After eight years of the "Thatcher revolution"
EDITORIAL • BRITAIN for IV!
IN 1975, when Thatcher became leader of the Tory party, it had just got its lowest percentage of the national vote in any
THIS IS now the second Issue election this century. Now, after eight years as prime that International Viewpoint has now appeared in its new format.
minister, she is confident of being elected for a third - and
We hope you like the changes we even a fourth — term in office and has called a general have been able to make, thanks election for June 11, a year earlier than necessary.
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A rumour that Labour had closed to within 1 per cent of
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"Thatcher revolution" have been devastating for those at the
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HE LABOUR PARTY's fortunes have been looking up in the first week of the election cam41% for the Tories (still enough to give them an overall majority), 34% for Labour and 22% for the Alliance. Their ratings had suffered a big drop since January this year, when Labour were only 2 percentage points behind The Labour Party (LP) has to win 112 marginal seats in order to get a majority in parliament, and the indications are that it will take little short of a
In recent by-elections, and in the May local elections, Labour has suffered heavy defeats. In the May elections, which took place everywhere but in Scotland and London, Labour was defending 9,000 of the 12,000 seats in metropolitan and district councils. Although still remaining the strongest party in local government, Labour made a net loss of 227 seats, while the Tories and the Alliance made net gains of 75 and 453 seats respectively.
The Tories have governed since 1979 with the support of only around 44% of voters. In the 1983 general election the Tories won 43% (373 seats), with Labour taking 28% and the Alliance 26%. Although the percentage of the national vote for the LP and the Alliance was very close, Labour took 209 seats to the Alliance's 23, due to the peculiarities of Britain's first-past-the-post electoral system.
The creation of the SDP by rightwingers breaking from Labour in 1981, and their electoral alliance with the remaining rump of the Liberal Party, has contributed to smashing the consensus of post-war British politics as much as Thatcherism itself. In particular, the Alliance has thrown doubt on Labour's ability to form a majority government. Labour lost 3 million votes - almost totally to the Alliance - between the elections of 1979 and 1983. It was this vote that played the decisive role in ensuring the re-election of Thatcher.'
Support for the Alliance in sections of the ruling class and the bourgeois media has more to do with its role in keeping Labour out than getting the Alliance in. It is the acceptable face of the anti-Tory vote, keeping Labour in line and accelerating its right-ward drift as it seeks to compete with the Alliance in the electoral arena.?
The establishment of the Alliance as 1. See "Thatcher and friends", by John Ross, Pluto Press (Arguments for Socialism series), London, 1983.
2. On the situation of the Labour Party and the Labour 3
left, see "A victory for the right at Labour's conference", by John Lane, IV 107, October 27, 1986; and "Labour Party conference: Kinnock tightens his grip", by Richard James, TV 108, November 10, 1986. June 1, 1987 • International Viewpoint
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1983 General Election unservaly
BRITAIN the third party in British politics has produced a campaign for tactical voting "to keep out the Tories". The most well-known proponent of this strategy is Eric Hobsbawm of the (Euro) Communist Party. In the May issue of their journal, Marxism Today, he argues:
"The defeat of the Thatcher government is the essential task in British politics, and should have absolute priority over any aim and political calculation .. There is only one logical conclusion for those of us who put the defeat of Thatcher first. It is, in every constituency, to vote for the candidate who offers the best chance of beating the Tories, whether Labour or Alliance."
In the same issue of Marxism Today, an article entitled "The natural alliance" begins with this illuminating introduction: "The Alliance just can't be ignored by the left anymore. Martin Kettle suggests that it has a surprising amount in common with Labour." What is hardly surprising, with positions in their press like these, is that the membership of the CP has now plummeted to around 9,700.
Since the Tories victory in 1983, seen by many as a result of the "Falklands factor", they have been consolidating their political and economic projects. The major themes have been reversing Britain's economic decline, restructuring industry and the work. force, and curbing the power of local government and the trade unions -both traditionally a base of support for the Labour Party.
