Policy Review - and we certainly wouldn't recommend it to cheer you codifying and developing the ideology which through the verbiage to give you a However it is an important document: Kinnock and his cohorts have embraced, It will dominate this ycar's Labour Conference and It proposes to junk many of the party's more radical commitments - and prepares the ground for ditching the rest by next year. Since it is al- ways casier to defeat an enemy when you know what their strategy is, we will tryto give a round The first things that hits you about the docu- ment apan from its size and tedious language dividuals. Linguistically this is balanced by constant references to the community, but term under third torn Thatcherism; "Individual' is not. So we are constantly told that Labour must be the party of individual choice - and are the incessant references to the rights of in- idcologically there is no balance at all. "Community Is a very weak and ill-delined while this should have certain limits, the docu- discussions in the party over the next year. up of its most central points. potted version. ир.
Page 9 of'a policy of steady expansion, competitive banks and finance houses to respurce a full scale socialist investment programme, it Most telling of all, however, is the section un social ownership. Apart from the concepl of "public interest companies" which will be monitoring on the question of consumer af- fairs, investment and pricing policy, the rest of the section is familiar. It carefully avoids nationalisation. Perhaps it would be fairer to say il almost rules out sole state ownership and proposes instead a variety of measures such as minority and majority shareholdings, workers" The document is a product of the acceptance lance that is maintained despite all evidence of sound balance hetween finance and industry". Thatcherite view of the cconomy - an accep- collectives, share schemes and workers" co- by most of the Labour leadership of a the daily worsening of the crisis. In this sense it fusis even its own limited terms: it is neither Jean Reilly makes vague references to establishing by some unspecified means. new nor realistic. Throwing in the towel on the economy operatives: of'a policy of steady expansion, competitive exchange Tates, and low inflation together with structural measures that ensure a moder crisis - unemployment, a rising balance of This, coupled with measures to deal with regional imbalances, and the question of the EEC after 1992, makes up the response of the much-heralded policy review to the present trade deficit, a much reduced industrial base and a level of manufacturing output which is moment that these measures sound a bit familiar. You would he dead right. This is nothing more than a mish-mash of Keynesian expansionism and a set of supply side policies For instance the document correctly iden- Some of you may be thinking at this very which although inoffensive. perhaps even worthy, are hardly capable of dealing with the crisis. I is a recipe for another Wilson-style tifies one of Britain's major problems as alack of investment. However instead of committing the next Labour Government to nationalise the not even as high the 1979 level. failure in government. supply response'. Just as Nigel Lawson's boom heads for bust, Labour'sleaders have abandoned even the pretence of a radical alterna- The authors of the Policy Review section claim requires a new approach to the central that deals with the cconomy come to the point Economie success in the 1990s they question of how best to help the companics, the entreprenuers, the risk-takers, the managers, the workers. to meet the challen- comes fifth in line, affer entreprenners and risk-takers. The only poople to get lower ranking than workers are scientists, tech- people, presumably, who are going to have a major role to play in the new high technology. Labour's plan for the economy consists of the working class nologists and trainers. These are the very high investment conomy which the authors a Medium Term Industrial Strategy made up SOCIALIST DUTLOOK no 9 October 1988 So there we have it ges of the next decade!. pretty quickly!
Wayne Edgington And the review offers no solutions to deal key guestions at Lubour party conference. But the ability of the left to turn back the tide of new Our ability lo huild mass campaigns. whether around defence of the NHS. apposition to the Poll Tax, against Soction 28, or around the closure of Cowley will be more significant in delermining the long term relationship of for- field movement as a force for hoth discussion and action, bringing logether activists inside and outside the Labour Party aal pose a real challenge for leadership, organisationally and politically, in the party, in the trade unions and reviow. The question of Britain's occupation of the north of Ireland is absent — although the Labour party has just issued a separate docu- On women's rights. while the commitment policy, the central issues of abortion and con- On racism, the document has little to offer. White there is a commitment to repeal of Section 28. the review seems to draw back from with the depth of the cconomic crisis or to al- leviate the suttering imposed on the working class by Thatcher's policies over the last mine There will be dehale on a number of these In particular, it 1s vial to hurld the Chester: lo the Women's Ministry is affirmed and some gestures are made in the direction of existing existing party policy to end all legal discrimina- realism will not be decided on conference floor. other than to waffle ahout supposedly non-dis- JANE WELLS tries to work out what is new about Labour's latest policy ment in which it upholds the Unionist veto. "