Marxism Today's 'New Axis' height of the print dispute, an article which appears to suggest that Hammond and the LEPTU have the only viable way forward
Evidently fearful of this, CP industrial organiser Peter Carter weighs in to give Lloyd's ideas a vagucly left gloss in the next issue. No, says Carter, Hammondism and Scargillism are not the only viable alternalives: there is a 'third way'. This third way between the right and the ultra-left is 'the broad left of British politics. This group, which has an urgent need to assert itself includes the Labour Co-ordinating Committee, and a host of personalities like Bickerstaffe, Sawyer, Knapp, Livingstone and Blunkett. This group is contral to winning the central ground of the labour movement.
This broad left, according to Pete Carter constitutes a 'new axis' against the ultra-left which includes the 'Militant tendency, the Campaign group of MPs, the Communist Campaign Group and the Morning Star' -un ultra-left coalition which has no concept ot broader alliances outside the labour movement. Carter suggests that the broad left of which he talks will have the quality of 'generating popular struggles"
No doubt Carter's idea of creating a 'third force' against the hard left and the extreme right of the labour movement is one which many, including the Tribune group of MPs, the now-style Tribune newspaper and even Neil Kinnock himself might agree with. But our objection to it is not basically that; our objection is that putting this third force forward as a viable grouping to lead the movement in a socialist direction (we assume
that Carter wants some sort of socialist direction) lacks any basis in facts. Indeed it contradicts all known facts about the forces he names and the way in which ideas and consciousness develop in the labour movement
Let's take the question of generating popular struggles. Does Carter seriously think that the Labour Co-ordinating Committee, Tom Sawyer, Rodney Bickerstaffe et are genuinely interested in 'gencrating popular struggles? The icc, being faithful supporters of Kinnock, want to close down popular struggle in order to concentrate on clectoralism. Bickerstaffe, Sawyer and Knapp will run a mile from the first sign of struggleamong the members of their respective unions. And Ken Livingstone helpfully suggested recently, in an interview with Marxism Today writer Bea Campbell, that the hard lett in the Labour Party should be shot. He and Blunkett are two of the main people responsible for heading off the struggle against rate capping.
It might also seem a little bit strange to Carter, if he thinks about it, that the most gigantic popular struggle in Britain in recent years was led not by the motley crew of his third force bur by the 'hard lott' ultras round Arthur Scargill!
The miners' strike is worth pondering on. It created the broadest popular alliance outside the labour movement and the trade unions scen in recent years. It involved an alliance of political parties, tens of thousands of women, whole communities, hundreds of support groups encompassing people from 27
every walk of life. This was par excellence a broad alliance stretching beyond the trade union movement. This was not because Scargill is a strategic genius, but because the struggle and the alliance were indissoluble. The alliance was created by the exemplary character of the tight put up by the miners, its obvious justice and moral superiority over the government, and the fact that the
unlike so many sections of the "broad left', were actually prepared to raise the banner of struggle against the Tory
The miners' struggle also involved an openness to support from other sections of the community, including womens groups, lesbian and gay groups, and black organisations, which was very far from the insinuations of sectarian narrowness and crude workerism which Marxism Today makes about the very large group of people in Britain it calls the 'narrow, sectarian left'.
Since Carter mentions Sawyer, Knapp and Bickerstaffe, it is worth making the point that only the NUM leadership has voted in far our of black sections in the Labour Party, while Carter's broad left', so keen to make alliances, did not.
The thing which really unites the personalities listed by Carter as being the core of a third force is that they are all furiously i commodating to Neil Kinnock. This of course Today's own accommodation to Kinnock. This accommodation has been signalled in two recent articles in the February 1986 issuc: one by Michael Rustin advocating a coalition with the SDP/Liberal Alliance in the event of a hung parliament, and the other by Sam Aaronvitch saying 'goodbye' to the Alternative Economic Strategy --. from the right.
'there is a straight choice
facing the unions: Scargill
Tor Hammond'
Rustin takes the same line as Anthony Barnett in a recent Guardian article — that Labour should be a bit tougher in the policies it puts forward in order to be in a better bargaining position when the time to create a coalition with the Alliance comes. superior to glorious opposition'.
Rustin's strategy, again not contradicted by Marxism Today's editors and echoing a
Cof articles suggesting coalition, hopelessly utopian. What on carth moves Barnett and Rustin to imagine that the Alliance will be in the slightest bit prepared to take on board any radical, anti-capitalist clements from Labour's programme if a coalition is formed? Surely the price tor such a coalition would be the ditching of every last remnant of radical policies? The picture of messrs. Steel and Owen bargaining with Kinnock over which radical policies will in fact be implemented by a coalition is one of the least convincing scenarios to be dreamed up by even Marxism Today's broad range of contributors.
