Richard Sanders is an author and writer and has made documentaries and written articles about the Middle East (West Asia). He is connected to the website, Middle East Eye from what I can gather and formerly worked for the UK's Channel Four.
Double Down News is an independent UK News organization.
By Roger Silverman
Even in the bizarre context of British politics today, it is unusual for a political party’s national leader to endorse the candidate of a rival party without even informing, let alone consulting, his own local members on the spot. But members of Your Party’s local proto-branch in Stratford and Bow have learned from the press that Jeremy Corbyn is demonstratively supporting the mayoral candidate of a different party – Mehmood Mirza of the newly constituted party, Newham Independents.
Some years ago, Mehmood Mirza stood for Labour’s National Executive Committee for its allocated ethnic minority seat. Shortly before the ballot, together with the purge and wholesale closure of both West Ham and East Ham Constituency Labour parties, along with others, he found himself expelled.
For a while he associated with the group founded in their place by local socialist activists, but soon parted company with them to found a separate party of his own – Newham Independents – recruiting almost exclusively among the local Pakistani Muslim population. Newham socialists made persistent attempts to join forces with the new party on a common programme and even made a bloc with it in the last round of council elections, but their subsequent approaches to them have since been brusquely rebuffed.
Due to widespread disaffection at the bungling and at times politically corrupt administration of the overwhelmingly Labour Newham council, the new party won a couple of local by-elections and were joined by a defecting Labour councillor. Now for the second time, Mirza is standing for mayor of Newham and newly recruited allies are standing for every single council seat.
At first sight, the party’s manifesto is very attractive. It promises free school meals for all primary and secondary students, free resident parking permits, plus two hours of free parking across the borough and “more social housing”. This is in a borough which only a year ago needed emergency financial support from the government and which has recently become the most indebted council in London, with over £2bn owed by the town hall.
In 2025, Newham’s council tax was hiked by 9%. But Mirza has ruled out any further increase in council tax in one of the most deprived boroughs in the country. He says he volunteers in a foodbank and sees first-hand how people are struggling. “It’s not the right time to increase council tax”, he says, “Yes, the council needs money, but there are other ways to save money and to generate money.”
So, what are these other ways? He has an easy answer. “To ask for money from the central government…In central government, they’ve got enough money… We will campaign for more funding from central government. We will tell them our needs, we will explain to them what our needs are,” says Mirza.
So that is Mirza’s policy? To ask the government for more money? This is naivety bordering on fantasy. There is no chance that the government will relent and simply pour money into Newham’s coffers, irrespective of the appalling poverty of its residents. If this Labour government is refusing any further concessions to a mayor and council controlled by the Labour Party, then it is hardly more likely to when it is led by an anti-Labour independent council.
For all his good intentions, if Mirza becomes mayor, then there will be chaos. He won’t know how to handle the budget and will follow the line of the chief executive. Bankruptcy could follow and the government would then send in commissioners to impose a draconic budget. This fiasco would discredit not just Mirza and Newham Independents, but also potentially Jeremy Corbyn, who has so very publicly endorsed his candidacy.
We have many times seen the same phenomenon – a candidate who makes grandiose promises, often in all sincerity, but without the vaguest idea how to pay for them, apart from “explaining to the government what our needs are”. What is needed is a strategic programme harnessing the energies of the local working-class population.
Newham is the site of spectacular housing and infrastructure projects, all feverishly springing up during the run-up to the London Olympics. These include countless towering luxury apartment blocks of empty flats, mostly owned by foreign billionaires who have never once even visited them, but cynically use them as convenient piggy bank investments in which to hide their ill-gotten black money.
At the same time, it is also the home of record numbers of homeless street-dwellers, many of them sleeping in doorways right below these largely uninhabited tower blocks. A socialist council would organise and mobilise the homeless to occupy these empty flats and fight for an end to exploitation, cheap labour and profiteering landlords.
It is a crushing disappointment to those of us locally who flocked enthusiastically into Your Party, when the first appeal was made to launch it, that despite repeated attempts to invite Jeremy Corbyn to visit us, engage with us and confer with us, he has ignored all such invitations. Newham has rich working-class traditions and local trade-union activists are appealing to Mehmood and Jeremy to meet with us to plan the genuine socialist fightback our borough so desperately needs.
Republished from the UK socialist website, Left Horizons
"Your Party" is a new left wing political party formed in the UK by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn and is a response to the dismal failure of the Labor Party under Keir Starmer to provide any serious response to the assault on British workers by international capital. The party has huge national support but is already facing potential splits at the top. The author below is a community member of UNITE the union.
By Steve McKenzie
The farcical spat at the top of your party was perhaps an inevitability, an accident waiting to happen. Travelling back a few years to September 2018, we can observe the Corbyn movement in terminal decline. The pressure put on it by the establishment and the cowardly and cynical machinations of the backroom bureaucrats behind Corbyn sealed its fate. Many of the same individuals still lurk behind closed doors today.
At the beginning of September 2018, a Labour Party NEC meeting took place and committed the horrendous blunder of accepting the deeply flawed IHRA definition of antisemitism. It was a pathetic attempt by those really pulling the strings in the party to appease the ruling elite.
Such was their fear of the British establishment and the Zionist lobby, those calling the shots in the Labour party were determined to prostrate the Labour party completely and utterly. They were desperate to present the vote on its adoption as unanimous.
However one NEC member, 75-year-old, Peter Willsman, a man with some integrity and backbone, put a spanner in the works. He refused to vote for its acceptance. He was therefore made to leave the room when the vote took place.
