The analysis made in the 2009
article has retained its validity in the aftermath of Thatcher’s death.
We wrote then: "Even before she has departed this world, a ferocious
controversy rages over her heritage, with mass indignation at the idea
of state recognition for her and her role". (Socialism Today No.128, May
2009)
And so her funeral proved to
be. It was carried out at the cost of an estimated £10 million. The
Socialist Party demanded that Thatcher should be treated in death as she
treated others in her lifetime. The funeral should have been
‘privatised’ with Mark Thatcher – with an estimated fortune of £80
million – called upon to make a contribution, along with the sharks in
the City of London and big business. They benefited most from her
policies.
But "the best-laid schemes o’
mice an’ men/Gang aft agley" (go often awry), wrote Robbie Burns. The
careful calculations of the entire establishment that Thatcher’s funeral
would be an enormous political bonus for them have blown up in their
faces. All the festering discontent, inherited from the Thatcher period
and added to by the Blair and Brown governments, has surfaced. The sheer
class hatred from the victims of Thatcherism, both past and present, has
been expressed in their bitter opposition: "You didn’t care when you
lied. We don’t care that you died", proclaimed a banner held by
Liverpool fans at a football match, protesting against the Hillsborough
slander campaign and cover up by Thatcher and her government.
Thatcher sycophant Andrew
Marr, on his return to television, added his dose of poison against the
people of Liverpool with the completely false assertion that, in 1979,
the city council considered dropping the unburied dead into the sea
during the action of low-paid public-sector workers!
A ferocious condemnation of
‘Operation True Blue’ – the secret preparations for the funeral made by
Tory and Labour frontbenchers with the support of the Liberal Democrats
– was the result. Those who suffered directly at her hands were reminded
of the brutal methods which she and her government employed,
particularly against the miners, Liverpool city council, the print
workers and many others. Young people, who were not even born when she
was in power, nevertheless began to understand that she and her cohorts
laid the basis for the catastrophic position which they face today.
Thatcher quite consciously
destroyed manufacturing industry, as we explain here, as a precondition
for weakening the power of the working class and its organisations, the
trade unions. The consequence was an army of poor, which persists and
has grown, and a slashing of wages, with the replacement of relatively
highly paid manufacturing jobs with low-paid ones.
The beginning of the
dismantling of the welfare state was also a result of her policies,
which her heir, David Cameron, is carrying through today.
Semi-dictatorial methods, such as severely curtailing the right to
strike, were put in place. John Stalker, ex-deputy chief constable of
Greater Manchester, wrote in the Daily Mirror that she "took us to the
brink of being a police state" during the miners’ strike.
Thatcher also backed to the
hilt every bloodthirsty dirty dictator on the planet. Counted among her
‘friends’ were the Chilean dictator General Pinochet, the Pakistani
dictator General Musharraf and many others. Moreover, an article in the
Observer on 14 April showed that, even when she was out of office,
"Thatcher 'gave her approval' to son Mark's 2004 coup attempt in
Equatorial Guinea". That was a plot against a dictatorship, with the
prospect of massive financial gain as its aim. She also later urged
Simon Mann – who alleges that Mark Thatcher was closely involved in the
plot – to join a conspiracy to overthrow the democratically elected
leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez.
Is there any doubt that
Thatcher would have given support to similar methods – the destruction
of democratic rights – against the British working class and people if
the situation required it, ie if capitalism was endangered? She
indicated this in her anti-union laws. Without the right to strike, free
of all state interference, there cannot be real democracy. The
maintenance of her anti-union laws by Blair and retained by Cameron is a
big impediment for the working class today to fight effectively the
continuation of her policies by the Con-Dem coalition.
At one stage, Thatcher and
her theoreticians criticised ‘elected dictatorships’, usually radical
regimes which threatened to go beyond the bounds of capitalism, the
system she defended. But her government was, in the true sense of the
term, an elected dictatorship. Never once did the governments she
presided over present their full programme in elections. But, once in
power, they proceeded to implement vicious, class-based measures which
enhanced the position of the minority, the greedy rich, at the expense
of the overwhelming majority, the working class, the poor and the middle
classes.
The attempt of the capitalist
media to burnish her image as a ‘wonder woman’, who ‘transformed Britain
and the world’ is a great exercise in historical amnesia. The claim to
have established a ‘property-owning democracy’ lies in ruins. Owning a
house now is completely out of the reach of the young generation.
