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It’s no time for despair – Ben Selby, FBU

25th September 20241 Commenton It’s no time for despair – Ben Selby, FBU

The leadership will come under huge pressure to not go anywhere near socialist policies, we’re already seeing it. We must as a movement drag this government to the left.

By Ben Selby, Fire Brigades Union

There is a need to discuss what’s next for socialists in and out of the Labour Party and how we push this new government left.

There is no denying it’s been a difficult five years for the socialist left. With the Coronavirus crisis, the looming existential threat posed by climate catastrophe, and a resurgent far-right, it could not be more important for us to keep fighting – inside the party and in our communities and workplaces.

It’s been a dispiriting time, but we shouldn’t lose sight of how much we’ve shifted the terms of debate.

Public ownership is beginning on railways, not far enough in our opinion but water and and energy will no doubt have to be next in line.

We didn’t achieve what we wanted with Jeremy’s leadership, but we have transformed the policy landscape in the party and the country. We’ve put socialist ideas into the mainstream. And we’ve got a new generation of committed socialists.

This isn’t nothing. Important advances have been made.But this is not to understate the challenges ahead.

We as socialists have the ideas, the Blairite tribute act don’t, that’s why they keep rolling him out. And I want to make this point here about Sir Tony Blair’s comments about Grenfell when he said tragedies like Grenfell cannot be completely avoided, and that people are ‘going to make mistakes’. They were utterly disgraceful and the sooner that man is in the Hague the better.

The shock of the coronavirus pandemic and cost of living crisis has shown how fragile the free market is. It shows how capitalists rely on the state when they need it. In 2008, bankers crashed the economy, they ran to the state for help, and then they made the rest of us pay their debts for a decade.

But in 1945, the working class insisted that if we could house and care for everyone in a crisis, we could in peacetime too. It’ll be up to us to shape which path we take now. As socialists and as a party, this is what we should be saying.

This crisis has shown that the state can intervene to protect living standards. So let’s do that all the time – not just in emergencies.

It’s shown the harm of hoarding – so let’s break the power of the billionaires who hoard society’s wealth. It’s shown that we can house the homeless – so let’s ensure no one ever sleeps rough again. It’s shown that cuts have consequences – so let’s never underfund our NHS, fire and rescue service again.

And it’s shown that society is nothing without the working class. So let’s build a society run by, and for, our class in all its diversity.

The leadership will come under huge pressure from outside the party and from inside it to not go anywhere near socialist policies, we’re already seeing it.

And my union, the FBU, is very clear where it stands on these two recent issues and where the leadership is wrong:

On the riots, these were racist, far right and Islamophobic – not just thuggery. On the two-child benefit cap, it keeps 300,000 children in avoidable poverty – it should be immediately scrapped – no excuses.

And winter fuel payments prevent fuel poverty and are important to so many in society. If the heating is on in Downing Street, I should be on in all homes. So that’s why the FBU said to Labour MPs on the parliamentary vote over winter fuel payments – you cannot abstain on austerity and your vote will be remembered.

And on the New Deal for working people, and we only see this as a stepping-stone, we must repeal all anti-trade union laws and we must all step up this campaign.

Tony Benn once said that although the Labour is not a socialist party, it has always had socialists in it. I think we might begin to feel this more in the months and years to come.

But if we’re serious about transforming society, we can neither abandon the party nor our socialism. We must as a movement not just push but drag this government to the left.

But the challenges we face – the threats and the dangers – mean it’s no time for despair. We have no time for retreat. Moderation won’t cut it. Only socialism will. So solidarity comrades.

Let’s keep fighting.

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• By Ben Selby, Assistant General Secretary of the FBU, who you can follow on x/twitter.
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