A YEAR AGO, Socialist Outlook welcomed a conference to defend the welfare state.
It was sponsored by three of the country's largest unions, TGWU, GMB and UNISON. Chaired by Ken Livingstone, and featuring speeches from Bryan Gould (remember him?), GMB leader John Edmonds and others, it attracted substantial television coverage, and was seen as a key challenge to the rightward drift of Labour under John Smith.
Speech after speech resounded with worthy calls for the defence of universal welfare benefits. Many of them were subsequently reprinted in a booklet reporting the conference. It seemed that a real fight was about to begin, firing a warning shot across the bows of Smith's Commission for Social Justice.
But that is effectively all that has happened in the first twelve months of the Campaign to Defend the Welfare State.
Many union branches and Labour Parties will have responded to the original initiative and affiliated to the Campaign. Many of these bodies will no doubt also send delegates to this year's repeat perfomance at Congress House on December 3. But they have not been offered much in the way of a campaign.
Tide of attacks
There is no lack of issues around which a fight should be built. The Welfare State remains a central focus of the Tory offensive, and the tide of attacks on health and welfare rights has escalated.
• More hospitals face closure across the country.
• Pensioners have battled on courageously against VAT on fuel, assembling a 6-million strong petition.
• Peter Lilley has unveiled brutal plans for a "job Seekers Allowance' to rip off the unemployed.
• An equally vicious new 'Incapacity Benefit' is set to strip benefits from upwards of 250,000 people with disabilities.
• Tens of thousands of students have protested at poverty level grants and the loss of vital benefits.
• There have been headline-grabbing •artes ny peone with disablities ce manding civil rights and fighting systemCOHSE DON SOUTH YORKSH dents. A full-scale national conference is scheduled for April 8 in London.
Failure
Neither campaign is perfect. The Campaign to Defend the Welfare State has an abundance of top level official support, but has clearly failed to carry any fight into the broad ranks of the labour movement.
The Welfare State Network, conversely, is struggling to accomplish a very ambitious task of linking diverse campaigns, and working with limited resources.
It has to fight hard to ensure that it broadens its political appeal, avoiding the pressure to become simply a gathering of the hard left.
It needs to transform its grass root support into a real factor in the political situation, and this means stepping up the fight for affiliations and official support from the trade unions, Labour Parties and other organisations.
It might appear that an ideal solution would be for the two campaigns to link up in joint activity, sharing resources and spreading information even more widely. There is no reason why they should be seen as counterposed.
Working together they could organise maior events at union and labour Party conferences, pump out publicity, turn the heat on Labour's leaders to fight back, and encourage a new strengthenDelegates at the December 3 conference should press for such joint work, which would not demand any political retreat on either side.
We cannot afford another wasted year in the fight for the Welfare State. Benefits and services are under threat right now. The countdown to 1995's crucial trade union and Labour Party conferences, which will potentially shape Labour's policies for the next election, The fightback for our welfare state must start now, and start in earnest, hopefully with the backing of John Edmonds, but if necessary without him.