[Militant No. 471, 21st September 1979, p. 8-9]
By Lynn Walsh
Shirley Williams recently tried to dismiss the crucial debate on democracy within the Labour Party as “like the crewmen on the Titanic deciding to have a punch-up in the engine room.”
Her speech, made to a fringe Fabian society meeting at the TUC in Blackpool, was eagerly seized on by the capitalists media.
Both the press and television have been giving massive publicity to the right wing counter-offensive, launched by Terry Duffy of the AUEW, Jim Callaghan, Shirley Williams, and later Denis Healey, against rank-and-file demands for Party democracy.
It is Shirley Williams’ own polemic, which resembles the fatal Titanic iceberg. Prominent are her colourful phrases, eagerly broadcast by the capitalist media in an attempt to smear the left. Underneath are the entirely spurious and contradictory ‘arguments’ on which her attack is based.
Firstly, Shirley Williams completely ignores the fact that Labour leaders, by steering a disastrous course of pro-capitalist, anti-working class policies sank the Labour government on a massive iceberg of embittered disillusionment.
It was the failure of the Labour leadership to implement any of the socialist measures repeatedly demanded by Annual Conferences to tackle the capitalist crisis – or even to implement the reforms they themselves previously promised – which has led to the overwhelming demand for an extension of democracy in the Party.
Yet Shirley Williams says she would not be prepared to serve as a Labour MP again if automatic and repeated re-selection became Party policy.
“It is an invitation to intimidation by party officials”. (‘Guardian’)
“I didn’t fight for my job to be a poodle.” (‘Daily Telegraph’)
But what she is really arguing against is the elementary democratic principle that the rank and file of the Party, through the elected constituency management committees, should select, and, if they so desire, re-select their Parliamentary representatives.
Party members do not want “poodles” in parliament. What they do want is MPs who will be genuine representatives, tribunes who will advocate and fight to implement the policies of the Party.
From Shirley Williams’ remarks, one can only conclude that she wants to see MPs acting not as tribunes but as proconsuls, responsible only to the parliamentary leadership, with local parties merely acting as election machines to work for the return of Labour MPs.
Turning to the question of Party leader, Shirley Williams tries to divert the argument by criticising the NEC’s appointment of the Party chairman’s position by ‘Buggin’s turn’. The chairman should be elected by conference, but so should the Leader.
The Leader, however, should be predominantly elected by MPs, according to her. “I don’t myself believe that candidates or party workers are in a strong position to judge the calibre of parliamentarians as are fellow MPs who have seen them in action over the years in the House of Commons.”
Isn’t this just a polite way of saying that Party members are too stupid to select the leader? Shirley Williams has lapsed into the most short-sighted – and arrogant – parliamentary cretinism.
Is it simply the parliamentary ding-dongs which decide the battles of the labour movement? Is judging the ‘calibre’ of MPs just a matter of assessing their debating style or letter-writing ability?
No! Under the Heath government it was the extra-parliamentary struggles of the organised workers which brought the Tories down. And under the last Labour government, did the combined parliamentary talents of the Parliamentary Labour Party prevent the government, once it took the fatal course of trying to work within the rotten capitalist framework, from launching attacks on working-class living standards?
More is at stake than the technical competence of Labour MPs. It is a question of who they represent and what policies they fight for.
In calling for the election of Chairman by Party conference and the election of the Leader (i.e. potential prime minister) by the PLP, Shirley Williams is arguing for a convenient “separation of powers.” The Party as a whole can discuss what it likes, take what decisions it likes – but the PLP and Labour governments will implement a policy of their own.
Is this not simply a counterpart of capitalist ‘democracy’ itself, in which people may discuss that they like, vote as they like – so long as in the last analysis big business decides!
Shirley Williams also condemned proposals to make the NEC rather than the PLP responsible for drawing up the election Manifesto. This would entrust the Manifesto, she argued, not to those who have to implement Labour’s policies, but to “those who dream in the bath.”
So, serious debate and discussion in the local parties and affiliated unions is mere bath-time dreaming! The experience of thousands of party workers who have first-hand knowledge of the conditions under which workers have to live and work, and who are involved in the struggle to defend workers’ conditions and thoughts, are not qualified to decide what is required from a Labour government.
Only the parliamentarians, it seems, conditioned by years of grooming in the ‘corridors of power’ and under the pressure of big business and the state machine, know what is good for the working class under a Labour government!
The argument that it would be “damned bad industrial relations” for the Party, rather than the PLP, to decide the Manifesto, is ludicrous. Through their protected position in parliament, ex-officio delegates’ rights at Conference, and publicity in the press, MPs now have an entirely disproportionate influence in the Party.
In a democratised Party, however, they would still have a key influence through their elected positions and participation in all the Party bodies – but on a democratic not a privileged footing.
Shirley Williams, in one remark showed just how remote she is from the realities of life when she condemned “the great majority of strikes today” as simply “giving a black eye to the public”.
Are trade unionists not part – a 12 million-strong part – of the public? Do workers light-mindedly decide to strike simply to spite the labour leaders by “getting the public against us”? Have low wages, mass unemployment, and ruthless bosses’ rule nothing to do with it?
This is the implication of Shirley Williams’ scandalous attack.
In the face of overwhelming support for a campaign for the 35-hour week by the TUC, moreover, Shirley Williams “urged the unions not to press for shorter working hours for this would simply lead to more overtime…”
What, workers will be asking, will a future Labour government offer if Shirley Williams and the right wing get their way?
Shirley Williams’ explanations for Labour’s defeat, for example are contradictory.
She dismisses the idea that Labour would have done better if the election had been fought on the NEC’s policies: “It would seem very odd to vote Tory as a way of showing your disgust that the Labour government was not more left wing.”
What a spurious argument! Traditional Labour voters remained loyal to Labour and voted in spite of the right-wing’s policies (hence the bigger Labour vote in the north). But there was also a layer of politically backward workers, especially in the south east (where Shirley Williams lost her own seat campaigning on her own right-wing policies), who did not vote Labour because they were offered ‘more of the same’.
Conclusions
A fight on a radical programme would have aroused the enthusiastic support of traditional Labour voters – and also won the support of millions of other workers and middle-class people looking for a real improvement in their living standards and future prospects.
Shirley Williams herself admits this in a distorted way. “The government,” she said, “had become the ‘establishment’ to the point of boring young voters, and did not look radical enough”. (‘Daily Telegraph’)
What is this supposed to mean? How could the Labour government have been more radical? Accepting capitalism it was forced to carry out measures of capitalist crisis.
“Establishment” can only mean ‘pro-big business’. “Boring” can only mean retrogressive, Tory-in-all-but-name.
But Shirley Williams is not prepared to draw these inescapable conclusions. For her, “radical” seems to have the superficial meaning of dressing up right-wing policies in more trendy radical-sounding garb.
But in the real world of today, radical can only mean socialist. Only socialist policies, which go to the roots of the crisis in capitalist society, can appeal to the youth with a fundamental alternative capable of convincing them and winning their support.
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