New leader found wanting
IN JULY of this year, Tony Blair was elected as the new leader of the British Labour Party. His victory - following the sudden death of the previous incumbent
John Smith - was heralded by the mainstream media as the culmination of a struggle between so-called
International Viewpoint #262 December 1994 ability to identify and champion the major issues which, for the foreseeable future, should dominate the thinking of the broader labour movement, such as:
• the Party's trade union link;
• democratic rights and reform
"modernisers" and mis-named "traditionalists". While the truth is, as ever, a little more complicated, there can be little doubt that Blair is the most right-wing leader yet. ROLAND WOOD explains the significance of his victory and the reasons for the attack on "Clause Four" of the Party's constitution.
### CLAUSE FOUR
(both collective, for example repealing anti-trade union laws, and individual):
• defence of the welfare state and health service.
1945
It should be of no great surprise that on all three Blair is found wanting. This is because the logical implication of his project - a move to the centre — is that Labour will not only have to repudiate
"TO SECURE for workers by hand or brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible, upon the basis of common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry and service. 24
H
Labour Party leader came the publication in the aristocratic Harpers & Queen of several proclamations of faith from "Blair-loving Labour voters..."
Another indication that the "modernisers"" strategic aim — to make Labour electable, after fifteen years in opposition, by struggling with the governing Conservative party for the centre-ground of British politics — had, at least in their own terms, made some immediate impact. Moreover, by 5 August Labour had a 33.5 percent lead over the Conservatives, which, according to pollsters, is the biggest lead either party has ever had over the other.
However, Labour has had large leads in the opinion polls before (in the run-up to the 1992 election it lead consistently — but still lost). What has become clearer over the last few years is that Labour's opinion poll leads are based primarily on the ups and downs of Conservative fortunes, rather than any any last vestiges of socialist policy, but also say goodbye to the post-1945 settlement.
The break with this should not be underestimated. 1945 was the high-point of British social democracy and, while Labour's post-war programme has often been ridiculed, the fact is it worked. For twenty five years after the war, so far as millions of working people were concerned, their daily experience confirmed what moderate Labour politicians claimed: They had jobs, schools, hospitals, social security — and they were convinced that the Labour Party was respon sible.
A powerful myth was thus created
- "Labour's tradition" — an integral part of which was the idea that the ruling class opposed the policies set out in Labour's 1945 programme.
Why did this myth become so strong? One reason is that Britain was the only major European country to suffer neither occupation nor fascism. The British working class never had their organisations smashed by a desperate ruling class (indeed, trade union strength doubled during the war), and indeed Britain was the only European country in which the rate of exploitation fell after the war. It was therefore easy to mistake the Conservative party's superficial parliamentary opposition for real opposition.
Further, the ruling class understood that despite short-term losses a post-war settlement was not only politically necessary but economically possible. The shock of the 1930s Depression, and
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BRITAIN
"Blair has accomodated ideologically..."
International Viewpoint #262 December 1994 fear of a social explosion after the war, had convinced them of the need for a fundamental shift in capitalist strategy.
Above all, however, Britain was virtually the only industrialised country where the new policies - which were being applied throughout the West -were introduced by a workers' party governing alone. In Italy and France the Communist parties formed only a part of coalition governments. In Germany it took several years to rebuild the social-democratic party. In the US there was no such party. In consequence, whilst in other European countries it was often understood that modern social democracy was an achievement of the welfare state, in Britain the welfare state was seen as the achievement of modern social democracy.
### Divided
Today however, Labour is faced with a ruling class which is divided over the next shift in strategy.
On the one hand there are those who, in general, defend and pursue the interests of international finance capital and the arms industry, seek a qualitative break with the post 1945 settlement, and are anti-European (but invariably pro-US). This "faction" (which has always been influential, principally due to the historic role of finance capital and the arms industry, began to set the agenda for a new type of Conservative government following Margaret Thatcher's election as party leader in the mid1970s. Following the party's 1979 election victory their ideological hegemony remained virtually unchallenged for ten
At the end of the 1980s, as the pace towards European (capitalist) unity began to accelerate, Thatcher's ruling class adversaries, who were associated with manufacturing capital (all but decimated domestically by the policies of their erstwhile friends), and who were relatively pro-European, began tentatively to re-assert themselves. They saw their last chance not only to defend what remained of their capital base, but also to rebuild it.