The ‘left wing’ General Secretary of Unite, Len McCluskey, penned a hand wringing article on whether a vote in favour of accepting it was the right thing to do or not. In the end, and of course for the sake of unity, he would have us believe that he had no option but to capitulate and accept it.
IHRA definition of antisemitism
Jeremy Corbyn, who by that time was a mere figurehead, attempted to move a very mild and minor ammendment, but those pulling his strings told him to put the ammendment away and be quiet.
So the IHRA definition of antisemitism was adopted by the Labour Party unanimously. As is well known it is deeply flawed – there are far better definitions, like the Jerusalem declaration – and it is cynically used to smear any criticism of Zionism and recently any criticism of Israel over the genocide in Gaza as “antisemitic”.
Given developments since and the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza, the shame of that decision by the Labour’s NEC that day leaves an indelible stain. A fortnight after this retreat, at the 2018 Labour Party conference, these same cowardly wire-pullers conspired to ensure that the open selection was side-tracked.
Right wing Labour MPs saw open selection as a threat to their careers, and the union bureaucrats saw it as a threat to the comfortable status quo. Democratic accountability and real membership control is something that MPs and well-healed bureaucrats are not prepared to tolerate.
Capitulation on open selection
Open selection would have been a step in the direction of democratic accountability and real membership control. Len McCluskey voted against Unite policy on this issue: the union he had had a policy in favour of mandatory reselection.
His justification for the capitulation this time, was that Jeremy wanted him to vote against it. So heroically ignoring Unite conference policy, the Unite delegation to the 2018 Labour Party conference bowed down in the face of the iron will of and dogged determination of Jeremy Corbyn and voted against their own union policy. Pathetic doesn’t begin to describe these events.
The key players from Unite from that era were not the only ones guilty of destroying the potential of the Corbyn movement. There was (and still is) a conglomeration of vested self-interest, whose tried, tested and failed bureacratic approach has let us down again and again in recent years.
These charactors and their secretive controlling, top-down approach are still clinging to Jeremy Corbyn, who in turn steadfastly refuses, or pretends not to see, what is going on. Their fingerprints were all over the debilitating public spat, ostensibly between Corbyn and Sultana, that threatens to derail the Your Party project before it even gets off of the ground.
Indeed Your Party may not get off of the ground, and will certainly achieve very little if it does, unless it is purged of this debilitating factor. The only way to build a party properly is to identify a problem and deal with it; ignoring what is clearly going on, who is responsible for it, and issuing inane calls for ‘unity’ will achieve nothing.
Dismissing a fundamental issue like this as just “teething problems” is evading the issue. The far right and the establishment are laughing at us. It is time to rid ourselves of the excess baggage and start building a real left alternative from the bottom up.
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| CA Governor Gavin Newsom signs the Election Rigging Response Act to save Democracy Source: Cal Matters |
Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED
08-26-25
Electoral warfare
It seems we’re preparing for war here in California.
Back in June, Donald Trump pressured Texas Republicans to redraw the state’s Congressional maps to favor Republican candidates, undermining Democratic Party power in the state and most importantly, increasing the number of Republican seats in the US House of Representatives where that party has a very slim majority.
We have an intense electoral competition every four years between two capitalist parties over who gets to govern society and reap all the benefits thereof.
Putting it bluntly, the Texas move is a political power grab. It is clearly harmful to working class and poor people as any strengthening of the Republican Party over workers’ lives is a recipe for poverty and in many instances a death sentence. Those Democrats and others that have condemned it as a very bad undemocratic move are right.
In response, California’s Governor Newsom has picked up the baton and has become the leading Democrat in the fight against Trumpism, electorally anyway. Initially Newsom had threatened to do a bit of redistricting of his own that could cost Republicans half their Congressional seats in the state and, if successful, change the balance of power in the US House of Representatives
Many never took the threat seriously as gerrymandering is frowned upon and California has an independent redistricting commission that was given the power to draw electoral boundaries by the voter in 2012, taking it out of the hands of the state legislature.
But Newsom introduced new electoral maps at a rally on August 15th and has called a Special Election for November 4th in order to get support for his proposal from the California voter.
The legislation is called Proposition 50 and normally thousands of signatures are required to get a proposition on the ballot. But the California constitution allows it if it is passed by two thirds of the state legislature. As California is a Democratic Party stronghold, a one-party state basically, Governor Newsom’s Proposition passed and the campaigning has already begun.
The issue is very controversial as the independent citizen commission is very popular and was considered a huge victory taking the drawing of electoral boundaries out of the hands of the politically charged legislature with both parties at war over voting power.
Naturally, the state’s Republicans are opposed to Proposition 50 and lots of money is being spent on both sides of the issue. The state-run election is expected to cost about $250 million. The hypocrisy of California’s Republican Party is evident opposing Newsome’s redistricting for overriding the electoral commission and “Undermining our Democracy”. Meanwhile, the Republican Party introduces similar legislation in Texas.
The Democrats are just as bad introducing what is termed the “Election Rigging Response Act” as a strategy against a rival party’s election rigging in Texas and claiming that they are defending democracy. It’s no wonder American’s have come to despise politics and politicians and have abandoned the electoral process in their millions. Newsom and the Democrats are saying the legislation is only temporary until 2030 and we’ll see how that goes.
Is This the Best Democrats Can Offer Workers?
