Labour's need for a class connection

The contest for the Labour leadership is in its final month. As events have unfolded, the mass media coverage has reduced the contest to a battle of the brothers - David and Ed Miliband.

But even without this interference from the papers - not to mention Mandelson and the Murdoch networks - the leadership contest is a distraction from what Labour needs to do to re-engage with the working class in Britain.

To clear up any potential confusion let us define what we mean by working class.

Working class is a broad term and includes all people who work for a living - ie they perform labour for wage remuneration by hand or by brain. They have no means of private profit or income from the labour of others, own no means of production or commercial property.

Also falling into this definition are people who potentially could do jobs but due to limits set down by capitalist society are unable to find work, such as the unemployed, people with disabilities and migrant workers.

There are other oppressed groups in society such as asylum-seekers and pensioners who share common interest with the working class.

According to the Office for National Statistics there are 8.1 million people economically inactive with around five or six million of working age without a job, over two million being put on - or forced to go on - incapacity benefit to avoid being classed as unemployed and one million young people 16-24 years old without a job.

So despite what some commentators might say, the recession is not over for working people - and the Con-Dem cuts will simply make things worse.

Since the recession first hit in 2008, unions and others have put forward many grim statistics like these, painting a picture of growing inequality. But to really see the effects of the capitalist crisis, you just need to walk around your local community.

In most areas there is visible evidence of economic woe - commercial properties lying empty or building sites left deserted as the money behind the construction industry has dried up, leaving merely the bare bones of what would have been the latest housing development.

When you take a trip on the bus or train, what do you consistently see and hear?

There is a more visible presence of homeless people in the street often with mental health problems.

But most startling of all are the conversations of those people lucky enough to still have a job.

People will say: "I like the job but I don't know how long it will last."

"I am working all the time but I am struggling to pay the rent."

"My manager is giving me a really hard time and I don't know why."

Clearly these are hard times, perhaps the hardest since the great depression of 1929, but what can we do about it?

Most of the so-called pluralist print press, particularly the Mail and the Sun, feed readers a diet designed to demoralise and undermine any form of class consciousness.

Even when criticism of excessive bank bonuses appears in some of the liberal dailies the solutions are always confined to increased state regulation.

There is no mention of genuine public ownership of the banks or how our 83 per cent share in RBS, for instance, could be used as a controlling stake-holding where public and trade union representatives could be voted on to the bank's board of directors.

If the economic depression as result of a general crisis of international capital was not bad enough, we have a Con-Dem administration wielding the axe at our hospitals, schools and public-sector jobs.

Their ideologically driven assault on the working class is being done simply to settle the crisis on their terms, to ensure a reduced welfare state and reward big capital with the spoils so they can get back to "business as usual."

Despite the enormous difficulties there are positives to draw on and, as result, hope for the future.

Localised campaigns involving unions, community groups and in some cases the Labour Party have sprouted up all over the country particularly around academies and hospital closures.

Following the constitutional stitch-up between the Tories and the Lib Dems, thousands of people joined or rejoined the Labour Party, which remains the only credible electoral alternative to a ruthless Con-Dem government.

The Lib Dems are the weak link in the coalition and must be pursued with increased vigour at the ballot box by Labour candidates putting forward an alternative to seize on the widespread public dissatisfaction with the cuts.

But in order to reinvigorate the Labour Party, it is not enough just to elect a new leader or for the party to engage in never-ending navel-gazing.

We must learn to become the party of labour again - of working people, the dispossessed and disadvantaged.

Only by working closely in popular local and national campaigns against the cuts agenda can the transformation of the party have any hope of succeeding.

Detractors might argue that this call will make Labour unelectable or is harking back to the days of Militant.

On the contrary it is about returning Labour to government with a popular mandate for peace and publicly owned public services.

Illegal wars, Trident nuclear weapons, privatisation of the public sector are all universally unpopular with the electorate.

With Con-Dem cuts affecting small business and economically relegating many middle-class professionals to the ranks of the working class the labour movement may find itself with extra allies in the fightback.

However the leadership of any popular anti-cuts alliance must be led by the engine of the working people - the trade union movement.

The Labour Party must stand shoulder to shoulder with the movement in this endeavour.

People across the country will resist the cuts - individually and collectively, through walkouts, work-ins and demonstrations.

We cannot afford five years of this Con-Dem government to wreak havoc in our communities.

Huge demonstrations potentially rivalling the stop the war demonstration in 2003 are planned by a number of unions in October and March next year.

With high-profile disputes at BA, network rail and the London Underground to name but a few, there are plenty for Labour activists to get behind.

Tony Benn once said capitalism was "one of the most painful roads to socialism."

It is a road well trodden but we have to start walking forwards. It is not time to ditch Labour - it is time to reclaim it for working people.