Corbyn lead shakes ruling class

by Daphne Liddle

JEREMY Corbyn now has a 20 or 22 per cent lead in the Labour Party leadership race, according to which newspaper you read, and right wing Labour leaders are going frantic.

Efforts to persuade one or two of the other three contenders to drop out to allow the right wing vote to centre on just one of them have failed. All three have put their own ambition ahead of the principles they claim to uphold.

The air is thick with threats of plots to undermine Corbyn if he is elected, showing that the right wing leaders would sooner wreck Labour than see it return to its base as a party for the working class.

They claim that Corbyn would make Labour unelectable but that shows them in total denial of reality. They would all give their eye teeth to have half the popular support he has. And they cannot understand what he has that they don’t. They cannot understand why one honest man in a mass of corruption, personal ambition and opportunism has such a big appeal to so many working class people. Even those who disagree with some of his views respect him.

He has integrity and a lifetime of experience of fighting for peace and social democracy. He knows how to present himself in TV interviews and not let himself be side-tracked into personal sniping.

Dig as they might the bourgeois media have found no dirt to throw at him but they still try to portray him as a disaster for Labour, mistaking the opinion of the billionaire newspaper barons for public opinion.

We have to remind ourselves that he is a social democrat and not a communist and we differ with him on some issues. For example he seems to be trying to face both ways on the question of Britain’s European Union membership.

But the response from Labour members, from the Left in general and particularly the young, vindicates the New Communist Party position of seeing the Labour Party as potentially a powerful instrument of the working class.

That party will not lead us to a socialist revolution but it will have a part to play in the development of a revolutionary situation — which requires above all a conscious, united, organised and self-confident working class.

It is certain that the imperialist powers are horrified at the prospect of a dedicated peace campaigner like Corbyn possibly becoming our next Prime Minister. The impact on Nato could be immense.

They will be doing everything they can to bring him down; they will try to snare him into corruption and scandals to try to make him appear as corrupt as they are.

They will try to buy him off with dodgy deals and compromises. But he is not naïve. They will try to divide and divert our awakening young working class potential leaders. They will foster extreme right-wing and fascist parties.

If all else fails they will resort to violence. This makes the role of communists vital. We do not want Corbyn to end up like Allende in Chile. The working class needs to be prepared to anticipate a coup.

We need to remember that coup did not advance the cause of peace and socialism in Chile but set it back decades. We must arm the young workers with an understanding of class politics to be ready to defend themselves and the whole working class.

Such a coup, if it is thwarted by organised workers, could rebound into a revolutionary situation.

Whatever happens, it cannot be denied that Corbyn has tapped into a massive hitherto unrecognised level of popular anger with Tory austerity and a support for left wing, pro-working class politics that has been denied a voice in this country for decades.

They thought Thatcherism had killed it and Blairism had buried it but working class consciousness, anger and power are alive and well in Britain and now have a flag and a platform to rally around.