. They are no doubt poised to try and take advantage of popular dissatisfaction that will arise with the establishment’s handling of the crisis. This crisis is unlocking many doors to reactionary forces. The introduction of emergency laws to confront the virus and the mobilisation of the military in many countries are clear examples. In Hungary, the Prime Minister Victor Orban has used these new laws to effectively introduce a dictatorship; in the United States, Trump has used measures supposedly aimed at stemming the pandemic to further victimise and criminalise migrants. In Italy, the pandemic has taken a huge toll on the population with more than 20,000 deaths. The result has been that both the fascist Brothers of Italy and Salvini’s Lega party have been politically strengthened. If the left fails to rise to the political challenges we face as a society, the far-right and reactionary nationalism will step into the breach.

But there are many indicators that the current balance of attitudes is favourable to progressive social change. When people ask why there is insufficient testing and personal protective equipment for NHS staff who are risking their lives everyday – and a hundred other questions – this carries the seeds of societal change. When people spontaneously organise social solidarity, this is the embryo of the future society we want to see. Social solidarity, the defence of life and the protection of the vulnerable are front and centre of the political, economic and social demands being made across society on a mass scale. Of course this is contested by the right: they mount dark arguments, demanding that the government protects the economy by allowing the virus to rip through society – a Darwinian cull leaving hundreds of thousands to die. At the moment these are voices that we have driven to the margins; but they still exist and the further development and consolidation of solidarity-based mass engagement – and the framing of a new type of society in the post-virus era – is necessary to prevent those voices organising and growing louder.

A political door has been opened for the left which has long been closed. Our ideas have a potential mass audience – indeed many are spontaneously reaching the conclusion that we cannot go back to the status quo pre-virus – but at the moment we do not have the organisational forces to engage at the level that we need to. In this period it is necessary to find the means to swim with rather than against the current.

The need to provide personal protective equipment for medical staff and sufficient ventilators for virus patients is rightly seen as central to defending society as a whole. This need contains the seed of the revolutionary idea: that for society to function in the interest of its people and to meet their elementary needs, it must be organised on a fundamentally different principle. In confronting the virus, the realisation is growing that we have to escape the domination of production for profit and replace it with production to meet human need. These thoughts find concrete expression in the real world with numerous factories temporarily converting to socially useful production.

Socialists have always recognised the need to convert the vast wealth and productive capacity dedicated to the military-industrial complex, to turn ‘swords into ploughshares’, and here we see the real possibility of society and economy being organised to meet the needs of all people. This is a dynamic and creative development that challenges the dominant social relations of capitalist society. It engages with the desires of millions. This is well-expressed by Naomi Klein and Angela Davis’ statement that in order to really change society we have to ‘kick the door in’, or as Marx puts it in The Poverty of Philosophy, that ‘men must change from top to bottom the conditions of their industrial and political existence and consequently their whole manner of being’.

These changes will remain at the level of possibility until we build a movement sufficiently strong to impose the will of the people on government. It is in this struggle to defend humanity as a whole that we can begin to erode long-established modes of thought which encase us and trap us in the past. We must break with the idea that has been drummed into us by our rulers that ‘there is no alternative’. A socialist movement has to engage, help shape and even merge with this challenge to the existing order. The virus has placed a gigantic stop sign in the face of humanity. There is no going back and as Arundhati Roy says, ‘ nothing could be worse than a return to normality.’

Humanity faces a series of interlocking crises: environmental degradation, slump and economic collapse, political and social decay. Capitalism now confronts its deepest ever crisis. The strategies that enabled the system’s survival after the 2008 financial crisis no longer work. The trillions of dollars pumped into the system are having little effect. A global slump has begun that is already devastating the lives of hundreds of millions of working people on all continents. A great thunderstorm threatens and the pandemic is the lightening that precedes it. It is speeding up processes already under way and shining a critical light on past recent attempts to change society.

The crisis of 2008 gave rise to a series of political challenges from both the radical and the social democratic left, all of which grew quickly and mobilised millions of people who wanted to see a different world. These were hugely important movements which tested the political consensus but all proved unable to effectively challenge the existing system. They were beaten back by the strength of the establishment forces. Criticism can be made of individual political actors or failed strategies and compromises made, but it is important to try and understand why none of these movements were able to overcome the class forces ranged against them. There were many examples of important elements of social change wrought by these movements but none were able to mount a systemic challenge to capital, hampered by both the power of the financial institutions and the lack of adequate state or civil society support internationally.

The problems humanity faces require systemic societal change. This economic system is broken and destroys the lives of millions. It cannot be made to work in their interests. It must be ended. The conditions have arisen in which it is both possible and necessary to make a conscious break with all the traditionally accepted ideas and institutions that have dominated the lives of working people for generations. The class truce that many in the labour movement seek is no longer possible. The options for those who promote the line of least resistance are exhausted.

The pandemic illuminates the reality long suppressed, that the working class can no longer live under this system. Throughout the world millions now face penury and in many countries starvation. What we are now seeing is that working people and the poor are beginning to think that another world is necessary. Millions no longer want to live in the old way and the struggle is now engaged. There will be some confusion and some false starts but the outcome cannot be determined in advance – it will have to be fought out. It depends on mass human activity and crucial to the battles ahead is whether those bruised and battered forces of the radical and revolutionary left can develop the strategy and create the forms of organisation necessary for the coming struggles. I believe we are now in the foothills of a historic engagement which will determine our future and that of generations to come.

In China where the outbreak was first identified, it has been brought under control but elsewhere it is spreading rapidly. In its wake the virus is transforming everyday life. The main way to fight it is self-isolation and social distancing. No longer can people socialise as they did. Grandparents cannot help look after their grandkids. The schools are shut. The supermarket shelves are often empty. Bars, clubs restaurants and all social amenities are closed and will remain so possibly for many months.

The world is turned upside down and everyday life is changed in a way that nobody was expecting.

Swift action in China against the virus gave the rest of the world a breathing space. It gave other countries a few weeks in which to make preparations but few heeded the warning signs. In the US and Europe, few if any preparations were made by governments. Trump called the virus a hoax. He had already closed the White House pandemic office and last July had withdrawn the only US medical epidemiologist embedded in China’s disease control agency in Beijing. This was a ‘Chinese’ virus and would not infect US citizens. But Europe not China is now the epicentre of the virus and many thousands more will die here than there. In the US itself there has been precious little testing and the disease is running rampant.

As governments flounder and struggle to stop the spread of the pandemic, ordinary people are coming together in self-help groups, in streets and on estates and throughout the community, to make sure the vulnerable and the elderly are not abandoned. In the UK, thousands of these groups sprang to life almost spontaneously. They are social solidarity in action and are taking some of the strain off local councils who have seen services decimated through central government cutbacks. This is not only heart warming but is a cause for hope and optimism.

