Political pantomimes (1984)

From the October 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was just a year ago that Neil Kinnock, obviously appalled at being elected leader of the Labour Party, made his well-publicised attempt to throw himself into the sea, only to be thwarted when he lost his footing in the treacherous shingle of Brighton beach and was hauled to safety by his wife. Those were days of a sprouting optimism in the Labour Party. The awful experience of being led to predictable defeat by bungling Michael Foot had, the party members hoped as they left their conference, been put behind them. They now had a new pair at the helm — the so-called dream ticket of Kinnock and Hattersley, which was another way of saying that between them these two politicians were expected to be able to pander to every imaginable prejudice and misconception in the minds of the voters. With unemployment on the rise and the Tories’ luck surely due to run out. Labour could look forward to a year of improved fortunes; perhaps they would win a few by-elections, carry some important local authorities and set their sights on an early return to power.

The Conservatives too were euphoric — and with better reason than the Labour Party. Their election was in the bag and nothing is more likely to enthuse party members, from the silver coiffures of the constituencies to the ambitious back-benchers. than the prospect of a long period in government. The gamble of the Falklands war which, had it failed, might have wiped out their chances for a long time, had succeeded triumphantly. The atavistic appeal to workers' most miserable prejudices of patriotism had paid off; voters everywhere were convinced that the war had again proved that British soldiers, sailors and airmen are many times tougher, braver and more durable than any others. It was all very dramatic and heady. Of course there were a few people who had been killed, a few more who had been horribly maimed and disfigured who could not be shown to the cheering crowds at the “victory” parade. But they didn’t count; they were less likely to win votes than the marching ranks of those who had come back in one piece. The Falklands helped Thatcher slaughter Foot in the election; the list of politicians she has picked off grows impressively long — Heath, Callaghan, Foot . . . No wonder the Tories enjoyed themselves so much at the seaside last October for by their standards everything was going so well; if they ignored the unemployment figures they could feel the economy was coming right, if they ignored the mounting evidence of the sharpening of working class poverty they could proclaim that their policies were reaping a rich harvest.

But as they gather for their annual bout of morale-boosting this year, the two parties may be in different humour. For the Labour Party, Kinnock has not turned out to be the Kennedy-style vote winner they hoped for. A recent attempt to appear athletically informal backfired to such an extent that he was in danger of being stuck with the image of a rather foolish playboy — something he has since worked hard at expunging with some long, tedious contributions to what are called debates in the House of Commons. On the more delicate matters of policy — delicate because they require a skilful balancing act between warring factions within the party and because it is a matter of luck in their timing whether they are vote winners or losers — Kinnock has too often been exposed in his attempts to fudge the issues.

On nuclear weapons he declares that a Labour government under his leadership would scrap the Trident missile programme and turn the American nuclear bases out of Britain. In his rise to the top Kinnock trod the traditional left wing back bencher’s road of support for CND and this is too recent for him not to now make some gestures towards it. But what he now puts forward is a long, long way from the unilateral abandonment by British capitalism of its nuclear weapons stock. It is a long, long way from promising any solution to the horrifying prospect of a world nuclear conflict for even without Trident and cruise missiles the capitalist powers would still hold several times more weapons than would be needed to blow most of settled life off the face of the earth. But of course no one in their right mind would expect a Labour government, trying to protect the interests of the British capitalist class, to scrap their nuclear weapons, whatever the last party conference had said. Nobody in their right mind — which means nobody with the slightest knowledge of how the competitive system of capitalism has to work — would expect the other powers to be impressed by any such modification of policy as Kinnock promises. And no worker about to be changed into atomic vapour would worry about which weapon system was responsible, or what its name was. What this means is that as long as the support for capitalism, which is so tirelessly fostered by the Labour Party, continues the system will carry on in its inhuman, perilous way until perhaps the missiles fly and there are a few' minutes for the working class to regret their rejection of the revolutionary solution to it all.

