World Socialist Radio - Peter Mandelson: Arch Labour Party Careerist (2026)

Adapted from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peter Mandelson: Arch Labour Party Careerist byThe Socialist Party of Great Britain

Peter Mandelson exemplifies a lifelong “careerist” within the Labour Party. His political trajectory was driven more by personal advancement than by principled commitment to socialism. He rose through the party not from grassroots activism but via roles in communications and media management, becoming a key architect of “New Labour.”

This episode uses Mandelson as a case study to criticise Labour, arguing that figures like him demonstrate how the party is dominated by professional politicians focused on power and status, rather than pursuing genuine socialist change.

Taken from the March 2026 edition of The Socialist Standard.

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The Leader and the Labour Party (1960)

From the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Scarborough it was outwardly politics that were being discussed, but the Leader and his supporters were also on trial. The questions were what should be the policy and who should be the leader.

On the main resolutions decisions were reached which will hold unless and until they are reversed, but the question of leadership was not decided, though various groups which think it was are looking round for Gaitskell's successor.

On different aspects of the dominating issue of nuclear weapons there were four resolutions, and Mr. Gaitskell and the Labour Party executive were defeated on all of them, though not by large majorities. It was a severe but perhaps not yet fatal blow for Mr. Gaitskell and the Labour M.Ps, the majority of whom stood for the official policy.

A resolution was carried that “Labour policy is decided by the Party conference which is the final authority,” but the executive gave it an interpretation which seems to rob it of much of its meaning. Mr. Len Williams, the Party's National Agent, told the Conference that “the Parliamentary Labour Party” (that is, the Labour M.Ps.) is under no direction from conference or any other body. Mr. Williams said the National Executive did not wish to oppose the composite resolution if it was understood that it involved no change in the long-established principle governing relationships between conferences, National Executive and Parliamentary Party. And it had to be understood that nobody had the power to instruct the Parliamentary Party on the way it carried out its responsibilities." (Daily Herald, 5/10/60.)

And the day after the Conference Mr. Gaitskell made it clear that he has no present intention of resigning and on the contrary is preparing to overturn the Scarborough votes. Speaking in a TV interview he declared: “I regard it as absolutely vital that we should reverse this decision at next year's conference and I shall do everything I can to get that done.” (Daily Mail, 9/10/60.)

He also gave it as his opinion that the Parliamentary Labour Party will by a majority support the policy defeated by the delegates at Scarborough, the implication of which is that they will also confirm him in the Leadership, which incidentally carries with it the leadership of the Opposition at a government- provided salary of £3,000 a year.

Many Tory and Liberal newspapers, while criticising and regretting Mr. Gaitskell’s unsuccessful tactics, lavished praise on him and openly hoped that he may survive his defeat by Conference.

But whether he goes or stays the prospect for the Labour Party is bleak indeed. In the constituencies and in Parliament there will be rival groups each determined to put their point of view, and laying the Party wide open to attack from Tories and Liberals. This may, as the Liberal leaders proclaim, give them an opportunity to win back former supporters who joined the Labour Party. One political commentator, Mr. Robert McKenzie, thinks that even if Mr. Gaitskell survives for the moment it will solve nothing for the Party. His opponents will regard it as a cynical trick that Mr. Gaitskell only claims the right to defy the Trade Union block vole when it ceased to support his policy.

It is almost inevitable that the victims of this “trick” will fight on, either until they are expelled from the parliamentary party, or until Gaitskell himself is destroyed. And as the next election looms ahead, even some of those who admire Mr. Gaitskell's courage may decide that he must make way for someone who has at least a chance of reuniting the party.

(Observer, 9/10/60)

His own opinion, and hope, is that a new anti-H-Bomb Labour Party will be formed and that the Gaitskell faction will then come to terms with the Liberals.

Another danger for the Labour Party is that the conflict will lead to loss of some trade union support and may influence relationships between the Party and the TUC. Sir Thomas Williamson. Secretary of the General and Municipal Workers Union told conference that some of the branches would withdraw support from the Labour Party if the anti-nuclear resolutions were carried. (Daily Telegraph. 6/10/60.) The correspondent of The Times (7/10/60) reported that events at the conference had strengthened the already existing movement to reduce or sever the TUC’s connection with the Party.

It is an accepted convention of professional politics that the politician always claims to speak “for the people or, as he sometimes qualifies it—“for all intelligent people.” It is not so easy to decide what a Labour Party conference vote represents. Mr. Cousins claimed that he speaks “for Britain ,” a claim that Tory newspapers angrily rejected. Out of more than 22 million workers in this country, of whom 9,600,000 are in trade unions, the TUC has in its affiliated unions about 8 million, and the Labour Party 5,600,000. If Labour Party conference votes represented the views of its affiliated trade unionists and the additional 875,000 individual members who belong to local parties, cooperative societies, etc., they could be taken as representing directly the considered wishes of the majority among 6 million workers. (A large, but unknown number of the individual members also count as part of the affiliated trade union membership). But Labour Party spokesmen are well aware that their voting methods, including the trade union block vote, can produce distorted results. Even so, the claim of the Daily Herald (which now supports the H-bomb) that the great majority of Labour supporters are with them on that issue is, to say the least, somewhat surprising. According to a poll undertaken by Odhams Press Research Division “an overwhelming majority of Labour supporters and trade unionists are against the West giving up H-bombs and nuclear weapons so long as Russia keeps hers . . . . more than four out of five Labour supporters think that Britain and America should keep the bomb.” (Daily Herald, 4/10/60.)

There are, of course, sceptics who think that public opinion polls may be no more accurate than block votes.

The Guardian shares the Herald's view of the vote and roundly declared that the Conference is not democratic “while it is governed by trade union block votes. . . . There is no democracy in giving Mr. Cousins one million votes. As the world will probably see today, one or two men can turn Labour's policy upside down.” (Guardian, 5/10/60.)

Mr. Gaitskell, defeated on the H-bomb, gained the day on a policy statement which in effect discards old aims of wholesale nationalisation, and puts in their place the possibility of nationalising a few selected industries, together with the plan for a Labour Government to buy shares in companies without taking them over. It recognises that “both public and private ownership have a place in society.” Delegates speaking in opposition called it “underwriting capitalism” and the abandonment of “Socialism.” Mr. Gaitskell retorted that the proposals were just as much “Socialist” as is Nationalisation, a fact on which Socialists can heartily agree, since nationalisation is state capitalism and has never been advocated by the S.P.G.B.

While the delegates were maintaining, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, that they still believe in nationalisation as the answer to the workers’ problems, strikes were going on in the nationalised coal industry (they break out at the rate of over 30 a week year after year), the Railwaymen were preparing for a strike over pay and Postal workers were discussing a strike resolution over hours of work. And it would seem from the rent strikes and the riots that followed forcible eviction of council tenants by a local council that nationalisation's little sister municipal ownership is no less unpopular.

The day that the Daily Herald reported the vote on the policy of the government buying company shares it reported developments in the direction of a little private enterprise by the local Labour parties themselves. They are planning to form a Unit Trust to invest their funds in company shares and thus cash in on the rise in the profits and prices of ordinary shares that has accompanied inflation. A trade union Unit Trust is already being organised.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: Starmer goes nativist (2025)

Editorial from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

ReformUK fought last year’s general election on a single issue. The same leaflet, distributed everywhere they were standing, declared that this was ‘the immigration election’ and that ‘only Reform UK will freeze immigration’. They won five seats, all from the Conservatives. Labour election strategists were pleased as the swing from Conservative to Reform helped them win in other seats Then, last month, Reform won a parliamentary by-election in a seat previously held by a large majority by Labour. Then, Labour realised that Farage’s party was as much a threat to them as to the Conservatives.