Society is creaking under the weight of the tasks necessary to protect people in this outbreak. It is ill-prepared. The health service is poorly resourced and short of staff and basic equipment. The medical staff struggle to find protective masks. There are insufficient beds and not enough ventilators. The doctors will have to decide who lives and who dies. More morgues are being prepared. All this stems from years of austerity cutbacks which followed the bailout of the banks in 2008. Over that period there has been a massive transfer of wealth from working people to a small elite in society.

When the government says not to panic few believe it. When the supermarkets say there is enough food for all even fewer believe it. The supermarket shelves are emptying. The just-in-time food supply chain is fragile and could easily collapse.

The pandemic has detonated an enormous crisis. It is a crisis not just of health care but of the economy, of our political structures and of society as a whole. It is a global existential crisis of the entire system, it presents a real threat to the continuation of capitalism. Is this an exaggeration?  Some argue that the old routines of society will return once a vaccine is found. People will go back to work, production will resume and things will pretty much return to ‘normal’

Of course it is possible for the ruling class to recover its position, even from such a deep crisis. But is it also possible now to see an alternative path to a new kind of society. A struggle is now engaged over the future – can this rotten system be ended?  For many years this has seemed an unattainable prospect for those on the left. But in the midst of this crisis the possibility of fundamental social change is posed.

The virus has stripped the ideological mask away from society. Every thing that was hidden is now illuminated for all to see. The pandemic unleashes the same social and political dynamic that the world wars did. It accelerates class divisions and class struggle and reveals the real relations of things in society. We can see clearly the social power of the working class. The bankers, the Richard Bransons, the hedge fund managers and the speculators are exposed as the drain on society that they actually are. They add nothing of value.

The real value in society is to be found in those who constitute the actual subject of production, that is in labour itself. It is an ideological sleight of hand that makes the capitalist rather than the worker appear as the motor of production. For those of us on the left this is a truism that we learnt in our early time in the movement. But the change that the virus creates is that this now becomes apparent to all, as clear as day. Everyone now not only sees it but they come out on their balconies and shout it and make noise with pots and pans about it and whatever else they have to hand. And in Edinburgh they sing it in the form of Proclaimers’ songs dedicated to the ‘unsung heroes’ of this crisis – the nurses, the doctors and all those who are keeping society going during this crisis.

Society as a whole recognises the truth that it can dispense quite happily with the bankers but nurses are essential. Even the ruling class understands this and sees its own impotence in the crisis. The virus illuminates this essential truth: that working people embody the common decency of humanity.

Millions of people now recognise the uselessness of this system and of those who rule us. ‘Don’t we need a new form of society?’ ‘Why are things like this?’ This goes beyond leftist propaganda and becomes the talk of everyday life. In the solidarity networks these questions and these discussions are taking place. ‘What sort of society do we want?’. And when the answer to that question is ‘Not This One’, then something is in the air. A profound change in mass social consciousness is taking place.

The questions keep coming. Why are there no medical masks, no ventilators, no hand sanitizer? Where do we get these things? The answer is simple. Requisition the resources from the private health care system, instruct manufacturers to produce for human need. Society can be organised on radically different lines and can serve the interests of the vast majority and not those of a small minority.

This is a potentially explosive situation in class relations. The economic compulsion on the backs of the working class is undermined. Everyone remembers Theresa May saying in the 2017 general election that there was no magic money tree to pay for an increase in nurses’ wages. Now it seems they have found a whole magic money forest to try and preserve their dominance.

So what will happen next? The ruling class senses the danger and is prepared to move quickly and to give ground in order to maintain class rule. They are trying various strategies to preserve their position. At the beginning Johnson and his chief adviser Cummings were both keen on the ‘herd immunity’ strategy which proposed letting the virus rip through society. However after a public outcry and the publication of a study by epidemiologist Professor Neil Ferguson and others from Imperial College which suggested the strategy could lead to the deaths of 250,000 in the UK and up to 1.2m in the US, ‘herd immunity’ was shelved. The government withdrew it declaring that it had never been its strategy in the first place.

The pandemic has driven the world economy into recession to be followed by slump outstripping both the crisis of the 1930s and that of 2008. All the accumulated contradictions within the system that drove previous crises are once again brought to the surface in an even more powerful and destructive way. The measures taken to try and revive capitalist economies over the last ten years have built a massive burden of indebtedness into the system which now threatens its collapse. In its wake it reveals the fragility of all the existing political and social structures in society.

The Tories do not have a clear strategy to extricate themselves from this agglomeration of crises. A class truce is proposed by both Tories and Labour Party to deal with a national emergency. The Tories are prepared to temporarily suspend some of their sectional interests. The Labour Party, deeply wounded by its election defeat, is keen to present itself as a loyal, constructive and responsible opposition.

Jeremy Corbyn, whom the Conservative Party has attacked as a threat to the nation and as an ‘anti-semite’, now becomes an important elder statesman with whom one can work. You will hear little about the anti-semitism crisis in the Labour Party in the coming period. And Corbyn will be replaced by Keir Starmer who is very much a politician that leading Tories believe they can do business with. Some argue that Starmer should be brought into a national unity government. They believe that they will need Labour’s help in order to survive this crisis.

This political truce has its dangers for both parties. Both parties risk being outflanked and surpassed as the catastrophe gathers pace. In this situation the Labour Party is in a potentially powerful position, but doesn’t yet realise it – or more accurately wants to avoid the responsibilities that now rest on its shoulders. It welcomes being asked into the establishment’s inner circles and warns workers to accept and not go beyond what the Tories propose.

But the reality is that labour itself – the working class – is able at this point to exert its social, economic and political power. The Labour Party must represesent the interests of the working class in this context. It must lead, because what we are seeing is a shift in the balance of class forces in society, a change that few of us could have imagined only a few weeks ago. Working people are becoming aware of their power and the possibility of uniting with others across borders.

There is a sense that something must really change and a recognition that society must not return to how things were before the pandemic. Another, better world will have to be made.

The question for the radical left is how are we to respond? Do we have anything to say in this situation?

We cannot just repeat the old formulas. We have to reawaken our historical perspectives of socialist transformation. The answers do not lie in mirroring the strategies of the revolutions of the twentieth century. We must grasp the interplay of the social forces which are presented to us today, historically conditioned as those are, and which form the terrain on which we must fight. Previous revolutionary struggles cannot just be repeated. They left a legacy of positive and negative aspects which will shape our actions now.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks were the product of a specific constellation of historical and social forces. We must fight with the comrades we have and the social forces which exist in our time.

Many millions of people are beginning to understand the need for real social change and are preparing to fight for the new society they want to see. The initial skirmishes in this battle will take many forms and socialists should engage creatively with the new forms of organisation that are emerging and not impose preconceived ideas as to how the struggles should unfold.

The left in the country has been riven by deep divisions over Brexit but in other countries too socialist organisations have been confined to a small political space; and comrades have been isolated from each other in separate organisations, often battling over the minutiae of political differences. I believe it is time to try and unite those socialist forces which understand both the gravity of the crisis and the tasks necessary in the coming period.

There will continue to be political differences and I am not suggesting the abandonment of principles. Instead I am suggesting the abandonment of subjectivity because that is required of us. It is our duty as socialists. We must try and rise to the level necessary to play the historical role that the left has always claimed for itself.

