Editorial
capitalist party. bureaucracy, as a device to through Parliamentary legislation, it has sought to achieve more or less ambitious reforms within the existing system, using the established institutions of bourgeois democracy.
Many Marxists in Britain impatiently to this situation, either with frustrated denunciations of tne programme and premature announcements of the "death"' of social democracy, or by fostering illusions that a Labour leadership could be pressured by Conference votes or rank and file action into far-reaching anti-capitalist measures. the labour movement - have even atempted to paint up the make even daringly radical, while grovelling to business leaders or Kinnock's rejection of both renationalisation and any new nationalisation. the question at the forefront of their minds is not whether Labour will carry out revolutionary socialist attacks on the bastions of capital - but whether a Labour government would halt and roll back the attacks of a reformist government is that it makes no new attacks on the trade unions, democratic rights and living standards that have been so savagely treated by Thatcher. and the pronouncements of the Kinnock leadership suggest that even this minimal demand could result in serious confrontations between the working class and Labour in office. post-war government, unambiguously with employers against trade union struggles, implementing reactionary policies at home and abroad, and tailoring their actions to the demands of the bankers.
It is clear that one likely sharp confrontation will be on the need to repeal all of the Tory anti-union laws enacted since 1979, thus simply restoring the rights that have been swept away. Kinnock's supporters reject this approach, certain limited "rights" for union members, while
THE LABOUR Party has never been an anti-
From its early formation by a wing of the trade union protect the unions have responded limitations of Labour's
Others — adapting to the reformist pressures inside
"progressive" aspects of Labour policies to the Kinnock leadership appear quite ignoring
Roy
Hattersley's
But for many sections of the workers' movement, which Thatcher has made on the working
The bare minimum that its supporters could expect
Yet the experience of previous Labour governments
Under Wilson and Callaghan, and under Attlee's sided leaders
Labour offering instead to legislate
Socialist Viewpoint No. 15 February 1987 pl
Court.
Labour government.
Shrewsbury building strike the strike
- disqualification or surcharges from fight Tory attacks the media, and repeal the Immigration
Meacher.
Poverty Action Group's magazine, Poverty, Meacher says a Labour government would face colossal pressure on treasury resources citing housing benefit as one of the biggest problems.
"If we tried to return to the status quo ante, we would put up the cost of benefits by ap proximately £450 million," he
Said.
He confirmed that a future rovernment would
LABOUR WEEKLY, February 6, 1987 intending that whole sections of Thatcher's laws will remain on the statute book, backed up by all of the blatantly anti-union rulings handed down by the High
Another issue is the restoration in full of the cash cut from health, housing, education and social service spending by nearly 8 years of. Tory attacks. Instead, Michael Meacher offers a pitiful sop to the NHS, while Roy Hattersley is adamant that even the councils that have attempted to cushion the blow of Tory cuts by incurring debts will receive "no blank cheque' from a
While Harold Wilson's government refused to assist the surcharged Clay Cross councillors or free the jailed pickets, Kinnock has always made clear his opposition to any amnesty for jailed miners or reinstatement for those victimised in and will make no move to life Lambeth or Liverpool councillors - or any others penalised for
Who now believes that a Labour leadership so ready to join the Tories in denouncing anti-racist councils as "loony left" will brave the vicious racist hysteria from
Acts which
Sources into Mersey. go Injection of no
• A Labour government may
not be able to reverse all the
swingeing social security cuts
already made or proposed by
the Tory government warns
In an interview in the Child
Still fighting on: sacked trade unionists at Hangers the limbfitters have been strengthened by the formation of a vocal Women's Support Group provide much of the legal facade of institutionalised state racism?
Will Kinnock, busily using party political broadcasts, and mythical friendly do anything to combat the brutality and arbitrary powers of the police - and repeal Thatcher's Police Act and "public order" legislation?
Having promised a "minimum wage" but refused to out any figure upon it (many believe a pathetic £80 could be the Labour target), Kinnock and Hattersley have focussed much more consistently upon the need to hold down wages in the hopes of creating more jobs. A new Labour government committed to wage controls could rapidly run into collision with whole sections of workers — not least in the public sector -seeking redress from years of declining living standards under Thatcher.
Among many other issues where the bare minimum demand on Labour is that they halt and reverse Tory attacks, the glaring difficulty for Kinnock is how to handle the industries that have been privatised to provide cheap votes for Thatcher and to fund tax-breaks for the wealthy. The astronomic costs of repurchasing the shares that have been sold would nationalisation:
power and wealth of the SPUTE I HE SAC
HANGER DISPUTE MAKER
SUPPORT THE 300 SACKED LIMBMAKERS. Socialist Viewpoint No. 15 February 1987 p2 vague "social ownership'" line now adopted would be enough to trigger a media backlash but nowhere near a serious
On each of these issues, Marxists favour and argue for particular demands and policies - designed to mobilise mass action, organise workers at each level to challenge and confront the power and the "rights' machinery, expose the profiteering and exploitation that is central to the capitalist system.
- no matter complete and perfect it may seem - can in itself hope to mobilise the action of millions across the country.
The best conditions to raise more advanced political demands, and fight for their implementation, conditions for class struggle in which the political thinking of whole sections of workers is shaken up and masses come into conflict with the limitations of their existing trade union and political leaders.
This is why - for all the treachery of the Labour leadership we call clearly for re-election of a new Labour government to defeat the vicious Thatcher encourage workers to take militant action to defend
Vote Labour - and fight for socialist policies!
- REINSTATE
1/T(·
•n SACKED 30
FI LIANGE
DISPUT SUPPOR/ SACRED 08 KEINSTATI THE N FCOTIA