For a democratic Labour party

Summer is known as the silly season by the press because the long parliamentary recess means they have to fill their columns with even more rubbish to make up the difference. This is a good time for bourgeois political leaders to shuffle their packs while the backstabbers make their play in the corridors of power. And it always ends with the spectacularly tedious "conference season" starting with the TUC and followed by equally boring Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative bashes that we've all grown to know and love down the years.
    This time round we’ve seen Rishi Sunak replace Ben Wallace with Grant Shapps in Defence – though Sunak had little choice as Wallace was going anyway after he failed to get the top job in NATO – while Sir Keir Starmer continues to purge the ranks of his Shadow Cabinet to make room for more Blairites eager for high office when Labour wins the next election.
    Some Corbynistas are rallying around the call to “Stop Starmer” from a campaign backed by two former Labour MPs, George Galloway and Chris Williamson, along with veteran Liverpool campaigner Audrey White who was kicked out of the Labour Party last year after she confronted Starmer in a cafe to challenge his right-wing policies and the ongoing purge of supporters of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.
    Former Labour campaigner Crispin Flintoff, a stand-up comic who raised more than £150,000 for Labour before he too was kicked out, says “Keir Starmer is a danger to our democracy. He will say or do anything in pursuit of power. He is the most untrustworthy political leader this country has seen …the media hasn’t shown the reality of Starmer. But people who’ve been members of the Labour Party know what he’s really like. He stabbed the previous Labour leader in the back, he has broken all the pledges he has ever made, and he is carrying out a McCarthyite witch-hunt of the party — the biggest political purge of recent times...Starmer’s campaign to get into No 10 is the most cynical attempt to manipulate public opinion ever undertaken. We cannot allow him to get power because then it will be too late”.
    Whether Starmer is the most untrustworthy politician this country has ever seen is a matter of opinion – there’s been plenty of other Tory and Labour leaders over the years who would fit that bill. What is a fact, however, is that the only way Starmer is going to be stopped from getting into Downing Street is to vote Conservative at the next general election.
    Though Labour was founded by the trade unions to give the working class its own voice within Parliament, the Parliamentary Party leadership has been dominated by the middle class intelligentsia since the days of Ramsay McDonald.
    But the enemy of the working class is the ruling class not the Labour Party. Labour still maintains its links with the unions and the co‑operative movement and as long as that continues it remains the best option for the working class in the era of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Our strategy is for working class unity and our campaigns are focused on defeating the right‑wing within the movement and strengthening the left and progressive forces within the Labour Party and the unions. Day‑to‑day demands for reform, progressive taxation, state welfare and a public sector dedicated to meet the people’s needs are winnable under capitalism, particularly in a rich country like Britain today.
    We don’t want to waste time on futile efforts to build social-democratic platforms to rival Labour at election time. We need to break with the “broad left” factions in the unions that do little apart from elevating their leaders on to the gravy train of the bureaucrats who line their own pockets at the members’ expense. We do need a democratic rank-and-file movement within the unions committed to peace and socialism. It can be done!

On Yer Bike

 Remember summers of old? Those halcyon days when workers took their traditional summer break while the great and the good trooped off to loll around their villas in Tuscany or bask in the Caribbean sun?

Those days are sadly gone. We’re now in the era of coronavirus and the “staycation”. August is still the “Silly Season” but these days the papers have to fill their columns with even more rubbish now that the Wimbledon championships have been cancelled along with most of the cricket and the other competitive sports fixtures.

The traditional summer sightings of the Loch Ness monster and giant jellyfish stranded on the Devon coast may have gone but the Johnson Government is doing its best to entertain us by offering free bikes on the NHS while Sir Keir Starmer’s supporters while away the time trying to drum Jeremy Corbyn out of the Labour Party he once led.

In 1981 Norman Tebbitt, a now largely forgotten Tory Cabinet minister of the Thatcher era, told unemployed workers to follow the example of his father who “got on his bike to look for a job” during the 1930s. Now his successors are urging us to do the same thing to fight the flab.

The Government has launched a campaign to combat obesity in England by offering £50 bike repair vouchers as part of plans to boost cycling and walking. An initial 50,000 vouchers will be issued online this week. Bikes will be available on the NHS and doctor’s surgeries will be stocked with bicycles to lend, with training, access to cycling groups and peer support. In some cases, we’re told, patients will be even allowed to keep them if they use them enough.

Boris Johnson says cycling and walking have "a huge role to play" in tackling health and environmental challenges amid growing evidence of a link between obesity and an increased risk of contracting Covid-19 and Type 2 diabetes.

"But to build a healthier, more active nation, we need the right infrastructure, training and support in place to give people the confidence to travel on two wheels," Johnson says. “That's why now is the time to shift gears and press ahead with our biggest and boldest plans yet to boost active travel - so that everyone can feel the transformative benefits of cycling”.

Of course the “Fix Your Bike” scheme is just another “feel good” campaign like the Chancellor’s £10 “Eat Out to Help Out” food voucher and the hand-outs designed to keep charities and small businesses going during the current crisis.

But laudable in itself, not “everyone” can safely ride a bike – least of all the morbidly obese that the campaign is aimed at. If the Government genuinely wants to provide a safe environment for cyclists the first step would be to take public transport back into public ownership and restore the subsidies to bring down bus and train fares and reduce car usage across the country.

If the Government seriously wants to encourage “active travel” it could start by conserving the countryside that has been plundered by the property developers for decades and restoring London’s Green Belt and the open spaces of our great cities.

Finally the best “feel-good” factor would be to give the health service the resources it needs to speed the research into developing a vaccine against Covid-19 and  tackle the coronavirus plague that has brought this country and most of the world to its knees this year.