NEIL KINNOCK said recently that Britain would have been better off if there had been a Labour government since 1983. hankered after the left policies on which Labour fought the election that year. Kinnock, of course, meant no such thing. But it is worth taking a brief look at just how far the Labour Party has shifted.
Labour's 1983 manifesto was certainly 'left' by today's standards. It was committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament, repeal of the anti-union laws, renationalisation of privatised industry, and much more.
At that time the party was far more democratic than it is today; there had bosince toe midiyde08. The 1985 on since the mid-1970s. manifesto was drawn up with much more party mput than berore. Ine leader could be elected by the whole party - not just the MPs. Mandatory resulted in a crop of new left MPs and candidates.
It was during the Labour governments of 1974-79 that the impetus came for changes in Labour's policies and party democracy. The Callaghan government's Social Contract ventually defeated at both the TUC Congress and Labour Party conference.
Opposition to a key government policy overflowed into demands for greater accountability of the party's rep resentatives. In the aftermath of the Winter of Discontent, provoked by its ersistence with an incomes orty times the current level of days lost st the 1979 clectic Within eighteen months of the Tories being elected, mandatory re-selection and election of leader by party con ference were passed. In October 1981, Tony Benn came within one or he deply eating Denis Healey leadership.
Some ten years on and we are now in a position where resistance to redundancies and speed-up is low, MP's have been expelled, Labour Party Young Socialist: has been smashed, Labour's policies look like wet Toryism, and conference democracy is on the verge of being abolished in favour of bureaucratic 'policy forums'.
From the early 1980s the right wing and the bureaucracy planned their fightback against the high tide of Benmism. Arter the deleat of Benn in the deputy leadership election, the SDP split and the 1983 election defeat, the right hit back with the election of Kinnock as leader, and the expulsion of the Militant editorial board.
Facing Thatcher's intransigence, the trade union leaderships were incapable of putting forward any policy other than retreat. A special TUC conference in 1982 had pledged outright opposition to the 1980 and 1982 anti-union laws even if this meant unlawful action.
But during the first full test of the laws - the Stockport Messenger strike of mid1983 - the TUC failed to give serious support. Verbal opposition was then negotiate with the government.
two tactor nave to be taken into account when examining the failure of the Bennite left to overcome right wing and bureaucratic resistance. irst, the alHance around the Bennites, for example the electoral bloc which brought Benn to within half a per cent of winning the deputy leadership battle, involved a very temporary bloc, which included left and not-so-left bureaucrats disgruntled with the Callaghan government. That alliance could not hold in the long term.
Second, the Bennite leaders were very late to organise the left, to form a powerful rank-and-file movement in the party and the unions. When they eventually formed the Socialist Movement, the defeat of the left was already sealed.
There is no guarantee that a strategy which involved strong rank-and-file or ganisation and an open challenge to the ureaucracy would have won. Even the bed statens cup of fore but the pos best strategy can end in defeat, sibility existed of a different outcome If a strategy based on mass action and a hallenge to the bureaucracy had bee adopted In the late 1970s there was widespread debate in the labour move ment of a left policy for government -vanations on the Alternative Economic Strategy' theme. What was lacking though, was a programme that could relate to the struggles of the working class in a more direct way, linking their demands to what the Labour Party should do.
Far from united resistance, sections of the left have refused to defend Militant supporters, while Milifant itself has, at est, set up 'front' campaigns, refusing to work with others in a broad cam. paign. At other times it has either put up no resistance at all, or has resorted to the courts.
The upshot of these failures is that the bureaucracy now feels confident to exper almost anyone who resists its policy directives, to impose candidates at will. ana to exper two sitting Mi's. Dave Nellist and Terry Fields.
Join the Campaign Against the Witchhunt co 56 Ashby House, • Loughborough Road, Brixton, London, SW9 7SL. No. 19 April 4, 1992