WeeklyWorker

20.03.1997

Time for a working class alternative

Revolutionary campaign must challenge rotten New Labour bloc

May 1 is their election day. Paradoxically it is also our International Workers’ Day. May Day will therefore see the hypocrisy, the Janus, two-faced nature of a broad, but politically well-defined spectrum of the left thrown into the sharpest relief. Our traditional day of socialism and blood red flags, militant demonstrations and solidarity speeches will see many a ‘subjective’ revolutionary ‘objectively’ act like run-of-the-mill Blairites.

From the Socialist Workers Party to the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain, from the Alliance for Workers Liberty to Socialist Outlook,from the New Communist Party to Workers Power, they will join The Sun and the Financial Times in a rotten bloc calling for a New Labour vote.

That, of course, is what the majority of working class voters look set to do - with or without the urging of any of the putative ‘revolutionary vanguards’. Opinion polls show Labour standing at 56.5% - a massive and surely unassailable 28 points ahead of the beleaguered Tories. After 18 Tory years millions of people desire change. They will therefore vote Labour to get rid of the “sloppy, divided and tired out” Tories (The Sun March 18 1997).

Normally this is exactly how the British constitution functions. Since the 19th century there has been a “convenient” two-party system whereby popular discontent is dissipated through the safety valve of replacing one representative of capital by another. The masses, said Marx, are thereby allowed to vote every four or five years for somebody to “misrepresent” them. Hence the din and clamour of the hustings should not be confused with the clash of genuine opposites. John Major and Tony Blair are performing a well-rehearsed ritual.

Long ago, Lord Balfour - Tory prime minister over the years 1902-6 - noted in a glowing introduction to Walter Bagehot’s classic study, that a change of government is not at all dangerous. The “parties”, he observed, “have never differed about the foundations of society”. Actually the constitution “presupposes” such “moderation”. Whether it could survive a “majority” which wants “a revolution” was for him debatable (W Bagehot The English constitution London 1974, ppxxiii-xiv).

Between them Neil Kinnock and John Smith re-established Labour as a trustworthy alternative party of government. In historic terms Blair has done much more. By rewriting clause four he formally returned Labour to its liberal, pre-1918 roots. Labour no longer pretends to have anything to do with socialism. The old reformist ideology has been replaced with the dull practicalities of managing capitalism. Indeed the exploitation of living labour by dead labour is taken for granted as the pinnacle of human achievement. For Blair, says the Financial Times, the “bond market rules” (March 18 1997).

Though the union link remains, Labour not only accepts the capitalist “foundations of society”, but has won the backing of a swathe of prominent capitalists - truly Labour “means business”. No wonder Margaret Thatcher confided to trusted associates that her counterrevolution would be safe with Blair. There will be no rebirth of the post-World War II social democratic state.

The Labour Party under Blair should still be scientifically defined as a bourgeois workers’ party. However, in terms of that dialectical formulation the working class pole has become increasingly residual, the bourgeois pole dominant. In other words, politically Labour is led by thorough-going reactionaries who now find no reason to pay lip service to the working class nor its interests. Labour’s 100,000 recruits are not class fighters but credit card Labourites. Internally they are leadership voting fodder.

The notorious Millbank tendency might once and for all resolve the contradiction negatively by qualitatively “curbing” union power and Clintonising Labour at October’s set-piece conference. Ironically the “landslide” the pro-Labour left “want” so earnestly, will in all likelihood strengthen the hand of Peter Mandelson and co (Workers Power March 1997). A sweeping Labour victory could see New Labour finally transmogrify into Non-Labour. Yet, whatever the exact outcome, Labour has ceased to represent any sort of a bridge towards the socialist articulation of the working class. New Labour is the bridge that takes workers back to liberalism.

There can be little doubt that a Blair-led cabinet is set to be the most rightwing, anti-working class Labour government ever seen. Gordon Brown pledges to stay within Tory spending limits. The anti-trade union laws will be maintained. Workfare will enslave the unemployed. British troops will stay on in Northern Ireland to protect the ‘peace process’. On crime, education, the family, health and welfare Labour unashamedly shares the perverted values of Thatcherism. Major routinely complains that Blair has stolen Tory principles and policies. Blair’s “bond of trust” with The Sun to keep “those things of the 80s that are working” is no ploy.

Even where there are differences of detail or nuance there is nothing remotely progressive about Labour’s agenda. The proposed Scottish and Welsh assemblies and reform of the House of Lords are mere sops. Change to prevent change. There will be no possibility of democratically exercising national self-determination. The prime minister’s power patronage over the second chamber increases dramatically and the hereditary monarchy stays untouched.

What of the much vaunted minimum wage? The figure touted by Blair is far below the £275 a week necessary for subsistence. And Labour’s warmer attitude towards the European Union and its single currency heralds further cuts and austerity for workers, not prosperity. One need only look at what is happening in Germany, France and Italy, as their governments strive to meet the Maastricht criteria, to understand what Labour’s aspiring Iron Chancellor has in store for us.

So why are so many publications of the left saying, ‘Vote Labour’? It used to be that workers had socialist illusions in the Labour Party. That was the case in the early 1920s. Obviously no more. Nowadays the only illusion in Labour is that it could be no worse than the Tories. This demands radically different tactics. But one thing is for sure: putting workers’ illusions in Labour to the test will not by itself convince anyone of the need for a socialist alternative. Any such suggestion is to fall into crude mechanical thinking. Workers learn through consciousness and organisation, not defeat and demoralisation. Five years of Blair could well produce nothing more than another Tory government.

Clearly there are those who have turned Lenin’s tactical advice to the newly formed CPGB - that it should support Labour “as the rope supports a hanged man” - into a dogmatic opposite. The pro-Labour left has to all intents and purposes adapted to popular belief in the two-party system. They therefore find it useful to elaborate a ‘lesser of two evils’ theory. In the 19th century that excused voting Liberal. In the US it excuses voting Democrat. On May 1 it excuses voting New Labour. Such a denial of elementary working class political independence leaves workers with nothing more than the dubious privilege of choosing the butcher.

Then there is the prediction that the election of a Labour government will trigger a crisis of expectations. Spontaneously the masses are supposed to take to the streets around Labour’s most minimal of minimum wage and its promise to keep the Tories’ trade union laws. Why workers are not capable of fighting a discredited, sleaze-ridden and rudderless Tory government, but will instantly take on a newly elected Blair government, is a mystery. In terms of organisation and consciousness what is the difference between April 30 and May 2? However, inventing a decisive class struggle break does justify the ‘vote Labour, but fight’ brigade.

The Provisional Central Committee of the CPGB puts forward this minimum election platform:

If Labour candidates are willing to publicly campaign on this set of demands - which are by no means revolutionary - we say workers ought to consider supporting them. If however they refuse, such candidates are unworthy of any support. If they defend Blair’s New Labour manifesto, they must be actively opposed and exposed. That includes Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone, Alan Simpson, Jeremy Corbyn, Dennis Skinner and other members of the Socialist Campaign Group.

The CPGB supports communist candidates standing under the banner of the Socialist Labour Party and the Scottish Socialist Alliance. They should fight openly on the basis of our revolutionary manifesto (to be published in early April). These candidates require and deserve financial, moral and logistic support from all partisans of the working class.

Where there is no communist standing we urge critical support for the candidates of the SLP, SSA and the Socialist Party. Whatever the reformist shortcomings of their manifestos, they mark a break with Labourism - albeit awkwardly, unevenly and incompletely. Here we have the raw material communists need to build a real proletarian alternative to Labour and the inhuman capitalist system it serves.

Jack Conrad