What to do? The decision was made to steal Reform’s clothes and on 12 May Starmer delivered his already notorious ‘island of strangers’ speech in which he claimed that if immigration wasn’t further curtailed native-born Britishers would become, as Enoch Powell had put it decades earlier, ‘strangers in their own country’. Neither Powell nor Starmer defined what they meant by ‘stranger’, leaving native-born people whose parents or grandparents came from the British colonial empire open to being victims of anti-immigration prejudice and attacks.

Starmer’s words was hard-core xenophobia, the language of nativist parties everywhere, as political theorists define parties that declare their aim to be ‘promoting or protecting the interests of native-born people over those of immigrants’. Many might see this as reasonable — why should people already there not get priority over newcomers? — but it is based on the premise that native-born workers and immigrant workers have different interests.

The nativist demagogues claim that the two groups compete not only for jobs but also for housing, hospital treatment and school places. This does appear to be the case but the limited supply of these is not caused by too many immigrants. It’s limited by the nature of the capitalist system under which workers are never going to be supplied, whether from their pay or from services provided by the state, with much more than enough to keep themselves in efficient working order. Keeping immigrants out won’t change this. It wouldn’t mean more or better for the ‘native-born’.

It is not clear why immigration should have become a big issue; probably a result of the media’s over-concentration on the desperate people crossing the channel in small boats. Immigration proper is a normal economic feature of capitalism and waxes and wanes as the economy expands or contracts. Capitalism needs workers because their work is the source of capitalist profits. When capitalism is expanding in some place due to the prospects of profit being good, more workers are needed there. Workers move to where the jobs are, sometimes recruited directly by employers. From a capitalist point of view, employing these migrating workers and providing housing and basic services for them to keep themselves fit to work is well worth it as the amount of profits they produce outweighs the cost.

Socialists say that workers, wherever they were born or whatever their language or state-imposed nationality or what religion they were brought up in, have a common interest in joining together, in the first instance, to face their employer. More widely, they have an interest in uniting to end the capitalist system and replace it with a world without borders based on the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources.

Power pact (1981)

From the November 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

The political alliance between the Liberals and the ‘Social Democrats' pales into insignificance in comparison with the more sinister alliance between the SDP and the BBC. The media in recent months has outdone many of its previous efforts in paving the path of ‘moderation' as the TV, radio and newspaper journalists invent stories to prove that there is now a popular burst of opinion in favour of ‘centre politics'. What began as a Gang of Four has become a rabble of many: ex-Labour cabinet ministers, sixteen members of the ruling group on Islington council, some Liberals who look like they have just won the jackpot at Bingo, and even an inoffensive looking Tory from Norfolk. Names that once sent us searching for a copy of Who's Who (Had you heard of Bill Rodgers when he was a member of ‘our great movement’?) are paraded across our screens as the speakers of Truth; Liberals who used to write manifestos about saving whales and giving power to Wales (or was it the other way round?) are now adopting pompous airs and talking about ‘preparing for government'; even that undying enemy of labour and friend of Labour, The Daily Mirror, has opted for the alliance, with full-page photographs of semi-nude women saying The middle way is the best'.

In order to establish the mythical middle, mythical extremes are needed. One can imagine the editor of The Guardian issuing the order: ‘Go out and create us a couple of really awful extremes so that we can sell this new centre.' And so the caricatures came to be. First, there is the caricature of the wicked, thoughtless Thatcherite Tories who plan to increase unemployment and blow up the world with American weapons once they have succeeded in getting the whole working class standing in one long dole queue. Like the witch in a children’s book, Thatcher is painted as being wickedness personified. The other side of the caricature is the Marxist- dominated Benno-Trotyskyist Labour Party. Benn is portrayed as a modern Stalin, waiting patiently for his chance to grab power and destroy Western Civilisation (coming soon).

Like all myths, there are elements of truth. Thatcher and the Tories are viciously anti-working class. When have Tories not been? Their ignorant and unhistorical monetarist policies do fail to provide any solution whatsoever to the social problems of our time. They are impotent in the face of disaster and arrogant in the face of criticism. With increasing unemployment, increasing cuts in social services, increasing armaments production and increasing poverty, workers are right to regard the promises of Thatcher and her team as an insult to human intelligence. The memories of Labourites are as short as their alternative policies for getting society out of the mess it is in.

They attack the problems as if Thatcher caused them. As if unemployment did not double under the last Labour government; as if Labour Ministers were not in the forefront of cutting social services in order to balance the books; as if the last Labour government did not place armaments production as a top priority; as if the rich did not get richer during the period of the last Labour government. Who are these people trying to kid? But now they have an ‘alternative economic policy’ and the story goes that if we give Benn another chance (‘another' because he was in the last Labour government) he will run capitalism in the interests of the working class. This claim is a foolish and cruel con-trick. The next Labour government (if there is one) will not run capitalism; capitalism will run it. The portrait of Benn and Co. as a socialist alternative may attract a few people to the Labour party, it may scare some off, but in the long-run it will be seen as a waste of political energy.

And there they are, standing in the middle between the Wicked Witch and the Bogus Marxist Threat: the Liberal-SDP Alliance. Dead centre, dead honest, in fact they claim to be so innocuous that they might as well actually be dead. There is that nice young David Steel and that dear old Roy Jenkins . . . all terribly nice chaps with whom any self-respecting media hack would enjoy sharing a bottle of claret, but there is just one little thing: What the hell do they stand for? So far they have left the electorate in the dark about this minor aspect of their alliance. Like a well-rehearsed play for which there is not yet a script, the Alliance are selling plenty of tickets, but what will they do when their followers demand to see the performance? Not long ago a successful SDP candidate for a local council in the North East was interviewed on the local radio: “Now that people have voted for you, could you tell us exactly what policies you stand for?" asked the man from the media; “Well, we’ll be deciding our policy later this year and as soon as we have, the electors will be the first to know", replied the man from the media. So, there you have it; vote for the Alliance and ask what you are voting for later. History being made? It’s more like a mystery being made.

On one point the allies are definitely in agreement. Both are one hundred per cent committed to the maintenance of the capitalist social order. No need for a policy statement about that. Both the Liberals (who claim to stand for capitalism) and the SDP (who call themselves ‘democratic Socialists’) accept a way of running society in which goods are only produced if there is a prospect of selling them on the market for a profit. Both are opposed to any challenge to the class ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution. In this vital respect the alliance is broader than it thinks, for it includes the Conservative and Labour parties. All of the Lefties with their ‘alternative economic strategies’ (for which read, ‘previously tried and failed Keynesian policies’ are as committed to the buying and selling system as any Liberal or SDPer.

As reported in a previous issue of the Socialist Standard, the SDP has refused a challenge from the SPGB to debate its views in public. Its leaders prefer to state their case from the secure distance of a BBC Any Questions studio rather than face real working class people with real problems arising from a real cause which the SDP will do nothing to remove. As the media continues to persuade us of the moderation and reasonableness of the new messiahs; as David Steel prepares to resume where Lloyd George left off; as political careerists from all parties point the accusing finger at one another and say that everyone is an extremist but themselves; as the word ‘socialism’ is tossed about the political arena like a football which changes shape each time it arrives at another team; as a Gang of Bores awaits its call to do for the working class what has never been done before and what can never be done, it is high time that we, the working class, took a good, hard look at those who want us to follow them, and when we have seen them for what they are we can tell them precisely where to go.

Steve Coleman

Gunter gives his Orders (1967)

From the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Scratch beneath the skin of any complacently Right Wing Labour Minister and in nine cases out of ten you will find he has a history of Left Wing militancy. Minister of Labour Ray Gunter is the tenth case—the man who has always defended the official party line, who has always infuriated the firebrands by his unrepentant stance way out on the right.

Stumpy, thick-necked, with a coarsely drawn face, Gunter can look like a ventriloquist’s dummy. At times he sounds like one, frothing out cliches and platitudes like an unconscious satire on a trade union official eager to let the world know he has recently mastered the use of words like “auspices”, “context”, “relevant.”