Private landlords own one third of former council homes!
She also carried through an
economic revolution in Britain, claim her acolytes. This is completely
false, as even capitalist commentators like Will Hutton have shown.
Average growth rates when she was in power were lower than in the
previous 20 years. Moreover, the ‘big bang’ in the City of London led to
the orgy of unrestrained financialisation of capitalism, as we warned
would happen at the time. This helped to create the conditions for the
2008 economic crash, which the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn
King, described as the "worst ever".
Thatcher is dead, but
Thatcherism lives on in the three main political parties in Britain. She
created ‘mini-Thatchers’ at local as well as national level who are busy
today savaging services and jobs in the public sector. How hypocritical
that a £15 million Margaret Thatcher library and museum is to be opened
after her death, while the little Thatchers are busy closing libraries
up and down the country as part of the cuts programme.
When asked what her greatest
achievements were, Thatcher replied: "New Labour, Tony Blair". We must
draw all the necessary conclusions from this in fighting energetically
for a new mass party of the working class.
One of the conclusions we
drew in 2009 was that: "A Cameron government would be a re-run for the
working class of the experience of Thatcher herself, only probably much
worse because the economic situation is dramatically worse than during
her reign. It would provoke a massive social confrontation, probably
even forcing the conservative officialdom of the TUC to move into
action. A one-day general strike could come quickly onto the agenda".
This has been borne out, with
the TUC forced into unprecedented mass action with the demonstration on
26 March 2011 and the subsequent strikes. A 24-hour general strike has
not yet been implemented. But the idea of a general strike is rooted in
the situation. The death of Thatcher provides the opportunity for us to
build a movement that will eradicate the conditions which bred
Thatcherite capitalism, and raise the alternative of a democratic,
socialist planned economy.
Thatcher’s
bitter legacy
Margaret Thatcher was not cut
from the same cloth as those representatives of British capitalism who
preceded her at the head of the Tory party. Post-1945 Tory prime
ministers, in the main, such as Harold Macmillan, presided over a
‘post-war consensus’, which prescribed that the government and the
ruling class would seek to avoid a head-on confrontation with the
organised labour movement. Following in the so-called ‘Whig tradition’,
Tory grandees developed the special art of British statecraft, by
bending with the class and social winds. This served them well during
the post-1945 boom in accommodating to the tops of the labour movement
in particular in ‘sharing out’ a growing ‘cake’. But the ‘slow
inglorious decay’ of Britain was masked during the boom. When this ran
out of steam it inevitably culminated in a collision between the
classes. This took shape in the 1960s but intensified in the tumultuous
1970s and 1980s.
The Heath government that
came to power in 1970, following the dismal failure of the Labour
government of Harold Wilson between 1964 and 1970, set out to correct
the decline of British capitalism, naturally at the expense of the
working class. Edward Heath, although not himself a grandee – he was a
‘grammar school boy’ – was in the same political tradition as his Tory
forebears. He nevertheless threatened the labour movement with the idea
of provoking a ‘general strike’ which the government would defeat.
However, when his government confronted the miners in 1972 and 1974, it
lost both times. The latter strike led to the three-day week and the
defeat of the Heath government in the February 1974 election.
These events, particularly
the unprecedented event, for Britain, of an industrial dispute provoking
a general election and the defeat of the Tories, exercised a profound
effect on the strategists of British capitalism. Heath gambled on an
election whose theme was ‘Who rules, us or the miners?’ and he lost. The
ruling class began to prepare for the future when it could take revenge
on the labour movement. Heath was unceremoniously thrown overboard and
replaced by Thatcher in early 1975. Formerly a minor figure in Heath’s
government, as education minister she had already earned an anti-working
class mantle as ‘Thatcher, milk snatcher’ for removing free school milk
for primary school children. But her ascent to the Tory leadership was
no accident. Friedrich Engels, alongside Karl Marx, the originators of
the ideas of scientific socialism, commented that each era calls for
personalities required by objective circumstances. But if they do not
exist in a rounded-out form, it ‘invents’ them. Thatcher, without any of
the scruples or hesitation of the aristocratic Tory grandees, was the
brutal face of British capitalism required by the situation. She not
only polarised society but the Tory party itself.
