(Socialism Today No 13, November 1996)
Will the Tory party split after the next election? For almost a decade the fault lines among Tories have been deepening. The uneasy coalition which makes up the modern Tory party was held together by factors which have already disappeared, or are rapidly disappearing, says Peter Taaffe.
The British bourgeoisie, faced historically with the rise of a powerful working class and its organisations, the unions and the Labour Party, carefully built and nurtured the Tory party as its main political instrument. And unlike its European counterparts, it is a party which within living memory possessed a ‚mass base‘. Its membership, standing in the 1960s at over a million, embraced the middle class and even upper layers of the working class.
But 17 years of Tory government has rotted these foundations. Moreover, the collapse of the Berlin wall has altered the political terrain in Britain and the world in which the Tory party operates. The spectre of ‚communism‘ abroad and the threat posed by the working class, its organisations and parties, at home, was the ‚glue‘ that held together the major capitalist parties in Europe, such as the Christian Democrats in Italy.
These parties have either disintegrated or are in the process of doing so because of the removal of the communist ‚bogeyman‘ and the increased bourgeoisification of former workers‘ parties which no longer pose a threat to capitalism.
Although the effects are delayed in Britain, the Tory party is not immune from this process. An additional factor delaying its disintegration was the opportunity to share in the considerable spoils of office, flowing from almost two decades of power. Now, with electoral catastrophe beckoning in seven months time, it is likely that a great schism in the most successful bourgeois party in Europe will finally take place. The present crisis in the Tory party, highlighted in particular by the ferocious insults traded against each other over Europe, is acute even by the standards of the ‚civil war‘ of the ‚wets‘ and ‚drys‘ during Thatcher’s rule. This was demonstrated in the run up to the Tory party conference, at the conference itself, and in the days and weeks that followed.
A former Tory prime minister, Balfour, once boasted that he took more notice of his valet than the delegates at his party conference. In the age of the electronic media, however, it is not possible for any leader to treat the members of his own party in this disdainful fashion. Instead the Tory party managers at the conference were able to put a gloss over the huge rifts within the party. But as one capitalist commentator put it, this was only a ’success‘ because of the absence of ‚disaster‘. The conference demonstrated a unity born of fear of what will happen in the election. Moreover, it was at the cost of an outbreak of acute, collective political schizophrenia by those who attended. The ‚delegates‘ were mostly rabid right-wingers. During the day they cheered Tory ministers, including the reviled chancellor and alleged ‚left‘ Tory, Kenneth Clarke. But like hungry werewolves they came out at night at the fringe meetings to satiate themselves on the blood of the ‚Europhiles‘ like Clarke and his allies in the cabinet. Lord Tebbitt, the standard bearer of the Eurosceptic right, reviled Leon Brittan, European commissioner and former Tory minister, for ‚treason‘. In the run up to the conference itself he had publicly called for the dismissal of Clarke, Heseltine and Gummer, the cabinet’s most prominent pro-Europeans. Clarke’s supporters in turn denounced the ’neurotic witchhunt‘ against their hero. Major himself, in a meeting with Tory Euro-MPs, told some of them to ‚go and boil their heads‘ (described in the Dictionary of Slang as ‚a proletarian injunction not to be silly‘) over a dispute as to whether agricultural minister, Douglas Hogg, should attend a European parliament committee of inquiry into the BSE crisis.
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The rise of the Eurosceptic right has finally pushed the Tory ‚left‘ to organise themselves, with threats of an open alliance with Labour. Their organisation, the Tory Reform Group, has expanded its rented offices. It is described by The Observer as ‚an embryonic new party‘. The leader of an estimated 30-strong group of Tory MPs, Peter Temple-Morris, has also threatened to defy the Tory whip if the party swung behind an openly ‚Eurosceptic‘ leader. Temple-Morris it seems has even confided to friends that he voted Labour at the last local elections. Edwina Currie has also stated that she would not mind losing her Derby seat at the next general election and expects Tony Blair to be the next inhabitant of 10 Downing Street.