Perhaps Gunter is living out of his time; many of his public outbursts sound as if the ventriloquist had cast him in the role of a Dickensian workhouse master, dishing out strong doses of brimstone and treacle to the boys and fiercely crushing any tendency to ask for more:

“The economy of this nation has to be put right.. . with a measure of harsh government”. (Scottish TUC, Glasgow, 12/2/67.)

“We as a nation are living beyond our means.. . too many people drifting and dreaming that all is well” (Ilford, 8/1/66.)

Gunter may infuriate those who think that Labour lost its soul somewhere on the road from Scarborough 1964, but apart from that he cannot be described as an exciting man. His background is undeviating to the point of tedium; trade union branch officer, Divisional Labour Party secretary and agent, joined the Army in the war, rose from private to captain, Labour M.P. after the war, President of his union, member of the Labour Party National Executive and finally Minister of Labour in 1964. Now, he is said to have reached the peak of his ambitions; according to one political correspondent Gunter has no desire to move on to greater things and does not think of himself as a future Prime Minister.

Of course they said the same thing, long ago, when the colourless Major Attlee became Postmaster General in the 1929/31 Labour government— and they kept saying it about him, almost to the day when he took over at Number Ten. Has there ever been a politician who has not seen himself as a future Premier? It is hardly in Gunter’s make-up to be that unique.

Indeed, there is some evidence that his rise in the Labour hierarchy was anything but unconsidered. Gunter first won fame by his spirited defence of the platform at Labour Conferences during the early Sixties, when the long period in opposition had them frustratedly and constantly chewing their own tails. It was temptingly easy, then, for a rising star to rise still further by making attacks on the leadership and by speaking in the wild, airy manner so beloved by the Left Wing. Not a few of the present government did just that— but not Gunter. His stand at the Conferences was enough for the newspapers to decide that here was a man of the future, who could be relied on to do capitalism’s dirty work with never a qualm.

Very soon, Gunter was building up his reputation for preaching what he calls hard facts:

“He said there was nothing sacred in the present methods of collective bargaining, and he could not accept that the rewards must inevitably go to those who could, because of the nature of their work and the power of their organisation, command the greatest economic power.” (The Guardian, 17/9/62.)

I am persuaded that unless the unions face the facts of life as they are in the late 1960s, then in seven to 10 years’ time the State will have to intervene.” (Socialist Commentary, April 1964.)

Gunter was not alone in this; other Labour leaders, among them Callaghan and Wilson, had said roughly the same. Those were the days when the Incomes Policy was being drawn up, for action when Wilson’s honeyed words on the scientific revolution won power for Labour. The unions were being given due warning—and a lot of voters were being convinced that a Labour government would be anything but a tool in the unions’ hands. Prominent among the graspers of this particular nettle, one of the readiest to throw a gauntlet before the unions, was Ray Gunter.

Of course this went down very well with the newspapers, who always seem tremendously impressed by any evidence that a politician may be honest. Gunter, they decided, was a candid man of the people, who could always be relied on to speak his mind. Perhaps that was why, when Labour’s day of victory dawned at last, the television interviewers made a point of asking him what he thought of Gordon Walker’s notorious defeat at Smethwick. Gunter was obligingly blunt; this, he said, was a victory of which the Conservative Party should be thoroughly ashamed.

A lot of people looking in that night must have decided, approvingly or not, that this reply meant Gunter was opposed to the electoral exploitation of racism. But Smethwick, and the later result at Leyton, left their scars; when the Labour government outdid the Tories in their restrictions on coloured immigration, one of the two Ministers to submit memoranda pressing for drastic cuts was Gunter. (The Guardian, 31/5/65.)

But this change of policy did not dent the new Minister of Labour’s reputation for common sense. Nothing, it seems, can do that; even when he is so rash as to say, as he did at Blackburn on 5 January 1966, that there were signs the coming year would be industrially more peaceful than 1965. That risky prediction turned out to be right. In 1966 the number of stoppages of work through disputes, the numbers of workers involved, and the number of working days lost, were all lower than in 1965. But that can hardly be called an achievement of Gunter’s; by recent standards 1965 was a bad year—many more working days lost than in 1964, nearly twice as many as in 1963 although much lower than any year between 1958 and 1962. And 1966 was the year when the railwaymen came within an ace of striking and when the seamen had their first official stoppage for over fifty years—incited, said Wilson, not by any desire to improve conditions but by “politically motivated men”.

But right or wrong, Ray Gunter has kept stolidly on, preaching, bullying (“. . . the conference this week has been … roughly handled by Mr. Gunter.” The Guardian report on the Labour Party conference, 30/9/65) sometimes giving way to self-pity (“Sometimes I felt a bit grim under the skin. Some of you seem to think that blokes like myself, when we have arrived at positions of authority, somehow have deserted all the things we stood for. I resent that.” Scottish TUC, 12/2/67.)

Last summer he won new fame by wishing aloud that not so many Labour Party members would equate the Means Test and profit with original sin (who said they did?). Then a rash of publicity on unofficial strikes—the Cameron Report on the Barbican dispute, the stoppage at the London and Liverpool docks—had Gunter at it again.

First he returned to an old theme of his: discipline. (“Mr. Gunter, the Minister of Labour, said yesterday that the prevalence of unofficial strikes was indicative of a state of indiscipline in industry which we should have to tackle. The Times, 17/10/67.) He has plugged this one before: “There is far too much indiscipline in every part of this nation” (Co-operative Congress, Edinburgh, 7/6/65.) “If, perchance, inner disciplines and voluntary contributions are not forthcoming in a short time, this nation must look to other means to prevent the ultimate disaster” (TUC, Brighton, 6/9/65.)

Then from the very bottom of the rag bag of excuses which all politicians keep handy, Gunter produced the tatty old Red Bogy:

“There is now little doubt that the Communist Party are plotting to make this a winter of disruption. They now, unhappily for the well-being of the nation, have entered into an unholy alliance with elements of the Trotskyist Party. Their aim is to destroy our hopes of economic recovery and thereby they hope to bring ruin to the social democratic movement.” (Gillingham, 18/10/67.)

If it was clear from this that the government were getting desperate, it also seemed that Gunter was living in a nightmare world peopled with wildly undisciplined workers—overpaid, underworked, striking at the first word from Communist Party headquarters.

Now one of the Oxford Dictionary’s definitions of discipline is “. . . order maintained among schoolboys, soldiers, prisoners etc.” Perhaps this is what Gunter thinks is lacking among workers—perhaps he, the ex-officer, would like to have us all recruited into some sort of school, or army, or prison, where there would never be any nonsense about struggling to improve our conditions; disciplined, we would take what was coming to us and be thankful.

In any case, workers are subject to all sorts of discipline, whether they recognise it or not. There is the discipline of relying on a job for a living, and of this job existing only so long as it is profitable. There is the discipline—or perhaps degradation is a better word—of producing goods for sale, which usually means a debasement of skill and knowledge in making a shoddy imitation of the real thing. There is the discipline of living two lives—the workaday life of tongue in the cheek, judging everything in terms of our employer’s profits, the job, the wishes of the boss; and the other life at home, when a worker can judge things, as far as possible, in terms of human comfort and welfare.

This is not all that employment means. Because a worker sells his working ability to an employer, employment means that the interests of both are opposed. This opposition is bound to break out into disputes—over wages, conditions of work, security of employment and so on. Gunter prides himself on being a realist but it is highly unrealistic to expect these disputes to be gentle, disciplined affairs confined to the agreed lines of official action. When it suits the employers’ interests they close down a factory or a mine or a railway line and dismiss their workers and Gunter sees no sinister plot behind it. But when workers decided that their economic interests demand something more militant than lining up like soldiers, or schoolboys, or prisoners, for what their employer likes to give them, Gunter sees red.

