Peter Taaffe: After Thatcher

(Militant International Review, No. 45, New Year 1991, p. 3-9)

Peter Taaffe analyses the reasons for the fall of Thatcher and looks at the perspectives now

„Tory MPs likened each other to rats, vipers and vultures.“ (The Independent, 25 November, 1990.)

In the Militant International Review in Spring 1989 we wrote that „the more serious strategists of capital are terrified of the long term consequences of Thatcherism. It is not accidental that the Financial Times … ruminated on the comparisons between Thatcherism and the De Gaulle ‚regime‘. For a decade the so-called ’strong state‘ of De Gaulle rode roughshod over the … French proletariat. The stoked-up anger burst out into the streets in the immortal May-June days of 1968… The downfall of De Gaulle left in its wake the break-up and splintering of the bourgeois parties.“ (Militant International Review, Spring 1989).

At that time Labour reformists, demoralised refugees from ‚communism‘, as well as bourgeois observers, were reconciled to Thatcher remaining as Tory leader and possibly storming to another election victory, Some, like the ingrained sceptics and organic defeatists gathered around journals like Marxism Today, organ of one wing of the ‚Communist‘ Party, foresaw a whole historical epoch of Thatcher triumphalism.

All were agreed that a new political ice age now confronted the labour movement and the ideas of socialism. Only the Marxists, gathered around the Militant and MIR pointed to the subterranean revolt in the factories, on the estates, in embittered working class communities the length and breadth of Britain, which would shatter this rosy perspective.

The poll tax battle, and particularly the huge demonstrations earlier this year, widened the visible fault lines dividing the government and Tory Party into a yawning chasm. Masonry began to drop off as one minister after another sought refuge in his ‚family‘ or ‚business‘. The scene was set for the violent convulsions within the government.

Never before have the tops of the Conservative Parity been so openly at each others throats as in the incredible drama surrounding the toppling of Margaret Thatcher. Her replacement as prime minister, John Major, like Humpty Dumpty and ‚all the king’s horses and all the king’s men‘, will find that the unity of the Tory Party cannot be easily put together again after the bloodletting of the Tory leadership contest. Prime ministers have been removed before: in 1916 when Asquith was forced out and in 1940 when Chamberlain was forced to resign. In 1922 also, Lloyd George, the Liberal leader, was deposed as the Prime Minister when Tory backbenchers revolted and brought down the Liberal-Conservative coalition government. (The Tory backbench committee which organised Lloyd George’s overthrow became ‚the 1922 Committee.‘ )

Yet these occasions were mere family spats compared to the vituperation and personal bitterness so visible in the weeks leading up to and after the anti-Thatcher coup.

The resignation of the Deputy Prime Minister, Howe, came on the heels of Thatcher’s volte face over the Exchange Rate Mechanism followed by the Eastbourne, Bradford and Bootle by-election catastrophes. This signalled the death rattle of the Thatcher regime. We then learnt from the Financial Times in the wake of Howe’s departure, that „the Prime Minister could not stand being in the same room as her deputy“. Referring to Howe’s legendary docility, this journal commented, „the punch-bag hits back“. The Cabinet reshuffle that ensued was the eighth in just over a year and the eighteenth since the Conservatives came to power in 1979. Thatcher was the sole survivor of her first cabinet. Gleefully, The Independent printed a photograph, recalling the infamous picture of the original Bolshevik Central Committee showing Stalin as the sole survivor.

But unlike Stalin, who surrounded himself with terrified bureaucratic zombies, Thatcher’s new cabinet was stuffed with potential Cassius and Brutus figures ready, at the first opportunity, to plunge the dagger into her back and seize ‚the imperial crown‘. Following Heseltine’s impressive first showing the cabinet, by 19 to 2, advised Thatcher to depart. One bourgeois commentator wrote: „history’s pool attendant had said, ‚time up‘.“ In fact it was the prospect of electoral Nemesis for the Tories, if Thatcher remained, which prompted Heseltine’s original challenge.