The careful window dressing was in tatters just days after the end of the Tory party conference. Despite being offered a knighthood if he remained within the fold Peter Thurnham, another Tory MP, defected to the Liberal Democrats. (This worthy actually delivered flowers to 10 Downing Street on the morning after Major was re-elected in 1992!). Never in history has the Tory party faced such a haemorrhaging of MPs towards other parties.
Adding to Major’s woes is the electoral threat posed by Goldsmith’s ‚Referendum Party‘. With a war chest of £20 million, more than what the Liberals spent in the last four general elections, Goldsmith has succeeded in terrifying Tory MPs. Goldsmith informed The Guardian that „tens upon tens of Tory MPs (have come) pleading with me not to run against them“. In some places it would take no more than 500 votes for his party to defeat Tory MPs. He says of the Major premiership, ‚I vomit on the government‘. Like Ross Perot in the USA, and Berlusconi in Italy, he is just one indication of the fragmentation of the once-solid constituency of the major bourgeois parties.
In the polarised situation in Britain Goldsmith is not likely to succeed in getting any MPs in the next election but he has tapped into the volatility of the middle class and the shifting away of once loyal Tory supporters. Right-wing Tory MP Teddy Taylor has even hailed the Referendum Party as a ‚bright new party‘ and has not come out against people voting for it, while Redwood hesitated when asked whether voters wanting a referendum on the single currency should vote Tory or for Goldsmith’s party. Tebbitt has, in any case, boasted that half the Tory candidates standing in the next election are implacably opposed to European Monetary Union. He has warned Major or whoever succeeds him, that there will be a majority in the next Tory parliamentary party which will block any attempt to move towards Britain joining EMU. The struggle between the different wings of the Tory party over Europe has reached the stage where demands are being made for expulsions of the Eurosceptic wing, ’similar to those made against members of Militant Tendency‘ in the Labour Party in the past.
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The Tory party conference was perceived as a ‚public relations‘ success. It was a pity the electorate did not agree with commentators and Tory managers alike. The Guardian poll in early October still puts Labour 18% ahead of the Tories. This would result in a Commons majority of 191 for Labour with the Conservatives ‚pulverised‘ to a mere 182 MPs. At this point in the electoral cycle in 1991 the Tories and Labour were running neck and neck. Despite all the efforts of Blair to demobilise potential Labour support, a powerful ‚time for change‘ mood appears to have gripped Britain.
In order to avoid a complete electoral rout pathetic efforts are being made to present Major as ‚honest John‘ in opposition to ‚Tony the phoney‘.
The further ‚Americanisation‘ of British politics is under way with the contest between the parties becoming not just personalised but ‚almost presidential‘. The shift of New Labour to the right under Blair has even prompted Major to dress himself in the garb of a champion of the poor. He attacks Blair as ‚New Labour – Old School Tie‘ in opposition to himself as a ‚poor working-class boy from Brixton‘. His image of ‚honest John‘ sits uneasily against the background of the unprecedented sleaze afflicting his government as evidenced by the Hamilton affair. In any other country, as the Guardian has commented, such examples of corruption would have been punished with the imprisonment of MPs. Here, in a desperate attempt to hold on to power, the Tory prime minister backs up those who clearly have their noses in the pig trough. And it is not just Tory MPs who have been in the gift of lan Greer and other so-called ‚lobbyists‘. Even a former Labour left MP like Doug Hoyle, although he did not benefit himself personally, received a donation from Greer’s organisation in the last general election. This is just one indication of what can happen to Labour as it abandons its working class and socialist base. If you accept capitalism, why not accept the mores of capitalism too?
Andrew Rawnsley, in The Observer gave a revealing picture of the lobbyists busy at the recent Labour Party conference. It seems that lobbyists put great value in being on first name terms with members of the shadow cabinet. Getting an introduction to ‚Tony‘ is said to be worth £50,000 and for ‚Gordon‘ (Brown) it is £30,000. The shadow of the cancer of corruption is present even before Labour comes to power. Indeed, such a process is inevitable as Labour has transformed itself into a bourgeois party, to the extent that we can have the unedifying spectacle of a Tory prime minister presenting himself as a champion of ‚trade unionists‘, because Labour is seen to be publicly repudiating workers and the poor. However, such tricks will not save Major.