It is true that at times (the present, for example) it is Communist Party policy to involve themselves in industrial disputes. Gunter takes this as proof that the disputes are caused by the Communists, which is something like the Communist claim that troubles in Russia and eastern Europe are the work of the CIA. In any case, what about the time, during the war, when the Communist Party were opposed to strikes? Who caused the disputes then? The fact is that industrial trouble is bound to happen and workers become involved in it because they work for wages and not because of any political affiliation.

Let us be blunt with Gunter. He is a member of a government which came into power on a wave of optimism and warm promises. So far their most spectacular achievement is their failure to deliver the goods, and the ebb wave of disillusion which is losing them one by-election after another. The reaction of Gunter, and others, has been to blame outside influences—the gnomes of Zurich, the storm which blew them off course, the alleged laziness and indiscipline of the workers.

This is typical of all governments and typical, too, of Dickens’ workhouse masters, who always said the boys’ hunger was really their undisciplined greed, and had nothing to do with the thin and meagre gruel.

Ivan

Doing the Splits (1971)

From the December 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

How seriously should we take the splits in the Labour and Conservative parties over the Common Market ? Is there likely to be some massive realignment of capitalist politics, with Roy Jenkins leading a coalition of Liberals and pro-Market Labourites in a new party ? Will the great machine of capitalist politics suffer irreparable damage, or can we still sleep of nights secure in the knowledge that it will continue to deceive, coerce and exploit us ?

To begin with, nobody should allow themselves to think that the splits have anything to do with principles. Of course all members of the capitalist parties say their political allegiance is based on principle, but issues like the Common Market, which they say are also matters of fundamental principle, cross the party lines so that George Brown agrees with Heath, Wilson with Enoch Powell and so on. This shows how flexible are the “principles” of our parties and it tells us something about their splits.

One notable, but not unusual, feature of the splits over the Common Market is that both the big parties are suffering at the same time. This makes it difficult for either of them to adopt the attitude of pious shock which they affect when only the other side is split. Then they can say that such disputes are evidence of their opponents’ irresponsibility. When they themselves are divided on some issue they claim that this goes to show what a lively lot they are, vibrant with debate yet tolerant and united enough to contain the argument and apply it for the benefit of all those voters outside. This is all part of the jolly game of politics.

In this country, it is the Labour Party who have become famous for their splits, very often splashing them into the public eye. This has tended to promote the idea that the Tories are more stable and united but there is some evidence that this is not true. Since the 1929 Labour government, the Labour Party have had only four leaders—Lansbury, Attlee, Gaitskell and now Wilson—and of these Lansbury was never more than a caretaker after the defection of MacDonald. During the same period the Tories have had seven leaders —Baldwin, Chamberlain, Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Home and Heath—and in almost every case they have changed to the accompaniment of a public dispute.

At the same time, behind those gentlemanly Tory facades, there have been fierce splits over matters of policy. For example, Macmillan was much occupied with persuading his party to move out of the Edwardian era (which he was said to personify) and to accept the decline of the British Commonwealth. This seemed to be no more than accepting the obvious and the inevitable, but Macmillan was bitterly fought by a strong section of the Tories headed by Lord Salisbury, who always looked and spoke and thought like an archetypal Tory backwoodsman. For Salisbury, the final blow was the surrender of independence to Cyprus and he resigned to snipe at the Tories for their policies on the old Empire and to mumble about the shocking treatment being handed out to our kith and kin in Rhodesia.

Life was no more placid for the Tories before the war. They were split on the best method of dealing with the rebirth of German capitalism; when that matter was settled in the forties they found scapegoats for their own doubts and disunity in Baldwin and Chamberlain. Of these two, Chamberlain always kept a pretty firm grip on his party, at least until the end, but Baldwin’s career at the top was almost continual turmoil, as he was under constant attack.

The Labour Party do not have the Tories’ reputation of the party of gentlemen and usually conduct their rows like public house brawls. Perhaps that is why they are so famous for their splits, which have very often blinded the voters to the fact that Labour is always solidly united on the basic issue of trying for power to run British capitalism. Their most damaging split, in 1931, was not on any fundamental issue; they were united in the opinion that the working class had to suffer in some way during that time of crisis for British capitalism. None of them ever suggested Socialism as a way out of the whole sorry mess.

Having survived the debacle in 1931, Labour had a comparatively tranquil time until they came to power after the war, when the group which eventually became known as the Bevanites were constantly rocking the boat, which was in any case leaky and unstable. Here again the splits were never on fundamentals but were always over the best—often, quite openly, the most vote catching — methods of running British capitalism. In the end, at the Brighton conference of 1957, Bevan shocked many of the followers to whom he was a new Messiah by publicly making his peace with Gaitskell. The conference was debating nuclear armaments and Bevan, who was supposed to be the man who would guide us all to Socialism, argued that British capitalism needed these arms to protect its position against the other capitalist powers and that failure to recognise this would be electorally disastrous.

At that time the Labour Party, in the aftermath of Suez, were smelling the approach of power. In the event the Tories hung on and when the election came in 1959 Labour’s defeat threw them into another uproar of dispute, with the Gaitskellites arguing that the party’s traditional policies (or rather their traditional propaganda, because the policies were so easily ignored by governments) should be abandoned. This was to be, not because the policies were not socialist, not even that they went against working class interests under capitalism. It was simply that they lost the party votes. The next couple of years saw another row, this time over nuclear weapons, until Wilson came along and settled the whole matter by running British capitalism with a single-minded concern for the interests of the ruling class, while assuring everybody that he was doing something entirely different.

It very often happens, that a split reveals a future leader—sometimes in the role of peacemaker, like Wilson, sometimes as a man of honesty. In this Common Market split in the Labour Party, Roy Jenkins has come into prominence; he has been a consistent supporter of British capitalism joining Europe and perhaps one explanation of all the coverage he has had recently is the publicity boys’ surprise at finding a politician who says the same thing on more than one occasion.

It is distinctly pathetic, to see the Labour Party putting so much faith in Jenkins, perhaps as an overreaction to the exposure of Wilson as a tawdry trickster. They were once similarly hopeful about Wilson, as they were about all the many leaders who disappointed them before. Once again they are ignoring facts; the records show that Jenkins is no less cynical, no less a vote-grabbing politician, than the rest. For example, in a book he wrote in 1959 — The Labour Case — he avowed that Labour’s policies could be carried out “. . . without any question of an increase in the tax burden. On the contrary, they should leave room for substantial reductions.”

Apart from the fact that Jenkins was here descending in his anxiety to grab votes for his party, to pandering to the ignorance of workers who think the level of taxation affects their material interests, it is clear now that he was making another of those empty politicians’ promises. The Wilson government based a lot of their policies on steeply increased taxation—and Jenkins, as Chancellor of the Exchequer for about two years, was directly responsible for a lot of it. He was the inspiration for a lot of the Wilson government’s attacks on workers’ living standards, frequently lecturing us from the television screen on our spendthrift ways which were causing such terrible poverty among the grouse moors and the slums of Park Lane and Eaton Square. In a recent debate in the Commons (see The Guardian, 10 November 1971) he denounced unemployment just as if his government was not in power when it first became a serious problem and attacked the Tories for their ". . . silly little argument . . . that unemployment was an inevitable result of wage claims, and that those responsible must just take the consequences.” Yet this is what he said when he was Chancellor, at a union conference which was debating a motion condemning an incomes policy backed by legal sanctions:

An uncontrolled wages situation could undermine the Government’s central purpose, by putting back into people’s hands the purchasing power that the Budget had siphoned off . . . (The Times 25/4/69).

Jenkins is said to be a “liberal”, yet he did not resign over the racist laws passed by the Wilson government, which outdid the Tories in pandering to working class colour prejudice. He supported the reintroduction of prescription charges — much higher than the Tory charges which Labour had stopped; the raising of the school leaving age, the end of free school milk, the cuts in the housing programme. He was prominent in a government which kept the British nuclear weaponry. And that is only part of the list of anti-working class acts for which honest Roy, martyr to his conscience, must take his full share of responsibility.