The virus has disrupted the ability of the ruling class to subordinate working people in line with its overall class interest. The virus stops capital reproduction dead in its tracks. The Tories are prepared to give ground because they understand the weakness of their own position. They speculate that this ground can be recouped from labour once everything gets back to ‘normal’. In this belief they have some willing allies in the labour movement. These people are so imbued with the ideology of the ruling class that they cannot imagine the world being any different.

But there is movement now at the base of society. There is anger, a desire for change and there needs to be organisation.

The working class is faced with the possibility, no more than that at this moment, of resolving – in its own interests – some of the problems it has faced for many decades. It begins to recognise the impossibility of continuing to live in a world dominated by capital. A question is posed. How do we create a society based on human need and not profit?

For the radical left there is a new mass audience. Ideas that would have seemed outlandish a few weeks ago now make perfect common sense. Who will now justify the billions or even trillions of dollars being spent on nuclear weapons and other military hardware? Why do we not distribute food to the poor and vulnerable? Why are there food banks? Surely food should be distributed to everyone? Increasingly production and distribution are being brought under state control in the interests of the population as a whole. This cannot be only necessary and desirable during a national emergency. It has to be the bedrock of our society.

There must be no going back and we need to be organised, becoming hegemonic with a new narrative that centres planning, public ownership and solidarity at the heart of our society. The desire for ‘normality’ after the crisis will play into the Tories’ hands, We must resist this and win the case for social, economic and political transformation.

There is a lot more to say on the question of internationalism and on the question of climate change.  During the crisis the decline in industrial production, the reduction of air travel and exhaust emissions reduces pollution and leads to better air quality. There are once again fish and dolphins in the canals of Venice. The fight against the pandemic has to be accompanied by a complete re-thinking about the organisation of society and its relation to the natural world. In the future society must be organised in such a way that the natural world is protected and not destroyed.

We all need to write about and discuss these crucial matters. I will try and write some more on them myself, especially about why building the international movement is a primary task at this moment, and about the dangers we face from the far right should we fail.

Let us recognise the scale of the tasks we face and bring together those forces that have a common understanding of the necessity of ending this system, not saving it.

Time is not on our side. Rosa Luxemburg’s understanding that in her historical period humanity stood on the crossroads between ‘socialism or barbarism’ has never been more true than in ours.

I first met Alice in 2001 at a local Stop the War meeting in Islington and worked with her on many campaigns and projects over the next nearly twenty years. From the off she was the proverbial force of nature driving forward the campaign. She wasn’t interested in the doctrinal disputes of the left. They irritated her and she wasn’t shy in letting those who were thus engaged know how she felt. And she had a wicked sense of humour – see below.

Post-demo pint. Stop the War early days

For her the movement was everything. She wanted action and a better world for all. You didn’t want to fall out with Alice. She was one of the warmest and most generous people I have ever met but woe betide anyone she felt wasn’t pulling their weight in the movement

Halloween eve protest. Alice and Laura Dubinsky. 2002 in the Guardian

For many years she was at the heart of the Stop the War coalition. In the early days she made the initial contacts with the Muslim community in Islington when it came under attack and visited the local mosque to express solidarity. In 2002 she was central to the first ever protest against the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Alice – in centre – on the first ever ‘Close Guantanamo Bay detention camp’ protest at US embassy 2002

She helped organise the collections from the national demonstrations and ran the stalls. And before we had a proper office we would count the collections in the living room of her council flat. Later on Alice became the finance worker at Stop the War. She had many skills and bookkeeping was one. She kept books for a range of radical projects: the Left Book Club, Muswell Press, Left Unity and others.

Alice was very proud of being a council tenant and never considered buying her flat even though it would have profited her personally. She used to talk about how pleased she was that her flat would continue as part of the social housing stock and would house a family in need. She was appalled by the Grenfell fire tragedy and campaigned against Rydon which was one of the contractors responsible. She attended many of the silent marches.

Our joint work was only part of her work for the movement. There was so much more and so much that we all have to thank her for.

Her heart lay in her commitment to social justice and her support for the NHS. She fought to defend our local hospital and this tribute from the secretary of that campaign, Shirley Franklin, sums it up:

‘So devastated that my feisty friend and comrade Alice Kilroy passed away today. She was a brilliant fighter for peace, socialism and social justice. And a fab banner maker. She was our very rigorous treasurer in Defend Whittington Hospital Coalition. And today it was confirmed that she has been awarded the Islington Mayor’s Civic Award. She knew it was going to happen. Big thanks to Alice for your tireless work for a better world.’

Alice opposing the attempt by the Whittington Hospital management to use Grenfell contractors Rydon

I want to mention some of the many campaigns that Alice supported or helped build. There will be many that I don’t know about but others will speak about them. And I want to talk about the personal help she gave me.

Alice was outraged at the way the families of soldiers in both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were treated. She supported the Military Families Against the War campaign for which she made the banners and she became close friends with some of the family members; she was close to Joan Humphries, the grandmother of Private Kevin Elliott, who was killed Afghanistan in 2009. She was always willing to put people up when they had to travel to London for meetings with MPs.

Over the years her embroidery, needlework and quilting skills developed to the point where she was able to create the most beautiful banners. Many have been exhibited. She used a very light netting fabric as the base which made the banners portable – essential for long demonstrations. Probably the most delicious of all was the one she made for the Lesbians and Gay Men Support the Miners banner which is truly a work of art. For many years she made costumes for the Notting Hill carnival which she loved to attend.

LGSM banner. This was the banner Alice thought this her finest creation.

She made the banners for the Greece Solidarity Campaign, for the anti-austerity Coalition of Resistance, for the No Pasaran conference, as well as banners for Stop the War, the Labour Party, Left Unity and many trades union branches.

Representatives of the 595 sacked cleaners from the Ministry of finance welcome a delegation from the Greece Solidarity Campaign (14 Oct 2014) at the cleaners’ camp, outside the ministry of finance just south-west of Syntagma (Constitution) Square, Athens. Alice was very proud of this international solidarity work.

Alice’s banner for the front of the 60,000 strong Stop Trident march in 2016.

She was for a time a member of the radical left party Left Unity acting as a national officer and treasurer. She also made banners for practically every Left Unity branch. As soon as Jeremy Corbyn launched his leadership campaign she left Left Unity and rejoined the Labour Party. Jeremy was Alice’s local MP and she was fiercely loyal to him recognising in his leadership bid a renaissance for political life in Britain. Within a week of Jeremy making it onto the ballot for the leadership Alice had made a ‘Just for Jeremy’ banner which was used on the first ever campaigning stall supporting his leadership bid. She went on to make many others both for his campaign and for the local party.

Left Unity on Kurdish solidarity march. Wonderful William Morris quote

Although Alice had been opposed to Brexit she was even more opposed to right-wing remainers who sought to use the issue to undermine the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party. She had no truck with those who sought to paint Jeremy as an anti-semite and a racist. Jeremy was a personal friend as well as being her MP. He visited her in hospital in December and she knew Jeremy’s deep commitment to the working class. She understood with a clarity that so many lacked that vilification of Jeremy Corbyn was driven by the establishment and his opponents in the party.

