Last September she had to borrow $4 billion. Britain's reserves are noW tour times lower than Germany and half of Italy's!
We've got to get stuck in over the next few months. I don't believe the election is all that far away. I believe that as soon as there is a little bit of blue in the sky, she'll cut and run.
That's why the fishing zone has been put around the Falklands. It has nothing to do with fish. She needs the Jingoism of 'Let's duff up the Argies'. If they were concerned about the stocks of fish, why haven't they put one around Britain? It's to raise the flag of nationalism in time for the election!
There was no fight over Hong Kong -with the 'Reds'. Geoffrey Howe went over and signed it away. If it had been Derek Hatton that had done that they'd have hunt him, and blamed me and Tony Benn for it!
150,000 bankruptcies since the Tories came to power. You know about that in Wakefield. Even the shop she was born in, in Grantham, converted to a gone bankrupt. can't survive in Thatcher's Britain.
During the strike it was 'got to make a we shut your pit.' Johnson Matthey bank went under, with no
£100 million down. Mrs Thatcher. She says 'Shut it then, shut it! You don't have to ring me on a Sunday night. If it has no reserves then shut it. MoGregor's told you every night on the BBC - the one that's full of left
'But I just thought I'd better tell you that it's not a pit, it's the Johnson Matthey
'Christ, keep it open! It's run by and Norman Tebbitt's' So they found £100 million of your money! coalfields. We needed it for the health service. But they used it to keep the bank out
It should have been shouted from the housetops. Not left to back-benchers. Hattersley should have been in there pitching.
always imagined it was Militant he was throwing at.
The SDP talk about a middle way. There wasn't one during the Strike. In real life you have to make decisions. Either you go in the gates or you stay out. People who claim there is an easy non-combative way are fooling you. There is no yellow brick road. You are either on the side of those who produce the wealth or you're on the
The Tories have taught us a few lessons
- to look after our own. Things have to pick up now we've got them on the run. That means we've not got to waste any remember the story when they said 'it's only Liverpool, a tiny minority of 1%' Then they went to St Helen's, to Coventry, and Redcar. Then an inquiry into Knowsley.
I call upon this Party to assist in stopping these expulsions and inquiries into people whose only crime is fighting the Tories.
We have to make sure that when we've got a majority we done something with it, that all of us are going to act together like socialists and be accountable to the Party that sent us here, and not get bogged down inspecting our own navels.
There are great socialist landscapes to conquer. Let's do it together!"
LABOUR
ANDTHE
CLASS
JOHN PETERS discusses in more detail the peculiarities of the British Labour Party and the correct tactics for
THE prime obstacle to building a mass revolutionary party in
Britain is the ideological and organisational hold of social democracy on the working successful socialist revolution will only occur in
Britain once this hold has been
To recognise the problem is only the beginning: we need to have an understanding of the nature of social revolutionaries in the past in coming to grips with it.
The Origins of the Labour Party other European countries where social democratic parties were built which then constructed Trade
Unions, the British working class had no independent party for a long time after mass (general) unions were
Until the formation of the Labour
Committee in the British working class overwhelmingly voted Liberal and trades unions
This difference in the way it was formed gave the Labour Party a difbeginning to other social-democratic
Outside Britain, European social tionary, with the debate on reformist
Socialist Viewpoint No. 15 February 1987 p35
WORKING
"revisionism" taking place from the turn of the century and coming to a head in 1914 with "patriotic" support from social democracy to their own capitalist class in each imperialist country at the start of World War I.
debate over reformism, best exemplified by that in the German SPD between Luxemburg and Bernstein, concerned many issues, including the General Strike and parliamentarianism, but is best summed up in the opportunists' phrase "the moment is everything, the goal nothing.
