Benn and
Heffer
challenge
Labour
leadership
TWO WELL KNOWN members of the Labour Party's left wing Campaign Group of MPs, Tony Benn and Eric Heffer, have decided to stand as candidates at next autumn's LP conference for leader and deputy leader of the party. With the majority party leadership swinging to the right under the pressures of Thatcherism, the left has welcomed this opportunity to put forward a socialist alternative that can challenge this rightward slide.
Finn Jensen interviewed Tony Benn about his decision to stand and the campaign around the candidacies in his Chesterfield constituency on April 29. W HY ARE you and Eric Heffer standing for leader and deputy leader of the Labour Party? It seems widely accepted that you are not going to win, mainly because of the trade-union block vote.' I have been nominated for the leadership post in the Labour Party for the last five years. But at the time we wanted to do everything to defeat Margaret Thatcher. Therefore about a year ago — just before the general elections in June - some of us who had been meeting regularly thought that the best thing to do would be to have a conference on socialism, starting just after the elections.
We had this amazing conference in Chesterfield in October last year [see IV 131]. We had expected 500 people. There were 2,000! And the second conference, planned for June this year, might be even bigger because of the leadership contest. This movement gives people a lot of hope. Then, in January 1988, the Campaign Group [a left grouping of Labour MPs] discussed whether to put forward a candidate for the position of leader of the LP. Everyone thought it was wrong to do it so soon after the gen-
But the pressure to stand against [LP leader] Neil Kinnock began to build up again. I personally had many doubts about it because I feared it would divert attention from the Chesterfield conferences, that it could lead to a major defeat that would be damaging to the left. But we consulted the movement. We sent letters to every constituency [local LP branch] and got a very encouraging response. And on March 21 at a meeting I did not attend they decided to nominate me and Eric. So I did not seek the leadership nomination, but when it was put • What was the reaction?
The first thing that happened was a tremendous opposition to the idea of having an election, which was damaging to those who put it forward, because how can you oppose elections as such. So we won that argument. Now we have local elections on May 5, so we will concentrate on winning those before stepping up the campaign for leader and deputy leader.
What is happening in the national leadership of the party is that it is drawn not even toward centrism, but toward the Thatcher consensus: on NATO, the EEC, the single European Act, market forces and the rest. And the build up of opposition is very strong. Although I am a bit sceptical about it, there was a public opinion poll in the Observer last Sunday saying that 39% wanted to vote Labour and 14% of the total population wanted me to win as leader of the Labour Party. This represents over six million
The engineers' union (AEU) had its national committee last weekend and 35% of the delegates voted to support me. The constituency support is coming in. It is not that
BRITAIN Tony Benn (left) and Eric Heffer (DR) we calculated beforehand that we would win. But what we are doing is injecting into British politics the case for socialism in a way that has not occurred for many, many years. And with the growing militancy of the seamen, miners, teachers, printers, health service workers, transport workers and so on, there is now a mood for a stronger opposition to Mrs. Thatcher, for a clearer opposition in the future, for the parliamentarians to be out in the struggles, as I was
I think that the arguments for socialism are very powerful arguments at this particular moment. And it is, of course, a foundation for whatever happens later. Whether we should stand for election every year [for the leadership] is a tactical choice we can make later. But it is clear that while the party is being shifted to the right this argument has an impact, and may even have an impact on the leadership. For example, the leadership actually agreed to a resolution supporting the seamen. I don't know if they would have done that if there had not been a leadership contest. The leadership did not support the miners nor the health workers, but they supported the seamen on Wednesday. I have had 2,000-3,000 letters, running 12-1 in favour of standing as leader. • How do you see the campaign relating to the class struggle outside the Labour Party?
I have always related the struggle in the Labour Party to the class struggle in general. During the miners' strike, I did 211 meetings for the miners. I went on the picket line at five pits in Chesterfield every week. So it is not a new thing. But one of the arguments of our campaign is that we think all the MPs should support people in struggle, not just be limited to the parliamentary arena, and that they should present a clear alternative and campaign for it. It should be internationalist, socialist and democratic in character. And I think that among the individual members of the Labour Party that is what they want.
It might be that the trade-union votes will 1. The leadership election is determined by an electoral college made up of a bloc 40% of votes for the trade unions, 30%6 for the local consituencies and 30% for 9
• We want to encourage closer economic, industrial, social and political links between working people here and those in other countries; we support all those peoples in Africa, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere fighting for freedom against dictatorial and oppressive regimes: we believe in socialism and democracy in all parts of the world, east and west. *
BRITAIN go against us at the LP conference because of the way the voting works. But if the constituency parties give support to our campaign it would be a tremendous step if we got anywhere near half of their votes. And it would make it difficult for the leadership to dismiss socialism. • Your campaign has caused some problems in the Campaign Group. Some women left the Group [who were opposed to the leadership challenge], and you were not able to get a woman candidate for deputy leader.
