(Militant International Review, No. 31, Spring 1986)
In studying and analysing the Liverpool experience all workers can prepare themselves for similar movements in their own areas. There will be many ‚Liverpools‘ throughout Britain, only on a more gigantic scale
„By the mid-1980s the Conservatives saw Liverpool as the power base of the Militant Tendency. And they wanted to defeat it. The scene was set for a political confrontation … the government recognised it had lost the propaganda battle in 1984 and failed to get the arguments across to the electorate. The government now decided to shift the argument and attack the Labour council directly in the future, portraying the conflict not as a technical dispute about money, and the grant system, but as a Militant plot against the government“ (Liverpool On The Brink, by Michael Parkinson).
„When it comes to a threat against their material interests, the educated classes set in motion all the prejudices and confusion which humanity is dragging in its wagon train behind it … The struggles of the other parties among themselves is almost like a family spat, in comparison with their common baiting of the Bolsheviks. In conflict with one another they were, so to speak, only getting in training for a further conflict, a decisive one“ („The Month Of The Great Slander“ from Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution).
The British ruling class have been shaken to their foundations by the magnificent struggle of the Liverpool City Council and working class. In the miners‘ strike and in Liverpool are to be found the germs of the future mass conflicts which will convulse Britain on a national scale in the next decade. There can be no other explanation for the vile and unprecedented campaign of slander and of personal vilification of the leaders of the City Council and District Labour Party. A new Tower of Babel, of lies, mis-information and half-truths has been constructed by the hirelings of capital in Fleet Street and the media.
Roots of crisis
The ruling class have concentrated in their hands enormous powers to mould „public opinion“. Of course, Britain’s monopolised press, the TV and radio have always been used to denigrate and attack all those leaders of the labour movement who in any way threaten the capitalist system.
Thus both Tony Benn and Arthur Scargill have been compared to Hitler in the yellow press. But a new low was struck by the ITV World in Action programme in December in its persecution of Derek Hatton, who has earned the hatred of the ruling class and their echoes in the labour movement, for his role in Liverpool. His full replies to the dirty questions put by an ex-reporter of the Sun were edited out by the „unbiased“ producers of this programme. Never again will any serious worker involved in struggle and the labour movement trust World in Action as a programme from which they can expect any sympathy whatsoever.
However World in Action has only repeated on a national scale what the local Liverpool Echo and Daily Post has belched out daily on Merseyside. All pretence of „objectivity“ has been abandoned by these filthy organs of capitalism. A hate campaign, which has been unrelenting in its fury, has been conducted by the editors of these newspapers. Both nationally and locally the ruling class and their organs are determined to smash Liverpool as a symbol for workers everywhere moving into struggle. Like with the miners, Thatcher wanted to ensure that „militancy does not pay“. She described the miners as „the enemy within“. She reserved the same venomous class hatred for the working class of Liverpool: „They do not have enough respect for my office … these people must be put down“ (from Liverpool On The Brink by Michael Parkinson).
At each stage their fury has been increased. Just as they seemed to have Liverpool on the ropes, the victim managed to effect a miraculous escape. With the support of the national and local official trade union leadership together with the Labour Party front bench, the ruling class thought that in December they were in a position to rub the councillors‘ noses in the mud. They were determined to force the council to carry through draconian cuts in the living standards of the working class. The council was forced into a partial but orderly retreat. But the main gains of the struggle of the past three years were retained.
What terrifies the spokesmen of capital in relation to Liverpool, even more than in the case of the miners‘ strike, is that the strategy and tactics of the Marxists have proved more than a match for them, even though this battle has been limited to one city. A plethora of academics and wiseacres have sought to explain the „Liverpool phenomena“, in terms of the alleged „uniqueness“ of the population, its „special geographical and social structure“. But Liverpool has all the same characteristics as Glasgow, Newcastle, South Wales, the West Midlands i.e. of mass unemployment, poverty and deprivation. There is nothing „unique“ about these conditions for most working class areas of Britain.
Economic collapse
And yet at the same time, Liverpool is „unique“. The Liverpool working class is fortunate to have at its head a leadership within which the Marxist supporters of Militant have played a crucial, and at certain stages, a decisive role. It is also „unique“ in the scale of the movement and the mass participation of the working class in demonstrations, strikes and within the labour movement. Without a doubt, at this stage, it is the most politicised city in Britain. The ideas and slogans of Militant have penetrated wide layers of the proletariat. Even the opponents of the Militant such as the Merseyside ‚Communist‘ Party grudgingly admit: „… The belligerent fighting stance of Labour councillors touched a popular nerve. There is no doubt whatever that the politics of the financial crisis electrified the people in a way that was simply never there before. Everyone knew about it, everyone had an opinion.“ Tony Lane in Marxism Today, January 1986. In studying and analysing the Liverpool experience all workers can prepare themselves for similar movements in their own areas. There will be many „Liverpools“ throughout Britain, only on a more gigantic scale. What then are the main lessons to be drawn from the struggle?
