FED UP with Labour's abject failure to present any coherent challenge to Tory 'market' economics, union chiefs, MPs and CLPs have have thrown their support behind Bryan Gould's new pressure group, the Full Employment Forum.
Gould, heavily defeated in his 1992 bid for the Labour leadership, has clearly struck a chord of popular anger and resentment at the constipated silence which constitutes Labour's present economic policy.
Hiscall for an end to the damaging economic 'consensus' with the Tories will be as widely echoed in the party and trade union rank and file as it is feared by the Trappist tendency that surrounds John Smith.
Under the banner of 'closed for modernisation, this group has pursued a tactic of constant retreat on all economic questions since the general election defeat.
Silenced
The extent of the yawning gulf that has supplanted any serious economic policy can be deduced from the sudden silence of Labour's new Employment spokesman John Prescott, who has discovered how hard it is to challenge Tory policy when you have none of your own.
The modernisers' stance is best typified by Peter Mandleson MP, who as Kinnock's right-hand served as the architect of two successive electoral disasters.
He has written to the Guardian to warn that any discussion of possible alternative economic policies should be gagged, since the Tories could latch on to suggestions for increased borrowing or public spending and use them against Labour. Careless talk could cost votes, warns the man who helped lose Labour millions.
The response from Smith's circle of "modernisers' to the initial manifesto issued by the Full Employment Forum was equally non-political, branding it as some kind of personal attack on John Smith.
What is the heresy of Gould's new pressure group? Far from a marxist manifesto or any challenge to reformist politics, it is in a sense a 'back to basics' call, urging a Labour government to 'all the instruments of macro-economic policy in order to promote full employment'. Interrupting the Trappist conspiracy - Bryan Gould The scale of the response to Gould's relatively modest policy initiative shows that even on this front, confidence in John Smith's team of ditherers is waning fast.
Among the early recruits to the FEF are 35 Labour MPs including leading members of the Campaign Group and three members of the shadow cabinet. S0 CLPs have lent-their backing, and on Christmas Eve the FEF's funds were boosted by the official support of Britain's third biggest union, the GMB, which joined three other national unions in affliating. Edmonds (centre) suffered defeat at 1993 conference: now taking revenge This move by GMB leader John Edmonds is just the latest symptom of the anger and frustration at Labour's feeble performance that is running through the whole trade union Edmonds, like TGWU General Secretary Bill Morris, is furious that after defeating the unions on the OMOV issue at last year's Labour conference, John Smith' leadership has heeded none of the pointed criticisms about its lack of profile, and continued to retreat before the Tories.
No say, no pay Union chiefs last summer warned that a Smith victory on OMOV could result in a union response of 'no say, no pay', in which they take a more independent line on the funding of the Labour Party.
Since that conference, the traditionally right wing and staunchly "new realist' GMB has expressed it displeasure by withdrawing its £500,000 a year support for the Trade Unions For Labour electoral machine.
It has also joined with the TGWU and UNISON to back a November conference in defence of the welfare state called by left MP Ken Livingstone, before now throwing its support and cash backing into an unofficial policy forum.
These decisions underline the isolation of Smith's 'modernisers from the organised sections of the labour moveBut the emergence of the FEF as a rival pole of policy also raises doubts on its character and the extent to which it can The party has strayed so far to the right of what were mainstream left reformist notions of a 'planned capitalism' as popularised in the Alternative Economic Strategy of the early 1980s, that even Gould's basically Keynesian call for public spending to pump-prime a new Sharing collective constipated silence: Prescott economic expansion is seen as dangerously radical.
The fact that such policies would bring a Labour government mto conrict with te Maastricht agreement and the EU, and would risk a further devaluation of sterling means that they go far beyond the boundaries of Labour's modemisers.
Falling short
But the policies put forward so far fall well short of full-blooded socialism. In fact the FEF proposals do not go as far as suggesting any extension of public ownership - leaving open the question of how the newly-expanded economy could be controlled in the interests of working people. It is not clear whether and to what extent the FEF will encourage or allow political debate within its ranks. It seems more likely that union leaders like Edmonds, not best known for encouraging democratic debate in the GMB, will be keen to limit any such development, and to use the FEF as a lever to force the official leadership into a more aggressive, campaigning posture.
Open up
However there may be opportunities for affiliating CLPs and union bodies to press for the Forum to set up a more open policy-making process in which wider issues and an explicitly socialist perspective can be introduced.
Though Gould has appeared in the national press and on television launching the new initiative, the campaign work of the FEF for 1994 seems to hinge on a year of "regional seminars' targeted at existing Labour Party members and trade unionists.
Either way, the fact that the silence has at last been broken, and the issue of an alternative policy put at the centre of discussion must improve the prospects for the beleagured left fighting on for socialism in the Labour Party. The giant right wing union which merged engineering workers with the old electricians' and plumbers EETPU in 1992 is in deep crisis as top bureaucrats jockey for LABOUR PARTY advantage.
The mega-union is divided on how its annual conference should be run.
The original merger proposed a hybrid conference which would be a large (800-delegate) conference like those of the old EETPU. but unlike the EETPU would be composed only of lay delegates and would have policy-making powers.
When this was blocked by the electricians leaders, engineering members stormed out of a joint executive meeting.
EETPU leader Paul Gallagher is due to take over the merged union in May: but almost two years after the merger there is still no progress on a new rule book, and the two sides are at loggerheads on many issues.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 55, January 15 1994, Page 6