'briefing Reaches Out

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London Labour Briefing, founded in 1980, has now become a widely-read monthly bulletin of the Labour Left, and inspired other Briefings in Brighton, Merseyside, Nottingham, Strathclyde, West Midlands, etc. On February 5 they will be meeting in London to discuss a national network. Martin Thomas interviewed Graham Bash, political editor of London Labour Briefing.

SHNCE Briefing started, it has had two major campaigns - the campaign to get a left Greater London Council [GLC], aid Target 82, the campaign directed towards the borough councils. What's next?

There's no immediate answer to that. Briefing now faces a more general task - to build up concentrations of strength, to build up a unity for the hard left in the Labour Party, and to turn the Labour Parties outwards so that we can recapture lost ground.

Above all, we must learn the lesson of the Deputy Leadership campaign: the hard left has got to build outwards, in particular in the trade unions.

If there is an immediate specific campaign, it is preparing for the next general election. We can help forward the sort of campaign that was originally developed by the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory [in 1979]. The concept of fighting for a Labour victory on a hard left socialist programme was a very valuable one.

Clearly there is something in Briefing which goes beyond the immediate campaigns. that's shown by the fact that other Briefings have developed elsewhere.

We on London Briefing start from one fundamental principle: that our practice is primary, that the labour movement will respond to our socialist, to our Marxist ideas, to the extent that the movement is feeling its strength. Only insofar as it we are eollectively strong can our consciousness be revolutionary.

So our number one task is to transcend the divisions which preven as fro: feeling our strength - divisions between different sections of the revolutionary left, divisions between the revolutionary left and the besiscitions of the Bennite left, between the constituency Labour Parties and the trade unions, between the struggle in Britain and the struggle internationally, between the labour movement as a whole and the women's movement, and between politics and life itself.

We've seen ourselves as organising from within the constituency Labour Parties because that's where we're strong, but at the crossroads with the other levels of politics.

We don't work by imposing our ideas from above on those in struggle, but by alloving the movement through our pages and strue.

tures, to speak for melt I think chat's the shit. tion of Briefing - a certain openness, and also, hopesufficiently so, a hardness though perhaps not and inflexibility when it matters.

The February conference will have a limited role: conferences rarely go far beyond the existing state of what is.

We want to create a liaison between the various Briefing groups. I'm not talking about a national paper, or destroying the autonomy of the local groups, but some sort of link-up.

You talked about a turn to the trade unions being a priority for the hard left in the Labour Party. What role can Briefing play in that?

The role London Briefing has played in that has been not very much, but what we want to do is to attraci around us people who can do that work.

We've found that some of our most important allies on this have been the other revolutionary groups. You'll find that most of the industrial articles in Briefing have been. obtained with the assistance of members of other revolutionary groups.

How much Briefing can do in the trade unions depends mostly on the extent send the divisions ep ween the various revolutionary groups.

But our work in building a cohesive left in the constituencies is also a contribution to the fight in the Briefing has a wide readership, but a comparatively tiny core of activists producing it. Do you see that as a problem?

It's certainly a problem. We must further establish Briefing as the legitimate voice of the broad left, commanding some loyalty from all the groupings of the hard left then we can brinion someft.

the energy from those groupings. It depends on winning the support of existing activists who are already involved in other campaigns, rather than creating a new layer of activists.

What balance sheet would you draw now on Briefing's two main campaigns, for the GLC and for the borough councils?

The GLC campaign has a success.

The GLC is generally seen to be under the contro!

of the left. Ken Diving tons role on the Irish ade. for crampic, has been absolute!:

crucial: it has made if chai that a sell ge Party of Foot and Concannon, there is another Labour Party - the Labour Party of Livingstone and Bundred -which takes a very radical position, not only in words but in deeds, on crucial questions.

Whatever criticisms we have of Livingstone_on the fares campaign - and those criticisms were pretty clearly voiced in Briefing - 1 think on balance that that campaign was a success.

It's not quite so clear in the boroughs. The Labour Party as a whole took a battering in the borough elections, and apart from a couple of areas it can't be said that the hard left have a great influence in the borough councils.

But in Islington there are people of-the hard left in leading positions, and they are having to face up to some very difficult problems - such as what to do next year about the rates.

I have had lots of criticisms of Socialist Organiser being opposed to rate rises apparently on principle; and it seems to me that now that some of the comrades of Socialist Organiser are in leading positions on councils and facing the problems, we'll see the divisions transcended.

Another round of rate increases is still a possible option.

Certainly Ken Livingstone has played a good role on issues like Ireland and gay rights. But don't headlines like "London's Ours" (June 1981) and "Fortress Islington" (June 1982), reflect self-deception? Far from the left's position in the GLC and Islington representing a revolutionary seizure power, the GLC wasn't even able to cut fares.

Aren't you in danger of accommodating to existing structures, reconciling the Left to the role of administrators, sacrificing political sharpness, for the sake of supposed strength and power which in fact is illusory?

A really good question! Certainly we do not, and must not, mistake the assumption of office in the GLC or Islington with a revolutionary seizure of power.