So if the Labour Party decide to put their faith in Jenkins as yet another new saviour, they will be as bitterly disappointed as they were with Wilson, MacDonald and the rest. Jenkins may look and speak like a stern, unbending schoolmaster but what he actually is, is an ambitious capitalist politician. His function is to get power to run the affairs of the British capitalist class and to carry this out he is quite ready to join in the deception and the trickery which make an essential part of capitalist politics.

When the uproar over the Common Market has died down and workers who have been so fascinated by it, and who have been deceived into taking sides, have settled back into their proper, lowly place in capitalist society another incident will have been written into the history of politics. Then the whole futile business can start all over again.

Ivan

Editorial: Mr. Crosland abolishes Capitalism — and Socialism (1955)

Editorial from the November 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Observer newspaper has been running a series of articles on the future of the Labour 'Party, in which various writers have diagnosed that Party’s troubles and offered remedies. Some of the articles have gone beyond the problems of organising and of attracting voters, to deal with wider topics such as the meaning of the Labour Party’s “Socialism” and the requirements of the world today. One of these, “A Time for Hard Thinking” (Observer, 9/10/55), was contributed by Mr. Anthony Crosland, who sat in Parliament as Labour M.P. for five years for the South Gloucestershire constituency, and was defeated in the Test division of Southampton at the general election in May of this year. Mr. Crosland is described as an economist and former university lecturer. He is a member of the executive of the Fabian Society.

Let it be said at once that if Mr. Crosland’s article is not impressive it is certainly staggering. It is staggering that one who has the opportunities possessed by Mr. Crosland of studying the world he lives in should be able to see so little and deceive himself so much.

The core of his argument is that such wonderful progress has been made in this country that the old working class economic problems are with us no more and Socialism should therefore be defined afresh “in terms of a set of social and ethical aspirations.”

Mr. Crosland maintains that "the long-run problems of concern to Socialists are no longer mainly economic.” This is because:—“British Capitalism has been transformed almost out of recognition. ... I, personally, think it rather absurd to go on calling this economy 'Capitalism.’ . . ."

It was right and proper, he says, to be concerned in the past with the economic problems of unemployment, instability, and physical poverty, but not any more.

“But to-day, the economic system has been reformed, and no longer poses these traditional problems. Even with a Conservative Government we shall probably maintain full employment (if not inflation) for as far ahead as we can see, and we now have a rate of economic growth which, although not fast enough to satisfy some austere perfectionists, is certainly fast enough to eliminate poverty and sustain a rapid rise in working-class earnings. Despite the tiresome problem of the foreign balance, our present economy is capable of distributing material benefits on a scale which would have staggered Socialists only a generation ago."

As already mentioned, the really interesting thing about this sketch of a Capitalism reformed out of recognition is that it is false in almost every particular.

It reads like one of the dreams indulged in by the earliest members of the Labour Party about what they thought would take place.

Almost the only factor among these he mentions, that gives seeming support to his case, is the unusually long period of very low unemployment.

Nobody questions that the replacement of the destruction caused by the last war has played a part in this but Mr. Crosland, like many others, thinks that “full employment” can now be maintained by Government policy. As it would take us too far afield to deal here with the economic fallacies inherent in this belief in permanent full-employment it must suffice at present to remind Mr. Crosland that every boom in Capitalism’s history has produced its prophets of no more slumps; not to mention the Labour Government that went into office in 1929 convinced that it could prevent slumps but which was submerged by the most prolonged depression for 50 years.

One of Mr. Crosland’s points is that the old Capitalist “instability” has disappeared. If he means in this country alone (this is not clear) he would be making the elementary error of supposing that British exports could go on booming in face of an outside world in the throes of a crisis; but whether he does mean this or not, there is no evidence anywhere that Capitalism has got rid of instability. Has Mr. Crosland forgotten the sharp recession in U.S.A. in 1954, the quite acute textile slump in Britain and elsewhere in 1952, and the recent announcement in Australia and New Zealand that imports of British cars and other goods, are being cut? And did Mr. Crosland notice the “stable” way the Stock Exchange behaved when President Eisenhower’s illness was reported? A Daily Mail New York representative cabled:

“The biggest stock market break since the great crash of 1929 hit Wall Street to-day—a direct reaction to President Eisenhowers illness. . .

“Many shares dived by $15 The flood of selling orders raised the trading to 7,720,000 shares, the highest in 22 years. Total loss reached nearly £4,000 million.”—(Daily Mail, 27/9/55.)

The Daily Herald of the same date reported “gloom in share markets in this country partly due to the same cause. Alastair Forbes, a regular contributor of the Conservative Sunday Despatch had a pointed comment on this:— ,

". . . What can one say of capitalism as a system when the news that President Eisenhower has had a heart attack causes a panic selling wave on the stock market ? . . . Even the explanation that the selling panic would never have taken place if the intelligent members of the New York Exchange, who are all Jews, had not been away for Yom Kippur, is scarcely enough to rehabilitate the system in the eyes of the watcher through the Iron Curtain.”—(Sunday Dispatch, 2/10/55.)

But the chief interest attaches to Mr. Crosland’s belief that “physical poverty” is no more, and that “material benefits” are distributed now by Capitalism in Britain on a scale that would have staggered Socialists a generation ago. We are compelled to ask where Mr. Crosland, the economist, got this information.

There has, of course been a very great rise in the price of everything including the price the worker gets for the sale of his physical and mental energies, but we cannot suppose Mr. Crosland has not allowed for this. What, then, is there to show for the 30 years since—say 1925?

The figures published by the London and Cambridge Economic Service show a rise of average wage rates between 1925 and 1955 of 163 per cent.; that is to say wage rates now are about 2 2/3 what they were in 1925. The L.C.E.S. also show a rise of 116 per cent. in the cost of living. Coupling these two figures we can say that average wage rates are now 23 per cent, more than they were 30 years ago. Is a small increase of something averaging well under 1 per cent, a year a phenomenon to be staggered by? Is it this that, for Mr. Crosland, has revolutionised society and abolished Capitalism?

Let us remind Mr. Crosland, too, that this very modest rise has not been a “benefit” distributed by Capitalism or by Governments, but something for which the workers have had to struggle through strikes, the number of which is now steadily increasing. This we need hardly say is the old unregenerate Capitalism with its class struggle! It should not be forgotten, too, that the workers had to fight to maintain their wage rates under and against the Labour Government, and for the four years between the starting of the new wage index and cost of living index, in June, 1947, and the end of the Labour Government the workers fought a losing battle, for the cost of living rose by 29 per cent, and wage rates by only 22 per cent.

It is true that workers’ earnings have risen by a larger amount than have wage rates. This is because they are working more overtime, more piece-work and other-systems of pay related to output, more night work and shift work. Are these, too, regarded by Mr. Crosland as evidences of progress away from Capitalism?

He thinks “physical poverty” has .gone. May we ask Mr. Crosland what state of living it is that the unemployed, the sick and the aged enjoy on their small allowances, not to mention the several million men and women whose wage rates are on the £6—£7 level or less. Mr. Crosland is not the only person to cherish silly notions about how the treatment of the above groups has been revolutionised, but when allowance is made for the fact that the cost of living is now only just a little short of 2½ times what it was in 1938 the thing will appear in proper perspective. Just to take one item, the unemployment benefit of a single man was 17/- in 1938, it is now 40/-. Truly a staggering advance except for the fact that the purchasing power of 40/- now is slightly less than that of 17/- in 1938!

And what does Mr. Crosland make of the slum position? He thinks that Capitalism has gone but certainly its slums have not. Mr. F. Collin Brown, chief housing and planning inspector to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, told a conference of Sanitary Inspectors at Scarborough on 13 September last that “he estimated that about one million houses in this country were beyond repair. . . . More than three million houses in Great Britain were over 80 years old, and two million-odd over a century old.”--(Times, 14/9/55.).