In an enormous cover-up operation the ruling class and its organs have sought to hide the real situation which faced the Labour administration when it took power in 1983. They have been aided and abetted in this task by the labour and trade union leadership who were unprepared to follow their members into battle. They have fostered the legend that Militant had deliberately exaggerated the scale of the problem.
The impression has been given that it is the „wicked Marxists“ who are responsible for the social plight of Liverpool rather than the government. Some argue that if only a more „moderate tone“ would have been struck in negotiations with the government, then in some way the colossal social problems of Liverpool could have been conjured away. However Michael Parkinson in Liverpool On The Brink gives just a hint of the catastrophe, economically and socially, which confronted the Labour administration in 1983 and determined that they would have to confront the. Tory government at some stage if they were to remain true to the policies upon which they came to power.
Parkinson points out: „The story began with the ports. They made the city great and in the late 19th century gave it more millionaires than any other provincial city in Britain“. But for most of the 20th century unemployment, economic decline and poverty have been endemic in the area. In the early 1930s unemployment throughout Liverpool reached a peak of 28 per cent and throughout that decade was at least one and a half times the national average. Between 1966 and 1976 350 plants closed or transferred production elsewhere with the loss of 40,000 jobs. Thus even during the post-war boom Liverpool and Merseyside was faced with a haemorrhage of jobs from the area. A handful of firms have exercised an iron grip over the economic and thereby the social life of the city. At the beginning of the 1980s, 57 per cent of manufacturing jobs were in plants employing over a thousand workers! The national figure for workers in this size of plant was only 29 per cent.
In 1979 less than one per cent of the city’s firms provided nearly 40 per cent of total employment and by 1985 seven large firms controlled almost half of all the 47,000 manufacturing jobs in the city. At the same time between 1981 and 1985 these seven firms had shed 30 per cent of their jobs. Between 1979 and 1984 almost half of Liverpool’s manufacturing jobs were lost in this way. Liverpool became known as „The Bermuda Triangle of British capitalism“. Parkinson comments: „In the mid-1980s the city had lost control of its economic destiny“.
Capitalism has completely failed the people of Liverpool and Merseyside. The only viable alternative for thousands of youngsters looking for hope and a job lay in employment by the city council. The scale of Liverpool’s crisis is indicated by the special report commissioned by the town planners for economic and employment prospects in the next decade. This report predicted that there would be a devastating 30 per cent unemployment by 1990/1991 „which would provide all the ingredients for a social explosion“. Tony Mulhearn, President of the District Labour Party, commented at the time on the report: „This shows the failure of private enterprise. We have in Britain the most corrupt, effete and degenerate capitalist class in the history of the world. If the trend continues there will be no manufacturing jobs left in Liverpool by 1990/91. The only alternative is a socialist alternative“.
Previous Tory/Liberal administrations have facilitated the frightful collapse and decline of the city. Thus, by 1981 the total income of the city had fallen by 18 per cent, rate income by 25 per cent and total real net expenditure fell by 14 per cent from its peak level of 75/76. When Thatcher took power the national government was providing 62 per cent of the city’s net income and the rates provided 37 per cent. But by 1983 the government’s contribution had dropped to 44 per cent and the rates had risen to over 55 per cent!
1984 council victory
The Tory/Liberal administration had cut back savagely on jobs and services. Parkinson and many other commentators have fully documented this in detail. It is these horrendous economic and social conditions which have fuelled the revolt of the Liverpool proletariat. They have provided the fertile soil upon which the policies and programme, strategy and tactics of the Marxists have taken root. From the first day that the city council came to power the campaign for more resources for the city was unique in its involvement of the organisations of the working class and of mass participation. Like no other city in Britain over the last three years, Liverpool has seen a series of magnificent one-day strikes and mass demonstrations.
In a conversation with Arthur Ransome, the English writer, in 1919, Lenin commented: „When I was in England I zealously attended everything I could and with a country with so large an industrial population public meetings were pitiable, a handful at a street corner … a meeting in the drawing room … the school class … pitiable“. No such comment could be made about the events in Liverpool over the last three years.
Faced with the first onslaught of this mass movement the bourgeois decided to buy time and retreat. Thus in 1984 concessions were given by the Environment Minister Patrick Jenkin. Many attempts were made to dispute the scale of the victory both by bourgeois commentators and by their echoes in the sectarian organisations on the outskirts of the labour movement. However, the serious representatives of capital were in no doubt as to what Liverpool had achieved. Tory MP Teddy Taylor, who has the ear of Thatcher, in a private conversation with a Marxist, mentioned that Liverpool had undoubtedly won a big victory in 1984. But, he argued, the policy of the government during the miners‘ strike was to avoid any ’second front‘. According to this vicious representative of capital the government „hoped to get Scargill“. These people always personalise the struggles of the working class. To the ruling class ‘Scargillism’ merely signifies a fighting, militant class struggle policy for the trade unions and labour movement. In the well-worn traditions of British capitalism the ruling class were prepaid to give concessions to Liverpool, bide their time, and prepare to take revenge at a later stage. However the hapless Patrick Jenkin who had given these concessions was a casualty of Liverpool and was unceremoniously thrown overboard by Thatcher in a Cabinet re-shuffle last year.