But such slogans as "London's Ours" were, in my opinion, justified. We have to learn to throw the stigma of illegality onto the class enemy - applying at a local level the same type of approach used at a state level by the Bolsheviks in 1917.

We had just won an electoral victory in London, and we were insisting on Labour Movement's right to govern London - to run London our way'. It was meant as a statement of intent, a challenge to those extra-parliamentary forces of the ruling class that have thwarted Labour's right to govern.

• Yes, the dangers of accommodating to existing structures are real enough -at whatever level we operate. But what is the hard Left to do? We are in a real dilemma here. If we are not careful, we can end up being just administrators of Tory policies, and worse still, taking political responsibility for those policies.

But because the GLC was defeated on the fares, are you saying it was wrong for the hard Left to have intervened in the fight for, and assumption of office of, the Labour GLC in the first place? Have we really reached the stage at which the GLC is merely the administrator of Tory policies?

Have not important gains _ however limited - been made for the labour movement by the role of the Left in the GLC, in Sheffield, and in Islington?

It is true, however, that Heseltine's latest penalties NORIK CANU-ASES "Upposition lo cuis are a further major step toward a situation in which it becomes impossible for Left councillors to operate at local level, and in which it would be wrong for them to continue.

So I do take your point. How would you assess the experience of the last two or three years with rate rises? A lot of councils have cut jobs and services. The criticism should be concentrated on that fact, and not on rate rises.

But I would rather look forward. We would agree that the campaign must be to force more money out of central government, as Islington is now doing.

To the extent that the movement is strong, we can get more resources out of central government. To the extent that we're not, we can't.

I'm not at all admitting defeat in advance, but to the extent that we're not successful in the immediate future, local authorities have got to make some decisions.

In certain circumstances there can be a case for majority opposition, or for going into bankruptcy. The case for disengagement is certainly strengthened by Heseltine's latest penalties, which could mean enormous rate increases in some boroughs.

Disengagement would be a statement that we have reached the stage at which socialist councillors are no longer able to use their positions to defend services. But it would be useless for one or two authorities to disengage in isolation. To be effective disengagement will have to be organised in key boroughs throughout London..

That means an immediate confrontation. If we've got the strength to do that, we should do it. But if we haven't the strength...

Rate increases are no part of a socialist solution. They are so nothing imposed on us to the extent that we lack strength.

But if / recali the argument chout rate rises three years 230, vou were saying ther TN 0.6.4. TaT NOTH I don't know. It's time until we're strong enough to impose our solutions on the bourgeoisie. To the extent that we're not strong enough it could be time, time, time.

What would you say?

I don't think any of these rate rises have gained time. In Lambeth, for example, the rate rises prepared the way for the council to be panicked into cuts.

Councils will never have the strength to defeat the government. A council has very little power. What socialists can do is use the council as a platform to mobilise against the government.

They should say that the alternatives are a big rate rise - in Islington, for example, at least £4 a week on average - or severe cuts. They should say they are willing to fight both these alternatives and to face the consequences - surcharge, disqualification, etc.

They should agitate for a fight and try. to win a majority in the local labour movement. They may not be able to get that majority, but that's what they should fight for and give a lead for.

But to go back to what you saying about the role of Briefing as a framework for unity of the hard left: in that context, what would you see as the defining issues for. the hard left?

Total commitment to all of the constitutional victories that have been won by the Labour left, total opposition to the register, and refusal to register. Commitment to accountability.

A principled anti-impertalist position on the international issues - Briefing has been quite consistent on Ireland and on the Malvinas (where, frankly, I think we had a far more coherent position than Socialist Organiser). Opposition to Stalinism. And: support for the growth of the women's movement.

The last point. I think.

means not only support for the fight of women within the Labour Party: but diso huikding the Labour Party •ed so that it becames • inking definition of politics itsel We've tried to build a co nection between sexual po ties and class politics.

Finally, on local level opposition to cuts. Ques ions such as rate increas are legitimate areas for di agreement.

If Briefing did become framework for unity of t hard left, with masses mo activists, how would you si it being organised?

To some extent we've ready built a structure whi can create bridges betwe the ditferent levels of t movement. This has not ways beer without paying price, and think on sol and differentiation.

Be that as it may, we made a start on uniting wi in our structures many the best sections of the k The left can unity its for and embody the strength the working class if we c learn to throw away comp party lines, in favour of ing ideologies as such, a method that is open a flexible.

The model I think is ve useful is the way the BO viks developed in the revo tionary period in 19 when they transform themselves into a very op democratic organisation.

We have our debates 1 in the open, we're imposing a line from abo but allowing the best ac ists to express their own periences and their poli through those experiences The problem is, as !

say, that we haven't many activists. Well, we have lots of activists 1 are prepared to assoc loosely with Briefing.

we have got 125 sellers Briefing in London.

We're not a discipli revolutionary organtsat I'm not at all denying need for a disciplined I lutionary organisation -a Leninist, and 1 accep!

need for such an opt tion. But in Brieting = operating at a ditter::

and Ithink whet:

has 208 it role in in whi.!

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