I am opposed to this legislation. It doesn’t serve the interests of working class people to support legislation that gives the Democratic Party more power over our lives that it already has? Same goes for the other capitalist party. This is electoral warfare between two parties that represent the US capitalist class including the billionaires among them. California is home to 200 billionaires, 82 of them in the San Francisco Bay Area where I live. The same three billionaires, that sat behind Trump at his inauguration would be just as supportive of Newsom or any Democrat that occupied the Oval Office. They own both parties.
There are many Californians that are uncomfortable with Newsom’s Electoral Rigging Act as it is electoral rigging, but Trump is so despised I can’t see Newsom’s Prop 90 being defeated. Either way, Newsom is the Democratic Party’s front runner for President in 2028 and this is a major campaign booster.
But the most important lesson workers should draw from this episode and Newsom’s proposal is how quickly the political process works when they need it to. This measure has gone from a threat from Newsome to a place on the ballot in a few weeks made possible by the legislature which the Democrats control. It’s akin to Biden and Pelsosi’s anti-union legislation that they introduced to Congress overnight when rail workers threatened a crippling strike in 2024. Both Democrats and Republicans united on that one. No problem reaching across the aisle when it comes to workers’ rights or profits.
Workers can’t look to the Democrats to defend democracy and as the statistics show, are hungry for a political alternative to the two capitalist parties. We should take no side in this war. We have some serious issues in California and the nation and neither party will resolve them.
This is reflected in the general disgust Americans have with politics and the two political parties that have dominated US political life for over a century or more. In national elections close to 100 million people never bother to vote. Only one in four eligible voters voted for Trump for example. All is not well on the home front and this is reflected in various polls.
According to a December 2024 Gallup survey, “62 percent of Americans said that the federal government should ensure that all Americans have health coverage,
Another survey in 2020 found that nearly four times as many voters support increasing public transportation funding as support reducing it. A similar survey in 2023 found that 70 percent of respondents agree that “providing people with more transportation options is better, “ for our health, safety, and economy than building more highways.”
A Half of all renters spent 30% or more of their income on rent in 2023 while 56% of Black or African American renters did so. US Census Bureau.
82% of Americans want the government to make housing more affordable PEW research and Two-thirds of Americans prioritize developing alternative energy sources, like wind and solar and About three-quarters of Americans support a U.S. role in global efforts to address climate change
These are just a few issues that are important to US workers and the middle class that any politician or party could tap in to that would galvanize the population and help to transform the balance of class forces in the US. The failure to do this is a major reason for the rise of Trump.
Organized Labor’s Potential Power in California
In addition to electoral activity, and in conjunction with it if working people had a party of our own, California has two million workers affiliated to the California Labor Federation AFL-CIO and the LA Labor Federation alone has 800,000 workers affiliated to it; nothing moves in California if these workers decide to stop working. It is the power of the organized and the unorganized working class that we must look if we want to shift the balance of power in California and the US in our favor and it is this power that can defend democracy and stop the threat of fascism. Those that think the Democratic party can defend us from fascism are terribly wrong and have not learned from history.
It’s clear through this experience that California could be a different place if the political power the Democratic Party has in the state was used to confront the issues facing millions of people and changing life for the better. Millions of people want change but they can’t get it no matter which party is in power because, as Nancy Pelosi once said when she answered a question about socialism from a young Naïve DSA member, the Democrats are “Capitalists”. Both Democrats and Republicans are enemies of working class people.
Workers’ shouldn’t vote to give either one of these parties increased power over our lives and instead rely on our own strength by participating in any way our personal resources allow in the building of a united, working class direct action movement and an independent political party based on the working class, our organizations and communities.
Richie Venton
Scottish Socialist Party
8-16-25
FALKIRK SHOWS TRADE UNIONS URGENTLY NEED TO MOBILISE AGAINST THE RACIST FAR RIGHT
We live in an increasingly volatile and polarised society.
END THE GENOCIDE
In Glasgow yesterday, the thousands marching against the ongoing genocide and conscious starvation of men, women, children and babies in Gaza was, by all accounts, the biggest in months.
The SSP were proudly present, as we have been since day one, arguing for an end to the genocide, to Labour's arms sales and SNP arms subsidies, supporting mass struggle for peace through socialism in the Middle East.
FALKIRK
By stark contrast, those of us in the SSP who joined the peaceful protest - initiated by Falkirk Trades Union Council - outside the Cladhan hotel housing refugees and asylum seekers in Falkirk, were faced with an ugly mass of racist bigotry across the narrow street.
At a peak, we had around 250-300 anti-racists protecting the "hotel"- its workers and those who've sought sanctuary from wars and civil wars - from attack by a crowd whipped up into a frenzy by fascist and other far-right groups.
The alarming fact is that at their peak, those screaming "send them home", "stop the boats", and singing "Rule Britannia" numbered 800-1,000.
It was allegedly called as "a peaceful protest" after an asylum seeker was convicted of rape and jailed.
This inexcusable, heinous crime was latched onto to brand ALL asylum seekers, refugees and people of colour as rapists and paedophiles by unscrupulous far-right and fascist actors - including 'Tommy Robinson', UKIP's Nick Tenconi, and fascist grouplets like Great Britain National Protest.
Some of the local people who joined this demo may well have concerns about women's safety, but where were they when Women's Aid and other services were being cut?
Where did they protest against the most common of all crimes against women – r
ape, assault and murder by men in their own family, usually a husband or partner?
At the very start of the demo, a few shouted about Grangemouth and the threatened closure of Alexander Dennis - issues the SSP has spearheaded campaigning on in the streets of Falkirk, calling for nationalisation under workers' control to build clean electric buses for free public transport - but which the full weight of the trade union movement has yet to take action on, which would answer the genuine concerns some locals were expressing.
