(Militant International Review, No. 50, March-April 1993)
Peter Taaffe reviews The Time of My Life, the autobiography of Denis Healey, for decades a key figure on the Labour right.
Denis Healey has occupied a central position within the right-wing of the Labour Party at critical times in its evolution over the last 45 years or so. His admirers claim that he was ‚the best Labour prime minister that never was‘. Yet his saving grace, viewed historically, is that he never became the Labour leader. If he would have done, given his programme and policies, his reputation would be as tarnished as those of Wilson, Callaghan and Kinnock. In other words, his ideas were never put to the test, except as part of a Labour cabinet, holding influential positions such as defence secretary and chancellor of the exchequer, where he demonstrated an unswerving support for the status quo, that is capitalism.
Although Healey is an intelligent and cultured figure – with an obvious expansive knowledge of classical music, opera and theatre – along with many of his co-thinkers, and the broad swathe of left reformists as well, he has a thinly disguised contempt for theory. Karl Marx is described as ‚a great man‘ and yet Healey extols the virtues of Popperism and proclaims himself an ‚eclectic pragmatist‘.
On the one side he can declare: „I am a socialist who believes that the Labour Party offers the best hope for Britain’s future … I do not believe that I or my colleagues are perfect; nor have I ever believed in the perfectibility of man. But my faith in the moral values which socialism represents, and in those who try to put them into practice, however imperfectly, remains undiminished“. (p. 13)
And yet this ’socialist‘ can quite happily recount his collaboration with CIA agents, generals, bankers, and seemingly every stripe of opponent of the organised labour movement and working class. His philosophy, which he constantly counterposes to ‚impractical‘ Marxism, he sums up as follows: „And what is socialism, if it is not a crusade? … ‚An obstinate will to go down a road by inches to conditions which reduce avoidable suffering‘ … In my opinion the essential differences in politics concern the priority given to one group of social values rather than another“. This progress ‚by inches‘ is not even on a par with the Fabian doctrine of ‚the inevitability of gradualism‘. Healey’s philosophy is pure liberalism rather than socialism. If it is possible to gradually reform away the worst features of capitalism, and mankind was to arrive peacefully and painlessly at a classless society, why put forward, as Marxism does, a programme to radically break the economic and political power of capitalism? Because history, not the least Denis Healey’s own experience, attests to the fact that not even ‚by inches‘ is it possible, without abrupt changes in the situation, for humankind to advance up the historical ladder of progress.
Indeed, when Healey was chancellor in the Labour government of 1974-79, he received a harsh lesson disproving the very doctrines he enunicates in his book. He introduced for instance a weaith tax, alongside corporation tax, which because of the protests of the City of London – they accused Harold Wilson of being ‚a Bolshevik‘ – was neutered and effectively cancelled out. He actually recounts in this book that under that Labour government not only did the capitalists have the lowest taxes of any of their counterparts in the advanced industrial countries, but that a wealth tax proved to be completely inoperative.
His nostrums for the problems of Britain, as well as his predictions, have been falsified by the development of events. He recommends ‚the Swedish Model‘ for the British Labour Party: „The Labour Party could learn much about a constructive symbiosis between government and the market from the experience of Sweden’s Social Democrats, who have earned over half a century of almost uninterrupted power by managing their economy with exceptional efficiency“. (p. 584)
Recent developments in Sweden, however, completely contradict the rosy scenario sketched out by Healey. Consensus has given way to a bitter class conflict as the Swedish ruling class attempt to snatch back the gains of the ‚welfare state‘. For good measure the author also invokes the example of Japan which is now beginning to suffer the same maladies – slowing down in the rate of growth, contracting investment, a crisis in the financial sector, etc – as the rest of the capitalist world.
In a kind of anticipation of the collapse of his ‚models‘ for the future, Healey, like all reformist ‚pragmatists‘, takes refuge in the assertion that it is well-nigh impossible to make predictions. He says, for example, that „in 1907 no-one predicted the First World War or the Bolshevik revolution which grew out of it“. This shows that even an intelligent reformist, with more than an average knowledge of history, has a very scanty grasp of the real history of the working class and the labour movement. It was precisely the Marxists internationally, who anticipated a world conflagration between the major capitalist imperialist powers.
And Lenin, and above all Trotsky through his theory of the permanent revolution, did precisely ‚predict‘ the Russian revolution. Of course they did not give it the name of ‚Bolshevik‘ either then or subsequently. This was added by the bourgeois calumniators of the revolution who to this day picture it as a ‚putsch‘ and not a genuine expression of the overwhelming majority of the population of Russia seeing the need to overthrow the tsarist autocracy through revolution.
Marxism of course is not in the business of making arithmetical ‚predictions‘. It is however the science of perspectives, allowing those who are able to apply it skillfully to understand the broad trends within society, which will at a certain stage lead to certain results. Thus we can say that unless British capitalism is replaced by a more sane, harmonious and inteligent means of organising production in society, increased chaos, anarchy, economic collapse and mass pauperisation is inevitable. We can also say with certainty that the British working class will resist ferociously the attempt on the part of the capitalists to thrust them back to the conditions of the past.
Callaghan told Healey privately „he was so disenchanted with the behaviour of the unions that he was contemplating legislation to control them“
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This book also allows us to understand the social types which dominated the labour movement in the course of the post-war economic boom. For example, when he was head of the Labour Party’s international department in the immediate post-1945 period, Healey advertised for a secretary. One of those who applied was Geoffrey Johnson-Smith, but because he was in America he was unable to attend the selection meeting. Later he became a television star and a Tory MP.
