Union man? Major (here with French President Mitterrand and premier Balladur) is bogged down in European impasse HARDLY a week goes by without another crisis over Europe Why has the issue caused such rancour? Why have such deep splits emerged? TOBY BREWSTER offers an answer. FROM THE OUTSIDE there seems to be no good reason why Britain's "natural party of government" seems intent on knocking itself to pieces.
To explain the last five years of bruising battle we have to trace the origins of the profound breach that has opened up in the British ruling class. This iș primarily a difference over how to govern.
While it is true that they do not face a crisis of. rule in the classical Marxist sense - they have not been seriously challenged by an alternative class leadership for generations -they nevertheless do face the destruction of the political bloc which has been in power for most of the twentieth century. Things are starting to fall apart.
When Geoffrey Howe put the knife into Thatcher he hardly mentioned the state of the economy, which was in a deep trough at the time. Nor did he focus on the poll tax, probably the most unpopular measure ever introduced by a Tory government.
The main issue was Europe.
His speech addressed as its prime target the dire consequences of Thatcher's hostility to the EU and the effects it would have on British capitalism.
Ever since Heseltine first walked out of a cabinet over Westland helicopters, this question has split the Tories from top to bottom. The pro-Europe wing ruthlessly used the opportunities created by the poll tax's unpopularity to settle the dispute in their favour.
In this context it is possible to see what a wise choice Major was for them. He was elected not as the man who would get rid of the poll tax hut as the man to resolve the battle over Europe. It is not possible properly to understand British politics in any other way.
He was picked because he was as far to the right as the pro-Europeans could stomach. He also has the advantage of understanding how important it is to appease the Eurosceptics — having them on the inside looking out is part of the strategy. That way potential opponents are locked into the present leadership, hamstrung and disarmed.
The pro-Europe wing is all too aware of the depth of reaction in British society - especially at the base of the Tory party - and how it yearns for strong leadership.
Norman Lamont was not the only one singing in the bath when sterling fell through the ERM trap door.
It would have been possible - metaphorically - to fill Dublin's Landsdown Road stadium twice over with Tory party workers willing to smash up their seats and throw them at the pro-Europeans. British Conservatives of all shades think the ERM is a one way ticket to rule by foreigners. And they hate the thought.
Douglas Hurd was forced to acknowledge as much in the Financial Times, "we have a problem in the Parliamentary Party and a problem among Conservative activists, doubt about that"
Such is the rancour that the whipless nine have reduced their own party to a minority government. These people explicitly advocate a turn to the right of the sort so ably argued for by Lord McAlpine.
Hurd battles on, arguing that the last thing the Tories need is "a new raft of ideological policies". This contribution is clearly aimed at Redwood, Lilley and Portillo. These heirs to the leadership of Britain seek to restore it as a world power through a frontal assault on the labour movement and welfare state.
These divisions therefore cannot just be reduced to a question of finance versus industrial capital. While it is a neat counterposition, the question should not be posed so simplistically.
It misses the critical point - the battle in the Conservative Party is a deeply ideological battle, one fought on the terrain of ruling class strategy.
Europe is how it is expressed in public. It is their most concrete expression of division. Concrete enough to bring down Thatcher, their anointed representative of a decade's Editorial, Sunday Telegraph standing; tossed away in tears without remorse when she was no longer needed.
It is on this matter that the failure of the British left to challenge the pro-European capitalists is so appalling and debilitating.
Just where is the anti-Maastricht campaign that is mobilising people from a left-wing perspective?
The absence of any serious left challenge over the key issue in British politics would be laughable if it was not so serious. The terms of the debate are being set by the right. It appears to people only as a discussion among capitalists - a socialist alternative is nowhere - to be seen.
Acceptance of the conditions of monetary and economic union will undoubtedly require huge attacks on the welfare state. This is the context in which a Blair-led government will find itself. A massive battle will be declared. It will be fought out through the public sector unions and through the structures of the historic party of the working class.
The bourgeoisie are currently fighting tooth and nail for the soul of the party of the working class. Marxists must be at the centre of this struggle, to make sure the odds on them winning are reduced.
The ferocity of the argument within the Tory Party is therefore set in place by Britain's special historical position in the world.
From populist triumph to poll tax fiasco: even the glory days of Thatcher did not resolve the historic problems of the British ruling class For 150 years it was the most powerful capitalist power on the planet. The success of the British Empire allowed the Conservatives to establish an historic bloc which maintained it as the ruling class party for a whole period.
The creation of this bloc was a response to i) the development of a mass working class movement in the middle of the nineteenth century around Chartism and ii) the settlement that came out of the end of the Corn Laws, which indicated the predominance of finance capital over manufacturing capital.
The Tory party organised a bloc of Unionists, the military, petit bourgeois layers, banking and finance capital and, later, skilled workers To weld this alliance together it was necessary to have both a strong exchange rate and to make limited concessions to the working class. The high exchange rate also established London as the centre of finance capital in Europe.
The capacity to maintain this double act. was underwritten by the enormous inward. flow of profits from Britain's capital which had been exported abroad.