Jeremy and Owen Jones on Solidarity with Greece demo.

Alice and I set up the People’s Campaign for Corbyn facebook page but Alice ran the page and built the followers up to nearly 60,000. Some of the posts went viral such as the one with the photograph of Jeremy on the night bus. The page was a continuous source of support for Jeremy’s leadership and Alice was dedicated to using it to oppose those who were attacking him.

I have much to personally thank Alice for. She made me four incredible banners for a conference I organised in 2008 on the 40^th anniversary of the May events of 1968. The banners were huge long quotations from the Situationist graffiti that littered the walls of Paris at that time: ‘Run Comrade, the old world is behind you’. She made a banner for my daughter’s 10^th birthday – Holly is now 25 but we still have the banner. And she made banners for my 60^th and for my wedding to Kate. The wedding banner is a fantastic hammer and sickle. And I need to say a special thanks because when I was ill with cancer and having chemotherapy and was temporarily homeless, she took us in.

One of the last banners Alice made was for the No Pasaran conference. Lindsey German is speaking and on the platform is Salma Yaqoob, Walter Wolfgang –  sadly no longer with us, Diane Abbott and Chairing is Kate Hudson

Alice loved her daughter Stephanie above everything else. My thoughts are with Stephanie and with all Alice’s family and friends. Not only will she be much much missed but in a very real sense she is irreplaceable.

Farewell Alice.

Business as usual will not defeat the rising far right. We must mobilise together, within Britain and across Europe, to win this struggle.

Robinson represents a rising tide of anti-Muslim hatred across Europe and the United States which has many similarities with the anti-Semitism of the 1930s. This finds fertile ground as a result of the impact of neoliberal austerity – imposed on the working classes of these countries to bolster capitalism. It has torn apart the fabric of many communities and left large numbers prey to the false narrative that blames immigrants for government-induced economic ills. This is compounded by the other set of lies, which holds the peoples of the Middle East responsible for the results of the catastrophic wars wreaked on them by the West – terrorism and a huge refugee exodus. Britain has taken virtually no refugees yet a great and baseless fear has been provoked, which has been used to fuel not only the Brexit outcome but the rise of the far right. There is fear and uncertainty and a real struggle to survive for many – and anger.  The answers provided by the far right tap into this destabilisation and are beginning to attract mass support. The fact that the governments of the USA, UK, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark and others are promoting racism and suggesting racist ‘solutions’ is very dangerous and legitimises the movements growing on the ground.

This raises important questions for the labour movement today. In Italy and in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s the rise of fascism led to the destruction of the labour movement in those countries and the murder on an industrial scale of millions of people including 6 million Jews.

Are the conditions being created once more for the return of fascism in Europe? How do we organise to turn back the far right? What can we learn from previous experience?

The anti-fascist struggles of the 1970s

Things were so much simpler in the 1970s. I was a student at Middlesex Poly in the late 1970s and it was the most radical period in my political life. We spent a lot of our time occupying the campus in opposition to the attempt to introduce fees for overseas students. As far as fascism was concerned we all knew what it was and how it should be fought. No platform for fascists! Stop them marching, stop them organising. The main organisation of the far right, the National Front (NF), was led by John Tyndall who was an open fascist. There were photographs of Tyndall parading in Nazi uniform and celebrating Hitler’s birthday. The crimes of the Nazis were embedded in the consciousness of millions of people and the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) slogan – ‘Never Again’ – had real resonance.

The fascists were a threat. In the London local elections of 1977 the NF received more than 5% of the vote [119,000]. There was real concern about the NF making a breakthrough in the 1979 election. They planned to stand in more than 300 constituencies.

Fascism fed off the well-spring of racism that existed in British society, a racism reinforced by the media and some mainstream politicians. Enoch Powell had made his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in 1968. The far-right Moral Rearmament group organised some London Dockers and Smithfield meat porters to march in support of Powell. Migrant communities which had settled in Brick Lane, Southall, Birmingham, Leicester and elsewhere came under vicious attack.

In 1976 at the Birmingham Odeon, blues guitarist Eric Clapton, the Morrissey of his day, launched into a vitriolic racist rant, ‘This is England, this is a white country, we don’t want any black wogs and coons living here… Enoch for Prime Minister! Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white!’  This prompted Red Saunders and Roger Huddle to write a letter of protest to the music press. The letter announced the launch of Rock Against Racism (RAR), capturing the spirit of these post-colonial times bringing together punks and black youth. It put on more than 100 gigs across the country including two massive concerts at Victoria Park and Brockwell Park that attracted crowds of 60,000-100,000.

The tactic of the NF was to try and intimidate migrant communities by marching through inner-city areas. There was a struggle for control of the streets. In August 1977 they attempted to march through Lewisham. A counter-demonstration of many thousands stopped them.

In the wake of Lewisham the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) which had been central to the anti-NF demo there, initiated the ANL. The ANL became a mass campaign with hundreds of prominent supporters from across the labour movement and wider society. It was as ubiquitous in those days as Stop the War was in the early noughties.

There was deep racism within the police who used the hated Sus Law to harass young people from migrant communities. Black and Asian youth set up self-defence organisations to defend their communities from attack by both fascists and police.

My partner of the time was in the Socialist Worker Student Organisation (SWSO) and I was around Big Flame, a libertarian socialist group. Most of our political work at that period, apart from attending the Grunwick picket line every morning, was helping to build opposition to the NF. We were at the Notting Hill Carnival in 1976 when the police – who were indiscriminately arresting black youth at Carnival – were surprised when the whole community fought back. It was pretty scary. I went home but my girlfriend stayed to defend the SW stall set up under the Westway which was in the heart of the fightback. Together we were at Wood Green, Lewisham, Brick Lane, Chapel Market and elsewhere.

There was mass opposition to the fascist threat. Wherever they tried to march there were serious attempts to stop them. The NF was turned back and at the 1979 election they received a derisory vote.

It was a successful mass campaign. But the racism in British society did not disappear and in 1978 Tory leader Margaret Thatcher made a direct appeal for the racist vote saying ‘people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture’.

The 1970s also saw a period of militant working class struggle. Trade union membership reached more than 13 million. Strikes called by the TUC forced the release of London dockworkers jailed under the Industrial Relations Act. The miners’ union forced the Heath government to call an election which he lost.

Although there were movements of the right across Europe in the 1970s they were weak. Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the French Front National, received less than 1% in the 1974 Presidential election.

The 1970s saw revolution in Portugal and the death of Franco in Spain. There were powerful mass communist parties in France and Italy. The military junta in Greece fell in 1974.

Across Europe the far left numbered tens of thousands. We still felt, as the Thunderclap Newman song went, that there was ‘Something in the Air’.

What are we facing today?

