[Militant International Review, No 27, Autumn 1984, p. 2-9]
By Lynn Walsh
The outcome of the miners’ strike will be an issue of over-riding importance for this year’s annual Labour Party conference. The preliminary agenda includes over two dozen resolutions on the strike, particularly condemning the brutal tactics being used by the police on Thatcher’s orders. Two other issues which feature prominently are the coming battle in local government against the government’s „rate-capping“ measures and the fight against the cuts now devastating the National Health Service. At the same time, however, delegates to conference will be weighing up the balance sheet of the year since Neil Kinnock’s election as Party leader. There will be massive rank-and-file opposition to the attempts by the leadership of the Parliamentary Party to swing the party back to the right, particularly on economic policy, and to undermine the existing procedure for the reselection of MPs, due to be set in motion again at the beginning of 1985.
There can be few Labour Party members who fail to recognise the significance of the miners’ struggle and the importance for the whole labour movement of their winning a decisive victory. There was overwhelming support for the National Executive’s call, moved by the Young Socialists’ representative Steve Morgan, for a 50p a week levy in support of the miners. Although this has not been organised from Party headquarters, many Labour Party members have been involved in demonstrations, days of action, and have been collecting money and food to sustain the miners.
There is enormous anger in the Party, however, at the leadership’s failure to give unequivocal support to the NUM, and especially at criticism of the strike from Peter Shore, Roy Hattersley, and more guardedly from Neil Kinnock. The strike was several weeks old before Neil Kinnock came out clearly in support. Even then, this support was tempered by public criticism. The Daily Mirror head-lined Kinnock’s statements in support of a ballot, which had become the slogan of the right wing of the NUM, of right wingers in the TUC like Chapple and Duffy, and predictably of the capitalist press. The Shadow Cabinet was slow, to say the least, even in using its allocation of Parliamentary time to debate the issue of the strike. While criticising the unprecedented para-military tactics of the police, evidently planned and organised nationally from the very beginning, spokesmen like Hattersley and Shore have appeared far more concerned to condemn the violence of pickets. They are blind to the fact that in the all-out class war provoked by Thatcher, the only way to avoid violent conflict on the picket lines is to come out in favour of the TUC, the trade unions, and the Labour Party itself mobilising decisive support from the ranks of the labour movement in order to secure a rapid victory for the miners. With growing demands from trade unionists for the TUC to call a 24-hour general strike in support of the NUM, Kinnock actually attempted to cut across this, claiming that „this is not the way British trade unionism works“. Not only is Neil’s knowledge of working class history limited, but he attempted to short-circuit the arguments for general strike action to demonstrate the strength of the movement and prepare for further action by glibly dismissing them as „the big bang theory”.
Instead, the leadership of the Shadow Cabinet, through Stan Orme MP, have acted as a broker for the terms of the National Coal Board – desperately attempting behind the scenes to persuade the NUM leadership to settle the strike on what they consider to be the favourable terms of the NCB. This stance reflects the view, evidently made clear in off-the-record briefings from Kinnock’s advisors to the press, that the miners’ strike will be harmful to Labour’s electoral prospects. Do they imagine that defeat for the miners would improve Labour’s prospects? In any case, even if their pessimistic assessment were true, what kind of Labour leaders are they who will support workers’ struggles only when they are „popular“ or when they are guaranteed in advance to produce electoral success?
However, recent events have refuted the Shadow Cabinet’s viewpoint. During the strike Labour has made gains in Parliamentary by-elections, in the local elections in May, and also in the Euro-elections. This development was admitted by Roy Hattersley in his regular column for the Wall Street Journal (26 June), a paper, of course, not read by many Labour Party members: ‘Yet during the 15 weeks of the strike Labour has inched up in the opinion polls and actually become the most popular Party for the first time since the Falklands campaign’.
