Labour support for imperialism runs deep

Keir Starmer is wedded to imperialism (Photo: flickr/Number 10)

Keir Starmer and the Labour government are pushing through more funding for war, cuts for working class people, attacks on migrants and support for Israel’s genocide.

Starmer’s betrayals flow from a contradiction at the heart of the Labour Party. While Labour claims to represent working class people’s interests, it has always tried to rule in the “national interest”.

But there is no national interest that unites bosses and the workers they exploit. Conflicting class interests override all others.

Labour governments try to prove they are responsible managers of the British capitalist state. That means not challenging the rich at home—and backing imperialism abroad.

Labour’s support for British imperialism is therefore a logical extension of this view.

You can see it in the Labour Party’s long history of supporting war. Take the Labour government of 1945-51, which many party supporters hold up to be a bastion of progress.

It fought desperately to hold on to remnants of the British Empire. It brutally repressed those demanding independence in Malaysia. It did all it could to resist Indian Independence. It ran Kenya as a colony for the benefit of some 30,000 white settlers, smashing a general strike aimed at ending a brutal racist settler regime.

And the Labour government led a fierce campaign to restore Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia, murdering over 20,000 Indonesians who demanded freedom from the British empire.

Labour backed the creation of Israel as a state to defend Western interests in the Middle East three months before the Tories did. And successive Labour prime ministers—from Harold Wilson to Tony Blair to Keir Starmer—enthusiastically support Israel and condemn Palestinian resistance.

It will come as no surprise that this Labour government aligns with British imperialism, sending more weapons to fuel the endless war in Ukraine and continuing Britain’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.

Hundreds of thousands of people are breaking from the Labour Party. They voted for left wing and independent candidates at the general election—and some hope for a new alternative party.

Any new organisation that develops should not aim to be a Labour Party mark II, which sees elections as the main way of winning change. It has to base itself on struggle outside parliament, and see those struggles as more important than elections.