The People’s Assembly is about ordinary people coming together en masse and was founded specifically to challenge the politics of austerity, cuts, and the reduction of the state.
There are particular groups in our society affected hardest by austerity – namely young people, the unemployed, low-paid workers, the disabled and black, minority and ethnic groups as well as regional disparities in affluence, poverty and opportunity.
To improve the material conditions for working class people, including minority and disadvantaged groups, The People’s Assembly formed a broad coalition with trade unions and other community and grass roots organisations to create strength not division and to ensure that no one got left behind.
Labour has moved into a position in which it could win the next general election. Keir Starmer was elected by members to the Labour leadership on a number of manifesto points that he agreed to and from which he has now moved away from, and it is unclear what his policies are.
Shift to the right
There has been a casuistic shift to the right in order to take up political space and to pick up swing voters. There has been a deliberate policy of ‘no policy’ of ‘no change’. There has been a calculated and deliberate picking off of members to the left of the party; a clear signal to members not to challenge the leadership and an outwardly visible sign that Labour isn’t for the left and the horses need not be scared.
Labour may well have a comfortable win, but what are they going to do in government once the power is won?
History and a warning
In October 1924 the minority Labour government was defeated in the context of the Liberals removing their temporary support for Labour and the Conservatives, who had been split, resolving or apparently resolving, their internal disputes.
Here we are in 2024 – one hundred years later – and the Lib Dems are of small consequence independently, but the Conservatives are fractured and their wounds run deep. Labour cannot afford to be complacent about this, for as history shows us, wounds can be healed.
A clear plan is needed
The People’s Assembly would like the electorate to have access to a clear plan for action and clearer policy for an incoming Labour government as well as a plan to ensure the government holds.
Being anodyne has been key to Labour’s climb up the polls, slipping under the swing voter radar, picking up marginal seats and slipping into a majority lead. Simultaneously, there has been a pertinent shift in language shift from “working class” to “ordinary people”.
There is now a whole layer in the Labour Party who are anti-working class and have something to lose. And that’s a layer consisting of members, MPs, councillors.
Starmer has told a story of working class origin. Both Rachel Reeves and Bridget Phillipson talk of their non-privileged roots, working hard, getting to Oxford, and propelling themselves up the jobs and social ladder. This talk of hard work is so infuriatingly patronising and it eeks of Norman Tebbit and his dad’s bike.
Being able to earn a living in a job that pays the bills is not about working hard and neither is funding for university nor access to high quality vocational training. Success is about opportunity, access to opportunity and reducing barriers to participation.
The myth of social mobility
Social mobility is a myth. The idea that we can all move up, all better our lives is just not true. For some of us to move up, some people need to move out of the way and come down.
Some of what has been going on in the Labour Party leadership and its communications has been about social mobility and fear; a fear from those who rose from the lower working class, who made it and for whom affluence is everything and who do not want to go back to less than what they have now.
A movement needs to work together
It is worth remembering that the Labour Party leadership is not the party. And it is worth remembering that Labour is a movement together with the unions and other organisations.
To be successful, to win, a movement needs to work together, to fight together, to win together for all people and not just some people. So how does Labour win for everyone?
A people’s peace
In 1918, Arthur Henderson, a former general secretary of the Labour Party spoke at a conference to agree the new constitution for fighting the next general election:
“What were they asking for internationally? They were asking for a people’s peace, broad based upon the will of the people.
‘’What were they asking for nationally? They were asking nationally for a reconstitution of society broad based upon the principles of citizenship
‘’… And they could only do so by saying to every man woman who was a citizen ‘Come along with us, our platform is broad enough and our movement big enough to take you’. That was the way to success. That was the way to get hold of the machinery of government in this country.”
A people’s peace and a reconstitution of society based on citizenship – peace at home and abroad. Our foreign and home policies are inter-connected; a hostile policy towards foreigners seeking sanctuary does not bring peace at home.
In 1918 we were post World War and hoping for peace. We are now in 2024 in amidst a global war – not on home soil but in Russia, Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, Palestine … We are a global world; we are connected and yet we are disconnected.
What Labour needs to do
An incoming Labour government needs to move away from a politics of identity, which serves to divide and carve people into groups of ‘other’ … and move towards this reconstitution on citizenship, with an understanding that we all have value.
Labour needs to implement a fair, transparent, safe policy for people seeking sanctuary and refuge alongside fair policies that improve the conditions of all people in the UK. For this to happen there needs to be a shift to community, class-based policies.
An incoming Labour government needs to commit to meaningful changes with shared interests in richly-run public services; support to get people into good jobs and to stay in them; access to education for everyone at all stages of their lives so they can retrain and adapt to change; the NHS needs to be taken off her knees; housing is a major issue – refugees should not be living in rat-infested hostels, children should not be living and dying in damp homes with black mould, local authority rough sleeping schemes that give people back their lives and their dignity need to be re-introduced along with a commitment on rent controls; energy should be fairly priced with a move ever greener; public transport needs to work at an affordable price.
The People’s Assembly need an incoming Labour government to build a society with a future that everyone has a stake in and for that to happen it needs to move to a broad-based participatory party, working with the unions and other groups in the interests of all people. For the many.
In order for Labour to move, to build this mass movement in which the trade unions are key, The People’s Assembly needs to regroup and refocus from a grass roots level, on the streets and within communities, to campaign, to grow, to challenge.
Recording of Anya’s speech on Facebook
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