What next for Labour?

Gerry Downing opening

By New Worker correspondent

What’s the future for Labour was the question posed by a panel of speakers at a New Worker meeting in central London last week. Gerry Downing of Socialist Fight who was expelled by Labour on trumped-up charges of ‘anti-Semitism’, and Marie Lynam, a Posadist who is a Labour Party activist and supporter of the Labour Representation Committee, both spoke at the meeting, chaired by NCP leader Andy Brooks, at the Calthorpe Arms in the Gray’s Inn Road.

The Calthorpe Arms was the spot where the first policeman in London was killed in the 1830s. It was here that the 1983 Brink's Mat gold bullion robbery was planned. But pub history was far from the minds of the comrades who looked at what lessons could be drawn from this year’s Labour Party conference and what’s next for the movement in the New Year.

The massive support shown for the Palestinian cause at Labour conference was a remarkable advance. It may have stopped the Zionist witch-hunt in its tracks for the moment. But the Corbyn leadership’s refusal to challenge the bogus “International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance” definition of antisemitism that the NEC adopted in full in September gravely undermines the campaign to reinstate all those unjustly expelled or suspended from the party for their outspoken support for the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.

The role of the supposedly left leaderships of the major unions that fund Labour like Unite, Unison and the GMB was discussed as well as the need for greater democracy within the Labour Party as well as the trade union movement.

 There is no consensus, as yet, amongst the left within the labour movement on how we get there. But the comrades at this meeting all agreed on the need to campaign for Labour to adopt a clear-cut anti-war position when, and if, it returns to power at the next election. Scrapping Trident and the rest of the so-called “nuclear deterrent” that is just an extension of US imperialism’s power in Europe has to be top of the agenda along with demands for the closure of all British bases abroad and an end to the occupation of the north of Ireland.

The meeting finally closed with a collection that raised £40 that paid for the room while some comrades stayed behind to continue the discussion in the bar below.