Brighton- a Balance Sheet

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the movement with Impun- great utal ucpenus vu tuny the local movement.

pelled out during the week left would sincerely swear by but also to argue for our polby Foot. He talked of "part- the same articles of faith - itical positions. nership': "The partnership AES, anti-EEC, etc. Benn LAST year, the Tory press tagged the decisions of the Labour Party conference as 'Benn's October Revolution' T'his year, some of them are insisting that the FootHealey-Kinnock counter revolution has come.

This year's 'counter-revolution' is like last year's revolution' — a prematurely definite description of something still unshaped and unfinished.

But the decisions of Brighton can prove to be the point at which the tide turned against the Left - the beginning of the 'counterrevolution'. Whether they do or not will depend on how the Left responds.

Tony Benn said that the vote on the deputy leadership was an enormous victory for the Left. So it was, despite the vote going against us in, for example, NUPE, to draw so manly trade unionists into politics ment. Once inreated, teve. will not stop at their present political views.

A decision in principle was made to set up factory branches. Conference decided to fight the Tory cuts by refusing cooperation at local government level. A 35 hour week was voted for. An attempt by Weighell and Sirs to bring back the proscription of political tendencies in the Labour Party was not even discussed.

NEC blow

All these are positive achievements.

But that is not what the fight that focused on the deputy leadership contest was all about. That was about acoountability in carrying out the new policies.

By standing, Benn stopped the soft left bog closing over the new policies, to digest them, transtorm them, and gut their meaning so as to accommodate the entrenched Right.

In that struggle, the vote for the NEC was a big blow.

Control of the NEC by the soft-left/right-wing alliance is a major victory for our opponents. It gives them control of one of the commanding heights of the Party. It could give the stamp of legitimacy to all sorts of dirty tricks against the rank and file and against conference decisions.

We need to face up to that fact immediately, SO that we can rally the serious left to face the challenge.

In addition to the defeats on the deputy leadership and in the NEC elections, the Left suffered other setbacks at Brighton.

The decision on the Manifesto means that what the Labour Party will present to the electorate as our alternative to Thatcher will be Party policy as shaped, selected (and rejected) by the people who ran and sustained the governments of Wilson and Callaghan.

Shift

Unilateral nuclear disarmament was upheld, but failed to get the required two-thirds majority to become a settled part of the Manifesto. Foot himself (a founder member of CND) made a speech on Tuesday which sounded very like a first shift away from unilateralism.

The three-year rule was imposed by a 5-to-1 majority, with the NEC, however, retaining the right to make exceptions.

The conference stay in NATO.

After Brighton, the balance sheet of the struggle that began during the life of the last Labour government, and has raged openly for the last two years, would now look something like this.

The local Parties are massively Bennite (83% voted Benn for deputy). SupAdvances Despite the vicious antiI abour press. there has beer a regrowth of Labour t 25 membership, by about pcl wollt Tremendously important decisions have been lakel for democratisation. The euclidi Wuive gives decisive "v On WIK shoulc be prime minister, if Labour has a parliamentary majorly, lo extra-parliamentary forces.

On the debit side, there is the fact that the centre-right control the NEC; the Right controls the PLP; and the TUC, of course, is the TUC.

Bureaucracy

The fact that the local government Left has so far shown itself unable to organise a fightback against the Tories - the experience of Lambeth and Lothian -must to some extent depress the movement.

There is, as we in Socialist Organiser have argued in great political weakness the Left. The AES does not add up to a credible working class alternative to the Tories, or make possible a new type of 'Labour' government in Britain, a workers' government which really serves the interests of the working class and cuts against the interests of the ruling class.

The Left is not adequately organised. The women's sections remain feeble, though growing fast. The youth remain under the control of lifeless sectarians around the mis-named 'Militant The basic reason for our setbacks at Brighton is clear. The Labour Party, with six million individual and affiliated members, encompasses enormous chunk British society: it cannot be easily transformed. Within it, the unions - which mainly means the trade union bureaucracy - wield a decisive role.

But the trade union bureaucracy is one of the basic pillars of conservatism in the labour movement and in British society. As long ago as the 1920s, Leon Trotsky truly said that the British state itself could not stand without the trade union bureaucrats being one of its pillars.

