Most places these days the mood is of anger. Fighting the bullies we see the solidity of the post strikes, the all out strike of the Leeds refuse workers. Underlying these is the recognition that there is no one to look to for help, we have to do it ourselves.
So it makes sense to draw political conclusions about what is going on and argue that something has to be done about next year's general election. It's already late but the prospect of doing nothing is unacceptable. The old slogans 'Vote Labour without illusions, vote Labour and prepare to fight’ are simply not acceptable. We have to do something ourselves.
The conference title says it. There is a crisis of working class representation. Mark Serwotka's superb speech to the Manchester Industrial Relations Society last month spelt it out with particular clarity. Coming to his conclusion, he showed how the ‘Make Your Vote Count’ campaign, impressive as it has been in many ways, doesn't work if all three main parties give the same answers to the key questions. Mark's answer to this is to put it to the members of PCS that they vote on whether to put up their own candidates. Though it looks as if PCS is moving too slowly on this for an election that will have to be in May 2010 at the latest, the method of going to members, using the democracy of the union, is exactly what socialists should argue for.
But can the left get itself together? It isn't going to be done quickly. Labour has dominated working class politics for a century. It was 1891 when the Independent Labour Party was founded, 1900 when the Labour Representation Committee was established, 1906 when Labour made a break though in a general election, getting 29 MPs and calling itself 'The Labour Party' for the first time. And it was 1909 when the largest of the unions, a quarter of the TUC’s membership, the Miners' Federation finally decided to affiliate to Labour. The replacement of the Liberals by Labour as the main party to get working class votes at the ballot box took 20 years.
Today’s world is very different. Building a left alternative to Labour is a huge task and there will be many reverses on the way. Five years ago we thought we had made a solid start with Respect. Today it looks very uncertain whether there will be any nationally visible set of candidates putting a left alternative to Labour. Some things, though, don't seem too difficult. Judging by what people were saying at the conference, it may not be too hard to write the manifesto: no to war and privatisation, make the bankers pay. The name might be a problem. While there were some at the conference who wanted to argue that the EU should be a central target of any socialist campaign and hence the first - and most quoted half - of the name 'No2EU, Yes to democracy', the majority of speakers didn't mention the EU.
To put this alternative together is the task and it looks too big in the time available. As Joe Higgins from Dublin explained, you need six months. The degree of unity, the willingness to make real commitments of time and money, the numbers involved will make a real difference. Can we achieve these in time? If we move quick enough, in Manchester and Salford, it should be possible to have campaigns against Kaufman and Blears. From the conference, it was clear that local groups are getting together in quite a number of places. At a guess, I think we might have 30 or 40 candidates with good campaigns. Not as good as we want, but not the worst start. It has to be done. If not us, then who? If not now, then when?
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