Mobilise Vote Benn

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1. As a first priority, to restore full employ.. tion Bill and to end the House of Lords. Labour Government by adopting the alter- 4. To develop co-operation with all the coun 2. To expand the develop Housing. Health. withdrawal of Britain from the Common Education. in its work for peace, international justice To support and strengthen the rights of 5. To adopt a non-nuclear defence strategy women. to extend democracy and self- for Britain, to work for European nuclear government at all levels in industry and all American nuclear bases from Britain. society. to defend the Trades Unions, to TONY BENN 20p from Rank and File Mobilising Committee Deputy Leadership It is only ruling-class propaganda that maligns them, and they really have a universally benign effect on British society? Not so. At the root of this fairy story is the notion that there is no fundamental antagonism in our society.

The unions are immensely destructive of a system whose well-being depends on profit. That is why they are attacked by the government. In the last 15 years the working class has repeatedly destroyed or completely battered out of original shape the successive strategies, under both Tory and Labour governments, for running Britain according 10. needs of its social system, a capitalist system.

Subversive

Both a measure and a result of the historic crisis of the British ruling class -as a capitalist ruling class -has been their inability to deal with the working class. The "constructive' efforts of the 'statesmen' at the head of the TUC and the key unions have counted for nothing, and they have been forced into opposition, battered by governments on the one side and the rank and file on the other.

The trade unions are destructive - of the capitalist system. The self-defence of the working class is destructive for capitalere, with whose profit mainspring workwages are permanently at odds.

Socialism is not 'subversive'? The old Labour Party was not. The ruling class think the Benn movement and the movement for democracy is.

Essentially they are right. The movement for Labour democracy means - so far - that there is no stable, reliable, house-trained and house-broken Labour Party as a fall-back government for this system, as the Labour Party was in 1974. That is subversive of the status quo, of 'the consensus' , of bipartisanship (e.g. on foreign policy). The peaceful transfer of parliamentary power through elections is now, for the ruling class, a problem such as it thought it had long outgrown. And that is only the beginning. Area) before joining in 1972.

So surely they joined because events had defeated them, narrowed down the options; because British capitalism could not compete? Not in Benn's view, which, incredibly, is this:

"The British establishment concluded years ago that the ballot box, combined with a strong and united labour movement, was going to prove capable of introducing Britain to socialism by democratic means through Parliament... The establishment and the media have cooperated to cover up the systematic transfer of power from the British Parliament to the Common Market, the Pentagon, the IMI and the multinationals...The establishment betrayed our heritage of democracy, because they feared for their power and privilege if it was allowed to continue.

"They opted for survival as the colon¡al administrators of a subject Britain rather than accept displacement by the democratic processes in Britain"

Conspiracy

They would if it came to that, to be sure, as many threatened ruling classes in history have. But did they? In 1970-1 (the threatening upsurge of industrial militancy did not take off until the miners' victory in 1972)? In 1967? In 1961, when Britain first tried to join the EEC? Such a view of the matter is preposterous. (The section is, incidentally, subheaded the book "How the British Establishment persuaded the British people to abandon Parliamentary Democracy").

Benn's view of Britain's 'malaise' diagnoses a ruling-class conspiracy rather than the inescapable consequences of the rusting-up of the profit mainspring of British capitalism, its decline, and the convulsions that flow from it, at all levels of society - including both the alienation ('irresponsibility', of the working class and the decadence offhe rulers.

"The old is dying and the born; in this interregnam 1 here arises d even further than inevitable after World War 2. But if Britain is now (and for decades past, long before joining the EEC) massively less in control of its own destiny, in face not of hostile powers but of the ebbs and flows of the international economy and the decisions of the more powerful governments and groups, that is in the first instance, and fundamentally, the result of its chronic economic decline.

Threads

The formal relationships, the EEC membership, the subordinate place in the NATO alliance, the weight or lack of it in IMI bargaining, fłow from that condition and do not create it. (It is even debatable whether they exacerbate it the realities of wealth and power would hit Britain in a different way if, for example, it was outside the EEC; but they would not go away).

Britain is tied by a million threads of economic dependence on the world market and by many additional ties to the BEC (which is not a conspiracy, but a.: organic trading unit). These cannot be cut or severed: to try would produce a catastrophe unprecedented even by current Thatcherite standards. The links can of course be manipulated and managed in different ways and in different class interests. Even, however, il the working class had power in Britain, in the sense in which Marxists use the term, it would still be a matter of dealing with the realities real forces, real weight. comparative strength and dependence.

This means that the scope for actually making Britain independent again is extremely limited. Whot Benn mourns for and presents in political terms as a loss ot political sell determination is in truth rather different. No force other than econonne realities, calculated and assessed according to the sell-interest of the politically luily autonomous British ruling class decreed that Britain would o into the He, do one rather than pother deal with the IM, or enter the sad The new campaign broadsheet includes articles on the SDP, issues at Brighton, the attack on the NEC, cuts, rights, polic, and power an wealth.

190% Mint ment during the life time of the next native economic strategy.

public services both to meet peoples needs and to create jobs.

protect the interests of the ethnic comCampaign. 16 Tyler Street, London SE10.

September 1981 Price 20 DI My candidature is clearly and firmly based upon the following policies:

munities. to enact a Freedom of Informatries of Europe to secure the complete Welfare and other essential Market and to support the United Nations and World development.

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 10 September 1981 Page 10

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