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Friday, October 13, 2023

Labour in pain (1983)

From the October 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Judging from his article in Tribune (19 August 1983) Conrad Jameson of the Kensington and Chelsea Labour Party is a very frustrated man. The article cries out with utter despair against a party which has betrayed thousands who placed their faith in it.

Conrad Jameson is staggered by the cynical policy somersaults which the Labour Party has performed since its overwhelming defeat in the election:
It’s hardly seven weeks since the election. Yet Neil Kinnock has already put us back into the Common Market, E. P. Thompson has already confessed that Denis Healey was right after all — stop Trident and Cruise for now but bargain about Polaris later on. Even the sweet-natured Michael Foot has already discovered that it is only the discount that makes the Tory policy of council house sales so wicked as the principle has always been good.

These are changes, mind, coming from Labour's Centre Left — and before the October Conference. When the strains of The Red Flag have died away will we not get still more? And if that is the case why should I bother my head about turning Right or Left?
The choice in the Labour leadership battle, according to Jameson, is between Hypocrisy and Opportunism:
There are two ways of moving Labour back to the middle. One is to move Rightwards but say you haven’t. For this tactic we need a first-class hypocrite, a leader who can march backwards even while claiming to make a forward change — and for that, no doubt about it, Kinnock fits the bill . . . Another way of moving Right is simply to move Right — and shut up and be quick about it. For this tactic we need a first-class opportunist . . . For that kind of swordsmanship we need Roy Hattersley.
It can be far from satisfying to be stuck in a political party which changes its policies because the voters don't like them and which picks its leaders on the basis of their hypocritical and opportunist credentials. But that is the party which Conrad Jameson says he belongs to, and who are we to disagree with him? Of course, he is not alone. Apart from the thousands who have abandoned the Labour Party in recent weeks, months and years, there are many who, like Conrad Jameson, carry on giving loyalty to the party which is as unprincipled when it loses as when it wins. One can sympathise with their attachment to the Labour Party: it is never easy to break away from one's traditional affiliations and make a new start. Hard though it may be, there are urgent reasons why Conrad Jameson and others who feel and think like him should start questioning the basic position of the Labour Party.

Facing facts, it has to be conceded by Jameson and others that the problems of the Labour Party are not simply problems of leadership. Even if Kinnock was anything but a hypocrite and Hattersley was transparently honest Labour would still be a party which aims to work within the capitalist system. It is Labour's refusal to examine the system rather than its symptoms which makes it a party of reformism, destined as long as it survives to play the futile game of trying to run the system of exploitation in the interest of the wage slaves who are exploited.

Consider the so-called Left wing policies which Labour is now in the process of throwing overboard in a desperate attempt to keep the sinking ship afloat. Membership of the Common Market; the Left want out, the Right wants to stay in. But what interest is it of the working class whether the British capitalists — our exploiters — join the European Big Business Club or stay out of it? The pretence that workers would be much better off one way or the other is one which sustains the myth that, given a few modifications, capitalism can be turned into the kind of society where all the manifestations of poverty can be eradicated. Yet any serious analysis of capitalism would show that poverty is not a consequence of one trading alliance rather than another, but is an inevitable effect of a system based on class division.

Under the capitalist system one class owns and controls the means of wealth production. but does not produce any wealth; the wealth producers are alienated from social power. The law of the market which is the fundamental principle of capitalism, is that needs can only be satisfied if it is profitable to the capitalists. The Labour Party advocates import controls, but these are economic policies belonging to a nationalistic outlook based on a confused analysis about “what's best for Britain” rather than what socialists should be advocating: what's best for the working class. The argument over nuclear missiles is, again, seen by the Labour Party in completely reformist terms. Instead of beginning by asking why wars take place in the modern world and concluding that war is unavoidable when there is constant competition over markets, raw materials and trade routes, the Labour Party has become involved in the business of advising the British capitalists — and those of the other NATO countries — as to the most humane way to fight a future war — using conventional rather than nuclear weapons

The capitalists are not interested in fighting humanely, but in killing cheaply and with the most efficient weaponry of destruction. If E.P. Thompson now agrees with Healey’s sordid compromise that is no doubt because he has realised that if Labour is ever to provide a credible government of capitalism it will have to defend and expand British capital without any moral scruples about nuclear weapons.

