Briefing's new slogan

Scan page 12

The Chartists misquote Trotsky to justify raising an ambiguous slogan which is completely in step with the demagogic campaign for unity serious Labour Left. Trotsky had something to say about this type of better living standards and conditions. to defend jobs and services. 5, p.90).

sloganising.

ployed. DON'T let the pessimists kid you that these are times of universal defeat and retreat for the Left.

Briefing is still advancing.

Last November the editorial by a large maioro arvol as mne masthead slogan, 'Labour take the power!' It followed in the footsteps of Lundon Labour Briefing, which council housing and other public services. has long proclaimed this slogan. *Freeze rent and rates. In the February issue of Brieting, Chris Knight announces this new advance for Briefing in an article decorated with a picture of Leon Trotsky and a quotation from his 1938 document, 'The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International' (the 'Transiworkers' defence squads. tional Programme').

... the demand, systematically addressed to the old leadership -'Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power!' - is „an extremely important weapon... tability, etc. Now, Trotsky notwithstanding, in the Labour Party right now this slogan is altogether pernicious.

In fact Chris Knight has no right to attribute the siogan to Trotsky.

Trotsky's observation generalises from the experience of 1917 in Russia where the Bolsheviks addressed and affirm their stand publicly. the demand 'take the power' to organisations which based themselves on the masses - the soviets -which had tremendous social might but whose leaders entered coalitions with the bourgeoisie. a matter of urgency. The workers' , soldiers' and peasWants' soviets already had most of the power: the old system was parahad by colosinion The did order retained only the unerased and services should be blacked. shadow of its former power. It was 'dual power' The demand to the workers' parties to 'take the power' in conditions of crisis, dual power, and mass revolutionary organs of workers' rule (soviets), would certainly be a average for the trade. useful and important weapon in helping the masses to break from those of their leaders who did not want to 'take power' • That was Trotsky's idea. That is why he included the idea in his comprehensive 'Transitional Programme' But that programme was a tool to be used by Marxists who would deploy its slogans and proposals SCOTLAND Edinburgh.

Contact: Dave, 229-4591. the bankers and bosses. Glasgow. Contact Star Crooke, 63 Dixon Ave G42.

NORTH WEST Hyndburn.

Contact: Accrington Liverpool.

Contact: 733 6663.

Manchester.

By Fergus THE POWER:

"We must never play with slogans that are not revolutionary by their own content but that can play a quite different role according to the political conjuncture, the relationship of forces, etc.... "(Leon Trotsky: "On the Theses 'Unity and the Youth'' . Writings 1934according to what was appropriate in a given situation. Revolutionaries have to use their political judgment.

The slogan 'take the power' ', like any other single slogan or combination of slogans from the "Transitional Programme' or similar documents, is useful or otherwise, helps us advance or confuses the issue, depending on whether those who select it and try to use it are able to make a correct assessment of the situation and the given stage of development.

For its initial advocates, the slogan means out-and-out revolution. For the broad movement it car only mean 'Labour take office' - a slogan which slots into the increasingly-prevalent idea that the central goal must be to get Kinnock to Downing Street irrespective of politics - and (as the LCC puts it)

don't rock the boat with your ultraleft ohsessions and delusions.

Trotsky talks of using such a slogan as the Bolsheviks did, against the leaders of vacillating parties based in the masses, in conditions where sharp social crisis puts such parties up against the gun and destabilises them. In the decisive experience, 1917, the slogan was used by an openly competing independent party, the Bolshevik party.

The Chartists use it now when none of these conditions exist.

British society is not in a revolutionary crisis. The slogan is used for the Labour Party as it is, from inside the Labour Party, by loyal members of the Labour Party. It is something for the existing Labour Party to do, perhaps after shedding some more of its leaders.

To use such a slogan outside of its time, place, and the proper configuration of social and political forces, is harmful: rarely more so than now. To raise the idea that government office (for that is what "power' will mean to all but the initiated few) must be central for this LabPRESS our Party now, in conditions where the yearning for some alternative to the Turies is a major weapon in the hands of those who continue, with returbishments, the tradition of Labour's own pink Toryism - that is to serve the status quo, not to subvert it.