They provided the crucial support for the Wilson and Callaghan governments until Callaghan kicked them away and provoked the 1978-9 winter of union struggles.

Voice

After that, they felt their interests lay in securing an increased voice in the party.

And that was central in what happened in the 1979 and 1980 party conferences.

Unions played a positive Tole for Labour Party democracy while remaining the opposite of democratic themselves.

But the democratic campaign was only marginally organised among the unions' rank and file.

The established Left in parliament had long been the Egyptian mummy of British politics - dead and hollow. Gestures and speeches and postures, yes - but deeds, struggles, and hopes for the ideals' they proclaimed, no.

Fudge

The split in the Left came exactly at the line dividing theory and practice: when Benn stood the issue was not, as they insisted, "personalities', , but that he was making it impossible for them to fudge and compromise.

Instead of a united Left offensive, we got the old Labour Left shattering, and the majority of the Tribune group siding with Healey through either the spoiling candidature of Silkin, abstentionism, or (in the case of 5 MPs) actually voting for Healey.

And the stone-age Right in the unions organised to pull their coup at Brighton.

What will the Right/softleft alliance do now?

Even Dennis Healey fudged the issues at conference. Today the right that remains in the Labour Party will either adopt left coloration themselves, or let foot and Kinnock front for them.

The balance of forces among the trade union leaders is such that Foot, KinnPete will basically serve the Right.

Unity

The election due in 2½ years or less will now begin to shape things, and help the Right and soft-left sell the need for 'unity' to the rank and file. They will say that they too accept the policies (ALS. Fir withdrawal, etc).

The manner in which Foot got the conference to overturn its earlier decision on the Manifesto could be the pattern for the future. Foot told the conference that the issue was one that could cost Labour the next election. The first vote was 3,609,000 to 3,400,000 for NEC control of the manifesto. The second showed a small majority for the status ... (USDAW auritshad 440. sides.)

That may prove to be the first big victory for anti-Tory demagogy in the lead-up to the election.

The way it was done was symbolic. Conference voted for the principle of NEC control - i.e. in principle for the Left - and it then voted not to change the constitution to allow it to happen - i.e., in practice for the status quo.

The decisive thing for the Left is still to make reselection work by driving out time servers and careerists. The main hope of the Right and soft-left is to gut reselection by way of one-person shortlists, etc. For issues like this new NEC is going to be enormously important, giving rulings, recommendations, judgments; encouraging dithering almost-SDP scabs to stay in the Party by assuring them they can defy ity: encouraging local right wing cliques.

Such a perspective was has got to be one in which the PLP does not presume the right to dictate to party conference, and the party conference does not presume the right to dictate to the PLP, We have to accept a spirit of tolerance.

The victorious Right want to improve on Brighton with a purge of the Left - to fillet the Bennite Left by chopping out the Marxists. Foot etc. may for now prove a frail breakweather against them. A purge would go against their inclinations (though Kinnock voted against reinstating Ted Heslin, the Marxist excluded from Oxford Labour Party), and against their need for unity. But as always with Foot, it will depend on where the strongest pressures come from.

The situation is such that the Right probably could not use the NEC as a basis for all-out war on the Party rank and file just now. For these are generals without an army - Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock, Dennis Healey, etc. They need the rank and file for now.

In this situation, a very -and dart damande on Tanu Benn. His personal centrality is increased by the fact both he and many of the Judas the Russian labour movement, Lenin used a telling story which he took from from Leo Tolstoy.

Going along a road, a man saw a figure in the distance, croucned, swaying and moving his body seemingly without sense: 'a madman'. When he came nearer, he saw he was sharpening a knife.

The labour movement now is trying to hammer out a democratic structure and socialist policies so that we can have a real alternative to the Tories. We are sharpening a knife for Thatcher, and maybe for capitalism.

Limit

* Kick the Tories out now! Organise for the Labour Party to play a major part in the fight against the four per cent limit.

* Build an organised Left in the Labour Party and trade unions. Tony Benn has the antharitu in the mave- •DAMITI é ốf bốd d bn[ ee conference to set up a broad left capable of regenerating the movement. He should do this immediately.

* We must fight to develop the women's sections into powerful fighting forces. The fact that the trade union bureaucrats could simply use the women's NEC places as pawns in their games at the conference should outrage the women's sections.

