From: "Karl Carlile" <joseph-AT-indigo.ie>
Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 18:15:35 +0000
Subject: Re: M-I: re: Labour and Politics - let's consider class.


The British Labour Party is a bourgeois party. To susggest that it is 
some kind of working class party is poppycock. Incidentally did you 
get elected as an MP Nick?
 
                                       Karl



_-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's true, Bob, but to treat every Social Democratic party identically across the world, just because you've 
spotted a trend, is the worst kind of formalism, no? Each political situation has to be evaulated concretely, 
on the basis of the context, the relevant balance of class forces, and so on. Not to do that leads to the kind 
of confused opinions on the UK Labour Party from American socialists (the Labour Party is like the Democrats) 
or even from socialists in mainland Europe.

The UK Labour Party, despite comrade Roberts' assertions to the contrary is still *just* a different kind of 
party from the social democratic parties of Europe and / or the Democrats. Blair and his cohorts wish that 
difference to be obliterated and they may well succeed in doing so. But to operate now on an assumption of 
defeat in that struggle is to advocate passivity. The result of not fighting Blair will be disorientation and 
demoralisation. THe results of fighting him may well be defeat - but defeat is better than not fighting.

Harry's statement about the formation of the Labour Party ignores the fact that the various strands of Marxism 
in Britain at the time took part in the creation of it. He also massively over-simplifies the clas position in 
the unions at the time, to paint a picture of Labour as purely a party of capital. It is true that the manual 
unions were less enthusiastic about the Labour Party - the Mineworkers' Federation, for example, continued to 
fund Liberal MPs for a while - did this make the Liberal party more 'revolutionary' than Labour? Possibly, 
according to cde Roberts, but not on any concrete reading of events.

The vote in safe Labour seats was low, but "laugahbly"? Nowhere near as low as the vote in many strike 
ballots, or the elections for the union General Secretaries. So what does that prove? Partly that workers are 
cynical about Labour, as cde Roberts suggests, but partly that many, many people feel completely cut off from 
politics altogether. Not a progressive thing, that.

If Harry was right about Labour, then there should have been a massive vote for the SLP and for the Militant, 
but actually that did not happen. The workers who were disillusioned in Labour simply didn't vote, because 
although they don't trust Blair, they don't want to be dividing the Labour movement (as Scargill et al were 
seen to be doing). So, the question is what to do about it. Cde Roberts says that to tell people to vote 
Labour would be quite unacceptable, while Bob follows the rest of the left in assuming that the only choices 
are "critical support" of Blair or outside opposition to the entire Labour Party.

If these really are the only choices, then what do we say to the millions of working class people who just 
voted Labour in order to get rid of a vicious Tory government? "You were wrong to vote Labour"? That is what 
Harry MUST say to them, since voting Labour was "quite unacceptable". Bob seems to side with this view, too. 
But the "critical support" people fare no better - "you should have voted Labour *critically*," they say, 
confusing the poor workers, who can't figure out how you signal critical support on a ballot paper - write 
faintly, perhaps? Or only use a very small 'X'?

Neither of these positions stand up to the crucial test - how your politics relates to the lives of ordinary 
working class people. Labour is still, they say, our Party, however tenuously, and we wanted our Party in 
government. The only rational response from Marxists to this is to agree: "Indeed we do, but not at any price 
- we wanted Labour to win the election in order to change society. Labour can only change society if the class 
that elected it fight for it to do so. So now you've voted Labour fight for it to deliver."

And if you weren't talking their language before May 1st, they're not going to listen to you after May 1st. 

> It is also true that the union bureaucracy that is loyal just wants part of
> the action whereas the leftward "traditionals" at best want to go back to
> the good old times.

But those 'good old times' simply aren't on offer. I think that everyone in the Labour movement now 
understands that - it is the cause of the disorientation among the soft left: they know their project is 
finished (realistically it finished with Kinnock, but many of them refused to give up hope, and John Smith 
accomodated them. Blair doesn't think he needs to), and they've got nothing left.

There are only two choices: Blairism - Labour as a truly capitalist party, or Marxism - Labour re-invigorated 
by struggle from below. To preach "anti-Labourism" now (as opposed to anti-Blairism; I'm anti-Blair) is 
to assume that there's only one choice left for the Labour Party, that Blair has won, and that the working 
class has got to start again rebuilding a Labour movement from the grassroots up. But that is woefully 
premature, and based on a set of misguided assumptions - and it is not a view shared by the working class. 

Where are the resolutions to trade union conferences calling for disaffiliation from the Labour Party? Not 
even the Liverpool dockers (who would have most justification) have proposed this, nor even the NUM! So why do 
the anti-Labourites feel they know better than the working class?

No, Bob, you're wrong. Not because workers should give critical support to Blair (they shouldn't), but because 
'support' is not the fundamental issue - involvement & struggle are the issues, and the places workers should 
fight the Labour government of Blair is inside the Labour movement: the unions and the Party, for as long as 
we can do so there. Only if we lose in that milieu should we leave it.

The grass may look greener on the other side, but that's because there aren't any workers trampling it down.

> But in England the SLP represented a sizeable split to the left of the LP
> and in fact in a deformed way represent the aspirations of workers in
> England and in this case the left should have called for no vote to Labor
> and critical support to the SLP. Communists should take every opportunity to
> deepen the political split of the working class from the traditional Social
> democracy and when opportunities like in England prsent themselves the left
> failed miserably!

No, Bob. The idea that the SLP represented a "sizeable split to the left of the LP" is a fantasy. On three 
counts. Firstly, the idea that it was a split from Labour. It wasn't, not in any meaningful sense. Most of 
its members were actually ex-CP, many had never been in the Labour Party, and those who had been had mostly 
left some time before. Scargill failed to organise any kind of aggressive recruitment and didn't take any 
significant union leaderships (i.e. people who might represent something) with him. It has neither numbers nor 
weight.

Secondly, it is not sizeable - a handful of thousand at most: good for a revolutionary party, certainly, but 
the SLP makes clear that it is not that. As a rival to the Labour Party it is frankly pathetic.

And thirdly, it is not to the left. Not really. The manifesto was shockingly timid. As you probably know, I 
stood as a Labour candidate, and was able in election material to spell out what I would consider to be 
transitional demands for the current situation in the UK (rebuilding the welfare state, cutting hours to end 
unemployment, taxing the rich to fund the social priorities, etc.). My 'Labour' election leaflet was far more 
left-wing than the stuff put out by the SLP candidates locally (who spent their time criticising the local 
Labour council (echoing the Tories, who spent the whole campaign doing nothing much else). Now the council 
deserves criticism, and the councillors deserve replacing, but that is not what socialists should focus on in 
a General Election.
> 
> However I wonder what Harry's position is on work in the unions in regards to all of this?

A good question - given that he's so negative about the Labour Party, and given that he's equally negative 
about the union leaderships (and it's certainly true that the union leaders are barely an improvement on Blair 
in many cases) the logic of his submission is that workers should leave the unions and concentrate on building 
an ideologically pure formation for only those workers who are already a class-for-themselves.

That is a pretty classic definition of sectarianism, isn't it? It's no good preaching only to the converted, 
nor is it any good waiting for the class to discover itself (which some of cde Roberts' post seems to imply). 
We have to get out there, into the thick of the class-as-it-is, and tyr to help it develop, move, and 
struggle, one step after another. The revolutionary party won't be created by wishing it into being, nor will 
the revolutionary class.

Nick




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                          Yours etc.,
                                     Karl   


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