Despite a massive media campaign of denunciation and personal vilification, Tony Benn, who has boldly supported the miners (and more recently supported the call for a general strike in support of the NUM), won a resounding victory in the Chesterfield by-election Although they were systematically played down by the press, which might be expected, Labour made big gains in the local council elections, with the Tories losing overall control even in „true-blue“ areas like Cheltenham, Eastbourne, and other parts of the South East. The most significant feature of the local election results, moreover, was that Labour made the biggest gains where the left is strongest, for instance in Manchester and above all in Liverpool. And, notwithstanding, working class voters’ marked lack of interest in the EEC, Labour also chalked up gains in the June Euro elections, winning 14 additional seats.
From the indications that a series of strikes during the so-called „Winter of Discontent“ in 1978-79 helped to undermine the position of the Callaghan government, Kinnock and co-thinkers have drawn the entirely false conclusion that strikes always inevitably damage Labour’s prospects. However, strikes damage Labour governments because they are a symptom of Labour’s failure to solve the problems facing workers. Under Tory governments it is a different question. Industrial struggles against the bosses and their Tory representatives arouse the sympathy of the class, rally workers towards the labour movement, and raise the level of class-consciousness and militancy amongst wide layers of the workers. The miners’ action has drawn on huge reservoirs of class sympathy, and among the advanced workers it has re-awakened the feeling that it is possible to struggle and to force Thatcher and her big business backers to retreat. This is why the strike has brought a significant turn towards Labour in recent elections and even in the opinion polls sponsored by the capitalist press, one poll giving Labour a 3% lead in mid-August.
Undoubtedly it is true that Labour should have made far bigger gains given the situation facing most workers, with mass unemployment and a continuous driving down of living standards. From the point of view of using parliament as a platform to expose the Government and rally support to Labour, the shadow cabinet should have been far more effective, particularly given the splits and crises which have riven the Tory leadership since Thatcher’s „landslide“ last year. Labour would have won sweeping victories in recent elections, hammering the Tories and obliterating support for the Liberal-SDP Alliance, if the Labour leaders had put forward a bold alternative and mobilised the Party and its support amongst trade unionists in mass campaigning activity.
This is demonstrated by the success of the magnificent struggle of Liverpool’s Labour Council against Tory cuts. On this issue too, the Labour leadership through its local government spokesmen John Cunningham and Jack Straw, advised Liverpool Council to call off the struggle and accept terms which would have meant a 60% rate increase and massive job losses and cuts. To the workers of Liverpool who participated in an unprecedented local campaign of demonstrations, public meetings, and industrial action, Neil Kinnock could offer only “train-loads of sympathy” – advising them in practice to capitulate to Jenkin’s threats. Liverpool could not win a struggle and would alienate support from Labour – this was evidently Kinnock’s thinking. However, Liverpool smashed the Liberals and Tories in the local elections, gaining additional seats on the Council. In the light of this mass endorsement of the Council’s policy at the polls, and forced to recognise that the Council would be backed by massive industrial action, Jenkin caved in and offered Liverpool concessions which will allow the Council to implement about 80% of its programme. Labour workers in other cities faced with similar problems are now demanding to know when their councillors will be taking „the Liverpool road”.
