Interview with ERIC HEFFER "I'm against expelling anyone for left wing views

Scan page 8

'In certain parts of the country, the Pa has degenerated into an electoral machine' Eric Heffer is challanging the Kinnock/Hattersley 'dream ticket' for the Labour Party leadership. John Bloxam and Martin Thomas spoke to him.

JB: Why are you standing?

EH: I wasn't very happy to see that certain trade union leaders, without consultation with their membership, had begun to stitch the thing up. Clearly a number of them had got together - probably through the TULV - and it was almost getting back to the old days of Lawther and Williamson.

I thought this was wrong. It seemed to me that there was a whole section of the Party that would not be in any way represented, I immediately consulted a number of Parliamentary colleagues, my own constituency party, and others, and there was a general feeling that I ought to There ought to be a genuine choice in front of the Party and the trade union movement.

Contrary to what a lot of people are saying, there is a lot of support - not for me, but for the ideas that I represent, that's the important thing. And that's beginning to show itself.

MT: A lot of people in the Party see the witch-hunt as a central issue in this leadership election. The other candidates for leader have declared themselves very much in favour of the measures taken against Militant. How do you see that issue in your campaign?

EH: I have consistently fought against the expulsion of the Militant editorial board, and in fact of anyone else. I wasn't even in favour of chucking out the until they said they were going to untu lney sald uney were gong to put up candidates against the I'm against the expulsion of the five Militant editorial board members, I would be against further expulsions of anybody because of their left wing views, no matter which particular group or tendency or paper they support; and, as far as I'm concerned, we have got to reverse the expulsions and find a way for those members to come back into the Party.

JB: Is that going to be an important issue in your campaign?

EH: I'm standing very clearly. on that position, and I do in my initial statement. I make it clear that all internal matters within the Party must be settled within the Party, not by administrative measures. That's what I mean by that. It's one of the points in the initial statement.

MT: Another major issue for Labour Party members now is how the Labour Party is going to recover from the defeat we have had in the election. In your statement you talk about building a mass party. What ideas will you be putting forward on that?

EH: In certain parts of the country the Labour Party has degenerated into purely an electoral machine. It has got very divorced from the lives of the people. So you've had a development of tenants' associations, of campaigns on this, that and the other, and the Labour Party has not always been central in those campaigns.

I think that's wrong. In the old days, when I first joined the Party, it was considered by the people to be their Party. They might have had criticisms of it, but they went along to the local Labour secretary and they told them what was happening, and immediately the Labour Party would become involved.

I think we have to get back to that, but back to it on a more developed scale. We really have to have a Party which is integrated with the life of the people at all levels - primarily, of course, with working people - so that the Labour Party is naturally looked to whenever there is an issue of importance, like a diversion of a road, or the building of a block of flats, or any one of a million other issues.

The Party has got to be a tribune of the people, very much integrated with the life of the people.

And not only that. It's got to be the tribune of the people in relation to the problems of the ethnic minorities. It's got to clearly make a stand about discrimination against women. We have said it in our programmes, but I don't think we've got involved enough.

I see us building a mass party on that basis, so that the people in each area feel totally identified with the Party.

MT: The trade unions face major struggles with this newly re-elected Tory government. What role do you think the Labour Party can play in relation to those struggles?

EH: One of the most important things we have to do is to build the Party in the factories and in the places of work.

The idea of workshop branches has now become far more important. In the past you could rely on the trade union branches as being in many respects the voice of the Labour Party, but whilst that is still important, I think that the Party itselt has got to have a real presence in the workplaces. We can do that by building up the workplace branches.

We have to be seen in the factories and in the workplaces as part and parcel of the leadership of the workers in those workplaces in their struggles for better conditions, improved wages, and so on.

If Tebbit gets away - as he's unfortunately likely to - with a change from opting out of the political levy to opting in - that could have a very bad effect on the income of the Party and on the strength of the Party. I think the Tories want an American-type scene, where the unions support individual representatives in Parliament, rather than the total integration of the unions in the Party that we have in this country.