But yesterday, they were part of a baying mob, some of them giving Nazi statues, chanting the fascist National Front's slogan of the 1970s, "there's no black in the union jack".
In amongst this crowd were those holding banners with a skull pierced by a bloodstained dagger, saying "Kill Them All, Let God Sort 'em Out" - hardly a peaceful message! Hardly a message of concern for women and children's safety!
It took great courage by all those of us who stood for hours, holding the line against likely attacks on the Cladhan hotel, but we did - despite the paltry police presence, with at first only half a dozen police separating the rival crowds.
If we hadn't held the line, the hotel and people within it would have been attacked, with unthinkable human costs.
TINDERBOX OF ANGER
This is a harsh reminder of the deep damage done by capitalist crises - including housing shortages, service cuts, job losses in Grangemouth and Alexander Dennis, and grinding poverty - and the unforgivable scapegoating and racist incitement, not just by Reform UK, UKIP and fascist grouplets, but also Starmer's Labour.
They've created a tinderbox which flares up with the likes of a horrible rape incident, targeting all those fleeing wars and persecution for racist attacks and potential injury and death, as angry mobs are incited to target the "hotel" they're cooped up in for ages, as the government fails to deal with their asylum applications.
Yesterday's events in Falkirk were possibly the ugliest I've witnessed since our battles against the fascist street fighters of the 1970s.
However, the fact yesterday's crowds didn't just overpower the substantially smaller anti-racist demonstrators is further evidence they were overwhelmingly NOT fascist street fighters, but an angry, downtrodden crowd who've had their anger channeled into racist bigotry, blind hatred of people who had nothing to do with shoddy housing, benefits cuts, totally inadequate services and other privations.
As we chanted a few times, "Profit is the enemy".
A WARNING TO THE WORKERS' MOVEMENT
Falkirk should be treated as a wake-up call to all trade unions (the STUC included) and socialists that we need to build a positive, working-class socialist alternative in communities ravaged by capitalist attacks, regardless of which 'mainstream' political party is in office.
Otherwise they'll be prey to the baying mobs and cheap racist slogans of far-right outfits.
The SSP will continue to help resist the poisonous antics of the far right, and call on the full power of the organised trade union movement to be mobilized in demonstrations in the likes of Falkirk, to build unity against poor housing, service cuts (including those for women and children), against closure of Alexander Dennis, and for a positive socialist alternative, with massive wealth redistribution away from the millionaires who hoard it to the millions who need it.
We need a sharp, socialist, class appeal to people most affected by the crisis of capitalist rule, to break them from the millionaire demagogues of the far right, who want to divide us and rob us of even more wealth.
UNITE against racism!
UNITE against poor housing, service cuts, violence against women, job losses and poverty!
For working-class unity and socialist change!
https://membership.scottishsocialistparty.org/join_us/
#falkirk #FarRight #FightRacism #endpoverty #WorkersUnite #solidarity #SSP
by Arthur Albert – 26th July 2025
In 24 hours 300k people sign up to “ Your Party” in an unprecedented show of enthusiasm. This is all the more remarkable in that no one yet knows exactly what they are signing up for, even if it is to be a party or a series of umbrellas. For now all that anyone knows for sure is that it will be different and it will aim for change. So hated are the current politicians and the social status quo, difference and change are more than enough to generate widespread enthusiasm.
A year ago the electorate voted for change. We got change all right but change for the worse. Instead of low decimal point economic growth we got economic contraction. Instead of taxing the rich we got cuts to disabled peoples assistance. Gandhi was changed for Carlos the Jackal as peace campaigners are now labelled terrorists. International humanitarian aid money now buys weapons for the armed forces. Woke free speech restrictions mean that genocide can’t be called out in case it hurts the feelings of the murderers. Wages and incomes stall while prices and bills accelerate. I could go on in that vein all day and not even begin to exhaust the reasons for people to be angry at the current situation. So too could virtually every person in this country with the exception of those people who are doing rather well out of it, the mega rich and their well paid enablers, the politicians and the media.
Sultana and Corbyn are both advocates of the kind of change people actually want. Secure jobs that pay a living wage not zero hour contracts, public services and utilities that work for people not just for shareholder profit and a foreign policy based on peace not warfare. That is why so many joined so fast, this time with this initiative they hope to get the change that they want and need. Their aim is to fix the crises in our society with a mass redistribution of wealth and power.
A vocal few have taken issue with the time this initiative has taken and the secretive back room nature of a lot of what has preceded this current sign up drive. While we sympathise with many of the criticisms they have made we have to point out that these matters were out of our hands, none of us could have issued a call and have hundreds of thousands respond. Now we have to play the cards we have been dealt the best way we can. If there really is a secretive group hiding in the shadows that believes it can manipulate this new party by pulling the strings of the members then it are in for a rude shock, Momentum can not be resurrected, large swathes of this new party have been through the school of the labour party and graduated with honours. It is in these members that we place our trust.
On the other hand, some individuals were rushing forward with their grand master organisational schemes to be adopted right down to the fine details before the website clicker had even reached triple digits. For Marxists though while the nature of an organisational structure is important it is political ideas, method and approach that will be decisive in this new party. So what should Marxists advocate to help this new party develop into a real alternative to the Tories and the other capitalist parties ?
The Forde report noted in a shocked tone that the Labour Party administration did not act like impartial civil servants. The reason for that lack of impartiality is clear to every former Labour Party member. It is because the party administration was itself the core of the right wing faction that waged war on the members and saw them as the enemies (Trots). The administration did everything they could to destabilise the elected leader of the party, Corbyn, hamstring the lay party members and to prevent the selection or election of any further left wing MPs, even going so far as sabotaging election campaigns .