It is the underlying explosive economic, social and political situation – above all the poll tax – which explains Thatcher’s resignation

The split which led to Thatcher’s overthrow came on the issue of the EC. But it is the underlying explosive economic, social and political situation which explains the venomous infighting within the ranks of the Tories and Thatcher’s resignation. This in turn reflects the divisions within the ruling class – on Europe, the economy. the poll tax and many other issues.

All the resentment at Thatcher’s virtual one woman rule – parliamentary Bonapartism – welled to the surface when Heseltine challenged her. She had spoken less times in the House of Commons than any previous prime minister for 100 years. The Observer, 25 November, revealed that Peter Walker, who was a cabinet minister at the time, „was greeted with surprise one Thursday by a backbencher who found him drinking coffee in his room: ‚Why aren’t you in cabinet?‘, he was asked. ‚Oh‘, joked Walker, ‚we don’t have them any more.“

Thatcher ruled through her own court camarilla, presided over by her press secretary, Bernard Ingham, which screened her off from reality, particularly from the growing and open class hatred towards her and her government. Tory MPs in her last days compared her to Hitler in his bunker, summoning up phantom divisions to repel the ‚enemy‘.

* * *

The issue over-riding all others, however, in accounting for Thatcher’s downfall, is the poll tax. The contenders for Thatcher’s crown competed with each other in putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the poll tax. Former Tory chancellor Lawson also revealed that he not only opposed the poll tax in Thatcher’s cabinet but had proposed an alternative scheme which suggested amending the rates system. The levels of non-payment have stunned the government as well as all the so-called ‚experts‘ who calmly assured one and all that after the few initial protests, the tax would be made to ’stick‘.

David Begg, a Labour member of the Lothian Regional Council, has admitted: „People just realise it is uncollectable“ (The Economist, 8 September, 1990). This worthy had spent the previous two years denouncing the non-payment campaign in Scotland, predicting that it would collapse. Yet fourteen million people are not paying the tax, with the Institute of Public Finance predicting that local authorities could suffer a deficit of £1.7 billion by the end of the year. Levels of non-payment have reached 40-50 per cent in inner-city London and a real figure of 60 per cent in Liverpool.

Every attempt at cowing non-payers has failed. The magnificent campaign of the Scottish Anti-Poll Tax Federation prevented the Scottish equivalent of the bailiffs, the sheriffs, from carrying through a single seizure of goods in all those cases where the Federation was informed. They have turned the sheriffs into hate-figures in working class communities of Scotland alongside Thatcher herself.

At the beginning of September, just one quarter of local authorities had begun court proceedings for poll tax non-payment in England Wales

In England and Wales, the government added the extra dimension of court procedures to obtain ‚liability orders‘ to the powers they have in Scotland. But up to the beginning of September, a mere one-quarter of local authorities had begun court proceedings. It will take months, if not years, to process all outstanding cases. This will be so even if those ‚hanging judges‘ who sit on the magistrates benches process thousands of cases in one sitting.

These ‚guardians of the law‘, in seeking to do the bidding of the government, have often transgressed the very principles of the law which they are pledged to uphold. The net result has been to open the eyes of many workers who naively attend the court believing that they uphold ‚justice‘. The experience of the courts, the class bias of the overwhelming majority of the magistrates, their imperviousness to the pleas of ordinary workers that they ‚just cannot afford‘ to pay, has radicalised those sections who have gone through court proceedings.

The other string to the bow of the government has been the ultimate threat of imprisonment. Yet, at the first serious test, in the case of Cyril Mundin in Northampton, and the Marxist Labour MP, Dave Nellist, the ‚friends of the government‘ have intervened to prevent imprisonment. The strategists of capital understand that any attempt to imprison non-payers will just widen the circle of discontent and stir up mass demonstrations and protests on the scale witnessed earlier this year. The spectacle of the Freedom Association, who were behind the vicious anti-union Grunwick management, rushing to pay the poll tax of Dave Nellist must have considerably unsettled the supporters of the poll tax.