In order to ensure that that doesn't happen, we have to build now more than ever the workplace branches, and give a positive lead at all levels of the trade union movement.

If a trade union decides to take some militant action, we have to be involved in that militant action. Having been a trade unionist all my life, and, before. I came into the House of Commons, having been involved in many, many industrial disputes -I've never seen the struggles of the workers in the factories and on the construction sites and in, the shipyards as anything different from the political struggle. Politics and industrial struggles, as far as I'm concerned, are just two sides of the same coin.

MT: Another increasingly important part of the Labour Party is the women's organisation. What will your campaign have to say to women in the labour movement?

EH: I'd like to see a development of women's sections on a bigger scale. I do have some worries about the idea of the Women's Conference electing their representatives on the NEC.

I'm not happy about the way they're elected now, but the danger is that if you get the idea of each conference electing its later a number of people will use this as a way of changing the basis for the election of the constituency section, and introducing a local government section, and so on.

If that happens, the power will be taken away from the Party conference. We could get a totally unrepresentative NEC.

So I have reservations about the proposal for the Women's Conference to elect the women's section of the NEC. I agree with it in principle, but I think we've got to work out a bit more closely how it would be done to make certain that my fear does not come into effect.

JB: But at the moment the women's section of the NEC is the only section that is elected by the conference as a whole.

EH: I agree that's wrong. I don't necessarily think that the women's section of the NEC should be elected by the Women's Conference as such. I think it should be elected at conference, but I think the method of doing it now is wrong. I think there should be some way for the women having a representation at the Party conference as such, and electing their representatives at the conference.

MT: What about the other proposals that have come forward recently from the Women's, Conference, like the right for the Women's Conference to put resolutions directly on the agenda of the Party conference?

EH: I wouldn't objection to that.

JB: And positive discrimination? EH: I'm a bit worried about positive discrimination. It depends what you mean by it.

Certainly we should have far more women involved in the Party at every level, and I would hope if we developed the women's séctions properly, and they have more rights at Party conference, that would happen automatically. t would prefer to see. it done that way, than to sugg should have a quota system.

JB: How do you see your campaign being developed in the trade EH: I have written to the general secretary of every trade union that is affiliated to the Labour Party, and I've had some very interesting letters back.

I've had a letter from ASTMS in which they say that they've already decided, and I've written back saying that I have read the press, but 1 have asked that my statement be put not onlý to the National Executive Committee but also to the membership.

But CoHSE, for example, has said that they intend to ask every candidate to write 1000 words and to circulate this to their membership, for the membership then to decide. NUPE are also consulting their membership as a whole. The Steel Trades have suggested that all the candidates should meet the National Executive.

And I do know that in other trade unions their conferences are meeting and there will be comrades there who will be urging that my candidature should be supported.

Of course, while I was consulting people about whether to stand, others were getting their names around. Small groups of people were already trying to decide how the thing should go. And it has had some success. There is no point denying that.

But there is still everything play for in the trade unions. JB: Do you think that it will be an issue in the election as to whether the democratic reforms in the Labour Party should be consolidated and pushed forward, or rolled back?

EH: Whilst there may not be much public discussion about it, I do know that there is quite a strong body of opinion amongst certain leading people that they would like to see the reforms rolled back.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm strictly, clearly in favour of the gains that we have made, and I would like to see further gains made.

MT: Looking back, how would you see the changes in the Labour Party since 1979? Obviously some people in the Labour Party see it as a period of madness which led to the election defeat...

EH: I think the changes were absolutely necessary.

Of course, with the media intervention, it was presented as it the Party was tearing itself to pieces; but all it was doing was endeavouring to renew itself. Every organisation that has any historical role at all constantly has to renew itself. If it doesn't it dies. And the Labour Party had to renew itself, both constitutionally and policy-wise.

