INEVITABLY, following the defeat of the Corbyn project and the sense of loss of a coherent left, there is much analysis of the period we are in and how we can build a socialist project in what are very difficult circumstances for the left. 

There is a similarity between the period we are going through and the early ’70s and arguably mid-80s that the left, Marxist and non-Marxist alike, should consider when trying to develop a successful strategy and tactics, not just to defeat this Tory government, but lay the foundations for a movement for real change in the nations and regions of the UK.

The contours of the similarities of those periods are clear enough — an economic crisis, an increasingly unpopular but aggressive Tory government, in a context of international tension and conflict.

And yet in the late ’60s and early ’70s the British labour movement had some startling successes. 

Writing in the Star last month, Jon Trickett MP identified the key factors that won the 1972 miners’ strike.

As well as what might be called “traditional” picketing of their own pits to stop blacklegging, “flying pickets” visited other workplaces involved in power supply.  

Furthermore, as Jon points out, the miners benefited from outstanding solidarity from engineers, railway and power station workers.

In the month before Jon’s article, John Foster described how over much the same period 1971-72 the shipyard workers at UCS developed a revolutionary approach to fend off the threatened closure of four yards.

Drawing on a strategic understanding of the weaknesses of the Tory government’s position, they took over the threatened yards, won widespread support from local communities and the small businesses located there, as well as financial and political support from across Britain and further. 

By the 1984-85 miners’ strike the concrete conditions which John Foster refers to had changed considerably and the forms of solidarity offered were of necessity much broader.  

Diarmaid Kelliher in his important book Making Cultures of Solidarity: London and the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike identifies some of the key changes that had taken place. 

Deindustrialisation, already a major factor in creating unemployment throughout Britain, even in London, but particularly in the north of England, accelerated under Thatcher.

This had the effect, on the one hand, of stiffening the resolve of miners to defend their jobs, faced with almost certain long-term unemployment; on the other hand it weakened the solidarity of key sections of industrial workers the miners needed to win the strike, in particular the steelworkers, even if solidarity remained solid among other industrial sections like railway workers and dockers.

As Kelliher argues, the diminution of what might be termed “traditional” solidarity was to some extent replaced by new and sometimes surprising alternatives.

The solidarity work of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, for example, has been popularised by the movie Pride.

Kelliher details the myriad of support groups, many, as in the case of those in London, geographically a long way from pits and the communities they “twinned” with.

Although these new forms of solidarity could not give the miners a victory, it is worth recalling that despite everything that the state, scab unions and a hostile media could throw at them, the miners held out for 12 months. 

The radical changes affecting the economy and society, driven largely by neoliberal tenets, have transformed the economic and social terrain since the 1970s and the mid-1980s. 

The most egregious, if less obvious, is the shift of ownership of the British economy.

According to Alex Brummer in Britain For Sale: British Companies in Foreign Hands, half of British companies have been sold to foreign buyers.

Major industries partially or wholly externally owned include automobiles, pharmaceuticals, ports and airports, banking and finance and electronics. 

And of course, much of what was previously in public ownership has been privatised.

Even the basic utilities like electricity, gas, public transport and in England and Wales, water, have been transferred into private ownership.

Workers and consumers have been left open to the predatory whims of large companies like Amazon because of the hostile climate to trade unionism initiated in 1979 and sustained ever since, even by Labour governments.

Trade union membership dropped from a high of 13 million (54 per cent) in 1979 to 6.56 million in 2020 (around 23.5 per cent), although it is likely that the impact of Covid will reduce that figure, despite slight increases in recent years. 

This has been accompanied by a transformation in the nature of the economy. The number of workers in the production sector declined from 8.6 million in 1970 to 3.0 million in 2016, while employment in the services sector has grown from 15.4 million in 1970 to 28.9 million in 2016.  

Furthermore, the whole economy has been distorted by the needs of the finance sector, sucking jobs and wealth into the City of London. 

Even in the 1970s and 1980s in the examples we considered, industrial action on a sectoral basis by itself was not sufficient to win. Industrial and community solidarity played a key role. What we need to consider is the relationship between industrial and community action and political change. 

In a context where a minority of workers are unionised, industrial action on its own without any mechanism for transformational  political change is doomed.

That mechanism remains the political party, but not a political party committed to empty electoralism.

Campaigns to defend working people against the cost-of-living crisis led by organisations like the People’s Assembly need to politicise those who get involve; they need to point them in the direction of political as well as community-based activity.

For it will be obvious that our first political objective must be taking back into public control the basic amenities we need for a decent life and when we have done that, or sooner still if we can, make democratic public ownership the dominant form of ownership in the British economy. 

The Labour Party of course had a manifesto promising that and a leader in Jeremy Corbyn committed to it (as was Keir Starmer, until after his election as leader).

The new movement that will now emerge, based on new solidarities and innovative tactics, in the workplaces and in the streets must be unashamedly political in its objectives and start by making the Labour Party an instrument fit for the political end of the struggle while others make change through industrial struggle and community solidarity.

That would be a fitting memorial to the workers and communities who struggled for change in previous decades.