Thatcher has been able to claim some successes on the economic front. But although indicators such as employment levels, exports and manufacturing output look better than they have for a while, everything is by no means rosy General economic recovery since 1981 has been limited, with only parts of the economy succeeding in becoming competitive in international markets.
Much of the Tories' financial room for manoeuvre — outside of selling off nationalized industries — has come from North Sea oil revenues. With the collapse of world oil prices, the bilpounds surplus that Britain is earning from its foreign trade in oil has decreased dramatically, leading to growing fears about the balance payments deficit.
A masterly pre-election budget
In the recent March budget, Chancellor Nigel Lawson produced a "hat-trick" of income tax cuts, lower interest rates and higher public spending. It was a masterly pre-election budget. He was able to do this in part due to the recent upsurge of sterling against the Deutschmark and the dollar. In the run-up to the general election, the Tories are able to point to an annual economic growth rate of 3%, higher than any other European country. But even this would need to continue for 30 years before British living catch up with those of West Germany!
On other fronts, there are problems the Tories should they be reelected for a third term. A major one is the resuscitation of manufacturing. Following the 1980-81 recession, manufacturing capacity was drastically cut, leading to a loss of 2 million jobs in this sector alone. It is still contracting. Manufacturing industry had a 6% productivity improvement last year, meaning more job losses, with investment in this sector falling by 5% in
Unemployment has been one of the most visible consequences of Thatcherism. The official unemployment figure is 3,194,000 or 11%. Although the official figures have been falling recently, they there has really been a fall in the numbers out of work in the past year, given that the employed labour force had risen by the same amount as the inin the number of working age.
Another method of "massaging" the figures has been the creation of jobs, training schemes and community programmes by which involve an estimated 700,000 of the otherwise unemployed in mainly low-paid and dead-end work. It is no secret that if re-elected the Tories are planning to bring in US-style Workfare schemes, whereby claimants are forced to "earn" their pitiful amounts of dole money by working for it.
But even the official figures find it hard to mask the enormity of unemployment. Over 41% of those out of work are classified as "long-term" unemployed — that is, they have been on the dole for over a year.
Unemployment and poverty under the not been evenly spread throughout the country. There is now a marked north/south divide in Britain itself, which is also reflected in voting patterns (see box). In the 1983 tion, the Labour Party hardly seats in the south of England outside of London, while the Tories did very bad-
Scotland has perhaps been one of the hardest-hit areas, with an unemployment rate of 13.9% due to the slump in oil prices and in the semiconductor market in 1985. Over 19,000 jobs have been lost here in oil and related services alone. In January this year, a quarter of all jobs lost in the UK were
Tories expected to lose seats in Scotland
The Tories are expected to lose seats in Scotland and fall to third place, even
THE NORTH/SOUTH DIVIDE
Voting (%)
Scotland
28.4 came to power
1986 in 1979.
Given that the Tories have spent a lot of after their poor showing in the last election. In 1983, the Tories won 28% of the vote, and Labour 35%, with the rest going to the Alliance and the Scottish National Party. There are 12 Tory Members of Parliament (MPs) with majorities of only 10%.
But the divisions that the Tories have
(0)
Scotland
North)
time and energy fiddling the
14.0
North official unemployment statistics over past
Widland, years, the real wrought on British society have been deeper than simply geographical ones. Those in work have experienced a big rise in living standards. The take home pay of an average wage earner has risen by 21% more than inflation. Real per-
West
24.4
North
Midlands
Wales <
19.8
South
South West
28.6
4
50.6
Alliance
South
International Viewpoint• June 1, 1987 figure of those dole on the must be nearer
4 million. Even the Financial
8.9
South
Times (April
21) has ques-
3.7 tioned whether sonal disposable income is more than 15% higher now than in 1979. Divisions inside the working class have also been exacerbated along sex, race and age lines in the scramble for jobs, with such measures as the deregulation of minimum wages and attacks on the trade unions.