On the other hand, any attempt at widespread wage arrestment will provoke a resistance in the factories, including strike action. In the inner-city areas, the poll tax has merely added to the smouldering resentment at dilapidated housing, collapsing schools and the general squalor and neglect which typifies these areas. Even the Audit Commission, a semi-autonomous government agency, has warned that in these areas a ‚pretty inflammable situation‘ exists.

There are not enough police to safeguard the bailiffs (numbering 1,000 in the whole of England and Wales) seeking to implement the poll tax in these areas. Even in genteel Bath, the constituency of the former Environment Minister, Chris Patten, non-payment is an issue not just for workers but for big sections of the small business community.

The Independent, 3 November, reported that in Bath „shop keepers that would once have been pillars of the Tory establishment have been turned into anti-government activists, marching through the city on demonstrations against the poll tax“. It points out that in this city, a symbol of the seemingly sedate South, gangs of homeless beggars have gathered in the city centre „with Mohican haircuts, rat-like dogs and bottles of cider“. This threatens Bath’s reputation as a tourist attraction – 85 per cent of tourists who visit the city have been approached by beggars. The favoured method for extracting money is to threaten to vomit over them!

The imposition of the business rate alongside the poll tax has resulted in „Dickensian torment for bankrupt Bath shopkeepers who have lost everything: their homes, their savings, their dreams. ‚It makes me laugh that this is all happening under a Conservative government. My vote is for Neil, one local businessman said – a sentiment that is echoed by many disenchanted retailers.“

The petty bourgeois opposition to the government will be reinforced if the ten per cent increase in the business rate for next year goes ahead. Patten, with a wafer-thin 1,400 majority, faces the prospect of political extinction, along with other Tory ministers, on the basis of the present trends.

In desperation, he announced measures allegedly to hold down the level of poll tax for next year. In effect, he has imposed ‚universal capping‘ of local authorities, which will result in the savaging of local authority services and jobs. The effect of this is to take decisions on local spending out of the hands of local councils. Yet ‚local control‘ was one of the declared aims of the poll tax. Now greater powers are concentrated in the hands of the government through the Department of the Environment.

Heseltine has accepted the ‚poisoned chalice‘ of the minister responsible for the poll tax

Heseltine has accepted the ‚poisoned chalice‘ of the Minister of the Environment responsible for the poll tax. Tinkering will be insufficient to derail the mass non-payment campaign. Only its complete abolition will do that. If the government merely injects a further 42-43 billion this will not substantially cut poll tax bills next year. It would take sums of £10 billion or more to possibly produce a mood of ‚reluctant acquiescence‘. This would mean however that any reserves the government has for pre-election tax bribes would evaporate. Moreover it would not be certain that mass opposition to the poll tax would die down even then.

If nothing is done, the poll tax will still be increased in March and therefore the revolt on non-payment will be joined together with that of local authority workers moving to save their jobs and community groups fighting to retain already depleted services. The usual tactic of ‚divide and rule‘ will not work.

The attempt of the Tower Hamlets Liberal-dominated (read Tory) council to deny services to ‚poll tax defaulters‘ has collapsed. Workers who have paid the poll tax have in the main done so reluctantly and sympathised enormously with the non-payment campaign. Moreover, many who pay this year, once they see that resisters are not intimidated, fined or imprisoned, will join in the non-payment campaign.

The mass non-payment campaign is not only the most successful example of mass civil disobedience this century; it is also a demonstration in practice of the superiority of the strategy and tactics of the Marxists around the Militant and the MIR.

The savage attacks on living standards was a guarantee of resistance on the part of some workers. But without Marxist leadership, this would have been inchoate, disorganised and scattered. This would have allowed the bourgeois and its agencies to intimidate millions into reluctantly paying at least part of the tax. The non-payment campaign has not only to confront the Tory government, with its full panoply of powers. It has also had to counter the denunciation and outright sabotage of the right-wing leaders of the labour and trade union movement. They have acted as Thatcher’s front-line troops on this issue.

