The following is a comment piece from the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC)
The first meeting of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) all-Britain steering committee since 4 July was dominated, naturally enough, by a discussion of the outcome of an historic general election and what it could mean for the prospects of a revival of mass working-class political representation in the period to come.
TUSC: post-general election we still need a mass party of the working class
The meeting debated the draft review of the election – The 2024 General Election Fact File – prepared by the TUSC national election agent Clive Heemskerk. The file listed the TUSC results and those of the anti-war, anti-austerity independents, the Workers Party of Britain and other lefts in the context of the broader trends revealed by the election.
With detailed statistics illuminating the shallow levels of support for the new government; the growing alienation from the political institutions of capitalism since the 1990s; and the historic shift away from the Labour Party by workers and others – including those from a Muslim background – as a portent of future movements to come, the report asks: is there any:
stable social base for the coming second age of austerity, privatisation, war and climate crisis retreats that the Starmer government will attempt to impose on us?
And what opportunities does that create to build a new mass workers’ party that can unite all sections of our class?
The report was approved, with a supplement analysing separately the results achieved by the left-wing candidates who ran in Scotland and Wales. It is now available online.
‘The terrain has changed’
The committee also agreed that TUSC should continue to be involved in the discussions organised by the Collective alliance, which will also assess the way forward following Jeremy Corbyn’s successful re-election in Islington North.
The meeting further agreed to publish a Directory Of Elections in 2025 to help prepare a working-class challenge for the first scheduled elections that will face the Starmer government in May next year.
Although it is only 31 councils with elections in 2025, they cover a population of over 23 million, with all of them being local education authorities and having responsibility for social care services, libraries, highways, transport and more in their areas.
Finally, it was agreed that TUSC would resume its series of How Much Reserves Have They Got? reports on the financial capacity of councils to resist making cuts while conducting a campaign for additional central government funding, starting with the councils with elections in 2025.
At the next meeting – on Wednesday 4 September – plans for more widely campaigning for ‘People’s Budgets’ in the autumn period will be discussed.
As TUSC national chairperson Dave Nellist concluded:
The terrain has changed as a result of the general election, but the core mission of TUSC remains: to help develop the self-confidence of the working class that it is an alternative power to the capitalist rulers of society and that it has the capacity to create and build its own democratic mass workers’ party to realise that power politically.
Featured image via TUSC and the Canary