There were many who supported, at least in words, the Liverpool City Council in 1984 who have subsequently criticised the „immoderate“ statements of Derek Hatton and other Liverpool council leaders in the aftermath of the 1984 budget victory. Thus the Bishops of Liverpool, both Catholic and Protestant, have lamented the fact that Liverpool council spoke in „terms of victory“ over the government. Such criticisms have been repeated by the opponents of Marxism in the labour movement. If only a „different tone“ would have been struck by the spokesmen of the city council, is their lament! If only the council had gone in for „quiet negotiation“ with the government then everything would have been for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
It is entirely shallow to imagine that in great social conflicts the tone adopted by the combatants will determine whether a struggle takes place or not. In a war, and we are involved in a most vicious class war against the British bourgeoisie and its government, it is the struggle for fundamental social interests which determines whether a battle commences or not. Moreover the more serious the struggle became, the more the fair-weather friends of Liverpool City Council peeled off, some into outright opposition to the council.
Thus the Bishops, who had at least given verbal support to the council in 1983, came into outright opposition on a whole series of questions in the period leading up to the battle last year. Certain gangster elements who were around the self-proclaimed Black Caucus organisation opposed the appointment of Sam Bond as the city’s principal Race Relations Advisor. This had nothing to do with the fact that he was not a „Liverpool-born black“, as they claimed. But it had everything to do with the fact that they knew that searching questions would be asked about money provided by the council which has not at all benefitted the people of Liverpool – but certain elements around the „Black Caucus“.
The Bishops supported these charlatans and opposed the Liverpool Labour Party and City Council. This of course is in the nature of things. After all as one Liverpool worker put it „They (the priests) crucified Jimmy Christ 2,000 years ago because he was a champion of the poor“. They preferred Barabas the thief, rather than the champion of the poor, Jesus Christ. Now the Bishops side with those who have been involved in all kinds of nefarious activities in Liverpool – as opposed to the Liverpool proletariat and their representatives. As the class struggle heated up they went over to the side of the enemy. It was their open letter to the Times during the Bournemouth Labour Party conference which encouraged Neil Kinnock to make his vitriolic and abusive attack on the city councillors
And yet the prospects for a successful outcome of the council’s struggle could not have been more favourable at the beginning of 1985. Liverpool had inspired other councils to take a stand against the draconian attacks on local government expenditure in the financial year of 1984/85. Twenty councils came together in a common ’no rate‘, or ’non-compliance‘ policy.
Liverpool also deferred making a rate through it did not agree with the tactics proposed. The deficit budget proposed by Liverpool council in 1984 made it absolutely clear to the people of Liverpool exactly how much had been stolen from them by the Tory government. The ’no rate‘ policy clouded the issue, and confused workers. Some were duped into believing that perhaps the council were deliberately courting confrontation with the government in refusing to set a rate. But many of the leaders of the twenty councils such as Livingstone at the GLC and David Blunkett at Sheffield had criticised Liverpool for allegedly ‚going it alone‘ in 1984. Therefore in the interests of a united front against the government Liverpool joined in with these councils notwithstanding their misgivings on the ’no rate‘ policy.
The stand of these 20 councils initially engendered an enthusiastic and combative mood amongst local authority workers throughout the country . These workers showed a high level of consciousness and understanding about the need to stand together or face quite frightful cuts in the future. Even in councils which were not faced with immediate cuts in 1984 there was a preparedness to join in with their brothers and sisters in other parts of the country in a common local authority workers‘ fight. They indicated support for councillors who it seemed were prepared to risk everything to defend jobs and services. For the first time ever these workers, not the most militant or responsive to calls for action in the past, showed a willingness to fight.
An enormous gain from this battle was undoubtedly the organisation for the first time of a national local authority shop stewards‘ committee (NLACC). The stand of the local authority workers demonstrated that if the 20 councils had stood together then the government would have been compelled to beat a retreat. But luminaries of the ‚left‘ like Ken Livingstone and David Blunkett proved to be no more than what Lenin called „heroes of the phrase“. When the hour arrived of moving from verbal opposition into action, then their Parliamentary ambitions loomed larger than any determination to defend the jobs and services of the workers and communities that they represented. All the usual phrases about the need for a „tactical retreat“ were trotted out by Livingstone. Kinnock eagerly embraced his new recruit to the philosophy of the ‚dented shield‘. However the knights of old at least went into battle in order to receive a dented shield. Livingstone, Margaret Hodge of Islington council etc. retreated at the first whiff of grapeshot. Lambeth had originally voted to accept a no-rate policy. But their stand was undermined by defectors from the Labour Group. Liverpool alone was left in the frame to confront the Tory government.
