AS THE LABOUR leadership plans to fight the next election on the most right wing Labour platform for decades, HARRY SLOAN looks at the track record of British social democracy in government. MANY on the left feel not only bitter but hetrayed by Neil Kinnock's demolition of the radical policies fought for and won at Labour Conferences in the 1980s.
In many cases the disillusionment arises from the mistaken belief that the Labour Party could be transformed inta a genuine workers' party on a socialist This idea is often linked to the illusion - promoted by the old Communist Party, and even by Militant's call for an Enabling Act that socialism can be achieved in Britain through parliamentary measures, using the existing (capitanst state machinery to existate Nov. 9, 1991 No. 11 away the power of capital.
These were always illusions. If anything, by renouncing any policy that even hints at a challenge to the legitimacy of capitalism, Kinnock's team are returing Labour to the real, right wing traditions of British social democracy. It has been the outs of 'leftism' - primarily during spells in opposition - that have been thi exceptions in Labour's history: class collaboration and right wing policies have been the general rule.
Bourgeois
Marxists have always shared Lenin's charactensation of Labour as a bourgoois workers' party - one tied hand and foot to capitalism and its state, but it We call toe 2 working class support. Labour vote despite, not because of the various policies, programmes and manifestoes it has published, none of which has ever called for working class action let alone mapped out a perspective of socialism.
There never was any 'golden age' in which Labour leaders spoke out as working class militants or put forward a socialist programme. Not could there have been. The Party began life in the carly 1900s as the pr olitical offspring of the far-from-radical trade bureaucrats, themselves not socialists but on the rebound from their traditional alliance with the Liberal Part Though the formation of a Labour Party organisationally and politically independent of the capitalist parties represented a historic stride forward for the British class (one which orkers in the USA have yet to make the development was restricted. The new Party took on in parliament the traditional trade union reformist goal of seeking to improve workers' lot within the capitalist system.
Since then Britain has had a succession of Labour governments. Each time the basic policy •framework has been the same - an attempt to manage (or 'plan') capitalism better than the capitalists, backed by a readiness to repress the workers when their militancy gets in the way how servi male be to lend ter Labour's may be its leaders' be haviour and commitment to capitalism, the Party's base of working class support and its links with the unions mean that it is always potentially under pressure -and thereforeregarded by the employers as less reliable than their own political party - the Tories.
Turning points
Many of the watershed dates and events in Labour's history that stick in the mind concern major betrayals under economic pressure. Having rejected any socialist solution to the capitalist crisis, i ahour leaders wind up taking respon sibility for restoring viability.
1931: It was Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's failure to persuade his cabinet to impose huge spending cuts to placate the City which led him to form a coalition with the Tories and Liberals. In the ensuing general election Labour was decimated - falling from 269 to 52 seats. and remained marginalised throughout much of the 19305.
1951: The post-war Labour government's decision to respond to conomic problem be a for spectacles and false teeth the principle that the new NIS be free at point of use - triggered of Aneurin Bevan and Harold Wilson. But it also helped ensure the defeat of Attlee's party in the General Election, ushering in the Tories for thee notorious '13 years of misrule'.
1966: Harold Wilson's pay freeze raz alongside his witch-hunting and state scabbing on the Seatarers' The 1967 devaluation of the pound and Wilson's attempt to cover up the impact it would have on workers' living standards ("The pound in your pocket has not been devalued") helped undermine Labour's support in the working clas even before the attempt at anti-urde legislation in 1969.
1976 When Labour's Chancellor Denis Healey returned from the International Monetary Fund to unveil a swingeing package of public spending cub and compulsory wage controls, the scene for the subsequent parliamer tary pact with the Liberals, and for the Winter of Discontent' of 1978-79 whide sawa Labour government in pitched be tle with section after section of trac unionists, opening the door for Thatcher The economy, or the workers?