Another thing, and this [is] vital to the whole question of Capitalism and Socialism, is not even mentioned by Mr. Crosland, that is, the enduring vast inequality of ownership, the 10 per cent. who own 90 per cent. of the accumulated wealth. This is the basis of Capitalism, the ownership of the means of production and distribution by the propertied class. It has not been abolished, it has not been tackled. Nothing whatever has been done about it, nor could it be, except through the abolition of Capitalism and establishment of Socialism.

Mr. Crosland does not deal with this issue and until he does so he has not even begun to present an argument to support his fantastic proposition about the disappearance of Capitalism. Something he does do makes his case even flimsier. He ascribes to Karl Marx the responsibility for having originally turned attention to the economic problems of Capitalism. This, Mr. Crosland approves of, though now he thinks it has become out-of-date with the passing of Capitalism, but he also holds Marx largely responsible that “Socialism came to be (falsely) defined in terms of nationalisation.”

That Socialism was falsely defined in terms of nationalisation we readily admit but not by Marx; this was the work of the Labour Party.

But above all it is false because it obscures the essential feature of the Marxist case, that Capitalism rests on class ownership.

The early Fabians appreciated this and the importance of dealing with it. The later ones, Mr. Crosland among them, faced with the Labour Party’s 50 years of running way from the problem, can only offer now the bland suggestion that ownership doesn't matter after all and Capitalism has disappeared anyway.

One other thing Mr. Crosland failed to notice in his fascination for his argument for forgetting economic problems. He perceived, logically, that if his premises are correct the “ economists ” can be dispensed with for their job is done; but he did not notice that if Capitalism and its evils have passed away, and full employment is safe with the Conservatives, will workers any longer trouble to vote for the Labour Party or for Mr. Crosland?

Greasy Pole: Postman’s knock? (2006)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Devotees of conspiracy theories could be excused for descrying some determined backroom manoeuvring to ensure so swift a climb up the Greasy Pole”

The next time a flood of junk mail and red-printed bills comes through the front door do not, as it were, wish you could kill the messenger. Be aware that the friendly local postie may one day be Prime Minister of Great Britain or, even more distressingly, Leader of the Labour Party. Such an event may be heartening to anyone who is sustained by a conviction that this is a great land of opportunity and that capitalism is the finest arrangement of affairs as it allows anyone, no matter how humble their origins, to rise by their own abilities up to the highest  points in society where they can look down on those whose mail they once delivered.

For example there is Alan Johnson, whose mother died when he was 12, four years after his father had abandoned the family. It looked as if he would be placed in a children’s home but his sister, although only 15, persuaded their social worker that she could care for both of them. Living where the Westway flyover now belches noise and fumes, Johnson went to a local grammar school where he did not get his name onto the varnished honours board; in fact he says the school were “glad to see the back” of him. He took a job as a shelf-filler at Tescos but a problem about his lunch break put an end to that; he already had a child so he moved to Slough, to work as a postman. That led to him being elected as a local trade union official.

A long time after life in a council house under the Westway and then in John Betjeman’s favourite Buckinghamshire town he won a seat in the House of Commons. A few minor ministerial jobs developed into a place in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education. At this year’s Labour Party conference, among the pushing and shoving, the arm twisting and back stabbing, Johnson was spoken of as a challenger for the Leadership but he seemed to lose his appetite for the job – in spite of setting up websites with names like Johnson4leader.com.

Conspiracy?

Devotees of conspiracy theories could be excused for descrying some determined backroom manoeuvring to ensure so swift a climb up the Greasy Pole. Johnson’s constituency – Hull East and Hessle – was previously held by Stuart Randall, who had started out as an apprentice electrician before blossoming into a computer expert – which did not prevent a parliamentary journalist describing him as “nondescript”. Randall resigned from the Commons in 1997, allowing Johnson to take over a rock solid  Labour majority and Randall to be shuffled off to the House of Lords.

Then there was the matter of Johnson’s promotion in September 2004 to his first Cabinet job, as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (where he could start work on harassing Incapacity Benefit claimants back to work). The previous occupant of this job was Andrew Smith, who obligingly decided that he needed to spend more time with his family and with his constituency of Oxford East.

Perhaps he was alarmed by the slashing of his 2001 majority of over 10,000 votes down to 963 in 2005. And perhaps Johnson’s promotion in Smith’s place was not unconnected with the fact that, before he got into Parliament, he had been the only member of Labour’s NEC to support the new Leader Blair in his determination to get rid of Clause Four.

Tuition Fees

Like many New Labour leaders, Johnson shows some embarrassment about his past, about those carefree days in opposition when a budding politician could say almost anything, join almost any organisation, provided it seemed radical and exciting. Interviewed in the Observer Magazine (17 September), he insisted that “the first thing about me is I was never a Trot, or a semi-Trot. I was never, ever a Trot.” But he did not then go on to admit that he was once a branch official in the Communist Party.

Of course he has put all that nonsense behind him now that he is in the serious business of  government. His record of support for Blair is unblemished – so pure that when he was the Minister of State for Further and Higher Education under Charles Clarke he played what Tony Blair later described as “a vital role in the successful introduction of variable tuition fees during the last parliament”.

This mannered praise refers to the fierce battle the government had to endure before they were able to bludgeon the measure through Parliament. In that conflict Johnson’s smooth negotiating talents were crucial alongside Clarke’s belligerence. It was, Johnson said, “. . . a charm offensive. I was the charm and Clarke was offensive”.

This joke may not have gone down well with students and their families who struggle through the time at university and then emerge with the right to wear an academic gown and to pay off a substantial debt. Johnson offers this as justification for his attitude: “If I thought it was going to damage working-class kids, I wouldn’t have backed it”.

Another way of putting this feebly circular case would be to argue that the very fact he had backed the tuition fees must mean that they did not damage anyone; it is a style often used by Tony Blair to justify indefensible actions such as the war in Iraq. In any case Johnson’s attitude is rather at variance with his account of how his daughter was treated by the education system. In an area which still had grammar schools she failed her 11 Plus and was placed in a comprehensive school: “She was very bright but, well, probably life chances were lost then…So am I bitter about selection? Yes. I’ve seen what it does to kids”. But he does not seem to be “bitter” about his support for the proposals to set up “trust” schools which, however words are twisted and whatever promises are made, are intended to operate selection policies which can cost the pupils “life chances”.

Claptrap

On other issues Johnson has solidly supported the government – on ID cards, the war in Iraq, foundation hospitals, the “anti-terrorism” laws. And there will be many more examples, as he strives to promote his career through expressed loyalty to the government.

When he was appointed Secretary of State for Education, the postie who delivers the mail to his office brought a long letter from Blair which set out the tasks ahead of him: “…build on our unprecedented record of economic achievement…ensure the long term security and prosperity of our country and its people…deliver real improvements for ordinary hard working families and to underline our Government’s commitment to social justice through policies to expand opportunity and tackle the most deep seated causes of social exclusion”. At the very end of the letter Blair slips a bit of reality into the clap trap: “Your plans will, of course, need to be set against the background of lower growth in funding than in recent  years”.

One symptom of that reality is that there are 60,000 children in care in this country who are, according to Johnson, treated “appallingly”. This is after nine years of a Labour government presiding over the crises and failures of capitalism.

How does the ex-postie, with all his talents for smoothing over uncomfortable facts, explain that away?

Ivan

Exit a formidable opponent (1987)

From the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of all the MPs who did not return after the election to the House of Commons none expose more clearly the present purpose of parliament, the motivation of their party and the unpleasant realities of capitalist politics than the recently ennobled Lord Callaghan.

