Build a party to fight for the working class

Editorial of the Socialist, issue 79 – the paper of Socialist Party Scotland

Keir Starmer leads a government of deepening crisis. Plummeting opinion polls, a humiliating retreat on Labour’s planned disability benefit cuts and stagnating economic growth that has thrown off course their pledge to end the years of Tory chaos.

Elected with the lowest share of the vote for any government party since 1918, there was never any real or sustained support for Starmer.

There was no honeymoon. Attempting to send a signal to the capitalist class and the bond markers that Labour would ensure stability they refused to lift the two child benefit cap, betrayed the Waspi women and removed winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners.

They have also delayed – for over a year now – any meaningful measures to implement their weak workers’ rights legislation and in particular action on the thresholds for strike ballots.

All of these events, as the Socialist predicted, have created an even bigger political vacuum. The rise of Reform UK is a direct product of both the overall crisis of capitalism and Labour’s spectacular failures.

Above all its a result of the enormous crisis of working class political representation. A crisis that can be resolved, as we have explained, by the building of a trade union-led mass workers’ party.

new developments

The response to Zarah Sultana’s welcome announcement that she was leaving the Labour Party and planned to set-up a new party with Jeremy Corbyn, and the decision of recent policy conference of Unite the union to open up a discussion about their relationship with the Labour Party, underlined this potential many times over. Tens of thousands responded to Sultana’s appeal online to sign up.

Crucially, Unite’s conference, the largest union in the UK, voted with only 5 votes against out of 800 delegates to suspend the deputy Labour prime minister and all Birmingham Labour councillors with a view to expel them from the union. Labour’s scandalous actions towards the Birmingham bin workers has become a lightning rod for mass discontent towards Starmer.

These two development are symptomatic of the enormous pressure that is being felt in Labour affiliated unions and the wider anger in society against Starmer. His fawning towards Trump and his support for the Israeli government of death have all added to the overwhelming feeling that we need a party that fights for us.

But the question is what type of party is needed? In the discussions that are now taking place in the trade unions, among young people and workers, Socialist Party Scotland will set out what we believe is needed – a new workers’ party, centred on the trade unions, with a clear socialist programme. But critical to this is that the unions aren’t bystanders in such a debate but front and central.

This idea contrasts sharply with those being put forward from other political forces who are arguing for a left alternative or a party of the left. Yes, brining the existing left together will undoubtedly be a consequence of the building of a mass workers’ party, but our aim must be to build among primarily those who are not in any party at the moment. And the trade unions – or a section of them – have the authority and political weight in society to advance that case.

what programme?

The programme that such a party will have is also crucial. Yes, it should feature opposition to the Gaza war, racism and in defence of LGBTQ+ rights as central issues to fight on. But it must also answer the burning questions of low pay and benefit cuts, the lack of affordable housing, ending and reversing the cuts to public services and fighting for workers’ rights and an end to all anti-union laws.

Ensuring these ideas are front and central will be largely secured if the class character of such a party is overwhelmingly based among the working class and their mass organisations the trade unions. And in the context of Scotland, fighting for the right for self-determination. In other words the right of the Scottish people to decide whether or not to be an independent nation through a democratic referendum.

It will also be crucial that any structure for a new party gives trade unions a collective voice, under the democratic control of union members. Not to do so will, correctly, lead to some of the most fighting trade unionists hesitate about joining.

A federal and democratic party would allow individual members, but also both the different organisations that are already fighting for a workers’ voice in the electoral field – including the various groupings of left independent and local councillors – and future forces that could be won to a new party, to collaborate together while maintaining their own identities and programmes.

What is needed is not just to build a workers’ party with a mass base, but to build one with a programme and leadership capable of leading a successful struggle for socialism. We argue that will require decisive measures, such as nationalising the major corporations and banks, under democratic workers’ control and management.

There is not a guarantee that such a workers’ party with a socialist programme will be formed out of the Corbyn/Sultana project, if it does come to fruition. But Socialist Party Scotland will fully engage in the process, making the case for a mass workers’ party and a socialist programme.

With the Holyrood elections just 9 months away, we have taken the initiative, alongside others, to call a conference on Saturday October 4 to prepare a working class, trade union and socialist election challenge. We’d encourage all trade unionists, socialists and anti-war, anti-racist fighters to come along and take part.

• Holyrood 2026 – Build a working class, trade union and socialist election challenge
• Conference Saturday 4 October
• Renfield Centre, 260 Bath Street, Glasgow
• 1pm – 4pm