The boot seems always to be on the other foot: and the other foot is always on a policeman! The March Poll Tax demo.
The news that fewer young people in
Britain rcognise the name of Neil Kinnock than Nelson Mandela or Mikhail
Gorbachev will surprisc few Labour activists: it is perhaps more surprising that a Labour Party which has veered from low profile to no profile on all the key issues of the day should be 20-
24 percent ahead in the opinion polls.
This lead has little to do with Labour's.
policies. The Tories' handling of the economy, together with the massive hatred of the Poll Tux and Kenneth Clarke's NHS reforms, have followed the massive popular support for the ambulance workers, helping to make the Thatcher govemment the most unpopular for a long time, Since the self-destruction of the "centre parties which formed the Alliance' in 1987. Labour has been the main beneficiary.
picking up a massive lead in the opinion polls, and achieving the spec tacular by election victory in mid Staffordshire: now there is the prob ability that on May 3 the Parly could even improve on its previous peak support of 1986,
Confidence in the Tories handling of the cconomy, usually the issue over which they keep 4 lead over Labour in the polls, has evaporated, Not only does inflation look like topping the 10 percent mark, with inletest (and most significantly mortgage interest) rates showing no sign of falling, but the Tories are under attack from their town" side. Both the director general of the CBI and the governor of the
Bank of England have disputed Chancellor John Major's more forecasts for the economy, and underlined the Tories"
opsimistie"
failure to avert the decline in manufacturing invesiment.
A survey of City and academic cconomists for the Economis
IN DEPTH
As the Tories' crisis worsens, swinging votes Kinnock's way,
Labour's response seems to get weaker, argues PETE FIRMIN.
But is this simply the new leadership style of Neil's team, or the fruits of Labour's commitment to reforming a capitalist system plunged deeper into crisis by
Thatcher's policies?
"detrimental to industrial relations".
liberals in comparison.
also seemed to be in their interests.
that beheving two-thirds showed
Labour's John Smith would make a better
Chancellor than John Major. Even the
(Eddled) figures for the fall in unemployment are no longer heralded as a major achievement since the Tories recognise them as double-edged. The removal of high unemployment as a psychological deterrent to fighting for significant wage rises is the last thing the Tories want at a time of nsing inflation.
"matural allies have
The Torics"
deserted them on other issues loo, with the banks withdrawing from the stadent loans scheme and the Engineering Employers* Federation criticising the proposed arrestment of wages of non-payers of the Poll Tax as
Thatcher's isolation internationally on a wide range of issues only adds to the impression that she is a lame duck. Now that the Tories are on the run over their economic policies they seem unabie to recapture lost ground on anything, even their usually reliable standbys of law and order"- with crime figures still sky-high, and Thatcher's barmy foothall identity card scheme ahandoned - and racism, with Norman
Tebbit leading a reactionary revolt over the immigration of Hong Kong business people that makes the Thatcher leadership seem like woolly
Skilled workers desert the Tories
Thatcher won the support of an important layer of the skilled working class in 1983 and 1987 because her strategy for restoring the profitability of Brilish capitalism not only seemed to be working, but democracy was always a
The share-owning, property-owning
sham, but the myth could be sold to those who gained from it in the short term. The ideological benefits of privatisation and council house sales were casy to accept while the share market was buoyant and interest rates were low. Now they begin to be revealed for what they always were - part of a strategy of putting all industry into the hands of large financial companies and attacking the "welfare state".
Tax cuts, even ones which disproportionately benefit the rich, look different once they no longer offset higher mortgage payments, inflation and the Poll
Tax.
Thatcher's policies have always been a direct and immediate allack on that section of the working class which is low paid or unemployed. Bur in providing short term benefits to better off sections, she managed to persuade them that her policies were in their interests, despite pangs of conscience which have meant that the Tories have always done worse in the opinion polls on issues such as unemployment and the NHS.
Now the economic crisis, and particularly the Poll
Tax, mean that the chickens are coming home to roost, Until now the Tories have heen very careful to attack only one section of the class at a time. Indeed, this was part of a pre-planned strategy, down to the detail of what order to take on different unions
(steel workers first, miners only after other significant sections had
Labour's electoral strategy
The supposed high point of
Labour's general election campaign of 1987 was the Kinnock video, widely acclaimed by those who matter (the public relations 'experts') as much better than the Tories'. Yet the
Tories still won, because more people still preferred their policies to Labour's bland washing powder adverts'.
Come the next general election, Labour's campaign promises to be even less political, judging by the standards of the mid-Staffs by-election. To
Kinnock, cashing in on the
Tories unpopularity means making no policy statements or promises whatsoever.
