Clement Attlee (left) at 1938 Miners' Gala: even Labour's right wing has coexisted with Clause 4 for almost 100 years «To secure for workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible, upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry and service." THE LABOUR leaders have never liked Clause Four - it sounds to them too much like socialism. Yet despite its radical tone, it was adopted in 1918 as a way of blocking a more left-wing alternative.
To understand how the Labour Party came to espouse such a far reaching commitment it is necessary to look at the state of the labour movement after the first world war.
It was not until 1918 that the Labour Party become a truly national organisation. Before this it was a loose federation of groups.
Only under the impact of the Russian revolution could so radical a statement be accepted. However, it was deliberately conceived by its authors as non-revolutionary. This strange state of affairs is explained by the unique origins of the Labour Party. Origins The party grew out of the Labour Representation Committee, set up in February 1900 to win representation for the working class. This was not seen by its advocates as an instrument of socialist change, but to express the opinion of "men sympathetic with the aims and demands of the labour movement". Class struggle was not part of its programme.
Only the Marxist Social Democratic Federation suggested a more radical position. The vast majority of the delegates at the 1900 conference were quite happy with the formulation. They were mainly radical liberals not socialists. They desired only for wage earners "to be organized to support trade union principles and ideas by political methods".
The LRC took upon itself the endorsement of candidates for parliament. These were never opposed by the Liberals. Indeed there was a formal agreement for Liberals not to stand in opposition to the "Fighting for Socialism" has beën the stock slogan of British left reformism LRC. In return Kier Hardie and Ramsey MacDonald promised to "demonstrate friendliness".
This went as far as to let in without a fight the Liberal Party's candidate in Dundee in 1908, one Winston Churchill There was, said MacDonald, "no profound gulf" between the two organisations. The LRC in this period was a Liberal pressure group rather than a party in its own right.
MacDonald's organisation rejected militant action in favour of parliamentary tactics. In 1911 Arthur Henderson even proposed a Bill to make strikes which had not given 30 days notice illegal. War The first World War was supported unhesitatingly by the Labour Party. Days after it began Keir Hardie wrote The construction of a mass working class party wholly tied to parliamentary politics was a deliberate strategy aimed to "rehabilitate Parliament in the eyes of the people" and channel discontent away from Bolshevism. "a nation at war must be united". He argued that "With the boom of the enemy's guns within earshot, the lads who have gone forth to fight their country's battles must not be disheartened by any discordant notes at home".
The bosses soon realised how useful it was to have the Labour leaders on their side. They were the perfect agents for supressing working class action.
Keeping production going was vital to prosecute the war. Through appeals for workers self sacrifice hours could be extended and wages cut.
In return for pacifying their members the Labour leaders were given access to the highest level of decision making. In Asquith's coalition government they were taught to reject all militancy as unpatriotic. Henderson's Treasury Agreement of 1915 took away the right to strike from several unions and suspended all Ramsay MacDonald joined a Tory coalition - but didn't drop Clause 4! rules that would hinder increasing production.
Labour MPs enthusiastically recruited young men for the cannons of the battle fields. They opposed all negotiation. The only peace they favoured was through complete victory for the British Empire. The Russian Revolution changed everything. The cosy deal the leaders had with the bosses could not continue while the revolutionary wave swept through Europe.
A three week strike of 200,000 people in May 1917 was part of a mass radicalisation in Britain that saw the growth of a huge unofficial rank and file movement.
The Prime Minister Lloyd George exclaimed "the whole state of society is molten". He told Labour leaders "If I could have presumed to have been the adviser of the working classes...I should say to them: 'audacity is the thing for you. Think out new ways; think out new methods... Don't always be thinking of getting back to where you were before the war: get a really new world'".
The workers' leaders were not so bold. They spent their time devising ways of avoiding the struggle for the new world. Seeing revolution first hand on a visit to Russia filled Henderson with dread. He was determined to stop it happening in Parliament The new Labour constitution of 1918 was designed with this purpose in mind. "Revolution is a word of evil omen" said one of its authors. The construction of a mass working class party wholly tied to parliamentary politics was a deliberate strategy aimed to "rehabilitate Parliament in the eyes of the people" and channel discontent away from Bolshevism.
The Fabian gradualist Sidney Webb
Beatrice Webb wrote the constitution. Just like Blair he wanted to rename the party so as to appeal more to the middle class. Although he eventually had to abandon this idea he succeeded in reorganising the party so as to stifle the left.
In transforming the Labour Party into a centralised membership organisation, he established a system of local constituency parties and the election of an executive at annual conference.
The trade unions were given most of the votes. This aimed to isolate the left in me consaneroes Clause Four The commitment to common ownership of the means of production was put into the constitution by Webb to avoid an even more radical position. That this was a moderate option is an indication of just how militant the working class was in the period.
The leaders had to have a form of words that was without day-to-day relevance. They had no intention of letting it affect their practice. They have always ensured that socialist demands are left as abstract positions so that they can continue their class collaboration.
Nevertheless Clause Four expresses the peak of British working class militancy. This is what makes it so important. The inclusion in the Labour Party constitution of a statement in favour of social ownership expresses the strength of anticapitalist feeling after the first world war. That is why the Labour leaders have always disliked it.
Although it is not a revolutionary programme the clause is unambiguously anti-capitalist. Its reference to "the best possible system of popular administration and control of each industry and service" comes close to a demand for workers' control.
