HARRY SLOAN looks at the unfortunate fore-runners of Tony Blair's right wing political programme. a 'classless society', and happiness and freedom of the individual. ment or planning."
In fact Gaitskell was as conservative as Blair. And his politics brought 15 years of failure to the Labour Party.
As Chancellor in the Attlee government, Gaitskell's 1951 Budget, praised by the Daily Express as a good Tory Budget, together with a right wing manifesto which made no mention of socialism, paved the way for Labour's electoral defeat.
The party's abject lack of any coherent political challenge to a Tory government riding the post-war 'boom' led to three successive electoral defeats in the 1950s. So close were the parties that the economic policies of Tory Chancellor Butler were widely dubbed 'Butskellism'.
As if they had not done enough damage, Labour's right wing went onto the offensive in 1959 following the Party's third defeat.
The pace was set by Gaitskell's crony Douglas Jay, who wanted not only to drop nationalisation but to drop the unions, drop the name of the Labour Party, drop any principle of political independence, and to do a deal, even merge, with the Liberals.
Gaitskell did not openly go this far, but floated the idea of scrapping Clause Four and inserting a new 12-point Statement of Aims at a special conference of the Labour Party to discuss the election defeat, held in November 1959.
Chaos
After Gaitskell had spoken for an hour explaining his view, the conference degenerated into chaos. Later in 1960, under increasing pressure from his shadow cabinet and the unions, Gaitskell eventually retreated from his attempt to scrap Clause Four, and even his Statement of Aims was surreptitiously ditched before the 1960 conference.
Gaitskell's successor as leader, Harold Wilson, who had described the attack on Clause Four as like 'taking Genesis out of the Bible', led Labour to four election victories with the Clause intact but largely ignored.
But Gaitskell is not the only negative role model adopted by Tony Blair. His religious superstitions (reflected in his choice of school for his son), his rejection of any concept of the class struggle and his political proTHE LAST attempt to lead Labour into an explicit renunciation of socialist aspiration was that of Hugh Gaitskell in 1959. He too tried to replace Clause Four with a vague text, proposing Just as Blair today tries cynically to enlist women to his cause, hinting that his new text will pledge them equal rights, Gaitskell tried to appear radical by criticising Clause Four for making 'no mention at all of colonial freedom, race relations, disarmament, full employMacDonald nouncements all call to mind Labour's other catastrophic failure - Ramsay MacDonald. MacDonald led Britain's first, completely ineffectual, minority Labour, government in 1924: having left the entire edifice of capitalism undisturbed, it was ousted within. a year. In 1929, with more MPs, he again formed a minority Labour government, which again failed to deliver any significant gains tor the working class. Instead, in 1931 a run on the pound induced a financial crisis in which MacDonald was persuaded by bankers to stabilise capitalism by imposing a massive package of spending cuts, including cuts in dole payments. This was opposed by the TUC and split his cabinet. Urged on by the Tories and Liberals, MacDonald opted to form a coalition National Government to lead these attacks on the working class. Although he was expelled from the Labour Party as soon as the coalition was formed, the party was massively discredited. The ensuing general election in October 1931 saw Labour reduced to a rump of just 52 MPs. MacDonald's commitment to the capitalist order was nothing new. He had elaborated his views in some detail in a series of books and pamphlets. He was a Fabian, an evolutionist rather than a revolutionist, and an avid opponent of any concept of class struggle. an excellently conceived and resolute attempt to Christianise government and society." MacDonald, like Blair, regarded himself as something of a daring innovator in repudiating any class consciousness whatever: Gaitskell: right wing policies brought Labour 15 years of failure "There is an old and a new school of socialism. We belong to the new school. ... We have no class consciousness ... our opponents are the people with class consciousness ... But in place of class consciousness we want to evoke the consciousness of social solidarity."
Shambles As Leon Trotsky asked, as he looked in horror at the shambles of Fabian socialist 'theory':
"MacDonald 'wants to evoke' a consciousness of social solidarity. With whom?"
Trotsky went on to explain the socialist ABC:
"The solidarity of the working class is the expression of its internal unity in the struggle against Blair is seeking to extinguish any spark of radicalism from the Party's politics, to make it a party fit for entrepreneurs and those with least interest in social change. the bourgeoisie. The social solidarity that MacDonald preaches is the solidarity of the exploited with the exploiters, that is, the maintenance of exploitation."
Trotsky's scathing views of Fabianism ring true even today:
"It can without exaggeration be said that the Fabian Society, which was founded in 1884 with the object of 'arousing the social conscience', is nowadays the most reactionary grouping in Great Britain.
"Neither the Conservative clubs, nor Oxford University, nor the English bishops and other priestly institutions can stand comparison with the Fabians. For all these are institutions of the enemy classes and the revolutionary movement will inevitably burst the dam they form. But the proletariat itself is restrained by precisely its own top leading layer, i.e. the Fabian politicians and their yes-men."
Yet it is from this same MacDonald/Fabian/Christian school of politics that Tony Blair now draws his call for 'one nation': who cannot hear Blair's reedy voice in the confused words penned by his treacherous forerunner 70 years ago?
"Socialism is no class movement. Socialism is a movement of opinion, not an organisation of status. It is not the rule of the working class; it is the organisation of the community"
Tony Blair's 1995 version of the same view is to argue that:
"Socialism is a belief about society."
MacDonald also argued against any form of trade union struggle:
"The trade unionist has the same limitation imposed upon him as the capitalist - he cannot advance his interests at the expense of his society. It cannot be over-emphasised that public doles, Poplarism, strikes for increased wages, limitation of output, not only are not socialism, but may mislead the spirit and the policy of the socialist movement.
"Socialism calls men to give unstinted service in return for a reasonable reward measured in terms of life... The socialist therefore looks with some misgivings upon some recent developments in the conflicts between capital and labour. They are contrary to his spirit; he believes they are both immoral and uneconomic and will lead to disaster.
"It is only when the worker by brain or by hand does his best for society that he will create in society that sympathy and support without which the labour movement will never attain its goal."
All this is bad enough, and familiar in today's speeches and embarrassed silences from Blair's front-bench team.
But in a sense, Blair is retreating even from the Fabianism of MacDonald. Clause Four itself was drafted by Fabians, and the younger MacDonald paid lip-service to the call for nationalisation - by the capitalist state -in terms that would frighten the daylights out of today's Labour leaders:
"The nationalisation of production is just as necessary to democracy - and just as inevitable if democracy is to mature into fullness - as the nationalisation of the sovereign authority by the suppression of the personal right of kings to rule. We must look upon production as a national function, and not as a task assigned to a class of separate individuals pursuing their own ends."
Spark extinguished Following in the footsteps of Labour's legendary failures, Mr Blair is seeking to extinguish any spark of radicalism from the Party's politics, to make it a party fit for entrepreneurs, the prosperous middle classes and those with least interest in social change.
In doing so, he is turning his back on the working class, and especially on the low-paid, the unemployed, the pensioners, and single parents who have lost out so heavily while the rich have cashed in.
Blair's repudiation of any socialist or radical politics make it clear that a Labour government led by him would follow MacDonald's example in 1931, and reserve its attacks for the working class while grovelling to big business and the middle class.
Although no socialist programme will be on the agenda of Labour's special conference in April, a rejection of Blair's attack on Clause Four would offer an important first step in the fight to turn Labour back towards its roots in the working class and trade union movement.
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