It was nothing new when Neil Kin nock boasted at the 1985 Bouremoac conferencethat Labour was "the party d production he insisted that
"We' ve got to have a goverment that many, of Sweden, of France, of Italy, puts This approach follows on a long, unlistinguished history of Labour leaderi struggling to run the capitalist economy.
he economic policies of the 1945-51 Attlee government were strongly haped by Labour's involvement in the wartime coalition government, in which TGWU leader Ernest Bevin as Minister of Labour spearheaded the strikebreaking and speed-up offensive in industry.
After 1945 the wartime Joint Produc ton Conne an OnS P laborated with employers to maximise output continued, as did the brital 1927 anti-union laws, passed in the aftermath of the General Strike. remained in force until broken by mass unofficial action on London docks.
The Labour government used its massive 100-seat election victory as a mandate not to sweep away reconstruct British capitalism. The profitable manufacturing and engineering industries were left secure in private hands, as were the banks (other than the Bank of England) and finance houses. Only the most bankrupt sectors and infrastructure industries - notably Tall and cieciriity - were nationalised. paying lavish compensation to the old owners while many of the existing managers remained in control.
Just as government cash was the only way to prop up these industrics, so the establishment of the National Health re-aruaDy Dours niosi radical reform hundreds of bankrupt charity-funded hospitals which faced ruin.
White Heat When Labour eventually returned to reforge the (capitalist) economy in 'the revolution", its radicalism was equaily It took the form of nationalising the plan' capitalism, with the establishment of a new Department of Economic Af. fairs as a counterweight to the Treasury, and the drawing up of a National Plan.
However the 'plan' got little further than establishing an Industrial Reor. Kanisation Corporation, which heloed sponsor mergers between big firms, resulans in sant joo slasnuns comoute British Leyland and ICL. ane atemes to tope aruons to d corl mon strategy with employers ran swiftiy into trouble as Labour tried to impose a 3 percent limit on pay increases The final years of Wilson's first period in government saw workers secking their own answers to low pay and poor conditions, througha massive escalation of official and unofficial strikes.
The response from Wilson and Minister of Labour Barbara Castle was to draw up draconian anti-union measures in the misnamed White Paper In Place of Strife It was withdrawn unofficial stoppages in 1969, but by that point Labour in office had once again dermined its own support sufficient allow Ted Heath's Tories to creep u from benint and win a surprise erecaon Radical manifesto By the time Wilson came back to Downing. Street in the midst of the miners' strike in February 1974, preceding Labour Conference had adopted a range of radical left policies, substantial calls for Grew of these saw the light of day.
Once again Labour's approach was to attempt 'plan' an This time through the teș ration of "planning agreements"
-ivate emplovers rs sing them. and setting up a NaEmerprise Board with powers to • = winds into fledgiing → iwperate approach PHOT which were the failed "planning agreement"
with US car firm Chrysler which collapsed with thousands of redundancies;
much of British Leyland - also followed massacre of dozens of plants and thousands of jobs; and the in the notth of trcland The stuggling shipbuilding were nationalised.
On the trade union front, Wilson inherited Heath's Industrial Relations Act bailed out - which was only repealed under the threat of a national engineering strike, and the third Phase of Freaw s pay laws.
which despite concessions to the miners was upheld against a bitter struggle by health workers.
The carly, honeymoon period of class collaboration saw the arrival of the Social Contract in sacrifices in exchange for the by reforms but by outright wage con.
trols, triggering a strike by (unsuccessfully) called out the troops as scabs.
By 1978 the unbroken militancy of the ister Callaghan to demand a TUC agreement to unit picketing and curb the effectiveness of strikes in the public sector.
When Kinnock now proclaims his refusal to repeal Tory anti-union laws wait for the hoped-for economic growth he is merely following a well-worn path to failure. ( Foreign Policy Though the left watched aghast as Kinnock's team vied with the Tories to be most hawk-like on the Gulf War, we should remember that from the very outset Labour has always been a party committed to British imperialism, acting in wartime as the recruiting sergeants of the capitalist ciass Under Wilson, ovemment imited in 90s that the alklands had to remain British. In op position 14 years later, Michael Foot's team were quite consistent in obligingly backing Thatcher's colonial war.