The present rightward course of the Labour leadership, which will have disastrous consequences for the movement unless it is reversed, stems from the failure of Kinnock and the „new left“ to understand the real reasons for Labour’s defeat last year. It is ironic indeed that they should still cling to the thesis of Eric Hobsbawm, a prominent theorist of the Communist Party and a veritable Professor of Pessimism who acts as a kind of psychotherapist for despondent Labour leaders. His explanation for Labour’s defeat, which was avidly republished by The Guardian, was that the working class has swung to the right, that ‘upwardly mobile” sections of salaried workers have moved away from the labour movement, and that sympathy for socialism has been submerged in an upsurge of ideological support for Thatcherism. Yet in his recent book, the dissident Tory ex-Minister Frances Pym admits that Thatcher’s „landslide“, a 144 seat majority based on a reduced share of the vote over 1979, was the result of the special conditions which prevailed immediately after the Falklands War. As he put it, a „true verdict“ was never delivered on the Tory government. Pym’s explanation leaves aside, of course, the failure of the Labour leaders to argue the case for the radical policies of the manifesto, the open attacks on Party policy from prominent ex-Ministers like Callaghan and Healy, and the failure of the Party to organise an effective election campaign. But the open opposition of Pym, Heath, Gilmour, and other prominent Tory “wets” reflects the underlying weakness cf the Thatcher government. For a government which won a landslide victory – as professor Hobsbawm would have it – on the basis of a swing to the right in society and a profound upsurge in ideological support for conservatism, Thatcher’s government has taken an inexplicable battering. Even the right-wing capitalist Economist (7 July), which once fervently supported Thatcher, confessed that her ‘second government is stepping up to become Britain’s most inept since the war.“ Protests at the banning of trade unions at GCHQ, massive opposition to the attempt to abolish the GLC and next year’s GLC elections, and above all her failure to win a quick and easy victory over the miners, have undermined support for the government even in the South and South East, as the Tory defeat in Portsmouth South showed. These developments, for anyone whose mind is not clouded by professor Hobsbawm’s notions, confirm Militant’s analysis: that Thatcher’s 1983 victory was just a „moment” in the class struggle, and it in no way altered the underlying balance of class forces in society, which are still overwhelmingly weighted in favour of the working class. What is lacking is a leadership of the labour movement prepared to take a bold stand on the interests of the working class and to give a lead with socialist policies.
While the class has begun to move against the Tory government, and the miners have demonstrated the enormous class determination and tenacity of the workers once they swing into action, the Labour leadership under the aegis of Kinnock, whose election as leader many workers welcomed under the impression that it would consolidate Labour’s swing to the left, has moved sharply back towards the right. In elections for the shadow cabinet, the PLP gave 9 of the 15 places to out-and-out right-wingers. The „balance“ of the front bench is tilted decidedly to the right, with the “old right“ like Shore, Healy, Silkin, Hattersley and Kaufman taking key positions, backed up by younger right-wingers like Radice, Cunningham and Straw. The witch-hunt against Militant, which Jim Mortimer, the General Secretary, assured last year’s conference would be ended after the expulsion of the five members of the Editorial Board, has been continued with the expulsion of six Militant supporters in Blackburn, a Militant supporter in the Rhondda, and moves against Militant supporters and other left wingers in a number of constituency parties. This has gone hand in hand with moves by the leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party to bury Labour’s radical policies and to undermine democratic mandatory re-selection of MPs.
Right ignores conference decisions
Last October many Labour Party members welcomed the election of the „dream ticket” of Kinnock and Hattersley as leader and deputy leader believing that it would end the turmoil within the party. The mood after Labour’s election defeat was overwhelmingly in favour of unity, but unity on the basis of the reforms and policies endorsed by a big majority of the party at recent annual conferences. From the word go, however, the new leadership set about reviving the failed policies of the old right-wing leadership. In the name of rejecting “ideology” and “vanguardism“, and of generally “refining” the Party’s policy, Kinnock even hinted at the need to loosen the links with the trade unions, the working class base of the party, and at abandoning the Party’s commitment to nationalisation embodied in Clause IV, part 4, of the Party’s constitution. In other words, the „new left“ turns out to be the old right in a new guise, with Neil Kinnock following in the footsteps of past leaders like Attlee, Wilson and Foot, who rose on the left but led from the right. In the period after Labour’s conference, Kinnock’s tactic appeared to be to avoid as far as possible any discussion of policy, despite the fact that the Tory government was being shaken by one crisis and scandal after another, and workers were turning back towards Labour for an alternative. Even some of Kinnock’s trendy advisers now admit that they went too far in persuading him to develop a new „popular image“. „If they had their time over again,” reported the Sunday Times (5 August), „there are many who would try to dissuade Kinnock from performing Tracey Ullman’s pop video, or doing Singing in the Rain. ‘They were born of an overhasty scramble to attract young voters,’ admits one of Kinnock’s kitchen cabinet. ‘We were too desperate to get away from the image of 1983’.“ Workers were clearly not impressed by these antics, which appear to be modelled on US Presidential-style campaigning rather than seriously taking up the issues facing the working class.