Today the situation could not be more different. Although since the late 1990s we have seen mass anti-globalisation and anti-war campaigns and the largest demonstrations in British political history, the decline of the labour movement – which began under Thatcher with the defeat of the miners in 1984-5, followed by the defeat of the printers at Wapping in 1986-7 – has not been halted. Trade union membership now numbers 6 million rather than 13 million and strike levels are at their lowest since 1893. Only 33,000 workers were in dispute in 2017 – despite that year being the worst period of wage growth since 1815.

The left outside the Labour Party has suffered a similar decline. The end of the Soviet Union also saw the decline of mass communist parties in the West.  In Britain in the 1970s the Communist Party had around 30,000 members and significant influence in the trade union movement. The Communist Party of Britain today has less than 1,000, mostly inactive, members.

All the organisations of the Trotskyist left have undergone splits and membership decline. The SWP, the largest of these, is a shadow of its former self. In the 1970s it was a vibrant organisation with a young membership and serious representation in the shop stewards movement. Today the organisation is much reduced in numbers with an ageing membership and is still struggling to overcome the legacy of a badly mismanaged rape allegation against a senior member. But it is still the organisation most involved in ‘Stand Up to Racism’ and ‘Unite Against Fascism’.

Today the far right is on the rise across Europe. From Poland to Hungary, Italy, Austria, France, Germany and elsewhere far right parties are making significant electoral headway. In some places they are in government.

One of the most striking aspects of this rise of the nationalist right is the degree to which they are organising on an international level. They recognise the importance of building international contacts and political solidarity in a way that the left today, despite its formal affiliation to internationalism, has largely abandoned.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has become something of a roving ambassador for this new international ‘alt-right’ movement. He spoke at the Front National meeting alongside Marine Le Pen. Bannon said ‘Let them call you racist, xenophobes, nativists, homophobes, misogynists – wear it as a badge of honour!’ He understands the importance of extending the political coalition around the alt-right, finding time to address ultra-conservative Catholic groups at the Vatican, as well as figures on the right of the Conservative Party such as Rees-Mogg with whom he met in December 2017. Rees-Mogg calls Bannon ‘interesting and well-informed’.

Tommy Robinson has forged close links with the French right-wing ‘Generation Identity’ movement which is developing national sections across Europe.

What is the strategy of the far right?

A new political coalition of the right is in formation. It is in its infancy but it is beginning to draw together UKIP, EDL remnants, Trump supporters, Farage, Christian Fundamentalist groups, the Democratic Football Lads Alliance, Tommy Robinson and disaffected right-wing Tories. Most of these groups were represented at the ‘Free Speech’ march and rally in May 2018 called after Robinson was banned from twitter. What unites them all are the campaigns ‘against [Islamic] terrorism’ and for ‘free speech’ and for Robinson’s release from prison.

Such a new coalition will draw its strength from the Islamophobia, xenophobia and racism that mainstream press and politicians have promoted over the last two decades.  Counter-intuitively it is the decline of UKIP that has allowed a wider support base for this potential coalition to develop.

One should not over-estimate the dangers faced from this grouping – it’s in its infancy and we all know the ability of the far right to engage in factional struggle. But neither should it be underestimated: this is a serious attempt to do far right politics in a different way in the most auspicious climate it has seen for decades.

In order to become a more powerful political force it will need two elements 1] serious finance of the kind that could be provided by people like Aaron Banks. Banks and Farage have been discussing for some time how to launch a new political project and 2] a political programme that extends beyond, while incorporating, the racism and Islamophobia that drive this re-groupment.

The left must understand the dynamic of this threat from the far right although there are differences over the role of Brexit in these developments. In my view, Brexit provides a particular opportunity to unite the forces of the far right – a group calling itself the UK Freedom Marches has called a demonstration for June 23^rd, the anniversary of the Referendum.

Much of the British left – and this includes the SWP, the Communist Party and others – considered the Brexit vote to be a progressive rejection of the establishment seeing it, as Socialist Worker said, as ‘a revolt against the rich’. Others, including myself, argue that the vote for Brexit, on the back of the anti-immigrant, xenophobic leave campaign, together with the election of Donald Trump, was part of a dangerous turn to the right in world politics. Brexit put fuel into the tanks of the right – Home Office figures showed hate crimes rocketed by almost a third in the UK in the year after the EU referendum, with unprecedented spikes around the referendum itself; it energised both the Trump campaign in the US and strengthened the far right across Europe. No doubt these debates will continue within the movement but they cannot be an obstacle to building unity against the far right.

How do we halt the rise of the far right in Europe?

Despite the political differences over Brexit it is vital that the workers’ movement unites to oppose this growing threat from the right. It is crucial that we have the widest possible debate on the left on the question of Brexit and internationalism. It is my contention that there can be no such thing as a People’s Brexit and that in order to turn back the right both here and across Europe we will have to re-build international solidarity organisations, strengthen collective political and trade union activity, and raise once again the lost slogan ‘for A Socialist Europe’. There is much work to be done here. In the early years of the century there was significant political cooperation on a number of levels, most notably through the anti-globalisation and anti-war movements, and through the European Social Forum (ESF). 20,000 came to the ESF in London in 2004, bringing activists together for sharp and challenging debate, strategy and action. Subsequently weakening, the social forum project was pretty much knocked out by the global economic crisis of 2007/8, but lessons can be learned from that experience.

The imposition of austerity policies across Europe has given rise to new radical left waves, as well as far right responses, and we must work more closely with the left currents that are challenging austerity and the far right. In Britain the radical left surge has taken the form of support for Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party. Yet the rise of the Corbyn movement has not made Britain immune to this growing threat from the right. The victory of the left in the Labour Party is a huge step forward but the pressure on the Labour left following that victory has been such that it has demobilised thousands of young people who joined to support Jeremy. Many have been sucked into the vacuum of inner Labour Party political struggle, an airless space.

If there is one lesson from history that should be burnt into our brains it is to avoid splitting the movement. It was the policy of the Third Period, dividing the Social Democrats and the Communists, which led to the defeats in Germany in 1933, opening the way to the full horrors of Nazi rule.

The existing anti-fascist and anti-racist organisations are to be respected for prioritising this crucial political struggle and they are essential to our future work. But the way things are developing, they are insufficient to meet the threat we face: the anti-fascist and anti-racist movement needs a massive input of energy and commitment from the broader labour and progressive movement. Business as usual will not defeat the rising far right. We must mobilise together, within Britain and across Europe, to win this struggle.

Steps to bring us together are crucial. The preparation of a European-wide conference of anti-fascist and anti-racist organisations and activists is an essential step if we, collectively, are to take forward the debate that can underpin the unity and development of the movements on the scale that is necessary: to meet the rise of the internationalising far right.

The fire fighters who fought the blaze say that they have never seen such a fire in many decades of their work. The fire took hold quickly, travelling up the height of the 24 floor block in less than half an hour. The fire fighters showed the most incredible bravery in going time and again into an inferno trying to reach people trapped in the upper floors of the block. Residents desperate to save their children threw them from the block. There was one report of a baby thrown from the 4^th floor who was caught safely by those outside.  The baby survived, but we do not know yet about the rest of the family. The outpouring of support and help from ordinary people has been tremendous and leads by example, of how our establishment should be responding to such a terrible human tragedy.