To prevent the situation that led to the defeat of the left in the Labour Party reoccurring in the new party, that of an administration usurping the authority of the party membership, it is necessary to devise a democratic structure based on one member one vote. Where all officials and representatives are elected by the body they represent and to whom they must be responsible and report back to. They must be subject to recall and none of them receive more than the average pay of a skilled worker (£38k per annum) so that none are attracted to the administration for well paid careerist reasons.
The only real guarantee against the new party, its administration, its councillors or MPs or its leaders getting out of the control of its members is a confident politically educated membership. Political education and campaigning should be at the core of the new party.
Perspectives for the economic and political development of society should be drawn up and discussed and debated at regular intervals. That way the party or its members will not be taken by surprise by events or blown off course. They will have a map that shows where they are and the route to get where they are going.
In order to deliver the change that so many desire and deserve, a mass redistribution of wealth and power. It is necessary to devise a programme that meets the needs of the working class. The 10 pledges need to be resurrected and the manifesto of 2019 needs to be revived and updated as a first step in that direction.
While the leadership of the Labour Party has succumbed to a mutated version of the neoliberalist virus that infected their predecessors from 1997 onwards the party is far from dead yet. Even among the right wing administration’s hand picked MPs there is rebellion only a year into office. As Johnson found, winning a landslide victory is not enough to ensure loyal obedience from the backbenchers or the ministers and Starmer is now if anything in a more precarious situation than was Johnson, who was at least popular with the rank and file of his party.
While Starmer was easily able to proscribe Marxist groups in the party, he was also able to expel socialists by the score. What he can not do is prevent the tendency for the rate of profit to fall and he can not prevent the class struggle being reflected in the Labour Party. Only a few years after a strike wave the trade unions ranks are stirring and NEC elections that were once formalities are now hotly contested between left and right and the beginnings of attempts to transform the unions by the ranks are either underway or are being reflected in the maneuvers of the bureaucrats.
Many in the ranks of labour and the trade unions will be watching the development of the new party with rapt attention, not just deciding if they should join the new party but in the days to come, they will also ask themselves whether they could replicate the new party’s policies in their own organisation. In this way the new party can influence labour and the trade unions for good but only if it is not sectarian. The new party must face towards the labour party and the trade unions in a positive way, criticising their failings but encouraging them to move away from neoliberalism
Marxist are not some quack theorists, we are attempting to express the actual relations that arise from the real existing class struggle. We point out the real common interests of every worker on this planet, not a day goes by when those common interests get closer and not a day goes by without that common interest becoming more apparent to every worker on this planet. Just as workers in Maidenhead and Middlesbrough have the same interests, so too do the workers of Macau, Mombasa, Milwaukee and Mumbai who face the same bosses, the same problems and the same solutions . Only on the basis of socialist internationalism will a party that represents the whole working class be built.
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| Screenshot from article: Source |
Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED
2-28-25
A quick few words. I found this image above after the chat with a friend in the UK who was asking me about the unions here. I saw a video about the strike with no sound but it appears there was talk of the need to fight which is quite common on these pep rallies, the strategy of the fight, what the demands are and how they can be won, is never mentioned.
I did look around and from what I can gather the dominant issue given for the strike, or walk out, is that the employer is not being nice, which means it's an unfair labor practice walkout. The union is not being respected at the negotiating table. This was the major issue years ago when thousands, upward of 100,000, mostly Afscme members surrounded the Capital Rotunda in Madison Wisconsin tor days to demand the employers bargain in good faith. The right to negotiate or bargain is important without a doubt, but what is being negotiated and what the demands of the workers are and how they can be one is crucial. For the trade union leadership, this is the most important demand as they would have no role to play, no job if the boss denied them a seat at the table.
I only read two or three pieces about this so I could be wrong, but it seems just like the usual hot air.
Walking out, and (even then in a way that won’t really shut down the workplace) is a safer bet if it’s about an unfair labor practice on the part of the employer. It’s a sort of defence of pro-union laws I suppose.
The speaker talks of the LA Labor Federation which represents some 800,000 workers last time I looked. You can bet that the vast majority of the workers at the rally will not know that or even what the LA Labor Federation is. The California Labor Federation, the state arm of the AFL-CIO has some 3 million workers’ affiliated to it.
Almost 15 years ago we had a similar situation involving many of the same unions up here at Cal Berkeley and throughout the state eventually. I remember being at a rally and the excitement was electric. They brought out a leader from the Alameda County Labor Council to speak to the young crowd of workers and students. This person spoke; here’s how these speeches go. “I bring the voice of 160,000 workers represented by the labor council and let you know we’re here to support you.”
I turned to a young student, he thought himself a bit of a Marxist back then, (for a minute or two) and pointed out that not only is this speaker not going to bring the power of these workers to these gates, 99% of the workers he claims to be speaking for don't even know he’s here and he won’t be telling them, or more
I am sure the same game plan is being repeated.
I would like to think differently but there is at this point no indication of it. I think we will see some serious battles up ahead here as Trump and his menagerie are pushing our backs against the wall. But the pro-market, pro-business trade union hierarchy will not in any way mobilize the immense potential power organized labor has as it would threaten their very existence and challenge their view of the world and how it should work.