* We must make reselection work. We must organise to drive out the careerists.

* We must organise for Labour Party democracy in the trade unions in a serious way; at the same time we must organise for trade union democracy.

* We must turn the decision of the Labour Party conference to boycott the lories at local government level into the starting point of a big drive for Labour councils to stand up to the Tory government and rally The role of Socialist Organiser must be to help spearhead the organising

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Can you tell which ones are the Tribunites? REG RACE MP, peaking at Socialist Organiser's Labour conference fringe neeting last Thurslay launched the call or a new movement if the Labour Left.

•As Margaret Beckett so eloquently and correctly said last night, the attitudes of the abstainers who are members of the Tribune Group, let alone those five people in the Tribune Group who voted for Denis Healey himself, those people, in my new, cannot be excused.

Those people handed the election to Denis Healey on a plate.

They were prepared to do that rather than to have the first left-wing leadership in the Labour Party ever:

People like Neil Kinnock have got a lot to answer for.

I say to Neil Kinnock and to the abstainers that their actions enabled the right wing to maintain a tenuous grip on power in the leadership.

And we don't want to see that ever again because we want a leadership in this party that is committed to conference policies. Denis Healey, as we all know is committed to thoroughly sabotaging Labour Party policy because he has said ne is going to sabotage Labour Party policy.

Fudge

He told us that he would not enter a Labour government if that government was committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament.

He's also made it perfectly clear that he wants to fudge the issue on the Common Market, on jobs, on the Alternative Economic Strategy, in fact on the whole range of Labour Party policies.

And how on earth can people in the Tribune Group abstain when the choice is between a man like that and a left candidate like Tony Benn?

The only answer that 1 can come up with is that perhaps some of them are looking for jobs in the next Labour government.

The wriggling and the squirming that we have had from them is like nothing I have ever seen in my life.

The real question we now 'face is where we go from here. I don't think anybody ought to feel worried or think that we've been defeated.

Growing tide

•i We have not had a major defeat. What we have seen in Labour Party over the past 4 or 5 years is a growing tide in the rank and file, for democracy and left. wing policies. And that tide has not stopped. The decisions of the conference this week on policy matters have been even more favourable to us than at the last two Labour Party conferences.

Although the right wing can mobilise, through Terry Duffy's block vote, support for individuals, for Denis Healey, or for right wing members of the NEC, they cannot win the arguments about policy and about the direction of the Labout Party.

They are consistently failing to do that and they can't exercise policy choices by wielding their block vote.

We should not be worried about where the Labour Party is going on policy matters because the tide is still with us.

What we should be concerned about, however, is in the new-found temerity, the new-found organisation, the new-found strength of the right in the trade unions to put together an electoral alliance to unseat people from key positions on the NEC.

Flack

Now the real question arises - how can we prevent that from happening again and how can we ensure that the ideological battles that we have been winning inside the Labour Party - and we haven't gone nearly far enough on many issues - are carried through by people we can trust, by a leadership that is committed to party policy.

Over the last few days I have had a little flack from other members of the Tribune Group who have been worried about what I have said about forming a new group in the PLP.

The first nome truth is that the Tribune Group in Parliament consists of a very wide diversity of people -an even wider diversity now than before.

It ranges from people like Comrade Skinner to people like Alec Jones - I thought nobody would recognise that name - who has never as far as I know been to a Tribune meeting and what some of them actually do is pay their £50 into Tribune every year because they know that a list of the Inbune I MPs Is published in Labour Weekly and Tribune at the time of the Labour Party Conference and the Trades Union Congress.

Doing things

There is of course now a group of Denis Healey supporters in the Tribune Group.

It's been the case that a small group of us within the Tribune Group have tried to push the Tribune group into doing things like organising conferences where constituency party delegates and trade unionists can come together and argue about policy and the way the left should direct its attentions.

I produced a paper for the Tribune Group on the relation between the trade unions and Tribune and on the day it was received by the Tribune members one of them leaked it to the press and a copy was sent to every member of the TUC General Council.

Therefore you can see the great difficulty of working with a diverse group of people who have very widespread political opinions.

Now I don't mind being in a group where there are a wide range of political opinions. Indeed it has been said that the Tribune Group is a cosy chat shop and that is just about what it is.