Kinnock's favoured type of candidate is Glenda Jackson or
Peter Mendelson, polished media personalities with right wing politics.
An indication of the deter mination to prevent the left's voice being heard in the election is given by the way in
IN DEPTH ing nearly everyone at one. which Walworth Road clamped down on those constituencies threatening to produce manifestos which differed from the 'official' line on the Poll Tax for May's council elections. Those Parties whose manifestos promised not to fine people for non-payment of the Poll Tax were told to remove this or have a manifesto written by regional officials imposed upon them, and face suspension of the Party.
Yet in the general election the stakes are too high for the Left to allow its voice to be silenced. To keep our heads down and campaign on Kinnock's policies, or to duck out of the campaign altogether, would be to evade our responsibilities. There has to be a Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory which, while calling for a vote for Labour, demands that a Labour govemment implement policies in the interests of the working class.
The Tories have their chickens coming home to roost: the Labour Party has these two been defeated). The difference with the Poll Tax is that they are attackThatcher's loyal lieutenants Of course, the Tories have been ably assisted throughout their 11 years of attacks on the working class by the Labour and trade union bureaucracy, From their persistent refusal to lead any defence of trade union rights or jobs and working conditions, to their political bankruptcy in failing providing any
Ideological alternative to convincing market, which is now the starting point of the Labour programme, Thatcher couldn't have done it wilhout them.
As the Tories' crisis becomes starker, this becomes more and more obvious. At the height of the Tories' unpopularity, the TUC and Labour Party are not willing to defend the working class against the universal attack on its living standards and democratic rights represented by the Poll Tax. Instead they write in condemning any notion of con-payment, refuse to call even demonstrations against it, and merely say Pay up and vote Labour when the time comes".
Since becoming Labour Leader in 1983. Kinnock has avoided giving support let alone encouragement, to any section of the working class in conflict with the Tories, from the miners in conflict through to the ambulance workers. The most he has ever done is call for arbitration. More often his contributions have been seen to attack or undermine the working class fighthack, as when he condemned violence by miners who fought back against police brutality without even the notional 'even-handedness" condemning police violence. and called on railworkers to call off their strike and accept BR's pay offer last year.
Even within the rules of the pariamentary game. Kinnock has refused to attack the Tories, backing them on 'national security" grounds over the Zircon spy sattelite affair and leaving it to hackbenchers (occasionally even Tory ones) to probe issues like Colin Wallace's claims of psychological warfare in the North of Ireland and even refusing to go onto the offensive when this
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 24, May 1990 Page 21
Smile! It's candid camera! Has Kinnock persuaded these keen photographers to run him off a set of contact prints to ease expulsions?
The witch-hunt that has been going on for years against individuals, particularly Milltant supporters, and Constituency Parties Is once again focussed on Merseyside, with the Labour Party machinery stepping In to protect Frank Field by attacking both Militant and Socialist Organiser. The additional objective Is to prevent Wallasey from selecting a left candidate. But the witch-hunt Is also being stepped up a notch around the Poll Tax.
Councillors from Brighton to Strathelyde are facing disciplinary action for refusing to vote to set a Poll Tax. Many on the left with a track record of opposition to cuts and the Poll Tax have been prevented from standing as councillors on May 3. In Swansea the selection of the Chair of the Wales anti-Poll Tax Federation (a Militant supporter) to replace the sitting mayor has been overturned, the party suspended, and the individual concerned now faces expulsion.
This systematic witch-hunt has now extended to letters from Walworth Rd telling parties to have nothing to do with
IN DEPTH The witch-hunt and the Poll Tax the All-Britain Federation of Anti-Poll Tax groups, threatening to take action against the activists involved.
Kinnock's oflensive against the anti-Poll Tax movament fits nicely in with the attempts of the media to label the movement as the puppets of Militant, the Socialist Workers Party or Class War (with the additional neat touch of the right wing and the press blaming Militant for the NUT conference decision for industrial action). At the same time we have the scandalous decision of Labour-run Hackney Council to suspend Andy Murphy for being interviewed on Class War's attitude to the Trafalgar Square 'riot'.
The left must have a principled position of fighting this witch-hunt both inside and outside the Labour Party with the broadest possible defence democratic rights. Socialists must refuse to accomodate to what the witchhunters consider acceptable, and instead step up our involvement in the mass anti-Poll Tax movement.
DUCE unearthed a can of worms.
