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A tale of two protests

TWO protests in Birmingham this weekend as the Conservative Party conference opens illustrate a fork in the road for the left.

Tomorrow will see the Midlands TUC and People’s Assembly bring thousands on to the streets in a demonstration against years of Tory funding cuts.

The Midlands could hardly be a more appropriate site for such a demonstration, as the area has suffered severely from so-called “austerity” since the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government came into office eight years ago.

As Midlands TUC secretary Lee Barron notes, the crisis that saw G4S-run Birmingham prison taken back into public hands illustrates the catastrophic consequences of outsourcing, the decision to slash the hours of the city’s social care workers is an example of the horrific human cost of cuts on some of Britain’s most vulnerable people and the bankruptcy at Northamptonshire County Council demonstrates that the Tories have starved local government of funding to the point where it cannot meet its most vital basic functions.

The whole of the labour movement and the left can unite behind the radical agenda set out at Labour’s conference last week to turn this sorry situation around and elect a government that will bring public services back in house, make sure people are paid a proper wage and are entitled to regular hours and leave no community behind.

Sunday sees another demonstration, this one aimed at putting pressure on the Conservatives to halt Brexit.

It is organised by EU in Brum, an affiliate of Britain for Europe, which forms part of the umbrella People’s Vote campaign headed up by right-wing Labour figures Chuka Umunna and Lord Adonis and run from plush offices in Millbank Tower, an address so swanky that the Labour Party under Tony Blair and the United Nations both had to leave because the rents were too high.

The People’s Vote campaign is led by opponents of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and clearly has access to significant funds.

But it has significant support on the left too. Sunday’s march will seek to influence the large number of pro-EU Tory MPs, and is unlikely to sound a pro-Labour note.

But another anti-Brexit outfit, Another Europe Is Possible, is now calling for the later October 20 demo to see “a sea of red flags” and build a pro-Corbyn, anti-Establishment campaign to Remain.

Supporters of such a strategy were strongly in evidence at Labour conference, many motivated by anti-racism and opposition to what they perceive as narrow nationalism, others by claims that leaving the EU will be an economic disaster.

But our movement has a choice: it can promote the unifying anti-austerity and socialist message that Labour hammered home so successfully last year, as the Midlands TUC will be doing this weekend.

Or it can look to reverse Brexit, which places it on the side of a status quo that has been impoverishing workers for decades. Another Europe is Possible wants an “anti-Establishment” pro-EU campaign, but the EU is an Establishment institution, buttressed by treaties which enshrine the primacy of the market and capitalist economics in law.

As Unite, CWU and other unions have warned, this is likely to divide working people along Remain or Leave lines when we should be fighting on the real front line — the divide between the richest and the rest.

Neither the TUC Congress nor Labour conference settled the issue. Both passed resolutions that left significant room for manoeuvre on whether to support a second referendum or not, while emphasising the need for a general election.

This means the struggle to ensure we are fighting to unite the working class behind radical economic change continues. It is not served by swinging behind a Stop Brexit cul-de-sac, which at best dilutes our class politics with the concerns of the liberal establishment and at worst could alienate enough voters to keep a brutal Conservative government in office.

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