Editorial: Taking on Labourism

Taking on Labourism The second issue of Confrontation goes to press at the opening of the 1987 general election campaign. In many ways however, the contest between the mainstream parties of British politics had been decided even before the campaign opened. For eight years Margaret Thatcher has triumphed over her opponents by her success in defining the terms of political debate. Despite her government's disastrous economic record, she has succeeded in making law and order, anti-trade union prejudices, the defence of the nation, the family, and even the virtues of private enterprise central themes of a new consensus. The extent to which all the opposition parties have adopted policies upholding firmer policing, anti-union legislation, higher military spending, family values and a mix of public and private ownership is a true measure of the achievement of the Thatcher years. The Labour Party's pathetic attempts under Neil Kinnock to steal the Tories' patriotic, militaristic and authoritarian clothes guaranteed its defeat long before polling day. The election campaign could only decide the scale of Labour's defeat and the role of the Alliance parties in the new parliament. Whether or not Labour wins more seats than it did in 1983; a third Thatcher victory will be a heavy blow to the party, confirming its shrinking social and geographical base and chronically declining influence.

If another Tory victory will be bad for the Labour leadership, it

Taking on Labourism 2 will be catastrophic for the left. In 1983 it could take refuge in its new power bases at the GLC, in Liverpool, Sheffield and in other municipal strongholds; its campaigns such as CND could still mobilise hundreds of thousands; it still had its broad-left groups in the unions and friends like Arthur Scargill and Jimmy Knapp in high office, and Tony Benn and Eric Heffer were still on Labour's national executive. Today the left's organisations are mere shells and its old leaders mere shadows of their former selves.

By retreating before Kinnock's attack, left wingers thought they could dig in and live to fight another day. Some even thought they could avoid the blame for Labour's demise and that the left could rise again when the right was for once forced to take the rap at the election post mortem. But in the end the left's refusal to challenge Kinnock has only reinforced its role as scapegoat for all Labour's failures. Acquiescing by its silence to the label of loony', the left is destined to become the main victim of the election debacle.

The events of the years between 1983 and 1987, culminating in the June election, have fully exposed the conflict between the strategies of the leaders of the official labour movement and the interests of the working class. In both the unions and the Labour Party, the labour bureaucrats have tried to save their own skins by coming to a closer accommodation with the representatives of British capital. In industry and services, union officials have been ready to negotiate rationalisation plans and in-house tenders which accept mass redundancies, inferior working conditions and restrictions on union rights—such as the effective withdrawal of the right to strike. To retain token union membership and the regular flow of dues to head office, union officials have sacrificed the jobs and rights of thousands of workers. Meanwhile in the political arena, Hattersley and Healey and the .

rest have adopted policies on the economy, public spending and trade union affairs that accept permanent mass unemployment, wage controls, restrictions on welfare spending and state interference in union ballots and elections. In their desperate attempts to secure their own positions, the labour bureaucrats have adopted policies that can only accelerate the forces of division and demoralisation within the working class. Because the most politically aware sections

Taking on Labourism 3 of the working class remain loyal to Labour, Kinnock's humiliation is not simply a problem for the labour bureaucracy-Labour is dragging the working class down with it.

Early in 1987 the Revolutionary Communist Party issued an open letter to all left-wing organisations and individuals, proposing the formation of The Red Front. We appealed to others to join us in putting forward a slate of candidates to stand in the general election on a basic platform which put forward the cause of working class unity. Our aim was to take advantage of the debate around the election to mobilise a core of resistance to the mounting capitalist offensive against the working class before, during and beyond the election itself. In the event most of the surviving groupings of the far left put their fear of challenging Labourism at the polls before their formal commitment to building a working class alternative. While many individuals and some smaller groups in particular areas supported The Red Front, the larger left-wing organisations chose to campaign for the Labour Party. From the moment the campaign opened, the left's much-vaunted hostility towards electoralism in general and Labour in particular vanished as its supporters became the most enthusiastic canvassers and flyposters for the party that paralyses the working class. Relying on the limited resources of the RCP, The Red Front was unable to make the national impact in the election we had originally intended. Nevertheless, The Red Front put down a significant marker in the 1987 general election. At a time when the rest of the left was in abject retreat it pointed the way forward to unite and strengthen the working class for the battles ahead. While the electoral focus of The Red Front does not extend beyond 11 June, the wider project of building a working class alternative to Labourism will become even more important after the election. Hence the major article in this issue of Confrontation focuses on the conflict between Labourism and The Red Front. Linda Ryan synthesises elements in the critique of Labourism published in past issues of the next step, and clarifies the purpose of The Red Front in the context of the wider objectives of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

In the second article John Gibson provides a largely empirical

Taking on Labourism discussion of the impact of the Thatcher years on the working class.

One of the consequences of Labour's defeat in 1983 was a revival of theories of the demise of the working class that first became widely discussed in the British labour movement after Labour last lost three consecutive elections-back in 1959. We can now expect further attempts to explain Labour's political failures by sociological commentaries on the changing structure of the working class. We hope to continue this discussion in future issues of Confrontation.

The final article in this issue-Frank Richards' discussion of the theory of state capitalism—has no direct bearing on the debates around the general election. Yet it exposes a theoretical weakness of the British left which permeates its political practice and incapacitates it from acting as an independent force. In the immediate post-war years, anti-Soviet ideology played a central role in consolidating the Western alliance and in marginalising radical movements in the West. The traditional association of the left with the Bolshevik Revolution became the most powerful propaganda weapon against any anti-establishment movement.

One section of the left came up with an ingenious response to the right's familiar 'get back to Russia' gibes. It adopted a novel analysis of Soviet society, declaring it to have become another form of capitalism-state capitalism. The slogan "Neither Moscow nor Washington summed up the dismissal of both East and West as equally detestable variants of the same social system. It provided a way of dodging Cold War accusations that the left was soft on Soviet communism, and also neatly corresponded with the Labour left's project at the time: finding a third way' between the Soviet and American systems. Frank Richards shows that the theory of state capitalism means applying a label to Soviet society at the cost of emptying the concept.

of capitalism of any specificity in relation to Western society. The result is an inability to understand the movement of either the Soviet Union or the West. The renewal of Cold War tensions in recent years has given a new lease of life to the notion of state capitalism-and the slogan 'Neither Moscow nor Washington' has also been revived. At a time when the emergence of a Soviet leader skilled in modern public relations and media presentation has led to a wholesale revision of

Taking on Labourism superficial Western theories about Soviet totalitarianism, the need for a scientific understanding of Soviet society is greater than ever before. Through a critique of the theory of state capitalism, Frank Richards clarifies the Marxist approach to this key question.

We welcome comments and criticisms on any of the articles in Confrontation. We hope that pressures of resources will allow more frequent publication in the future.

Mike Freeman, June 1987