22.02.1996

“Getting the ear of the class”

Anne Murphy spoke to Wally Kennedy, Militant Labour councillor in Hillingdon which has recently gained another ML councillor, Julia Leonard

When did you first get involved in politics?

I was involved in the republican demonstrations in Dublin in 1968. I came to Britain and did not do anything politically for a few years until the pub I was running in Tottenham was closed down because of our refusal to bar black customers.

They ordered me to increase prices to ensure that the black working class of the area could not afford to drink there.

My wife, child and I squatted the pub as the brewery boarded it up around us. In the end we were evicted and I went on hunger strike outside Allied Brewery in St Johns Street for nine days. We got a tiny amount of compensation and were rehoused by the GLC in Eastcote, west London - but it did not abate my anger.

I joined the CPGB. But, although there were some decent people, I did not think they were going anywhere. At the first meeting I was the only one under 65. I was frustrated at the lack of activity but also had political differences over events in the Soviet Union. They had the British road to socialism, but I wanted revolution.

I was not allowed to express my differences and left after about a year.

Was that when you joined the Labour Party?

Yes, I got involved through local campaigns and being a shop steward. I was warned off speaking to the Militant Tendency, but I found their commitment tremendous. Everybody knew I was in Militant when I stood for Labour and became a councillor in 1990.

It was at the height of the anti-poll tax campaign. We organised huge meetings in Hillingdon and set up anti-poll tax unions based on the estates. The divided white and Asian community in west London became involved together in the unions. We were able to overcome racism in a way not normally possible.

When were you expelled from the Labour Party?

I was suspended in February 1994, two months away from the local elections. I had already been reselected in my ward unopposed in September 1993. All the local branches and trade unions supported me, but not a single member of Hillingdon Labour Party got involved in my campaign.

How did Labour react to your determination to stand?

Central office imposed a candidate and poured in resources, sending hundreds to canvass and leaflet. Their intention was to hammer me, but I got elected with an increased majority of 1,300. The official candidate only got 400 votes.

You see yourself as a communist and revolutionary. I would say ML fudges the issue of how we get socialism. How do you see revolution?

If you stand up now and say you want communism, the working class will think you mean what they had in Russia.

You have to get the ear of the class, raise their sights, show them how it could be different. In raising their sights you raise ideas of socialism and international socialism, which is genuine communism.

Yes, I think you have to have a revolution. That underpins my whole understanding of the state.

I raise the issue of revolution every day, through my casework. We go through the practical issues and then I will always tell them that we need workers’ control - that we should run the world ourselves. If they know you as a fighter then they will know more clearly what you mean by revolution.

I am a great believer that the class will reach its own conclusions through struggle. My view, not accepted in our organisation, is that Marxism is really common sense. That it is the crystallisation of working class experience.

We think we need a party where there is the ability to form permanent factions and for open ideological struggle.

I totally agree. We have that ability in our organisation. During our split the minority organised but did not argue its case properly and could not accept that they could not win in the short-term. It was mostly the conservative elements that left.

I am interested in what you think about Ireland since you first came to politics through the republican movement, like myself.

There is an ongoing discussion within our organisation on the question of Ireland. Not least of all because of the recent changes. We need to look at the class composition of the republican and loyalist movements. In the last 17 months of the ceasefire politics began to be discussed in a way not possible before.

It is important to listen to those discussions because if we can wean away any sections from their traditional narrow viewpoint then we should do so. The south of Ireland has had Ireland for the Irish for the last 70 years and the workers are still treated like shit.

We have been criticised in ML for having the Progressive Unionist Party on the platform with us. But if there is on balance any chance of working class unity we should go for it. We want to convince the republican and loyalist workers that they have more in common with each other than with their leaders.

What role do you see for the Socialist Alliances and the SLP?

Arthur Scargill’s call for the SLP was good in the sense that it raised the question of socialism. But fancy calling on the UN as the bastion of peace!

I think he has lost a golden opportunity to regroup the left as a broad based socialist party, not a broad based party of labour. There are Labour councillors here locally who are considering joining the SLP. Those councillors have been inflicting cuts on the working class for the last three years. This is the milieu that Scargill’s party is starting to attract. There is no doubt that he will attract some very good working class militants. I hope he does, because when a layer of the working class gets involved in that party the constitution will have to be changed.

The role of the SA, when we cannot get into the SLP, is to raise the ideas of socialism and organise the working class in the area, to do what the trade union bureaucracy do not do anymore. But Scargill may have started a movement that the working class will finish.