In this debate, the main social democratic leadership, or "centre", took a position of defending the revolutionary programme on paper, but carrying out the programme of the reformists; hence the term "centrists" for those who show themselves to be "revolutionary in words, reformist in deeds "
The British Labour Party however grew from much less theoretical soil — the trade union movement. Trades Unions are, at root, bodies for gainTUC founded the Lour Represen reforms from capitalism. tation Committee as a continuation of that struggle for reforms in the "political" (i.e. parliamentary) arena.
Despite what some (such as Militant) claim, there was never "golden age" of the Labour Party. It was always a party reflecting the limited political horizons of the trade union leadeship.
Arising from this difference in how it was formed is the main continuing difference between social democracy in Britain and elsewhere - that of direct affiliation of the trades unions to the Labour Party. (When initially formed, the LRC/LP did not have in-
dividual membership but only affiliated bodies mainly Councils and Independent Labour Party branches.)
Social democracy, by nature, has close links with the union bureaucracies, but the "open-valve" with direct representation of the unions at all levels and their direct domination of policy making is unique to Britain. The Class Nature of the Labour Party The programmatic nature of the Labour Party clearly bourgeois, regarding parliamentary democracy as sacrosanct, making no challenge to the capitalist nature of the state and the economy, bipartisanship as the noIm "foreign policy" role of British imperialism.
The fact that Labour governments implement some retorms benefit the working class (NHS, education, etc.) does not alter the basic characterisation of the Labour Party programme as revolutionary, defending capitalism rather than struggling to overthrow it.
As Lenin put it:
"...the concepts organisation of the Trade movement' or 'political expression of this movement' are wrong ones. Of course the bulk of the members of the Labour Party are workers; however, whether a party is really a political party of the workers or not depends not only on whether it consists of workers, but also upon who leads it, upon the content of its activities, and _of its tactics.
"Only the latter whether we have before us really a political party of the proletariat. From this point of view, correct one, the Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois because although it workers, it is led by reactionaries. and the worst reactionaries at that. who act fully in the spirit of the bourgeoisie.
an organisation of the bourgeoisie which exists in order, with the help of the British Noskes and Scheidemans to systematically deceive the workers.
(This is from a speech to the 2nd Congress of the Comintern, 1920, in which Lenin also advocated that the British CP should affiliate to the Labour Party.)
However, the Labour Party is securely based on the trades unions, the mass organisations of the working class, and no amount of sociological analysis of its membership or activists alters this.
The Labour Party is best defined as a bourgeois party based on the mass organisations of the working This characterisation clearly shows
Trades its very everywhere and regarding on accepting the which counter-
"political
Union government the contradictory nature of the part political and the contradiction between historical interests class (the struggle for sociali~ determines the only workers from social democracy party.
of consists is nature sociological.
Those members.
tories in
(despite ballots qualifications) confirm this.
Social-democratic
Party class.
Socialist Viewpoint No. 15 February 1987 p36
Labour: an alternative pariy of bourgeois of the , and the programme of "its" party. it is this contradiction which revolutionaries The nature have to exploit if we are to break
This does not mean that the Labour Party is in some way a "two class party" with a bourgeois leadership and a working class base. The bourgeois programmatic, not who question the "mass" nature of the Labour Party miss the point. It does not have a mass individual membership, let alone an active one. In organisation it is usually a feeble sect, but remains influential out of all proportion to its active
The "mass" nature stems from the organic link with the unions and what this represents in terms of working class support. The overwhelming victhe recent political fund all the obvious parties depend on inertia, and one of the central purposes of demanding that the Labour
Fact contrary to its bourgeois nature, in accordance with the needs of the working class, is to cut through this inertia and undermine one of the props of capitalist society. Labour Governments of Labour governments follows clearly from this characterisation: they are capitalist governments, but still based on the organisations of the working class.
They are an alternative party of government, often able to push through anti-working class measures which would meet far more resistance if implemented by a Tory government (and, as a consequence, laying the foundations for more reactionary Tory governments).