It seems, in private, he is reconciled to defeat but wishes to limit its scale. On the other hand, the Tory right is pursuing a policy of ‚revolutionary defeatism‘ (in reality, counter-revolutionary defeatism). It not only recognises the Tories will be defeated but positively wants such an outcome. Only then would it be possible, they calculate, to install one of its standard bearers in the leadership, either Redwood or Portillo. Such a development, which could not be ruled out in the aftermath of the next election, would have far greater consequences than the defeat of Heath by Thatcher in 1975. When Michael Foot was elected leader of the Labour Party in 1981, this was the signal for the SDP traitors to split away. The election of Redwood or Portillo could be the signal for the Tory ‚left‘ to finally split away. It is clear that in a Tory parliamentary party following the election the ‚left‘ would be in a minority. They could split away, either joining a coalition with New Labour and the Liberals, or could form some kind of separate force with their own whips in the House of Commons. On the other hand, they could remain within the Tory party but in effect act like a separate party in parliament.
In either case, such a development would represent the long expected fragmentation of British politics along the lines of what is already the ’norm‘ in Europe. In the past the British bourgeois would strenuously attempt to prevent such a development. But this was at a time when the Tory party was in the hands of the so-called ‚grandees‘. With a world and long-term view they thought in terms of decades and even centuries. The present leadership of the British bourgeois, reflected both by Major and those who oppose him in the Tory party, have a philosophy of reaching just the next corner. It is possible that the serious strategists of capital may reconcile themselves to a Tory party led by somebody like Chris Patten, soon to vacate his position as Governor of Hong Kong. He has the necessary credentials to lead the party, as a former ‚wet‘ minister under Thatcher, but with a ruthless anti-working class programme of savage cuts in public expenditure. But it is going to be difficult to engineer his ‚re-entry‘ into British politics in time to ensure his ascension to the leadership.
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The Tory party no longer fully reflects the interests of the British bourgeois over Europe or EMU. Three-quarters of managers of the top companies believe that the schism within the Tory party over Europe is „harming our business interests and more than half think it is time for a change of government“. (The Independent). Forty-five per cent of managers no longer think that the Tory party is „the natural party of business and 56 per cent thought it was time for the government to go“. Increasingly this layer looks towards a Blair government as a more reliable prop for British capitalism. Signifying the increasing acceptance of Blair and a Labour government by the City and big business, the Financial Times Stock Exchange Index went through the 4,000 barrier after Blair’s speech to the Labour Party conference.
The Tory party increasingly has come to resemble the Republican party in the US. The majority of its youth wing, as well as a big section of the new intake of Tory MPs, belong to what the Financial Times calls the ‚anarcho-capitalist‘ tendency. They parallel the rise and development of the ’new right‘ typified by Gingrich in the US Republican party. Their rise to power after the next general election could signify an open split. The rump that cuts away may not go into a formal coalition with Blair’s New Labour but the political terrain would then be occupied by a number of parties. We could have a much weaker Tory party, in reality an ‚English National Party‘, alongside of a ‚liberal‘ Tory split-off, as well as the rise of the nationalist parties together with New Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
This fragmentation of British politics ultimately reflects the tense underlying economic and social situation in Britain. There is colossal discontent but none of the existing major parties adequately expresses this. Hence splits, new political formations and divisions. The uneasy industrial and social peace, which on the surface seems to grip Britain in contradistinction to Europe, will be decisively broken by the next general election. The doubling of the national debt and the constant campaign to further undermine spending on welfare, all denote future savage attacks on the living standards of the working class. Huge class battles loom in Britain. Working people will have no alternative but to take to the road of resisting the onslaught of diseased British capitalism. Massive reaction from public-sector workers is inevitable. Blair, conscious of what is coming, is frantically attempting to dampen down expectations and is more terrified than the bourgeois of a big majority for Labour in the general election. But nothing can stop the recoil of the working class against almost two decades of a steady whittling away at their rights and conditions, resulting in an unprecedented rise in poverty.
Fragmentation is itself a reflection of increased demand for change but there is no vehicle which adequately reflects this mood. Only with the rebuilding of the labour movement, and with the development of a powerful socialist and Marxist force, can the urge for change result in a decisive change in society, the elimination of capitalism and the establishment of a socialist Britain.
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