Full circle: the radical left and the Labour Party

Editorial note. A two-page spread built round a diagram: a circle of the radical left groups, from the 1950s at the top to the papers of 1981 at the foot, with a caption box beside each group, three timeline panels down the centre and quotations down the outer columns. A cartoon aeroplane marked "SPARTS" flies off the circle at the foot of page 10. The order below is editorial: timeline, then each page's captions and quotations. Headings in square brackets are editorial. The timeline panels cross the fold: letters hidden in the binding but certain from the word are supplied silently; letters in square brackets cannot be seen on either page.

Printed page 10

The Radical Left and the Labour Party

FULL CIRCLE

Early '50s~mid '60s: The formative years

Economic expansion and political consensus dampened down the class struggle in industry. Under Clem Attlee and Hugh Gaitskell Labour's right wing took firm control of the party leadership with the solid backing of the trade union chiefs. The left was a small faction of the Parliamentary Party. Led by Nye Bevan with some support in the constituencies, Michael Foot's Tribune was i[t]s mouthpiece. It left domestic issues to the right and concentrated on international and moral issues.

Working class quiescence restricted the radical left to discussion cir[c]les inside the Labour Party. Despite their differences, they all campaigned for the return of a Labour government committed to 'socialist policies' – unilateral nuclear disarmament and more nationalisation. The radical left groups were simply part of the Labour left: their politics were explicitly reformist.

Mid '60s~early '70s: Leaving home

Harold Wilson led the Labour Party through the early stages of the recession and the increasing trade union militancy it provoked. Wilson's answer was a series of incomes policies, austerity measures and anti-trade union schemes that provoked a degree of conflict between the Labour Party and the unions unknown in the post-war period. By giving Gaitskell's revisionist programme a technocratic gloss Wilson won left-wing support up to the mid-'sixties. The left in the Labour Party remained weak, politically disoriented and isolated from the trade unions.

The radical left groups established independent organisations in the space that opened up between the Labour Party and the working class. Drawing in activists from radical student and youth politics the radical left groups grew in size and won some support from militant trade unionists, particularly in the struggles against the Heath government's anti-union laws. The radical left entered a more militant phase: but it never succeeded in creating a political alternative to the Labour Party.

Mid '70s~today: The prodigal sons return

The profound recession of the 'seventies has shaken up the Labour Party. The chief exponents of the right-wing politics that ruled the Party in the 'fifties have now left to form the Social Democratic Party while Tony Benn has led a dramatic left-wing revival. Labour's Social Contract paved the way for Margaret Thatcher's more aggres[s]ive bourgeois strategy and a sharp decline in industrial militancy.

Unable to defend jobs and conditions through their unions, many acti[v]e workers are turning to the illusory 'alternative' provided by the Labour Party. The result has been a collapse of the radical left's fra[g]ile working class base at a time when a swin[g] to the right in petit-bourgeois and student circles has removed the major traditional source of recruits. The radical left groups fi[n]d themselves sliding inexorably back into the Party their founders started off in 30 years [a]go, and hoped they'd left behind in the 'sixties[.]

[Captions on p10: the Cliff group, IS and the SWP]

'Neither Moscow nor Washington, but International Socialism' – Tony Cliff's response to Korea and the Cold War defined the group's 'third camp' social democratic position. His 'state capitalist' theory of the Soviet Union marked him off from the Trotskyists; with his theory of the 'permanent arms economy' he parted company with Marxism. (Socialist Review)

Formed in 1962, the International Socialism group did not really get going until 1968 when it drifted out of the Labour Party to set up a national structure which explicitly rejected a Leninist approach to revolutionary organisation. CND and the anti-Vietnam war movement provided its activists, the 'shop stewards movement' its political target. (International Socialism)

In 1976 the IS became the SWP – but this could not prevent stagnation under the impact of Labour's Social Contract. While still organisationally outside the Labour Party, the SWP has thrown its weight behind Benn's campaign for the deputy leadership, especially building trade union support for the Labour Coordinating Committee pro-Benn conference. (Socialist Worker)

[Captions on p10: the Grant group and Militant]

Ted Grant entered Labour latest (1954) but went deepest. Grant cooperated with the Cliff group to produce Young Guard in the Young Socialists between 1961 and 1963; he had no distinctive political or theoretical position. Militant began publication in 1964.

After Healy's group had been expelled and Cliff's had drifted out of the YS, Grant's time had come. Militant gained control in 1970 and has retained it since. This blinkered sect has plodded along inside the Labour Party impervious to outside events; it now finds itself to the right of most of the Labour left.

[Captions on p10: the IMG]

The IMG was formed in the late '60s by individuals from various Trotskyist fragments in the Labour Party. Its hallmark was its adaptation to prevailing trends – national liberation struggles in the backward capitalist world, the Cuban revolution, Vietnam, the student revolt, feminism, etc. (The Week)

The radical left group that achieved the least penetration into the working class, it proved the most susceptible to the pressures of isolation and fragmentation in the late 70s. When its 'revolutionary regroupment' initiatives failed and the SWP rejected unity talks its members stampeded back to the Labour Party. (Black Dwarf, Red Mole, Red Weekly, Socialist Challenge)

The Cliff group calls for an incomes policy...

