A breath of fresh air for the left
THE SOCIALIST CONFERENCE held in Tony
Benn's Chesterfield constituency the weekend of October 24/25 could not have been better timed. It came three weeks after the Labour
Party's annual conference, which had seen many rank and file members frustrated both by the Kinnock leadership's continued moves to the right and by the lack of any alternative leadership from the left. It also took place only five days after the crash on the world stock markets.
The conference, which brought together 2,000 socialists from both inside and outside the Labour Party, may well mark a turning point in the fortunes of the Labour left in Britain, in decline since the defeat of the miners' strike in March 1985. In a more profound way, it reflected a growing mood of resistance in the working class. Here a leading supporter of the magazine Socialist
Outlook examines the prospects for the left today.
### MARY READ bureaucracy on the constitutional gains made in the early 1980s, on the women's organizations and on the youth wing of the party. But it would be wrong to see the Labour Party conference as a debacle for the left. There were signs of the continued
BRITAIN strength of the left, despite several years of isolation and diminishing size.
Firstly, there were some significant votes. Although it was defeated, the NUM resolution on nationalization received over two and a half million votes, revealing a significant number of trade unions still backing a fundamental position of the left. Once again, the women at the conference expressed more visibly than anyone dissent against the manipulations of the leadership. They organized a demonstration in support of their demands. Lastly, the left fringe meetings were bigger than in the previous two or three years, with left leaders such as Tony Benn capable of attracting enthusiastic audiences of several hundred.
Unfortunately, what these audiences heard was completely inadequate in the face of impending Tory legislation and the Labour leadership's capitulation to Thatcher's ideology. Rhetoric calling on people to fight harder, but without offering any leadership to such fights, was hopelessly inadequate and the frustration was visible on peoples' faces. The inability or refusal of the left leadership to provide a way forward reveals another level of the crisis of leadership in the labour movement. The strategy of winning the party bit by bit, for socialism, has been shown to be the pipe-dream it always was, but nothing has been put in its place.
### Workers still ready to fight
The continued existence of the Bennite left as shown at the Labour Party conference should not be a complete surprise for it is based on the resistance of the working class to the Tories' policies. Despite the major defeat of the miners' strike, followed by further defeats of the printers and several smaller battles, the working class is still capable of fighting back and has not been overwhelmingly defeated. Indeed, over the last 18 months there has been an increase of combativity among the most militant sections.
Earlier this year the Yorkshire miners struck against the harsh disciplinary code imposed by British Coal and there followed a huge majority in a ballot for an overtime ban. The CPSA held a series of one-day stoppages over their pay and conditions. The teachers also held one-day strikes for over a year and now local government workers are taking action against cuts in public services.4 What is emerging is a regroupment and recomposition of the left, not so much in the constituency Labour Parties, as in the previous period, but among trade-union and campaign activists. 1. See also IV 121, June 1 and 124, 13 July, 1987. 2. On the BP share sale see Ernest Mandel's article in IV 130, November 23, 1987. 3. See /V 126, 28 September, 1987. 4. On the teachers' actions, see /V 113, February 9 and 9 122, June 15, 1987; see also the article in this issue on page 12. December 7, 1987 • International Viewpoint
BRITAIN Tony Benn: playing back-seat role (DR)
The combination of a renewed offensive by the Tory government with the redundancy of the labour bureaucracy's slogan to "wait for a Labour government" is leading to the conditions for struggle. Workers under attack, particularly in the public sector, have little choice in the matter.
The financial and political crisis in Labour-led local councils is symptomatic of the situation. Some councils face huge gaps in their budgets this year. Next year it looks even worse, with deficits of up to f60 million in the London borough of Lambeth (just one of around 30 London boroughs) for example. The response of the Labour council leaderships in London and other big cities, such as Manchester, has been to carry out the Tory policy of making cuts in expenditure, despite having been elected on "No Cuts" manifestos. In Manchester a deficit of £110 million is leading to 4,000 "voluntary" redundancies. In several London boroughs rent rises for council tenants are being combined with a freeze on filling job vacancies — with further cuts to come.
In the face of this capitulation to Tory attack there is nonetheless a minority of Labour councillors who have taken a principled stand against any cuts in jobs and services and who, along with trade-union members, tenants and community organizations, are mounting fight-back campaigns. These are being led in London and elsewhere by supporters of the newspaper Labour Briefing.