Labour governments are seen as "safe" by the bourgeoisie when they can be relied on to act against the working class (with little pressure from such as the IMF). A Labour government becomes 'weak" for capitalism when its working class base rises up against it — as in 1969 with "In Place of Strife" or in the 1978-79 "Winter of Discontent'. In such circumstances the ruling class will use the other agencies at its disposal to repress the working class.
Those who argue that it is Kinnock's intention to break the direct link between the Labour Party and
Marxists do not endorse Labour's programme by calling for a Labour vote the unions, have to explain why it should be in the interests of the bourgeoisie (or Kinnock) to break precisely that aspect of the Labour Party which makes it of use to them.
Whilst removing the link would reduce pressure on a Labour government to act in the interests of the working class, it would also reduce the pressure on workers to patiently bear the cost of capitalism's problems, and restrict Kinnock's ability to utilise union block votes against the rank and file. The United Front and Iransitional demands In the aftermath of the 1914 betrayal by the Second International and the formation of Communist Parties, the leadership of the Comintern recognised that it was not sufficient to point out to workers the inability of capitalism to cater for human needs, the need to overthrow it, and to "expose" the bankruptcy of the reformist leaders in their unwillingness to tight tor the interests of the working class
There was a need to put forward demands which took up the immediate needs of the working class, which if taken up and fought for by those who did not accept the communist programme would show the logic of the struggle for socialism and the treachery of their present leaders. This was the essence of what became called "transitional demands".
Labour Puttine, perple first
Because the unwillingness of reformist leaders to fight for the basic interests of the working class can only be exposed by fighting for them in practice, the tactic of the United Front was also developed. Communist parties were to say to workers: "we do not belive your leaders will fight for the basic needs of the working class, but we are prepared to fight alongside you for these needs and for your leaders to take them up."
Demands were to be made not as an exercise in literary exposure but because the working class needed what was demanded. mobilising demands, mobilising the working class in self-activity they were sterile. The Communist approach fought for by Lenin was to say: "fight alongside us for limited demands, and we will convince you in the course of struggle," not: "first accept our overall view, our analysis of your leaders, then fight."
The United Front meant not only fighting alongside the rank and file n day-to-day issues, raising trans onal demands with them and callin on them to raise them with their leaders, but also making direct approaches to the social democratic leaders to fight for these demands
This meant firmly rejecting the sectarian concept of a "united front from below" (seeking to exclude the bureaucrațic leaders while linking up only with the rank and as epitomised by the "Third Period" ultra-leftism Stalin's disastrous But also to be rejected is any attempt at a bureaucratic "united front from above" between leaderships without the involvement of the rank and file, shown in its full colours by Stalin's relations with the British TUC in the Anglo-Russian Committee prior to the TUC betrayal of the 1926 General Strike.
The united front tactic requries a quite different approach, which above all maintains the political independence of the Marxist forces, especially their right at all times to criticise social democratic leaders and their policies. Governmental Slogans The United Front flows over into the question of governments. Where revolutionaries are not strong enough to stand their own candidates in elections, we generally call for a critical vote for reformist workers' parties while placing clear demands on them.
Marxists do not call for a vote for Labour against the Tories because we see them as "better"; on the contrary, we argue that there is no fundamental difference. We call for a vote for labour because we need to dispel the illusions held by the working class, who believe a Labour government is
John Harris, IFL John PHOTO:
a "lesser evil" to the Tories.
As Lenin put it in Left Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder:
"If we are the party of the revolutionary class and not merely a revolutionary group, and if we want the masses to follow us land unless we achieve that. we stand the risk of remaining mere windbags), we must, first, help Henderson or Snowden to beat Lloyd George and Churchill.... second we must help the majority of the working class to be convinced by their own experience that we are right. i.e. that the Hendersons and Snowdens are absolutely good for nothing. that they are petty-bourgeois and treacherous by nature, and that their bankruptcy is inevitable; third, we must bring nearer the moment when, on the basis of the disappointment of most of the workers in the Hendersons, it will be possible with serious chances of success, to overthrow the government of the Hendersons at once..."
