(Socialism Today No 25, February 1998)
‚Our consciences say we must split with Tory Blair‘, was the headline over an article by Ken Coates and Hugh Kerr, MEPs, in the Observer (28 December). This defiance of the Labour leaders by an estimated six left MEPs comes after the success of the left at Labour’s October party conference, where Ken Livingstone was elected instead of Blair’s right-hand man. Peter Mandelson, to Labour’s NEC. It also follows the huge parliamentary revolt over the attacks on lone parents. Does this indicate a mass revolt of Labour Party members, led by the left, which can compel Blair to step back from his Thatcherite assault on the £100bn welfare budget? More importantly, asks Peter Taaffe, does it signify the beginning of attempts to form a new mass socialist alternative through a major split from the Labour Party?
Certainly, the brutal attack on lone parents and the impending assault on the disabled has infuriated a wide cross-section of the Labour Party. The ‚queen of the Commons rebels‘ was none other than Gwyneth Dunwoody, arch right-winger and one of the organisers of the witchhunt against the left in the 1980s. Former deputy leader Roy Hattersley, who bears a major responsibility for paving the way for the Blairista counter-revolution, was ‚treated as a raving Trot‘ by Labour for mildly criticising the government. He has been joined by other pillars of the right, such as Denis Healey and, now, Lord (formerly Jack) Ashley, who is threatening to organise a revolt against attacks on disablement benefits.
Labour Party membership has plunged: party officials admit that at least 17% have left in recent months. MPs have felt the hot breath of outraged constituents, including many Labour Party members, on a range of issues. Heart-rending stories have appeared in the capitalist press about the ‚plight‘ of government figures. „At least one minister who regularly holds a Christmas gathering at home for local party members found himself serving drinks in a half-empty house – seemingly because people would not cross the threshold of someone who had voted for benefit cuts“. (Observer, 28 December).
The indignation against Blair and his poodle-like cabinet was fuelled by press reports of Blair’s meeting with millionaire disc jockeys in Number 10 while the boot was put into single parents in parliament. And while many of the victims of his policies desperately scratched around to find the money for presents for their kids, he took his family off to the Seychelles for a Christmas holiday costing, according to The Independent, £13,000! Little wonder that the Independent can declare: ‚He is a true heir of Margaret Thatcher‘.
Ken Coates and Hugh Kerr have linked their decision to the attacks on the poor in Britain, as well as the completely pro-business policies of Blair in Europe. They point to the „heavy pressure from the whips in London to abandon our support for rather mild proposals (from the Christian Democrats!) to protect the legal rights of employees in take-overs. Labour members were instructed by Lord Simon, late of BP, to break ranks with our fellow socialists in Strasbourg in opposing this kind of reform“. Moreover, „every month we are instructed to cancel support for whatever socialist policies have been agreed by the wider Socialist Group in the European Parliament where these involve additional spending or fixed ‚overly specific targets‘. A recent case was the Van Veizen report on unemployment, judged by the Labour leaders to involve too active a commitment to job creation“. They go on to say: „We cannot, and we will not, sign up for an agenda of deep cuts in the welfare state, penalties on the poor and the vulnerable, and an even more grotesque maldistribution of wealth throughout society“.
They are to be commended for taking this stand. But they are not alone. The reaction against Blairism is not restricted to the ‚left‘. As we have seen, Hattersley and Healey, and junior government ministers who have resigned over lone parents, share the opposition of the Labour left to specific proposals of the government. Hattersley, for instance, denounces those who „parrot meaningless Blairite slogans about the iniquity of ‚tax and spend‘.“ (Sunday Times, 28 September 1997). Yet these critics are in a sense inconsistent in their opposition to Blair. The Labour right accept capitalism but fail to see the crisis which confronts the system and the even more serious crisis that looms. Concessions that were given in the past have now to be clawed back. The 1980s saw the piling up of debt – corporate, personal and, above all, state debt. All capitalist governments in the 1990s are compelled by the logic of the system, whether they call themselves ‚conservative‘, ’socialist‘, or ‚New Labour‘, to seek to cut this debt.