The conference at Chesterfield was therefore timely. The large attendance of 2,000, and the political make-up of those who were there, was important. Attending the conference were the left wing of the 10 Campaign Group of Labour MPs (a grouping to the left of the Tribune Group in parInternational Viewpoint • December 7, 1987 liament, which has historically represented the left), and the left wing of the NUM leadership (Scargill and Peter Heathfield, with Betty Heathfield from Women Against Pit Closures). In addition there were quite large numbers of rank and file miners and women from the mining communities. No other prominent trade-union leaders were there. Sections of the Labour left came, but nobody from the so-called "soft left" - the Labour Coordinating Committee (LCC, formerly part of the Bennite left, now increasingly within Kinnock's orbit). Also attending were some members of the Morning Star wing of the Communist Party, but no Eurocommunists (for whom it would have been far too radical!); and members of the Socialist Society, an organization of non-aligned socialist intellectuals, who were joint organizers of the Chesterfield conference.
Of the two large left groups in Britain, Militant supporters boycotted the weekend, preferring instead to organize a London-based meeting on local government cuts. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) had about 100 members present, but made a very sectarian intervention, speaking at every opportunity on the redundancy of the Labour Party and the need to build an alternative — the SWP. Such an approach went down like a lead balloon.
### SWP and Militant hostile to the event
But the hostility of these two groups to the event can be easily explained. Both the Militant and the SWP, having no real conception of the united front, have used the Labour left over the past few years as possible recruits, with some small success. If the left starts to get organized again that process will go into reverse, such is their narrow approach. Chesterfield was not therefore in the interests of their narrow, sectarian approach to the political recomposition in Britain.
Significantly absent from the weekend were the forces of Labour Left Liaison (the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy,
Labour Women's Action Committee and Black Section). The recently fused supporters of Socialist Outlook were well represented, as was the current around Labour Briefing (a class-struggle coordination within the left, who had 150 supporters there. Other small currents were also present. But, in the main, the conference was made up from rank and file Labour Party and trade-union members, across a wide age range. Women were reasonably well represented, although the participation of Black people was low.
### Agreement on key policies
The organizers of the conference were somewhat overwhelmed by the size and success of the weekend, and it was at times disorganized. Nevertheless, it was a revitalizing event. There was political agreement on a number of key policies - support for unilateral nuclear disarmament and opposition to NATO; support for public ownership and nationalization (this now effectively dropped from LP policy); and support for the setting up of a new organization, "Women for Socialism" , supporter by Betty Heathfield and Women Against Pit Closures, significant Black women activists, women MPs and so on. Labour Briefing Women helped organize the meeting of about 200 women to discuss setting up this new organization. There is clearly a groundswell of feeling among women, many previously involved in the socialist feminist current in the 1970s, who now see the need to organize again, but this time in direct relation to the labour movement. One of the central campaigns that Women for Socialism will get involved in is the Fight the Alton Bill, set up to defeat an attempt to restrict abortion to the first 18 weeks.
There was also support for the fight in local government, although this was a point of contention with some platform speakers, notably Bernie Grant who is a new Black MP and councillor in a London borough that has been implementing cuts.
Possibly the most significant contribution of the weekend came from Ken Livingstone, former leader of the Greater London Council (GLC) and now MP for Brent East constituency. After the defeat of the miners' strike and the simultaneous collapse of the fight against Ken Livingstone: a bid for the leadership of the left (DR)
Tory abolition of the GLC, Livingstone moved to the right. After being elected MP in June this year, he spent much of his time attempting to put together an alliance between the Campaign and Tribune groups in parliament, along with an agreement between Labour Left Liaison and the LCC outside. Such an alliance between the two wings of the old Bennite current was based on an explicit exclusion of the hard left, including supporters of Labour Briefing. This impossible task had, by the time of Chesterfield, clearly failed, and Livingstone's speech during the Saturday evening rally marked a significant move back to the left, along with an explicit bid for the leadership of the left and, even more importantly, for the leadership of the LP as a whole.
His speech, on the effects of the crash and its political implications, was explicitly anti-capitalist. He showed how the strength of the right in Britain had been dramatically overestimated, based as it was on the shifting sands of capitalism. He argued that the Labour leadership's capitulation to the Tories' economic framework was based on this misassessment. He said that the crash put the question of socialism right back on the agenda; that the failures of previous Labour governments were based on their refusal to take control of capital, and that this generation of socialists must not let such a thing happen again.