Yet the campaign and its leaders have established a colossal reservoir of support amongst millions of workers. No other organisation in the recent period has moved more people into action on such a scale as the All-Britain Federation. There have been two mass demonstrations this year alone. 250,000 in London and Glasgow in March, and 35,000 in London in October. This is quite apart from the numerous regional and local demonstrations. At the same time, the national and local anti-poll tax organisations have generated the resources to produce millions of leaflets, thousands of posters, which have informed, organised and stiffened the resolve of millions not to pay.

The government underestimated the generalised opposition that would develop towards the tax. But its greatest blunder was to underestimate the capacity of Militant supporters to provide the organised backbone to mass non-payment. Militant supporters have supplied the strategy, tactics and organisation to the campaign. The bourgeois strategists are well-informed of this fact.

It is this which lies behind the recent attempt to link Militant to alleged ‚land deals‘ in Liverpool, with The Sunday Times making the ludicrous suggestion that Wimpey had unwittingly supplied funds to assist the Militant. They claim that this allowed Militant to „come from nowhere“ as the major force in the All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation.

Bourgeois journalists can be astonished that a seemingly small force such as Militant could generate such self-sacrifices from its supporters, overwhelmingly ordinary workers, to finance its activities. Soaked in cynicism, if not alcohol, they are incapable of understanding the sacrifices which ordinary workers are prepared to make on behalf of their cause. The week-in week-out, day-in day-out task of raising money on the streets, on the estates and in the factories by the supporters of the Federation is on a different planet to that which they inhabit. Moving from pub, wine bar and club to editorial offices, how is it possible for them to understand the bitter class hatred and suffering of ordinary working people?

The strategists of capital, however, while encouraging the ‚black propaganda‘ of The Sunday Times, understand and fear the ideas, programme and organisation of Militant. Not for the first time in history, they have probably penetrated sections of the anti-poll tax campaign with the purpose of disrupting and disorientating the movement. Both on the March and October demonstrations there were forces at work which have sought to present the All-Britain Federation as a force ‚for violence‘. They have been assisted in this task, perhaps unconsciously, by puerile ‚anarchist‘ groups which have attempted to batten on to the anti-poll tax movement.

Ultra-leftism is always a payment back for the opportunism of the labour and trade union movement. Eleven years of Thatcherism have created in all the major cities a layer of de-classed, homeless and embittered youth, harassed and intimidated by the police. They have been joined by a section of middle class youth, repelled by the greed and gross materialism of Thatcherite capitalism.

These layers have provided a breeding ground for all kinds of confused ‚anarchist‘ ideas. A tiny minority of these have linked themselves to such weird and wonderful formations as the ‚Class War‚ group. Instinctively hostile to the organised and disciplined forces of the working class and Marxism, they have linked up with every stripe of sectarian group to oppose the Marxists on the issue of the tactics to be deployed to defeat the poll tax. Combating capitalism is for them reduced to the simple and infantile slogan of ‚confronting the police‘. The first rains of spring always produce in the forest some weird and wonderful plants.

The deadlock and seeming paralysis of the official labour movement has allowed anarchist and pseudo-anarchist ideas to develop amongst a layer of the youth. Once the heavy battalions of the working class move into action however, such ideas will become completely marginalised. And in the situation opening up in Britain such a movement is inevitable. It is the dim recognition of this, of the underlying explosive situation in Britain, which has provoked the splits within the ruling class.

* * *

The division amongst the Tories on the issue of the EC mirrors that amongst the bourgeois as a whole. The ‚Chingford Skinhead‘, Tebbit, in his usual blunt fashion, declared: „The differences between us, who see the consequences of a single currency, and those who want to rush blindly ahead, are huge.“ (The Independent, 3 November ) Thatcher. Tebbit. and their wing of the Tory Party, wish to locate Britain in a future which will see British capitalism firmly wedded to American imperialism as the latter’s semi-satellite.