It is true that New Labour have deliberately restricted themselves to Tory spending limits and the cuts that go with them. This was milked for all it was worth by the Tories in the Commons. As is the custom at the end of a debate when voting is taking place, the minister responsible usually stands at the entrance of the division lobby to thank those voting for his proposals. On this occasion, it was the Tory ex-minister Peter Lilley, to the annoyance of shame-faced Labour MPs, who thanked them for implementing his cuts! The government has a £3bn surplus. The Liberal Democrats have estimated that there will be even greater surpluses in the next four or five years, although their calculations do not take into account the possibilities of a devastating world economic recession or slump. The decision to attack the very poorest is not an ‚accident‘ but has been consciously decided upon by Blair, Brown, and their entourage. If lone parents, the disabled, and the unemployed, can be attacked so viciously, this is a warning to teachers, civil servants, local government workers and others, that they could face an even more brutal assault.
Critics from the Labour right, such as Hattersley, do not even ask the question why significant welfare reforms were conceded in the 1950s and 1960s but now ‚cannot be afforded‘. Then capitalism faced a structural upswing with record growth rates and historically high profits, which allowed significant concessions and a real improvement in the living standards of the working class, certainly in the advanced industrial countries. But those days have long gone. Even in the 1970s, the Keynesian ’socialist‘, Anthony Crosland, coined the phrase ‚the party’s over‘. Denis Healey, now a stringent critic of Gordon Brown, while Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1976, carried through £8bn worth of cuts under the aegis of the IMF. This is still the biggest single cut carried out by any post-1945 government. His retreat before capital was built on by Thatcher and her first chancellor, Geoffrey Howe.
But the situation confronting British and world capitalism in the 1990s is even worse than that which confronted the Wilson government of 1974-79, with niggardly growth rates, persistent structural mass unemployment, and a growth in the army of the poor. This reflects the incapacity of capitalism to further develop the productive forces, particularly the most important productive force, the working class which is not fully integrated into production. As Socialism Today pointed out before the Blair government came to power, New Labour is entirely different to any other previous ‚Labour‘ government. At the head is a conscious bourgeois leadership which has quite deliberately transformed the Labour Party from the political voice of the organised working class in Britain, of the trade unions in particular, into an openly bourgeois formation. Every day of the last eight months has confirmed this analysis, and future events will further underline this. Blair will be unmoved by appeals to alter course by heart-rending accounts of the effects of his measures. His government, unlike previous Labour governments, does not have one foot in the camp of the organised working class. It is therefore not subject to the pressures which were brought to bear on previous Labour governments.
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The scale of attacks carried through, or contemplated, by Blair and Brown would have already triggered a mass revolt in previous governments. Macdonald’s acceptance of the diktat of the Bank of England and of British and world capitalism in 1931, precipitated the split in the Labour Party which led to the downfall of the Labour government and the return of a national government. One of the consequences was the development of a mass left wing around the Independent Labour Party (ILP), which split from Labour in 1932 with, at its outset, something like 30,000 members. But there is no serious prospect of a similar development today.
New Labour, as Blair reminds us, is a ’new party‘, in which the slightest dissent will be stepped upon. One of the factors in the MEP’s revolt is the imposition of a code of conduct in the European parliament similar to the straitjacket imposed by the Blairites on the Westminster parliamentary Labour Party. True, this ‚discipline‘ did not prevent a big parliamentary revolt on the issue of lone parents. Nevertheless, the massive parliamentary majority of New Labour ensures, with the support of the Tories, that anti-working class policies will be ruthlessly implemented. Blair will proceed with the same determination as the Swedish Social Democratic prime minister, Göran Persson, who in the past few years has won the ‚world record‘ in cuts in welfare. Both proceed from the point of view of a defence of the free-market system. In Sweden, the left made noises but in essence came to heel because they did not have a coherent alternative to Persson’s programme.
Unfortunately, the same applies to the Labour left in Britain. Ken Livingstone, touted as a future leader of the left, is completely inconsistent in his criticism of Blair. In the New Statesman in October, he commented: „I haven’t written off Blair and I don’t think the left should. There are a lot of truly ghastly people gathered around Blair, like lice on the back of a hedgehog, and they have their own agenda“. He refuses to criticise the king but concentrates on the court camarilla! He even takes a sideswipe at Tony Benn for moving too far to the left and allegedly driving Blair into the arms of the right: „Blair and others like him were lost to the cause in October 1980 when Tony Benn marched further to the left in his conference speech of that year. Benn famously called for a massive extension of public ownership and the abolition of the House of Lords within days of a Labour government coming to power“. Tony Benn took this stand under the pressure of a growing left-wing within the constituencies and the trade unions. His support for the nationalisation of the top 25 companies in Britain represented a big step forward and further enhanced the position of the leftward moving workers within the party.