"We have seen too many failures in the past to say we can go round the route of Wilson and Callaghan again ... but .•• we can only win when we convince the tens of millions that we know what we want to do with the British economy and we have the political will to take control of it and use it in the common good, and not just for the greed of the few who dominate the City of London."
Livingstone's speech internationalist
His speech was also internationalist. He argued that it was impossible to create socialism in Britain while propping up an America that "butchers its way around the world in order to shore up its economic gains and immediate military and economic interests". Subsequently, in the national press, he has developed these themes, in particular the role of Europe and its relation to America after the crash.
This speech was not just left rhetoric. Livingstone is clearly making his bid for the leadership on the basis that the crash opens up the political scene in a dramatic way. He openly opposed one of the tenets of Chesterfield, that "we should not blame our leaders for what has happened". As he correctly asked, "How long would the miners' strike have lasted if Joe Gormley (previous right wing NUM president) instead of Arthur Scargill had been leading it?"
But there are those who remember Livingstone's recent past and who are wary of his sudden return to the left. Even The Guardian diarist calls him "the political version of Access [credit card] — our flexible friend". And in his speech after Livingstone, TOWN HA Scargill warned him that he had heard such rhetoric on taking over the commanding heights of capital before. Clearly trying to outdo him, Scargill said:
"I don't want to win electoral power, I want to win political power to smash the capitalist system. What's wrong with the demand for the common ownership of production, distribution and exchange? It's not just the commanding heights we want, but the whole system under which we live."
While there was no doubt at Chesterfield of the impact of Livingstone's speech, there is also no doubt that Scargill, although beleaguered within his own executive, has a strong rank and file base, plus the credibility of having led a strike to try to win it. As such he commands a trust that Livingstone has yet to earn. Further, Livingstone's experiences have been entirely within the Labour Party. He does not have
BRITAIN much knowledge about the trade-union movement and speaks little about it. His record as an employer when leader of the
GLC was not a very commendable one.
After two and a half years of increasing isolation for the left, the Chesterfield conference came as a breath of fresh air, and coinciding with the crash it does open up the political agenda in Britain. But there are a number of problems associated with the project of "building a socialist movement".
Firstly, the idea of developing socialist policy is vacuous if struggles are not supported and led now. The local government fight is a point in question.
The leadership of the conference didn't want to take a position on this key line of divide, because their own ranks are divided on it! The left should not seek to make unnecessary or premature divisions, but the question of cuts is one of principle. Some Labour councillors are carrying out
Tory cuts and making the working class pay for the economic crisis. There is a struggle to support and a lead to give. By refusing to take a position, they are refusing to lead.
Secondly, both the papers for the conference and the conference itself were very weak on the situation in the trade unions. There was no discussion on the reason for the defeats we have suffered; no discussion on the role of Willis, the TUC and "new realism", all of which are here to stay; no proposals on how to build the left in the unions. Part of the reason for this is that
Benn has traditionally relied on Communist Party leaders in the trade unions to organize his trade-union base. But there is increasing conflict as even the Morning
Star wing opposes Scargill in the NUM and has no more adequate answers to Thatcher's offensive than the coalitionist policies of the Eurocommunists.
Urgent need for discussion on the unions
There is an urgent need for serious discussion on the way forward for the left in the unions, the need for organized solidarity and the need to build a cross-union organization that is genuinely democratic.
This did not take place.
There was also a reluctance among the organizers to make the movement democratic and the leadership accountable. Supporters of Socialist Outlook and Labour
11
Briefing argued that it will be impossible to
December 7, 1987 • International Viewpoint
CAPPING
BRITAIN build a large, effective left movement if deals are being cobbled together in back rooms, as has been the practice in the past. No left will build lasting roots in the rank and file it it functions by exclusion and lack of democracy. If the left is to overcome its isolation, if the left is to rebuild and grow again, if the right wing course of Kinnock and the leadership is to be rolled back, then more than a good, anti-capitalist programme is needed — we also need democratic organization.
Lines of divide already being drawn
Labour Briefing's leaflet for the conference proposed six points as the political basis for left organization, six points that coincide with the objective situation and where the lines of divide are already being drawn:
• Fight against the massive cuts in local government, education and the health service, and against the proposed poll tax;
• fight against the Alton Bill, and for the rights of women, Black people, lesbian women and gay men; women and gay men;
• solidarity with trade unionists in struggle;
• fight for an anti-capitalist programme in the Labour Party and the trade unions;
• fight any moves towards coalitionism;
• fight to build anti-imperialist solidarity with the struggles in Ireland and South Africa. Against NATO and for unilateral disarmament.