If nuclear disarmament is liable to cost the Labour Party a lot of votes, the issue of strikes looms even larger in their nightmares of another June 1983. The working class attitude to strikes can be a curiously ambiguous affair. On the one hand most workers, whatever their prejudices and pretensions, are liable to be persuaded that only strike action can protect their interests. This is true of many groups of workers who at one time would not have been seen dead in a ditch with a picketing miner or docker. But now hospital employees, banking workers, and civil servants are among those who have used the strike weapon. Even “professional” (whatever that may mean) workers like teachers and engineers are prepared to come out to get better pay and conditions or to resist attacks on their standards. But on the other hand these workers are often quick to condemn other groups who take strike action. Another widespread inconsistency in workers’ attitudes towards strikes is the impression that somehow the Labour Party is invariably in favour of them. Of course this is quite unfair to the Labour Party who. when they have been in government, have always bitterly fought workers who stood against Labour’s attempts to cut back their standards. If Tory ministers now inveigh against the alleged excesses of pickets and urge other workers to break the picket lines, they are following the example set by members of the last Labour government, like Home Secretary Merlyn Rees and Prime Minister James Callaghan who, in that infamous winter of discontent, knew on which side of the picket line their sympathies lay.

So when he is confronted with something like the strike in the coal mines. Kinnock has a serious problem in assuaging several prejudices at once. This year’s Labour conference will give a lot of attention to the issue; there will be demonstrating workers urging all-out support for the miners, opposed by sober warnings about the effect this will have on Labour votes outside. This has been the story of many a Labour conference, as some members passionately joust for what they have been brought up to know as the soul of the party against those who are alive to the reality of a party which wants power over British capitalism and must not let a little thing like political theory or principle get in the way. Kinnock’s every word at this conference will be carefully probed by zealous media hacks who at the end will give their verdict on his capacity as a possible future prime minister, which means their rating of his ability to deceive. For him it promises to be a harrowing time and so far he has not shown too much agility when under such pressure. Perhaps this time he won’t slip up at the water’s edge.

The fact that the Tories are rather better at hiding their splits should not disguise their existence. For some time now they have been in trouble on a number of issues, bravely dismissed by them as a slight matter of slipping on banana skins. But this evasion cannot apply to the coal strike, which has its electoral perils for the government. At the moment they may well be gambling on beating the miners through a combination of starving them back to work and shaming them back as the strike leads to winter power cuts and an inevitable reaction from workers whose normally miserable lives are made even more so by being plunged into darker and colder conditions. But the most recent precedent for this, the three day week in 1973/74, did not turn out as a victory for the Heath government. Rather than being seen as the valiant defenders of civilisation against rampaging hordes of workshy saboteurs, that government were damned as causing a disruption to industry which could have been avoided through more sensitive and canny handling — the sort which the Labour Party, with its so-called social contract and Employment Minister Michael Foot, were only too anxious to provide.

It is history now. that Heath never recovered from that disaster which has left him sulking on his party’s back benches. If it turns out that Thatcher has similarly miscalculated. the same fate could await her. The suffering and the squalor of capitalism goes on untroubled by any realistic expectation in those two parties that they will ever bring it to an end. None of that matters; the leader is safe as long as they can work so successful a deceit on the working class that fear is conceived as happiness, disease as health, repression as freedom. Look carefully at Thatcher's speech at the Conservative conference this year; under the pressures of running British capitalism she is showing signs of wear and such are the disputes in her party now that it will need a truly slick performance by her if that inevitable standing ovation is to be really as rapturous and as heartfelt as it seems.

Is it too gloomy to predict that, as usual, both parties will succeed in their deceptions and that once again the workers will nourish this society with their bland acceptance of what should be unacceptable? Party conferences are designed as occasions when the morale batteries are recharged. It needs only some flashes of insight into social realities for them to become occasions of exposure and despair for the politicians and of exhilarating hope for the people.

Ivan