The only way that the left would have won the Blairs of this world would have been to have abandoned its raison d’etre – a left-wing radical programme. And this appears to have been the conclusion many on the left have drawn. For instance, Chris Mullin. a major supporter of Benn at that time, supported ‚enthusiastically‘ (Independent) Blair’s candidacy for the Labour leadership and „strongly backs the welfare to work strategy, is hawkish on law and order and apparently believes that only ‚centre-left‘ governments like those of Blair can win power“.
Ken Livingstone’s idea of the left stretches, it seems, from Gwyneth Dunwoody and Roy Hattersley, to the Tribune left and the Campaign Group. His programme is mildly reformist and is not a serious alternative to that of Blair. It is a faint echo of the radical reformist, alternative economic strategy, proposed by Benn and his supporters in the early 1980s. Livingstone’s programme proposes to „raise additional money by cutting the defence budget and raising taxes on businesses and home owners. He believes Brown made a big mistake in reducing corporation tax in the last budget; ‚We should have raised it, not cut it‘.“ (New Statesman).
While all socialists would support cuts in the defence budget and taxes on big business, they would have consequences which would nullify their affects on the basis of capitalism unless further additional socialist measures were taken. Significant attacks on the profits of big business inevitably lead to a ’strike of capital‘, as witnessed under the Labour government of 1964. The introduction of a corporation tax, and particularly a capital gains tax, was effectively abandoned because of the sabotage of big business. Ultimately, a Labour government which accepts the framework of capitalism rests on big business. Attacks on the rich can only be sustained by the public ownership of the major monopolies and a socialist plan of production.
The same inconsistency is shown by Ken Livingstone in his approach to the development of British and world capitalism. On the one side, he correctly anticipates a new economic crisis: „At the last meeting of Labour’s NEC, the prime minister looked genuinely surprised when I pointed out the likelihood of a recession hitting our government in mid-term“. Yet he also believes that once capitalism has overcome this recession there will be a structural growth similar to the 1950s and 1960s. Nothing could be further from the truth. The real parallel to be drawn for British and world capitalism is not with the 1950s and 1960s but with the 1930s. A long depressionary phase of capitalism punctuated with slumps and recessions and very feeble growth is the prospect which faces the working class unless it changes society. There is no understanding on the part of the major left leaders of the real processes that are developing at the present time.
They have an unrealistic attitude to perspectives for the Labour Party. Tony Benn, writing in Tribune, points towards the ‚informal national government‘ between New Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Paddy Ashdown is serving on a cabinet committee and overtures have been made to Kenneth Clarke and the ‚left‘ of the Tory Party. A formal coalition could take place in the next period, possibly in the next year, with invitations to Ashdown and other Liberal luminaries to join the cabinet. But what conclusions does Tony Benn draw from this? He correctly says that there is ‚a huge vacuum‘ which is being „opened up in British politics… neither New Labour, the Tories, nor the Liberals are representing millions of people who once looked to Labour to speak for them in parliament“. But he then goes on to call for the ‚re-founding‘ of the Labour Party, arguing in favour of remaining within the Labour Party and ‚recapturing it‘ from the Blairistas. Yet the Blairistas have an iron grip on the Labour Party and it tightens with every passing day.
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The Labour Party is increasingly dead as a viable political instrument for working people seeking change. Tony Benn’s call for a ‚re-founding of the Labour Party‘ is meaningless unless it is interpreted as taking steps to form a real viable mass alternative to Labour. Perhaps the time that Benn has been in the Labour Party explains his reluctance to take the step of founding a new mass socialist alternative. Yet Franz Mehring in Germany, faced with the betrayal of the Social Democratic Party in 1918, at the age of 72 took the step of founding a new mass party, a genuine Communist Party, when there was no other alternative. In the case of Ken Livingstone it appears that personal ambition, a lingering hope that he will be called upon to serve in the Blair government, keeps him within the New Labour fold.
