“The objective reality of the crises Labour will face will demand the adoption of a radical, change programme if the incoming government is to have any chance of success.”
John McDonnell MP explains why he has called a major Conference in May
The German socialist Rosa Luxemburg famously said that “The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.”
Yet at times there seems to be a cross party conspiracy of silence not to mention the seriousness of the crises we are facing.
So, there is an urgent necessity for those of us on the Left to “proclaim loudly what is happening.”
We are in the midst of a poverty, debt and destitution crisis for many of our people.
Four weeks ago it was reported that in terms of absolute poverty, the UK has seen the biggest rise for 30 years. The figure jumped to 12 million in 2022-2023, a rise of 600,000 – and this means the rate of absolute poverty now stands at 18%, a rise of 0.78 percentage points.
On child poverty, UNICEF reported in December that child poverty levels in the UK are the worst among world’s richest nations. Disgracefully the United Kingdom amongst the 39 high- and upper middle-income countries had the worst percentage change in child poverty rates between 2012- 14 1nd 2019-21, with a 20% rise in child poverty rates.
The government refuses to even acknowledge not just the scale of poverty in our country but also the depths it has reached with one million children experiencing destitution. No matter how many times government ministers are reminded that destitution means not having the basic essentials to get by, they still obsess over tax cuts for the benefit of the wealthiest in our society and corporations.
It’s the same head in the sand approach when it comes to the climate crisis.
Just this week it was reported that the UK is facing food shortages and price rises after extreme weather.
Crops haven’t been able to be planted due to record rainfall. Lambs have faced high mortality rates due to the rain’s persistence. And crops that are planted aren’t coming through enough due to soil conditions.
What’s more many countries we rely upon for food imports are also suffering shortages, often due to drought, with Morocco as a chronic example.
Yet despite all the home-grown evidence of the impact of climate change the Government colludes with the fossil fuel industry in expanding fossil fuel exploration and supply and starves the alternative green energy sector of the resources it desperately needs for the green technologies of the future.
The political bankruptcy of this government has been exposed in dealing with these twin crises.
As a result, the Conservatives have reverted to type and have resorted to their traditional strategy of attempting to suppress resistance with authoritarian legislation and combine this with the disgusting scapegoating of migrants and refugees.
People are desperate for an alternative to get rid of the Conservatives and so it’s not surprising that there has been a sustained lead for Labour in the polls.
It’s obvious that the Conservatives will leave behind them a toxic legacy.
Yet as Andrew Fisher and I looked at in the Labour’s In-Tray report, there is little detail coming from Labour on how they will fund the changes we need in a whole range of areas including in public services, and often not enough recognition of how deep-set the challenges Labour will face are after 14 years of austerity.
Worryingly too, there has also been a continuing pattern of watering-down or abandoning radical policies even though they are popular – public ownership of water and the Green New Deal, which was developed over a number of years, being just two clear examples.
With Labour almost certain to form a Government in the coming months the concern is that it will not come into power with the scale or nature of programme needed to tackle the challenges ahead.
The objective reality of the crises Labour will face will demand the adoption of a radical, change programme if the incoming Labour government is to have any chance of success. Even if there is an unwillingness to accept this now before the election this will become an obvious necessity very soon after Labour takes office.
It’s for this reason, on May 25 in London, Claim the Future will be bringing together academics, think tanks, unions, campaigners and others to discuss the ideas that are needed to create this policy agenda at the A Labour Movement Agenda for a Labour Government Conference.
Sessions will cover the need to fully defend the New Deal for working people against corporate lobbyists and their ‘New’ Labour-era allies inside Labour, how we stand up to the privatisers, the profiteers and the polluters to put people and planet at the centre of socialist solutions to the crisis, and the need to roll-back the ongoing Tory offensive on our right to resist.
From each of these sessions we hope to contribute to building a transformative policy platform that clearly puts public need before corporate greed – and which together will form the core of a real labour movement agenda for the next Government, the creation of which is an urgent matter for our movement.
It will be a different kind of event to many political conferences in that it will be a “discussion conference” where – although we have structured the day around a number of broad policy areas and invited presenters to set the scene for individual sessions – the aim is to ensure that attendees participate fully in the discussions that follow and link up to establish alliances for the future. We want as many people as possible from across our left, labour and social movements to update us on what they are working on, and to set out their ideas on the transformative policies we need.
I hope you will be able to come along for a vital discussion.
- Conference: A Labour Movement Agenda for a Labour Government. Saturday, May 25. Hamilton House (NEU), Mabledon Place, London, WC1H 9BB. You can register here. Speakers to include John McDonnell MP; Mick Lynch, RMT General Secretary; Fran Heathcote, PCS General Secretary; Asad Rehman, War on Want; and more.
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