“Unless a militant, organised working class wins real advances for workers, Labour is likely to lose the next election… and hand power to a resurgent right-wing.”
Alex Gordon, RMT Broad Left, joined hundreds of activists for Winning a Socialist Future: Ending Austerity, Racism and War, an online meeting organised by Arise: A Festival of Left Ideas, Strike Map and a coalition of left organisations in various trade unions where hundreds of activists came together to discuss the way forward in 2025.
You can read a published version of his speech or watch the rally below:
Socialists and trade unionists need to work together to build a new fightback. I am pleased that RMT Broad Left has been able to work with comrades in PCS Left Unity, NEU Left, Unite United Left, Unison, Strike Map, Labour Arise and others in recent years and to join up and develop the demands of our trade union movement. Today, RMT members are on strike at the Avanti West Coast train company in a long-running dispute, and we want to thank all trade unionists from across the movement and across this country for their solidarity and support for our members.
Britain is in a new phase of profound economic, social and political crisis, which has been exposed by the failure of the current government to come up with a credible plan for its ambition to grow the economy. The symptoms of this crisis can be felt all around us.
The persistently weak performance of the British economy means growth rates remain low (+0.1% in November 2024 after falling by -0.1% in October). The December 2024 growth rate due to be unveiled later this month is likely to be negative. Overall, the UK economy has flatlined since emerging from the Covid pandemic in January 2022, fluctuating between low growth and small contractions. UK business investment is the lowest of all G7 advanced economies, and UK labour productivity has been in historic decline since the 2008 financial crisis. In 2023, UK labour productivity was 18% below that of the US, 15% below Germany and 13% below France.
Britain’s labour market is characterised by low-paying service sector jobs, and the UK economy is geared to the needs of the finance sector and a handful of arms, mining and pharmaceutical companies with no interest in the welfare of the British people, while risky shadow banking and private equity make UK firms particularly vulnerable to financial crashes.
The terrifying drive to war: the British state is up to its neck in promoting the growing global violence which pushed us to the brink of nuclear catastrophe in November 2024, when British supplied and controlled cruise missiles were used to bomb Russia, engaging in an almost inexplicable brinkmanship that is taking us to edge of Armageddon. Britain arms and supports Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its endless war on its neighbours through exporting
military hardware and use of the RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus.
Britain scuppered peace talks in Ukraine in 2022 and urged a hard line on the Ukraine government, promising to bankroll and arm it ‘for as long as it takes’, while pensioners at home go cold and hungry – all in the interests of greedy investors seeking to privatise assets in the name of ‘reconstruction’. And Britain’s military industrial complex has been a cheerleader for military aggression against China, promoted through the AUKUS pact to finance and build nuclear submarines based in Australia for deployment in the Indo-Pacific region.
Falling working class living standards: according to the TUC, British workers are suffering the worst decline in living standards of any G7 country. Real household disposable incomes remain lower than before the 2020 pandemic, as Britain’s particular exposure to the forces driving the cost-of-living crisis compound effects of long-term sluggish wage growth.
Sharply widening inequality: Britain has more billionaires than ever, controlling more than £653 billion of wealth. The top 10% of the population control 57% of all wealth, and the bottom 50% control just 4.6%.
The destruction of smaller businesses: the number of small businesses has shrunk from 5.9 million in 2020 to 5.5 million in 2022. Reports show widespread fear of closure among small businesses, while high streets are dying, being
populated by wealthy chains with Private Equity backers or abandoned completely for business parks or online retail.
The growing social conflict that divides Britain: the 2022-23 strike wave showed a resurgence of class politics. Yet the riots in English towns and cities that began three weeks after the 2024 general election show social alienation and divided communities being manipulated by racist and far-right forces. The rise of Reform UK shows a new level of
organisation and ambition on the far-right, leading us into an era of fascist advance.
Starmer’s Labour government: Keir Starmer’s Labour government perfectly expresses Britain’s crisis. Labour won the July 2024 general election on a massive protest vote against failed Tory policies, but with little popular enthusiasm for Labour’s programme. In 2024, Labour lost half a million votes from its total vote share in 2019, proving itself less electorally popular than under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
The Starmer government’s subsequent polling has been disastrous. Labour’s budget and legislative agenda set out to appease City of London financial interests’ austerity-fixation and to accelerate spending on war, while claiming to scrap austerity for working people facing low wage growth, collapsing business confidence, attacks on benefits and cuts to domestic public spending across government departments.
Labour’s few progressive manifesto commitments, such as an Employment Rights Bill and rail nationalisation, now bear the heavy imprint of corporate lobbying to dilute its legislative program.
A Labour government could address symptoms of Britain’s crisis (economic stagnation, low wages, low productivity, high social inequality, decrepit infrastructure), but it won’t. Labour’s affiliated unions, which traditionally sought to push Labour governments in the right direction, seem unable to resist the organised pressure of big business in Britain. Labour will continue to fail, lose popularity and could lose the next general election.
Unions must campaign to rebuild working class living standards
Keir Starmer asked to be judged on whether people’s living standards had gone up after 5 years in government. The working class can’t wait 5 years for a Labour government committed to ‘fiscal responsibility’ and with no plan to create economic growth to pull this miracle off. The far-right is preparing to take advantage of Labour’s failure to deliver at the next election. Raising living standards now is the priority for organised workers.
Unions must build coordinated campaigns to win pay rises in the public and private sectors. A fightback against employer offensives and a militant response to austerity in the public sector can force businesses and the government to increase spending and investment through collective action.
Unions should coordinate action wherever and however possible, although fetishising calls for a ‘general strike’ is likely to be treated with scepticism. In 2020, trade unions adopted as TUC policy a CWU proposal for a unified bargaining agenda. The continued failure to implement this agenda should be seen by trade union members as a significant retreat, and we should demand better from our own movement.
There is significant resistance to this agenda. Some union leaderships see industrial action, particularly in the public sector, as a threat to a Labour government and may seek to avoid industrial action. Others see a narrow sectional interest instead of a wider class outlook. The left cannot be blind to the power of these arguments. Unions cannot be indifferent to the fate of the Labour government, but neither can we be cowed by the need to defend the
indefensible. Unless a militant, organised working class wins real advances for workers, Labour is likely to lose the next election. Left to its own devices, Labour will fail and hand power to a resurgent right-wing.
The left in the unions must force union leaders to look outward and work together, recognising that different groups of workers will bargain on different timetables and organise members with varying levels of consciousness and militancy. But the truth is that each union alone can only win partial and temporary improvements for members. To win irreversible changes and take on the organised power of big business means building unity between unions around a common industrial and political agenda to rebuild class politics.
This brilliant meeting of socialists and trade unionists demonstrates the hunger that now exists for a joined-up left in the trade unions to take on capitalism’s addiction to austerity, racism and war.
- You can follow Alex Gordon on Twitter/X, and the RMT Broad Left on Facebook.
- You can watch Winning a Socialist Future: Ending Austerity, Racism and War on the Arise Festival YouTube channel here or listen back on Spotify here.