All the powers of ‚official society‘, that is capitalist society, have been marshalled against Liverpool in the last six months. Notwithstanding all the evidence to the contrary, the ruling class, and some in the labour movement, still argue that Liverpool could have found a way out, could have balanced the books much earlier. Liverpool council, had, it seems, „deliberately chosen“ a policy of confrontation with the government. This is entirely false. No Marxist would deliberately cause confrontation and conceal a solution which would avoid suffering and deprivation for working people – if it were available. But as subsequent events-demonstrated, the government was determined to compel Liverpool to carry through savage cuts in jobs and services, combined with massive rate increases.
No choice but to fight
To have gone down that road would have meant undermining the colossal fund of credit and support that the council had built up amongst the working class population of Liverpool. It also became abundantly clear that if the resources of the national movement had been placed fully behind Liverpool then the Tory government would have been compelled to beat a retreat. Instead the national Labour and trade union leadership did everything to frustrate, hamper and prevent the campaign focusing on the Tory government as the main architect of Liverpool’s calamity.
In the last six months the national leadership of the movement, rather than basing themselves on the mass movement, have used their power and prestige to exert remorseless pressure on the councillors to carry through cuts and increase rates. Neil Kinnock’s position towards Liverpool has at least the merit of consistency. Before the 1984 budget he had advocated a policy of increasing rates by 60 per cent! The infamous Stonefrost Report advocated a minimum of 15 per cent increase in rates together with various measures aimed at cutting expenditure. And yet the history of the labour movement on Merseyside demonstrates one thing: to seek a way out of the crisis through massive rate increases would have a negative electoral effect, which Kinnock’s policy is allegedly designed to prevent.
In 1981 when the Labour Group was controlled by the right-wing a rate increase of 50 per cent was carried through in Liverpool. Those councillors like Derek Hatton who supported Militant were in a minority, but ferociously resisted these rate increases in the Labour Group. In the elections of May of that year Labour lost six seats, the largest loss ever sustained by the two major parties at that time. But in the 1983 council elections Labour got 46 per cent of the vote, the highest-ever Labour vote in the city. There was a 51 per cent turnout in the 1984 council election. In a recent Parliamentary by-election in Tyne Bridge, there was a mere 38 per cent turn-out! The contrast between the mass involvement and participation of Liverpool workers in the struggle and the situation in other parts of Britain could not be greater. Moreover 72 per cent of council employees voted Labour in 1983 and 1984. Labour had become identified in the eyes of the masses with a policy of defending jobs and services and thereby the future employment prospects of the working class and particularly the youth of the city.
To squander this capital through capitulation to the government and massive rate increases would have been criminal. The councillors had no alternative but to go into battle. The landmarks of this struggle have been well documented in the pages of the Militant newspaper and there is no need to repeat them here. But the defeat of the strike call on 25 September last year undoubtedly represented a turning point. The ruling class and their shadows in the labour movement were absolutely terrified by the prospect of a council workforce engaging in all-out strike action which would have then undoubtedly spread to the private sector. Every dirty weapon in the armoury of capitalism was employed in order to defeat the strike vote.
Given the situation it was remarkable that the council workforce came so close to voting for a majority to come out. The miners had been defeated. The other 19 councils that had started out in the battle at the beginning of the year had thrown in the towel. There was a clear understanding that Liverpool alone was still confronting the government. The local and national leaders of the white-collar unions – some of them paying lip service to the call for strike action – in practice worked ferociously to defeat the strike.
Not a normal boss-worker situation
The leadership of NALGO pursued a cynical campaign of attacks on the council leaders while at the same time allegedly supporting the campaign. Derek Hatton was lampooned in NALGO newsheets which were supposed to be in support of the campaign against the Tory government. The leaflet which the NALGO leaders put out to their members in preparation for the ballot on strike action stated: „Tuesday’s Echo carried the story headed ’strike was our idea said NALGO leader‘, quoting branch chairperson, Graham Burgess as saying the strike was ‚all our idea‘.“ The leaflet goes on to say: „It is not, however, the case that the idea for the strike was ‚NALGO’s idea‘. In fact we initially suggested that no action be taken till the money ran out, but the majority of the trade unions voted for the strike“. It then goes on to boldly assert: „There can be no doubt that a strike, if NALGO members vote for one, will be long and difficult“. If this is support for strike action what would opposition look like!
