'Airstrip One' Article

Date: 21st April '01

Name: Joe Clemence

Below is an extract from an article by Emmanuel Goldstein analysing political trends in Britain and their implications for the left. The whole article is too lengthy to be included here, but can be found at http://www.antiwar.com/goldstein/g042301.html

WHAT CAN THE LEFT DO?

The left seems to be in a quandary. By adopting the right wing economic agenda, they have now focused politics on identity, which in the short term is indeed benefiting them. However, in the long term it is suicide. In a democracy, power eventually goes to the majority. A party whose electoral base are ethnic minorities, Celts, government employees and multinational executives will simply wither. The Labour Party needs its working class vote. The left will have to focus again on the actual needs of the working class, as it is only if they think of themselves as working class that Labour stands a chance of capturing their votes. The outlook is not promising on that front as the vast majority of Labour MPs come from an almost identical social background as their conservative counterparts and the unions are now too large to be anything other than unrepresentative bureaucracies. The approach of small quasi-Trotskyite sects like Red Action, who are actually organising the working class rather than preaching to it, are on the right lines but are too piecemeal for anything to be done. For the moment, the left does not see the necessity of representing its working class voters' less liberal social views. Doubtless, it will, in the long term.

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