Welcoming the TUC's rejection of Tory wage control proposals:

'We must follow it up with a sound wage and price policy.' (Socialist Review, mid-March 1958)

'High wages ensure demand, plus efficient use of labour. Low wages produce exactly the opposite result.

'It should be possible for an annual increase in wages to be paid to everybody based upon the increase in the national income. Even given the present levels of investment that increase would be of the order of 3 per cent. But this will require rational planning and would result in some diminution in the power of the trade union leaders. Hence the apoplexy whenever this subject is mentioned.' (Socialist Review, March 1958)

for tax reforms...

'We of the Left cannot reduce or minimise our differences with the Right; but we can fight in the same party for such radical proposals as Anthony Crosland's reforms for the educational system and proposals for really punishing redistributive taxation, which would lead towards income equality.' (Socialist Review, April 1962)

and import controls

Campaigning for Wilson in 1964, the Cliff group called for 'socialist policies (to) remove many of the causes of the present crisis' – import controls, bans on capital export and selective nationalisation. (Young Guard, October 1964)

Rearguard action

'The case for keeping out of the Labour Party' – title of the longest article ever published in Socialist Review, July 1981.

Printed page 11

'Many of the left groups came into being and grew in strength because of the manifest failure of the non-socialist years of the Labour Party, from 1951. It was a judgement by a generation of socialists on the Parliamentary Labour Party during the years of Revisionism.

'I think it's significant now that there is a coming together.' – TONY BENN (Interviewed in Socialist Challenge, 4 June 1981)

[Captions on p11: the Healy group, the SLL and the WRP]

The largest of the Trotskyist groupings, Gerry Healy's circle was swelled by defections from the CP in 1956 and 1957. It was devoutly orthodox proclaiming Trotsky's characterisation of the Soviet Union as a 'degenerated workers' state' and predicting the collapse of capitalism throughout the post-war boom. These positions had little effect on its day to day support for the Labour Party and particularly its feeble left wing. (The Newsletter)

The SLL was launched in 1959 but its independent existence began after the expulsion in 1964 of Healy's Keep Left, the dominant faction in the Young Socialists since 1959. Notorious for its sectarian and bureaucratic methods, the SLL is less well known for its adaptation to the Labour left: Bevan, Foot and even Wilson prior to his election, as well as left trade union bureaucrats like TGWU leader Frank Cousins – all were backed by the SLL.

The SLL became the WRP in 1973. As the recession appeared the WRP's predictions of impending collapse and revolution became more and more strident. Its politics became more and more unstable as it came to identify with petit-bourgeois nationalist movements and regimes in Africa and the Middle East. However Healy's eccentricities have not prevented his party's adaptation to the Labour bureaucracy. The WRP is a strong supporter of its heroes, Ted Knight and Ken Livingstone, and 'red rate rises'. It recently fully backed the TUC's People's March and is campaigning for Benn against Healey.

[Captions on p11: Workers Fight, the ICL and the WSL]

Associated at different times with Healy (up to 1964), then with Grant, and later still with Cliff, the Workers Fight faction led by Sean Matgamna takes the prize for the most unstable of the fragments.

After Workers Fight emerged from its sojourn in IS in the early 'seventies, it fused with Workers Power (another IS split) to form the ICL which soon broke up again. After a brief spell of unaccustomed independence under the banner of Workers Action this grouping re-entered the Labour Party. Its paper Socialist Organiser is a leading force in the 'Benn for deputy' Campaign.

Alan Thornett's WSL left the WRP in 1974. It became progressively more divided and demoralised in the late 'seventies; it has recently taken refuge inside the Labour Party and fused with supporters of Socialist Organiser.

Healy and the Labour Party

'The Labour Party ranks are looking toward individuals like Aneurin Bevan to provide that leadership. If the majority should so signify, as it now appears they do, we of the Labour Left are willing to back Mr Bevan's bid for directing the Labour Party forces. Only by enabling Mr Bevan, his programme and his ideas to pass through the test of experience in office, can the whole Labour movement appraise their value.' (Labour Review, May-August 1952)

After its proscription, the SLL launched a campaign for affiliation to the Labour Party, so that the League could 'take its rightful place in the development of a socialist left wing.' (The Newsletter, 30 April 1960)

'Gaitskell and the right wing are the real wreckers of the Labour Party. They are the real disrupters.' (The Newsletter, 18 June 1960)

'We believe that the experience of another Labour government will form a vital part of the mass education of the working class. We are in favour of the election of such a government even under the leadership of Gaitskell.' (The Newsletter, 12 May 1962)

Not just yet

'A special recall Congress of the WRP in June "gave support to Benn in the election contest and denounced the witch-hunts against him, but insisted that the WRP would not liquidate itself into his camp like the revisionists have done.' (The News Line, 6 June 1981)