Three CPGB members, two also members of Communist Students attended the Friday June 17th rally organised by the Sheffield Anti-Cuts Alliance (SACA), where rebellious Labour MP John McDonnell was the keynote speaker. Over 150 people turned out, and it was one of those rare occasions when most of the Marxist left in Sheffield could be found in the same room together.

Serving as master of ceremonies was Martin Mayer, of Sheffield Labour Representation Committee and on the executive of the Unite union. Several local activists were invited to the podium first. There was trade unionist and University of Sheffield secretarial and support worker Maureen Howard, who drew gasps of shock from the assembled with her story of the evisceration of the pensions of lower grade workers at the University. UCU and Permanent Revolution member Andy Smith described the strikes under way in Sheffield College and elsewhere before stressing that it was the bankers and not ordinary people that had crashed the economy, and that the coalition government had no mandate for its cuts programme.

An NUT member told the assembled about the practical impact that 30% cuts had had on her school, leading to more work sharing amongst teachers and the firing of many catering staff. Another UCU member, Liz Lawrence said that we need to call the coalitions cuts programme by its proper name- as a naked act of class warfare. Politically no-one called for anything further than the (welcome) co-ordinated strike action already on for June 30th and potentially in the autumn. There was also a somewhat timid speaker from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, the ‘moderate’, usually anti-strike union that will be engaging in its first withdrawal of labour in its 127 years of existence. She kept her focus on the purely sectional, economic interest of her members in the dispute, refusing to venture a political role for strike action.

Left Labourism: the real and the fake

John McDonnell walked the audience through the varied horrors of unemployment statistics and government bills which had been or would be voted through parliament, and which would amount to the final destruction of much of the welfare state. He then waxed nostalgic about the postwar social-democratic consensus, when we enjoyed council housing programmes and workers rights (but not so many ‘rights’ that they could not be taken away from us!). Like the trade union and Marxist speakers at the event he blamed the greedy bankers, making reference to JK Galbraith’s conclusions around the world crisis in the 1930s. He said he was optimistic about fighting the cuts, saying that while the initial reaction to news of job losses and cuts was one of despair, people were also organising and resisting. But, said comrade McDonnell, it was not enough simply to ‘resist’ and hope the government falls in  the process- we had to build an alternative, though in the end it was that same old chimera, a ‘left’ Labour government returned on a socialist programme- and with no suggestions as to how this may actually be made to come about, perhaps demonstrating a lack of faith in his own LRC to do this.

But this is, at least, a strategy and political vision of some kind. It puts him ahead of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Socialist Party in England and Wales (SPEW) just on the level of having an idea, publicly, for what would come after a general strike and possible crisis of the coalition. Of course, in secret and away from the working class, the Marxist left do have their own ideas- believing that the purely economic struggle and the defence of existing conditions, or in this case The General Strike, will lead to the radicalisation of workers, who will form soviets, and then the ‘crisis of leadership’ of the working class will rapidly be resolved with the conquest of power by their own small group. Given where the working class is now though, any ‘general strike to defeat the government’ would indeed result in the outcome of a Labour government. Certainly the working class would have to be in a far more desperate situation than it is now to consider handing power to one of the left sects. The perspective of building a mass working class politics independent of the Labour Party and trade union tops, by uniting openly as Marxists (thus serving as a radical pole of attraction both within and without the Labour Party) were completely absent from the members of the ostensibly revolutionary left, both on the platform and in the discussion which followed.

No alarms and no surprises please

Contributions from the floor were limited to two minutes, and only about eight comrades got a chance at that. Nearly all who spoke were members of Marxist groups, but SWP and SPEW comrades did not disclose their presence (or politics) to those assembled, content with playing at being social democrats / members of a front group / militant trade unionist. CPGB member Lee Rock was the first to speak and chastised the poverty of ambition of the assembled left, asking why we were not seeking to organise unemployed youth in Sheffield, of whom there must be tens of thousand. He said this reflected the approach of the left in ignoring the question of mass working class organisation. Rounding on those present who implied that The General Strike, or the next Labour government will lead to socialism, Lee said they were living in ‘cloud cuckoo land’ if they seriously believed this. Most controversially, he attacked the implicit opportunism of the Trotskyist sects whose own trade union tops were happy to recommend bad deals involving job cuts and two tier pension schemes under a Labour government, but had  changed their tune to suit now that it was the blues and the yellows rather than the red team implementing the capitals’ agenda. He then outed two individuals on the platform who had voted for such scab deals under Labour. This actually provoked one young SWP member to tell our comrade loudly to ‘shut up’.

"It's detecting Marxism captain, but I can't see any"

SWP member Max Brophy spoke immediately after and denounced the attacks on the scabs as ‘sectarianism’!  He said he could make the same criticisms of Labour that comrade Rock had made, but deliberately refrained from doing so. Presumably this would alienate the LP, to whom the SWP are trying to present themselves as safe allies. He  then called for us all to unite and fight and all that. Basically, pretend political differences don’t exist. At least until the right moment, when ‘the party’ will suddenly spring its programme onto the class (presumably). Maxine Bowler, also SWP but speaking with her SACA secretary’s hat on, related how an academy school was being forced though in a part of Sheffield against parental opposition. Apparently the unscrupulous headteacher had been using assembly time to propagandise about the supposed virtues of this to the children.

Only one other member of a far left organisation deigned to inform those present of their existence- Gemma Short of social-imperialist outfit the Alliance for Workers Liberty. She out-militanted the other Trotskyists in the room by saying that workers should set up unofficial strike committees during the strikes rather than rely on the bureaucrats. Perfectly laudable as demands go, though in the context of a one-day strike such committees might find themselves without a great deal to do. But will the rest of the far left let themselves look less ‘militant’ in the trade union struggle? Will this resolve the historic crisis of the leadership of the proletariat in the AWL’s favour? Who knows. John McInally, leading member of SPEW and on the PCS executive (who had voted for a two-tier pension scheme under Labour) also spoke, but merely reprised the nostalgia for an imagined golden age of social democracy after the Second World War. He made a big fuss about using the word ‘socialism’ which naturally drew approval from those assembled. Going on the politics present tonight, ‘socialism’ will probably remain just a word for some time to come. One we can even bring out on special occasions in our speeches.

Michael Copestake