27.03.1997

Shifting sands of SWP Labourism

Crunch time is almost upon us. As all the mainstream parties go into election mode, the revolutionary left is faced with the stark dilemma: whether or not to vote for the Sun-baked Labour Party. Any revolutionary party which does urge workers to vote for the explicitly pro-capitalist agenda of Tony Blair needs to come up with a very good reason as to why we should.

Some left organisations, as a matter of faith, will support Labour at the ballot box regardless of the objective or concrete circumstances - or logic.

One of the most pristine examples is the Socialist Workers Party. Week after week, year after year, Socialist Worker insists that there is no alternative to ‘kicking the Tories out’- ie, voting Labour. However, its arguments for doing so change like the weather, and end up being more an irrational plea (for divine intervention) than any serious, worked out political strategy.

The front page of the latest issue boldly states: “It’s time for real change - get rid of the Tories and their system” (March 23). Leaving aside the fact that the SWP seems to think that capitalism is an invention of the Conservative Party, how does it envisage this “real change” occurring? As it says in the ‘What we think’ column: “Tony Blair has made it clear New Labour will not offer anything fundamentally different from the Tories.”

So, it is still a bit of a mystery as to why workers should vote for Tony Blair. Now, in the past, the SWP has maintained that workers move to the left - ‘start the fightback’ - under a Labour government. Having a Labour government attacking workers as opposed to a Tory one acts as a class consciousness ‘booster’, we have always been led to believe.

Bur this theory seems to have been forgotten, or at least discretely put aside for the time being. Last week, comrade Chris Harman, in an article on the last Labour government and the ‘winter of discontent’, pointed out: “Disillusionment with Labour, far from leading to a leftward shift, gave way to a general shift in ideas to the right, the victory of the Tories in the 1979 election and a long period of defeats for the working class movement”. From this, comrade Harman draws the correct conclusion that under a Blair government, “there will not be any automatic movement to the left” (March 15).

So why vote Labour then, Chris? Ah well, there is always the ready-made excuse to wheel in at the last minute, if all other rational arguments have collapsed miserably - general elections do not matter anyway. You see, as Paul Foot immaculately put it, “elections are the most passive of all political activities” (Socialist Review May 1992). “But what really counts at the end of the day,” continues comrade Harman, “is not a cross on a piece of paper. What is decisive is whether people engage in the kind of struggles that fundamentally challenge the system” (March 22). It’s OK to vote Labour, just as long as you are “fundamentally” challenging the capitalist system, according to the SWP.

And we all know the form that this “challenge” will take - trade union activity. As Socialist Worker never tires of telling us, “socialists” need to concentrate their energies on the “workplaces” where - and this will definitely come as news to millions of workers - we are “strong”. Even if we were “strong” in the workplace it would be no thanks to the SWP though. For all its militant huff and puff, it has always urged workers to put their weight behind ‘left’ bureaucrats.

We saw the SWP’s characteristic tailism and lack of courage during the 1995 leadership contest in the Transport and General Workers Union, between Bill Morris and Jack Dromey, husband of Harriet Harman. Correctly, Socialist Review noted that “the TGWU election presents real opportunities for socialists to strengthen that opposition [to Blair - DP]” (June 1995). The drawback to this fine talk, and there is always one with the SWP, is that its idea of an “opportunity” is to urge workers to vote for Bill Morris - the scab, born again Blairite who has worked overtime to sabotage the inspiring fight of the Liverpool dockers. But at the time the SWP saw its job to talk up the ‘left’ credentials of Morris, even though it admitted itself that “many ordinary TGWU members are unaware of any real differences between the two candidates” (ibid). How silly of them - they should have realised that “a Morris victory would be a boost to everyone who wants to fight for jobs, decent wages and better conditions” (ibid). It would be interesting to watch an SWP member trying to explain this to a sacked Liverpool docker ...

We should not be surprised though by the SWP’s enthusiasm for Bill Morris in 1995. Just as it has always believed that a Labour victory will inspire workers, so they believed that a Morris victory would “boost” TGWU members. The same fundamental ‘methodology’ is at work. It has to be said that the SWPs cowardly deference to ‘left’ bureaucrats, and its general keenness to vote Labour, makes a mockery of Paul Foot’s boast that “socialists [are] people who make no concession to capitalist society because they want to replace it, root and branch” (Socialist Review May 1992).

The real problem for the SWP is not hard to detect, though. It has totally misunderstood, and misinterpreted, the enormous change in British politics over recent years. Crudely put, the ‘Blairisation’ of the Labour Party has totally buggered up the SWP’s historical/theoretical schema, and it has no idea how to square the circle.

Thus, it has viewed Labour’s steady shift to the right, and its general embrace of the Tory-led agenda, as ‘irrational’ - not what the Labour Party is supposed to do, in the book according to the SWP. Hence the plaintive cry in Socialist Worker: “Why then is Labour moving onto ground where the Tories feel more confident and might hope to gain votes?” (November 2 1996). We know the SWP script from here on almost by heart: massively unpopular Tory government; therefore Labour swings to the left to harness the anti-Tory groundswell; Labour gets elected; ‘betrays’ all its socialist promises and - bingo - the masses turn to the revolutionaries, disillusioned with the rottenness of social democracy. The eventual outcome, of course, is the massive expansion of the SWP and, not long after, the introduction of real socialism.

