The Workers Party enters Parliament
What's in its programme and manifesto?
What kind of party is the Workers Party of Britain?
The stunning victory of its leader George Galloway in the Rochdale by-election means that there is now an independent voice for peace and socialism in the UK parliament.
This is the first successful leftwing challenge to Labour’s monopoly on working-class political representation in parliament since the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs lost the 2020 leadership contest to replace Jeremy Corbyn as party leader – and it may not be the last.
The question now arises, given that its leader’s profile is currently higher than that of the party itself: is the Workers Party more than Galloway?
It is worth examining those elements of the Workers Party’s policy statements and manifesto which are common across the left. This will help to explain why the Socialist Party and the Communist Party of Britain both backed Galloway’s candidacy in Rochdale.
Class politics
The WPB was launched by Galloway in December 2019 with a simple ten-point programme which grounds the party in “building a new working class politics in Britain”, centred on opposition to war and support for reforms to improve living standards.
By launching in the aftermath of a general election in which Labour’s 2017 advances were wiped out as the Tories won a big majority in parliament to “get Brexit done”, the Workers Party sought to defend the economic radicalism of Corbynism while backing Britain’s departure from the EU.
Here’s how the party defines the working class:
“It is the 99%. The workers are anyone who has to sell their labour power for wages. What does that mean? It means that if you have to earn wages, do jobs for money, you are a member of the working class.” [1]
This is the traditional understanding of the working class as those who are dependent upon the wage fund for their existence rather than on returns from asset ownership. The party stresses it does not exclude those unable to perform waged work due to illness or disability, nor those who have retired from the labour market and are in receipt of pensions.
The party has grown since its formation, recruiting former Labour MP Chris Williamson in a fusion with his Resist initiative which had sought to organise those breaking from the Labour Left and maintain the momentum of the Corbyn years.
And the Workers Party continues to coordinate with the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition to avoid candidate clashes, indicating a seriousness about putting up a united challenge to Labour from the left at the ballot box.
Manifesto
Though the WPB launched in 2019 with a succinct “ten-point programme”, at its 2023 Congress it began drawing up a general election manifesto.
Galloway has said the WPB will stand “up to fifty” candidates in the next general election and its Britain Deserves Better manifesto declares:
“The Workers Party of Britain is a socialist party but we are not utopian, nor are we bound by abstruse theory. We have a common-sense analysis and a practical mission. The Workers Party is committed to the redistribution of wealth and power in favour of working people.
“Our analysis recognises that the era of modern capitalism and the international system of capitalist imperialism is not going to be replaced overnight, and that the growth and development of a socialist system of economy is intertwined with the growth and development of working class political power. It may take many years to transform the Britain into a secure democratic socialist state. But it is possible. It is necessary. And some things we can do immediately.” [2]
The party is “unashamedly anti-imperialist” and wants to “reverse British foreign policy which has been dynastic and then capitalist for centuries”, opposing UK membership of NATO and declaring:
“We are indomitable enemies of profit-seeking international military-industrial interests with a stake in war. [...] We will maintain friendly relations with all peace-loving nations knowing that they must create their own path towards democratic socialism without foreign interference.” [3]
The party views workplace organising as essential but it is not uncritical of existing trade union structures or the current affiliation of many unions to Labour:
“The Workers Party of Britain is committed to the trades union movement as the best means of maintaining independent working class resistance to the interests of capital. However, it is deeply dissatisfied with the conduct of trades union bureaucracies and the insistence of many in maintaining support for the corrupted Labour Party, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“We endorse the continued struggle by workers within trade unions to disaffiliate from the Labour party. We will continue to support workers struggling for their immediate interests, better wages and conditions.” [4]
And the party would go further than traditional trade unionism’s focus on collective bargaining over pay and conditions, it is interested in promoting and introducing forms of workers’ participation and control over the decisions which affect their labour:
“The Workers Party of Britain is fully committed to exploring and co-ordinating various and innovative demands for workers control as part of the struggle for working-class power in tandem with the ongoing struggles for better pay and conditions. In power, we would take the system that is most effective in ensuring increased workers control and most effective in maintaining the entrepreneurial innovation necessary to solve social and community problems and legislate for its implementation.” [5]
On making the management of industries and enterprises accountable to the working class, the party states:
“To have policies for worker empowerment implies a policy for dealing with administrators and managers. The Workers Party of Britain is not opposed to management but only to management that answers to a special interest that is not the interests of the people [...]
“One of our aims is to help workers become managers through education and training while stopping those who ‘make it’ from pulling the ladder up behind them. [...]
“We will end the old war between workers and managers and replace it with a socialist commitment to management in the interests of the working class with accountability to the working class both through legislation or regulation and the trades union movement.” [6]
Programme
In characterising the Workers Party, “centrist” and conservative critics often use the term “far left” to describe the party’s politics. But this is to mistake the politics of propaganda groups with the general approach of the broad labour movement, solely because the party does not operate a ban on communists and socialists who come from a Marxist tradition.
A report of the party’s National Members Council in November 2022 noted, in the wake of a split by members of the CPGB-ML:
“The Workers Party of Britain welcomes the participation in its ranks of communists (and non-communists) from any party, but the Workers Party is not a communist party and had no intention of becoming yet another party of this type.” [7]
Whatever the terminology used to present it, the programmatic goal of the Workers Party is clearly for the working class to take power in Britain through election victories and the democratisation of the political system in order to build socialism.
In common with other parties to the left of Labour which base themselves on the organised working class, this includes the democratic demand in the party manifesto for proportional representation in the UK parliament. This is arguably a prerequisite for challenging the Labour Right without the Tories returning to government because the votes of the organised working class and its allies divide between candidates of rival parties.
But there is a commitment to avoid coalitionism, in which a party acts as a prop for the political establishment:
“If elected into office, we will not make self-defeating compromises to maintain weak coalitions dominated by politicians whose only links are to the State and not to the People.” [8]
Citations
1. https://workerspartybritain.org/ten-point-programme/
2. https://workerspartybritain.org/manifesto-britain-deserves-better/
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. https://workerspartybritain.org/2022/11/22/national-members-council-met-in-manchester/
8. https://workerspartybritain.org/manifesto-britain-deserves-better/