While eschewing public discussion of Labour’s policies, however, the leadership of the Parliamentary Party quickly set up a series of study groups of its own, clearly intending to by-pass the National Executive Committee in formulating policies for a future Labour government. All the signs are that, like Harold Wilson in the past, the Kinnock-Hattersley leadership will attempt to ignore conference decisions and decide the contents of Labour’s next manifesto for itself.
During the leadership election campaign, Hattersley made it clear that he „would not consider himself to be bound by conference decisions“. More recently, he has boldly proclaimed that his „summer sermons“ of last year are „no longer heresy“. By what he calls a process of “democratic osmosis“ – in reality, undemocratic revision – the Party leadership has re-adopted the policies advocated by the right-wing of the Parliamentary Party.
Appointed Shadow Chancellor by Kinnock, Hattersley set up a “brains trust“ which reportedly meets at his room at Westminster on Mondays. The Financial Times (14 February) which is clearly much better informed about its deliberations than the Labour Party, reported that this group „consists of three bankers and brokers from the City and five academics (four of whom are professors), all of whom prefer to be anonymous.“ Undoubtedly, one of the main purposes of these Shadow Cabinet deliberations is to reassure big business that a future Labour government, with Hattersley as Chancellor, would pose no threat to the “mixed economy“, i.e. to capitalism.
In a major policy statement, given as a speech to the Ruskin Fellowship Committee on 15 May (published in Tribune, 1 July, 1984) Hattersley outlined economic policies for the next Labour government. From within the socialistic verbiage the capitalist commentators were quick to draw out the important points. The next Labour government would adopt an incomes policy. It would increase state expenditure and would consider a ‘small budget deficit desirable’. But Labour ministers, according to Hattersley, would no longer regard „a massive increase in effective demand … (as) a certain and automatic remedy …“. There could not be „a dash for growth”.
Hattersley has belatedly but correctly come to the conclusion that the Keynesian policies of the post-war period will no longer work in the period of organic capitalist crisis. However, reassurance to big business on this score offers no consolation to workers. In the absence of any proposals for genuine socialist measures to take over ownership and control of the commanding heights of the economy and to introduce socialist planning of production, the Labour leadership is once again in a position of offering reformism without reforms. The statement laboriously explains what a Labour government will not be able to achieve, while conspicuously offering very little in the way of improvements in workers’ living standards.
Kinnock himself, on several occasions, has confirmed that this is the approach of the Shadow Cabinet. At the party’s Scottish conference in Perth in March, Kinnock revived the old excuse that the last Labour government was defeated because there was a „backwash of over-expectation”. Under the next Labour government, he told delegates, „We’re not going to be able to say ‘yes’ to everything“. This puts a question mark over all the radical reforms adopted as policy by recent conferences. It is a return to the disastrous line adopted by James Callaghan in the 1979 election campaign. Promise nothing and the workers will not be disappointed when they get nothing. Apparently, the right wing Parliamentary leaders have not woken up to the fact that working people judge Labour governments, not by whether they implement the fine print of the manifesto, but by whether in practice they begin to solve the every-day problems facing workers. Kinnock and the right wing team with which he has surrounded himself are blind to the fact that experience of the crisis, which has deepened sharply since the last Labour government, has forced politically conscious sections of workers to the conclusion that there is no way out within the framework of capitalism: only fundamental socialist policies can provide solutions. But, as now appears customary with Neil, he does not take up the issue but attempts to dismiss it with a glib phrase – as „spray-on socialism“. Workers might retort that he is still advocating „elastoplast reformism“ – attempting, moreover, to re-use a plaster that long ago lost its stick.
The Party conferences re-affirmed support for radical policies in the conferences which followed the 1979 defeat not simply because delegates, representing party activists, favoured left-wing resolutions. The swing to the left on policy reflected conclusions drawn by wide sections of the working class from the experience of the Wilson-Callaghan government. That the policies of the right wing which dominated that government were a disastrous failure. That the ideas of reformism, given the world-wide crisis of capitalism and the special crisis in Britain, were finished. That there is no way out within the diseased framework of the present system and that only rounded-out socialist policies based on the implementation of Clause IV, part 4, can provide a way out for the working class. These lessons will not be forgotten by the workers, particularly the active members of the trade unions and the party.
