16.03.1995

New clause four is pre-clause four

Labour, ironically under the rubric of ‘modernisation’, is about to transform itself back into a trade union backed liberal party

ON MARCH 13 Labour’s National Executive Committee overwhelmingly agreed to support the Blair “update” of clause four. Labour’s leadership now officially and openly champions what is called a “thriving private sector” and the “enterprise of the market”: ie, capitalism. This is indeed a defining moment in the history of Labourism.

New clause four in fact is pre-clause four. Islington man speaks in the archaic tongues of community, nation and partnership. Ironically under the rubric of ‘modernisation’ the Labour Party is being returned to its ideological origins, which lie not in 20th century Fabian socialism, as so many pundits maintain, but in the 19th century. Transparently Blair’s much vaunted “social-ism” has nothing to do with the apocalyptic visions of firebrands like Edward Carpenter, John Bruce Glasier and Robert Blatchford. These god-fearing gentlemen thundered against the devil capitalism and prophesied the coming of a New Jerusalem. Blair’s Victorian values are those of a conventional liberal politician.

That is why he and his chums on the Commission for Social Justice make no pledges to spend beyond what capitalism considers it can afford. And that in turn explains why he supports anti-union laws, a below subsistence minimum wage and workfare for the unemployed. New Labour will be an SDP Mark II.

There is, of course, a thin leftwing line determined, even at this eleventh hour, to fight for that antidote to Bolshevism drafted by Sidney Webb and Arthur Henderson 77 years ago. From the right-moving Ken Livingstone to the left-moving Tony Benn, from the entryist Socialist Organiser to the ex-entryist Socialist Workers Party, from the Kimilsungite New Communist Party to the Gorbachevite Morning Star, from the ‘hard’ Trotskyite Spartacist League to the ‘soft’ Trotskyite Militant Labour, they are committed as a body to save Labour’s reformist soul.

As we said last year in the Weekly Worker, these opportunists are on “a loser”. Blair is sure of victory at the April 29 special conference. Where Gaitskell failed, Blair will succeed. In the reactionary climate of the 1990s all he has had to do is hold out the threat of a fifth general election humiliation. Before even hearing or seeing Blair’s 349-word revision, trade union and constituency delegates alike were voting at regional conferences to sacrifice Fabianism so that he might live as prime minister.

The imminent demise of the old clause four is a crisis for the whole pro-Labour left. Those who joined to further the Bennite project in the 1980s find themselves in the 1990s members of a party Shirley Williams again admires. Those who argue that Labour is the only realistic vehicle for socialist change will soon be flatly contradicted by its constitutional aims and values. Those who say ‘Vote Labour, but ...’ will have to admit that they are after all calling for a pro-capitalist vote.

To understand why Blair and his spin doctors decided to junk the Fabian code for a more humane, more state regulated form of capitalism, one needs to know its genesis. The Labour Party began in 1906 explicitly rejecting the class war and socialism. In essence it was a trade union version of the Liberal Party. Only after the October 1917 revolution in Russia did Labour’s grandees decide to wrap their party in the red flag. Workers had been radicalised by the horrors of World War I and inspired by the young Soviet Republic. “Society,” said David Lloyd George, the Liberal prime minister, “is more or less molten.” Marx’s well grubbed old mole was at work.

To delay communism Labour transformed itself in 1918. From a loose federation it became a cohesive, national party with individual members who were subject to central discipline. Liberalism was discarded. What replaced it though was not socialism, but a Labourism enshrined in the Webb-Henderson clause four. Though a far cry from genuine socialism - ie, the first stage of communism brought about by the revolutionary self-activity of the working class - for many British socialists it was considered a positive step. If by some fluke clause four had been implemented it would not have ushered in a new social order. The existing state would have remained intact. It would however have had a far reaching impact on capitalism. That dim prospect reconciled most class conscious workers to the limitations of Labourism and kept them attached to a party permanently dominated by reactionaries.

Given this it is absurd to claim, as does Arthur Scargill, that the old clause four is the “cornerstone” of the Labour Party’s “socialist faith”. To be a Labourite is to misunderstand the history of the Labour Party. Clause four was a sop. Every Labour government has dutifully managed capitalism and ensured that the working class continues to be exploited through wage slavery.

Defending the old clause four has nothing to do with defending working class socialism. Clause four was introduced by Labour and trade union tops to keep militant leftwingers tamely within their orbit. Now paradoxically this very same Fabianism is being defended by militant leftwingers because they require an excuse for staying in, or continuing to support, Blair’s party.

In 1918 the masses were beginning to reject parliamentarianism and turn towards direct action. The Labour leadership bolstered the left so that it could appear socialistic and maintain its working class following. In 1995 we are in the shadow of reaction. With the working class politically mute the Labour left is no longer needed, neither by Blair nor the boss class. But the latter does want a responsible and cringing second eleven, a party that can be trusted to screw workers in the national - ie, capitalism’s - interest. Thus the media praise for every Blair utterance, and the financial donations from the rich and famous.

Reaction has however by its own dynamic created a contradiction. Capitalism is a system that uniquely hides the secret of its exploitation. In the age of bourgeois democracy this has become a political necessity as well as an economic characteristic. For much of this century capitalism has therefore denied its own existence. According to the permanent persuaders, following World War II we lived in a post-capitalist, post-industrial society. And most fell for it. Edward Heath momentarily let the mask slip in the early 1970s. Then in the 1980s the social democratic disguise was discarded altogether. After the disastrous Wilson-Callaghan government Margaret Thatcher rode into office over a split and discredited Labourism proclaiming the joyful news that in capitalism lay salvation.

The Tories shattered the post-World War II settlement and launched a sustained drive to make Britain safe for profit. Unemployment was cynically allowed to spiral. Industry was decimated. Effective trade unionism became illegal. In turn miners, dockers and printers were crushed. Youth found themselves denied housing benefit and the dole. Student grants were frozen and replaced by loans. House buyers saw dreams turn into nightmares. The NHS was handed to money grabbing trusts and executives. Privatisation gave huge salaries and share options to the few, but job cuts, insecurity and worsening services to the many. Single parents, travellers, beggars and other victims were blamed for social decay. Ravers, squatters, environmentalists, protesters of every hue and kind were criminalised. But precisely because all this has ostentatiously and bombastically been done under the name of capitalism, millions today know the beast - and revile it.

There is a political vacuum. The death of social democracy and ‘official communism’ means capitalism feels stronger than ever. Even in the midst of its slide towards a new general crisis it arrogantly insists that there is no alternative. Yet at the same time capitalism is rejected as never before. When Blair refers to the ‘market’ and ‘enterprise’ people know he means capitalism and they hate what that means. Labour’s new clause four demands that if the left is to remain left there must be a break with illusions and excuses. These times require honesty and courage. Let us unite, not in the defence of a Fabian sop. Together let us provide a real alternative to capitalism. A mass revolutionary party committed to the liberation of humanity.

Jack Conrad