The reformist views of its Fabian authors are also present. It talks of securing for the workers the full fruits of their industry. This is a top-down socialism not a recipe for class struggle. The 1918 conference meant a rejection of Liberalism. This break with the party of capitalism was a big step forward. But the new ideology was not socialist. It was a peculiarly British product called "Labourism".
This was enshrined in the statement of policy "Labour and the New Social Order" that accompanied Clause Four. This document spoke for the "genuinely scientific reorganisation of industry, on the basis of the Common Ownership of the Means of Production". It was easy to win support for nationalisation following the huge growth in state control during the war.
While it condemned poverty, unemSidney Webb: no leftie ployment and poor quality housing and called for a big improvement in living standards, it never went so far as to demand an end to capitalism. It was a programme for extending the war economy in the favour of workers.
Ralph Milliband in his famous book Parliamentary Socialism concludes that, "the new programme was much less the manifesto of a new social order, altogether different, economically and socially, from the old one, than an explicit affirmation by the Labour Party of its belief that piecemeal collectivism, within a predominantly capitalist society, was the key to more welfare, higher efficiency, and greater social justice".
It was Fabian plan for a new type of capitalism not a declaration of socialism. This notwithstanding, the 1918 settlement between the right wing leadership and the radical mood of the day stood for significant reform of capitalism. It is more than Blair offers today. Gaitskell It was not until 1959 that the clause was challenged. The Labour Party had lost three elections in a row. Party leader Hugh Gaitskell blamed the commitment to nationalisation.
He favoured a massive retreat from public ownership and even proposed working class share-owning of industry long before Thatcher thought of it.
The parallels with Blair are striking. Gaitskell wanted a debate over basics. He wanted to undo the Labour Party's link with organised labour in order to present it as a 'people's party' rather than a workers' party.
He argued that only by dumping nationalisation could the party win the middie classes. This electoral argument hid a more fundamental divide. Gaitskell did not just want to win elections, he wanted to put an end to the party's formal opposition to capitalism.
In arguing for the removal of the commitment to nationalisation he said that Britain was now a "mixed economy", "in my opinion, capitalism has significantly changed, largely as a result of our own effort". Like Blair, his catchword was "modernisation".
This reopened a basic divide in the labour movement between those who want to run capitalism and those who want to build socialism. It was a division the leadership would have better left alone.
Gaitskell's proposals were defeated. He was forced to back down in the face Defending the Clause is necessary not because its retention will make Labour one day implement socialism, but because behind the attacks lies an attempt to get the rank and file of the labour movement to accept capitalism as permanent. Clause Four is an impediment to people understanding that Labour is a pro-capitalist party. of massive trade union opposition. The post-war boom had created a powerful and self confident trade union movement that was not prepared to be cajoled or bullied by the party leadership.
Nevertheless the compromise the party adopted still recognised "that both public and private enterprise have a place in the economy". Despite rejecting Gaitskell's 'grand reconciliation' the right retained the leadership of the Labour Party.
Like Blair, Gaitskell did not call outright for the removal of Clause Four. This would have been too forthright an attack. Both coded the change in the language of modernisation.
But even if widespread nationalisation had been called for by the party it is certain that the leadership would not have implemented it. In this sense all the debate and discussion over nationalisation is unreal.
The leadership will never be won to socialism, or to measures that lead in its direction. Declarations in favour of social ownership are useful to them only for May Day speechifying. They have no intention of acting upon them.
Defending the Clause against the Gaitskell-Blair attacks is necessary not because its retention will make Labour one day implement socialism, but because behind the attacks lies an attempt to get the rank and file of the labour movement to accept capitalism as permanent.
Both Gaitskell and Blair have seen Clause Four as an impediment to people understanding that the Labour Party is a pro-capitalist party. They are united in a desire make the labour movement abanSOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 70, October 22 1994, Page 7 Harder-line for capitalism than Gaitskell: Tony Blair don a socialist alternative. This is why defending it is so important.
The defence of Clause Four is a practical matter not an "article of faith". If Labour Party activists can be persuaded to accept capitalism as the only way of organising society then they will have no basis for opposing its demands and requirements - if capitalism needs to make cuts they must be implemented. Getting rid of the Clause is an attempt to demobilise opposition to capitalism.
This is what lies behind the latest developments in the Labour Party. Kinnock brought in the ad-men not to do more than communicate more effectively. It was the beginnings of a right wing strategy to make the party more wholeheartedly embrace the market. Symbol Kinnock may not have been fully aware of the consequences of the policy review. The present leadership is far more confident. It understands that Clause Four is an important symbol. One that speaks of a completely different type of society. It has to be removed in order to help carry out unashamedly pro-capitalist policies in office.
The right has traditionally claimed that its differences with the left are just over the speed of change, that everyone is moving in the same direction toward socialism, only that more caution is necessary. The attacks on Clause Four show this is not true.
Blair intends to remove all what is left of the social democratic intention to reform capitalism. His new constitution is motivated by just the same intention as Gaitskell's reforms - to put an end to the working class nature of the party. The leadership is laying the groundwork for carrying out capitalism's cuts if Labour should win the election.
The removal of the Clause would be a profound victory for the right. It would not only weaken the Labour Party, but weaken the struggle against capitalism. This is why every socialist must fight for its retention.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.70, October 22 1994, Page 8
Class Independence