As old wounds re-opened over Europe, signs also began to emerge of a significant weakening of Britain's overstretched role within finance capital. However, the catalyst for Thatcher's fall from grace in 1990 was the mass movement against the poll tax.! For the first time in many years the ruling class, already divided over Europe, was faced with a united working class. The removal of Thatcher, figurehead for the crusade of the previous ten years, was the act of a newly resurgent ruling class faction with an innate instinct both for survival and vengeance.
It is to this faction that Blair (and with him the John Monks leadership of the only trade union federation, the TUC) has accommodated ideologically, in so far as they share a common belief that what is required today is more thorough integration within the project of European unity and the establishment of what could be described as a post-cold war settlement to replace the post-1945 consensus - this time based far more explicitly on the interests of capital.
Where differences occur it is, for example, over support for the "Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty" (ostensibly defending worker rights) which even the Conservative's "left" have problems embracing, despite the fact that its bourgeois continental partners are not nearly so reticent, understanding only too well that its paper commitments are in fact toothless.
Blair's aim, while the Conservatives remain divided (Prime Minister John Major has largely failed to close their increasing divisions, and it is not yet certain which faction will win outright), is to exploit the situation in order to establish Labour as the new governmental representative of pro-European capital for the next century. Little wonder then that the debate about the "Clintonisation" of the British Labour Party remains very much alive. What more could the ruling class (or at least one faction) want, other than Labour's selftransformation into a British-style Democratic Party?
The very nature of the Labour Party is at stake. Will it retain its constitutional link with the trade unions? Champion policies such as full employment? Defend the welfare state and collectivist values in general which, in the public perception, and not in a negative way, characterised the Party in the immediate post-War period? Or will it totally "modernise" - breaking its link with the unions, accepting much of the damage which has been done to public services, and becoming the new "centre
Blair's thinly veiled attack on "Clause Four" of the Party's constitution at October's national conference has quickly become the leitmotif for the direction in which he wants Labour to move. Indeed, he laid some of the ground for this attack even prior to the conference.
"Marxist socialism"
In his inaugural speech as leader, Blair declared that Labour had to move away from "Marxist socialism based on social ownership" and fully embrace the free market. While the idea that Labour's leadership has at any time this century had anything whatsoever to do with Marxism is of course laughable, what was significant was his use of the term "social ownership". Clause Four itself actually uses the expression "common ownership" (see p. 24) but its meaning and implications are not dissimilar.
Moreover, both before, and for some years following, the close defeat in 1981 of the Labour left's standard bearer, Tony Benn, in the election for deputy leader, much of the left was identified with the inefficient and bureaucratic nationalisations of the past. Following the election of Neil Kinnock as Party leader in 1983, the leadership began to use the term "social ownership", often in (embarassingly astute) criticism of "old fashioned nationalisation", , but only as a cover for its rapid move to the right on
1. The "poll tax" (introduced in Scotland in 1987, and in England and Wales in 1988) replaced the existing form of local taxation, the "rates", which contributed towards local government services. Whereas the rates were generally progressive in scale, based on the value of property, the poll tax took no account of that or anyones ability to pay. At the height of the anti-poll tax campaign well over 10 million were refusing to pay and the tax was, in effect, unenforceable.
2. As we go to press eight Conservative MPs have had the "whip" (a peculiarly English expression) withdrawn, that is to say they have been suspended from the Conservative parliamentary group following their abstention in a vote to agree an increase in Britain's financial contribution to the EU. Major made the vote one of confidence in his government. The suspension of the eight means that technically the government no longer has a parliamentary majority. While the number of Conservative MPs willing to abstain in order to defeat the proposal may appear quite small it is thought to be a very real expression of deep-seated scepticism towards the EU within the Conservative Party as a whole. Add the "sleaz" factor to these problems over Europe and you have a government which is literally reeling from one blunder to another.