Kinnock's concern has been solely with = fruitless scarch for issues on which he could unite with "wet Tories or even the Lords against Thaicher. Detence of working class interests hasn't entered his thinking. Now, at a time when the Tories are loss popular then ever, he docsn'l even call on them to armounce a general clection pulling their policies "to the verdict of the people'. something Harold Wilson regulurly called on the Tories to do: Instead he only seems to echo the bleatings of the Tory wets" that Thatcher is had for the courtry. It is almost as if he is arguing for a change of Tory leader rather thin confronting their policies - perhaps not realising that Thatcher's personal unpopularity is a major factor in Labour's electoral support
Kinnock's strategy
The Labour leadership's concem has been solely for respectability and acceptance by the ruling class and their media. Turing their backs on the working class, they have done the full round of businessmen's lunches and conferences to win the capitalists" confidence. This quest for respectability reached its most sickening depths when Roy Hattersley, in his role as Shadow Home Secretary, called - without benefit of trial or evidence - for "the stiffest possible sentences" Tor those involved in the Poll Tax 'not".
This has gone hand-in-hand with a remorseless drive to ditch every last Labour policy which contained even a whift of socialism, and clamping down on the party democracy which could threaten this course.
The lesson" Kinnock drew from the Wilson
Page 22 SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 24, May 1990
This conference offers the opportunity for the building of a broad, democratic organisation of the Labour Left at a time when Labour is riding high in the polls and active resistance to the
Tories is greater than at any time in the last members interested in fighting the politics of
The Future Of Socialism In The Labour
Kinnock's style of twist could leave us all on the rock and roll and Callaghan governments of 1974 79 is not that they came to grief because they attempted to resolve the crisis of capitalism by attacking working class living standards, but that they weren't ruthless cnough in doing so, and failed to suppress the revolt within the labour movement against those policies.
The austerity measures of those governments met increasing work ing class resistance, both through strikes and making bodies of the labour movement, culminating in the autumn of 1978 in the rejection of incomes policy by both the TUC and Labour
IN DEPTH within the decision
Labour Party Socialists
Conference
MAY 19th & 20th eleven years.
In addition to discussing what policies we should be fighting for Labour to adopt in the
1990g and the democratic changes we want to bring about in Labour's structures, the conference will be discussing campaigns over the witch-hunt, Poll Tax and general election.
This is an essential conference for all Party
"new realism'
Party
SHEFFIELD POLY
The Student Union, Pond Street
Party conference, and then the Winter of
Discontent'. The defeat of Callaghan in May
1979 was followed by the adoption of left policies on a wide range of issues, wide-ranging mcasures towards Party democracy, and the near-election of Tony Benn as deputy leader in
1981
For some sections of the media and their paymasters in the ruling class it appeared that the
Labour Party might change fundamentally, to become a socialist party, committed to more than tinkering reforms.
As a party based on working class support, there are, in the last analysis, two possible routes
Labour can take. One is to embrace the system, and reassure the ruling class that - despite its more unruly volces - it is a 'respoctable" party in the interests of committed to policies capitalism and better able to control the working class when the Tories are unpopular. The other would be to break with the system, and fight for the interests of the working class and socialism against capitalism.
Kinnock, like every previous Labour leader.
is committed unquestioningly to the first road and implacably opposed to the second. In desiring to become prime minister he can see no further than wanting to gain recognition from the bourgeois media. That there is not the slightest concern with winning working class support for policies which might contain the merest hint of a challenge to capitalism was symbolised carly on by the closing down of even the mealy-mouthed Labow Weedly newspaper, and its replacement with the cynical mail shot glossy Labour Party News, the very antithesis of a campaigning publication and epitome of
Kinnock has been preoccupied with two. issues: firstly, reversing all policy commitments unpalatable to the ruling such as nationalisation, repeal of anti-union laws, increases in public spendunilateral disarmament Secondly, he has attempted to close down all avenues of resistance to these policy changes both now and in the future. This explains his opposition to the self-organisation of black:
people and women in the Parly, the closing
Labour Party Young down of the
Socialists, and the prolonged witch-hunt, involving the suspension of Constituency
Parties and districts which dared to cross him, and the expulsion of individuals
(primarily Militant supporters).
The attack on Party democracy continues relentlessly, with the proposals to reverse mandatory resclection of MPs (one of the gains of post-1979) for all sitting
MPs, the extension of one member, one vole' (and posial hallots) to all local party decisions, the downgrading of party con-
[crences, both national and regional, from sovereign bodies to talking shops, and ultimatcly the abolition of the block vote.