Blacks, women and young people have been pushed even further to the bottom of the pile. Neal Ascherson, in
The Observer newspaper of May 24, illustrates this process:
"Before Mrs Thatcher's victory in
1979, Britain had less income differences than most industrialized countries:
the share of the top
1% had halved since
1945. Now the income share of the top
10% has returned to its 1960s level, ris-
The figures of those living at or below the supplementary benefit level were around 6.1 million in 1979, and now almost 12
The size of
'underclass' nearly doubled, centage of the working population in unions has declined -
1979 to around 50% today. But in spite of the defeats and losses suffered during the past eight years of Thatcherism, there are still nearly 11 million people in trade unions. British unions counterparts.
But even if the trade-union movement has not suffered a decisive, qualitative defeat in the past period, tion
BRITAIN trade unions have been brought within the law; the power of the NUM [mineworkers' union] has been broken; the incidence of strikes has been greatly reduced." (Financial Times, April 9.)
The lack of any form of fightback on this front has meant that the Tories have even managed to win the propaganda battle that union power had to be curbed, pre-strike ballots are more democratic and so on. But there have been small successes, even so.
For instance, in an attempt to sever the financial support of the unions for the Labour Party, trade unions were compelled to hold individual ballots on whether to keep their "political funds". In all 37 unions that balloted, the vote was "yes", and in six more unions new funds have been set up.
Series of strikes in the public sector
The public sector, in particular, has seen a series of strikes by teachers and civil servants over pay and conditions. Public sector workers make up only 26% of the working population, but since 1980 have accounted for between 43-88% of days lost through industrial entire population." have in store if they
SELF deepening of this pro- PORTRAIT cess, in conjunction Labour leader Neil Kinnock following in Wilson's footsteps? uncompleted
One of the major structural changes made by the Tories has been the privatization of over a third of formerly state-owned enterprises. They include British Petroleum, British Aerospace, British Sugar, Cable & Wireless, Bri-
Gas, Sealink, Jaguar British Telecom. Since 1979, denationalizations have brought the treasury more than £7,500 million, even though they were sold off at bargain basement prices. If they are elected for another term, the Tories plan to priva-
Steel, electricity and the water authorities!
But it has been the attacks on the trade unions and on trade-union rights, alongside unemployment, that has perhaps caused the most disarray and confusion in the labour movement. In 1979, 30% of the total population were members of trade unions; today figure has declined to 22%. The defeats in particular of the year-long miners' and printers' strikes, with the Tories getting more than a helping hand from the trade-union and Labour bureaucracies, have left their mark.
In 1986, the national union federation, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) had 9.5 million affiliated members, a fall of 274,000 from 1985. The perperiod by 26. .1% in the tobacco inc other hand, union streng in the service sector, will continue. Male employment will fall by 600,000, women's by 400,000 Full-time jobs will fall by 1 million, with the number of part-time jobs ris-
900,000. Finally, there has in peripheral jobs — part-time, home work or short-term contracts. Now 34% of the total workforce are in this "peripheral" category, 3 million men and 5 million
An interesting fact to note here is that one spin-off from the Tories attacks on the trade unions has been a speed-up of union amalgamations across a whole a number of industries, as the unions seek to combine forces to defend their position. There are now fewer than 90 unions for the first time since 1872, when the membership of trade unions was only 255,000.
If the unions retain some numeric strength though, the attacks coming from the government in the form of successive Trade Union Acts hit at the Achilles' heel of British tradeunionism - its political weakness:
"The most unequivocal success [of the Tories] has been in the field of industrial relations ... the facts are that action. As Tory employment minister Kenneth Clarke acknowledges: "One of the problems we have now is that all the militant unions are in the public sector. The private sector ones have been modernized really; there you have all the reasonable and moderate ones."
At the same time as attacks on the trade unions, the Tories have taken on the other major part of Labour's base - concentrated especially in the big cities - local councils. Ratecapping by central government (statutory limits on local taxes, with penalties for overspending has forced Labour-led councils to implement. the Tories' public spending cuts locally.