In or out of the EC, economic catastrophe looms for Britain

The Heseltine, Heath, and Howe wing, on the other hand, fear the economic and political consequences of British capitalism being shut out of ‚fortress Europe‘ or condemned to the ’slow lane‘ of European economic development. In or out of the EC, economic catastrophe looms for Britain. Entry into the EC has merely meant that in the last ten years the trade deficit with West Germany, for instance, has increased eight-fold. The British bourgeois as a whole undoubtedly feels colossal resentment at the economic weight now exercised by the German giant.

This was given expression in the crude, jingoistic outbursts of Ridley which led to his sacking from Thatcher’s cabinet. Nevertheless, in the more sophisticated language of the Foreign Office, the British ruling classes hostility to its German cousin was expressed in the leaked document summing up the discussions in Chequers on Britain’s future in the EC.

Complete economic and political unity is impossible on a capitalist basis. The process of integration, so long as a world economic upswing continues, can be taken a long way. The EC is itself an expression of the fact that the productive forces – science, the organisation of labour, technique – have outgrown the narrow limits of private ownership on the one side and the nation state on the other.

Neither the British, French nor the German bourgeois are capable of completely eliminating the nation state in one European ’super‘ state. Economic integration can go a long way. It is highly unlikely on a bourgeois basis, however, to result in the establishment of one ’single currency‘ for the whole of the EC. The German mark in effect holds sway over Europe, which expresses the economic domination of German capitalism within the EC.

It is possible, on the basis of an economic upswing for the capitalists, like thieves sharing out the swag, to co-operate in lowering tariff barriers, seeking to co-ordinate and harmonise tax, customs duties, laws etc. But once the upswing turns into stagnation, never mind downswing, it will be every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.

The battle-royal which now ensues between Britain and France on agriculture merely foreshadows future, inevitable conflicts. The British bourgeois will at a certain stage seek to forge a counter-weight to Germany in an alliance with Italy and France. In the past, these have been the traditional allies – in the case of Haly, a former semi-satellite – in British imperialism’s policy of a ‚balance of power‘ on the European continent.

But British capitalism no longer possesses the economic weight which allowed it to play the independent role of the past. The entry into the ERM, with the pound being tied to the German mark, was a striking illustration of the weakness of British capitalism vis-a-vis their traditional rival, German imperialism.

Against all her instincts, Thatcher was persuaded by Major to enter the ERM, seeing it as a ‚quick fix‘ to the economy which in turn would lay the basis for another election victory. With lower interest rates, and therefore lower mortgage repayments, the much commented on ‚window of opportunity‘ would be presented to the Tories. This, it was calculated, would ensure further electoral glory in 1991.

Leon Trotsky once remarked that in the past it took years, sometimes decades, for a prognosis to be borne out or falsified. Such is the speed of events in our epoch that months, weeks and even days is all that it takes to shatter the rosy perspectives of the spokesmen of capitalism. The Financial Times commented in relation to ERM entry: „The initial euphoria following Britain’s entry into the ERM … lasted the weekend.“

The technical reasons for ERM entry, the return to more or less fixed exchange rates, has proved to be one of those seemingly accidental events in history which bring to the surface deep-going changes in the position of British capitalism. The Keynesian economist, Douglas Jay, has correctly compared entry into the ERM to the Tory Chancellor Churchill’s return to the gold standard in 1925. He pointed out, in the Financial Times, 10 October, that: „all the arguments used for joining the ERM were used from 1920-25 for fixing the Dollar-Sterling rate of exchange at the historic $4.86. This would, we were assured, achieve ’stability‘, and a ’strong currency‘. For a few months in 1925, the fixed rate was greeted with euphoria. But by the end of that year, the economics of the coal industry collapsed, and 1926 brought not stability, but a six month coal strike, the General Strike, long, drawn-out unemployment and an irresistible run on Sterling in 1931. Keynes had estimated the over-valuation in 1925 as ten per cent, much less than it is today.“

British capitalism was still a major economic power and player on the world arena in 1925. Today, it has been reduced to a second and possibly even a third rank economic power, a mere appendage of American imperialism. But entry into the ERM at a fixed rate of DM 2.95 is, as most bourgeois economists recognise, a 20-30 per cent ‚over-valuation‘ of the pound. This means, as in the last recession of 1979-82, British exports will be priced out of world markets.