The divisions between the
Thatcherite ‘dries’ or ‘hards’ and the Heathite ‘wets’ were found not in
any personality clashes but in the methods chosen to confront the labour
movement following the latter’s triumph over the Heath government. The
wets correctly feared that Thatcher and her government would lead to a
class confrontation which would question the very basis of capitalism.
They remained unreconciled to Thatcher for almost all of her reign but
largely accommodated themselves to her government when it appeared to
score successes.
The winter of discontent
Buttressed by ill-digested
ideas from the ultra-right Austrian economist, Friedrich Hayek, and the
messianic monetarism of her ‘mad monk’, Sir Keith Joseph, Thatcher
capitalised on the retreats and ineptitude of James Callaghan’s Labour
government. This government was more set on confronting the legitimate
demands of trade unionists than the dire economic situation which was
developing, culminating in the so-called ‘winter of discontent’. The
strikes of the most lowly-paid workers were vilified by the capitalist
press, the Tories and even by the Labour government as the ‘dirty jobs’
strike.
Militant (forerunner of the
Socialist Party) warned in October 1978: "Sooner or later… the
strategists of capital will conclude that the Labour government has
served its purpose as far as they are concerned. In any case, if the
government continues its present policies into next year, especially if
it takes on more and more sections of workers fighting for decent living
standards, it will virtually ensure a defeat for Labour". These
prophetic words were, unfortunately, borne out in the May 1979 general
election.
Militant also warned that
Thatcher "would eventually be forced to launch an offensive against the
working class and its organisations. Ridley indicates this". This refers
to Tory shadow cabinet minister Nicholas Ridley, who had prepared a
blueprint for confronting the unions. He had written that "in the first
or second year after the Tories’ election, there might be a major
challenge from a trade union, either over a wage claim or redundancies".
Ridley thought that this would come in the mines and therefore proposed:
"A: build-up of maximum coal stocks, particularly at power stations; B:
make contingency plans to import coal; C: encourage the recruitment of
non-union lorry drivers by haulage companies to help move coal where
necessary; D: introduce dual coal/oil firing in all power stations as
quickly as possible". Right-wing Tory MP, Ronald Bell, again indicating
the future role of the Tories, stated: "Strike-breaking must become the
most honourable profession of all".
The winter of discontent
generated all the class spite which was to become the hallmark of the
Thatcher years. At Reading hospital, for instance, patients who turned
up for treatment were asked whether they were trade unionists. Those who
answered yes were refused treatment by a consultant surgeon. We pointed
out in Militant at the time: "The demand for a living wage is seen as
treachery by the capitalists". However, the Callaghan government had run
out of steam and was incapable of imposing the will of the capitalists
on an almost insurgent labour movement. Noises began to be made about
splitting the Labour Party – which, at that stage, was still a workers’
party at the bottom, although with an increasingly pro-capitalist
leadership – and the formation of a national government. A left-wing
Labour MP of the time, the late Stan Thorne, revealed that some
right-wing Labour MPs had been involved in secret talks with the
Liberals and Tories on the issue of splitting Labour and forming a new
national government, as a previous Labour leader, Ramsay Macdonald, had
done in 1931.
This proposal has resurfaced
in the capitalist press in relation to the Brown government. So dire is
the present situation that there is despair that any government – let
alone a David Cameron-led Tory cabinet – could ignite a social explosion
if it tried to solve the crisis with draconian pro-capitalist measures.
Therefore, why not a ‘government of all the talents’? This is probably a
non-runner before an election but if there is a hung parliament, with no
party in overall control, then it could resurface. A coalition
government is, however, as the 1930s showed, just a Tory government in
disguise.
The plans in the 1970s came
to nothing because the government that the capitalists expected would
follow the next general election would be firmly under their control.
Moreover, it would be determined, as we pointed out in Militant, to
confront the working class: "A Thatcher government will be even worse
than the hated Heath government which was kicked out by the trade unions
in the economic chaos of the three-day week… The Tories want the state
to interfere with the unions – outlawing flying pickets, breaking the
unity of closed shops and imposing rules on union elections as a
condition of unions being ‘certified’ by the government, similar to the
‘registration’ under the notorious Industrial Relations Act".
