The 2005 Labour Party Conference marks a
significant shift in the situation in Britain.
It deserves careful study by Marxists and by every trade union and Labour
activist. It was chiefly marked by a sharp conflict between the Party
leadership and the trade unions. In the course of the week, the leadership
suffered a series of defeats over key issues in the “New Labour” programme,
such as NHS backdoor privatisation plans and the restoration of some form of
right to secondary picketing for strikers.
On Monday September 26, the opening day of
Conference, The Guardian carried an article with the headline: Leadership
team prepares for battle with unions. That set the tone for the rest of the
week. In the course of the week the leadership suffered a string of humiliating
defeats, one after the other. On Monday Conference voted to restore the right
to take secondary strike action, lost under the Tories. A second defeat
followed when the conference overwhelmingly endorsed a GMB union motion calling
for the pension age to be kept at 60 for public sector workers and linked to
earnings.
Finally, on Thursday, Conference threw out
the proposal of the government to introduce still more private sector
involvement in the NHS. A resolution demanding the immediate suspension of
private sector involvement was approved by an overwhelming majority of about 70
to 30. In addition, the manhandling of an 82-year old delegate led to a debacle
by the leadership and provoked a furious response by the rank and file that is
destined to have serious repercussions. This was not supposed to happen!
Blair and Brown
At the beginning of the week, the media
focussed all their attention on what was supposed to be the “central issue” –
the succession to Tony Blair. Lately the press has been commenting on how old
and tired poor Mr. Blair looks these days. This tiredness is not personal but
political. The working class has passed through the Blair school and learned
some bitter lessons. There is now an angry backlash against Blair and New
Labour in the rank and file of the Labour Movement. At the present time this is
reflected most clearly in the unions. But inevitably it is finding its reflection
in the Labour Party. What happened this week was a warning of stormy times
ahead.
The days when Blair could get his ideas
passed easily in Conference have passed into history. According to some sources
delegates at this Conference were told: “if you do not stand up during a
standing ovation, you are out.” Under these circumstances, it is no surprise
that he is thinking longingly of his retirement in the Tuscan hills. But he is
remarkably slow to hand over to his friend Gordon. Clearly a deal was struck a long
time ago. Yet everything seems to indicate that Blair will hang on as long as
possible, even though this will discredit him completely and damage Labour’s
election chances.
One newspaper carried an article entitled: “Blair’s
selfish vanity risks poisoning Labour’s future”. Tony Blair is both selfish
and vain, of course, but that is not the reason why he continues to cling to
office. Why is he hanging on so tenaciously? Because the ruling class fears
that Brown will not be able to hold the line, that he will bend under the
remorseless pressure of the unions and the rank and file, that Labour, having
swung so far to the right will start to swing back to the left. They know
this has happened before. That is why they are pressing Blair not to step down
until the very last moment, in an attempt to keep their hold over the Labour
Party. But given the ferment of discontent that exists, to postpone the day of
reckoning will only be to make the conflict more violent when it finally breaks
out, and break out it must.
Gordon Brown’s "no going back"
speech was therefore intended to steady the nerves of big business. When Brown
addressed the Conference he was not speaking to the delegates but to the City
of London and the ruling class of Britain.
He was saying to them: “You don’t have to worry about me. I will carry on with
the same New Labour (i.e. bourgeois) agenda.” The media concentrated on this
all week. It was going to be a case of “the king is dead. God save the king!”
In an interview with the Sunday Times
he said: "The programme of reform will continue when Tony steps down
because it is the right programme for Britain.
Indeed it is the only programme for Britain
if we are going to compete in the era of globalisation." This is the
language of Blairism, pure and simple. But the message of this Conference was
very different. Although it is very doubtful Brown succeeded in winning the
confidence of big business, he has certainly alienated a wide spectrum of
Labour Party members and trade unionists. They do not want to get rid of Blair
to replace him with Blair Mark-2. More and more people realise that Tony Blair
and Gordon Brown really represent the same political trend. There is no real
difference between them.
