Labour Party in conference: the left fights on THIS YEAR'S Labour Party conference, held at the beginning of October in Bournemouth marked a key point in the developments inside the British labour movement following the 1984-1985 miners' strike. It was dominated by two processes which will remain the key to Labour Party politics between now and the 1987 general election.
The first, quite obviously, was Neil Kinnock's (the leader of the Party) campaign to make Labour 'fit to govern' by turning its back on the miners, on cities like Liverpool (1) and on the Black communities. Kinnock quite consciously used this conference to project himself as a candidate acceptable to the capitalists for prime minister and as a more effective hammer of the left' than David Owen or
BRITAIN 1984, the NUM was the only union to support Black sections, at this year's conference the NUR (the railworkers' union), NUPE (public employees) and one or two smaller unions added support. The resolution in support of Black sections was defeated but this is now an issue of substantial support and this was reflected in a big increase in the number of Black delegates at the conference and their role in supporting class struggle issues under debate in the conference.
Notwithstanding these successes on important individual questions and the resulting consolidation of a more advanced Labour Party leftwing than at any time in recent decades, the overall result of the conference was that Kinnock was able to assert his dominance over the basic line of march of the Labour Party into the next general election and reduce this fighting left to a small minority on questions of overall direction of the Party.
Kinnock and the fighting left are the forces whose struggle will dominate the life of the Labour Party between now and the general election. They represent the basic choices facing the labour movement.
Kinnock won the plaudits of the Tory press in Bournemouth by signal. ling that his programme is not to reverse Thatcherism. Instead he aims to take Thatcher's chief planks as the starting point for any Labour government.
Hence the essential content of the economy debate was abandoning the objective of restoring full employment and the promise to renationalise the industries privatised by the Tories. On trade union law the aim is to retain the key elements of Thatcher's anti-union legislation. (2) In addition Kinnock wants to be able to guarantee a deal with the unions to restrict pay increases.
In its fundamentals this programme is the same as that of the Liberal-SDP Alliance, where they differ is that the Alliance, unlike Kinnock, wishes also to break the links between the unions and the Labour Party, and, ultimately, to
1. Liverpool City Council, which is led by supporters of the Militant tendency (see Note Three below) is the only council in the country which is still refusing to comply with the government's attempts to restrict the spending powers of local authorities through delimiting the amount they are allowed to raise through local taxation, that is rates. Neil Kinnock has publicly denounced the stand taken by Liverpool in particular in a speech delivered at Labour Party Conference which received wide acclaim from the bourgeois media.
In September, 1984 a whole series of anti-trade union measures went through parliament. These included obligatory voting by secret ballot for industrial action and an obligatory ballot on unions' affiliation to the Labour Party.
David Steele [leaders of the Soc Liberal Party Alliance]. REDMOND O' NEILL
The second process was the continuing emergence out of the miners' strike of a Labour left of a quite different type to anything seen since at least World War Two. This 'fighting left' - around the NUM, the Black sections and the Campaign Group of MPs [Members of Parliament] - was a clear minority in the conference, but a minority which, because it is based on class struggle, was able to impose some important defeats on Kinnock.
Most importantly, the resolution moved by the National Union of Mineworkers [NUM] called for; "The next Labour government to legislate to provide; a) A complete review of all cases of miners jailed as a result of the dispute [that is the 1984-1985 miners' strike]; b) the reinstatement of miners sacked for activities arising out of the dispute; c) the reimburse. ment of the National Union of Mineworkers with all monies confiscated as a result of fines, sequestration and receivership."
The resolution was carried by a vote of 3,542,000 for and 2,912,000 against. This was a clear defeat for Neil Kinnock who himself summarised the debate for twenty minutes, attacking the entire course of the NUM leadership in the 1984-1985 miners' strike. A resolution was also carried in support of the struggle of Labour-controlled local authorities
International Viewpoint 28 October 1985 ial Democratic Party (SP) and like Liverpool and Lambeth, against the Tory government's laws limiting the powers of local government and imposing large cuts in services and jobs. In particular, it was agreed to commit the next Labour government ... to fully compensate those representatives of the Labour movement who have suffered personal loss, bankruptey, disqualification or whatever as a result of non-compliance with these laws!