There needs to be a full public inquiry into the causes of this terrible fire. What is immediately clear is that the recommendations of a report commissioned into the fire at Lakanal House in Camberwell in 2009 have not been actioned. We need to know why.  The Tories have obstructed the introduction of sprinkler systems into tower blocks. They need to be held to account.

Moreover, building regulations have not been revised for 11 years. The block had undergone major refurbishment with the addition of polyethylene cladding which was added to the block for aesthetic reasons. This cladding is certain to be one of the main subjects of the investigation as it was a cheaper, less flame-resistant version which apparently allowed the fire to spread quickly. The concerns of the residents over fire safety were repeatedly ignored by the management company responsible for the building. The single escape stairwell was in dilapidated condition. The fire alarms did not function adequately and could not be heard in the flats themselves. The advice to residents to stay put in the event of fire undoubtedly cost many their lives.

This was a social housing block with a working class residency. There is no doubt that had the tenants of luxury blocks of flats raised such concerns as those raised by the Grenfell they would have been listened to more seriously.

The working class in this country is treated with contempt no more so than in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. This is a hugely rich borough which claimed the refurbishments of the block had to be carried out with the residents in situ because it could not afford to house them elsewhere even on a temporary basis. Like other boroughs in London there is a desire to socially cleanse London of its working class inhabitants. Part of the reason given for the cladding was to make the block less displeasing to the eye for tenants of luxury blocks nearby. The borough has to re-house the residents of Grenfell. They cannot be left in B &Bs for months on end. The block must be re-built with the same care and attention as the luxury blocks nearby. No doubt today even in the wake of these deaths there will be speculators, developers and private landlords working out how they can profit from this disaster. We cannot let this happen.

Following the fire, Theresa May made a private visit to the site. No press or television cameras were allowed to cover her visit and she met with no survivors. She continued her in camera premiership showing no respect and a good deal of cowardice in her action. The reason given by the BBC was that she feared receiving an angry response from residents had she met them. We guess that would have been the least of it. There is a deep,deep anger not only among those that have survived but in the whole community and well beyond.

Millions of people share that anger. They understand how the establishment and the rich in this country treat them with contempt. This understanding found its expression in the recent general election with the emergence of Jeremy Corbyn as the real leader in this country. Corbyn made a public visit to Grenfell in the full glare of the media. People understand and believe that he will get to the bottom of this tragedy and not try to cover it over as the Tories will.

Grenfell is a symptom of our age. The people who died have not died in an accident, but in a wholly avoidable tragedy for which people have to be held to account. We have to press for criminal charges for corporate manslaughter for those who responsible for the fire at Grenfell. That should include those who sat on reports, ignored tenants’ legitimate concerns and did not take action because of cost.

We can no longer go on as usual. There are countless deaths in this country because of benefit sanctions, because of pollution and poor air quality. Austerity has taken a terrible toll on working people while the rich have benefited enormously.

We have to make sure the residents of Grenfell receive justice and proper compensation for all that they have suffered.

The huge anger over Grenfell is growing and it threatens to sweep away this government. We have to work to make sure it does and that it is replaced by one whose central concern is that of social justice.

Source: Left Unity

1 Migrants are net contributors to society

All serious economic research has shown that migrants make a substantial net contribution to the British economy. This is largely because a disproportionate number of them tend to be working-age adults. In a report issued in 2013, for example, University College London’s migration research unit estimated that the net annual value of the contributions of new arrivals to UK public finances was £25 billion. Specifically, migrants from the European Economic Area were estimated to have paid 34% more in taxes than they received in benefits in the ten years from 2001 to 2011.

2 Migrant labour boosts the economy

A 2016 study by University College London academics showed that the arrival of EU migrants was correlated with an improving economy and labour market. Between 2010 and 2015, they discovered, 850,000 Europeans arrived to work in Britain, but at the same time a million more Britons entered the workforce. They concluded that: ‘mass European migration is actually fuelling the relative growth of the UK economy that in turn is making Britain ‘the jobs factory of Europe’ that brings them here. This, of course, is only what we should expect. It is an example of the ‘multiplier effect’, where activity in one part of the economy stimulates activity in others, in a continuous feedback mechanism.

3 Migrants fill gaps in the labour market

The same University College London study in 2016 also found that 60% of new migrants from Western and Southern Europe had university degrees, and 25% from Eastern Europe. The authors concluded that Britain was attracting the highest number of university-educated migrants of any country in the EU year after year to work in the financial, technology, and media industries. Public services are also highly dependent on foreign staff, perhaps most notably the NHS, where 25% of doctors and 10% of nurses are from overseas.

4 Migrants do not increase unemployment

Research by the highly respected National Institute of Economic and Social Research has concluded that immigration to Britain has little or not impact on overall levels of unemployment, even when the economy is in recession. There appears to be no link between migrant inflows and the overall level of those claiming jobseeker’s allowance. This is almost certainly a reflection of the fact that most migrants are filling jobs for which local labour is not available. In any case, the distinction between domestic migrants and overseas migrants – though central to right-wing discourse – is clearly arbitrary. Moreover nearly all studies of the effect of migration on jobs and wages neglect to include the effect of job creation through enterprise by migrants. Migrants create more jobs than their actual numbers.

5 Immigration controls damage the economy

Recent research on the impact of Brexit by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research suggests that the effect of restrictions on migration will be almost as damaging as restrictions on trade. The negative effects – cutting growth of GDP by between 3.4% and 5.4% over a decade – would far outweigh any modest effect on the wages of workers of low-skilled jobs. One of the report’s authors said: ‘Prior to the referendum, a number of analyses estimated the long-term impacts of Brexit on the UK economy; but none incorporated the impacts of Brexit-induced reductions in migration. Our estimates suggest that the negative impacts on per-capita GDP will be significant, potentially approaching those from reduced trade.’ As far as wages are concerned this research shows that ending free movement could possibly increase unskilled wages by 0.1% over a five year period but would probably NOT once these deleterious effects of ending free movement on the economy as a whole is taken into account.

6 Immigration controls attack the victims of the system

The debate about immigration is rooted in nationalism, racism, and scapegoat politics. Restrictions involve borders, deportations, detention centres, and immigration police; they legitimise racism, give the green-light to thugs, and lead to aggravated levels of abuse and violence directed at minorities. They involve the denigration, persecution, and oppression of the victims of the system, both domestic minorities, and those fleeing war and poverty overseas. They are the mark of a barbaric, inhumane, dysfunctional social order.

7 Immigration controls divide the working class and weaken the labour movement

The purpose and effect of the discourse around immigration is to confuse, divide, and disable effective working-class organisation and united popular resistance. Left unity stands foursquare with the most oppressed against the racists and the far right. And that means speaking out loud and clear, against racism, for migration, in defence of the existing right of free movement in the EU and seeking to extend that right to others.