Go read what Afscme head Lee Saunders says or any other trade union leader. The new chair of the DNC has appealed to them to help in the face of Trump and co and, barring any serious movement from below, they will comply and try to get the Dems back in the driver’s seat, at least with enough in there to stop the most blatant abuses that should be introduced over time so as not to provoke a workers’ movement on the ground or toward an independent political voice. They like to grandfather the changes in and direct the worst at the future hires, preferably aimed at the youth and our children
This will just slow down the assault a bit (maybe).
We are in a different era, a changing world situation. The two capitalist parties have worn out their welcome as shown by the millions of people that don’t bother. I spoke to a very decent person I know this morning, he admitted to me that he voted for Trump hoping some things will change. Another close friend a union guy I stood with in many battles against the bosses in the past. He said he did too. “Let them get a little taste of this Mofo.”, he said. Maybe that’ll get them off their asses. I am not advocating for these two points of view just that it’s complicated and reflects the horrible choices, or lack of them when it comes to the electoral process in this country. Biden after all is a supporter and orchestrator of a genocide.
Please read some labor and working class history in the US. We have never had a party of our own. We were never able in the course of the class struggle to shift from the industrial plane and battles on the picket lines to the electoral plane and the ballot box.
We have won what we have from the founding of the country as a modern nation state through sheer physical struggles in the streets and workplaces of America. From the battle to unionize to the civil rights movement that followed the founding of the CIO.
We are early in this new period. I am convinced the US working class, millions of human beings from every corner of the world (including those whose home it has always been) brought here with the expansion of the capitalist mode of production globally, will rise to the occasion. What else can I think? There’s no guarantees in life but history teaches me I’m right I reckon.
I’m not saying it will be pretty.
Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED
12-2-24
Juliet Stevenson is great and I commend her in addition to the respect I have for her as an actor. But what’s missing whenever well known people speak out like this, even labor party members or musicians or academics, and this is throughout the world, not just the UK, they never raise the obvious. Call on the trade unions and their leadership in your country to enter this battle as allies of the Palestinian people. It is workers that move the goods, load the ships, the planes, drive the trucks, make an issue of this and call on them in one way another to stop and down tools as we used to say. Given the crisis of leadership of the working class in the trade unions and political parties, I understand the omission but that's a mistake.
Mention the trade union leaders and leaders of any party that claims to be a party of the working class, and that includes communist and socialist parties throughout the world; they cannot claim to represent workers and not be involved, and certainly not silent in the struggle to defeat the Zionist Apartheid states’ genocide or any other assault on workers and the poor internationally.
As she says, silence is assent, and you are complicit in the genocide. Biden and Harris in the US and Starmer in the UK are beyond complicit in this genocide, they are orchestrators of it.
It is the working class internationally that can stop this and ultimately offer a future for humankind. And in some way or another those speaking out have to come to recognise this. They are not key players but can be important allies.
We do not have a labor or workers’ party in the US, or even one whose leading figures falsely claim to be representatives of the working class, like the toady Starmer et al do in the UK. Here in the US, The Democratic Party is a dead end for workers; it's the war party.
It matters not what the Party or trade union labor bureaucrats say or do, the issue must be raised that it is workers, union and non-union alike that move the goods, the weapons and other crucial commodities that allow the Zionists to commit genocide. Passing a resolution on paper is not enough. A resolution in the trade union has to have teeth to it, has to explain what should be done and directed at those that have the power to do it.
Those of us that have spent much of our political lives active in the trade union movement are well aware that the present leadership of organized labor here in the US and probably the western world, will not challenge capital and the capitalist system as they see no alternative to the market and when capitalism enters its inevitable recurring crisis, they move to bail it out at the expense of their own members and the working as a whole.
When leaders refuse to take action where the rank and file can, we must lead. If we are in a union the leadership should not stop us from raising the issue, introducing resolutions that spell out what it is and what needs to be done; that workers have to “down tools” have to refuse to move the agents of death but also any product in or out that enables the perpetrator; force a debate on it. That’s how we can counter the propaganda. We have to have a struggle within the trade union movement, and there are many union locals in the US where this is possible.
The ruling class supresses any ideas or worldview that challenges the established narrative through their control of the mass media and public education; and they are assisted in this by the folks in the public bar a few exceptions. Universities are primarily capitalist think tanks.
Believe it or not, organized labor in the US has the resources to have our own press, our own party and so much more and we have 14 million members. The California Labor Federation has two million workers affiliated to it. The LA Labor Federation alone has over 800,000 workers. Do not tell me we are weak. California is the sixth largest economy in the world
But we are in a war on two fronts my brothers and sisters in organized labor. One is against capital and big business which is the easy one, the other is against the pro-market policies of the heads of our organizations that took a century or more to build. Unions were not built by the mafia as Hollywood would have us believe, nor by lawyers, and there are lawyers that are good allies. They were built by working class men and women, despite the racism the violence the sexism.
If you are in a union and silent on the genocide and international affairs in general and not fighting for organized labor to step to the plate here then you’re are complicit as well.
Sorry about that.
From the UK socialist website, Left Horizons.
I have been away for a few days and had no internet connection for a lot of it. I intend to read up on events and contribute to the discussion myself. This is a good contribution from Left Horizons at this early stage. While away, I made a couple of videos, on Tiktok one of them removed by Facebook when I posted it there.
I stress to some of my friends that voted for the Democrats, as is often the case in US elections, it's a vote merely to keep the other guy out, and US workers are are fed up with this usual Democratic Party pablum. I am sure as much as Trump support came from misogynists, racist and xenophobes, a large number would have been to stick it to the established politicians. It is the Democratic Party failings, it is a major capitalist part of course so it can't offer much in substance, and its allies atop organised labor that bear the blame for the rise of Trump and why so many workers voted for him.
