02.05.1996

SLP moves to break Labour stranglehold

Gordon Brown has unambiguously announced Labour’s intention to continue the Tories’ attack on workers with a promised squeeze on public spending. Yet after the local elections Blair’s Labour Party looks set to win a huge anti-Tory vote, taking it to victory in the next general election. Can the Socialist Labour Party turn the tide on the Labour-Tory rightwing consensus?

Gordon Brown spelt out the now familiar Labour agenda at a lecture on Monday night at the Manchester Business School.

Taken in context, there was nothing particularly remarkable about the speech. Shadow minister after shadow minister in every department has been anxious to ensure that workers expect nothing from a Labour government. Whatever the date set, the general election campaign is in full swing.

Far from distancing itself from the Tory agenda, Labour’s campaign consists of trying to prove itself more Tory than the Tories.

Significantly, as it does so, its lead in the opinion polls remains extensive, it even sneaks up. As we go to print, thousands of voters - told to expect nothing from Labour - look set to replace Tory councils with Labour ones. This should not surprise us, since the real problem is the lack of a working class alternative.

Labour does not need to adapt to the ideology of a combative working class demanding its rights, since workers are on the defensive. The social democratic consensus which dominated the approach of both Labour and Tory after World War II is therefore presently off the agenda.

The mainstream party consensus is now around the ideology of the unfettered market economy. Capitalism, ruthless or not, must be good for you because there is no alternative.

This was the essence of Brown’s little anthem to the bosses. Labour is not just trying to woo this or that company director, although their donations obviously do not go amiss, or this or that ‘middle Englander’. It is trying to gain total hegemony over the whole ideology that now reigns supreme. To improve our living and overall social conditions, we are told, we must make Britain ‘great’ again. Brown’s pledge to tighten the public purse, to cut out waste, to “seek partnership with the private sector”, is the sort of hard ‘truth’ that many have come to feel secure in. Capitalism is safe in Labour hands and when Britain is great again we will all reap the rewards.

But Labour’s ascent to power will not be a bed of roses. A powerful undercurrent of discontent is brewing. Many workers are putting their cross by the local Labour butcher with gritted teeth. Inevitably Blair’s Labour has begun to create its opposition. The working class must find expression for its anger if it is going to become a powerful force for positive change.

The Socialist Labour Party is the beginning of this expression. A section of workers, still small but nevertheless significant, are not content with grumbling as they put a cross in the Labour box. They are starting to organise themselves to provide the solution.

That is why the debates at the SLP conference this weekend are so important. This is not an academic exercise or a cosy get-together. It is the first step in the formidable struggle to forge the organisation that can overturn the whole rotting capitalist corpse and replace it with a society which can take humanity out of the squalor. Members of the SLP know we must get it right this time. It is no good repeating old mistakes, whether it be creating a Labour Party Mark II, another left sect or a re-run of ‘official communism.

There is much division already on the correct way forward, but the first step has been made by actually coming together and facing the task. If all opinions are debated out in the open for the whole class to take part in, if they are tested out in practice and re-examined vigorously we can reach the answers that will take us to victory. This is a formidable task, but it should not be an arduous one. Through the battle of ideas and the unity of action we can start to build the comradely trust and cohesion which has been so frustratingly lacking in our movement.

Lee-Anne Bates