The NUPE leadership opposed the strike action and refused to give their members the right to vote! In the leaflet they put out they quoted the witch-hunting resolution against Militant that was passed at the NUPE national conference! The NUT took the most shameful position of all. They dragged the council before the capitalist courts and yet the option for solving the budget crisis was ‚legally‘ there in the form of cuts in the education budget. The Department of Education had demanded that Liverpool sack 400 teachers, who according to them, were ’surplus‘ to the educational needs of the city. This would have given an extra £25 million to the council, which would have immediately solved the budget problem. Quite correctly, the councillors saw this as an attack, not just on the teachers, but on the educational needs of the working class of Liverpool as a whole. But the NUT leadership, led by the so-called ‚Communist‘ Party, were in no way motivated by the needs of the working people of Liverpool, but what they perceived were the narrow selfish interests of their own members.
In the days leading up to 25 September, Liverpool witnessed a series of unprecedented mass meetings. The only indoor arena big enough to take the numbers was the Liverpool stadium. Here took place meetings of 6,000, 4,000 and 5,000 workers balloting and discussing the issues involved in the strike. The most remarkable feature of these events was that so many workers voted in favour of the strike action. In the teeth of a ferocious campaign of opposition, 58 per cent of the General and Municipal workers voted in favour of strike action. A majority in the TGWU also voted in favour as did UCATT. Almost 50 per cent of the manual workers voted in favour of strike action. Also important minorities in NALGO and other white-collar unions voted in favour despite the shameful campaign of passive resistance conducted by their own leadership.
The white collar union leaders, both locally and nationally, sought to present the relationship between the council and local authority unions as the normal boss-worker relationship. In a Tory Council, or one controlled by right wing reformists this would undoubtedly be the case. But Liverpool was a socialist council. No other council has accorded greater power or involved the unions more.
The position of the council in this situation is analogous to the relationship that would exist between a democratic workers state and the trade unions. The unions would still be independent of the state, „their state“ as Lenin put it, with the right to strike etc. They would also be the main props of a democratic workers state. Indeed the management of the state would be drawn from the trade unions. At the same time they would be a defence of the working class against the bureaucratic excesses of „their state“.
In Liverpool the unions should at one and the same time be the main supporters of the council and at the same time defend the workers against arbitrary actions, particularly by the capitalist management, which has been inherited from the previous Tory/Liberal regime. Yet in the budget crisis the national union leaders pretended that the unions should act entirely independently of the council, taking no account whatsoever of its financial plight.
The ‚Redundancy notice‘ controversy
Undoubtedly one of the complicating factors in the campaign for a strike vote was the issuing of the so-called ‚redundancy notices‘ in the period prior to the stewards deciding to call for all-out strike action. The question has been asked many times, then and since: was it correct for the council to issue these notices? Without doubt, this provided the bourgeois and the reformists with a weapon to completely distort what the council stood for. It was eagerly seized upon by Neil Kinnock in his shameful and infamous attack on the council at Bournemouth.
Marxism believes in telling workers the truth. Any serious tendency in the movement which is seeking to win majority support also has a responsibility to record any mistakes in strategy and tactics, in order that the working-class and the labour movement can learn from these mistakes.
It is impossible to comprehend the decision of the city council, without at the same time understanding all the circumstances in which the decision was made. The Labour Group had been informed by the City Treasurer that legally he would need to place £23 million aside for redundancy pay when the cash ran out. If the notices did not go out then the councillors, both collectively and individually would face a bill for £23 million. The councillors had already put themselves out on a limb and faced a threat of a £100,000 surcharge, banning from office, possible jailing, seizure of homes, etc. In this situation it was felt by the majority of the councillors, particularly given the reluctance of the white-collar union leaders to back them in their stand against the Tory government, that they were not prepared to risk another £2 million surcharge each. But Napoleon once said: „Military warfare needs the kind of mathematics of an Euclid or a Newton“. In politics also it is necessary to understand political algebra, to visualise the way things will develop, to understand in particular how the class enemy will utilise any action you take in order to undermine the struggle and discredit the labour movement.
There was no question of the Liverpool City Council sacking anybody. This is a vile slander, and subsequent events demonstrated this. The ‚redundancy notices‘ were merely a tactic for gaining time to pursue the campaign to the end of 1985. When fully explained this was accepted and supported by the workers. Thus when the issue was put to branch number five of the GMBATU, in which Militant supporters play a decisive role, by 1,000 to two the workers voted to send the notices out.
The opposition of the white collar unions led by NALGO to the so-called „redundancy tactics“ was hypocritical and contradictory. According to the City Treasurer if the notices had not been issued then the money lenders would not have lent money to the council. This would have meant the non-payment of wages in September and the collapse of the council. If this course would have been adopted then the NALGO leaders would have been the first ones to denounce the council. Instead of the crisis coming at the end of 1985 it would have existed in September.
However, it was not possible to explain the rather complicated tactical reasons why the notices were sent out, either to all local authority workers, to the mass of the population of Liverpool, and particularly to the workers outside of Liverpool. The mass of the workers gain their impression of what is going on through the grossly distorted image on the TV and radio, the press and so on.