The Democratic Party is the party of the trade union bureaucracy, not the union member or workers in general. This marriage, a united front between these two forces, is a deadly one for union members and workers as a whole. Richard Mellor
The election of Donald Trump is a major setback for the interests of the working class in the USA and internationally. Rather than a ‘golden age’ as Trump promised in his victory speech, his elevation to office will be a prelude to intensified class struggles, attacks on living standards and workers’ rights, and internal conflict of a kind not seen since the American Civil War.
On the international plane, Trump’s trajectory will be as erratic and unpredictable as the man himself, but it seems likely that he will double down on US support for Israel in its genocidal war in Gaza, while at the same time he may seek to force Ukraine into an unsatisfactory deal with Putin’s Russia.
That a misogynistic, lying, narcissistic, convicted felon should be elected to the most powerful political office on the planet is an indication of the profound and unprecedented crisis at the heart of the capitalist system. It has been said – correctly – that we live in the most turbulent period in the whole of history, certainly in modern times, and Trump is the living representation of that.
In the heyday of rising of capitalism, that new, dynamic and aspiring class basked in self-confidence, underpinned by a semblance of philosophical justification for its dominance. But today, an utter lack of moral and ethical compass by the capitalist class finds its perfect embodiment in Donald Trump.
The mainstream media is always obsessed with percentage share of the vote – noting that in the large majority of counties and electoral districts, Trump’s vote “went up” in comparison to 2020. What few media outlets have noted, however, is that his vote in absolute numbers declined over those four years, by around a million and a half, from 74.2m to 72.8m.
A monumental rebuke to the Democrats
Trump’s victory is, above all, a monumental rebuke to the Democratic Party, which lost a staggering thirteen million votes in comparison to 2020, falling from 81.3m to 68.1m. [These figures correct at the time of writing]. The Biden administration presided over a fall in living standards, as wages failed to keep up with inflation and the costs of housing.
The result is a rebuke, too, to all those trade union bureaucrats who have backed the Democratic Party uncritically for years, even though it is a party completely wedded to Wall Street and the capitalist system. For Wall Street, the economy under Biden may have been steaming ahead, but for workers it has been stagnating.
It was reported that by 2022, “11% of Americans were living in poverty” but nothing Biden did in his subsequent two years made any difference to that. In the same year, “7.9% of the population lacked health insurance. Healthcare spending per enrollee decreased across Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Programme), and private insurance plans when adjusted for inflation.”
By the end of 2023, the top fifth of income earners held 71% of the nation’s wealth, amounting to approximately $103tn, while workers often worked two jobs to keep their head above water.
A 2024 PRRI (Public Religious Research Institute) survey of American values found that “Seventy-two percent of Americans say they are worried about not having enough money to retire, while more than six in ten say they are worried about being unable to afford health care (65%), housing (64%), everyday expenses such as groceries or gas (61%), or getting a job that pays a living wage (59%)”.
Around a hundred million Americans not motivated to vote
This, then, was the fundamental reason for the collapse of the Democratic Party vote and why around a hundred million Americans were not motivated to vote at all. As candidate and vice-president, Kamala Harris refused to dissociate herself from the actions and policies of the Biden administration, so she was tarred with the same brush.
The Democratic Party will have almost certainly lost millions of young and Muslim voters over its virtually uncritical support for Netanyahu’s war on the people of Gaza. As elsewhere, the USA has seen hundreds of rallies, demonstrations and campus protests over Palestinian rights and this is arguably a bigger movement all-told than the protests against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. The Democrats lost in every single college town in the key state of Michigan, for example, and although we don’t yet have the details, that may have been broadly true in many other states.
But it was above all on living standards and the economy, that Trump succeeded, falsely claiming – like right wing populists the world over – that he is ‘different’ to other politicians and that he is on the side of the ‘little’ person. At every rally he addressed, Trump asked those present if they were better or worse off than they were four years ago, and they answered at the ballot box. Harris’s Hollywood smile, celebrity endorsements and meaningless talk about “joy”, were nothing against the tide of anger on which Trump was able to ride so cynically.
Although the issue of mass immigration featured strongly in the polls – and was the main issue flagged by Trump in all his rallies and propaganda – even this, at bottom, is an economicquestion. Many workers in the USA, like those in Europe, including Britain, fear that decisions are taken above their heads and without their consent, and they are understandably worried that they are being forced into greater competition for jobs, affordable homes and for dwindling health and other services. Second and third generation Latino immigrants voted in large numbers for Trump precisely because they fear the growing competition for jobs and incomes.
Trump has pledged to deport ten million
Trump pledged in his campaign to round up and deport millions of undocumented migrants, but like his former pledge to ‘build a wall’ on the Mexican border, it is likely to be a policy mired in chaos and disorganisation. It is not clear if the federal government can even build up the resources and an apparatus big enough to deport the ‘ten million’ Trump mentioned.
That said, the labour movement needs to be alert and prepared to defend migrant workers against attacks by police and vigilante squads targetting Black and Latino workers. It is a fundamental class question and workers must defend other workers against harassment by the state and right-wing gangs.
Kamala Harris charged Trump with being a ‘fascist’ in the last week of the election campaign, but that label had no meaning to the overwhelming majority of Trump voters, who, like the four million who voted for Reform UK in Britain in July, are utterly alienated from mainstream politicians, most of whom are personally well-off and seem incapable of understanding the pressures and insecurities of everyday life for workers.