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ployment and indignity will be consigned to the dustbin of history." O
International Viewpoint #262 December 1994 economic and later, social policy, stripping the concepts of social or common ownership of any radical or indeed class
It is ironic, perhaps, that Clause Four is as much a part of the mythical "Labour tradition" as anything else, given that it has always been hated by Labour's leaders. There is a simple reason for this: On the one hand, its adoption in 1918 was an act of tactical expediency on the part of the leadership, and nothing more; on the other, the commitment to common ownership was proposed by the constitution's principal author, Fabian gradualist Sidney Webb, in order to avoid a more radical variant. That the final Clause was a moderate option gives some indication of how militant the working class was at the time. So while the impact of the Russian revolution provided the motivation for a radical statement of aims, its authors
1945, imperfect and limited as they were the Blair leadership has instead chosen to accept the so-called logic of current economic orthodoxy - that a welfare state is no longer affordable and probably not really necessary - and move forward accordingly. Clause Four is an obstacle. Whatever its weaknesses its importance lies in its symbolism, because as Mineworkers leader Arthur Scargill says, it "marks the party out from the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. It establishes a clear identity."
Without Clause Four, and with a continued weakening of the historic trade union link, the character of the British Labour Party will have been qualitively transformed. *
MINEWORKERS LEADER, ARTHUR SCARGILL, WHO HAS BEEN A CENTRAL LEADER OF conception was deliberately non-revolu-
THE LEFT OUTSIDE PARLIAMENT FOR MORE THAN A DECADE, SPOKE AT A RALLY
TO LAUNCH THE CAMPAIGN IN DEFENCE OF CLAUSE FOUR.
Definitive
The aim was to definitively tie the
TONY Blair and Gordon Brown, the Clinton clones, want an American-style
Labour Party to parliamentary politics
Democratic Party. Any one naive enough to think that they will be satisfied with
(and as the Clause says the Party will just the removal of Clause Four is living in cloud cuckoo land.
"secure for workers..?
" - perish the
The next step would be 'we want a new name; one that is more acceptable; one that thought that they might secure the
"fruits of their industry" through their doesn't jar; one that is acceptable to the City!' own activity and struggle). The late
History is littered with leaders and leaderships who ignored at their peril ordinary men
Ralph Milliband in his Parliamentary and women who sought only common justice and a better way of life.
Socialism' concluded that "the new pro-
We've got in real terms 5 million without a job and at least 10 million below the poverty gramme was much less the manifesto of line. There are hundreds of thousands homeless. What an obscenity to witness on a new social order, altogether different, television Labour's leaders greeting the captains of industry, wining and dining them at economically and socially, from the old one, than an explicit affirmation by the
The wordsmiths are working overtime to sell something which they believe will be
Labour Party of its belief that piecemeal collectivism, within a predominantly
There is no alternative, nor should there be any alternative. It's the very soul of our capitalist society, was the key to more welfare, higher efficiency, and greater social justice."
No fancy words. No dressing up of the arguments. Straight down the line defend
However, this Fabian gradualism was combined with an unambiguous
I say to all those inside and outside Parliament, inside the party and the trade union anti-capitalist spirit. Today, both elemovement 'remember the struggle ever since the party was born. It has been on the ments must be expunged if Labour is to basis that we are different from parties who support capitalism.
take yet another step towards proving its
It is Clause Four which marks this party out from the Tories and Liberal Democrats. It loyalty (and subservience) to free marestablishes a clear identity and one which has seen victory in at least five different ket capitalism. Today, the social philanthropy of the early part of this century,
We should fight to retain Clause Four in its entirety and demand that there are no which played no small part in shaping the Labour policies of 1945, is as dan-
We should say to Tony Blair and to the leadership that we not only want to retain gerous a reminder of what Labour
Clause Four but that we want you at the next election to show our class the same once stood for as strikes for better loyalty and dedication that the Tories show to their class. You should help implement wages or improved working condithe kind of policies which will create an equal society. One where helplessness, unemtions are a reminder of whom the
Party was created to represent.
Despite opinion-poll after opinion-poll indicating continuing identification with "social-democratic values" (epitomised by the policies of
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£300 a head at Labour Party conference. acceptable to Tony Blair. party which is being attacked. Clause Four - defend socialism. general elections. changes. Not a dot. Not a comma. Not a word.