After their defeat the Labour Party are, once more, in the throes of something called "Bringing The Party Up To Date", which actually means purging themselves of any policies or so-called principles which are suspected of losing them votes. A letter from "Lifelong Tribune Supporter", Walter Cairns, of the University of Dundee, in the Guardian of 22 July put it like this:

Kinnock and Gould . . . enjoy my unqualified support in their endeavours to refashion the party's image into that of a modern and efficient movement for socialism.

Among the contradictions and misconceptions which crowd this letter from an eminent academic lawyer, one thing stands out. Even while they are advocating policies like refashioning the party image, based on the cynical presumptions of a capitalist society, Labour supporters are capable of claiming that they are doing so with the object of establishing socialism.

If the Labour Party — somehow, somewhere. sometime — does stand for socialism it must follow that its membership consists of socialists — of people who understand socialism and are agreed about the urgency of setting it up in place of capitalism. It must also follow that these people think, speak and act like socialists; for example they oppose any discrimination based on sex or race, they deny that production for profit is a constructive social motivation, they understand that a class society must give rise to class conflict, they reject the principle of political leadership. Applying these standards to the record of James Callaghan reveals conclusive evidence about the authentic character of the Labour Party — that it is not a socialist party but one which stands, quite clearly, for capitalism.

Callaghans early life was an impoverished struggle from which, not untypically, he drew the wrong conclusions. For one thing, the extremities of his family's poverty had something to do with his father's death in 1921, while he was still young, as a result of what he went through in the Navy during the First World War but this did not deter Callaghan from joining the Navy himself during the Second World War. He had left school to become a junior clerk in the Inland Revenue and had risen through his union, the Association of Officers of Taxes. In 1945 he was returned to the Commons for one of the Cardiff constituencies — some prudently left-wing stances during the 1930s had attracted the attention and patronage of Hugh Dalton and Harold Laski. He passed the war quietly in Naval Intelligence. Perhaps after all he did learn something from his father’s death.

Callaghan's rise was something of a mystery to political observers. He had not gone to university, he was not charismatic like Bevan, or sophisticated like Crossman or earthy like Bevin. He had no gift for sweeping rhetoric or quicksilver repartee. What he did have, instead, was a dogged resolve to climb the greasy pole of political power and. to help in this, a cunning feel for many ingrained working class prejudices. Peter Walker, who in these matters knows what he is talking about, described Callaghan the Prime Minister:

We have a Prime Minister, who is good on television; who looks like Stanley Baldwin; who lives like Stanley Baldwin; and Stanley Baldwin with the vote of the Labour Party and North Sea Oil is a very formidable opponent. (Financial Times, 16 December. 1967.)

When the first Wilson government was elected in 1964, Callaghan’s eminence in the Labour Party was enough to see him installed as Chancellor of the Exchequer. This was an unusually tricky appointment. Labour's promise of prosperity through a massive surge in productivity in an age restless with the new technology had led to the setting up of the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA). a new ministry with a brief to blast away the Treasury’s cobwebs of financial orthodoxy. Callaghan, when he was Shadow Chancellor, had made no secret of the orthodoxy of the policies he intended to follow. Speaking at a Yorkshire miners’ summer school in 1962. he warned that ". . . substantial changes are necessary in the reorganisation of Britain’s economy and in the methods of wage-fixing", by which he meant formal "planning" of wage rises. In the same speech Callaghan denounced the Macmillan government for their handling of industrial relations and for governing the country by gimmicks. (Guardian, 28 August. 1962). Probably, the miners loved it. They could not have known that Callaghan was an admirer of, and a close collaborator with, Reginald Maudling, who as Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer was an important practitioner of government by gimmick:

There was a mutual liking and confidence between Maudling and myself. During his tenure of office he did not hesitate to talk privately and frankly to me about his concerns. I reciprocated during my period at the Treasury . . . (James Callaghan, Time and Chance, 1987.)

The Wilson government was dogged by the "central problem" of the balance of payments. They hoped to control the economy through the DEA's National Plan and through the joint Declaration of Intent by the government. the employers and the unions that the way to improve the world standing of British capitalism was for everyone to volunteer to be moderate and restrained about their income. It did not take long for the realities of capitalism to wreck that fantasy and for the Labour government to make moderation and restraint compulsory. At the Labour conference in 1966 Callaghan revealed that what they actually meant by "voluntary" was "under threat of compulsion”:

Those who wanted to force the government to use compulsion have had their way. Perhaps they are proud of their victory but they have done no service to the ordinary men and women of this country, nor to the trade union movement.

This speech also spelled it out that when the government talked about moderation in incomes they really meant in working class incomes — in wages. The income of the capitalist class (who are not "ordinary men and women") did not come into the reckoning.

According to Richard Crossman, Callaghan's apparent nonchalance concealed a panic at the continuing economic crises which at times left him virtually paralysed. For one thing he was under severe pressure to devalue the pound an issue on which he had not only nailed his colours to the mast but burned his boats into the bargain. In the Commons in July 1967 he again stated his opposition to devaluation as". . . not the way out of Britain’s difficulties". So when, in November that year, the government which had promised to raise real standards decided to cut them by devaluing the pound Callaghan had no way out. In what was described as a resignation he swapped offices with Roy Jenkins, to become Home Secretary. It was not a bad reward for a minister whose impotence in face of capitalism's crises had been so harshly exposed.

Callaghan's time as Home Secretary was notable for his pushing through in seven days the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1968 — a panicky reaction to the prejudices maliciously excited by the likes of Duncan Sandys and Enoch Powell over the Asian immigration from Kenya and Uganda. His justification for this measure — that unless the public were confident that immigration was effectively controlled there would be continuing riots and tension (Time and Chance) may have secured a few racist votes for the Labour Party but it contradicted their claim to stand for the free, humane co-operative world of socialism and it was in any case a wretchedly specious argument for trying to appease the appetite of a dangerous prejudice.

Labour’s return to power in 1974 allowed Callaghan to become Foreign Secretary and when Wilson resigned in 1976 he moved predictably into Number Ten, a politician unusually experienced in the three great offices of state below that of Prime Minister. In theory, then, he should have been an historic success. In practice it was very different. His government soon decided that the agreement for voluntary pay restraint negotiated with the unions by Wilson and Michael Foot should be extended. They set a limit of five per cent and threatened sanctions against any company which settled pay claims above that figure. Healey, the Chancellor, was wielding a savage axe on public expenditure. aiming for cuts totalling £3,000 million over the next two years. Callaghan informed the 1976 Labour conference that Keynesian policies, which had once given theoretical sustenance to Labour manifesto writers, were now dead:

We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists . . .

This was greeted as a typical piece of Callaghan common sense; it took no account of the effect which the cuts were to have in, for one, the National Health Service:

Standards of care in the health service have drastically worsened through the lack of money, more work and shortage of nurses, the Royal College of Nurses said yesterday.

(Guardian, 31 October 1987.)

For a while Callaghan seemed to be getting away with those policies but resentment against the government deepened and the Labour Party lost a series of by-elections, most notably in mining and industrial seats like Ashfield and Workington. As their majority dwindled away Callaghan, rather than surrender power, came to an arrangement with the Liberals in which whatever was left of Labour policies were compromised for the sake of Liberal support in parliament.

In the summer of 1978 the unions began to indicate that they had had enough of pay restraint. Many trade unionists were employed in socially vital work for wages below what they could get on Social Security. After a week in the sewage works or the sewers, in ambulances or hospital kitchens they were compelled to scrabble for Family Income Supplement. In the previous winter Callaghan's government had used troops to break the firemen's strike but no detachment of Green Goddesses could have withstood the flood of disruption of the winter of discontent. Callaghan, the Prime Minister who had come up through the trade union movement. was in favour of trying to dragoon the strikers in a State of Emergency but settled for merely urging workers to betray their class interests by crossing picket lines: ''Everyone," he said in the Commons, "has the right to work and everyone has the right to cross a picket line. It is not a sacred object and I hope they will do so". (Guardian 24 January, 1979).