Therefore great care has to be exercised in mass work by the Marxists to ensure that issues are presented in such a fashion that they do not allow the bourgeois and the reformists to distort them and sow confusion amongst the working-class. The finer points of ‚tactics‘ were lost and the false impression was given that 31,000 workers were to be made redundant.
Given these factors it was a mistake, we believe, for these redundancy notices to be sent out. Militant is in a minority both on the council and in the labour force as a whole. If every councillor was a committed Marxist and was prepared to go to the end, the issue would have been simple. The guiding philosophy would have been „in for £2,000 in for £4 million“. The Marxists would have refused to have become entangled in the legal web which has been carefully constructed by the bourgeois when it comes to local authority finance. If then the City of London and the bankers would have refused to lend cash because the notices had not been sent out then it would have been crystal clear that Liverpool was being blackmailed and threatened with bankruptcy by capitalism.
However this tactical mistake was eagerly seized on by all the opponents of Marxism, particularly by Neil Kinnock in his speech at Bournemouth. Not a word was uttered about the heroic struggle of Liverpool in defence of the workers in the city. The vilification outdid the Tories in its viciousness. Moreover no mention was made of those Labour councils such as Rhondda ‚Labour council‘ which had provoked strikes of their workforce because of the threat of privatisation. Nor was there a word about the cutbacks carried through by Newcastle council, by Wakefield where nurseries had been closed, and many other councils dominated by the right wing.
Right-wing leaders attack council
Kinnock’s attack provoked widespread indignation throughout Liverpool. In the weeks and months leading up to the Labour Party conference the bourgeois press had pilloried Liverpool as „smack city“, inhabited mainly by „mindless football hooligans“, of the unemployed and unemployable, of layabouts and, in the immortal and shameful phrase of the Sunday Times, „a majority of lumpens“.
Leon Trotsky pointed out that in the past, the British ruling class had demonstrated a ‚cold cruelty‘ towards the colonial masses. The same class hatred and viciousness has now been displayed towards Liverpool. The city was to be considered almost as an insubordinate colony by Thatcher. In the words of Baker at the Tory party conference the people of Liverpool were to be left to „twist in the wind“. The sick, the old, the sufferings of the disabled were to be used to bring the council to heel.
Now the leader of the Labour Party appeared to be joining in and putting the knife into Liverpool. His attack also opened the door to the Tories and Liberals together with the Liverpool Echo and Post to arouse what Engels called the „enraged petty bourgeois“. An organisation called „Liverpool against the Militant“ tried to organise reactionary demonstrations against the city council. The ‚LAM‘ slogan was „Kick Militant out of the Labour Party“. Unlike the demonstrations organised by the council where 20, 30, 40 and 50 thousand workers came out on the streets of Liverpool, this organisation of small businessmen, nightclub owners and other riff raff managed to organise 3,000 old-age pensioners on a Sunday afternoon outing at the Pier Head. Their numbers were grossly exaggerated by the press in order to frighten and intimidate the Labour council into capitulating. But the councillors remained absolutely firm. This in turn provoked the fury of the leaders of the labour and trade union movement.
Kinnock wanted to commit the councillors to „a psychiatric couch“. Even those who had formerly given at least lukewarm support to the council, such as David Blunkett, condemned the councillors refusal to carry through cuts as „inexplicable“, „insane“ and also as „an act of sabotage“. Margaret Hodge of Islington council condemned Liverpool for „letting down the left“. Cutting jobs and services it seems, has now become the new totem of the left. In fact it is those such as Blunkett, Hodge and Livingstone, etc. who have let down the left and local government workers.
As the city began to be starved of funds, the press then began to use the inevitable cut-backs as a stick with which to beat the council. The first fiddle in this chorus was taken by Sarah Cullen, a TV commentator for ITV’s News at Ten, a programme now commonly known by workers as „Lies at Ten“. The sick, the old, and the infirm, whose facilities were threatened by the Tory government’s cuts were presented on the TV as victims of the council’s policies. A barrage of filth and poison was spewed out by the organs of capitalism in the period of October and November.
‚An orderly retreat‘
Militant not only dominated the Labour Party conference, but also the Liberal, Tory and SDP conferences. Four Cabinet ministers at the Tory Party conference, led by Tebbit and Thatcher, denounced Militant and Liverpool City Council and demanded that Neil Kinnock carry through the expulsion of Militant from the Labour Party. The real instigators of the witch-hunt are in the Tory Cabinet. However, despite the attacks of the Tory government the bourgeois would have been compelled to beat a retreat in the face of the mass offensive of the Liverpool workers. This would have been particularly the case if the council would have had the support of Labour’s front bench and the national trade union leaders.