“Divine Right of MPs“
Under pressure Labour’s right-wing and the capitalist press Neil Kinnock has also reopened the battle over re-selection. He gave backing to a proposal for an optional „one member one vote” ballot on re-selection which was put to the July meeting of the National Executive Committee, and passed by 15 votes to 12. This move is an attempt to safeguard the position of right-wing members of the Parliamentary Labour Party, to „protect“ them against re-selection by their General Management Committees. Significantly, the optional ballot will apply to sitting MPs only, not to the selection of candidates generally.
Quite a number of right-wingers would not be sitting in Parliament now if they had been obliged to face reselection before last year’s general election. The postponement of re-selection in many areas, which resulted from the delay in implementing the new constituency boundaries (ineptly and unsuccessfully challenged by Labour’s front bench in the High Court), enabled the NEC to impose a re-selection procedure which in most parties effectively ruled out any challenge to the sitting MP. This saved the political bacon of 20 or 30 MPs who long ago lost the political support of their local parties.
Ever since Neil Kinnock became leader, supposedly as a figure who would end the battle within the party, a continuous stream of right-wingers have traipsed through his room at Westminster demanding action to safeguard them against „party activists’. A majority of the present shadow cabinet were included among the 70 signatories on a letter to the Party’s general secretary calling for a change in the re-selection procedure.
Predictably, the Solidarity organisation, whose policy on most issues is indistinguishable from that of the Social Democratic Party, has been to the forefront. Early in July, Kinnock had a secret meeting with the Solidarity group – which includes Roy Hattersley, Peter Shore, John Smith, and other Shadow Cabinet members – to discuss the proposals. ‘Solidarity’, reported The Times (4 August, 1984), „in its latest newsletter to members, says, ‘the need to fight at constituency and branch level is, if anything, greater than ever before. It may be tempting to argue that the internal battle is over and that Solidarity should now quietly fade away. Certainly there will be no prizes for a high profile which suggests the party is in turmoil’.“ Clearly, the right advocate “unity” only on their own terms – on the basis of „protection from left-wing activists” (members who attend meetings), guarantees that radical conference policies will be ditched, and that there will be a further purge of Militant supporters and other left-wingers This is evident from the Solidarity newsletter, which makes it clear that optional ballots are just a first step towards mandatory ballots – and that they intend to continue to fight for this beyond this year’s Party conference.
Naturally, these lobbyists for a return to the „divine right“ of MPs to hold their seat in perpetuity have been vociferously backed by the capitalist press. The SundayTimes, whose political columns are like a weekly propaganda bulletin for Labour’s right wing, gave prominence on 22 July to the story that ‘Neil Kinnock … has been warned by Shadow Cabinet ministers and right-wing labour MPs that the Party’s recovery is threatened by left-wing moves in the constituencies to dismiss 25 sitting Labour MPs as candidates in the next general election.“ Their list includes two shadow cabinet members, Peter Shore and John Silkin, as well as the Chief Whip, Michael Cocks (who was only re-elected Chief Whip by the Parliamentary Party after being forced to a third round of the ballot). Other newspapers produced lists which included other names too.
The mass circulation Daily Mirror, however, went even further. Immediately prior to the July NEC meeting, the Mirror launched a campaign under the slogan “Fight for the Labour Party“, with blown-up features on its front and centre pages over three days. Victory for Labour, according to the Mirror, necessitates dealing with the „far left“ or „Iunatic left’. This campaign may not be unconnected with the fact that the Mirror has just been bought by big business tycoon Robert Maxwell, himself a former right-wing MP. Maxwell is currently under threat of expulsion from his own local party, Oxford East, because of his action against the print unions. In answer to the print unions’ fight to save jobs in Maxwell’s British Printing and Communications Corporation, Maxwell has used the Tories’ anti-trade union legislation against SOGAT’82 and the NGA, applying to the High Court for the sequestration of their funds.
