Higgins Clashes with Boyd-Barrett over Labour Party

national | miscellaneous | news report Monday August 27, 2007 18:21 by MoS Reader

RBB and Higgins have greatly divergent views on Labour

The Sunday newspapers have shown great coverage of the Labour Party leadership contest after the resignation of Pat Rabbitte. However, for most left-wing activists the clash between Socialist Party's Joe Higgins and the Socialist Workers' Party's Richard Boyd-Barrett is very interesting. RBB cited the Party's "socialist roots" while Higgins said Labour are not a working class party and will not turn socialist.

The Socialist Workers' Party's Richard Boyd-Barrett said "I think there should be a left-wing alliance... We would welcome the development of such an alliance based on principled political positions." Boyd-Barrett, who ran as a non-party "People before Profit" candidate recently, continued, "I think Labour Party members should recognise that the strategy of coalition with Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil has failed and that the party should go back to its socialist roots and link up with other left-wing parties and organisations."

The Socialist Party's Joe Higgins sharply disagreed with this analysis of the Labour Party. He argued that "the Labour Party has essentially adopted the Blair perspective of adopting globalisation and the capitalist market... In my view Labour is not a real party of the working class any longer, they have just moved out of there into the establishment. I do not think they will change course, so the task of socialists is to create a new mass party for working people." The former TD ruled out return to socialist policies by Labour: "If Labour was to make a fundemental change of direction back to a socialist ideology we would welcome that, but it's not going to happen".

Not only is this debate interesting when it comes to the Labour contest and the nature of Labour, but also because a vast divergence between the SP and SWP is shown.