Reality has been cruel to the SWP’s dreams. As comrade Harman expresses it:

“British politics is dominated by a huge contradiction. On the one hand, there is a greater feeling for radical social change than at any time since 1945. On the other hand, the Labour leaders, who will benefit from this feeling, are making it clear they will not shift fundamentally from the Tory agenda of Thatcher and Major” (March 15).

Only for comrade Harman, and the SWP, could this be viewed as a “huge contradiction”. For Marxists this phenomenon, and the explanation for it, is very simple and obvious indeed. Given the fact there is no alternative to New Labour, Blair has been given carte blanche to move to the right and assimilate the Tory ‘revolution’ - and hence court Tory voters, and the British establishment as a whole. It would have been reckless folly for Blair to alienate ‘Middle England’ and its all-important votes (doubly so, given our undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system), when there is absolutely no reason to do so. This means that comrade Alex Callinicos could not have been more wrong when he claimed that Blair “enjoys a decisive lead in the polls despite, not because of, his rightwing policies” (original emphasis, March 8). Getting The Sun on his side can only be a considerable advantage - and Blair would not have been able to secure Rupert Murdoch’s blessing by talking the language of ‘Old Labour’.

A few years ago, comrade Lindsey German passionately argued that, “Whatever Labour does, however much it bends over backwards to appease the ruling class, it is always going to lose out.” As part of her argument she warned Blair that his dumping of clause four, and the overall shifting of Labour to the right, was a “gross miscalculation”, which “may yet haunt” him (Socialist Review February 1995). Labour’s 28% lead in the opinion polls - which is equivalent to the total vote Michael Foot received during the 1983 general election - suggests otherwise.

Comrade German’s words sum up the SWP’s ‘grand thesis’ - that Labour loses votes, “loses out”, the more it drifts to the right (and, presumably, away from its class ‘roots’). The grinning and hyper-confident face of Blair makes it sound positively comical now. But it was advocated, and expounded, with great earnestness by the SWP tops, and loyally mimicked by legions of humble SWP members. Analysing why Labour lost the last general election - and how “we lost socialist policies by the score” - the esteemed Paul Foot phrased it this way: “Marx argued that the prevailing ideas will always be those of the ruling class. Labour has to challenge these ideas to win elections” (Socialist Review May 1992, my emphasis). Comrade Foot was so certain of this that he elaborated a series of ‘ten commandments’ about the Labour Party, one of which decrees:

“The more it becomes their [ie, the capitalists - DP] captive, the more it attacks the people who voted Labour, thus ensuring a Labour defeat next time” (Socialist Review October 1994).

Comrade Foot - any chance of revisiting the real world at some point?

After everything we have experienced and witnessed over the last few years, it does border on the grotesque, therefore, to read: “The terrible effects of this government have pushed people to the left ... Opinion poll after opinion poll shows that the majority of people hold attitudes far more radical than New Labour’s” (March 22). However, as the SWP refuses to stand in elections - after all, it does not really count “at the end of the day” - all these “radical” votes will inevitably end up going Blair’s way. The SWP is truly trapped in its own self-fulfilling prophecy.

You cannot help but feel that the SWP still yearns, deep down in the closet of its political soul, for Old Labour and the cosy familiarities of left Labourism. This was made starkly apparent in its near glowing tribute to Roy Hattersley in Socialist Worker, which commended him for remaining “committed to some vision of reform” and applauded his “attacks on Blair’s arrogance and obsession with reassuring the rich”. Hattersley is on the right track, but “socialists need to go further” than him (October 26 1996). In other words, left Labourites - or even rightwing ones like Hattersley - are valuable allies in the fight for ‘real socialism’. ‘No Labour, no socialism,’ thinks the SWP.

This undeniable nostalgia for Old Labour also lurks in a revealing comment about the Sun’s conversion to Labour: “This will stick in the throats of the majority of Labour supporters who will remember the Sun’slies about the party in 1992” (March 22). Surely the only lie the Sun told was that by voting for Labour you were voting for ‘reds under the beds’ and militant trade union power. Sounds like the SWP will never forgive the Sun for its terrible crime of not backing Labour - something the SWP would never not do.

Still, it would be a miracle in some respects if the SWP did break from its unholy dependency on Labour (old or new). During the May 1994 local elections, Socialist Review maintained that “a vote for Labour would be a vote for class politics” (May 1994), regrettably omitting to tell us precisely which “class” it is referring to. Paul Foot told us a few months later, as the first of his ‘ten commandments’ on the Labour Party, that: “Labour, which is linked to organised workers, is better any time than the Tories” (Socialist Review October 1994, my emphasis).

On May 1 then, loyal and ‘orthodox’ SWP members will vote for the “better” Blair. This can only be to the discredit of the SWP and help contribute to the further defeat and demoralisation of the working class movement.

Don Preston