Labour’s National Executive, proclaimed the Mirror (25 July), “must decide today whether to start to win the next election or to repeat the mistakes which lost the last. It can either widen democracy within the party or tighten the grip of the undemocratic and unrepresentative left. It can either strengthen the authority of Neil Kinnock or torpedo his chances of becoming the next prime minister…” Featured prominently in its Save the Right campaign were “front line’ MPs Peter Shore and Frank Field, „two outstanding MPs“, according to the Mirror.
“Peter Shore is one of Labour’s most respected, experienced and powerful MPs. In 1980 and again last year he was a contender for the Party leadership …”
The Mirror conveniently forgot to remind its readers of Shore’s derisory vote in the leadership contest. Shore has consistently opposed the Party’s policies on the economy and in relation to defence. He wants a return to the disastrous pro-capitalist polices of the 1974-79 Labour government, and scarcely attempts to conceal the fact that further reforms are ruled out in the present economic crisis. For twenty years he has represented an inner-city constituency, Bethnal Green and Stepney, where workers have suffered the worst effects of Labour’s failure to reverse the decline of British capitalism. It is the effects of the crisis, not „conspiracies“ dreamed up by the Daily Mirror which has shattered support for Shore and his policies. Overwhelming votes of no confidence in Shore prior to the last general election demonstrated clearly that he has lost his basis of support in his constituency party.
The Mirror’s other ‘front-line’ favourite was Frank Field, MP for Birkenhead. This democrat, who according to Fleet Street, is „threatened“ by the re-selection process has already – very democratically – threatened his constituency party that if he is de-selected he will stand against Labour.
The Daily Mirror, a paper of big business which masquerades as pro-Labour in order the better to deceive its working class readers, pretends that it is out of concern for Labour’s chances of winning the next general election. This is pure hypocrisy. The Times, however, recently blurted out the truth. The strategists of big business (unlike the Labour leaders) are far from being deceived by Professor Hobsbawm’s thesis. They recognise that massive workers’ battles, like the miners’ strike and other struggles to come, will catastrophically undermine support from the Tories and bring a swing to Labour on the political plane.
„Pendulums swing“, warned The Times (24 July), „and it would be rash to suppose that there are no circumstances in which the pendulum could swing to Labour despite the fact that the left seized all the inner citadels and was ready to act as a dominant force once the Party had been taken over. It is therefore in the national as well as in the Party interest that Labour should remain as broad based as possible and as democratic. Mr Kinnock’s effort, belated and half-hearted though it is, deserves support“.
The strategists of capital want to ensure that the next Labour government will be dominated by a right wing leadership committed to pro-capitalist polices that will provide no threat. to the wealth and power of the capitalist class. That is what motivates their campaign to undermine and if possible reverse re-selection – not any concern for Labour’s electoral prospects.
However, the issue is far from decided yet. Kinnock has supported a half-measure because he is aware of the storm of opposition which will be provoked by any attempt to undermine re-selection. The constituency parties’ delegates at conference will be overwhelmingly opposed to the proposal. There will also be strong opposition within the trade union delegations, because the „one member, one vote” procedure effectively disenfranchises the unions affiliated to constituency parties. Kinnock has gained the support of a number of trade union leaders only by making the ballot optional. Even if the leadership succeeds in getting the proposal through conference in October in time to assist right wing MPs who may face re-selection from the beginning of next year, the battle will not be over.
When re-selection was carried through in 1981, in the aftermath of the disastrous defeat of the 1974-79 Labour government, it was seen as a long overdue, irreversible reform in Party democracy. Far from expressing the „narrow“ aims of „unrepresentative“ Party activists, the change reflected the conclusions drawn by much wider layers of the working class – that there should be no return to the failed reformist policies of Labour’s right wing and that the Party’s rank and file should be able to select representatives prepared to fight for workers’ interests. Mandatory re-selection through delegates to General Management Committees puts the selection procedure in the hands of representatives of active Party members who are involved in building the Party, discussing policy, and who are familiar with the record of MPs. The capitalist class and their echoes within the Parliamentary Party denounce this, not because it is undemocratic, but because they hope that with the „one member, one vote“ procedure they will be able to influence the outcome of re-selection through pressure of the media on less active layers of Party members. Once again, the capitalists are claiming the right not. only of choosing the leaders of their own party but of the Labour Party as well.