Rees-Mogg, monetarist guru, has argued in The Independent that this will require a reduction in wages of 20 per cent. Douglas Jay indicates the consequences of these policies when he pointed out that similar measures in the last recession resulted in „the sharpest fall in UK real output in a three-year period since 1850.“ Real manufacturing output fell 20 per cent in three years. Unemployment rose 60 per cent in the 18 months up to January 1981, and for the first and only time in UK history, the rise continued for seven years.

Britain cannot expect to share a different fate than France, which was forced to enter the ERM in the early 1980s. The consequence of this was meagre growth rates of between one and 1.5 per cent even during the 1980s boom, and a doubling of unemployment

British capitalism has entered the ERM at the beginning of a recession, certainly as far as Britain and the United States are concerned. It is, moreover, in the most parlous state economically it has ever been in history. There are no precedents for such a collapse.

Manufacturing industry is still the bedrock of a modern economy. In 1900, British capitalism cornered one-third of world manufacturing production. Even in 1954, its share was 20 per cent. This had collapsed to a paltry ten per cent in 1979 when Thatcher came to power. Despite Thatcher’s claim to an ‚economic miracle‘, this had dropped to eight per cent of world manufacturing production by 1989.

In the last ten years, 133,000 manufacturing companies had ceased trading.

Incidentally, Thatcher’s claim to have been the champion of small business is destroyed by the statistic given by Gordon Brown, Labour’s economic spokesman, in The Observer, 28 October, when he pointed out that in the last ten years, 133,000 manufacturing companies had ceased trading. This month, according to Brown, one man or woman will lose their job every two minutes in manufacturing industry and three small businesses will go into receivership every hour.

On present trends, a further 1.4 million jobs in manufacturing industry will be lost in the 1990s to add to the 1.8 million that were lost in the last decade. And it is not just in the old and dilapidated industries that British capitalism has been beaten in its own back yard. In electrical and electronic engineering ‚import penetration‘ has increased dramatically. Britain only produces one-third as many cars as France, less steel than Italy and less manufactured goods than France. And this is before taking account of the effects of either a world recession, a slow down in the rate of growth, or even a slump, on the feeble British economy.

Already, for manufacturing industry in Britain and the USA, a recession has been a reality for months, as it has been for retail and other sections of industry. It is, for instance, expected that 30,000 jobs could be lost in manufacturing industry in the next three months.

The economy could grow by a mere one per cent or even less this year and next. Even Major thinks that a recession ‚may be‘ beginning, This recession, however, is likely to be different in character from 1979-82. Even if it is not as deep-going as then its effect will probably be more generalised. Thus, the South East in September-October suffered a higher increase in unemployment than anywhere else in the country. It is precisely in the South East, the Midlands and East Anglia, where service industries are concentrated, which have been mostly affected.

During the boom, the capitalists were able to buy ’social peace‘ on the basis of increased profits and massive bank borrowing. Profits rose dramatically, while at the same time the financial deficit of industrial and commercial companies reached £24 billion, or five per cent of Gross Domestic Product in 1989. This will probably reach well over £30bn this year.

Now, however, the profits have begun to contract, with even giants like ICI reporting a drop. Entry into the ERM and a tightening on bank lending will, as Major has urged the capitalists to do, result in employers being forced to reduce ‚wage costs‘. This in turn means job losses and a cut in real wages. It is a formula for intensified class struggle.

Undoubtedly, one side of the 1980s boom was that those with jobs. in the main, saw a rise in real living standards. The other side was that this was at the expense of intensified exploitation of the working class with a deterioration in the health, social and personal lives of workers. Fords, for instance, was forced to pay out £6m at its Dagenham plant for hearing loss suffered by workers.