Given the mess in the Tory party, the
ruling class has no alternative but to cling to New Labour. But they do not
trust Brown in the same way that they trust Blair. Blair, after all, he is one
of their own. He has no interest in maintaining the Labour Party if it does not
accept his capitalist policies. In that case, he would prefer to see it
destroyed. He has his nice little three million pound house to go to, with a
comfortable pension and the confidence that his big business friends will not
desert him in his old age.
The New Labour “democrats” have an ingrained
tendency to ignore the views of the majority. They also suffer a marked allergy
to elections, in which they might end up in the minority. The right wing has
therefore suggested that no Party election will be necessary when Mr Brown
takes over. But this is not a popular view with Labour’s rank and file. After
Brown’s disgusting performance at the Conference it will be even less popular.
Some delegates and MPs ‑ who would have a vote in such a contest ‑ openly
challenged that view. They want a proper debate and the right to choose the new
leader.
According to The Guardian: “Mr
Brown’s unambiguous message also angered some union leaders. Derek Simpson,
general secretary of Amicus, said that continuation of the Blairite
modernisation agenda would lose Labour the fourth term which John Prescott’s
opening conference speech invoked yesterday.
“Tony Woodley, general secretary of the
TGWU, and Amicus’s Mr Simpson said that ‘inappropriate’ New Labour policies
could lose them the election of 2009-10.
“Unison’s leader, Dave Prentis, called Mr
Brown’s comments ‘very disappointing’ and warned against ‘going back to the
Thatcher days of the market’. The GMB echoed that view. Ministers believe that
is the opposite of the truth and that voters are broadly in favour of their
strategy.”
The attitude of the trade union leaders is
only a pale reflection of the seething anger among the rank and file. The
battle lines are being drawn for a ferocious struggle in the Labour Party in
the coming period.
Party hijacked
The attitude of Blair and his faction is
like that of the absolute monarchs of old. Louis XIV famously remarked:
“L’etat, c’est moi” – “The state? I am the state!” Now Blair says: “The Party?
I am the Party!” The domination of the apparatus in Labour Conference resembles
the rule of the Stalinist bureaucracy in a one-Party totalitarian state. Not
even the slightest dissent is tolerated. The rules for electing Conference
delegates have been carefully rewritten to ensure that most delegates are
inexperienced and easy meat for the platform to deal with. In case any awkward
delegates are elected, the Party machine immediately swings into action. The
delegates concerned are invited outside the Conference, where they are
subjected to brutal arm-twisting by Party full-timers.
The Blairite apparatus has rigged the
Conference from top to bottom. In the past at least it served as a forum for
debating policy, although in practice the leadership usually ignored Conference
decisions. Now the last vestiges of Party democracy have been destroyed. With
the most astounding cynicism, the people who are always harping on about “our
democratic values” have trampled democracy underfoot.
John MacDonnell, speaking on the BBC’s World
at One programme, stated that this incident was not at all isolated but
only the tip of the iceberg. The root of the problem was the complete lack of
respect of the leadership for the opinions of the Party membership. What was
the point, he asked, of going to a Conference where resolutions are passed by
big majorities, thereby becoming Labour Party policy, and then a government
minister gets up and says: “This is not government policy.” He also cited cases
where delegates were text-messaged to instruct them which way to vote.
As in everything else, the Blairites have
double standards. They eject an 82-year old man from the Conference, for
heckling. Yet at the meetings of the PLP, whenever an MP attempts to criticize
the official “Party Line” (i.e. the Line dictated by the Prime Minister’s Office)
a number of Blairite cronies immediately commence organized heckling to
intimidate the dissident MP and reduce him or her to silence. At the Fringe
Meeting of the left wing Labour Representation Committee, former Labour MP for
Halifax, Alice Mahan, gave a striking picture of meetings of the Parliamentary
Labour Party, which shows that the same strong-arm tactics are used to silence
dissenters even at this level. It was torture to attend these meetings, she
said.
The systematic neutering of the Party
Conference is only part of the Blairite tactic of hijacking the Labour Party.
