looking for when they come to Manchester is to hear what the thoughts of people are for the Campaign Group, and to make a contribution to how they think the Campaign Group might present issues in parliament and in the party. And above all to hear how other people in the party see things.
We're not going to change society in Britain by sitting back and waiting for a general election after which the ripe cherries will fall into our lap. We're going to change society in Britain if we mobilise people into the expectations of what a Labour government could achieve and demand it of that Labour government.
That is a strength in politics - a weakness is just sitting back and waiting for it to happen. That leaves the forming of public opinion to people who are not friends of Labour.
SO: How about the Tribune conference on June 25. It seems to be based on a platform that's considerably to the left of Tribune's public face? JC: Firstly the date is regrettable because it clashes with the Global Forum meeting in Manchester which is an important international initiative.
But I think the Tribune Group and Tribune newspaper are increasingly at variance, in that Tribune newspaper is genuinely trying to give a platform to various people and groups within the party, and I think it is succeeding in doing that. I appreciate the efforts they've made in that direction.
The Tribune Group in parliament is basically a huge conglomeration of essentially pro-establishment figures. It is now the establishment group within the party. Because it is so broad it is really incapable of being a serious left force within the party. SO: The Campaign Group has recently recruited former members of the Tribune Group. What do you make of that? JC: The Campaign Group could become much bigger because it offers the opportunity of serious political discussion and debate and offers the opportunity of putting forward those views in parliament in a credible way.
The Tribune Group is incapable of doing that. It is so hopelessly compromised by its very close relationship with the leadership, almost whoever the leader is. In fact, I think all of the potential leadership contenders with the exception of Jack Cunningham are members of the GRANI Miners struggle: a missed opportunity for Labour to offer radical solutions Tribune Group.
SO: I'll close on the central theme of the SCGN conference which is full employment. What would you like to see come out of this conference in terms of carrying forward campaigning around full employ.
ment?
JC: What I find depressing is that we were all pleased last year when John Smith declared himself in favour of full employment. The whole raison d'etre of the Labour Party since its inception was a campaign for a job for everybody, a secure and permanent job for everybody.
Its come to something where we consider it a move to the left if the leadership of the party even think of full employment. But nevertheless his declaration was extremely welcome.
The problem is that we are not being offered an economic policy that is anything other than demand management within the economy. That isn't going to lead to full employment, not least because there are serious structural problems of unemployment in Britain through deindustrialisation and privatisation and the power of multi-national capital to switch funds all means jobs are expendable in any one country.
Also the agreements the British government has signed in Maastricht and GATT make it much more difficult to control those forces. If we are to achieve full employment there has to be a degree of planning in the economy, there has to be a shorter working week and there has to be a minimum wage.
All those things have to be done. Nearly every one of those will bring a Labour government into conflict with the EC commission and possibly with the GATT rules. This is an argument we have to have. It means a Labour government has to be very determined that it is going to achieve full employment.
It's the one issue which could win us a general election. It's the one issue which unites young and old and gives real hope.to people.
But if we only half-heartedly put it and don't add the details of how we're going to achieve it, it will just be laughed at during the election campaign for being a cynical election manoeuvre.
And if we put it forward and then do nothing about it as a Labour government, we shall quite rightly receive a lot of opprobrium from people.
Smith's shoes.
didate.
Any ideas coming
trom the left that the SCG shouldn't stand are defeatist. They prefer to abstain rather than risk defeat. We'll never get anywhere if we always wait for the right conditions for a struggle.
Arguments about
the potential failure of a candidate to achieve the prerequisite number of nominations from MPs fail to grasp the opportunity to exdate. over the place. That nations?
IN THE WAKE of John Smith's death there hasn't been a single day when the bourgeois media has failed to offer its latest suggestion or assessment of who should step in to But who do the left think should stand, and how can the left make it's voice heard above the media circus?
Activists in the Labour Party are crying out for fighting alternative that breaks the economic consensus with Tories. In order to play any significant role in the political debate, in this contest the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs (SCG) must stand a canThose that suggest you can influence the debate without a candidate are living in a dream world. Questioning the canidates about the left's policy priorities will be dismissed if there is no candidate standing who embodies those policies and gives party members a chance to vote for them.
Prescott: so-called traditionalist' pose the lack of democracy in the current mechanism. They also fail to rec- party. ognise the potential to regenerate the left of the party with the call for and if possible the standing of a left candiUndemocratic the party?
Should we wait until Labour Party conference overturns the undemocratic rule - which was precisely designed to stop the SCG putting up candidates or the selection of new left wing MPs who will make it possible to achieve the requisite number of nomiIf those goals were to be achieved it will be because the SCG take a fighting position and head up a recomposition of the left. Failure to stand merely capitulates to and consolidates the un- wrong. democratic nature of those rules.
The SCG needs to put aside personal differences, look beyond the Birmingham New Street / R.M.T Fighting privatisations and in defence of job House of Commons, and work collectively to obtain the required number of nominations and allow the left in the party to participate in the contest. If there is no left wing candidate, thousands of party activists will effectively be disenfranchised.
Why should left candidates even stand for the NEC if the criteria for participation in elections is guaranteed success? They recognise that they can't necessarily win, and over the years some on the slate have received low votes which could be seen as derisory and indicative of the weakness of the left. And yet they have consistently campaigned for places on the NEC.
What is so different now?
If SCG members are elected to the NEC without being prepared to fight for a left leadership candidate they are effectively saying they will be prepared to be Blair's lieutenants.
Prescott is perceived by the Guardian, and apparently also by Socialist Organiser, (which is calling, ludicrously, for "Prescott Committees") to be the 'left wing' candidate.
The danger is that unless the SCG intervene to change this perception it will become the reality and the sole parameters for any political (non) debate. If the SCG were not even to attempt to get enough nominations to run a left candidate, it would contribute to a further shift to the right of the spectrum of Labour politics and leave the SCG itself as marginalised and dicredited critics on the edge of the The SCGN conference is very timely. But are the SCG just going to be observers to an apolitical media beauty contest, missing a great opportunity to regenerate socialist ideas in It is pointless standing on the sidelines putting demands on Prescott or Robin Cook. People who argue for this approach misjudge the potential there is and the resonance of socialist answers to problems of full employment, defending the welfare state, housing the homeless - the list is endless.
Those who make their judgement based solely on an assessment of what's left of the old left rather than where the new left is or could be are Pressure should be brought to bear to insist that the left turns words into action and fights for a candidate.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 63, 1 June 1994, Page 10