Ticket Offices Saved: A reminder that pressure from outside Parliament works
The campaign to stop the closure of rail ticket offices has won. The Government has withdrawn its plans in the face of a mass campaign, led by the RMT, community groups and also Labour MPs and activists.
Yet Parliament let alone a Labour Government was not central to this success. It was pressure from outside of Parliament that did.
That’s not to say that ejecting the Tories from Office and electing a new Government is not important. It must be said however that Keir Starmer has reduced expectations of a Labour Government to such a low level it will be interesting if it does produce even modest change. The slogan kick out the Tories and keep on kicking has never been more relevant.
The Labour Party was formed for a reason and we are fast approaching the one hundredth anniversary of the first, brief, Labour Government. Leaving Starmer aside the impulse to change things through Parliament won’t go away.
However the nineteenth century suggests changes of some benefit to working people can be achieved without a Labour Party but, as with ticket offices, by pressure from without. Laws which put trade unions, strikes and picketing on a legal basis, all passed in the 1870s, were all achieved by pressure from without. Extensions to the right to vote and workplace safety, hours and conditions legislation likewise were achieved by political campaigning outside of Parliament.
Its not an argument in my view for anti-Parliamentary politics but it is one for understanding that the Parliamentary Road to Socialism is not the only way forward.
Good job