Defeat doesn’t make us defunct

It’s frustrating when protests and demonstrations are shrugged of as a meaningless waste of time and those who pick up a placard and participate are faced with accusations of ‘disillusionment’ and of being ‘sore losers’. The thousands of people who took to the streets of London (and in cities across the country) on June 20th had every right to do so. Yes, Labour suffered a cataclysmic defeat at the ballot box resulting in the Conservatives prevailing as the ‘winning’ party but that in no way means we should now have to take a step back and allow their ‘unnecessary’ austerity measures (as accurately stated by leading economists from across the globe and in recent IMF reports) to take place.

To quote Leonardo da Vinci, “nothing strengthens authority as much as silence”. We are fortunate enough to live in a country where we can protest without fear of violent suppression and we should exercise this right at every opportunity possible, especially when these very rights are threatened with the proposed plans to replace the Human Rights Act.

24% of those who voted in the general election voted Conservative and due to our farce of an electoral system, along with a range of other contributing factors, those votes translated into a slim majority that no pollster it seems, was able to predict in the run up to election day. But that victory was no mandate. Governments are elected to serve their people but this government has found itself in a position of power as a result of a disproportionate electoral system and puts its vested interests, namely the wealthy city fat-cats, at the forefront of its policy decisions.

Defeats like that don’t make movements like Labour’s defunct and there are many worthy causes that we should now be taking a bold stand against in the run up to 2020. It’s a mistake to be making premature predications about what platform the party should be running on in order to increase the chances of electoral success, especially when the Overton window may shift over the course of the next 5 years to a different political climate. The party should therefore focus on being a relentless opposition force to the government and this is vital to the survival and future prosperity of the Labour party. It’s an incredibly important view that must be embraced by the next leader of our party.

So what should we, as a united party, be fiercely combating? Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been cut across the public sector, most notably within the police and the civil services. 500 000 more are set to be lost over the course of the next Parliament, bringing the total cut up to 1 million, perhaps even more. Our under-funded, under-staffed hospitals are failing to provide much needed care and the NHS itself is under the very real threat of creeping privatisation. Welfare reforms are hitting the poorest families the hardest. Thousands have died as a result of the cruel benefit sanctions imposed on them and the DWP is now refusing to release statistics related to this, arguing that there is no reason for this information to be made public. If there is nothing to hide, what’s the problem?

Even still the government is planning on making billions and billions of more savage cuts to the benefits system which are set to result in the biggest rise in child poverty in a generation. The number of children living in households whose incomes are less than 60% of the UK average will increase as a result of the cuts made to these budgets.

But it’s not just this governments austerity measures that must be confronted. As aforementioned, we face the dropping of the Human Rights Act and also the worrying possibility of an exit from the EU. Furthermore, issues such as the Trident nuclear weapons system, military interventions and human rights violations in other areas of the world and expressions of solidarity with the people of Palestine, just to name a few more, are all causes that should receive an equal amount of attention, each being a valid reason to stand up, speak out and act to bring about change.

As we were to find out, despite people taking to the streets and challenging austerity, the government will indeed go ahead with the cutthroat cuts to the welfare budget pushing families deeper and deeper into the poverty pit, all whilst claiming to be the party of the working people. So nothing really came from the demonstrations held across the country and the same will most likely apply to demonstrations held in the future, but defeat must never be seen as a set back or barrier to social movements. The resentment and despair at such a thing should be harnessed and channeled into peaceful protest and demonstrations in order to let governments know that what they are doing is widely opposed and will be tolerated no longer and the Labour party should be at the forefront of this movement.