But the Labour and trade union leaders were as afraid of Liverpool succeeding as the Tory government itself. There is plenty of evidence to show that the leaders of the movement were actually encouraging Baker and the bourgeois behind the scenes in their refusal to give any concessions. One honest Kinnock supporter, a Labour MP, has admitted in private that his contacts in the Tory Party indicated that the government would not be able to stand by and see a major city go into bankruptcy. They would have come up with some kind of deal but for the fact that the Labour front bench were urging them to remain firm. As much as the government, the Labour right-wing, and their supporters in the trade union officialdom, are afraid of any „victory for militancy“.
If the miners‘ strike would have succeeded that would have undermined the right-wing. So too with the struggle of Liverpool City Council. Their fear was expressed in the shameful support of Kinnock for the government’s threat to use commissioners and even troops against the Liverpool working class in the event of the city going bankrupt. The Tories could not have even contemplated the sending-in of troops without the open approval of the Labour leaders. This statement of Kinnock, Cunningham, Straw and others during the Liverpool crisis provoked a wave of revulsion throughout the labour movement. It brought back the memory of the Callaghan government using troops against the firemen in 1977. This will raise a question in the eyes of many workers about the role of a Labour government with Neil Kinnock at its head. Does it mean that the next Labour government will be prepared to use troops against workers in struggle?
Both the Labour front bench and trade union leaders presented the Stonefrost Report as a ‚painless‘ solution to the problems of Liverpool. We have documented elsewhere (Militant, etc.) that the Stonefrost Report in effect meant massive increased burdens for the working class of Liverpool. The council refused to implement the report. However the campaign of the Labour and trade union officialdom had its effect in confusing and dividing the workforce. Therefore at the end of November the council was faced with a difficult choice. The first alternative was to engage in battle with only a minority of the workforce clearly understanding the issues and prepared to fight. The other alternative of an orderly retreat was chosen and we have explained in full in our statement in Militant the tactical reasons why this was done. But the Liverpool proletariat has been spared the big cuts which would have otherwise taken place, because of their magnificent struggle. Marxists have always argued that reforms are a by-product of militant and socialist struggle. In this case the marvellous struggle of the Liverpool proletariat has undoubtedly mitigated the effects of the cuts demanded by big business and the Tories. But some cuts such as the non-filling of vacancies etc. were inevitable. The £60 million loan that was given by the Swiss banks would have been impossible but for the preparedness of the council to go to the end in the struggle against the government. Pressure was undoubtedly used behind the scenes by big business in Liverpool and by the Tory government, not withstanding its subsequent claims to ’non-involvement‘. The Guardian and other bourgeois papers jeered about the „Gnomes of Zurich bailing out the Trotskyites in Liverpool“. The House of exhumed Lords devoted nearly a whole day to denouncing Militant, Liverpool council and particularly the Swiss bankers for seemingly bailing out the council. Beside himself with rage, Tory peer Lord Beloff even delved into history: „He thought Lenin’s remarks about the capitalist classes applied particularly to the bankers: ‚They would sell the rope by which they would themselves be hanged‘.“ (Financial Times, 12 December 1985).
But then, hinted the ignoble Lord, perhaps the £60 million loan was some fiendish plot hatched 70 years ago and just coming to fruition: „He reminded us Lenin had spent a considerable time in Zurich“!
But the fact remains that the loan only came through at one minute to midnight when it appeared as though the city was going to go to the brink and over. This loan coupled with some „unallocated cuts“ means that the basic gains of the proletariat of Liverpool have been safeguarded for the next period.
But nothing is permanent under capitalism. These gains will be taken back unless there is the socialist transformation of society. In the event of a new Labour government coming to power the ball will be in the court of Kinnock, Hattersley, Straw and Co to maintain through government action what has been built up by the struggle of the Liverpool working class.
What are the prospects for the battle in the next period? Liverpool has been a shining example to workers everywhere. The battle has been followed by workers throughout the world even through the distorted reports in the press and the overseas service of the BBC. Liverpool is a model to workers everywhere who want to see a victory over capitalism. The whole labour movement must salute the 48 Labour councillors who remained implacable and unwavering to the end.
The role of Militant supporters in the council workforce has been absolutely decisive. In the aftermath of the defeat of the strike vote on 25 September, Baker, the Tory Environment Minister was gloating in the Liverpool Echo: „The morale of the Militant must be very low on Merseyside this morning“. However on the very day this statement appeared we saw a one-day strike and a magnificent demonstration of 20,000 workers in defiance of Baker and his government. The morale of the Marxists is extremely high. At each stage of the struggle one thing has been brought out: where the influence of Marxism, with a clear programme and clear perspectives is strong, then the support of the workers has been forthcoming. But when, for instance, as on 25 September, there was a defeat amongst some workers of the recommendation to strike, there you will find the Marxists weak.
The best workers have already drawn all the necessary conclusions from what has been achieved in the GMBATU. Other unions must be similarly transformed into fighting organisations of the working class. The role of the leadership, of what Marxists call the subjective factor, has been starkly emphasised at each stage of the struggle in Liverpool.