For the first time in Labour Party history a resolution was carried in support of lesbian and gay rights against the recommendation of the Labour Party NEC [National Executive Committee]. The support of key unions for this resolution reflected the political impact that such campaigns as Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners were able to have on the trade unions during the 12-month strike.
A resolution was passed, also against the NEC recommendation, in support of women's reproductive rights. This specifically committed the Labour Party to end the situation where Labour MPs' votes on issues like abortion are treated as matters of individual conscience rather than binding party policy.
On the question of the right of Black Labour Party members to organise in constitutionally recognised Black sections of the party, important progress was registered. Whereas in
drive through a political split in the TUC [Trades Union Congress ] itself.
But Kinnock's project is not viable unless two conditions are fulfilled. The first is to achieve a deal with the key sections of the trade union bureaucracy on pay policy and trade union law. Kinnock has made some progress on this front but Ron Todd's [the leader of the largest union the Transport and General Workers - TGWU] impromptu defence of the NUM, in which he specifically ruled out pay restraint, showed just how far Kinnock has to go.
However, Kinnock's progress is based on the fact that Ron Todd, Jimmy Knapp [of the National Union of Railwaymen (sic) -NUR] and Rodney Bickerstaffe [of the National Union of Public Employees - NUPE] don't have any alternative. They accept that Labour can only have a chance of winning the general election if it is united under the leadership of Neil Kinnock.
The problem for those who accept this argument is that unity under Kinnock's leadership inexorably necessitates unity around his programme and policies. This is why the new realist left' - the Labour Coordinating Committee - LCC, Tribune [formerly a newspaper of left MPs inside the Party] Blunkett, [Labour leader of Sheffield City Council], Livingstone [leader of the Greater London Council] and so on - will not be able to maintain the position they argued at conference: support Kinnock and the miners, support Kinnock and Liverpool. Stab in the back from the Tribune left
In a cynical editorial Tribune advocates voting with the NUM in today's 'emotional light' , following the strike, and betraying that vote when Labour forms a government. Thus has Kinnock succeeded in winning over a section of the left.
The trajectory of this realigned' or 'Kinnock left' is to the right. It is not a product of Kinnock's arguments. It reflects the impact of the miners' strike on the Labour Party, and the failure of a section of the left to organise support for that strike, followed by the collapse of the majority of the opposition to the Tories' rate-capping laws.
This Kinnock left, in particular around Tribune and the LCC, is now the spearhead of his efforts to build up a base of support in the constituency parties and to undermine and coopt the campaigns around local government, CND, and women's representation within the party. This 9
Neil Kinnock and Margaret Thatcher on Remembrance Day (DR)
means a fight not only against Militant supporters (3) but also against the Campaign Group of MPs, the Scargill leadership of the NUM and their supporters.
This relates to the second fundamental condition for the viability of Kinnock's project: to win the Labour Party to turn its back on the type of social explosions which Thatcher's policies have provoked in British society. On this there can be no compromise.
No section of the British ruling class is prepared to countenance a goverhment which defends what Scargill did in the miners* strike, or which stands for city councils defying the law in their confrontations with central government, or which defends Black youth involved in the greatest urban revolts in the twentieth century in Britain. That is why Kinnock and his spokespeople have been so vicious in their denunciations of the miners' picket lines, of Liverpool and of the youth of Handsworth, Brixton and Tottenham [flashpoints of the recent riots].
But to win the Labour Party as a whole to turn its back on such struggles Kinnock has to isolate and defeat the fighting class struggle left - which has acted as the voice of these struggles within the organised labour movement. That is why Kinnock concentrated his fire on Scargill, Liverpool city council, the Black sections and the only section of the Parliamentary Labour Party [PLP] which has supported them, the Campaign Group of MPs.