The real aim of Blair and his right wing clique was to change the class nature
of the Labour Party, breaking its links to the unions and turning it into a
second edition of the Tory or Liberal Party. In fact, Blair has made no secret
of the fact that he considers the setting up of the Labour Party a hundred
years ago to have been a mistake.
Tony Blair himself has nothing in common
with Labour. His membership of the Party is a mere accident, dictated purely by
career considerations. He would be equally as happy – much more happy, in fact
– in the Tory or Liberal Party. He is, in fact, a bourgeois politician with a
bourgeois agenda. That is why the ruling class is so delighted with him. He has
got away with murder, carrying out Thatcherite policies that would have been
unthinkable for a Tory administration.
The extreme right wing policies of New
Labour have driven away Labour voters in droves and turned the Labour Parry
into an empty shell. Party membership has plunged. Many of those who have left
are Blairites, now disillusioned with Blair. But many are left-wingers and
Labour stalwarts, sickened by the rightward drift of the Party and alienated by
the repressive and dictatorial atmosphere that reigns at every level within it.
Failure of Blair agenda
Yes, all this is quite true. But there is
also another side to the coin. Despite all the rigging, the dirty tricks and
the bullying of the apparatchiks, the Blairites were unable to prevent the
emergence of a clear oppositional trend in the Conference, centred on the
unions. This represents a big difference with the past, when it was the local
CLPs that were on the Left and were systematically thwarted by the bloc vote of
the trade unions. Now the boot is on the other foot.
The Labour party conference inflicted its
first defeat on the leadership in a vote to allow secondary striking in the
wake of the Gate Gourmet affair. In the week before the Conference the big four
unions at the TUC called for supportive, solidarity action to be made legal
after the sacking of 667 staff at the in-flight food firm saw British Airways
baggage handlers down tools in sympathy. Delegates on the floor voted in favour
of the resolution on this issue, which was put forward by the Transport and
General Workers’ Union (TGWU). In the past, the Labour leadership would call
the union leaders into a smoke-filled room and twist their arms until a rotten
compromise was reached, but not any more. All attempts to reach a compromise on
the issue of solidarity action broke down.
The resolution sparked a furious row during
the debate. It overshadowed the build-up to the prime ministers’ big address in
the afternoon. William Bain, from Glasgow NE, was jeered when he claimed the call amounted to a "return to
the employment practices of the 1970s or ’80s". The MP for Stoke-on-Trent
South, Robert Flello, was also jeered when he urged delegates to reject the
resolution. But four sacked Gate Gourmet workers received a standing ovation
from the conference, one of them breaking down in tears at this gesture of
support.
Tony Woodley, the general secretary of the
Transport and General Workers’ Union, defending the resolution, said: "It’s about protecting
workers’ dignity and stopping bosses victimising ordinary men and women."
Woodley said the case exposed "severe weaknesses" in labour laws,
which allowed the "legal exploitation and bullying" of staff.
"It is unacceptable and immoral,"
he said. "We aren’t calling for wildcat action. We aren’t calling for
flying pickets. What is this movement about if it isn’t solidarity with those
less able to defend themselves?" He also attacked ministers for taking so
long to condemn Gate Gourmet management.
Gerry Doherty, of the Transport Salaried
Staffs Association, said Gate Gourmet workers were in a "David versus
Goliath" position and warned delegates not to be "hypocritical"
by applauding Gate Gourmet workers and then voting against the motion. He
attacked Blair for telling a recent TUC dinner that no Labour government would
restore the right to take secondary action. Mr Doherty said: "I don’t
think it is up to the current prime minister to tell us what we are going to do
in the future, because we will deal with that when it comes." Ed Blissett
of the GMB warned that it was "simply unacceptable that in the third term
of a Labour government" workers could be sacked while absent from work due
to sickness or maternity leave.
Alan Johnson, the industry secretary, was
defiant. He told delegates: "In our quest for full and fulfilling
employment we realised that we could not go through the 80s and 90s only to
emerge in the 70s. Back then this party supported secondary action and opposed
the minimum wage. Now it’s the other way round, and that’s how it needs to
stay." But Conference ignored him and voted by a majority of 70 percent to
back the resolution.
A stinging defeat
This was a stinging defeat, but the
“democrats” of New Labour knew how to react. The Party leadership promptly
announced that the defeat would be ignored. But there was no disguising the
fact that the secondary picketing vote is a blow to Blair and Brown, who vowed
to oppose it. To make matters worse for the leadership, only a manoeuvre by Ian
McCartney prevented Labour’s national executive committee from backing that
stance.
Displaying the usual New Labour aversion
for elections where the result is not decided in advance, McCartney prevented
the vote by adjourning the NEC meeting after it appeared that a narrow majority
of the 32 members would support secondary picketing. Had the vote gone ahead,
it would have been the first serious policy defeat of Mr Blair’s leadership by
the NEC since 1997. That such a situation could arise even on the normally
docile NEC is a clear sign that Blair’s authority is slipping away. The
Guardian reported:
“In a day of frantic backstage power
politics, some NEC members repeatedly asked for the meeting to be reconvened so
they could express support for solidarity action. The leadership eventually
struck a deal with the Amicus union involving a compromise on pensions in
return for the unions not inflicting a defeat on Mr Blair. The NEC reconvened
in mid-afternoon and decided to not to make any recommendation on solidarity
action.
“In an increasingly familiar pattern, the
vote showed a clear divide between union and constituency representatives. Downing Street claimed the
unions had put themselves in a dangerous position by being seen to be out of
step not just with ministers but with the constituencies.”
On the contrary, the unions are expressing
the will of their members and of millions of workers in Britain
who are being denied their most elementary democratic rights (as we know,
democracy is not a strong point of New Labour). It is really ironic that the
right wing leadership – who are out of touch with everybody – should appeal to
the constituency parties. In the past they were quite happy to base themselves
on the bloc votes of the unions to counteract the left wing resolutions from
the CLPs. Now it is the other way round. They are trying to base themselves on
the votes of moribund and empty local parties, whose delegates are manipulated,
intimidated and instructed how to vote by text messages, against the votes of
the unions.
On Wednesday the Labour leadership suffered
a major defeat on pension policy after a fierce if truncated debate. Delegates
voted heavily in favour of a motion calling for a universal state pension
linked to average earnings, and for compulsory contributions from employers and
employees. David Blunkett, the pensions secretary, and another New Labour
“democrat”, insisted the vote would be ignored. It nevertheless circumvents the
forthcoming pensions review by former CBI chief Adair Turner and a white paper
looking at options for a Labour fourth term.
On Thursday, the last day of Conference, a
motion calling for an end to the "further expansion of the role of the
private sector into the NHS" was also supported by a big majority. Once
again, the unions took the lead. The motion was tabled by Dave Prentis, the
leader of Britain’s biggest union, Unison. He told the conference: "An NHS
driven not by patient need but by profits and markets – is that really our
vision?” Accusing ministers of not consulting on the policy change, he said
health visitors, community midwives and district nurses were threatened with
transfer to the private sector and with being "left to the vagaries of the
market". He condemned this as "government by diktat" and said it
was "simply not acceptable from our Labour government".
Iraq – or how to deal with hecklers
The leadership had manoeuvred Iraq off
the agenda, which was a scandal, considering the importance of the question and
the well-known fact that the immense majority of Labour supporters oppose the
war and the occupation of Iraq. But
no matter how they intrigued and wriggled, it was impossible to avoid the
question. It was present all the time, if not on the floor of Conference, then
in the foyers and bars and the streets outside.
Barry Camfield of the TGWU, used the debate
on Britain and the World to attack the government’s record on Iraq and demand
withdrawal of British troops: "You cannot invade a country and declare war
on it on an unacceptable and false premise then decide to occupy it on the basis
that you were wrong in the first place and that it might be a little
embarrassing or involve a loss of face to give Iraq back to the Iraqis. […] Our
troops should be pulled out now and quickly.”
This speech was greeted with a loud ovation
from delegates. By contrast, Jack Straw was heckled as he told the Labour party
conference Britain was in Iraq "for one reason only – to help the elected Iraqi government
build a secure, democratic and stable nation". Iraq took
up only one page of Mr Straw’s nine-page speech on foreign affairs. This
manoeuvre was so blatant that it naturally sparked a bout of heckling in the
hall.
Now heckling is a very old part of the
tradition of British democracy, and any half-decent orator knows how to deal
with hecklers. But New Labour hacks like Jack Straw are, as we know, not really
very good at democracy. They are as bad at public speaking as they are at
everything else except conniving and intrigues. People who are capable of
ordering delegates to come to their feet during standing ovations and sending
delegates text messages instructing them how to vote will naturally regard
heckling as a crime equivalent to high treason, to be punished accordingly.
The full extent of the Blairite bullying
was exposed when New Labour apparatchiks brutally manhandled an 82-year old man
who dared to heckle while Jack Straw, the Foreign Minister, was speaking on Iraq.
This disgraceful episode was compounded by the fact that the man concerned was
not some wild ultra-left but a Party member for over 50 years. This contrasts
sharply with the record of the middle class Blairite carpetbaggers, who have
infiltrated the Party in droves in recent years in search of careers.
Not only was he forcibly dragged from the
hall, but once outside, Mr Wolfgang had his pass seized by police acting under
the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Here New Labour really touched bottom, even by
their own standards. But the days when they could get away with such things
with impunity are long gone. The mood of the delegates, already critical,
turned to fury. These strong-arm tactics are completely alien to the traditions
of Labour. They aroused indignation on the floor of the conference.
Sensing the mood, the leadership was forced
to retreat. The real problem, however, was that the incident was captured on
the television screens and seen by millions of people. Blair was forced to make
an uncharacteristic apology to limit the damage to his democratic and Christian
image. The zealots of New Labour had broken the Eleventh Commandment, the most
important one: Thou shalt not be found out!
On the last day, the incident continued to
haunt the leadership. There was a plethora of apologies, which reeked with
hypocrisy and fooled nobody. Walter Wolfgang accepted the apologies with
dignity but warned: “You cannot stifle debate by hiring heavies. A party has
got to be open to the world and must discuss international problems, because if
you do not discuss them they are not going to go away.”
On the same day, the trade unions inflicted
yet another sharp defeat on the government by throwing out its plans to expand
the role of the private sector in the NHS, ignoring a desperate plea from
health secretary Patricia
Hewitt. She argued that the NHS had always “made use
of” the private sector, not least the pharmaceutical industry. That is to say,
the big pharmaceutical monopolies have for year been making use of (i.e.,
plundering) the NHS.
In the course of her speech, she asked:
"Haven’t we learned that profits are not a dirty word? They are part of a
dynamic economy and they are helping build 100 new hospitals as well?” As a
good New Labourite, she is a fervent admirer of the profit system. But she
appears to imagine that profits come out of thin air. She did not explain that
in making these profits /not a dirty word!), the private sector is plundering
the state, enriching itself at the expense of the taxpayer, worsening
conditions for NHS staff and undermining the whole basis of the National Health
Service.
The minister’s words cut no ice with the
Conference. In a stormy debate Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, the
biggest NHS union, argued that ministers have persistently failed to consult
patients, NHS staff and even MPs over "fundamental changes" that
threaten to fragment the service and reintroduce "destructive markets and
competition" into the system. Union opposition made it impossible for the
government side to win. Ministers were reduced to hoping that a majority of
constituency delegates would support them. In the end, once again, the leadership
was heavily defeated on a key element in New Labour’s right wing agenda.
This Conference ended not just in a defeat
but in a rout for New Labour.
Blairism, a liability
Under the leadership of Blair and his
cronies the Labour Party has languished and declined. Party membership has
slumped from around 400,000 in 1997 to 201,000 at the end of 2004. Affiliated
union membership is down too. On May 5 just 9.5 million people voted Labour – 4
million down on 1997. In the modern era Labour has only once polled fewer votes
than it polled this year, and that was in 1983, an election in which Labour
came close to extinction. Labour won the support of only 35.2% of UK voters
in 2005, a lower share than it got under Jim Callaghan in 1979, in an election
that it lost.
In the face of these figures the argument
that Tony Blair and the New Labour “modernisers” are the reason for Labour’s
electoral success is completely unsustainable. The main reason why Labour
continues to win elections is because the Tory Party is in a state of complete
prostration and internal disarray. The truth is that Labour has been winning
elections not because of Tony Blair and his right wing gang but in spite of
them.
The warnings by trade union leaders that,
unless Labour changes course, it can go down to defeat at the next election is
not an empty one. The Tory Party will not remain forever in its present state.
To the degree that Blair and the other New Labour crowd (including Gordon
Brown) continue with capitalist policies, Labour’s supporters will be
disillusioned and the Tories can win back lost ground. The Party faces
significant electoral defeats in the local elections next spring, especially in
London.
But the prospect of electoral disaster is
beginning to concentrate minds, even in the PLP. So long as Blair seemed to
guarantee victory (this was always an illusion, but many believed it),
opposition within the Party and unions remained muted. But now the mood is
beginning to change. The Guardian explained the electoral arithmetic:
“Twenty Labour MPs have majorities of less
than 1,000 votes now. A swing against Labour next time of the sort which the
voters inflicted in 2005 would remove its parliamentary majority altogether.
That generates a very different kind of political reality to the
sky’s-the-limit feeling of 1997 and 2001. Labour MPs who feel the electoral
earth moving beneath their feet are unlikely just to wait patiently for the
end.”
The stage is thus being prepared for a
revolt against Blair and Blairism, even within the PLP. The main problem is
that the Left is still very weak and amorphous. Even so, the ruling class will
be watching the situation very closely. They will have been alarmed by the
events at this week’s Conference, which prove that ultimately the Blairite
agenda for the Labour Party has failed. He has failed to break the umbilical
chord that links the Party to the unions. And despite all the efforts to neuter
and control the Party, the rank and file are beginning to find their voice and
reassert themselves.
David Clark, a former adviser to the Labour
government, writes in the pages of The Guardian:
“The Labour party is in urgent need of
renewal and that can’t happen until Blair has gone. The party that met in Brighton is visibly exhausted.
More than a third of constituencies failed to send a delegate and the ones that
did turn up seemed lost and demoralised. Membership is below 200,000 and
falling, and the base that is left is ageing and largely inactive. Labour is in
a state of incipient organisational collapse. With Blair still in charge, next
year’s local elections threaten the sort of wipeout that would leave Labour
effectively moribund in large parts of the country. The great worry for Gordon
Brown must be that, like Major, he will inherit a party broken beyond repair.”
And he continues:
“It was clear even before Brighton that Blair’s purpose
for remaining in office is to constrain his successor. The Blairites realise
they can’t stop Brown, so they are determined to create an environment in which
it will be hard for him to pursue his own political course. This is what lies
behind the shrill insistence that Labour must not vacate the centre ground. It
is a cynical ploy and one that carries dangers for Labour. It involves the
exaggeration of the policy differences that exist within the government and the
stigmatising of Brown as a recidivist who, given half a chance, would revert to
Labour’s failed past. Their objective is to force Brown to overcompensate by
tacking right, but the risk is they will be so successful that the label will
stick regardless of what he does, and the post-Blair Labour party will struggle
to keep its electoral coalition together.
“Subconsciously, this may even be part of
their design. Electoral success is Blair’s only real personal achievement of
note and it would rather suit him if Brown were to falter at the polls,
especially if it could be blamed on his more ambitious political agenda. The
corollary of the argument that Blairism is the only way is the desire that
everything else should fail, and it is possible to detect in the manoeuvrings
around Brighton an element of wilful sabotage. It is a distasteful conclusion, but
what this reveals is a truly monstrous vanity. Blair’s remaining time in office
will be consumed by the search for vindication regardless of the cost to his
party.”