Only one council fought against ratecapping to the end, that of Liverpool in the north of England, which was led by supporters of the Militant newspaper. The Court of Appeal subsequently disqualified 47 Labour councillors for the losses the council incurred. But in the recent May council elections, Labour won back its seats from the caretaker Alliance council, with the Tories only getting 10% of the vote. One group who were not pleased with this result were the leadership of the Labour Party, headed up by Neil Kinnock, who had condemned the council as lefties" and used the fightback to victimize and expel Militant supporters.
Thatcher also succeeded in abolishing
5
3. Problèmes Economiques, April 23, 1987. 4. Employment Research Institute, Warwich University. Study conducted for the GMBU. June 1, 1987 • International Viewpoint
BRITAIN • AROUND THE WORLD completely the popular Greater London Council, led by Ken Livingstone, and replacing its main functions by nonelected bodies. Another victory was the "greatest sale of the century" - the selling off of 1 million council-owned houses to their tenants. The Tories have further plans to bypass local council authorities on school financing and to centralize school curriculums.
All these policies are aimed at taking away decision-making and financial power from local authorities spending, housing and education. The idea is presumably to end up with local councils in Britain having similar powers to those in the North of Ireland -over waste disposal, sewers and pest control. And the Tories want to privatize most of these jobs, if they haven't done so already!
Another gem in the Thatcherite freeenterprise philosophy has been shareownership schemes, with share sales following each successive privatization. She even launched the Tory manifesto for the upcoming election around the slogan "Power to the People"!
What has been Labour's response to all this? A good question. The editorialists of the May 20 Financial Times have the answer:
'The Labour manifesto is a revelation. If Labour had been able to produce documents like 'Britain will win' in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and conference resolutions, there have been no need for the Social Democratic Party to have been formed ... Active membership of the EEC is accepted without so much as a blush at the memory that the subject has split the LP for the last three decades. Even the commitment to a non-nuclear defence policy, so controversial when it was adopted last autumn, has been toned down to the point where it is almost an apologetic footnote."
In the run-up to the election, the Labour leadership has concentrated most of its vitriol not on the Tories, but on the left in the labour movement. The defeat of the miners' strike ushered in a new era of LP leaders distancing themselves from workers' struggles, witch-hunts against the left and attacks on Black self-organization.
The Labour Party's attempts to present itself as more moderate than the Alliance could lead to a third general election defeat - why vote for a pale imitation when you can vote for the real thing? The lessons of the miners' and printworkers' strikes, the fight for local council autonomy and against public sector cuts and unemployment can lead to only one conclusion: only a radical alternative, fighting for the
6
interests of the working class, can really begin to challenge the radical ToryInternational Viewpoint o June 1, 1987
WORLD
INTERNATIONAL Moscow Trials campaign A CAMPAIGN to clear the names of the accused in the Moscow Show Trials has been launched and well-known labour movement figures
"It is now over fifty years since the infamous Moscow Show Trials. It is astounding that at a time when the Soviet government is at pains to emphasize its concern with 'human rights' and proclaims the need for glasnost' (openness), the accused in these trials, with a few exceptions, are still considered guilty of being paid agents of Nazism and other crimes.
"Among these men were numbered who played outstanding in the Russian revolution of 1917. The reputations of founders of the Soviet and Bukharin were besmirched or expunged from the history books. Today, no-one doubts that the 'confessions' at the trials - the sole basis for the prosecution — were utterly false. Seven defendants in the third trial, Krestinsky and others, have been both judicially rehabilitated and politically exonerated. So have the military leaders, Tukhachevsky and others, whose military trial in 1937 was held in secret. But the admittedly false evidence against these men was inseparable from the charges against all the other
"None of the accused, of course, is alive today. Many were executed immediately after their trials. Others died in prison or camps. Leon Trotsky, the chief accused in all three of the trials, was murdered in exile in 1940. However, families of some of the defendants are still living in the Soviet Union. Some have also suffered imprisonment and exile. It is worth recalling that a review of all these cases was promised by Khrushchev, but this promise was broken.