Why Harman's election to deputy leader of the Labour Party represents a radicalisation!

HARMAN’S ELECTION REPRESENTS A RADICALISATION IN THE LABOUR MOVEMENT DESPITE ITS DISTORTED CHARACTER.


Harriet Harman’s election to deputy leader of the Labour Party this afternoon represents in a distorted manner a radicalisation within the Labour Movement against Brown’s policies. Her acceptance speech reflected this when she called for more council housing; for more democracy in the Labour Party; criticising to a certain extent the Iraq war; and what potentially a Labour government could achieve. Two examples of this she cited were the minimum wage and increased rights for gays/lesbians.

As a Trotskyist I have many criticisms of her acceptance speech. Examples are Harman prettifying one-sidely the increases in NHS which have largely strengthened private Capitalists; supporting British Imperialist troops in Iraq; and supporting the family. Those payments to a limited degree have peripherally strengthened the NHS. Harman played a terrible role in 1997 in cutting single parent benefits. Where the ultra-lefts go wrong is not seeing that radicalisations can take on all kinds of distorted forms and they break in practice from the Transitional method of posing demands on Social Democrats to carry out a fight so we can win their mass base over.

Trotsky in the 1920s argued for example argued that the landslide victory of Liberals in a 1906 British General Election represented a radicalisation reflecting a European radicalisation strongly influenced by the 1905 Russian revolutionary upheaval. Marxists would not vote Liberal because it was a Bourgeois party. Voting for Social Democrats is tactical and permissible because they are part of the workers movement. Trotskyists should demand that Harman fights for policies that benefit workers and the oppressed by struggling against Brown.

Brown is trying to stop this growing radicalisation within the Labour Party by trying to form a coalition government with Bourgeois parties e.g. Liberal Democrats and Conservative Party. Those on the left who argue falsely the Labour Party and Russia is Capitalist have confused intermediately stages of going in that direction with the completion of this process. Due to confusing those stages in these processes they are caught in a difficult position with the Bureaucrats in Russia reversing Capitalist restoration which is helping this economy to recover.

Labour going Bourgeois has been setback in a big way with the Blairites being kicked out. The fight against Brown will determine whether Labour will stay a workers party and whether a major left split will break from Labour. Trotskyists do not believe like the old Militant group that Labour can be transformed into a revolutionary party but relate to millions of workers who look to Social Democracy for a lead, so that Trotskyists can win millions of workers to a mass revolutionary party.