Preparing to attack the working class
Militant, in other words,
outlined in advance exactly the programme on which Thatcher was elected
in 1979 and explained how she and her cabinet were likely to act once in
power. However, prior to the election, while ruthlessly preparing behind
the scenes, Thatcher took pains to disguise her real intentions.
Unbelievable as it sounds today, and in view of the havoc over which her
government presided, Thatcher quoted St Francis of Assisi on the need to
end discord as she entered No.10 Downing Street! In her very first
budget, however, paltry tax concessions were given to average wage
earners, which would be wiped out by inflation in a few months, while
value added tax was increased to 15% and the Tories gave notice of
further savage attacks on the living standards of working people.
The right wing of the Labour
Party had prepared the basis for Thatcher by both failing to tackle the
problems of the working class but, at the same time, seeking to aim
blows against the left and particularly against Militant. Two Labour
prime ministers – Wilson, who had resigned in 1976, and Callaghan, who
took over from him – had scathingly attacked Militant in a dress
rehearsal for what was unleashed by the later Labour leader, Neil
Kinnock, and his allies in the 1980s. Callaghan stated on TV: "We
[Labour Party leaders] neglected education. We have allowed it all to
fall into the hands of the Militant group. They do more education than
anybody else".
The Labour right wing,
however, wished to ‘educate’ young people and the working class by
teaching them to accept cuts in living standards as a fact of life. In
fact, the right wing began an almost permanent war against the left,
with their main figures, such as David Owen and Roy Jenkins, threatening
a split, which subsequently took place with the formation of the Social
Democratic Party (SDP). This eventually collapsed into a merger with the
Liberals, becoming the Liberal Democrats, but they were the praetorian
guard of the capitalists’ attempt to purge the left from the Labour
Party. In January 1980, The Times, then the house-journal of British
capitalism, under the headline, ‘Time for a Purge’, called for action to
be taken against Militant.
At the same time, the
predicted offensive against the working class, both by the government
and the employers, together with the rise in unemployment, provoked
mighty working-class resistance to the Thatcher government. This was
demonstrated by the 140,000-strong TUC demonstration through London in
March 1980. The Times, at this stage, was speaking about the
"irreversible decline" of British capitalism.
The mood began to grow for
the TUC to call a one-day general strike, which was eventually watered
down into a ‘day of action’. Nevertheless, 14 May 1980 was still a
massive demonstration of working-class opposition to the Tory
government. This was followed in November 1980 with an historic Labour
Party demonstration of 150,000 against unemployment in Liverpool.
Massive demonstrations followed in Glasgow, Cardiff, Birmingham and
London. For the first time in generations, the Labour Party had actually
taken the initiative in mobilising working-class people in action.
Such was the relationship of
forces that the Thatcher government was compelled to step back
temporarily from its plans for a head-on confrontation with the labour
movement. This was shown in the mining industry in early 1981. The
threat to begin a programme of mass pit closures was met with the threat
of immediate strike action in South Wales. This panicked the government.
Thatcher, for the first time since she had come to power, was forced
into a humiliating retreat. But Militant warned: "The miners showed what
could be done by bold and determined action, but if the Tories were
allowed to do it they will come back later with further attacks on
workers’ rights and living standards". This was what had happened in
1925, when the capitalists, facing resistance from the miners, bided
their time to prepare for the 1926 general strike. Unfortunately, the
tops of the trade unions complacently accepted the situation in 1981
without any serious preparation for future battles. The miners were to
pay a very heavy price later, as Thatcher and her boot boy, Ridley,
built up coal stocks, beefed up the police, and prepared new laws in
order to try and smash the miners.
Catastrophic de-industrialisation
Britain was politically
convulsed at this time with the very existence of the government in
peril. Riots erupted in Bristol, Liverpool, London and other inner-city
areas, class polarisation developed on an unprecedented scale and, as a
by-product of this, the ideas of Marxism, signified by the dramatic
growth of Militant, became more popular. The Thatcher government,
however, relentlessly pursued its mad policies of monetarism – squeezing
inflation out of the system and cutting down the money supply – which
resulted in the wholesale closure of factories. This enormously
aggravated the economic crisis developing at this time in Britain and
internationally.