The eventual abolition of the block vole is the most far-reaching of these changes, intended to cut off the possibility of working class opposition to a Labour government's policies reaching into
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 24, May 1990 Page 23
IN DEPTH
Labour conference and overthe leadership. Of course, despite the demagogy of some, this would not restrict the influence of trade union bureaucrats on Labour policy, but rather make it even harder for the rank and file to call them to account
Kinnock wants to be able to tic the bureaucrats to sup.
port for Labour policies, such as wage controls, without backlash from their members. He has of course.
had to tread carefully over the speed with which he has moved on this, attempting lo ensure that the CLPs are fully
"tamed before giving them sole decision-making rights.
•Sit back and wait to be elected' place, Kinnock's approach has been to wait for the
Tories to become unpopular.
Fighting the Poll Tax today... the roof tax' tomorrow?
He couldn': do otherwise, given that Labour has no fundamentally different policies to offer. Indeed, given Labour's response is always why should we say what the Tories should do with the coonomy, we're not in government' it is hard to sec what the economists "prefer" in Labour's programme.
Above all else, Kinnock desires a smooth change of goverment without unrest as part of dampening working class expectations of a
Labour government.
The risk — one Kinnock is prepared to take hecause he puts the stability of capitalism even above his own desire to become prime minister - is that the Tories could Tocover by the time of the general clection.
Harold Wilson's Lahour government nearly did after facing a similarly large deficit in the polls. A change in the Tory leadership (not unlikely if their crisis continues over the summer) and an oconomic recovery in
1991 could make this at least a remote possibility.
The Tories lagged a long way behind in the polls during stages of the miners" strike. The way to ensure they don't recover would be t support the struggles against them, but this is of course the exact opposite of what Kinnock wants.
Labour's contradictions
In wanting to suppress Party democracy. Kinnock recognises the contradiction for the Labour Party. While desiring the endorsement of the ruling class, it relies on the votes and support of the working class.
Regardless of Kinnock's insistence that a Labour government will promise nothing of any substance, a Labour clection victory will raise expectations in the working class that it will carry out measures in their
Indeed, as the Tories hit more and more problems, working class confidence is boosted even in advance of an clection. Conflict between a working class fighting for its interests and a Labour govemment committed to austerity measures in the interesis of capitalism are virtually inevitable, even if we can't predict the how and when.
This is already coming to the fore over the Poll Tax, where
Kinnock's line of 'Pay Up and Vote Labour" - the equivalent of the old promise of 'pie in the sky' - conflicts with the desire of millions to defeat the Poll Tax here and now. The Labour leadership's insistence that it would take them two years after an election to replace the Poll
Tax with an unspocified "roof tax" makes their line even less attractive,
POLL TAX?
IT'S AN
ABOMINATION
SCRAP IT'
and is an indication of their problems to come.
The Tasks of the Left
The view that Thatcher was unbeatable, or at best could only be beaten by pacts with the Liberals and SDP. put about not so long ago by Marxism Today, has been replaced by one that says that Kinnock's policies are the only way to beat Thatcher. Yet a Labour government carrying out the Party's current policies could be a disaster for the working class.
Unless we build a pole of attraction which can offer an alternative political lead, against a Labour government if necessary, conflict between Labour and the working class will lead to demoralisation and dis. illusionment, with the possible replacement of Lahour by a Tory government even further to the right, as happened in 1979.
The tasks of the Labour Left are clear. In addition to building the largest possible opposition now to Kinnock's policy and constitutional changes, we have to link up with those engaged in struggle against the Tories (especially over the Poll Tax), offering both a perspective for these struggles and laying the basis for opposition to the policies of a Kinnockite government.
Despite Kinnock's fervent wishes, such opposition will spill over into the Party itself; our task is to ensure It is organised and united around a clear alternative. The groundwork for this can be laid by drawing those fighting the Tories now into the Party on a perspective of opposing the politics of 'new realism'.
The clection of a Labour goverment would most probably lead to an initial demobilisation of struggles, while people waited to sec what it would do. (We only need think of the opposition we would mcet in arguing for continued resistance to the Poll Tax after a Labour victory.) But we cannot wait, we need to start now if an altemative 15 1o gain
While it would be wrong to pose the Labour Party Socialists conference in Sheffield on May 19th/20th as 'the answer" for the left, it can go some way towards preparing the left for the tasks ahead, even at a time when the left is weaker than it has been for years. The setting up of a national, democratic organisation of the Labour Left and campaigns around the Poll Tax and the witch-hunt, and the launching of a left campaign for the general election would be a big step forward.
Page 24 SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 24, May 1990