Race for the Future.

• Author: Clement, Matt

THE STATE OF THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN SOCIAL CLASSES CAN LOOK very different when viewed from varying starting points. When this article was commissioned in autumn 2016, it was easy to see the political glass as determinedly half empty, especially in Britain: The vote, a close one, to leave the European Union (EU) in June 2016 had confounded the established views of all the major political parties and the mass media, and was welcomed by right-wing antimigrant groups as a rejection of multiculturalism rather than the neoliberal order. We were informed on all sides that it represented a triumph of right-wing populism, a decisive and dispiriting contrast to the wave of struggles that had swept across Europe and the Middle East in 2011 against austerity and tyranny respectively. The fact that the referendum result was unexpected only enhanced the sense of shock and dismay, setting the tone of much subsequent political commentary. Less than six months later, this apparently calamitous turn toward political reaction was dramatically reinforced by Trump's narrow victory. The most liberal and progressive-sounding president of the United States had been replaced by a character flawed and prejudiced in so many ways.

Trump clearly represents a vehement opposition to social movements. During the election campaign, he even built up his popularity by encouraging his supporters to physically attack protestorss at his rallies. No doubt all progressive-thinking people were appalled at what his victory represents. However, his election has proved to be a catalyst for a tumultuous revival of social movement struggles across the United States, with mind-boggling numbers turning out for the womens marches in his first few weeks of office. Rather than signaling a defeat for the left and activism in general, thousands have crammed town hall meetings and city squares to challenge his reactionary policies on health care and the persecution and deportation of migrants. This serves as a reminder that, alongside the rise of Trump, 2016 also saw the remarkable near success of open socialist Bernie Sanders in his campaign for the Democratic Party candidacy. This was surely an occasion for seeing the political glass as half full: An elderly white man, avowing a socialist ideology allegedly toxic with US voters, won a raft of significant state primaries and galvanized a new generation of political activists to come within a hair's breadth of defeating Hillary Clinton. Moreover, this story did not end with the election. Many have concluded that Sanders, with a left-facing antiestablishment outlook, would have been better placed to defeat Trump than Clinton--who had the backing of Wall Street and the neoliberal establishment. This explains why Trump himself attempted to reach out to the working-class victims of the free market system--combining sexist and racist diatribes with a bizarre commitment to working-class fightback on the eve of his victory.

The significance of big votes for the left in the United States and the United Kingdom is especially encouraging, even to those old left-wing heads who thought they had the monopoly of political wisdom on the best tactics to beat the right. It reinforced the argument that the best way to challenge your opponents is to stand for a contrasting ideology, rather than the dreaded tactic of triangulation or convergence that has brought social democrats, liberals, and conservatives to share so many policies in the last three decades, and led to the alienation that fed both the UK "leave" and US Trump votes, a fact British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn recognized the day after the UK referendum, claiming "the message is that many communities are fed up with cuts and economic dislocation" (Sandhu 2016). As a result, we are locked in a "race for the future between the racist right and the radical left as to who will most successfully articulate and harness this mass anger" (Molyneux 2017, 1).

This article will concentrate on the situation in Britain to analyze the changing contours of struggle, as the author has a more detailed knowledge of the evolving situation there since 2011. It will seek to explore what actually happened to the rising tide of struggle there in 2011, as represented by a mass movement against austerity and a startling outbreak of rioting across 13 cities. Were these struggles derailed, and if so, by what? How have the main political parties fared since then? Are we seeing a rise in populist reaction to neoliberalism, and is it on the right or the left? The principal focus will be on actual social movements which have emerged and influenced events at a local and national level. Have they captured the mood and provided a shell within which opposition and activism can grow? What is the relation between new social movements, such as UK Uncut and the People's Assembly against Austerity, and older formations, including the trade unions and the Labour Party? As an activist involved in campaigns in two provincial UK cities, Bristol and Southampton, from 2011 to 2019, I will chart the pattern of protest in these localities in some detail, comparing and contrasting with broader struggles nationally and internationally in order to illustrate the nature of today's struggle for social justice.

Trade Union Struggle

Trade union struggle has been central to politics throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. All those on the left share the wish that this would still be the case in the twenty-first century, although many doubt it. Some of the most commented-upon social movements that took off in 2011--that "year of living dangerously" (Zizek 2012)--including Occupy and Los Indignados were dominated by the idea that we were moving into an era where protestors would spurn established institutions such as political parties and the trade unions, although they proved far from defunct in that year of riots and uprisings. From Egyptian textile workers and doctors to Greek general strikers, or the audacious actions of Spanish miners the following year, strikes by workers were at the heart of the resistance. The geography of the United Kingdom tends to encourage national mobilizations congregating in London. In April 2011, the largest-ever British trade union demonstration occurred: Over half a million protestors came together to defend pension rights and oppose spending cuts. Across the country people organized and mobilized. For instance, 32 coaches and a train were commissioned to bring some 2,000 protestors up to London from Bristol, while 350 came from Southampton. What circumstances had given rise to this upsurge?

Ever since the installation of a Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition government in 2010, austerity had become both a political priority and a moral imperative. It was not popular, and the notorious Liberal U-turn from opposition to advocacy of student fees prompted the biggest and most militant student demonstration in decades in autumn 2010, "which began with large groups battling the police and ended with a riotous march that occupied Millbank, the Tory Party HQ)' (Clement 2016, 190). Throughout the demonstration,

There were surreal moments of protest. The son of a famous rock star was jailed for climbing up a war memorial in Whitehall.... Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall were surrounded by rioters whilst stranded in their limousine in the West End. (ibid.) As the impact of austerity spending cuts became clear, grassroots campaigns devised their own coalitions. For example, the Bristol and District Anti-Cuts Alliance (BADACA) attracted considerable support and helped to initiate a series of activist meetings for different groups of public sector workers whose jobs and services were endangered by austerity--teachers, council workers, National Health Service (NHS) workers, etc. These helped ensure the city's large turnout for the April march in London. Back in Bristol, around 3,000 marched in the city center when sections of public sector workers were called out on a one-day strike in June 2011. This was regarded as a successful action but was dwarfed on the November strike day, when around 20,000 protestors flooded the streets of the city. People also took to the streets as users of public services, but it was the trade union activists--cautiously endorsed by their national leadership--that had shaped and coordinated the action.

Bristol at this time was a city of around 450,000, with around 1 million living in the surrounding metropolitan area. Southampton is around half that size. Unfortunately for this working-class city, they had elected a Conservative local council whose leader, Royston Smith, was determined to leave his mark as a right populist who took on vested interests for public benefit. Following the example of the Southern Irish government's brutal reaction to austerity, he proposed a 10 percent pay cut for all those in his employ, the only English city to try this method of making public sector workers pay for a crisis not of their making. Smith, like Wisconsin's Scott Walker, was determined to push this through and thus provoked a series of strikes across the council, from the library service to social workers. Most militant were the refuse workers (garbage collectors), who went on strike for several weeks that summer (Milmo 201 la). Mass rallies were frequently held in Southampton's Guildhall Square on strike days; meanwhile opposition Labour Party councillors overcame their initial caution and openly supported the campaign against making low-paid workers bear the brunt of austerity.

The good news for protestors was that the Tory group lost control of Southampton's council in May 2012 and Labour took office. The controversial pay cuts were rescinded for the lowest paid council employees. Unfortunately, any hope that Labour would refuse to pass on central government funding cuts has been a forlorn one. Since then, libraries have closed and services...