Labour in office has shown its readi- support not just its capitalists, but t also the world imperialism. the ment sent troops to back the bloody interventionagainst North Korea wing in 1950, while Wilson from 1964 defied growing protests in Britain to give political support to Lyndon Johnson's brutal Vietnam war effort.
Britain under Labour has also proved xpansion of a crucial adjutant in US global strategy, with Bevin as Foreign Secretary playing rather than War NATO alliance in the late 1940s, and assisting similar reactionary alliances world-yide. And while allowing India and Pakistan independence, Labour leaders batLabour's platform 1991 has the familiar ring of Wilson's 'Let's go with Labour" In the 1960s tled tooth and nail to defend the rest of the British empire against colonial liberation strugcontinued under Wilson, BL with Denis Healey clinging doggedly to the continuation of British bases East of and aerospace industries Suez', and British troops fighting bloody wars to repress guerrilla forces in Africa and Asia As Kinnock turns his back decisively untareransay remembering that it was a Lateur government that developed the first British nuclear bombs, and that which TUC bureaucrats this poncy connnuca despite huge rank and file opposition - under Wilson promise o and Callaghan. protongea natonal firefighters in which Labour son in the late 1960s. Once the Heath ing Wilson set government funds.
Labour ministers in British state.
rampant under Labour 'own' general cause of ihe Atlee kovern USA's tokenistic Race Relations Act. The 1974-79 Labour ( the police demonstrator Blair Peach.
it is worth Kinnock's team is now seeking to out republican strip the Tories by emerging as the lead. ing British mouthpiece of the European capitalist class, arguing for ever-greater TOraST integration: but here too they are follow- in Britain. ing a familiar path. The first (unsuccess ful initiatives towards Common Market entry came from Labour's Harold Wilgovernment had negotiated entry to the EEC, the returnout to legitimise this, flying in the teeth of bitter opposition from the PLP, Party Conference and the In 1975, Wilson called a referendum, in which he and the Labour right wing joined with Heath's Tories and the Liberais to wage a campaign for a 'yes" vote, backed by big business and using Respect for the state A symptom of Labour's lack of radicalism in office is its failure, despite six election wins since the war, even to alter the key power structures of the The House of Lords has remained intact; the monarcny survives angute tioned and untaxed; the judiciary is just as reactionary and unaccountable as ever, while the secret services have run governments, secure in the knowledge that they were repealed safe from scrutiny or challenge. New immigration laws have buttressed state racism with much greater effect than the created and used the brutal picket-busting Special Patrol Group and presided over blatant police cover-ups, including murder of anti-fascist Having been the first to send British the six counties of northern Ireland in 1969, Labour was also the most ruthless in the repression irish triggering the 'H'-block ›anket protests and hunger stnikes ty withdrawing political status from Callaghan: the Labour PM who never won an election prisoners. It was the incominx sas syuson vovernment thatsteam ollered the vicious Prevention of TerSnTOn arisamiens effectively making it á crime to be irish No illusions It is clear that in eight decades, British social democracy has leamed nothing and forgoten notring in tneir asmat repertoire of class collaboration.
So why do we call for a Labour voter Because despite Kinnock's policies and intentions, the very fact of ousting the Tory government would create better conditions for a revival of working ciass militancy and activity.
The tension that will develop betweer he government and its working clas supporters contains a positive dynamic that can break down the demorausaton and apathy that has gripped much of the labour movement during twel ve vears of Thatcherism and almost unbroken example shows the difference. fourth term, they have ples hat could all but extinguish shop floor organisation; if Kinnock takes office there will be a battie - but it will be over how much existing Tory legislation should be It is clear that workers will have to wont nara acainst an sncomins Labou to resist many of its reac tionary policies; but the fightback will be more favourable Troline trengthened by the anger of workers whose illusions in social democracy lead them to expect real reforms and concessions from Kinnock Socialists must spel out and popularise a programme of policies and progressive aspirations of the workine clase on lving standards nghts, and Taasehprig esa mepssit for a socialist sctucoe te the ecenomic and social crisis of capatalism.
No. 11 Nov. 9, 1991
Marxism -
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