At the same time, the reign of terror in the factories, combined with the abolition of wage councils, the weakening of the factory inspectorate etc., has resulted in horrifying tales of exploitation of workers without trade union rights. Those within unions, particularly the traditionally low paid, have not fared that much better. Four out of ten Nalgo workers earn less than the Council of Europe’s decency threshold. 250,000 Nalgo workers earn less than £8,000 a year! In all the advanced industrial countries, the gap between rich and poor – the class gulf between the working class and the ruling class – has deepened and widened. According to a recent survey: „The gap between the pay of the highest paid and lowest paid employees (in Britain) is now wider than at any time since records began in 1886, the government new earnings survey shows. Over the last decade, the best paid group has enjoyed a real pay rise 16 times as large as the worst paid group.“ (The Independent on Sunday, 30 September) The authors commented: „The divergence is remarkable because pay differentials were so stable before Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979.“

The stored-up bitterness amongst the working class which lies behind these statistics will shape the course of events in Britain and internationally in the period that we are going into. The 1980s were supposed to have buried the very idea of classes along with socialism. The pendulum, we were told, had swung irrevocably and permanently to the right. Thatcher and Reagan were supposed to have guaranteed a ‚golden age‘ of a reborn capitalism. Reagan was fortunate enough to leave the scene before the consequences of his policies were fully felt. The hapless George Bush is now paying the price of Reaganism with the welling up of enormous resentment of the US workers against the rich and ‚their government‘.

In the US mid-term Congressional elections, the cry went up: ‚Kick out the bums‘. Although not as many Republican ‚bums‘ were kicked out as anticipated, this was due to the disdain felt by millions for the US electoral system. Only 35 per cent of registered voters bothered to turn out. The election results, therefore, grossly understate the growing class polarisation of the USA. In addition, intent on saving their political skins, Republican candidates scrambled to put distance between themselves and Bush. His popularity has plunged by 20-30 per cent in a few months. Moreover, three quarters of the population believe the country is ‚heading in the wrong direction‘.

A movement against all ‚incumbents‘, in America directed against Republicans, seems to be an international phenomenon. With the exception perhaps of Germany and Japan, for special reasons, an international mood, which is at bottom class resentment at the consequences of capitalist retrenchment and austerity, has developed against the ‚powers that be‘. In New Zealand, it resulted in the massive rejection of the Labour government (which attempted to out-Thatcher Thatcher). The New Zealand Labour Party received the lowest number of seats since the 1920s – a cautionary tale for the leadership of the British Labour Party!

In Britain, this crystallising mood is developing in an underlying but powerful movement to the left. Recognising that the tide had turned against the government, the Financial Times, ruminating on Bush’s problems over the budget deficit, warned: „A president who won a landslide victory in 1988 on his rigid opposition to tax increases, was driven to bargaining with his political opponents, not on whether to tax the rich, but how to do it. This is a warning to Conservative regimes everywhere.“

The Tory leadership contenders recognised, perhaps unconsciously, that the tide of history has begun to change when, like the Charles Dickens character, Uriah Heep, they sought to play up their ‚Umble‘ backgrounds. Unsuccessful candidate, Douglas Hurd, complained that people could be forgiven for thinking that the contest was for some ‚Marxist outfit‘ rather than the leadership of the Tory Party!

At the time of ERM entry, Thatcher could dream of the ‚golden scenario‘ – reduced interest rates, reduced mortgages, an election before the recession really hit home. This was shattered by economic developments and the split over the EC. With Thatcher in the picture, it became the ‚tarnished scenario‘.

The ‚golden scenario‘ has been resurrected … minus Thatcher! Major after a honeymoon period, will probably go for an election in 1991. But the CBI now expects a drop of one per cent in GNP in 1991. This could completely undermine the hopes of the Tories for an election victory if the election is delayed until the end of 1991.

