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﻿<title﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, Harris - The Sequel: Ontario Tories' Second Term - Article﻿</title>﻿

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﻿<b﻿>﻿Harris - The Sequel

﻿<br﻿>﻿Ontario Tories' Second Term 

﻿<br﻿>﻿</b>﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿


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by Alan Sears﻿<br﻿>﻿

﻿<i﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, July - August 1999﻿</i>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

﻿</center>﻿


He's back! If you hated the first term you're going to hate the sequel

even more. Just look at their promises - deep cuts to fund a further

20% tax reduction that will mainly benefit the rich, drug tests and other

forms of harassment for people receiving social assistance, new anti-union

laws, school uniforms and more standardized tests for students and teachers

(but, to paraphrase Marx, who will test the tester?). The list could go on....

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

But it is worse than that. At least in the first term there was

a significant fight back, including the 1996 OPSEU strike, one day strikes

(called Days of Action) that shut down a number of cities, the two-week

general strike by teachers in 1997 and lots of other actions. These

mobilizations gave Harris fighters (the real ones, not Howard Hampton

and the NDP, who pushed for an electoral focus) the sense that it was

possible to do something. Further, they created a space for the left to

challenge the Tories' agenda. Harris' popularity reached its lowest point just

after the teachers' strike.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

It is very unlikely that we are going to see fightbacks on that

scale in the sequel. There is going to be a lot more resignation. Calls for

protests are quite likely to receive a cynical "been there, done that"

dismissal in the immediate future. So what do we do about it?

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

First, it is important to remember that there will be 

fightbacks. The Tory agenda of massive attacks, combined with an employers' offensive

to win concessions, is going to provoke some people to fight. It is

quite possible that these will be small, defensive mobilizations where people

feel they have to fight because their backs are against the wall. It

will be crucial to support those struggles and do everything we can to break

down the wall of isolation that is likely to develop around those who

try to fight.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

But secondly, it is important to think of how we can contribute

to a longer-term project of rebuilding the left for future fights. It is

only by rebuilding a lively, activist left from the bottom up that we can

develop a base for future mobilizations and a capacity to resist

waverings and sell-outs. The left will be rebuilt through activism, working

together on those struggles that do develop, but also through discussion and

debate.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

One of the great successes of the Harris government in Ontario

has been an important shift in ideas (or "common sense"). This shift has

been accomplished in concert with a variety of other governments playing more

or less the same tune - ranging from the Klein Tories in Alberta to the

Federal Liberals, the Parti Quebecois and, importantly, the NDP in

Saskatchewan and B.C. We must not forget the crucial role of Bob Rae's

NDP government in Ontario (the prequel) in establishing the idea that there

is no alternative to the cuts.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Polls show a great deal of opposition to important parts of the

Tory agenda, such as cuts in health care and education and municipal

restructuring. Yet there is also a creeping sense of inevitability -

people often feel that there is no other choice. Tory poor-bashing has

created an important change in attitudes about poverty and assistance,

with a huge rise in victim-blaming. The idea that we have a basic right to

housing, health care and unemployment insurance or social assistance has

been badly undercut.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

This ideological shift is disorienting for a lot of people on

the left. It is very important to find new ways of working together to

promote discussion and debate about the right-wing agenda and how to

fight it. We need an activist left, but also a left with an analysis,

something to say. This requires a more open left, with more exchange and less

fragmentation and recrimination. I am going to quickly raise four of

the issues that the left needs to debate over the next few years.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

1. We need to "make sense" of Harris. Much as we detest the

Tories, we cannot pretend that this is just a gigantic cosmic accident, a bizarre

time warp from which we will eventually emerge. The Tories are pursuing a

business-driven agenda to remake government in ways that promote lean

production and capitalist restructuring. Cuts in benefits and services

fit with a deliberate policy of increasing the number of people

(disproportionately women, immigrants, people of colour and young

people) available for jobs at the lower end of the labour market: low wage,

part-time and insecure jobs. There is a rough consensus among employers

that they have hit on a restructuring strategy that will drive up

profits. We need to understand in greater depth what they and the Tories are up

to in order to equip ourselves to fight it.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

2. We need to remember the inadequacies of the welfare state.

Women, people of colour, aboriginal people immigrants, lesbians and gays and

the most impoverished sections of the working class were never fully

included in the welfare state. Social assistance was always inadequate and

stigmatizing - it was designed to be that way! Health care services

have been run by big business (such as the drug companies) and big medicine

(health administrators and powerful doctors' associations). Schools

were always about conformity and obedience - they just had different

strategies and tactics. So let's not get all misty eyed about the golden age. The left needs to

find ways to defend existing programmes against the onslaught, while at

the same time raising the issue of what real social justice would look like.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

3. We need to be very attentive to strategies of working class

differentiation. Part of the strategy of capitalist restructuring is to

increase the differentiation with the working class. Women are bearing

the brunt of the privatization of responsibility for our well-being, as cuts

in health care and social programmes dramatically increase the amount of

unpaid labour around the home performed primarily by women. Some

better-off workers benefit from tax cuts (and vote Tory, for example in

Oshawa) while people on social assistance are driven deeper into poverty.

Immigrants face head taxes and the elimination of such programmes as

English as a second language, heritage education for children to

learn their parents' culture and languages and various support services.

More than ever, calls for "solidarity" will only be meaningful if they

are met by active support of the struggles of the lower paid, people who are not

employed, women and immigrants facing discrimination.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

4. Finally, we need to engage more in the debates about how to

organize the left. It is a challenge to try to build a more open left that can

genuinely look to the future and learn hard lessons from the past. This

is certainly a time to move beyond traditions of organizing that have led

to a proliferation of small groups each claiming a monopoly on correct

analysis and a broader left outside (and sometimes inside) the NDP without a real

political home. It is going to take patience and creativity to build

the more open left that we now need.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

The re-election of the Torie﻿s in Ontario is deeply depressing.

But we can't end it there. We need to look at ways to rebuild the left through

activism and discussion. One of the things we can think about is how

this magazine can contribute to building a more open left. Can it

become a place for some of these debates about Harris (and other neo-liberal

governments) and the future of the left? How can we encourage the

participation of broader layers of the left who might disagree sharply

on key issues? I believe that working through these issues as well as

activly supporting the small pockets of resistance that will emerge are

crucial elements of the challenge we now face.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿


﻿<font﻿ ﻿size="1"﻿>﻿Alan Sears is a member of the New Socialist Group in Windsor.﻿</font>﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿


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