WHEN Harold Wilson's Labour government won a wafer-thin majority in the February 1974 election, it took office in the midst of a rising tide of trade union militancy.
Wage demands and battles against Pant cosur and job losses were folowed after 1976 by a wave of struggles against cuts in health, education and other public services.
Almost of these remained at the level of minimum demands, seeking concessions from the xisting employers in the existing sys em, raising no challenge to the 'right of capitalists to make and increase their profits.
On the other extreme, the propaganda from hard-left socialist groupings called without avail for Labour (or somebody) to carry out 'socialist policies", most notably the nationalisation of the banks and basic industry without compensation and under workers' control.
Missing link
The missing link was any agitation to popularise these issues to mobilise the working class to press these demands.
In general the left failed to find any way of linking the spontaneous refor mist militancy of trade union activists in struggle to the fight for an explicitly socialist programme.
Some strikes and struggles succeeded in winning concessions even the repeal of Ted Heath's anti-union laws - while others failed: but there were few political lessons learned in the process on the character of the Labour government or the need for a socialist solution.
Under Wilson and Callaghan Labour in office rode roughshod over the interests and demands of the working class that had clected them: but though the hard left organisations grew in numbers the question of a genuine programme of action that could offer an alternative way forward, a road towards socialism, for the labour movement rank and file remained unresolved.
The problem itself was not new. It had been addressed in different ways by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in the Oxtober Revolution of 1917, by the early Communist International, and by Leon Trotsky in the fight against Stalinism.
it was rotsky who most succinctly summed up the problem in the 1938 Transitional Programme, the key founding ment of the Fourth International:
It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge struggles between present demands and the socialist programme of the revolution.
"This bridge should include a system of transitional today's conditions and from today's consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat."] A transitional demand is therefore one that appears reasonable to many people, but which in essence is unat tainable without the overthrow capitalism. Trotsky explained that it was no accident that embraces no such 'bride' "Classical social divided its programme into two parts independent of cach other: the minimum which reforms within the framework of bour80018 and tion of socialism for indefinite future.
"Between the minimum and maximum . prosame, no onage existed And indeed social democracy has no need of such a bridge, since the word ocialism is used only for holiday speechifying."
Redundant
The bridge' is equally redundant for hose propagandis rents on the left which prefer to talk abstractly about socialism rather than to engage in real struggles Jut for the building of a socialist, class struggle current in the labour move ment, transitional demands will be vital. Trotsky's series of transitional demands centred on questions that appear grimly familiar in foday's situation, and which will loom even larger if a Kinnock government is elected:
• Defence of workers' living stand0001Cards; demands, stemming from position in the unions; 'viability' by tees: workplace social democracy workers' democracy • Mobilising limited itself to the from police and fascists; which promised substitucapitalism in the challenge the centralised capitalist state; or infallible recipe for and sectarian cur and the oppressed in struggle. 1974: this restec of the Tory onslaught.
OFFICIAL PICKET Fighting for a shorter working week: the Transitional Programme calls for a silding scale of hours • Fighting redundancies and unDevelopment of class struggle op • Challenging the bosses' ikons of the manage' financial raising demands for the abolition of business secrets and the opening of the account books and plans to the scrutiny of trade union commitloss of pay.
• Fighting for workers' control in the and in whole industries, leading to the development of a plan for production; behind demands for nationalisation of specific groups of capitalists, of banks and finance houses;
• Defence of picket lines and working class neighbourhoods against attack • Fighting imperialism and war; and Wales.
• Building workers' councils, local organisations of working class power to power of the • The fight for a workers' nent, independent of the capitalists These demands still obviously retain their general relevance: but they were never intended by Trotsky as a complete politics. They were always seen as an addition to the democratic demands and the minimum demands which are thrown up spontaneously by workers funds. was necessary for workers to figit for these demands for them to lead anywhere at all. This is obviously more prices. difficult in periods when the class strug gle itself has receded to a low ebb as a result of repeated sell-outs and defeats.
If Neil Kinnock wins the next election, there will be no instant repetition of the militant upsurge that greeted Wilson in strength of an industrial shop stewards movement and an active rank and file, both of which have been substantially destroyed or repressed by twelve years Stop Tory attacks Many of the demands most likely to trigger early conflict with a Kinnock government are not transitional at all, ut simply demands that Labour cease the Tories' attacks on the working class: • Demands for the repeal of the anticapitalist and anti-imperialist:
• For a crash programme of useful public worked including housing.
hospitals, community care, schools, colleges, transport, energy research, environmental protection - to remedy serious social problems and create new and worthwhile jobs for 4-5 million job.
less youth and adults at trade union rates of pay • For a shorter working week without • Scrap defence spending and Trident. Troops out of Ireland and the Malvinas. Britain out of NATO, disband all British bases overseas, expel all US bases rom Britain • Cancel the debts of Third World countries with British banks: open new negotiations for trade on equal terms.
• For national assemblies in Scotland Workers' control None of these demands is in itself socialist: but each will nonetheless be resolutely opposed by a Kinnock government. A socialist alternative will also need to answer a series of wider problems and build up a system of tran sitional demands for the 1990g, among • Workers' control of the banking and financial sector, coupled with the nationalisation of the banks, building societies, insurance giants and pension • A sliding scale of tages, giving increases in take-home pay to match rising • Work shearing without loss of pay to combat redundancies.
• An expansion of production, which points to the need for expropriation of key productive industries, and of vital in frastructure industries such as BT and British Gas. Many other democratic and partial demands will find a following. specially those for the liberation of black and ethnic minorities, women, and esplans and gay met However here l no magic to be worked simply by the incantation of transitional demands. The key factor is the mobilisation of workers in struggle, in which they can learn political lessons which no amount of propaganda can As workers rediscover their self-confidence and raise more ambitious demands, the conditions become more