It is to help the entrenched leaders, and them. for Neil Kinnock cerrainly wants to 'take the power' - in the only sense in which the slogan has any immediate meaning.

One of the most basic and central tasks we face is to change, transform, and regenerate the existing labour movement. It is necessary to insist - especially to those bemused by Kinnockite 'unity-mongering' - that this Labour Party, under this leadership, can take office but will not serve our interests.

To make 'Labour take the power' the central masthead slogan today at the very least means to direct attention away from the most pressing tasks. In fact it means spreading illusions that things are better with the Labour Party than they are.

It gears into the prevailing mood of the soft left. A few people who do the production work in Briefing will have a different meaning for 'Labour take the power' - most readers won't, and in the circumstances can't.

The slogan ignores the recent trend of events in the Labour Party - which has seen the victory (not yet the decisive victory) of the representatives of a new round of MIDLANDS Birmingham.

Contact: Godfrey Webster, 169 Barclay Rd., Bearswood, Smethwick.

Coventry. Contact: Keith, 75623. SO is sold at the Wedge Bookshop.

Leicester.

Contact: Phil, 857908. SO is sold at Blackthorne Northampton.

Contact: Ross, Nottingham.

Contact: Pete, 585640.

And the Chartists' slogan serves only to glorify the grubbiness - to cover humdrum municipal socialism with the sheen of a 'struggle for power' To be sure, the ideas of the Briefing Chartists have had little independent influence on what happened: they have provided an ideological rationale for the development of the 'municipal socialist left' rather than shaping it. But that obstructs drawing lessons from the development.

•A whole layer of the Labour Left has been drawn into municipal politics - into creating a returbished local machine for the Labour Party status quo, into adopting a basically right wing posture of adminstrators counterposed to the local working class and local government unions, even while continuing some leftism in other arenas, especially foreign policy. Throughout the country, layers of would-be leftists have in their turn been educated by the local government leaders to accept administering the system as a goal fit for socialists to pursue. They have been softened up for Kinnockism.

A refurbished version of the old Labour Party machine - that will be an ironic result of the struggles triggered by the proven bankruptcy in office of the last Labour governments.

The political fate of many in the Labour Left depends on what lessons they draw from the experience of municipal socialism. The first and irreplaceable step is to recognise where we are now and where the Labour Party is.

Consoling cant is best left to those who are willing to live peacefully with the status qun. Those who are going to continue fighting it cannot afford to indulge in fantasies.

Stoke.

Contact: 328198.

Bristol.

Contact: c/o 28 Lane. London N8.

Cardiff.

Contact: 492988.

Taunton.

Contact: c/o 28 Lane, London N8.

Basingstoke.

Contact: c/o Lane, London N Oxford.

Contact c/o Lane, London Wilsonism and Callaghanism.

The slogan is not just a piece of amiable nonsense given a home by the hospitable Briefing, which finds room for a wide range of positions. Some may have voted for the slogan in this spirit, but it does have implications.

For the Briefing Chartists play a role in the local government Left. They split from SO in order to rationalise. glorify and cover Ted Knight and Ken Livingstone. They spin consoling cant for the hundreds of rank and file activists who have followed these gentlemen into municipal socialism.

The slogan doesn't just mean 'Kinnock take the power'. '. It means take power locally. Or, as they sometimes put it, take some of the power.

It is incontestable that the local government left is in a massive crisis. The idea that this crisis is just caused by the Tories has plausibility, but it isn't the truth.

The local government left should have taken account of the Tories. They should have fought the Tories. Instead they opted to be local administrators, and to bank on rate rises to counteract a government which could make up the rules as it went along.

Central to the crisis of the local government left is the delusion that they could 'take power' locally.

Paul Barnett, Middle Middle Middle Middle

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

LABOUR— TAKE

board of Briefing's 'national sup- ply to a dept de the supple manor.