stuff that dreams
are made on? HARRY SLOAN looks at the policies on offer at this year's Blackpool Labour Conference. A YEAR after the gleeful scenes of the election of the self-styled "dream ticket" leadership of Kinnock-Hattersley, there will be little for Labour's left wing to cheer for at this year's Party Conference.
At a speed which must have caught many constituency activists gasping, the Kinnockersley twins have presided over a consistent rightward turn in Party policy, succumbing to the witch-hunting pressures of last year's Election press coverage.
The latest Party defence statement is the clearest example of this. While still curtseying in the direction of the Party's "non-nuclear" defence policy, it emphasises its support for NATO, and stresses the need to expand conventional forces.
Even this vigorous commitment to the defence of imperialist Britain and the NATO bloc against a mythical external "threat" is insufficient to satisfy the Party's neanderthal right wing. Kinnock's shadow cabinet colleague Peter Shore has made no bones about publicity attacking the policy, claiming that a non-nuclear strategy is incompatible with NATO membership. And former strikebreaking Prime Minister Callaghan is one of the tactical weapons to be rolled out into a reactionary fringe meeting in Blackpool aimed at opposing the policy and offering the media yet another helping of "defence policy confusion" stories.
Meanwhile Hattersley himself has proudly unveiled the NEC's new, explicitly non-socialist economic policy document, epitomising the defeatist right wing "new realism" even in its laughable title "A Policy That Works' (for whom?). Worse than previous illusory "alternative document makes no mention of nationalisation or of renationalisation of assets stripped by Thatcher, with the sole exception of British Telecom. Even the pretence of socialism is supplanted completely by a mixture of Keynesianism and wishful thinking. It represents a total capitulation Thatcher.
These significant shifts to the right on formal policy are linked to the abject refusal of Kinnock or his shadow cabinet colleagues to take any categoric stand in support of the NGA last winter, of Liverpool City Council in its defiance of the Tory government, or
Hattersley: economic "new realism". • of the miners' strike. This reticence of the "dream ticket" pair, and of Kinnock in particular, has even proved to be an embarrassment to some of his own staunch Kinnockites, Jean McCrindle and Peter Hain have openly stated their criticisms in the new issue of New Socialist, correctly accusing being "obsessed" with the question of
'To many striking miners and party activists, he has appeared to view the strike as an irritating diversion from the "real" task of winning electoral sup-
Indeed: electoral support may be growing again - it could drop lower than June 1983. But what type of government do Labour voters want? Do they want one which would support or attack workers struggles?
Kinnock's capitulation to Tory pressure and propaganda, and to the pressures of his right wing PLP colleagues is also reflected in his support for the attempt to neutralise reselection, and his vigourous opposition to the formation of autonomous Black sections within the Party. Though many black Socialist Viewpoint, No. 1, Autumn 1984. Page 11
-Blackpool '84: Burying left wing policies? members and numerous constituency activists have lobbied and battled strongly for this vital step to beat down the racist obstacles to a fuller recruitment and involvement of black workers — 80% of whom voted Labour in 1983 — it seems certain to be defeated. Similarly with the democratic reforms demanded by the Women's section — which have been a major sector of growth and a continued radical voice within the Party. Their demands have each time been blocked by the union bureaucracy.
16 months after Thatcher scored a nightmare victory over a feeble and divided Labour leadership, exposing in the process the disarray and confusion of the Party's left wing, the political movement has been backward rather than forward. The left has yet to take back up the cudgels in the way that brought the famous victories of 198081. It's time to wake up to the dangers
Reselection: