Labour Party conference:
International Viewpoint 10 November 1986
BRITAIN Trades Union Congress (TUC), the Kinnock leadership succeeded in winning the conference to the position that a future Labour government would, in effect, keep central aspects of the Thatcher anti-trade
Kinnock tightens his grip union laws on the statute book. (4) In particular, the commitment to maintain the legal obligation for trade unions to hold secret ballots before taking strike action is a key indicator of the fact that Kinnock expects to have to confront and attack the working class if elected.
THE LAST ISSUE of International Viewpoint published a report of the Labour Party's recent conference from the newspaper
Socialist Action. (1)
The following article by Richard James, a supporter of the International Group, gives a different assessment of the conference and the tasks for the left. We decided to publish both views because of the importance of this particular Labour Party conference, which may well be the last held before Margaret Thatcher's Tory government decides to hold a general election.
RICHARD JAMES
Commenting on the outcome of the Labour
Party conference, the
New Statesman (a weekly magazine which reflects the views of Labour's
"Kinnock can right wing)
said:
reasonably expect to have a party in as good a shape as at any time in the past two decades to fight the next election without falling into internal dispute."
(2)
This assessment has been echoed by all of the serious bourgeois press. It reflects two key processes which have been at work in the Labour Party since the failure of the upsurge of the left in the
1979-81
(marked by left period leader Tony Benn's defeat in the for deputy leader of the contest party in 1981) and the defeat of the miners' strike in 1985.
The first of these has been Kinnock's strategy of turning
Labour
"fit to govern" in the into a party eyes of the bourgeoisie. The second has been the break up of the old
"Bennite left": the peeling off of successive layers of this left towards the Kinnock leadership and its project.
In relation to the first process the conference marked a considerable success for Kinnock's project.
First, on almost all of the central questions, particularly policy and on those which will define a future government's
Labour relationship the Kinnock to the working class, leadership scored big victories.
Second, the attempts to isolate and marginalize the left were consolidated, in particular with the continued expulsions of leaders of the
Militant tendency from the party and the defeat of
Eric Heffer (a prominent left leader) in the elections to the National Executive Committee (NEC). (3)
On the economy, a policy statement from the party's NEC was overwhelmingly carried. It specifically rejected the nationalization of any of the core sectors of capital in favour of encouraging small scale "worker cooperatives" and employee share ownership schemes". There was not even any commitment to take back into state ownership all of those industries privatized by the Thatcher government.
The target set for reducing unemployment was one million over two years - which would leave at least three million jobless. It is difficult to see how a Labour government could reach even this modest target given the commitment, in advance, that the power of the capitalist class will remain unchallenged.
Proposals for a National Investment Bank and for a National Economic Assessment a summit meeting of representatives of government, trade-union leaders and big business leaders) amount, at best, to a classic social-democratic formula for tinkering with the economy in the hope of marginal benefits for the working class. At worst they will lead to a re-run of the wage restraint and "social contract" of the 1974-79 Labour government, in the context of a deepening economic crisis.
Policy passed on industrial relations would indicate that the second of these possibilities is the most likely. With the agreement of the
The debate on nuclear power generated considerable media interest. A left-wing resolution calling for phasing out all nuclear power plants in the life-time of the next Labour government, moved by miners' leader Arthur Scargill, was passed with a huge majority. But it was passed in conjunction with a statement from the party leadership which said that the phasing out of nuclear power was a "decades-long process" and that a future Labour government would continue with the building of a nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield.
So, even as a radical policy was being passed, the Labour leadership was making it clear that it had no intention of implementing it. This contradictory policy was easily exploited at the Tory Party conference the following week, when it was pointed out that if nuclear energy was as dangerous as the Labour leadership argue that it is, then the reactors should be closed down immediately - not in 18 years time. Ambiguity on defence and disarmament
There was also considerable ambiguity on the issue of defence and nuclear disarmament. On the one hand, policy in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament was re-affirmed. On the other, Kinnock, in his keynote speech, stated that under a Labour government all non-nuclear United States defence and intelligence installations would be permitted to remain in Britain. In addition, he reiterated the Labour leadership's commitment to NATO. Denis Healey, a leading right winger within the party and the spokesperson on foreign affairs, said before the conference that it was conceivable
See "A victory for the right at Labour's conference" by John Lane, International Viewpoint' No. 107, October 27, 1986.
*New Statesman' 3 October 1986. [Emphasis added].
'Militant' centrist current within the Labour Party which claims adherence to Trotskyism.
For a report on the Trade Union 23
class (DR)
change its
A weapons.
face paign on the majority.
of
Women was for women ship had opposed.
In addition, evidence of a balance of the
24 generally tiny the
(traditionally
The marked ional on nuclear ated with
The an activist movement including passed,
Cabinet have larger vote
The
Liberal tois to govern".
has own.
largely unresult partly the bourinated by the tendency.
forces with the new
It gave
Labour
Parties a within the second of disin-
The time of the local
Committee, defeat of of the most feature of the of the
Greater
(former leader tendency.
and their going
London
Amir
Khan, a by a much the main impetus than therefore, evident the balance
To
National
Union of
Mineworkers implicitly the leadership on inance of bureaucracy in
"fit
TUC held a few reflected in the
29, 1986.
the bour Party Back
For the have people within
Labour
Party been fighting for constitutional recognition of their right to organize autonomous Black Sections to combat racism and left be can increase representation of Black people.
Committee
Ireland
The
Labour on which fights for an anticampaign
1s G on the Irish struggle imperialist position within the labour movement.
The
Labour
Coordinating
Com-
Bennite mittee originated as part of the
1979-81
Since the period.
left in the of
Benn's deputy leadership failure campaign its evolution has been to the partly right.
International Viewpoint 10 November 1986
• International Viewpoint 10 November 1986 ference, helped to create the conditions for Kinnock's successes. In particular, the TUC's agreement on a whole series of policy questions (including the question of the legal obligation to hold secret ballots on strikes) prepared the ground for a "united front" of the dominant sections of the trade-union bureaucracy and the Kinnock leadership. It is important to note that influential figures such as Tom Sawyer of the public employees' union NUPE, formerly on the left of the trade-union bureaucracy, have become part of the realigned left which supports Kinnock. Left under pressure from Kinnock
BL
VER
UTAZOO to noitsmy
There can be no question that as the next general election approaches, further layers of the former Ben- Black activists are fighting for the right of self-organization in the Labour Party (DR) nite left will come under increasing pressure to bow down to the Kinnock leadership and keep their mouths shut in the interests of party unity and winning the election. There can also be no question that this year's conference saw this process already well advanced.
This, then, is the overall context in which what remains of the Labour left found itself at conference. The forces that are prepared to resist the move to the right behind the Kinnock leadership, fight for socialist policies to resolve the crisis in the interests of the working class and to oppose the expulsion of socialists from the party were isolated and under immense pressure. The impact that they made in the conference was, with some notable exceptions referred to above, marginal. However, the continued existence and future evolution of this current, which has minority but mass support in the labour movement as a whole, is of crucial importance.
The first thing to note about this current is that it remains a vertical one. That is, there are still figures within the left bureaucracy in the party and in the trade unions who are standing out against the drift to the right, and there is still a minority within the working class which identifies with them. Tony Benn remains a key leader of this left within the Labour Party and Arthur Scargill and the left on the NUM leadership remain central leaders of this left within the unions.
A week before the conference the left-wing Campaign Group of Labour Members of Parliament (in which Benn is involved) called a national meeting of left campaigns and groups to discuss organizing the left and combating the drift to the right. A decision was made to launch the "Campair Forum"
- an attempt at coordinating the work of the left within parliament, campaigns within the Labour Party (such as the Black Sections and the Women's Action Committee), and activists in the constituency Labour Parties. (7)
The Campaign Group had a large fringe meeting at the conference itself, at which hundreds of Labour activists heard left leaders oppose the witch-hunt, argue the need for radical policies, and support the struggles of the working class and oppressed in Britain and internationally. However, the impact of the Campaign Group within the conference I was small.= no serious attempt was made to organize left delegates, for example.
• Benn himself made his strategy for the left clear at a number of fringe meetings. He is not in favour of making an issue out of "personalities" - he is against specific attacks on Kinnock or other party leaders. He is in favour of the left organizing and fighting the election campaign around socialist policies. In other words, he is prepared to take the fight only so far and backs off when it comes to confronting the rest of the bureaucracy. Clearly, it is significant that a wing of the bureaucracy prepared to continue to advocate class struggle and oppose class collaboration. However, it is also clear that in the run up to the election the left will continually come up against the objective limitations of Benn's strategy.
Some of these limitations were made clear at the conference. For example the Campaign Group (which is a politically heterogenous CUTrent and includes forces considerably to the right of Benn) supported candidates in the elections for the
National Executive Committee such as Tam Dalyell (a well known advocate of nuclear power) and Michael Meacher (a Kinnock supporter who attacked the miners' strike).
Attempts were made by the realigned left which supports Kinnock to make inroads into what remains of the "hard" left. Ken Livingstone, in particular, made a number of proposals to try to draw in a further section of the left behind the Kinnock leadership and marginalize what Livingstone called the "ultra left" such as Labour Briefing. (8) As the pressure of the coming elections intensifies, the likelihood is that these attempts will meet with some degree of success.
For revolutionaries the tasks of the coming period are clearly posed: to politically clarify and organize a class-struggle current based on the broader layer that looks to Benn and Scargill for leadership. A current which makes no compromises on the question of fighting for anti-capitalist policies to confront the crisis, which does not baulk at confronting and placing demands upon the bureaucracy and which at the same time also strives for the broadest possible unity in action on the left. It is only through the building of such a current in the Labour Party and trade unions that a countervalling pressure to that exerted by the Kinnock leadership can be bullt up, capable of resisting further peeling off from the left into the Kinnock camp. •
7. The Women's Action Committee is a campaign formed by women to promote constitutional changes in favour of women in the party.
8. 'Labour Briefing' is a hard-left paper in the Labour Party which originated with the struggles around local government.
25
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
BLACK SECTION