Cliff Slaughter writes on Why vote Labour?

crisis THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE has been the only organization to lead a consistent struggle in the working class for socialist policies, against the betrayal of the Wilson governIn the summer and autumn preceding the 1964 General Election we warned the working class, through "The Newsletter' —forerunner of Workers Press — and through the Young Socialists' campaigns of the consequences of Wilson's leadership.

Even at that time it was clear to Marxists that the post-war economic boom was drawing to an end and that any British government which did not break from capitalism would have to carry out anti-working - class policies, leading to severe unemployment and attacks on living standards.

We therefore called upon the working class to vote Labour, but to combine this anti-Tory vote with the fight to change the Labour leadership and implement socialist policies of nationalization.

The Labour 'lefts' and the Stalinists rejected such a call. They considered (and still do) that 'pressure' could force Wilson to the left. ing spokesmen using all the imaginative and direct methods which the last few years have taught us.' The working class faces the possibility of a Tory government pledged to immediate measures against the trade unions, for 'planned' unemployment, attacks on immigrants, and repressive 'law and order' regulations.

And the revisionists advise the working class to 'disrupt' Labour meetings in the same way, presumably, as Enoch Powell's!

Blackburn's criminally dangerous line represents the interests of the enemy class. It must be condemned unreservedly and driven out of any part of the labour movement where it appears.

Since the 1966 seamen's strike, and particularly since che deteat of the prices anc incomes policy and the anti-union legislation in June 1969, workers have mounted a gigantic wages offensive, embracing low-paid and previously strike-free industries as well as the highly-organized Blackburn writes about 'the recent extended experience of Labour government'. He means only the impressions of the 'left' publicist like himself, and does not analyse the actual experience of the working class in struggle.

Millions of workers understand that to return the Tories could mean a return to the 1930s—a real and bitter prospect, a matter of life and death.

They also know Wilson tried to carry out Tory policies and lay down legislative foundations for the Tory attacks.

These workers are going through a particular, concrete phase of their illusions in reformism.

On the basis of their experience, they consider that even with a treacherous and weak Labour government, it is possible to preserve the gains built up in nearly two centuries of trade unionism through independent militant action.

From the Marxist standWorkers are going through a str point, there is no doubt that if Wilson is returned to power he will serve his capitalist masters and attempt once again to pass anti-union laws and impose a wage-freeze.

The General Election has been brought forward 'to June because of the galloping economic crisis and the need to put an end to the uncertain pre-election period when the workers continue to fight for wages.

Umbrella

To return a Labour government in these circumstances is not a question of the 'lesser evil'.

It is a question of the necessity of going with the working class through the experience of exploding latest illusion that a Labour government can be used as an umbrella beneath which militant trade unionism will be able to preserve the standard of living.

Furthermore, it is necessary to consider the political relationship of forces in the The VSC-IMG march on Satu on page one) which carried the revolutionary struggle for power being brought nearer every day by the world crisis.

This crisis finds the representatives of the capitalists nervous and hesitant, knowing they must attack, but fearful of the consequences.

How much more indecisive will they be if they fail to return their direct representatives-the Conservatives-to office, and have to operate again through the Labourites! ultra-lefts But of course it would be just as true to say, in Britain, that the bourgeois state rests on the trade unions, and through them on the working class (see Trotsky 'Marxism and the Trade Unions').

Should we then withdraw from the trade unions and refuse to work in them because they provide a pillar of bourgeois rule?

On the contrary, we strug gle inside them for a socialist leadership to defeat the agents of the capitalist class, and we defend these mass organizations against every attack.

Blackburn's historical views about the relation between the Labour Party and the trade unions are a travesty of the truth.

Distorts

He distorts history to support his argument about not voting Labour:

•... British trade unionism emerged under the tutelage of the labour aristocracy and its profoundly economistic, Lib-Lab ideology'.

In point of fact, trade unions emerged under conditions of repression in a wide variety of trades and industries, and the New Model Unionism' which answers to But the very existence of a Labour Party, to which the system goes in time of crisis, Strength strength of the working class. is itself a . reflection of the the existence of Labour governments, while reflecting the bourgeoisie's control of the working class to a definite degree, also opens up dangers of the end of this But working-class consciousness is Blackburn's last consideration.

He can think of the workers only as exploited dupes of 'All the evidence suggests that the decision of which Party to vote for will be determined less by class loyalty • and more by a calculation of which Party can run British capitalism better.' In other words, the workers are only interested in a wellrun capitalist system.

In such a situation', Blackburn continues, 'it would be absurd for socialists to muddy their propaganda and activities during the election by commitment to any of the bourgeois parties [i.e. Tory or Labour]' This is the old vice of sectarian fear of the real movement, but without the virtues of the young Cammunist movement, where at least those guilty of sectarian tactics had made a thorough break with parliamentarian and middle-class politics.

Blackburn and his friends come from an entirely middle-class political milieu which he calls the 'extra-parliamentary opposition' and can boast no work in the organized labour movement.

The best summing-up of the whole attitude of this rotten tendency is in Blackburn's closing paragraphs:

'In any case', he says, 'we must rid ourselves of the delusion that our support is likely to make any difference to the immediate outcome of this election ...

•... I do not think that any revolutionary group in Britain can claim that its support would be a "rope" strong enough to hang the Labour Party.' (Lenin spake of supporting Labour as a rope supports a hanging man.)

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