(...)
"...with my vote. I want to support Henderson as the rope supports a hanged man - that the impending establishment of a government of the Hendersons will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of the Hendersons and the Snowdens..."
But such a process is not automatic. A call for a vote for Labour has to be tied to demands on the government that it should act in the working class interest and strike at the capitalists. We urge workers to mobilise to enforce these demands. To the extent that we are successful, we will break the working class from
The fact that we have had seven Labour governments in Britain without a mass revolutionary party having been built reflects the fact that sectarianism and opportunism have been the norm in British far left politics, rather than the incorrectness of the policy spelled out by Lenin and The Early Communist Parties Because most of European social-democracy had portrayed itselí as "revolutionary" prior to 1914, break to social-chauvinist support for the war produced major leit-wing splits, even if many of these did not appear fully until after the war. In evey case where a mass communist party was formed, it arose from a split in social-democracy not outside of it.
Even when such mass parties had been formed, they used the united front approach to effect further splits from social-democracy. Thus in Germany there was not only the split of the Spartakusbund to form the KPD, "Independents" (USPD) followed by the fusion of the KPD and USPD to form the United Communist Party.
When this period of instability and "re-alignment of the left" mediate post-war years was over, and mass communist parties had been formed, the problem of winning the majority of the working class to the struggle still remained. It was in this period that the policy of the United Front was refined by the Comintern.
However, of the vestiges of ultrasocial-democracy and the difficulties of incorporating the principle of the United Front into the programme of the CPs against resolved before Stalinisation of the Comintern, so this policy had little pportunity to be developed anc tested in practice.
The highest point of the United Front is the demand on reformist/centrist parties to form a workers' government independent of the bourgeoisie and "take the power" This demand was intended to be used in revolutionary situation where soviets were being built, with the its peak, though large sections of the working class still followed reformist or cen-
The two best-known uses of this demand were in Russia in Germany in 1923. The first led to the successful revolution; the second to a missed opportunity when the German Communist Party hung back. The de-
"Labour take the Power' loses timelessly in periods of relative social The United Front and Entrism If the united front was a difticuit policy for mass communist parties to carry out, the problems for small groups of revolutionaries are infinitely greater. (In this sense any grouping is "small" so long as it is of insufficient size and authority in the workiliate to the Labour Party, workin vithin it both to win the best militant this advice by a mi majority pted onference), it couched its applic on tor affiliation in such terms that:
lowever, many CP members re
Labour Party members, at a However, with the coming of Third
Period Stalinism the NLWM was seen as a "barrier" to workers joining the CP and was wound up. and the Labour Party itself decribed as just another bourgeois party.
Since the degeneration Comintern, the banner of Marxism has been carried forward by the Trotskyist movement, which has never been able to begin from its own mass parties established in the workers' movement.
Building parties in a linear fashion, that is by the slow accumulation militants has proven painfully difficult and falls considerably below the requirements of the period. Only a convulsive process through splits and fusions, nationally and on a world scale, will culminate in the birth of a mass revolutionary party.
Even during exceptionally turbulant periods — such as acute crises of reformist apparatuses — it would still remain impossible to build revolutionary parties with mass influence in a matter of a few years, no céntrist currents appear within the traditional organisations of the work-
In practice, Marxists should have a flexible and open approach to every current coming out of the traditional parties or even the trade union movenent. This policy does not mean ar adaptation to the positions currents. It does not mean either ramming the Marxist programme down their throats in the hope they will swallow it. Marxists must learn how to revolutionary positions — not the whole progamme but its most fundamental points, the ones that correspond best to common work and point towards a common character of the work that is done to advance the revolutionary gramme and expose to workers the bankruptcy of social democracy re mains a topic for debate between the various Marxist groupings
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