These words are significant. They mean that
Blair and his cronies would actually prefer to destroy the Labour Party than
give up their control of it. And this closely corresponds to the purpose of the
ruling class that stands behind them. That is the fundamental line that divides
the Labour Party from top to bottom on class lines. The leaders of the unions –
even those who are not on the Left – do not want to destroy the Labour Party.
Nor do the great majority of Labour Party members.
The Blairite carpetbagger seem strong
because they have occupied the top positions in the Party apparatus. They have
a base in the PLP, although this may not be as strong as they imagine. But at
rank and file level they are weak and will be even weaker as the struggle
inside the Party unfolds. Ultimately, they will be vomited out of the Party
like the aliens they are. The opposition is set to grow, making life
increasingly uncomfortable for these bourgeois elements. There will be turmoil
and upheavals at all levels.
A bourgeois Party?
The bad situation in the Party have
prompted some people to ask whether the transformation of the Party is now
irreversible and whether the Labour Party has not been changed from a workers’
party to a bourgeois party. The ultra-left groups on the fringes of the Labour
Movement consistently harp away on this theme, like an old record with a
repeating groove. They really have no other song to sing. But many honest
workers are asking the same question.
The answer to this question is given by the
whole history of the Labour Movement, which over the years has experienced many
changes, both to the right and the left. The class nature of the Labour Party
is ultimately determined, not by this or that leader, but by its historic
relation to the class.
In the course of its history, the working
class comes to the conclusion that it requires a political expression. This
does not happen every day! Historically speaking, the proletariat has only ever
created a mass political party on two occasions: the Second and Third
Internationals (the Socialist and Communist Parties). When the working class
looks for a vehicle to express itself politically, it always moves in the first
place through its traditional mass organizations. This is a profound
sociological law that knows no real exceptions – at least as far as the
developed capitalist countries are concerned.
This law continues to operate even in Britain
at the present time. It is true that at the moment, the workers are not moving
through the Labour Party. Mostly they are disgusted with Blair and New Labour.
But where are they expressing themselves? Through the ultra-left parties that
claim to present an alternative to Labour? A quick glance at the election
results suffices to answer this question. The working class does not even
notice these groups, despite all the noise they make. It does not know they
exist. The working class can never express itself through small organizations.
The fact is self-evident for anyone that still has a brain to think.
When the workers turn away in disgust from
Labour (which happens regularly when they are disappointed by the policies of
the right wing) they do not look for an alternative outside the Labour Party,
but simply go home and sit on their hands. More correctly, they pass from the
political field to the industrial field and look to the trade unions to offer a
way out. That is particularly the case in Britain
with its very long traditions of trade union organization.
As long as the unions remain as an integral
part of the Labour Party, Blair could never succeed in his plan to transform it
into a bourgeois party like the US Democrats. The key to the Labour Party has
always been the unions, and this is still true today. That is understood by the
ruling class and explains why they are always demanding that the link between
the Labour party and the unions must be broken, to “free” the Party from the
influence of the unions. Ironically, the ultra-lefts have exactly the same
position as the ruling class and Tony Blair on this question.
The demand that the unions should break
from Labour is profoundly mistaken. It would be a big step back and would throw
the Labour Movement back to its starting point a hundred years ago, when the
trade unions set up the Labour Party to secure the representation of the
working class in parliament. What is necessary is not that the unions should
“contract out” but, on the contrary, they should contract in, and begin a
serious struggle to get control back from the alien right wing elements that
have hijacked the Party. With a serious campaign, that task should be easily
realizable.
Transform the Labour Party!
In the past, the unions were under the iron
grip of the right wing. The union bloc vote was always used by the Labour
leadership to defeat left wing resolutions from the local Party organizations.
The Lefts used to complain about this and demand the abolition of the union
bloc vote at Labour Party Conference. The Marxists in the Labour Party always
opposed this demand. We pointed out that the working class would transform the
unions through struggle and the unions would swing to the left. This has now
been shown to be correct.