In fact, Avocets were initially wiped out in Britain in the 19^th century because we ate their eggs. Fortunately the Avocet population had survived in other parts of Europe and they subsequently made their return to Orford. The truth is that EU funding underpins much of the nature conservation effort in the UK and its future is now uncertain. Yet the anti-EU, anti-immigrant narrative now intrudes everywhere, however baselessly, largely unchallenged.

Apart from supposedly protecting the local ‘British’ wildlife we are told that Brexit will mean ending the free movement of labour and controlling migration. This will lead to higher wages, increased employment among the native population and end the shortage of housing and other social services. Moreover democracy will be restored – we will have our country back.

For the right, Brexit opens the door to freeing Britain from the stifling regulatory embrace of the European Union allowing our national entrepreneurial spirit to once again reign free in the world at large; for some on the left, it is an essential first step on the path to a socialist Britain.

Those on the Left who called for a Remain vote in the referendum, did so, not because we harboured illusions in the progressive nature of the EU, but because the Leave campaign was fuelled and dominated by reactionary politics. We believed that a Leave victory would empower the right rather than the left and that far from providing a solution to any of the fundamental problems facing the working class it would open the way to further defeats. The post-Brexit treaties and legislative settlements would be seized upon by the government as a further opportunity for deregulation and attacks on our rights.

Immigration and refugees

The most reactionary feature of the campaign – and the most effective notwithstanding its dishonesty – was the way that all the ills of British society were laid at the door of immigration. A hundred newspaper front pages told us how damaging and harmful immigrants and refugees were to the British way of life – this was the underlying message of the leave campaign.

The fact that government policies are to blame for the shortages and cuts ascribed to migrants was disregarded, and the real economic benefits brought to our society and economy as a result of migration were airbrushed out of the referendum debate. So it is that the belief that curbing immigration will have a beneficial effect on British society has gained widespread currency and this belief was the driving force behind the leave campaign.

However even among those who supported remain and across a broad swathe of the labour movement the view that immigration is detrimental to the interests of the British working class has taken hold.

A few days before the Referendum vote the leader of Unite, the largest private sector union in Britain, made his views clear. Len McCluskey, writing in The Guardian, said he was not surprised that Labour voters were concerned about immigration: ‘In the last 10 years, there has been a gigantic experiment at the expense of ordinary workers. Countries with vast historical differences in wage rates and living standards have been brought together in a common labour market … The result has been sustained pressure on living standards, a systematic attempt to hold down wages and to cut the costs of social provision for working people’.

The view that immigration and particularly the free movement of labour within the European Union has been responsible for lowering wages, diminishing social services and creating unemployment is widely held. But is this actually the case? And will Brexit create the conditions for raising the wages and employment levels of ‘native’ British workers?

The evidence suggests not. The argument that EU migration is responsible for a reduction in wage levels is tendentious to say the least. The enlargement of the EU in 2004, when 75 million people joined, did not lead to a downward pressure on wages. That took place after the crash of 2008: it is since the recession – that began with the credit crunch and the bailing out of the banks that led to the longest and deepest slump in a century – that we have seen substantial pay cuts. Allowing for inflation, average wages fell by 8 to 10 percent in the six years after the global financial crisis of 2008. McCluskey does not mention the great crash in his article so we are left with the impression that immigration is the source of these wage cuts – whereas the reality is that wages overall rose during the period 2004-8 when there was significant large scale EU migration.

Most studies and reports show that immigration is a net contributor to the economy overall and, as far as average wages are concerned, it has a marginal impact and may actually lead to a small increase in average wages. Where there is an impact on wages – and it is a small one – it is on low wages and its impact is felt primarily by existing migrant workers and not by UK-born workers. Moreover, the first systematic study of the effect of large scale EU migration on the employment of UK-born workers showed no overall effect. Although some studies (Migrant Advisory Service) show that non-EU migration was associated with a reduction in the employment of UK-born workers over the period 1995-2010, there were no statistically significant effects for EU immigration.

Moreover nearly all studies of the effect of migration on jobs and wages neglect to include the effect of job creation through enterprise by migrants. Migrants create more jobs than their actual numbers.

EU free movement is therefore not only a positive for the host country but it is an advance for the European working class as a whole. Rather than being ‘guest’ workers with few rights, those who work in other EU countries have rights and protections as EU citizens. These rights need to be extended rather than retreated from.

Whether the ending of free movement would itself reduce immigration is a moot point. In Lincolnshire and other agricultural areas there was a significant leave vote, yet already farmers, many of whom themselves voted leave, who rely largely on labour from Eastern Europe to pick their crops, are calling for work schemes to allow those migrants to work here on a temporary basis. So those workers would see their rights of permanent residence removed and would be reduced to the status of more exploitable casual workers. It has recently been reported that the government is already discussing these proposals.

Working class support for Brexit

Clearly attitudes towards immigration are not entirely shaped by lived experience. In many areas with low migration such as Wales and the North East, large sections of the working class voted leave. This serves to underline the fact that working class support for Brexit was driven primarily by economic instability – poor housing, low wages, job insecurity in areas experiencing severe social and economic deprivation – combined with the misperception that immigrants are to blame for these problems rather than government policies. Unemployment and demoralisation, together with a decline in trade union organisation in those areas, also fed an anti-immigrant narrative which has been driven by the media and by the emergence and development of UKIP.

The reality is that reducing immigration and ending free movement of labour is most likely to result in a fall in overall living standards and would actually lead to a downward pressure on wages and an increase in unemployment. A Brexit Britain driven by the free market policies of the current Tory government would not improve the lives of those working class leave voters but would makes them worse.

We should avoid extending our opposition to the existing structures and policies of the EU – notably its neo-liberal cuts, austerity and privatisation agenda – to the absolutely essential engagement with the working class, politically and economically, at a pan-European level. The dominant slogans of the Leave campaign – ‘take back control’ and ‘we want our country back’ with their subtexts of insularity and nationalism and implied hostility to the workers of other European countries – are illusory and reactionary. So too are the politics of those on the left who see an exit from the EU on the terms of the right as something progressive in itself.

A wave of racism

The leave campaign was built on a wave of racism and xenophobia, a British pro-remain MP was murdered by a far right activist, and no lie was too outrageous to be believed: that Brexit would mean £350 million freed up each week for the NHS, that a Remain outcome would mean 70 million Turkish people coming to live here and claim benefits.

Following the vote the promises on the NHS were quickly withdrawn but the anti-immigrant lies had whipped up such an atmosphere of permissive hostility that this rapidly led to a dramatic increase in racist and xenophobic attacks. A Polish man was murdered and his friend badly beaten by a group of teenagers in Essex for the ‘crime’ of speaking to each other in Polish.

Some on the Left who supported the leave campaign tended to play down the racist upsurge – but this increase in hate crime was an entirely predictable response to the vile campaign that had preceded it. The leave vote emboldened the racists.

In fact, the referendum outcome further fuelled already existing anti-Muslim bigotry with increasing reports of women being assaulted and having their hijabs torn off.  What took place was a dovetailing of all the bogus concerns around immigration with the reactionary campaign against Muslims and refugees on the basis of the perceived impossibility of their integration into British society.

