John Edmonds of the GMB and Bill Morris of the T&GWU, the Blair banowaggoo won al the voics takeh at conference. Conference avoided specifying the minimum wage and even defeated the Constituency left on Trident, while a call for defence spending to be cut to the Buropean average was effectively headed off.
Orchestrated
It was one of the most successfully stage-managed conferences ever, which provided the media with choice soundbites and slick suited images. Bloody noses for the left were orchestrated over Liz Davies and Arthur Scargill's tactically questionah e efforts to reraise Clause 4 Worse. Clare Short's speech against Liz and the Leeds North-Bast CL.P on behalf of the NEC ruling, has set the scene for a possible new round ment is not new. It was the weakness and failure of the left to challenge it that was new"
Blair delivered a visionary speech which mobilised the delegates and won widespread acelaim. There is no doubt that his emotive and osychologically tunco but vacuous mcibne was effective. Even many Tory MP were impressed. one enough to cross the floor of the House to embrace Tony Blair's New Labour IT IS CLEAR that sharp tensions exist between Blair's project to transform the Party and sections of the union bureaucracy and Parliamentary Labour Party.
In particular there is an anxiety about their exclusion from future privileges, but their fears were allayed. As one boss of a big union explained, "It has proved casier to politic under cover of Blairism than it ever was in the old days." (Sunday Telegraph, 8.10.95)
However, there is also a fear that they won't be able bold the line if Blair goes too far, especially when in goverment, But thesc fault-lines are not open ruptures toment at any price. Nor are they open fissures may appear under mass pressure from below.
Even 'left" burcaucrar Rodney Bickerstaffe. when questioned about the left's weak challenge to Blair, snorted angrily so the camcra: "What do you expect? We can't make the Party look like a foppy rabbit just before a General Election."
That says it all.
Conference confirmed the two main goals of the Labour right. The first is to reassure the bosses that Tony Blair is their man - a reliSn senn oneD Wi sccuons or the professtonat and middle classes.
Central to achieving these goals is Biair's unconditional acceptance of the capicalist market and his desire to sever the historic links of the Labour Party with the trade unions.
The core of their plan is therefore to transform the Labour Party into a socat acmocranc party Hke the German SPD, at best.
The spectre of continuing wicaunts agalnss the ieit 1s an lnevitable consequence of this pol. icy. Ine new tule book consolidates OMOV and even proVesocesio deo (yes. like Stalin did), both of which are designed to by-pass the local party structures and representative democracy, in the name of "real democracy' - the atomisation of a passive party membership which is subject to direct appeals from the leader from Walworth Road and through the media.
Scargill
At the end of Conference. Arthur Scargill, smarting from his 11defeat, questioned his future membership of the party (there nations of active party members in some fringe meetings. cg. by the editor of Tribune).
Despite Tony Benn's assurances that Scareill would not leave the fold. his well publicised stance taking place in parts of the left about the need for a new party of labour. Some. prematurely in our view, see as immanent the demise of the Labour Party as the party of the working class movement: others just feel that there is an urgent need for a socialist pole to the left However, the conditions are not ripe for the development of a new left party today. The faultlines in the Labour movement are not yet ruptures and the masses want a Labour Governmest not a split.
Socialist Owlook insists that the task is to build a consistent revoluпопату coren not presidiorciy cy tablish a vacillating narty that does not know whether it is meant to be Ihe hving soul of Ui Labour of a revolutionary departure from L.acontradiction it would soon go the way or the oe ile into the dustoin of history.
even ir a tew ycar s experience radically changes the perceptions of the vanguard, calling today for a new socialist party is simply the luxury of armchair revolutionaries • and a diversion from the task of fighting the Tories and fighting B airism. 3 fieht that must be tocused on where it counts most. in the unions and amonest the social movements and the youth.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 92, October 28 1995, Page 4