Absurd

A majority of the Tribune Group has always resented any attempt to try and make the Tribune Group reach out into the wider labour movement to contact CLPs and trade unions and I think that in the present circumstances where the right wing are organising in the party, where the block votes are being used against us, when we need to ensure that the ideological changes and the constitutional changes that we have made survive. it is absurd to say that the Tribune Group could possibly perform the kind of role that is necessary.

I don't want to go off into the wilderness on my. own - be a one-man group. I want as many people to support the kind of policies and politics that I stand for as possible from the Tribune Group. But I say this. We need a group of left people in the PLP, the Broad Lefts in the trade unions and left forces in the trade union movement and constituency party delegates, and the péople who have been supporting us in the CLPD and the Rank and File Mobilising Committee, and we want to get them together in an organisation that can beat the right wing.

Embryo

What I propose that we should do - and I shall be trying to persuade my parliamentary colleagues of the logic of this - is to set up such a group.

Indeed we have had such a group in embryo very recently. We've had. the Rank and File Mobilising Committee, we've had the Benn Campaign Committee, around which there have been a group of sympathetic MPs who have been using that campaign to talk to the constituency parties and trade unions.

What we now need is to formalise that as far as we can to put wheels on it, to get more people to support it and to ensure that we don't get defeated next year.

That doesn't mean to say that we go all out to smash the Tribune Group.

A lot of Tribune MPs have said that they don't want to see the Tribune Group smashed to smithereens by a group of 35 or 40 people withdrawing from it and going to join a new socialist group. My own view is that it is not necessary to do that. I am quite content to remain a member of the Tribune Group and go along to their discussions and if we can get their support, that's fine.

But I am clear that what we do need is a group that is actually going to put wheels on our organisation and make the link that has never been made before between Parliamentary action and extra-parliamentary action.

Support

There is no purpose in the Labour Party forming a government, implementing the Alternative Economic Foot: for Tribune and Healey? Strategy, and having a policy for full employment, and nationalising the banks and insurance companies, if it hasn't got a party organisation that is capable of getting the support of working people to support those policies, because the first thing that will happen is that the press, television, the employers, will unite together to try and split away our grass roots support fiom what the Labour government is trying to do.

It would be madness for us to believe that there is any longer a distinction between what we do inside Parliament and what we do outside it.

Action

it is quite clear tha verv trade unionist in thi room cannot guarantee the success of his or her trade union policies on full employment by collective bargaining because collec tive bargaining cannot win employment. Full employment can only be achieved by government. taking action. So any trade unionist wanting to defend his or her members' jobs has got to be involved ir politics and therefore the traditional breakdown between the industrial I wing of the labour movement and political wing of labour movement has got to be broken down by inexorable logic of what we are doing.

Further, for the first time we face a situation where women are coming into the Labour Party and wanting equality and rights.

Organisation

Is parliamentary action alone going to win women over to the kind of positions that the women's movement wants to take?

I don't believe that parliamentary action alone, or collective bargaining aione can actually win those women who are active in the women's movement into the Labour Party. I don't believe that it will be possible unless we build that organisation, to win women who haven't yet become part of the labour movement to the fight for socialism and equal rights.

Link up We are talking about continuing to win the ideological battle that we all face against capitalist society and against those right wingers in our own party who want to try and stem the tide of progressive thoughts and ideas within the Labour The kind of organisation we need must bring all sections of the labour movement together and link up with those people who are outside the traditional divisions of the labour movement in the campaign for progressive policies and a leadership in the Labour Party capable of carrying out conference policy.

And if we do all that, then I am certain that we will continue to win in the Labour Party. The right wing majorities are not substantial - they are paper thin.

Vote split

The opportunity for us to overturn them is very substantial indeed. Gone are the days when a triumvirate of trade union leaders could destroy the constituency parties, could destroy the small progressive forces in the trade unions, by linking up their block votes together.

Those days have gone. We have ensured by our actions that the block vote in the trade unions is split. And we've got to make sure that our allies in the crade union movement like the TGWU and NUPE who come with us on most issues support us over the kind of changes that we want to see in the future.

We've got to ensure that we have discussion about our priorities now and about what that organisation is going to do. I look forward very much to hearing what you have to say about that.

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 8 October 1981 Page 10 .......... =_--.-.- tamine. itp.cin.i

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