The wrong position of some on the left regarding the upsurge in racism stemmed from their misperception of the Leave outcome as an advance for the left and the working class – not least their failure to recognise that the millions of European migrant workers living in Britain are part of the British and the European working class. They were denied a vote in the referendum even though they have been living and working here for many years and in some cases decades.

This narrow national approach contributes to racism and will only divide the working class. Further to that, claims had been made during the campaign that a Brexit vote would strengthen the Corbyn leadership and hugely weaken the Conservative Party. In fact, following the vote the Tory government united under a new, more right-wing leadership and was strengthened. Within the Labour Party, the Corbyn leadership came under massive and sustained attack from the party’s right, now given its long-awaited excuse to try and unseat Corbyn based on his perceived lack of commitment to a Remain victory. This was precisely the opposite outcome to that predicted by those on the left who supported Leave, some of whom had argued that the Tory government would probably fall and that if a Conservative government survived, it would be hopelessly fragile.

The May government is not ‘hopelessly fragile’. The Tories closed ranks to unite in the interests of their party and class and, given a positive boost by May’s clever presentation of her non-Eton background and longstanding ministerial experience, they remain well ahead in the polls. An early general election is unlikely given the current fixed term regulation and the fact that the government has a workable overall majority. But the government does have serious problems about how to deal with Brexit. This is uncharted territory – apparently there are insufficient experts to actually deal with the technical challenges of the necessary legislation – and it is also extremely unpopular with a large minority of the population.

Pro-Europe protests

The days and weeks following the referendum were notable for a wave of mass pro-Europe protests, to the extent that one could say that a new movement is emerging to challenge Brexit. More than 4 million people signed a petition demanding a second referendum within days of the vote. There is a risk that this new anti-Brexit movement will be dominated by the centre right, limiting itself to attempting to overturn the referendum decision, in a futile attempt to maintain British EU membership as it was before the vote.

Such an approach can only have negative consequences. Not only has that ship sailed but such a campaign would only fuel the right in this country. Already there are those like Aaron Banks, UKIP’s main financier, who are preparing to launch a new super-charged UKIP in the event that there is a serious attempt to overturn the Brexit result. In this context we need to engage with this anti-Brexit movement on a positive pro-European basis, but clearly arguing for a re-founded union, a different type of Europe which seeks to preserve the progressive elements of EU membership but to go well beyond them in terms of democratic, political and economic reform.

The terms of the Brexit are now the key site of struggle for the left and progressive forces in Britain.  There is no doubt that they will be highly contested. The Brexiteers charged with overseeing the process, Boris Johnson, David Davies and Liam Fox, will try to dilute or remove those trade union and social rights which have been underwritten by the EU. The Human Rights Act will be scrapped. Our job is to strenuously resist that.

There are those on the left who are calling for us to ‘respect’ the Referendum result. We do not ‘respect’ the result as there was a real democratic deficit in the referendum because of the lies and racism that drove the leave campaign. It is more accurate to say that we ‘accept’ the referendum outcome in the same way that we accept the result of an election. Accepting the outcome doesn’t mean ceasing to fight at every level, in the same way that when the Tories win an election we struggle against their reactionary policies at every step, fighting to defeat them electorally, and mounting campaigns in our communities to fight for our rights and defend and extend what we have already won. We will have to fight every step of the way to prevent the Brexit treaties and parliamentary legislation being a deregulatory jamboree in the interests of the ruling class.

We need to campaign actively against little Brexit Britain and the stripping away of our rights, and chief among those campaigns must be to defend the right to free movement. Free movement is an enormous step forward for the European working class, allowing the possibility of the creation of pan-European spheres of struggle. It recognises the essential fact that the integration of Europe politically and economically is a vital step forward for the working class internationally. The struggle is not to undermine the gain that free movement represents – some left leave supporters refer to it as ‘so-called’ freedom of movement – but to recognise its importance and to fight to defend it and extend it.

Not only free movement but migration in general must be defended; it is historically a powerful source of progressive development and we fight for open borders and for European integration. We oppose fortress Europe but we understand that the ending of free movement in Europe will make extending that right to all more – not less – difficult. We also recognise that the European integration that we need is not possible within the capitalist framework represented by the European Union.

Pan-European movement

So the task is not to agitate for a second referendum or to ignore the Brexit vote but it is to recognise that a pan-European movement is necessary to create the democratic and federal Europe that can begin to solve the problems that the working class faces internationally. This cannot be achieved within a national framework.

The most powerful moments in recent working class struggle in Europe have been those which have reached beyond national borders. The British miners’ strike in the 1980s and the French strikes of the 1990s and the mass recent struggles of the Greek working class have all found deep reserves of support from across the continent. Free movement represents the concretisation of the European working class and its ending would be a reactionary step bringing no economic benefit to the so-called native working classes of each country and politically weakening all working class forces across Europe.

The struggle over Brexit is the most important political challenge that we face. The consequences of unmitigated Tory exit terms are too terrible to contemplate so there is much work to be done. But this is also an opportunity to campaign and argue for an alternative, for the socialist Europe that we wish to see. Writing that in Britain may sound hopelessly utopian, but this is actually a vision shared by millions across Europe, many of them already organised in unions, parties and movements advancing those arguments. And this is also an opportunity to engage with the many hundreds of thousands of young people in this country who voted to remain – not because they sought to defend the neo-liberal institutions of the EU but because they instinctively grasped the importance of going beyond our national borders, feeling a real allegiance to a social Europe.

These are complex issues that cannot be settled in a single question referendum which are in any case of questionable democratic value. Referenda are notoriously the province of the dictator. But neither can these issues be solved on a national basis. The ‘take back control’ message of the Leave campaign claimed that they could but that was a reactionary illusion based on little Englander nationalism. It also had the effect of exculpating our own ruling class and institutions for their undemocratic and austerity driven agendas by blaming Brussels, when they will do worse outside than inside the EU.

So the British framework is clearly inadequate for the advances we need to make. An essential first step in this direction is an open discussion on all the issues that form the fabric of people’s everyday lives throughout Europe – on jobs, austerity, social services and wages. Such a debate and struggle across Europe has the possibility of affirming a shared belonging to Europe and the consolidation of collective struggle and strategic coordination to achieve the victories that are necessary to secure the basic existence of so many people’s lives.

There are now calls for referenda to be held across Europe. These calls are coming primarily from the far right – Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in Holland and from Italy and Sweden. There are some on the left echoing these demands believing that the left will be the main beneficiary of the break-up of the EU but this is illusory.

Marine Le Pen calls the Brexit vote the ‘most important moment since the fall of the Berlin wall’. In that she is right: the fall-out from the referendum will dominate British and European politics for years to come, but potentially in an extraordinarily dangerous and damaging way. The right sees this time as their opportunity but we must make it ours. We have to campaign for a refounded European union on a democratic and anti-capitalist basis. The first slogan in this campaign must be ‘Defend Free Movement’.