
The first meeting since July 4th of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) all-Britain steering committee was dominated, naturally enough, by a discussion on the outcome of an historic general election and what it could mean for the prospects of a revival of mass working class political representation in the period to come.
The meeting debated the draft review of the election – The 2024 General Election Fact File –prepared by the TUSC national election agent Clive Heemskerk, which listed the TUSC results and those of the anti-war, anti-austerity independents, the Workers Party of Britain and other lefts, in the context of the broader trends revealed by the election.
With detailed statistics illuminating the shallow levels of support for the new government; the growing alienation from the political institutions of capitalism since the 1990s; and the historic shift away from Labour by workers and others from a Muslim background as a portent of future movements to come, the report asks: is there any “stable social base for the coming second age of austerity, privatisation, war and climate crisis retreats that the Starmer government will attempt to impose on us?” And what opportunities does that create to build a new, mass workers party that can unite all sections of our class?
The report was approved, with a supplement added analysing separately the results achieved by the left-wing candidates who ran in Scotland and Wales, and is now available online at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/2024-GE-The-TUSC-Fact-File.pdf The committee also agreed that TUSC should continue to be involved in the discussions organised by The Collective alliance, which will also be assessing the way forward following Jeremy Corbyn’s successful re-election in Islington North.
The meeting further agreed to publish a Directory Of Elections in 2025 (see https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Elections-2025-directory.pdf) to help prepare a working class challenge for the first scheduled elections that will face the Starmer government, in May next year. Although it is only 31 councils with elections in 2025, they cover a population of over 23 million, with all of them being local education authorities and having responsibility for social care services, libraries, highways, transport and more in their areas.
And finally, it was agreed that TUSC would resume its series of How Much Reserves Have They Got? reports on the financial capacity of councils to resist making cuts while conducting a campaign for additional central government funding, starting with the councils with elections in 2025, and discuss at the next meeting – on September 4th – plans for more widely campaigning for ‘People’s Budgets’ in the autumn period.
As the TUSC national chairperson Dave Nellist concluded, “the terrain has changed as a result of the general election but the core mission of TUSC remains: to help develop the self-confidence of the working class that it is an alternative power to the capitalist rulers of society, and that it has the capacity to create and build its own democratic mass workers’ party to realise that power politically”. ■