TODAY we mark the 40th anniversary of Jeremy Corbyn’s election to Parliament.
Constituents, peace and anti-racist campaigners pay tribute to four decades fighting in the Commons for peace and socialism, five years of them as leader of the Labour Party, in the Morning Star’s pages as many will at events over the weekend.
This is not primarily about Corbyn as an individual. He never planned to lead Labour — standing as the Socialist Campaign Group’s candidate because it was “his turn.”
Still less has he courted his disgraceful excommunication by a current Labour leadership determined to crush the hopes Corbynism inspired. Solidarity with Corbyn is not just about the man but about opposing what Keir Starmer is doing to the Labour Party.
Some in the movement cite moving on from the Corbyn years — which is clearly essential — as an excuse not to defend socialists being hounded out of politics by the Starmer gang.
But just how much we have lost since the ruling class reasserted control of the Labour Party was made clear again today, when Rachel Reeves backtracked dramatically on Labour’s green prosperity plan.
The notion of fiscal responsibility is being used to U-turn on investment in a more environmentally sustainable economy.
It’s an instructive U-turn. The movement that propelled Corbyn to the leadership in 2015 understood that Britain’s economic model was incapable of addressing any of a range of worsening crises.
Those crises have all intensified since. Inequality has reached grotesque levels, as millions struggle to afford enough food or to pay their bills while huge corporations harvest record-breaking profits.
Public and essential services have been run into the ground, privatisation seeing billions leeched out of systems that have become increasingly dysfunctional.
Chaotic, understaffed railways plagued by cancellations and delays. A postal service claiming insolvency after splurging billions in shareholder dividends. Water privateers laughing all the way to the bank after pumping our rivers and seas full of toxic sludge.
Schools unable to recruit teachers qualified in the subjects they teach. A health service groaning under a seven-million-long treatment waiting list while paying through the nose for PFI debt and private-sector contracts.
That is before we come to the great existential questions: a warming climate causing crop failures and extreme weather across the planet, and the drive to a third world war between nuclear powers.
Most mainstream politicians acknowledge many of these problems.
But unlike the Corbyn movement, they do not draw the logical conclusion that a fundamental restructuring of society is the only solution.
Reeves’s U-turn — yes, Labour would like to do something about catastrophic global warming, but no, not if the steps required involve challenging fiscal orthodoxy — exemplifies the uselessness of “business as usual.”
People can see through this. That is why strikes for real pay rises still have massive public support despite cross-party hostility at Westminster. It’s why public ownership remains the public’s choice for energy and utilities whatever the professional politicians say.
Those politicians know how feeble their case is — which explains their ferocious, ongoing offensive against anyone who objects. Corbyn is merely the most famous victim of this process; the smear machine is turned against new targets every week.
We must defend them. A “lesser of two evils” accommodation with Labour against the Tories simply doesn’t address crisis on the scale we face.
On current form, we will be worse off after five years of a Labour government.
Not necessarily worse off than after five more years of Tory government, but worse off than we are now. Earning less in real terms, dependent on ever more threadbare services, less free, while our rulers carry on poisoning our world.
We cannot afford it. So we cannot afford to let the bullies have their way and write the Corbyn movement out of history.
That’s why, today, we celebrate its leader.