This in turn is dependent on world economic and political developments, not least the prospects of a Gulf War. A war may see a rallying behind ‚Our boys in the Gulf‘ which would temporarily redound to the credit of the government. But the inevitable spiralling upwards of the price of oil would deepen the recession, with more factory closures and increased unemployment. This would undermine the government and lead to a growth in support for Labour, notwithstanding the inept Labour leadership. It cannot be completely ruled out, however. that the Tories could creep back to power with a reduced majority. If it was left to the labour and trade union leaders the Tories would storm home.

The right wing Kinnock leadership of the Labour everything to dampen down expectations of a Labour government

The right-wing Kinnock leadership of the Labour Party, bereft of any policies which clearly differentiate themselves from the capitalist parties, have done everything to dampen down expectations of a Labour government. Thatcher’s entry into the ERM and the reduction of interest rates by one per cent stripped Neil Kinnock bare of two of the three major demands which he put forward in his speech at the Labour Party conference. The other one was ‚exchange controls‘.

Labour’s lead in the opinion polls up to the removal of Thatcher was not an expression of enthusiastic support for Labour. It was the ‚agin factor‘ at work, primarily an anti-Tory mood. The role of the Labour leaders in attacking the poll tax non-payment campaign, in distancing themselves from every section of workers who go on strike, have undoubtedly disillusioned a laver of advanced workers. The youth are repelled by the slavish support of Labour’s front-bench for imperialism’s intervention in the Gulf. Also the poll tax has effectively disenfranchised an unquantifiable section of voters, who have refused to register as a means of evading payment of the poll tax. And the Tories have given themselves, with Labour’s acquiescence, an electoral bonus by allowing predominantly Tory ex-patriates to vote in the general election.

Yet, notwithstanding the distaste and opposition felt by many towards the leadership of the Labour Party, it will be the determination to get rid of the Tories that will motivate the overwhelming mass of the working class. While a Tory victory cannot be excluded, a Labour victory still cannot be ruled out particularly if the election is delayed.

If the Tories win, the working class could first of all be stunned. This will give way, however, to a growing anger, not least against the summits of the labour and trade union movement. They will be blamed for a Tory victory. A period of turmoil and upheaval will take place in the labour movement. Kinnock would probably go, but the right wing, with its ‚in-built‘ majority, would seek to replace him with one of their own, with either John Smith or Gordon Brown or a similar figure.

The anger of the working class would be directed at those who held the stewardship of the labour movement in their hands and who permitted another Tory victory. In the factories and in the trade unions, a new layer will come co the fore to push aside the tired elements who have been incapable of arresting the decline in the living standards of working people.

Gradually a left will begin to form in the trade unions which will be reflected within the Labour Party itself. Depending upon world economic and political developments, a mass left wing, within which the Marxists will play a critical role, would develop.

A Labour victory, which is still possible, would first of all be greeted with joy and a sense of relief. A certain time would be extended to a Kinnock government to carry out its promises, or what workers imagine are its promises. On pensions, housing etc. The right-wing Labour and trade union leaders would move in the direction of although strenuously denying such an idea.

As the MIR has pointed out many times, a right wing Labour government working within the framework of diseased British capitalism, would not be able to deliver the goods. It would be caught between the hammer of the capitalists and the anvil of an aroused and expectant working class. Opposition would be inevitable at a certain stage.

Moreover, the Marxists will provide the catalyst for such an opposition. It is the desperate attempt to prevent precisely such a development that lies behind the constant vilification of Militant and the futile attempts to drive its supporters from the Labour Party.

Neither this, nor the slanders of Murdoch’s newspapers, will succeed to their declared task of separating Marxism from the labour movement. Events, not only in Britain but internationally, will push the working class on to the road of struggle. In action, and before audiences of tens and hundreds of thousands, all ideas will be put to the test The poll tax battle has been a dress rehearsal for the even greater dramas that will ensue in the 1990s.

In the course of set-backs, as well as victories, the ideas of Militant will become the property of first of all the advanced workers and through them the mass of the working, class. Once armed with these ideas, the mighty British labour movement will be invincible.