Chavs author, Independent writer and Labour activist Owen Jones talked to Salman Shaheen about the People's Assembly and the prospects for resistance to austerity
Chavs author, Independent writer and Labour activist Owen Jones talked to Salman Shaheen about the People’s Assembly and the prospects for resistance to austerity
If the People’s Assembly could be summarised in a word, it would be optimism. From the opening speeches it crackled, infusing enthused activists with the idea that austerity – a failure both in terms of restoring growth to the economy and protecting society’s most vulnerable – could be defeated with united action from the left.
Those speaking in the opening Plenary – angry, passionate and full of hope despite all past attempts to bring the left together in the face of neoliberal consensus – might have overstated the case and underestimated the challenge they faced, but the day was about inspiring people.
When I caught up with Owen Jones after the first session, he was naturally ebullient.
“It’s going incredibly well so far,” he said. “Over 4,000 people are here, it’s the biggest anti-austerity meeting since the crisis began, and I think the arguments that people want on the agenda about alternatives to the self-defeating nightmare of austerity are going to be on that agenda for the first time. It’s such a broad cross-section of the country. And it’s a launch pad for local groups and actions across the country as well.”
But the People’s Assembly had the misfortune of falling on the day that Ed Miliband announced Labour – for many the natural locus of opposition to austerity – would be sticking to Tory spending plans.
While Jones appears to be very much in the Labour camp, he is less enthusiastic about the decisions of its leadership.
“The message for the Labour leadership should be you can no longer expect to automatically be the leaders of the opposition to what the Tories are doing in this country,” Jones said. “You’ll now face competition from those who want a genuine alternative to austerity.”
Jones pointed out the Labour leadership is used to being yelled at from the right, but now it’ll be yelled at by people from a different direction.
“Those sorts of arguments used to support austerity, as it has been proven to fail even on its own terms, they’re no longer credible,” he said. “We will be putting huge amounts of pressure and we’ll be building a national campaign which will give a voice to all those who do want an alternative to austerity.”
Of course, many have now abandoned Labour entirely. Ken Loach, who was reportedly barred from speaking in the closing plenary and relegated to an afternoon slot in the marquee because he was too anti-Labour, has launched an appeal to found a new party to the left of Labour. It’s an initiative that I and almost 9,000 others have signed up to and I asked Jones what his stance on projects such as Left Unity is.
“At the end of the day, we will always have different strategies and tactics,” he said. “The most important thing is we all have unity where we can agree on an issue by issue basis.”
Jones stressed that the People’s Assembly is not a party, but a movement bringing together people from lots of different parties, initiatives, unions, and campaigning groups.
“I welcome anyone, whatever strategy they have, as long as we can work together on that common aim which is building a broad coalition against austerity,” Jones said.
The answer from Jones, then, is left unity in action, if not in name. While we disagree on the question of Labour, and while the People’s Assembly in its optimism may have underestimated the strength of consensus around austerity forged by the three main parties, Jones is certainly right that left unity against the cuts is our only hope.
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37 Responses to “Owen Jones calls on the left to unite against austerity”
blarg1987
I think part of the problem is that there is a large number of people who are dissatisfied with the current political system. We have the three main parties, all have their core voters but it is the swing voters that they adjust their policies for usually low taxes etc.
What Labout neeeds to do is re establish itself and target those people who have lost interest in politics and go back to its origional principles, e.g. a party representing the working person. Once it has re established its core principles it will find more people will vote for it and although may never again be a party of goverment, will be a large party in coalition, be it with the greens or lib dems.
Now I would rather have that then the Labour part of the last decade.
Ann Parks
Ah, the myth of “permanent Tory government” if the Scots leave. Cast your mind back to 1997. Blair’s New Labour won enough English seats in the Commons to form an outright majority, even without Scottish and Welsh seats, so if Labour won in England then, it can win in England again, as it probably will do in 2015. Or are you saying that Labour’s made itself unelectable in England? If so, Labour has nobody but itself to blame.
Owen Jones
Thanks all for debating this. It adds to my media profile and I earn great gobs of dosh doing that.
GO
Don’t mention it Owen. In fact I’m happy to earn you another few quid by inviting you to answer answer the point I made earlier:
“Things will be looking up if tax revenues in 2015 are ‘only’ £100 billion short of where they’d need to be to enable us to halt all further cuts and reverse any cuts already made. How on *earth* are we going to extract an additional £100 billion a year from banks, other corporations, and wealthy individuals – especially given their expertise in avoiding tax – and all without harming the economy in any way? You’re talking about *tripling* the current tax take from corporation tax, the bank levy, and capital gains tax combined… The reality of our situation, surely, is that a post-2015 government will be doing very well if they achieve enough on tax and growth to resist the need for *further* spending cuts in the next parliament… We should all share the aim of restoring spending on public services to (the equivalent of) pre-crash levels, of doing so as soon as possible, and of doing so through a combination of economic growth and progressive taxation. But that journey – the starting point of which, in 2015, is going to be tax revenues far, far short of where they’d need to be just to sustain *Osborne’s* levels of spending – is simply not going to be completed in one parliament, or even in two.”
I’m not asking for a detailed manifesto or budget, just an outline of a case that it would genuinely be possible to close the structural gap between pre-crash levels of spending and 2015 levels of tax revenue just through additional taxes on banks, corporations, wealth etc.
(My estimate of the size of that gap, £100bn, is just what you get if you assume that 50% or so of the forecast deficit in 2015 (so, 50% of c. £100bn) is structural, and that £50bn of cuts will already have been made by that point. (I think £10bn a year is about the rate at which the Tories have been cutting.))
JohnPReid
Jones outrage oat the demonization of the
working class in his book, is hypocritical ,The way that lefties like Jones refer to the Edl
as Robinsons gangs