The most pernicious tactics of deliberate confusion and dust-blowing together with outright lies came from the local supporters of the rapidly-dwindling ‚Communist Party‘. They acted scandalously as a mouthpiece of the right-wing Labour and even Tory ministers. If they had consciously set out to sabotage the struggle they would hardly have done better. Fortunately their influence has been-marginalised. They have been discredited in the eyes of the more conscious working-class fighters, and will play no significant part in future struggles on Merseyside.
The battle in Liverpool and Militant’s campaign for a socialist policy within the labour movement has earned us the venomous condemnation of the capitalists. They have pursued a campaign of pressure and of baiting to try and force Labour’s leadership to carry through a purge of socialists from the Labour Party, beginning with Militant and then going on to purge Tony Benn and the Campaign Group of Labour MPs. This is the first step in eliminating all the gains achieved in recent party conferences on party democracy and radical policies.
This in turn led to the enquiry into the Liverpool District Labour Party. Ex-leftwingers gathered together in the misnamed Labour Co-ordinating Committee (LCC), now universally known as the ‚Labour Careerist Committee‘, joined in the chorus of condemnation of Militant and the Liverpool DLP. Entirely unsubstantiated claims of ‚corruption‘ were made by these and others in the labour movement and in so doing they merely echoed the slanders of the capitalists. It is now a crime, according to these wiseacres for Labour Parties to have mass participation of trade unions in their meetings, to have 700 workers enthusiastically attending District Labour Party meetings.
Capitalists pushing for purge
Not so long ago the right-wing and their left-wing shadows were accusing Militant of „preferring small and unrepresentative cliques in constituencies“, and of „boring people away from meetings“. Our critics are strangely silent today when confronted with the spectacle of mass participation of workers in the Liverpool Labour Party. We have the unedifying spectacle of the so-called left-wing „Labour Coordinating Committee“ demanding that the participation of the trade unions in the DLP should be cut down. In the past these worthies enthusiastically supported rank and file control over the Parliamentary Labour Party through the re-selection of MPs, through the election of the cabinet by the Labour Party conference, etc. They are now the most vehement in demanding that control of the council by the DLP should be eliminated.
Scandalously the national Labour Party leaders have publicly supported the expulsion of Derek Hatton and Tony Mulhearn. If such a step is taken, which will be the beginning of a wide-scale purge in Liverpool and throughout the country, it will split the Labour Party from top to bottom. The capitalists are urging on the Labour leadership to take such a measure because they are alarmed by the results of the Tyne Bridge by-election with an absolute collapse of the Tory vote and the current split in their ranks. The way to prevent a stunning Labour victory is to present the spectacle of a divided and hopelessly disorganised Labour Party.
To expel Derek Hatton and Tony Mulhearn would be like trying to expel Arthur Scargill and Peter Heathfield during the miners‘ strike. It would not be possible to expel them without at the same time attempting to disband the Liverpool District Labour Party and the Labour Parties throughout Liverpool. Any attempt to move in this direction would in all probability mean open defiance of the National Executive Committee with these parties continuing to recognise these comrades as members. If the right-wing then moved in to try and close these parties, in all probability they would carry on with the mass support of all the workers in the area.
If such a step were taken, Militant together with others on the left would take the campaign to every section of the labour movement throughout the country. A campaign of explanation would be taken into the factories and onto the council estates. We would of course much prefer to concentrate on the battle against the class enemy, the Tory government. But in expelling Marxists, the right-wing are attempting to eliminate all the gains on policy, programme and democracy which the rank and file have achieved within the Labour Party. The leaders of the labour movement have a choice; they can have unity in the battle against the Tories – or they can have a purge. They cannot have both. What is absolutely scandalous is that these measures against the leaders of the Liverpool working class are being proposed when the bourgeois state is prosecuting them in the courts and threatening to fine them and ban them from office.
But there are stronger forces at work in society than the bureaucratic whims of a few right-wing leaders of the labour and trade union movement. The struggle in Liverpool was borne out of the social conditions in that city. Marxism has become a powerful lever for the Liverpool proletariat, not because of any alleged conspiracy, manoeuvre or intrigues as our bourgeois opponents imagine.
More ‚Liverpools‘ ahead
The Tory government intends to cut a further £1.3 billion from the block grants to local authorities – putting „all councils in Liverpool’s position“ as David Blunkett said recently. This will mean a further massive battle to avoid even bigger cuts. The Tory government, in concert with Tory councils throughout the country are attempting to compel councils to carry through a massive privatisation programme. It is these facts together with the long-term and endemic crisis of British capitalism that will undermine all attempts of the right-wing leaders of the labour movement to drive Marxism and its influence from the labour movement. The main lesson of Liverpool for any class conscious worker who attentively studies the events of the past three years is that only the policies, methods, programme, strategy and tactics of Marxism can guarantee a victory against capitalism in Britain and indeed on an international scale.
Schreibe einen Kommentar