It was this period that
ushered in the catastrophic economic devastation of British industry,
which was in decline but was furthered by Thatcher. So terrified was she
and British capitalism of the industrial working class, signified by the
defeat of Heath and Thatcher’s step back in 1981, that she was prepared
to contemplate and even half-welcome the de-industrialisation of
Britain. Manufacturing industry collapsed on an unprecedented scale.
Manufacturing output dropped 30% from its 1978 level by 1983 and
unemployment reached 3.6 million. This reduced British capitalism to a
minor player in manufacturing production and competition on the world
markets.
We consistently warned at the
time and since that the substitution of a casino economy of the
‘candyfloss’ industries of finance, banking, etc, in place of
production, of industries producing real value, would ultimately result
in a catastrophe for British capitalism and the British people.
This appeared to be falsified
by a combination of factors which saved Thatcher’s skin during her first
government. The most overwhelming reason was the cowardice of the
right-wing leadership of the trade unions, who refused to take decisive
action, for instance, when the most brutal anti-working class,
anti-trade union legislation in the advanced industrial world was
introduced. Weakness invites aggression. Prevarication, hesitation and
outright cowardice were the hallmarks of the right wing of the trade
unions both then and today. This emboldened the Tories. Thatcher was
also saved by the Falklands war. Napoleon wished for ‘lucky generals’.
Thatcher herself came very close to military disaster in this war but
her luck held out and she managed to defeat the even more unpopular and
decrepit Argentine dictatorship of General Galtieri in 1982. This
allowed her the full backing of the patriotic press of Britain, with the
Sun in the vanguard, conjuring up Britain’s past imperial ‘glory’.
The miners, Liverpool, and the poll tax
This Falklands factor, in
turn, laid the basis for Thatcher to go into another general election in
1983. Her hand was strengthened by the pusillanimity of Labour, this
time led by the hapless ‘left’ Michael Foot, who presided over the
expulsion of the five members of the Militant newspaper editorial board.
Also, the recuperation economically from the crisis of 1979-81 furthered
the Tories’ cause with the promise of ‘economic glory’ to follow what
had been achieved in the South Atlantic. This laid the basis for
Thatcher to recommence her war against the miners.
The outcome of the 1984-85
strike was not at all predetermined, as some have argued. In fact,
Thatcher’s government was about to capitulate just a short time before
its end. But a decisive and pernicious role in the defeat of the miners
was played by the right wing within the trade unions and the equal, if
not greater, treachery of Kinnock, the then Labour leader. A similarly
treacherous and cowardly role was played by Kinnock and other Labour
leaders in the Liverpool struggle between 1983 and 1987. A socialist
Labour council had begun to transform the lives of the people of the
city and, moreover, had achieved something that neither Galtieri nor
Kinnock had managed, that is, to defeat Thatcher in 1984. This excited
the most vicious hostility from Kinnock and his entourage.
At the same time, Thatcher
undoubtedly found some political succour in the economic changes being
wrought in Britain and worldwide. The neo-liberal economy, characterised
by the development of new technology, was beginning to take shape.
Thatcher, using the limitations of the past so-called ‘mixed economy’
under Tory and Labour governments, almost stumbled on the idea of
privatisation, of which she was a ‘late convert’, to begin her
‘revolution’, in effect a counter-revolution.
Ideologically, the labour
movement, under right-wing domination, was unprepared for Thatcher’s
offensive. The halfway house of the mixed economy, with a
bureaucratically-run state-capitalist sector in the hands of the
government and its appointees, and the majority of the economy in the
hands of private capitalists, had reached a dead end. Thatcher and the
right-wing ideologues that bolstered her, such as Milton Friedman,
seemed to offer a new, exciting departure from the discredited
quasi-managed Keynesian model. The sale of council housing, combined
with selling off profitable sections of state industry (what former Tory
leader, Harold Macmillan, termed the ‘family silver’) followed. This
received hosannas alongside the soaring of the stock exchange, not just
from British but world capitalism, which hailed Thatcher’s ‘experiment’
as the prototype for a new capitalist Eldorado. And it certainly was for
a few, as profits and the capitalists’ incomes soared, and the City of
London benefited in a new orgy of financialisation.
We warned that this would end
in tears, not just for the working class but for capitalism itself.
