06.11.1997

Tory divisions point to split

Since the May 1 general election ideological divisions in the Tory Party have widened considerably. William Hague’s success in winning the leadership contest marked a definite shift to the right from the centrist fudge, dither and drift of John Major. Today the Tories are an introspective English nationalist party defining themselves in terms of antagonism to further European integration. Of course, there has long been a besieged pro-European Union wing. Now with the Mainstream grouping it has taken definite organisational form. Two Conservative parties effectively exist - albeit inchoately.

There are two programmes. What separates the Hague-Redwood-Lilley wing from the Clarke-Heseltine wing is not that of shade or nuance. The differences are fundamental. They are about the strategic future of British capitalism. Should Britain throw in its lot with the EU and the uncertainties of the single currency? Or is it better to play safe, keep the pound sterling and slowly decline into the Ruritanian margins of history? These are the crucial questions that are pulling apart the Conservative Party.

Whatever the subjective intentions of the main players, the fault lines point to the real possibility of a split. The Tory left has the finances and the will to fight. In the shape of Kenneth Clarke and Michael Heseltine it has a very experienced, very skilful and very well connected leadership.

A real danger of disintegration faced the Tory left wing. Before the general election there had been a trickle of defections to Blair’s Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. On May 1 the ranks of Tory MPs were decimated. Many ‘one nation’ Tories lost their seats or retired. The overwhelming majority of new Tory MPs come from the right. Not surprisingly Clarke lost the leadership election by a big margin. Further defections appeared a certainty - Peter Temple-Morris was quite candid about his talks with Labour whips and even Blair himself.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown explicitly committed the government to Emu and the euro in October. The shadow cabinet reacted by hardening its stance virtually to the point of irreconcilability. The formula of staying out of Emu for the ‘foreseeable future’ deployed at the Tory Party conference was ditched. It was replaced by intransigent opposition for at least 10 years. Peter Lilley went significantly further in the Commons. And Hague made it clear that the Tory Party will enter the next general election specifically on a platform of saving the pound. This proved to be the catalyst. Clarke and Heseltine made their move.

In The Times Clarke issued his call for a “cross-party alliance” to secure a ‘yes’ vote in the promised referendum on the euro (The Times October 29 1997). Heseltine followed the day after, announcing the formation of Mainstream with himself and Clarke as the leadership. Others quickly rallied. Temple-Morris told a packed press conference that he would not be joining Labour. He would stay and fight to change the Tory Party alongside Clarke and Heseltine. David Curry then resigned from the shadow cabinet. Former foreign secretary Lord Hurd made known his support, as did Sir Leon Brittain, vice president of the European Commission. In total Mainstream is said to have some 20 MPs on board (out of a total of 165 Tory MPs).

Most of them are among the so-called ‘old guard’. Heseltine himself is in the late autumn of political life. However, what is at stake for these grandees is not so much their own fortunes and prospects. Rather it is the survival of their political programme and the survival of the Tory Party as constituted throughout the 20th century. Since the death of the great Liberal Party and the rise of Labourism the Tories - as the party of power - have been the natural, the preferred party of the capitalist class. Heseltine angrily pointed out on Radio 4 that Hague’s hostility to the euro is undermining this privileged position. The Tories could enter the next general election not only in opposition to Labour, but the CBI.

What is going on is an historic realignment of British politics. The political foundations and thus the political architecture of the United Kingdom are being transformed. Blair is pressing ahead with his programme of changing the way we are ruled. We are not seeing merely a tinkering with the constitution. The old constitutional monarchy system is dying. A new constitutional monarchy system is being made.

As we have said before, Blair’s remaking of the UK constitution is in fact both the continuation, the complement and the completion of the Thatcherite counter-reformation. Blair has no intention whatsoever of resurrecting or re-creating the 1945-1979 social democratic settlement. His ‘communitarianism’ is a pathetic re-invention of Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism. The ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ is to be ensured by the market and the drive for profit. In other words by the capitalist system, which necessitates unlimited exploitation and the endless accumulation of dead labour at the expense of living labour. A modern constitution for a modern economy, says Blair. By that he means New Labour will change the constitution; but, as Liverpool dockers and Hillingdon hospital strikers know full well, keeping in place Thatcher’s anti-trade union laws and anti-working class programme. Blair will do nothing to jeopardise Thatcher’s success in overseeing the transformation of Britain’s economic prospects.