The conference agreed to organize a series of mini-Chesterfields in the regions; to set up policy working groups which will continue to work on the three main areas of policy - the economy, international relations and disarmament, and democratic rights; to draw up a socialist register; and to organize a recall conference next May.
Labour Briefing supported the proposal to organize regional conferences around the country (in some areas this is already underway, and also the idea of a recall conference.
There is little doubt that the economic and political situation opened up by the crash will lead to further big struggles in Britain, and it is out of these struggles that the left will be reinvigorated and built.
The crisis of leadership of social democracy, both in the Labour Party and the trade unions, is posed very starkly for the working class. How far and how effectively the left seen in embryo at Chesterfield, will be capable of challenging that leadership is yet to be seen.
What is clear is that the Bennite current active from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s is recomposing once more. With Benn himself playing an increasingly back-seat role, the question of who succeeds him is posed. Livingstone clearly wants that mantle. Whether he manages it is only part12 ly dependent on his political will as he is tested in the battles to come. * International Viewpoint • December 7, 1987
A Tory curriculum for education BRITISH EDUCATION has always remained peculiar when compared to Europe or North America. It retains many archaic institutions. Nevertheless, it has usually changed in accordance with the needs of British capitalism. The post-war era saw expansion and many radical changes, not least the changing of secondary education (11 to 19 years) into a supposedly "classless" comprehensive system replacing, among other things, the old selective grammar schools.
With the deepening economic and social crisis affecting British society at all levels, Margaret Thatcher's Tory government, and in particular the Education Secretary Kenneth Baker, have decided on a clear reactionary course that means taking on the educational interests of the working class and teacher's trade unions. PATRICK FIELD
W HEN THE TORIES sought re-election for a third term in June this year, they chose to make education a major issue. Tragically, the general response of the Labour Party (LP) and the broad labour movement was inadequate. In the mid1970s, Labour prime minister James Callaghan set the tone of future national debates by giving credence to reactionary ideas about "standards" in education.
During the recent pay dispute (see IV 122), there was a certain amount of challenge to these assumptions, but as the fundamental issue of the teacher's struggle was pay, it was easy for the Tories to dominate the issues once the National Union of Teachers (NUT) leadership and the other unions involved abandoned any challenge to Baker.
Baker's proposals are wide-ranging, including curriculum and school reorganization. During the last three decades a lot has changed both in teaching content and the methods used. Out went traditional selection, learning by rote, In some more advanced areas, especially where there was a left wing-led local education authority (LEA), curricula were designed to challenge racism and sexism. Schools could take a liberal attitude to course content. For example, sex education could now include a positive attitude to sexuality.
Throughout this period, the right wing of the Conservative Party found these trends unacceptable. On almost every issue — be it discipline, the banning of corporal punishment (caning), anti-racist education, mixed ability teaching or morals and the family - this right wing have been at the forefront of an ideological offensive.
The centre of Baker's present proposals is for a national curriculum. This would result in at least 60 per cent of school timetables being devoted to mathematics, English, science technology and modern languages. A similar core programme has been outlined for primary schools (5-11 years). Subjects such as history and art would be marginalized, and subjects the Tories associate with left wing views, such as sociology, would be outlawed. Until now, basic subjects have been taught in all schools, with the schools themselves deciding on their own emphasis with guidance from the LEA. Now the existence and role of the LEAs are also under threat.
"Opting out" of the state system
Another central plank of Baker's programme is the notion of "opting out" -parents voting to run a school themselves. The rationale behind this is the free market, or what has been termed "open enrollment". It has been the LEAs that until now have apportioned places in any given school, attempting to ensure a balance of abilities and other factors. Baker aims to change this. These opting out proposals will cause chaos, with "popular" schools being oversubscribed and overcrowded while others are forced to close. They will also foster racism, witnessed recently in Yorkshire in the north of England, where a group of racist parents campaigned against their children going to a predominantly Asian school.
The financial implications of all this are still not clear, including how much parents
1988 CURRICH who choose to run their own schools will have to contribute. Baker intends to introduce regressive tax measures for such parents and provide money directly to these schools.