International Socialists

Editorial Comittee

This - the first Labour government in 18 years - was supposed never to happen. According to the politicians and media commentators, Labour's base had been so eroded by the decline of the working class on the one hand and the advent of Thatcherite individualism on the other that Labour could never form a majority government again.

These same people still deny that Labour's support represents any real shift to the left. Instead they explain the current change in Labour's fortunes by Tony Blair having moved Labour's policies, rather than the ideas of large numbers of people having changed. On this reckoning Labour's popularity is based not on the desire for change but on a supposed inherent conservatism among the British electorate.

So Blair is popular, we are told, because he plans to do little different from what the Tories have done in the past few years. However, this begs the question, why are people so keen to get rid of the Tories in the first place if they agree with the policies the Tories are pursuing.

The answer should be blindingly obvious - government policies are so unpopular that most people voting Labour will in fact do so because they expect something different. Blair is riding a huge wave of revulsion against Tory policies which has kept him massively ahead in the polls. But those poll leads were already very high long before Blair became leader. There is no evidence that Labour's popularity would have been less if John Smith had continued to be the leader.

So the great contradiction at the heart of Labour's success is that Blair and his coterie believe they are winning votes by adopting Tory policies, while the mass of Labour voters believe they are voting against Tory policies. Even much of the supposedly middle class, middle England support which Labour has been garnering has been on the basis of the need to spend more on education and the National Health Service, or of doing more to protect the old and poor, or of ending the worst excesses of the deregulated market. Gordon Brown's and Tony Blair's pledges to hold down taxes even for the super-rich and to freeze public spending are in direct opposition to such aspirations.

Since the double crisis over coal mine closures and the European Monetary System at the end of 1992, there has been increasing opposition to Tory policies. Opinion polls have repeatedly shown big majorities for "old Labour" policies such as renationalising the privatised utilities, imposing a wealth tax on the very rich, spending more on health, education and welfare.

These policies are popular because they appear to address the problems which people face: the gap between rich and poor which has widened under the Tories, the decline of public services, the introduction of the market into areas such as health and education.

There could hardly be a greater contrast between the policies of the ruling elite and their hangers on (which includes the idealogues of New Labour) and the popular aspirations for change which are so apparent among many working people. This contradiction has meant that alongside Labour's popularity in the polls have gone a mounting distrust of Blair and New Labour and an enthusiasm for socialist politics much greater than could have been expected so close to an election.

The campaign around the 500 sacked Liverpool dockers is an example of this. Every week thousands of pounds are collected from trade union branches and rank and file trade unionists for this strike which has never had the official backing of the dockers' TGWU union.

Tens of thousands have lobbied and demonstrated against council spending cuts around the country in the past two months. In Scotland these protests have been on a much bigger scale, as thousands struck and hundreds of thousands demonstrated against Labour council cuts.

None of this is reflected in official politics. Debates there range from incredulity that Labour gained such a massive majority over the Tories to how best pensions and welfare can be cut. At no point is any connection made between the two.

So the mood of anger and the desire for change are clearly reflected in support for struggles and for socialist ideas, but have little public expression in wider society as a whole. Because there is no such clear expression, the ideas come out in different ways. As well as left-wing views there can be bitterness, cynicism, a sense that all politicians are the same, and a sense that nothing can be done to change anything.

Such ideas will only be shifted on a large scale when struggles take on sufficient size and political weight to begin to change the political agenda and even to alter the balance of class forces.

Even on the left, it is commonly felt that Britain is still a very long way from such a situation. There may be factory occupations, strikes and militant demonstrations in France, Belgium and Germany, the argument runs, but Britain will not see such activity.

Yet we are already beginning to see exactly this sort of activity in Scotland, where a combination of deep cuts plus a level of radicalisation round the question of a Scottish parliament has pushed many into action. It is only a matter of time before such struggles - and much greater ones - also take place throughout Britain.

There are two major reasons why they have not happened so far. One is that the attacks which workers face in Europe have been deeper, more ride ranging and more generalised than anything faced in Britain so far. Attacks on the British welfare state have been extremely unpleasant, especially for those living on benefits. But the Tories have not yet been confident to attack workers' living standards outright.

This will have to change, whoever is in government. The great unspoken question in this election is what will happen to the massive public sector defecit which the Tories have built up. Attempts to cut this back, which will follow fairly quickly after the election, will mean much more serious cuts and wage freezes of a similar level to those in Europe. There is no fundamental reason why the reaction of British workers should be different from those in continental Europe.

The other reason why struggles have often been held back in Britain is paradoxically that the relative weight of the unions has meant a strong trade union bureaucracy - compared to say France - which has been able to ensure that anger did not burst out into strikes in the months preceding the election. The trade union bureaucracy will continue to play this role under a Labour government but it also has expectations which Blair will be unlikely to fulfil.

We can expect extremely stormy times under a Labour government.