It is not that it was not tried. I would have liked one of the two candidates to be a woman. We tried to persuade the obvious person, Audrey Wise, but she was not ready to do it. About the people who have left the Campaign Group - I am sorry that they left [some of them only left temporarilyl. One of those who left now supports John Prescott's campaign for deputy leader, so there is political confusion among some of them....It represents a different political position to some extent.
If the LP's current leaders, Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley, get away with introducing all their right-wing policies, do you think that could lead to a split in the Labour Party in the longer rope, like the Socialist People's Party (SF) in Denmark, the Greens in Germany, Pierre Juquin and the renovateurs in France. Do you see yourself as part of a new political current in
No, I come from a very old political tradition. When the social democratic tradition in Europe moved towards bureaucracy, capitalism and militarism, we see the reappearance of an old radical, democratic and socialist tradition, with a new dimension around women, ecology and so on. I am sure that if the argument was put to the Labour Party, the majority for such policies would be there, but it takes time to do it. And the Chesterfield conference is such a start. So we are not on a split course. We want to keep links to the trade unions, which are unified in Britain in the Trade Union Congress and not divided along par• Will the Chesterfield conference in June be centred around the Benn/
No, it is broader. It is a movement for socialism, not a political party. It is partly because of the success of this movement that the leadership campaign has come about.
But we also hope that socialist ideas will spread into the feminist movement, the green movement, the peace movement, the the Benn/Heffer campaign is a matter for the Labour Party and affiliated trade-union members. • The seamen's strike is escalating and becoming more politically important...
What makes this dispute different is the de-recognition of the National Union of Seamen (NUS). The company, P&O, no longer wants to negotiate with the union. This is therefore the first major attempt to obliterate the trade unions. With the miners and the Ford workers, the bosses wanted to beat the unions. But now they want to obliterate them. And it has produced a tremendous response. P&O has put £100,000 into the Conservative Party. The manager of P&O was a key adviser to Norman Tebbit [the former chair of the Conservative
The courts will, of course, implement the anti-trade union laws. We are witnessing similar attacks to those in the last century when peasants and workers were deported to Australia in order to destroy the movement. We therefore have to mobilize the maximum support for the seamen and their
At Chesterfield, for example, we will have a seaman speaking at our May Day rally. Every Labour Party member and trade unionist should come out in support term?
No. Historically, the right wing has left the Labour Party [the 1981 split to create the Social Democratic Party]. Something
Key policies for the Benn/Heffer campaign like 18 MPs have left the Labour Party, including a previous leader and two exdeputy leaders. But the left is very loyal to
• We support the restoration of democratic rights to working people through the party because the party is the instrutheir trade unions, and the liberation of local communities so that the councils they elect can provide a really high standard of essential ment of the working class movement. I am not in favour of splitting the party. Moreover, the majority of the policies in the par-
• We challenge discrimination and inequality based on sex, class, race, sexuty are those we stand for. So what we might see if our campaign is successful is more
• We believe that the whole apparatus of the state requires fundamental reform people going to the Social Democrats.
if the processes of government and the law are to be more open and more accountable to those they are supposed to serve.
• Your campaign seems to be stronger
• We uphold the right of women to control their own lives in the political, ecoin the local LP constituencies and nomic and personal spheres; we are committed to ensuring that women weaker in the trade unions. Why is do have full opportunity to become political and economic decision-
It depends how the trade unions organize
• We want to see proper provision for leisure, for earlier retirement, for lifelong their decision on who to support in the education, for the encouragement of the Arts in all their forms, and the esleadership election. I have sent out a letter tablishment of a genuinely fair mass media, free from monopoly private or to the trade unions, saying:
please consult all your members", because
• We demand measures to protect the environment and the animal kingdom one of the main purposes of the campaign is to get a discussion going. If the decision
• We believe that Britain should announce its intention to withdraw from Northis taken at the top, there is no discussion.
ern Ireland, and should work with the Irish people, as good friends and
We are first of all interested in the widest neighbours, to help secure reunification and peace.
discussion. And every constituency with
• We believe that Britain should be working more actively for peace throughout five to ten wards [sub-branches] having a the world, by diverting arms expenditure to the needs of development; by discussion will make 8.000-12.000 discusadopting non-alignment, outside of all military blocs and without foreign sions on socialism. Secondly, if you have a bases on our soil; and should support efforts to secure cooperation concentration of members and you add all across the whole of Europe, free from all restrictions under the Treaty of those minorities together, you have an idea of the strength of the argument. And the purpose of it is to re-establish the legitimacy of socialism in British politics.
10 • The Bennite left has often been compared to new political currents in Eu-
International Viewpoint #142 • May 30, 1988
Black movement and the Labour Party. So ality or faith.
makers throughout society.
state control from exploitation.
of the seamen. *