The right-wing of the Labour Party hardly differ in their class background, psychological type and outlook from the tops of the Liberal Party and the so-called ‚left-wing‘ of the Tories. This is why many of them can pass over from the Labour Party, in the case of MacDonald to a national government, or from Labour to Tory as did Reg Prentice, with as little difficulty as a man passing from a smoking to a non-smoking compartment on a train.
Healey also reveals the shameful private feelings and statements of well-known right-wing luminaries of the past. Thus Hugh Dalton, arch right-winger in the Atlee government, revealed that Atlee had offered him the Colonial Office after he had resigned from the Treasury following a budget leak. His response was: „No bloody fear, I told him. A lot of syphilitic niggers. All kicks and no ha’pence. Not me!“ This from a leader and a party professional professing ‚internationalism‘ and opposition to racism!
Healey also shows the bitter hostility of Labour leaders, when in power, to the pressure exerted on them by the trade unions. Thus when the opposition to the social contract was building up in the late 1970s, Callaghan told Healey privately „he was so disenchanted with the behaviour of the unions that he was contemplating legislation to control them“. As in many other things, Labour’s right-wing anticipated the Tories.
In some very interesting chapters on economic policy and in particular his period as chancellor, Healey details his own retreat, and that of other Labour leaders, from the ideas of Keynesian reformism. Another right-wing guru Tony Crosland coined the phrase „the party is over”. But it was Healey who translated this into practice with an £8bn cut in government spending in 1976, proportionately the largest cut in public expenditure in the postwar period. He denounces‘ the ‚punk-monetarism‘ of Thatcher and the ‚crewcut Keynesianism‘ of Reagan. Yet it was Denis Healey himself who paved the way for Thatcher and Lawson with their mad policies of monetarism.
Notwithstanding this he gives a very good picture of the changes wrought at the top of the Tory party. In this he shares much of the analysis of Militant of the trends at work within the Tories. He points out that Thatcher had hijacked the Conservative Party „from the landowners and given it to the estate agents“. He also paints a very graphic picture of the catastrophic falling behind of British capitalism on the basis of Thatcher’s policies: „Britain is lagging behind Europe in using computers, Europe behind the US, the US behind Japan. Britain is expected to have a shortage of 50,000 computer technicians in the 1990s, and is hopelessly behind in electronic research and development“.
He also very simply but clearly shows the contrast between Japan, where manufacturing has been given a priority, and the decay of US capitalism: „Japan has 1,000 engineers for every hundred lawyers; the US has 1,000 lawyers for every hundred engineers”. And yet he professes the belief that socialists „had better learn to live with organised capitalism”. This bald phrase would be too much for Labour Party members and therefore Healey dresses it up by declaring „although I prefer the phrase ‚market socialism‘, which is used in Sweden to describe its form of social democracy“.
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Because he was at the centre of events in the 1970s and has followed the world economy attentively, although empirically, Healey’s account of these developments, of the globalisation of capital, the effects of the 1987 crash etc, are interesting. But he fails to draw the right conclusions from the very diagnosis that he makes. Because he rests firmly in the camp of capitalism, purged of its ‚brutality‘ and ‚inefficiency‘, he naturally is bitterly opposed to those who seek to arm the labour movement with a programme to replace it by a socialist society.
Hence there are many bitter and quite false statements about Militant by Healey. He mentions the role of Militant supporters within the Labour Party in the campaign for democracy and socialist policies in the early 1980s. Quite falsely, and without any evidence to back up his assertion, he maintains that Militant supporters followed him around during the deputy leadership contest ’shouting him down‘. Many such assertions are made by the bourgeois press, but never proven with facts.
Of the same stripe is his praise of Neil Kinnock: „He started to purge the party of the Trotskyite fungus which had infiltrated some constituencies“. This ‚purge‘ has resulted in a catastrophic drop in Labour Party membership and widespread cynicism amongst the more advanced, politically conscious workers about Labour and above all its leadership. Moreover it did not lead to the result claimed for it in advance, namely, victory in general elections. On the contrary it allowed the Tories to present Labour as divided, and, with other factors, laid the basis for the defeats in the 1983, 1987 and 1992 general elections.
In common with the right wing as a whole Healey wishes to distance the Labour Party from its trade union link. He hopes that Labour would introduce the public funding of political parties in order to separate themselves from the ‚tainted‘ but alas necessary wherewithal to keep the Labour Party going – that is, the cash from the trade unions.
There are many other interesting features of this book, from the history of the labour movement im the last 50 years, Healey’s own experiences during the war, and in particular his acquaintance. with the Socialist parties on the continent. But the central justification for his political activity remains unproven. On the contrary, despite all the efforts in the service, ultimately, of the capitalists in keeping the Labour Party ’safe‘, reformism has little to show.
All the gains of the post-war period are now under attack as much from ’nice‘ Major as from Thatcher herself. This shows that it is the crisis of the system, and not this or that individual, which determines the actions of the representatives of capitalism. What is different to the position under Thatcher, however, is that the working class, following the upsurge around the miners, perceives a weakened and divided government. If it uses its power and strength in action, it can force this government to step back.
In the course of this movement the ideas of reformism will also be found to be wanting. Notwithstanding Denis Healey’s ‚intelligent‘ but nevertheless bitter denunciations of the left, and particularly Marxism, it will be these ideas that will come to the fore and will lead to a refashioning of the labour movement itself.
The Time of My Life, by Denis Healey, Penguin, 1990, £6-99. Available from World Socialist Books, Hepscott Road, London E9 5HB. Tel: 081-533-3311.
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