Even Alan Simpson, secretary of the Campaign Group, in an interview in the Guardian, admitted that, „in spite of his rebel status … before the election (he) would probably have accepted a front bench job on the environment or overseas development“. He also believes, as does Harry Barnes, another Labour left, that the left should ’stay put‘ in the Labour Party. However, Harry Barnes, writing in Tribune, concedes that some „activists are increasingly thinking of abandoning Labour and realigning the left through electoral reform“. Utterly pessimistic, Harry Barnes maintains that „the left has been hammered historically“ and confines himself to arguing for a „fairer taxation system“ as part of a regeneration of the left.
This faint-hearted approach contrasts, paradoxically, with the forceful hints of Roy Hattersley in September that he could easily abandon Blair’s New Labour party. He denounces the „apparent willingness with which Labour’s socialists – from the handful of residual Marxists to the army of genuine egalitarians – have accepted their enforced conversion“. He points towards proposals for proportional representation in Scotland and Wales, and also in the European elections, as an opportunity: „For the democratic left, the case against PR is nothing like as strong as it once was“. Like others, he points towards the present electoral system in Britain as a barrier to the emergence of new parties and makes the interesting comment: „Under the present voting system, political realignment is impossible. Not even a sensible socialist party would have done much better last May than Arthur Scargill’s breakaway faction. But with PR, a policy of moderate egalitarianism and a handful of attractive leaders, a genuine radical party would win a significant number of seats“.
Hattersley holds out the prospect of a split of Labour ‚moderates‘ and the re-foundation, in its original form, of the Labour Party. What he fails to take into account, however, is that the objective basis upon which the Labour Party arose in Britain and which fashioned it has disappeared. While a small radical Lib/Lab-type party cannot be ruled out, it would not take the mass form that the Labour Party did from its inception. The possibility of lasting reforms within the framework of capitalism has disappeared.
However, Hattersley’s approach ironically reinforces the case of those, like Socialism Today, who have argued that the conditions exist for the emergence of a new mass party. Moreover, this is not contingent upon the implementation of PR, although this would enormously facilitate its development. The Labour Party itself, despite all the obstacles, arose as a new mass formation with a roughly similar electoral system as at the present time. It represented the revolt of Liberal voters, predominantly working class, at the incapacity of the Liberal Party to meet their expectations. It also drew support from new layers of the working class. Pressure exerted by the working class through the trade unions compelled the formation of the Labour Party.
Now the trade unions and, increasingly, the constituency Labour parties are completely marginalised within the present New Labour Party. At the same time, there is a huge constituency of alienated former Labour members and supporters, environmental activists, shop stewards and fighters within the trade unions, who are seeking a socialist alternative to Labour. It is to the credit of Ken Coates and Hugh Kerr that they have taken the step of publicly splitting with ‚Tory Blair‘. Quite correctly, they write in the Observer: „We also believe that millions of people – including vast numbers of loyal Labour voters – now feel despairingly that no one reflects their views, concerns or aspirations“. However, they are still inconsistent in appearing to hold out the prospect that they can defeat the Blairites within the Labour Party. Events, we believe, will push them into recognising the utopianism of such an approach.
Will their actions lead to a real realignment of the left and the emergence of a viable new mass party of the working class? It is too early to say. Some capitalist commentators have pointed out that the existence of PR in the Scottish parliament enhances the prospects of the Scottish Socialist Alliance repeating what the Socialist Party in Ireland have done with the election of Joe Higgins to the Irish Dail (parliament). These steps on the parliamentary level will be paralleled by movements within the trade unions and in the workplaces in opposition to the anti-working class policies of Blair’s New Labour. There is no real prospect of a mass split, at least in the immediate period, of leading left-wing MPs from the Labour Party. It is more likely that we will see a fracturing of the Labour Party over time.
The next period will be characterised by further attacks from the government on those who voted for it in May, including swingeing cuts in local government. The Socialist Party is prepared to struggle with all genuine left forces to lay the foundation for a new mass party of the working class in Britain. Realistically, however, we recognise that this will take time to emerge and will result from a combination of events and the experience of the working class, and tireless propaganda for the launching of such a party. In the meantime, we intend to dig roots amongst the real left in Britain, in the factories, workplaces, on the estates, where working people have no alternative but to go into struggle to defend and improve their conditions.
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