Clearly, in constituencies where there is an overwhelming majority on the left, GMCs will vote against the ballot option. However, where a sitting right-wing MP is challenged there will be enormous pressure through the capitalist media for a ballot. Where ballots are decided on, the local and national media will pull out all the stops to secure the re-selection of right-wing MPs. There is also the danger that the new rules, which will inevitably be much more complicated, will give far more scope for de-selected MP’s to challenge decisions and for the National Executive Committee to intervene. This will open up the possibility of a whole series of enquiries conducted by the NEC’s mis-named Appeals and Arbitration Committee, in reality a Star Chamber which has taken over responsibility for organising witch-hunts against the left.
On the other hand, the right are deluded if they think that “one member, one vote” will automatically safeguard the position of the right-wingers. They claim that the activists are ‘“unrepresentative“. However, the old membership of the Labour Party declined under the stewardship of the right. The worst decline has been in areas dominated and represented by right wing MPs. New members coming into the Party, especially youth, and industrial workers, are overwhelmingly on the left. In most areas only a trickle of industrial workers have come in to the Party in the recent period. In the next period more and more industrial militants will turn towards the Labour Party, carrying over their industrial struggles into the political arena. Whatever the manoeuvres taken by the leadership, this will mean a further swing to the left in the Labour Party. While in the short term, therefore, the right-wing may bolster the position of a few of the right-wingers who face reselection, a resort to „one member one vote”, even if the right succeed in making it compulsory, will not save right-wingers indefinitely. Even in the coming round of re-selection, if the left campaigns correctly and takes all the issues to the membership, right wing MPs could be decisively defeated in membership ballots and replaced by parliamentary candidates who reflect the outlook of the present membership.
One thing is clear, however: Kinnock’s support for a change in re-selection marked the end of his honeymoon as leader. On this issue he has come forward openly as the spokesman of the right. The fact that the Kinnock camp itself has split on this issue, with Robin Cook and others like Norman Buchan coming out in opposition, is an indication of the battle which will be opened up.
No going back
Kinnock will not be allowed a free hand to turn back the clock. The Party’s ranks, beginning at this year’s conference, will fight tenaciously against the political counter-revolution being waged by the PLP’s right-wing leaders. In particular, the industrial workers who will increasingly come into the party in the next period, will massively reinforce the demand for policies based on the commitment to a fundamental socialist transformation of society.
This means a programme based on the implementation of Clause IV, part 4, which under conditions of present-day capitalism means the taking over of the banks and the 200 big monopolies which dominate the economy. This should be done on the basis of minimum compensation on the basis of proven need. Nationalised industries should be run under democratic workers’ control and management, providing the basis for a socialist plan of production. At the same time, linked to this the Party should campaign for immediate improvements in workers’ living standards through the implementation of £100 minimum wage for all workers, the 85-hour week without loss of pay, restoration of the cuts in the NHS, education, housing etc., and a massive programme of public works to provide jobs and much-needed facilities. Whereas there will be no enthusiasm among workers for a return to the discredited right wing policies of the past Labour governments, there would be enormous support for a socialist programme if it was explained and campaigned for.
There is growing support for such a programme among active sections of the labour movement, especially among those involved in the struggle of the miners. This is reflected in the growth of support for Militant, which has been singled out as the target of the right wing’s witch-hunt. The perspectives we outlined immediately after the general election are already being borne out, and our programme, based on the ideas of Marxism, is increasingly recognised by workers as the only viable answer to the crisis in the system and the class policies of the Tory government.
We are confident that Marxism will go from strength to strength in the trade unions and the Labour Party in the coming months, and those around Militant will certainly be to the forefront of the battle to defend Party democracy and socialist policies at this year’s Annual Conference.
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