That didn't lose us the election. The way the media presented it certainly helped to create a very bad image, but the renewal of the Party and the policy changes, in my opinion, were very good things.

Now, I think, having lost this election, we shouldn't go back to the old ideas. We should consolidate what we've got and build on what we now have.

JB: Where do you think the policy needs to be developed?

EH: In relation to the Common Market, whether we like it or not, we have Mrs There for another five years and we're consolidated in it. I think we've still got to say that coming out of the Treaty of Rome is essential, but we clearly can't make that a constant central issue.

We now have to really develop a close liaison with like-minded socialists in Europe, in the Common Market and outside the Common Market, to work out a policy in Europe for socialist ideas. That is real internationalism.

We clearly have to do it on a wider basis too, but I think Europe is important, because if we really had a European socialist strategy it could become the part of the world that rejects both the concepts of the bureaucratic state of the Soviet Union and the free enterprise capitalist concepts of the USA. We can develop a socialist Europe which could be the basis for transforming the entire world in a socialist direction.

• That may seem, perhaps, farfetched. It may seem idealistic, it may seem a dream. But it's something that I believe we now have to try and do.

So whilst I agree totally with the basic idea that the Common Market is no good for the British people, because it is a free enterSilesian miners. Heffer argues: "You can't be a genuine international socialist unless you fight oppression in the Eastern bloc tion and exchange out of the basis.

Scan page 9

society. on a sort of Council of all Ireland prise rich man's club and it is de signed to maintain the capitalist isystem - whilst that is so, I think jat this stage merely to say in or out isn't enough. We've got to do far more than that.

On the question of nuclear weapons, I don't think we've got to change our policy at all. I think we have to clearly say that we're opposed to nuclear weapons in this country, that we'll fight to get rid of them, and we'll fight with other European nations to have a nuclear-free zone through¡out the whole of Europe.

On other issues - I think there are many detailed policies that we'll have to have a look at. For example, on council house building: I think we perhaps need a two pronged effort there.

We must build houses for rent, jand they should always be kept as But I've always believed, and never changed my view, that arguing to come out of the Market should not in any way stop us from building unity among the socialists in Europe and the trade union movement in ~ Europe. Whether we're in or out of the Common Market, we can never solve our problems in isolation.

We can never build socialism in isolation. Any idea of that is just nonsense. It can only be done on the basis of the extension of economic development and agreement amongst a whole number of nations.

One might argue that perhaps that's a dichotomy of positions. But then sometimes in the labour movement we do get ourselves into those situations. hands of those who own them at he present time. All other privi eges stem from that: you hav got to get rid of the private own. ership of the means of production to build a classless But we haven't been arguing that case. For years we haven't been arguing it. Some of us have but the Party as a whole hasn't.

In relation to the banks and the finance houses - a number of us on the National Executive believe that we should take them into public ownership.

MT: Do you think the Labour Party should be saying more about workers' control?

EH: Yes. I 'think the whole concept of workers' control needs to this issue.

JB: I want to go back to the issue of policy. What is your view on the National Economic Assessment?

EH: The Economic Assessment only to try and get an agreed policy to present to the people. We couldn't go to the electorate and say: on this, so-and-so says we. ought to have a statutory wages policy and Dennis Skinner and others say we shouldn't.

MT: The Labour Party now is I don't say you can come out tomorrow, because the two communities have got to get adjusted to the fact that troops are going to be withdrawn.

The SDLP line of a discussion at least lays the basis. I think that to work through that, plus a clear statement that we are going to come out, phased over a period of time - that should be the Party's policy. And a total acceptance of the idea of a united Ireland.

I've always believed that this was going to happen. Becaust even if you get rid of the violence now, for a few years, if you have not solved the problem of the Border, it's only a matter of time before it all flares up again. That is the truth, and we had better look the truth in the face.

----- pull-quotes -----

of rty