Defeats for those at the top, the playwright Bertolt Brecht once observed, aren’t always victories for those at the bottom. And so the defeat – or at least, delay – of the Corporation of London’s eviction of the St Paul’s Occupiers will not trigger a renaissance for the London settlement or the Occupy movement as a whole. To walk among Tent City – now suffering the reverse of urban sprawl – is to walk through a movement that is unquestionably in full retreat. But as Brecht might also have said, defeats for the far-left aren’t always victories for the centre-left. For in the rout of Occupy, there is much to trouble moderate leftwingers.
Among the Occupiers themselves, there are all too many people who are a living repudiation of our approach in government. If a charge against the Occupy movement in October was how difficult it was to find anyone at the St Paul’s settlement who had attended their local state school, then a charge against Labour must be how difficult it is now to find anyone who hadn’t been failed by their local state school. The unifying characteristic of people on the far-left is that they have nothing to lose. We have to ask ourselves, how, after 13 years of Labour government, do so many people have nothing left to lose? For the majority of the Occupy remnant, ‘home’ means a friend’s floor or the underside of a bridge. For 13 years, the largesse of a high-spending big state did nothing to improve the prospects of these people, who now face the callous indifference of big business. We didn’t have an answer to these problems in government. We need to use our time in the opposition to find one.
It’s not just the people who make up Occupy that offer serious challenges for Labour thinkers. The manner of its failure – unable to weather the worst of the cold, unable to cope with the influx of the truly vulnerable – attests to a wider structural problem for the British left: that, in 2012, there is no longer a viable institution for the advancement and achievement of progressive ends outside of government. Look back at any of the leftwing protests of the last century, whether they be New Left academics or striking miners. They would have had the logistical and financial muscle of the trade union movement behind them.
That the needs of a vulnerable few were able to bring Occupy to its knees attests to a wider structural problem on the left. We failed to make the 20th century a progressive one at a time when the trade union movement was on the advance. Now that movement faces a crossroads between either extinction or evolution. The simple demographic truth is that we may face in the not-too-distant future a trade union movement that is either unwilling or unable to fund the Labour party. When you consider that Labour raised less from non-union sources than the Liberal Democrats over the last two financial quarters, that is a terrifying prospect.
What, at present, could possibly replace them? It has been suggested that community and religious organisations could replace the trade unions as the financial and organisational arm of the left. The fate of Occupy shows us that that is not a viable path. For every Giles Fraser, there is a Diocese of London, while for community organisations, the local and the urgent will always crowd out the national and the long-term. What has been ignored about Occupy is not the academic material they’ve produced, but the great work they’ve done as a community organisation in looking after the most vulnerable members of the settlement. What that also shows, however, is the difficulty of balancing that with running a national movement.
The answers to what a leftwing party looks like in an era without any reliable institutions for a progressive century, and what steps it might take to restore some and to create others, will be difficult and controversial ones. The failure of Occupy is a sign that it’s time to start looking at them.
—————————————————————————————
Stephen Bush is a member of Progress, works as a copywriter, and writes at adangerousnotion.wordpress.com
—————————————————————————————
Nothing to lose but their tents! Occupy is more akin to street theatre than the ‘National Union of the Unemployed’ or to Beggars Inc. Real rough sleepers are ill, druggies, or drunks and most Local Authority / Police Forces have good practice in place to help and control.
The real threat to union funding the Party is if the political fund either by decision or law requires member consent as to how it is spent to broad terms. The Unions fund local parties as well as the national party. But how many parties/unions are in contact with each other?
“If a charge against the Occupy movement in October was how difficult it was to find anyone at the St Paul’s settlement who had attended their local state school”
You obviously have not looked hard enough to peddle the same rumours as the right wing newspapers and politicians. Your first article about Occupy was disgraceful, this one is not much better. Occupy might have been a little more successful if you did not as the Labour party stick a knife in its back.
Since when was Labour about poverty?
Who took away the 10p tax rate?
Who let millions of foreigners in to take the unskilled jobs from the poor?
Ed Miliband in his 1.6 million house is hardly poor.
Neither is Tony Blair with his 15 million property portfolio or his multi-million pound annual profits (which he doesn’t pay much tax on).
Occupy are against the 1% and that includes many Labour politicians. That is why Labour are scared of them.
If Occupy is failing it is because it has enemies on the left and right.
Totally agree