With Labour's politics once again in the melting pot in the aftermath of John Smith's death, the fight for a genuine socialist alternative takes on an added importance. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK spoke to Socialist Campaign Group member JEREMY CORBYN MP about the forthcoming Campaign Group Network Conference on Full Employment SO: This conference is timely coming in the wake of the local and European elections and in the context of the leadership contest. What do you want it to achieve? JC: What I hope it will achieve is a serious analysis of the European election results and the problem the party has failed to address so far. We have been achieving good election results over the past two years based essentally on an anti-Tory vote rather than a pro-Labour vote.
Most voters are looking round the country and asking who's the best placed candidate to defeat the incoming Tory, and voting for them - whether they be Liberal, Labour or Nationalist. That is a very weak position for a political party to be in.
We are seen as a force for a negative rather than a positive. What has to be addressed is what a Labour government is there to achieve and what it is capable of achieving.
The General Election defeat of 1992 was very thoroughly analysed by a lot of people including the Essex University report, and a number of factors emerged. There was a slight increase in Labour support amongst the mobile middle class vote. But there was a serious falling away of support amongst the poorest voters and amongst pensioners, which would suggest that we're not getting through someJohn Smith: seen as radical in calling for full employment There was also a correlation between local party activity and the subsequent election result - an unpalatable fact which Peter Mandelson his ilk clearly don't like because their whole analysis has been to destroy the activity of local parties. SO: So what part can this conference play in the process of developing an analysis and understanding of why this has happened and adopting policies that can redress the problems? What organisational structures need to be set up? JC: It can come out with a series of policy proposals relating to full employment and the welfare state, arms expenditure, European policy, an international policy for a Labour government, a policy on criminal justice.
Those are all very, very important issues. But it can also say to those in the Low paid workers, like these Burnsall's strikers, are looking for radical answers from Labour "We can say to those in the Labour Party who feel disenfranchised by the Kinnock years, and feel ignored by the modernising drive of the party, that there are other people who think like they do, and there are other people who have joined the Labour Party because they believe in socialist politics". Labour Party who feel disenfranchised by the Kinnock years, and feel ignored by the modernising drive of the party, that there are other people who think like they do, and there are other people who have joined the Labour Party because they believe in socialist politics. SO: What sort of campaigning and what sort of structures do you think are necessary for this task? JC: An open left organisation within the party. It mustn't be secret, mustn't be proscriptive or prescriptive. It must give people the space to discuss and debate which they are increasingly denied within the normal party machinery. And it must be attractive to socialists who are outside the Labour Party at the present time.
The Labour Party has an age and an image problem. Its age profile is increasingly old. I seem to have gone through my life being a young member of the Labour Party, and I'm not getting any younger. We are not attracting young people into the party who feel alienated. To teenagers, environmental pressure groups and libertarian pressure groups are far more attractive than Labour.
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AFHONTKAJE APARTHEID JON THIS PICKETCorbyn: 'MP for all the labour movement' SO: Do you think that the Network is a beginning for that type of organisation? JC: It must live up to these expectations. Its always going to be difficult to organise the network because it's all done on a shoestring by essentially voluntarily labour, and there is always a danger that people will say that the Network must say A and demand A of everybody. It just can't, you just can't operate like that. It's got to operate on the basis more or less of a consensus on the direction in which we go. SO: What is the position of the MPs in relation to the Network? Do they welcome it? JC: The Campaign Group supported the establishment of the Network and its first conference in Leeds was extremely successful. The second one in Sheffield was rather small, and perhaps not as well prepared as it should have been.
I'm hoping that the Manchester one will be very large indeed and will be representative. I think what comrades are
•" COLIERY SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 63, 1 June 1994, Page 9