This strategic bloc worked very well. It allowed the ruling class to maintain the Tory Party as the natural government under conditions of developing bourgeois democracy while coping with the emergence of an organisationally strong labour movement.
This arrangement was complemented by a powerful trade union bureaucracy that could be relied upon to both police and depoliticise the workers movement Their success is underlined by the fact that between 1886 and 1945 the Tories won the largest share of the vote in 12 out of 13 elections and were almost continuously in office throughout the period - bar the pre-First World War Liberal victory and the two Labour governments This is also the reason why the crises of rule which effected the European ruling classes in places such as Italy, Germany and Spain did not have the same devastating effect in Britain. We have no equivalent to the upheavals in Germany 1918*19, Spain 1934-39, or Italy in the early to mid 1920s.
The 1926 General Strike hardly comes into the same category.
The strategy continued to work as long as Britain remained a world power. Yet from the end of the First World War it became evident that the balance of world power was already beginning to shift. A number of powers began to jockey for position. Two decades of an unstable global multipolar system could only be resolved by another world war.
What was implicit in 1945 became explicit during the Suez crisis. Britain was now a junior partner of the US. The phrase "special relationship" was no more than a euphemism for domination by the United States and the subordination of Britain by consent.
The far sighted members of the bourgeoisie saw that such a reorganisation of the world political system and Britain's reduction to second rank would need a thorough strategic reorientation. This would have to involve the rebuilding of Britain's domestic industrial base and domestic investment patterns in a re-orientation toward continental Europe.
In this way the welfare state can be seen as the product of two different sets of circumsrinces. "It has become common sense to many political leaders that the only safe place for British capital lies in an alliance with those the other side of the English Channel. Yet this contradicts everything the Conservative Party has stood for. Thus the crisis. There does not seem to be a week that goes by without another European crisis gripping the Tories. They've never had it so bad. Yet this is not just a passing ailment. It is more a fatal disease. Currently they are too weak to carry out monetary union or to get out of their sick bed to smash the welfare state."
First as a response to the enormous popularity of the Soviet Union following its vanguard role in the defeat of fascism and second as the basis of a new way to organise capitalism for the British ruling class. A modern capitalism requires a healthy educated workforce in order for it to compete on a world scre However this new orientation immediately began to cut across the historic bloc on which the Conservative Party had been based.
The cost of the welfare state to the working class was part of a drive by the Tories to reduce the cost of labour to capital. The attempted change of strategic orientation from international to domestic investment undermined both the military and some sectors of finance capital.
From the early 1960s until 1979 the ruling class tried by various means - usually incomes policies. - to reduce the wage levels of the working class within the framework of the post-1945 settlement. Only Callaghan's Labour government had any success here, but was eventually brought down by industrial militancy.
The conclusion was unavoidable. If British capital was to survive embedded in a medium size power then the whole 1945 deal had to be trashed.
In stepped Mrs Thatcher.
The leadership created for the job was the ideological representative of the old empire alliance. What other Prime Minister since the end of the Second World War summoned up more the ghosts of empire past? Hers was a mobilising ideology rooted in the imperialist ideas resident in all classes of British society.
But while Thatcher did deliver massive blows to the political and organisational strength of the working class, she was unable to reverse Britain's long term decline as a manufacturing power.
Consequently it has become commonsense to many political leaders that the only safe place for British capital lies in an alliance with those the other side of the English Channel.
Yet this contradicts everything the Conservative Party has stood for. Thus the crisis.
There does not seem to be a week that goes by without another European crisis gripping the Tories. They've never had it so bad. Yet this is not just a passing ailment. It is more a fatal disease.
Currently they are too weak to carry out monetary union or to get out of their sick bed to smash up the welfare state.
We should not get carried away with complacency, however. This is not a qualitative SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 80, March 25 1995. Page 9. Still singing in the bath: Norman Lamont crisis of ruling class rule of the sort that has convulsed Europe earlier in the century. It is a very specific moment.
The capitalist order is safe for the time being - because the party of pro-European capital is alive and well and living in John Smith House. This emphasises further the importance of the Labour Party.
The lessons of the poll tax struggle have to be learned. Mass action can win concessions, but if the political and ideological struggle is not taken through the structures of the labour movement, then it not only lets the labour bureaucrats off the hook, but it means an effective challenge cannot be mounted.
In the end all it took to take the wind out of the anti-poll tax campaign was another regressive tax - in the shape of 2.5 per cent on VAT.
That the bourgeoisie now have a second eleven fit to govern is due in part to the abandonment by British Marxists of the terrain of battle. They have preferred the comfier climes of left-wing conferences declaring the "new party" or "movement", or low level rank and fileist cabals which challenge no-one, involve no labour movement leaders and are not based on the struggles in the trade unions and Labour Party.
Such an abstention weakens not only the revolutionary left but fails to shift the balance of forces in the direction of our class.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 80, March 25 1995, Page 10
"Major was elected not as the man who would get rid of the poll tax, but as the man to resolve the battle over Europe. He was picked because he was as far to the right as the pro-Europeans could stomach."