Kinnock will find it difficult to isolate and defeat this new Labour left minority precisely because they are based on, and express, social forces engaged in class struggles that embody a fundamentally different line of advance for the labour movement than Kinnock against the Thatcher government. As the Campaign Group's response to Kinnock explained: We believe that the next general election will be won by uniting rather than condemning those in struggle against the current Tory government. These forces represent something quite remarkable in the British labour movement. At the 1984 Labour Party conference, the NUM came forward in defence not only of its own members but in support of Black sections, in defence of gay and lesbian rights, and in support of women's demands for greater representation. At this year's conference the Black section speakers took the floor in defence of the NUM, in support of the Women's Action Committee, which is campaigning for greater representation of women in the structures of the Party, as well as in support of Black sections. The Campaign Group laid the ground for the conference through an enormous number of meetings in support of the NUM (over 1,000), the publication of Private Members Bills on questions such as miners' amnesty, Ireland and racial attacks, and through giving 100 per cent support to local councils like Liverpool and Lambeth actually fighting the Tories.
In conference itself the Campaign Group was the only section of the PLP to stand up to Kinnock and Hattersley's attacks on those in struggle. Individuals like Dennis Skinner and Tony Benn went out of their way to spell out the kind of alliances for socialism that the miners' strike
3. "Militant defines itself as a Marxist paper for Labour and its supporters are dominant in the youth section of the Labour Party - the Labour Party Young Socialists. At the 1983 conference of the Labour Party five members of the Militant" party. editorial board 'Militant" were expelled from supporters have been the subjected to a continued witchhunt which also threatens the whole of the left of the Party. International Viewpoint 28 October 1985
demonstrated are possible and necessary.
Kinnock is leading the Labour Party to disaster by reviving incomes policy which destroyed the last Labour government, and by attacking the areas where Labour's support is strongest - in the big cities, in the mining communities, among Black people. The new fighting left which is emerging stands for expanding Labour's base by supporting those fighting the Tories, coming forward as the champion of women (including removing the obstacles to women representing the labour movement), defending lesbian and gay rights, opening up a dialogue with those fighting British rule in the Six Counties of Ireland and so on.
Following the Labour Party conference this course can be strengthened by pursuing the broadest possible united action with the entire labour movement on particular campaigns and at the same time hammering out the key policies and alliances necessary to build a long-term political alternative within the labour movement around the axis of building an alliance for socialism.
Within this framework, the tactics adopted have to correspond to the real balance of forces, not fantasy. So, for example, the proposal championed at conference by Labour Briefing and Socialist Organiser (4) that a key task is to run an alternative for leader or deputy leader of the party in 1986 is a non-starter. Rather than strengthening the fighting left that emerged at this year's conference, such a course would allow Kinnock to destroy that new left. What is needed is not organisational gımmicks or kamıkaze tactics but a gimmicks or kamikaze tactics but a political alternative to the course pursued by Kinnock.
This is also one of the chief lessons of Liverpool. Liverpool must be defended. But Militant supporters' objection towards Liverpool's Black organisations, and their reduction of all struggles to the economic, have weakened Liverpool's fight and facilitated Kinnock's attacks.
What is needed in the run-up to the next election is a break not simply with electoralism but with the past racism, sexism and British chauvinism of the Labour left - and serious tacties to achieve broad united action and clear policies. Despite Kinnock's victories steps were taken along that road by the new fighting left centred around the Campaign Group, the NUM and the Black section.
4. 'Socialist Organiser' is revolutionary socialist newspaper within the Labour Party. "Labour Briefing' is a journal in the Labour Party which organises large sections of the left wing opposed to the policies of Neil Kinnock. It is closely allied with the Campaign group of MPs.
International Viewpoint 28 October 1985