SHOWINGS of the film Oh Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie have been the focus of orchestrated attempts at suppression. No less significantly, when showings have taken place, they have also triggered important discussions on the future of the left.

In Scotland, suppression in Ayrshire was followed by a successful showing in West Dunbartonshire. Despite horrendous disruption by local road works, 80 people made it through — an unprecedented number for a local Morning Star meeting. Some travelled all the way from Ayrshire. Some had themselves fallen victim to the oppressive Starmer regime.

The subsequent question and answer session reflected all the anger and anxiety that currently exists on the left. Some of the contributions bordered on hatred of the Labour Party, but, interestingly, the SNP fared little better. This anger inevitably led to calls for the setting up of a new party.

It is important to take stock of the new arguments. Though effectively old they are taking on new life in current circumstances — and Scotland has probably more experience than most.

The implosion of the SNP was predictable, although dramatic when it came. The preceding leadership had built the party’s mass base on largely left-wing, social democratic values: partnership in industry, even some attempts at public ownership, redistribution, targeting poverty, opposing racism and espousing a new internationalism. In doing so they attracted a new younger generation alienated by New Labour.

But no less than New Labour, they did so without any analysis of the changing nature of capitalism and its institutional forms — how it works through current state structures, specifically the British state, the European Union and Nato.

This was bad enough for the credibility of the SNP’s future plans for independence: an interim reliance on sterling, growth through attracting external capital by lower taxes and, longer term, prosperity through the good offices of the EU. How could that work?

Worse was the impact on day-to-day policy. Every attempt to halt closures, or even take firms into public ownership, was thwarted by the SNP’s own favoured saviour, the EU.

Attempts to create social partnerships for the delivery of essential services — from housing to social care — led to equally unhappy results. Sooner or later the bubble had to burst. And today the new replacement leadership, while changing some of the labels, is doing no better.

At least we know what we are going to get from Starmer: New Labour dressed in military fatigues, sacrifices for freedom — for US capital and its British arms suppliers.     

Hence the call for new parties. There have been numerous attempts. They have had little success — neither Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party nor George Galloway’s Respect — even though Galloway is now having another go. Tusc’s dismal voting record has been mentioned in the paper. The RMT dumping them does not bode well.
 
In Scotland we had Tommy Sheridan’s Scottish Socialist Party (later Solidarity) vying for the working-class vote. While the former had some success, it was short-lived and the party is now a shadow of its former self. There remains of course a plethora of socialist parties in existence, some having been around for many years. Too many socialist parties — not enough socialism comes to mind.
 
None of these efforts will amount to a hill of beans unless they are supported by the trade union movement and there is no sign of that. Even the most militant union at the moment, the RMT, shot down the argument for a new party at an RMT fringe meeting at the Scottish TUC this year.
 
To return to the Dumbarton meeting: what was missing in the explosion of justified anger at the treatment of Corbyn and the left was an understanding of the need to undertake the hard, long-term task of building mass class consciousness.
 
If we had that, the tens of thousands of young people who supported Corbyn would have joined trade unions as Corbyn recommended. If we had that, trade unions would be recruiting massively instead of experiencing further decline.

If we had mass class consciousness, certain trade unions would have been unable to sabotage efforts to organise showings of the film. Corbyn himself and the left would not be getting victimised. Starmer would be nowhere near the leadership of the Labour Party and there would not be a Tory government.
 
Building class and political consciousness is surely the need of the hour. That’s what the Communist Party (which doesn’t seek to displace the Labour Party) consistently works for in the trade union movement and working-class communities.

We should remember our history. In the 1950s most unions were on the right. In some of the biggest, communists and supporters of the left were banned. But dedicated action over many years brought change, first in the trade union movement and then in the Labour Party.

Left argument and discussion, the constant exposure of big business and its bloody consequences worldwide, brought new politics by the early ’70s. By 1972 this change was registered in mass mobilisations that shook the state apparatus across Britain and, exactly 50 years ago in 1973, it secured Labour policy for “an irreversible shift of wealth and power in favour of working people.”

As depressing as the current political situation is for the left, there are no shortcuts to building the socialist alternative. This takes energy, commitment, organising, discussion, political education and, most of all, action that can instil confidence in our class that it has the power to change society.

It’s hard work but it can and, indeed, must be done if we are going to avoid a neutered trade union movement and, in the very near future, the prospect of grinding poverty combined with environmental disaster and an even closer approach of nuclear war.

This was why trade unions created the Labour Party in 1899 on a motion from a member of the social democratic federation, a forerunner of the Communist Party. Trade unions are where the fight for the principles of class solidarity and socialist transformation must start.