Joe Biden’s popularity in the polls collapsed almost as soon as he was elected in 2020 and he never recovered. We can expect Donald Trump’s popularity to decline just as rapidly in the early part of next year, because although his party will have control of the presidency and (possibly) both houses of Congress, not to mention the Supreme Court, there is no chance at all that the roll-out of his economic policies will favour the big majority of his voters, that is, discontented workers.
It is no accident that the day after his victory, US stocks reached record levels. The rich and super-rich and big corporations are expecting massive tax cuts, as they had after Trump’s first victory in 2016. Trump has proposed cutting corporate tax from 21 per cent to 15 per cent. Spokespersons at BlackRock, the largest fund holder, were purring in the Financial Times, along with just about every other banking analyst, that the Trump win will ‘open the door’ to better times.
Most of the proposed tax cuts will benefit the rich
It has been estimated that his proposed tax cuts will give two thirds of the benefit to the highest-earning fifth of the population, and only one per cent of the benefit to the working class.
As an article on the Gizmodo website put it, “Donald Trump has won the presidency and businesses connected with him and his allies are soaring. According to early financial reports, winners include banks, crypto-related stocks, and private prison companies. All of the worst people in the financial game”.
Anticipating a relaxation of banking regulation and soaring profits, one analyst at Wells Fargo bank told the Financial Times that Trump’s election victory marks a “watershed moment” for the US banking industry. “This is an inflection point,” he said, “a real game-changer.”
Trump’s climate change scepticism is welcome news to the big oil and gas companies. The US shale magnate Harold Hamm, a financial backer of Trump, said the victory was a “monumental win” for America’s oil and gas industry. It would “empower American oil and gas workers to reinforce energy independence for the US and its allies around the world”. In other words, despite the growing evidence of dramatic climatic effects of global warming, Trump will allow the fossil fuel industry to let rip.
Although Trump’s personal inclinations and policies – and even more so, those around him – might be described as ‘pro-fascist’, it is unlikely that his administration will fit that description. Trump will almost certainly attempt to curtail the rights of minorities and workers in general, but how far he succeeds is open to question.
Polls regularly show that most Americans support the right of abortion, but the swing against the Republicans among women voters was not enough to counteract the collapse of the Harris vote. It was still notable that on Tuesday seven out of ten states that voted on it approved amendments to establish or strengthen abortion rights in their state constitutions.
Some states already have draconian anti-trans and anti-abortion laws
As The New York Times reported, “Missouri, which was the first state to officially enact an abortion ban after Roe was overturned in 2022, became the first state where voters ended a ban at the ballot box, with 52 percent approving the measure. A similar amendment passed by 57 percent in Montana, another Republican-controlled state. In two battleground states, Nevada and Arizona, measures to enshrine a right to abortion passed, with more than 60 percent of the vote for each”.
Despite the popular sentiment, however, it is possible that Republican ‘Trumpists’ in many states may try to further limit women’s rights on abortion and the rights of the LBGT community, particularly of trans people. In several states there are already vicious, draconian laws against trans people, to the extent that there is an ongoing ‘exodus’ as they flee from one state to another. Republicans have already drastically limited abortion rights in some states, for example limiting abortion to six weeks and on this issue too, women are having to seek ‘refuge’ in friendly states.
The Trump Republican administration will be instinctively anti-democratic across the board, and that applies no less to trade union rights. However, breaking the industrial power of the unions would not be an easy step to take, because the unions, although they represent overall a minority of workers, still have a considerable social and political weight.
It has also been suggested that Trump will attempt to change the US constitution drastically, perhaps even to give himself the right to stand for a third term. Again, that may be his personal inclination, but whether or not he can move the huge juggernaut of US judicial and electoral tradition is another thing entirely.
Guerrilla war in the courts over federal and state rights
What is certain is that the next four years will be years of turmoil and battles: in terms of industrial struggles, Black and Latino communities struggling against police and state violence, and in battles over attempts to deport migrants. There is likely to be a permanent and ongoing ‘guerrilla war’ over constitutional and legal fronts as states, individuals, and political parties skirmish endlessly through courts and the legal system, at both state and federal level.
It was ostensibly on the ground of ‘states rights’ that the Southern states of US seceded and triggered the Civil War in 1860. Depending on the success of Trump at federal level, it is entirely possible that one feature of the coming four years will be legal struggles over the rights of large Democratic states like California and New York against the policies and powerful interests of the White House and Capitol Hill in Washington DC.
Failure of the labour movement to offer a way forward
Socialists and activists in the USA and internationally are dismayed and perhaps dispirited by the election of Donald Trump. It signals renewed struggles to defend all the rights that workers established over many decades and struggles to defend living standards. There will indeed be a fightback, but the starting point for that must be understanding how and why such a man could be elected to office in the first place.
The prime underlying reason for the election of hypocritical and cynical populists like Trump lies in the failure of the labour movement to offer an alternative. The most important political issue of our time is that of leadership, and to what extent the tops of the labour movement do or do not provide it.
Capitalism is historically redundant; it is a system based more than ever before on the parasitism of a tiny but highly influential minority, whose only aim is self-enrichment. Unless and until the leaders of the labour movement offer a viable alternative – and that means socialist policies, unapologetically challenging the entire basis of the capitalist system – then workers will blindly lash out in any direction, trying to seek a solution. We are living in a period of sharp and dramatic political swings to both right and left.
It is essential that we discuss the issue of how and why leaders like Trump come to be elected. This is because we may see the same process repeated nearer home in the coming years: with Nigel Farage in the UK, Marine Le Pen in France, the AfD in Germany or any other variety of European far-right populists.
[Top picture: graphic from BBC website]