It is true that the unions in Britain have
lost many members in recent years, partly from the closure of factories and
mines where there was a high level of unionisation owing to the wholesale
destruction of manufacturing since the Thatcher years, partly because of the
anti-union laws that shamefully remain on the statute book, but also partly
because of years of right wing trade union leadership that was totally
incapable of fighting for workers’ rights or even to defend the gains of the
past.
However, in the last four or five years a
change has begun to take place in the unions. It is quite natural that the
change should affect the industrial arm of the Labour Movement before the
political arm. The unions, for all their faults and deficiencies, are much
closer to the working class than the Labour Party. As the class begins to reawaken,
they are the first to reflect the change. But at a later stage this will be
reflected inside the Labour Party, to which the majority of unions, including
most of the biggest ones, remain affiliated.
The beginning of a change in the unions was
reflected in the defeat of one right wing general secretary after another in
union conferences. It is true that in many cases the newly elected general
secretaries were at best only soft lefts and inclined to wobble. But as a
symptom of a change in the mood of the class, these developments were very
important. We now see the early beginnings of a reflection of this change
inside the Labour Party. It is wrong to exaggerate, but even more incorrect to
deny that a change has already begun.
The task of the Marxists is first of all to
maintain a clear perspective, and not to be blown off course by ephemeral
events. Our orientation remains firmly directed to the Labour Movement – in Britain
that means the Labour party and the trade unions. Our first task is to win the
new generation of youth to the ideas of Marxism. It is true that today these
layers are not to be found in the Labour Party, which alienates the youth and
the militant workers and pushes them away. Therefore we must have flexible
tactics, but always keeping in mind the overall perspective.
It is necessary for Marxists to analyse
carefully all the processes and trends that are occurring in the mass
organizations of the working class. Simply to put a cross over the Labour
Party, to draw the conclusion that it is a bourgeois party and cannot change,
is short sighted in the extreme. It is the same incorrect method that only a
few years ago drew equally pessimistic conclusions about the British trade
unions, when they were dominated by the likes of Sir Ken Jackson. Let us remind
ourselves that the ultra-lefts used to argue that it was impossible to change
unions like the T&G, Amicus, the ETU and the G&B, and actually
advocated splitting the unions to set up “left” unions. This has been shown to
be completely false. The unions are now experiencing a process of change,
reflecting the first stirrings of the working class after a long period of
relative quiescence.
The mass organizations of the working class
reflect the movement of the class itself. The working class does not move in a
straight line. There can be long periods when it is dormant. Thus, Engels spoke
of the “40 years winter sleep of the British proletariat”. The same Engels
explained that in history there are periods in which “20 years pass as a single
day”, but he added that there were other periods in which the history of 20
years can be summed up in 24 hours.
The period into which we have entered is
one of the most turbulent periods in history. Dramatic events are unfolding on
a world scale. It is unthinkable that Britain
will forever remain aloof from the general world disorder. How can the Labour
Party not be affected by the general mood in society? To ask the question is to
answer it! In the next few years we can confidently predict that the mass workers’
organizations – both the unions and the Labour Party ‑ will be shaken from top
to bottom. Not one stone upon another will be left of the ramshackle edifice of
Blairism, which is built on sand. It will be blown away by events.
It is true that at this moment in time the
Labour Left is weak both organizationally and above all politically.
Nevertheless, the Left is destined to grow. The whole pendulum will swing
sharply to the left, reflecting the unbearable growth of class contradictions
in society. In the next period Party organizations that have been empty and
stagnant in the last period will begin to fill out.
There will be a ferment of discussion and
furious debate, which was already foreshadowed at this Labour Conference. The
Marxists will participate in this process and fertilize it with the ideas and
programme of scientific socialism. For every one that we can win and educate
today we can win a dozen or more in such circumstances. The perspective is very
optimistic, on condition that we keep our heads, continue to defend the ideas
of Marxism and keep our finger firmly on the pulse of the workers’ movement.