Labour optimism of 1964 was no more than a sour memory when, in March 1979, Callaghan's government were defeated on a motion of confidence and so were forced into an election. The DEA, the National Plan, the technological revolution, the planned growth of productivity and of incomes, were all consigned to the already crowded history of broken promises. In her diaries Barbara Castle described the end of Labour's dream as "stagnant output, high unemployment and falling living standards." This last was, of course, a reference to the condition of the working class for the capitalists were doing rather well. Healey had warned the rich that he would squeeze them until the pips squeaked but as Labour left office the income of the richest one per cent exceeded that of the poorest 20 per cent. In several senses the way had been paved for the age of Thatcher, which the Labour Party now regard as so calamitous. If there were any of what might be called justice in these matters. Callaghan should have shrunk, shame-faced, into obscurity. Instead he subsided into an honoured place on the back benches, with more time to spend on his adored Sussex farm. And when he announced his resignation from parliament he was quickly given a title as reward for all he tried to do, and did, for the interests of the British capitalist class.

His memoirs (Time and Chance) is a curiously passionless book, except when Callaghan launches into extravagant praise for some fellow political trickster. Criticism is, at worst, muted. Perhaps, after all, he does experience some twinges of doubt; perhaps what happened during those dismal years is too much to recall with any strength. He failed to keep a promise to do the impossible, to control an uncontrollable social system which operates on laws based on the interests of a small minority of parasites. In these fruitless endeavours he was indeed a formidable opponent — of the working class where he originated, the class who are the real producers in society. There is a useful lesson in his story. The significance of politicians is not their strength but their impotence and what this tells us about our class power to change society.

Ivan

Labourism—A New Statement of Expedients (1952)

Pamphlet Review from the August 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

A small number of Labour Party members who call themselves “Socialist Union" (formed in 1951), have recently written a booklet called “Socialism —A New Statement of Principles” (Lincolns-Prager, 3s.) It has been reviewed, both favourably and otherwise, in various newspapers and journals, all of which seem to accept the ideas it contains as being the last word in “socialist" thought. This illusion is fostered by the fact that distinction is made in the booklet between the “labour" and “socialist" movements, with the implication that its authors belong to the latter which is supposed to be part of the former. A duality of apparently wanting to run with the hare of discontent with Capitalism and hunt with the hounds of political office is central to the theme of a work which is calculated to please in some way everybody except socialists. We cannot deal here with all the fallacies and false ideas it puts forward, but we can pick out a few that may serve to illustrate our case against Labourism as a whole.

In the introduction the reader is told, in a rather confiding way, that “despite our successes—or perhaps because of them—we are conscious that the society we hoped to build still eludes us. The easy confidence of the past is gone and our way forward is beset with uncertainty." The question may reasonably be asked: if the society they hoped to build still eludes them, in what have their “successes” consisted? The Socialist Union, by way of trying to meet this point, refer to “an unjustified belittling of the genuine achievements of the Labour Government,” but also recognise that “the effect [of its experience of power since 1945] has not been disillusionment, but confusion and uncertainty of mind" This is the old line of complaint that the followers don't realise how much better off their leaders have made them, but what is most remarkable is the mention of disillusionment; this is a term not of outward attack but of inward reproach, and even the attempt to show that it is really something else indicates that its presence in the Labour ranks is tacitly acknowledged.

Nationalisation

The booklet’s admissions about the results of nationalisation can be construed as a belated confirmation of the S.P.G.B's. attitude towards it

"the mere act of nationalisation does not automatically change industrial and social relations in the direction we desire. It is a step—in certain industries a necessary step—but no more. Many of the benefits which were expected naturally to flow are not attained unless further action is taken."

We are accustomed to being told that nationalisation is only a step, but we still want to know what working class interests are involved that make it a necessary one in certain industries and, by implication, an unnecessary one in others. Although they do not say so, it is obvious that the S.U. believe that Labour nationalisation is “in the direction we desire ” but that Conservative nationalisation is not. It all depends on whom the “we" refers to. We are intrigued by the nature of the further action that must be taken before more benefits will flow. If the future benefits are to be of the same order as past ones then this is a very good argument against including nationalisation in further action.

There are numerous examples scattered throughout the booklet of the S.U. tail criticising the Labour Government dog. Thus “the formula of common ownership at least offered one clear line of policy. Abandon it in practice and, unless there is the clearest recognition of our deeper purposes, there may be no line at all, only a tinkering with the present social organisation.” One may wonder why the offer of such a clear line of policy was not taken up, especially since the use of the past tense suggests common ownership as a policy is for some reason no longer an offer. But the second sentence gives the due—”Abandon it in practice . . . tinkering with the present social organisation.” The intervening words are mere padding as far as socialists are concerned.

The S.U. is not averse to a little advertising, presumably for the benefit of capitalists, of the Labour Party’s handling of the workers. “Their wages, even when they are not successful in raising them much above subsistence level, are supplemented by the benefits of the welfare state. This further strengthens their position and their independence.'’ Such remarks add insult to injury when directed, for example, to the unemployed in textile and other industries. If Labourism “strengthens” the workers’ position like this then employers of labour have every cause to support it, and even to encourage more “strengthening"— it would be a cheap price to pay for the docility of the wage-slaves.

Equality

The chapter headed "Ethical Foundations” has a great deal to say about exploitation, human dignity and equality, but the conclusions arrived at are so innocuous and banal that Conservatives and Liberals would be pleased to endorse them. Indeed, George Murray, writing in the Daily Mail expected “ that at any moment I might see in this Socialist publication the Churchillian slogan: Set The People Free.” Strangely enough, the booklet also manages to include a number of sentiments that those who are really working for Socialism would not disagree with. The spirit of brotherhood and fellowship feature largely, but the effect is completely spoiled, and any real meaning abstracted from them, by remarks such as “few are so great as to feel a unity with mankind even beyond their nation's borders ” and “even socialists are unready to project the ideal of equality on to a world-wide scale.”

We in the S.P.G.B. have never claimed that there is anything particularly great in our feeling a unity with all mankind. If it were not for the propaganda of misleaders concerned with preserving Capitalism (welfare state notwithstanding), many more people would be better disposed towards their fellows abroad. The S.U. shows now false its claim to being socialist is by imagining that the people who are to build Socialism can do anything other than co-operate with those who hold similar views in all countries.

Results of Reformism

“Just because we have not always recognised that socialist programmes may vary in time and place, and even in name, the belief took root that there is somewhere, even if only in our imaginations, a ‘ socialist ’ system with its own unique set of institutions.”

“. . . there is no accepted institutional blueprint called socialism.”

Thus has the wheel of Labour reformism turned full circle. Starting out with the idea of gradually reforming Capitalism bit by bit until the change to common ownership would be accomplished, it compromised, collaborated, and cashed in on every grievance to attain political power. Anything was Socialism, and now. after six years of office has brought inevitable disillusionment to its followers, nothing is Socialism. What a bitter pill to swallow this must be for those in the Labour movement who tirelessly worked, as they thought, to abolish Capitalism. Now they are told that it was all an illusion, that the idea for which they made sacrifices was meaningless.

Some of them may remember telling the S.P.G.B. that they had to do “something now” and not just talk about Socialism. It would be easy to taunt, to describe, as some do, as “pathetic” their attempts to salvage what they can from the wreck of a false theory. However we do not believe that this would help them to understand just why Socialism has to be built by people whose actions are always in line with their object. We are not, of course, concerned with those who are in the Labour movement only for what they can personally get out of it—the New Statement of Principles is no doubt just “tactics” to them. But we believe there are many people who, if they read this booklet carefully and think over what it means, will be more inclined to join with the only Socialist Party for the only object that is really worthwhile.

We scarcely need add that the columns of the Socialist Standard are open to anyone who wishes to challenge our views, or to seek enlightenment on any of the other points that we have been unable to deal with here.

Stan Parker