To the sincere Labour Party member, who joined up in order to make society more humane, affluent and secure, the “realities” which their leaders are forced to accept must be very hard to swallow. It is easier to shout names at Kinnock and Hattersley than to accept that the “realities” which these politicians are adapting to are inevitable if Labour is to bow to the needs of capitalism. This leaves Conrad Jameson and other frustrated Labourites with a choice: either they also adapt to the needs of the profit system and drop the stuff about nuclear disarmament and standing on the side of the poor — or they stop playing the capitalist game and move beyond the barriers of the Broad Church. Of course, you can try to have it both ways and accept the role of political martyrdom, as some Leftists like to do. by staying in the Labour Party and spending a lifetime crying out against the betrayals, urging Labour governments to pretend that they are running socialism when they are running capitalism, and waiting to be dealt with in one of the periodic party purges. The self-deceit of the Militant Tendency is a one way deception: they believe that they are playing a crucial role in radicalising the Labour Party, but the Labour leaders know that they are about as dangerous as a crowd of feminists infiltrating the Girl Guides.

Suppose that you choose to leave. The mass exodus of recent years shows that you will not be the first to have thought of the idea. Where to next? Obviously, nobody leaving the Labour Party because it is a pro-capitalist party is going to be attracted to the Tories or the Alliance. At one time the Communist Party seemed to be an alternative. If there is one useful lesson which workers in Britain do seem to have learned over the last few years it is that Russian state capitalism offers no preferable alternative to private capitalism. The Communist Party of 1983 is a shadow of its old self; a blundering, old hanger-on to the coat-tails of the Labour Party. What about the other Leftist groups? Essentially, they are simply advocating old Labour policies, usually formulated in the language of Lenin. The idea that nationalisation is a socialist measure is another that workers are increasingly less taken in by and Militant's demand for the nationalisation of the top two hundred companies is hardly likely to inspire more than a yawn from any worker who understands how the capitalist system operates.

Most ex-Labourites retire into a kind of cynical apathy. Ask them which party they support and they tell you how they used to support Labour — and would probably vote for them rather than the Tories — but basically the parties are all the same. It is surprising how many workers told us that when we were campaigning for the Socialist Party of Great Britain in the recent general election. Conrad Jameson could be in grave danger of falling into the pit of apathy. Given the state of his party, and the inevitable compromises which he will have to witness from his new leader, we can hardly blame him — and many like him — for looking towards the exit door of the Broad Church.

There is always, of course, the Socialist Party of Great Britain. We appreciate that Conrad Jameson may never have heard of us and we are doing all that is within our power to ensure that our existence is more widely known. If he has heard of us he may, like many other people, have all sorts of strange misunderstandings about what we stand for. We stand for one aim and one only: socialism. Of course, socialism means many things to many people, so let us define it clearly: “The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community". That object is printed on every piece of literature produced by the Socialist Party. No leader or caucus could divert us from our socialist aim because the Socialist Party has no leaders and allows no followers: admission to membership is on the basis that you know what you want and you know how to get it. The Socialist Party has a clear analysis of capitalism based largely, but not dogmatically, on the theories of Marx. It is our contention that socialism can only be established when a majority of workers, not just in Britain but throughout the world, understand and want a society of production for use and free access to wealth.

Talk to many people on the Left and in the Labour Party and they will admit to having a certain respect for the Socialist Party. Of course, they realise that a party without leaders is never going to get any followers and that a party which is not in the business of trying to make capitalism work will never make capitalism work. They stay where they are — some for power, others in hope, and others out of mental indolence. We urge members of the Labour Party like Conrad Jameson — men and women who are struggling to find a way out of the mess of reformist politics — to think hard about the case of the SPGB. Of course, there may be many disagreements to be discussed and it may be that ex-Labourites will find the unbending principles of the Socialist Party just as unacceptable as the lack of principles of the Labour Party. Unlike other political parties, membership of the SPGB involves more than filling in a form and paying a few quid. A party of principles can only retain its unity by only allowing in those who are fully with us. To the disillusioned, of whatever party they may be, the socialist message is clear: Take the trouble to consider the Socialist Party and its clear case for socialism; if you reject it, tell us why and perhaps we will be persuaded to reject it; if you agree, then the next move must be yours.
Steve Coleman

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