Sam Aaronovitch, one of the CP's key 28 theorists of the AES during the 1970s, puts
forward a new economic strategy which makes significant concessions Kinnockite thinking. Stressing the limitations of what any Labour government could have the resources to achieve, he argues for the trade unions to police their own incomes policy; for 'investment and modernisation' without any measures of social ownership of industry or the banks; and for a 'reconsideration' of the left's opposition to the LEC. Space does not permit a detailed discussion of Aaronovitch's positions, but they obviously involve a sharp shift to the right on the positions on the AES defended by much of the Labour left and Cr for the past titteen Today Hunger Amidst Plenty Aaronovitch, Andrew Glyn's Million Jobs « Ycar pamphlet published by the Campaign group of MPs looks like the last word in ultra-leftism on the economy (which is doubtless what
The pro-Kinnock logic of what Marxism Today is now saying couldn't be clearer. On the one hand you have the bashing of the hard left as unrealistic and sectarian, on the other hand a stressing of the policy objcetives of job creation and welfarism through investment in the existing structures of British capitalism. And on the international level you have, through Aaronovitch's explicit questioning of opposition to the bEC, and a thoroughly false analysis by Jon Bloomfield (December "85 issue) that Europe is standing up to Reagan, a promotion of the 'European' option for British capitalism.
Despite Pete Carter's invocation of the 'broad left' of British politics, it is obvious that Marxism Today and through it the 'Euro' wing of the cris expressing a marked shift to the right even in its own traditional positions. In factthey now occupy a political position well to the right of a really broad swathe of the British left. And let it also be said that in addition to providing the theoretical ammunition for a rightward moving section of the labour burcaucracy, their chosen alles - the LCC, the NUP! leadership and so on are among the leading witch hunters of the hard left in the Labour Party and the trade unions.
The agenda for the ever-more-right wing thinking of Marxism Today was set by Stuart Hall in his article 'Realignment — for what?' (December '85 issuc). Hall says that 'the ritual expurgation of the "hard left" is not
what realignment is all about'. Neither, he says, is it about supporting hinnock. l is bout making socialism more reterant to the cra in which we live, and particularly to the realities of modern day Britain. This oper ales on a number of lords. Oneisthoncedlo 'Teminise' socialism. Another is recognsing the constraints under which ans Labou government would realistically bave to oper ite. But most of all it is about creating the alliances which correspond to the real cha acter of society today, and the workforce which actually exists. We have to break with a conception of socialist strategy which corresponded to a period when the majorin of workers lived in nuclear families, worked in heavy industry, and lived in a period of capitalist boom and prosperity.
Stuart Hall knows as well as anvone I suppose that Marxists judge individuais and political currents not by what they say about themselves, or even what they think about themselves, but what ther actualls do. So one response to his 'manifesto of alignment' might be to say that despite his protestations, Marism lodes i rightisin is obviously abour bashing the hard left and supporting Kinnock. But we can't leave it there, because the probiems of making socialism relevant that he mongons are real ones. It's self-evident that there has bech recomposition of the workforce. with none intellectual labour, the rise of a new, and
impoverished white collar proletariat. It's also true that the old nuclear lanuly is no longer the pre cminent and unique form of family of the working class. Likewise, the struggles of women. black people, lesbians and gays — and conscious ness of their oppression -.. have become more central to socialist thinking.
These changes of course pose many challenges on the lovel of analysis and strategy for socialists. Above all chet pose the challenge of building o ami capitalise alliance which can articulate the needs and
'bluntly, Stuart Hall is engaged in a con job' demands of broad sections of the population who are neither industrial workers, male or white. All that is truc. But what is not self-evidently truc, and what amounts to a
sequitur in Wall's line of is that such a reworking of socialist analysis and strategy leads to a shilt
Tand to an endorsoment of Kinnockite political themes.
To put it blundly Start Hall is engaged in a con job. If you define the 'hard' left as inherently incapable of coming to graps with new rcalities, and vou define the creative application of Marxism as moving to the right, that as sure as might follows day, that you arrive at the neat equation coming to grips with new realities - moving to the right, QED. The irony is that a Kinnock government, or a coalition, will have some rude shocks for anyone who wants to champion the interests of the oppressed They'll have an awful lot of 're thinking' to
INTERNAL ONAL
let, and santed a sestomarie polomic with exist between them have systematically
Why we left