19.02.1998

Back to normality

Around the left

No organisation likes to think of itself as a small and isolated grouping. This is only natural. After all, who would want to be a member of a ‘sect’ when they could be a member of a mass movement or party? A driving thirst for the really small time is not what inspires most people to get involved in revolutionary politics. Therefore, it is nearly always the other groups ‘out there’ that are either sects, weirdos or irrelevant - ‘just another leftwing group’ - while it is your own group which is solid and sensible, with the masses even.

This appears to be the attitude of the Socialist Party. Still. Though some sections of the SP are busily pushing Socialist Alliances, regroupment, rap­prochement, etc, the Taaffe leadership still cannot shake off this ‘small mass party’ mentality - despite the fact that it is shrinking in size with almost every day that passes. When it was the Mili­tant Tendency, it viewed with palpa­ble contempt all those left groups and individuals who were not deeply ensconced in the Labour Party - they were outside the ‘labour movement’ and to be treated as non-people.

Now, of course, the SP claims that the Labour Party is no different to the Tories. Instead, it is waiting patiently - and stoically - for the spontaneous upsurge that will magically produce the “new mass party” we all want. This notional “new mass party” has replaced Labour as the mechanical vehicle of history.

We can see this thinking in the lat­est issue of Socialism Today. Dis­cussing the Ken Coates/Hugh Kerr split, the “success of the left at La­bour’s October party conference” and the “huge parliamentary revolt” over the lone parents benefit cuts, Peter Taaffe wonders whether these are all portents of “the beginnings of at­tempts to form a new mass socialist alternative through a major split from the Labour Party” (February) - one pre­vious Militant option, it should be re­membered, until they were booted out of Labour.

No, this is not on the cards. As Taaffe explains, the “situation con­fronting British and world capitalism in the 1990s is even worse than that which confronted the Wilson govern­ment of 1974-79 ... This further reflects the incapacity of capitalism to further develop the productive forces, par­ticularly the most important produc­tive force, the working class which is not fully integrated into production. As Socialism Today pointed out be­fore the Blair government came to power, New Labour is entirely differ­ent to any other previous ‘Labour’ government. At its head is a con­scious bourgeois leadership which has quite deliberately transformed the Labour Party from the political voice of the organised working class in Brit­ain, of the trade unions in particular, into an openly bourgeois formation. Every day of the last eight months has confirmed this analysis, and fu­ture events will further underline this ... [New Labour] is therefore not sub­ject to the pressures which were brought to bear on previous Labour governments.” It therefore follows that lefts like Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone, who still see Labour as a site for change, “have an unrealistic attitude to perspectives for the Labour Party”.

Having said that, the SP cannot quite make its mind up. “The Labour Party is increasingly dead as a viable political instrument for working peo­ple seeking change. Tony Benn’s call for a ‘refounding of the Labour party’ is meaningless unless it is interpreted as taking steps to form a real viable mass alternative to Labour” (my em­phasis). Perhaps Taaffe is trying to justify the SP’s previous position of automatic support for Labour - which from its origins was a bourgeois work­ers’ party; ie, a party that owed its loyalties, politics and programme to the bourgeoisie.

But the real significance of Taaffe’s comments lie in the fact that “real vi­able mass alternative” to New Labour is going to take the shape of a ‘refounded Labour Party’, or Labour Party Mark II - ie, a centrist, left re­formist, halfway house that will get history back on track. This will allow, more importantly, the SP to resume its cosy relationship ‘with the masses’ and avoid troublesome political is­sues. Long live spontaneity.

Taaffe makes this crystal clear in his conclusion. After arguing that “the conditions exist for the emergence of a new mass party”, he confidently states:

“The next period will be characterised by further attacks from the government on those who voted for it in May, including swingeing cuts in local government. The SP is prepared to struggle with all genuine left forces to lay the foundation for a new mass party of the working class in Britain. Realistically, however, we recognise that this will take time to emerge and will result from a combination of events and the experience of the work­ing class, and tireless propaganda for the launching of such a party. In the meantime, we intend to dig roots amongst the real left in Britain, in the factories, workplaces, and on the es­tates, where working people have no alternative but to go into struggle to defend and improve their conditions” (my emphasis).

SP wants to surf the “mass” swell that it believes is just around the cor­ner. Seeing how the “real left” already exists, is ‘out there’ on the streets. Etc, that is where the future lies - in every­day trade unionism and ‘community politics’, not in the open struggle of contending political ideas and party-­building.

Don Preston