TONY BLAIR seems set to do what Hugh Gaitskell could not do and Neil Kinnock did not dare to try - abolish Clause Four of the Labour Party constitution which pledges the social ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.
However mismanagement of the Labour conference by Walworth Road bureaucrats enabled a debate to take place on this question immediately, and for the platform to lose by a whisker.
In the next year, and especially at the union conferences next spring and summer, every affiliated organisation will have to debate this question. The Left must mount a huge campaign to defend Clause Four.
That Tony Blair dares take on this question is a measure of the lurch to the right which is taking place in the Labour Party. This is a qualitative new stage of development, way beyond the capitulations carried out during the Kinnock "policy review" of the late 1980s and subsequently.
The Labour bureaucracy is using the advent of the new leader to eradicate every remnant of traditional social democratic policy - destroy all support for the mixed economy and the welfare state, and with it every major policy difference between Labour and the Tories.
Apart from defeating the platform on Clause Four, the left at Labour's conference scored successes in having Dennis Skinner and Diane Abbot elected to the NEC; Ken Livingstone also came close.
Dominant right
However none of this can hide the real relation ship of forces: in the "New" Labour Party the right wing is utterly dominant. While the constituencies have undergone a certain growth in the past period, especially since Blair's election, this is a political selection of people supporting the Right. It is quite unlike the Bennite influx of the early 1980s.
Thus it is quite on the cards that Blair will actually carry a majority against Clause Four in the constituencies. Among the trade union leaders, Blair will certainly get his way.
The attitude of most of them was to support the approach in John Prescott's final speech: don't worry, we will have a new constitution expressing traditional values, after all we still support a nationally owned railway system and post office! By that criterion, 95 per cent of the Just as the Tories' free market approach has been shown to the two big parties. world is socialist. Nationalised utilities, especially inherently unprofitable ones, are accepted world wide: even the United States has a state owned postal service.
The minimal pledge to support nationalised utilities is itself rendered meaningless by the refusal to renationalise utilities like gas, water and electricity privatised by the Tories. It is highly unlikely that a Blair Labour government would re-nationalise a privatised railway or postal service. Making Labour fit for capitalism: Prescott and Blair will join forces to push for the revision of Clause 4 But while the willingness of Blair to take on Clause Four represents the confidence of the new leadership, it also provides a major opportunity for the Left to mount a sustained fightback. The battle to defend Clause Four must be raised in every constituency and, especially, taken into every union conference.
A major campaign, uniting the whole of the Left inside the Labour Party and outside must be mounted to defend Clause Four. This must be the major campaigning theme for the Left at every union conference in 1995.
In one sense it could be argued that the issue of Clause Four is not of great practical import: every Labour government has ignored it. The social ownership of production means socialism. The Labour Party is not the instrument of socialist transition; it is a pro-capitalist party, albeit based on the working class. Blair could just as easily have ignored Clause Four, without committing himself to anything.
However, Clause Four has immense symbolic significance. It should not be defended because we want to defend the past traditions of Labourism, but as an opportunity to take the ideological offensive to defend socialism.
One of the great ironies of Tony Blair is that just as the Tories' free market approach has been shown to be incapable of resolving any major problem, the Labour leadership wants to abolish all policy distinction between the two big parties.
The campaign to defend Clause Four can be a tremendous opportunity to explain exactly what social ownership means, and how a society based on social need and not profit is not just morally superior, but, contrary to the claims of the "death of socialism", a perfectly workable alternative.