26.01.1995

Clause four chaos

THE CLAUSE FOUR controversy took on a new twist when the 480,000 strong Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union (MSF) did the dirty on Blair and retracted its statement backing the ‘mixed economy’ rewrite.

On January 19 Roger Lyons, leader of the MSF, issued a press statement excitingly entitled, ‘MSF Leads The Way in Clause Four Rewrite Debate’, which slavishly peddled the Blairite ‘New Labour’ line.

Hey presto! Twenty four hours later, Lyons issues a “clarification”(!) which tells us that the MSF’s position would not be decided until the end of February, after “consultation” with the various branches and regions. Apparently, the original statement had been “unfortunately worded and misleading” (The Guardian, January 21).

Not surprisingly, the presidents and secretaries of assorted MSF regions had not been very happy at Lyons’ policy-making by diktat and retaliated with an ultimatum: climb down or face ‘ritual’ repudiation from John McIntyre, MSF’s president, and a whole host of other angry senior officials. Lyons opted for discretion rather than valour.

This is history repeating itself though. The executive which controls the MSF threw its weight behind John Smith’s ‘one-member-one-vote’ reforms, and ironically its block vote proved decisive in Smith’s victory. Similarly, the rightist bureaucracy  - which has been carefully moulded by decades of ‘official communism’, it should be noted - are confident that they can stitch up its membership once again and foist the rewrite upon them.

Frank Vincent