26.01.1995

Brent Labour debates behind closed doors

Two approaches to Labour’s clause four clashed in Brent last week. While Brent East Labour Party held a private, members-only debate - Blairite Peter Mandelson MP vs local ‘left’ MP Ken Livingstone - geared towards Labour’s internal April 29 special conference. Meanwhile Brent Communists’ meeting was advertised publicly and open to all, taking the argument to the public that Labour can never genuinely represent working class interests.

Both the ‘vote Labour, but...’ SWP and Militant Labour sold their papers outside the meeting they were not allowed to attend, but neither had the confidence to present their views in the Communist meeting.

Mark Fischer, CPGB National Organiser, described the ‘left’ campaign coalescing around defence of clause four as “at best, a diversion; at worst, truly dangerous”. It sows illusions that Labour can be a vehicle for social change, for defence of working class rights and living standards. In fact the last Labour government presided over the biggest post-war drop in living standards and the doubling of unemployment, as well as sending the troops into Ireland. Labour has a long history of betrayal of the working class.

The ‘socialist origins’ of Labour, he said, are an illusion. The founding of the party in 1906 had nothing whatsoever to do with socialism. Clause four was an anti-socialist, anti-communist measure - a sop designed to keep socialists in Labour’s dead end of reformism and away from the struggle for communist unity which gave birth to the Communist Party in 1920.

“Clause four has never, ever, ever affected how Labour behaves when in government,” said comrade Fischer. “The attack on it now is an indication of the low ebb of working class struggle.”

Austin Mitchell MP (Tribune August 5 1994) characterised Peter Mandelson’s view of Labour’s “traditional constituency: the poor, the unions, the spending lobby, the public servants. They have to vote for us anyway. With nowhere else to go they can be taken for granted, their only task not to embarrass us. Labour’s job now is to make the world safe for readers of the Daily Telegraph. So don’t associate with our traditional voters. Give our new ones the fruits of their desires and protect their privileges.”

There will be “nowhere else to go”, said Mark Fischer, only so long as the revolutionary left continues to deliver working class votes to Labour. It is time to challenge Labour “in its lair, in the only place where the Labour Party really lives: in the ballot box.”

Stan Kelsey