Nevertheless with the abolition of hereditary peers the massive in-built 350 Tory majority in the House of Lords will at a stroke be swept away. Prime ministerial patronage finally triumphs over aristocratic family tree. Disestablishment of the Church of England must surely follow (even the ‘royal house’ of Windsor is considering various ‘modernisations’, including ending its system of male primogeniture). Northern Ireland is another major plank in the Blair constitutional programme. For 28 years the drawn-out revolutionary situation in the Six Counties has been a running sore on the UK body politic. The July 19 IRA ceasefire paves the way at some point to a renegotiation of the 1922 treaty. Local government too is due for a radical overhaul. London will in all probability soon have an elected mayor and a Greater London Authority.

Having triumphed in the September 11 referendum in Scotland and just scraped through in the September 18 referendum in Wales, coalition politics are only a matter of time. New Labour has the prospect of permanently running Scotland and Wales. The Liberal Democrats are natural coalition partners and Plaid Cymru and the SNP useful standbys. What is true of the Edinburgh parliament and the Cardiff assembly is also true of the Westminster parliament. Some form of PR - in all likelihood the most undemocratic - is coming. Blair is pledged to PR in European, Scottish and Welsh elections. The presence of Ashdown and other Liberal Democrats - enthusiasts for PR par excellence - in cabinet committees, above all the one established to discuss the constitution, shows us what is in store. To all intents and purposes we already have a semi- or proto-Lab-Lib pact.

Blair has already prepared Labour for the full thing by throwing the party back to its ideological origins and removing from those below the power to embarrass. His social-ism is unashamed capital-ism. Organisationally conference and the NEC have been completely domesticated. State funding of parties means the trade union bureaucracy will go from paymaster to mere supplicant. Power has in other words been concentrated in the hands of the parliamentary leadership. Labour has virtually been de-Labourised.

If Blair’s New Labour is well placed for coalition politics, Hague’s Tories are a nonstarter. Apart from Ulster Unionists they have no serious potential partners. More than that New Labour could, in the 21st century, become the natural party of big business (recreating something like Gladstone’s great Liberal Party, which united capitalists, middle class radicals and trade union bureaucrats). Where Sir David Simon has trod, other captains of industry will surely follow. So things are set for a thoroughgoing realignment.

The Clarke-Heseltine Tories could not survive for long under the first-past-the-post system. But under PR they could provide the hegemonic centre for a viable alternative government to New Labour. Under the right circumstances these Tories could attract Liberal Democrats or nationalists.

The City, CBI, etc, all enthusiastically welcome the euro. They consider the single currency and the single market an unmissable opportunity to expand their market share. The Hague Tories have manoeuvred themselves into a position where they have alienated this big business constituency. His wing articulates the interests not of the most competitive concentrations of capital but weak, parochial and small capital. That is, those who fear penetration or loss of markets to European competitors.

The atomisation, the (temporary) disappearance of the working class from the political stage create the conditions where the capitalist class can feel confident about decanting from the Tories to New Labour. There is neither pressure nor threat from the enemy within. At present the working class exists as wage slaves and voting fodder, but in no sense as a subject - ie, maker - of history.

Thatcher broke the post-World War II social democratic consensus - which necessitated emasculating trade union power. That carried huge costs. Not only has oil money been pumped into sustaining mass unemployment, but there has been enormous social dislocation. Millions are alienated from the state. In the absence of socialism, demoralisation, despair and separatism fills the vacuum. Blair wants to cement a new consensus around the state and to stay in office for 20 years. That is what his constitutional programme is designed to achieve.

Faced with this challenge, the majority of the left sees the future in terms of returning to the past. One way or another they want to defend, or resurrect, an imagined pro-working class, socialist Labour Party. The pro-Labour left, the SWP, Morning Star, the Trotskyite entryists fear European integration, a single currency and PR. The SLP is no different. NEC member Bob Crow recently announced the formation of Trade Unionists against the Single Currency. For these elements human liberation is to be achieved within the narrow national borders of Britain. Here is the socialism of fools.

Bourgeois politics are set for realignment. Working class politics should be too. A first step could be the creation of an all-Britain Socialist Alliance. The curse of the sects must be ended. Equally there must be a decisive break with New Labour and Blair. Above all the new conditions demand the organisation of all advanced workers in one democratic centralist party, the reforged Communist Party of Great Britain.

Jack Conrad