Thatcher was answered ideologically by us but crushingly in life by the
development of the current economic crisis. According to Thatcher, the
combination of Britain’s North Sea oil receipts and the ‘expertise’ of
the service sector, led by the banks and finance houses of the City, was
the answer to the ‘discredited’ theory of a manufacturing base. But it
is impossible to open any newspaper today without seeing a devastating
rebuttal, either indirectly or directly, of Thatcher’s ideology, and
with it that of the overwhelming majority of the capitalists in Britain.
Every single platform of Thatcherism has been reduced to dust. The
famous ‘property-owning democracy’ lies in ruins as homelessness,
repossessions and negative equity become the norm for millions. House
building is at its lowest level since 1924 and five million people in
Britain would now like to live in decent ‘social housing’.
Thatcher was defeated, not on
the issue of Europe, as countless commentators have claimed, but on the
poll tax. And it remains an incontestable historical fact that it was
the Marxists around Militant who played the decisive role in this
battle. On this issue, Thatcher herself had no doubt: "The eventual
abandonment of the charge represented one of the greatest victories for
these people [the organisers of the anti-poll tax demonstrations on 31
March 1990] ever conceded by a Conservative government". (The Downing
Street Years, p661) Absolutely decisive in this battle was the campaign
for non-payment, initiated by Militant comrades in Scotland and taken up
on a mass scale one year later in the rest of Britain. Eighteen million
non-payers of the poll tax finished it off and in the process reduced
the ‘iron lady’ to iron filings.
The defeat of laissez-faire capitalism
Thatcher represented
primitive, brutal, class warfare against the rights and conditions of
the working class. The lesson of Thatcherism is that capitalism under
whatever guise is incapable of ultimately delivering the goods for the
working class, either in Britain or on a world scale. She helped to
enshrine for an era the ideas of neo-liberalism. Ideologically, they
were countered by the very small force of genuine Marxism with the
majority of intellectuals and leaders of the labour and trade union
movement adhering to the ‘Washington consensus’, that is, Thatcherism on
a world scale. Militant (to become the Socialist Party) and the
Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) stood out. But the reality
is that the pro-capitalist parties in Britain have not completely
abandoned the economic heritage of Thatcher. Yes, the most ‘dangerous’
aspects for them have been relegated to history – unregulated,
unrestrained financialisation of capitalism – but the same intentions
are still there. Their mantra is that the working class must pay for
this crisis. Our answer is at one with those workers and youth
demonstrating in Italy, in Germany and elsewhere earlier this year, who
marched under the slogan: ‘This is not our crisis!’
Larry Summers, the main
economic adviser to president Barack Obama, desperately tries to
separate this crisis from capitalism itself: "There are those who just
as in the 1930s tried to learn the lesson that capitalism did not work
and needed to be replaced with an entirely different model. I don’t
think that’s right". The problem for Summers is that a growing number do
not agree with him. For instance, an online poll, in March, for a German
TV talk show answered the question: ‘Which economic system is better for
you?’, with the result, capitalism 46%, socialism 54%.
No poll can fully portray
what the mass consciousness is. But one thing is clear; ‘laissez-faire’
capitalism has been defeated. The state has been forced to step in to
rescue the system. The capitalists do not like this because this raises
the idea of not only rescuing the banks but also the majority of other
industries which are on their backs. Not just the Tories oppose this but
so do the Liberal Democrats, with the allegedly ‘radical’ Vince Cable
coming out against long-term state intervention (‘dirigisme’), and
voicing hostility to further state rescues for firms like Visteon by the
government. The consequence of this hands-off policy will be an
inexorable rise in unemployment and growing discontent, which is laying
the basis for a massive radical movement in Britain and worldwide.
Thatcher has been pictured as
a towering presence during her lifetime. Yet even before she has
departed this world, a ferocious controversy rages over her heritage,
with mass indignation at the idea of state recognition for her and her
role. She was an important, but is now a diminishing, factor in British
politics. There is nothing for the most politically developed workers to
learn from Thatcher, from the era that she represented, other than, no
matter who represents this system they will attempt to pin the blame and
the burdens of capitalism on the backs of the working class. Whether it
is the face of Thatcher or the seemingly more ‘acceptable’ visage of
Cameron, implacable opposition to them and their system, combined with
intransigent criticism of those at the summits of the labour movement –
who are not prepared to oppose them, root and branch, as the miners,
Liverpool and the poll tax protesters did – must be the cardinal
principles of a revitalised labour movement.