Left against Right at Brighton

[p009] LEFT AGAINST RIGHT AT BRIGHTON AS THE 56th annual conference of the Labour Party draws nearer the preliminary verbal skirmishes take on a sharper tone. The Tory Press exult in the apparent disunity of the Labour movement, but their exultation only shows their lack of understanding of the real issues. The clash between the Left and Right wings of the Labour Party is not the sordid struggle for personal aggrandizement which the capitalist Press assumes it to be—or rather which it suits them to portray as such. True, personalities play their role in the Labour move- ment as in the Tory Party. The Labour Government’s record would have been somewhat different if Nye Bevan had been Prime Minister instead of Clement Attlee; but not all that different, for Bevan like Attlee would have been working within the framework of a capitalist social and economic order. Labour’s two wings reflect predominantly the different class pressures which are brought to bear on them. The susceptibilities of the various leaders to these pressures reflect their social background, personal ambitions and domestic environ- ment. Hugh Gaitskell had that much-reputed training in 134 C. van Gelderen leadership which is supposed to be the main virtue of a public school education. But the role of Eton, Winches- ter and Harrow is not to produce socialists or dedicated leaders of the Labour movement. On the contrary! The British public schools make a point of imprinting on the minds of their scholars that they are ‘top-drawer’, born to rule. They teach them to treat the working class civilly, but at a distance. How can these scions of Society, enjoying all the privileges a class-ridden social order has to offer, have any other thought than that this is the best of all possible worlds? True, their social consciences may have been roused by the misery of the *tween-war years. The hungry thirties tugged at their heart-strings and they were emotionally driven towards the Labour movement. War, with its horrors and suffer- ing, emphasized the more obvious insanities of capital- ism. The Labour Party not only offered them a balm for their consciences but also an opportunity for political advancement. Although they joined the Labour Party they never became part of the movement or felt themselves part of it. Their role, as they saw it, was to ameliorate the lot of

[p010] the working man but not to change the social order. In much the same way their Victorian grandmothers used to do the rounds of the working-class cottages at Christ- mas doling out buckets of charity coal. It made them feel they were doing some good in this world and en- suring for themselves a niche in the next. Today their grandsons have their eyes not so much on some heaven- ly abode as on a seat in Parliament. In addition to the products of the public schools, the Right wing also draws its strength, and perhaps its main strength, from the conservative-minded trade union leadership. Although these men and women have a social background vastly different from that of the Gait- skells and the Daltons, they too have their roots deep in the soil of capitalism. The British trade union movement has battened on the super-profits which British capital- ism derived from the exploitation of a world-wide em- pire. While some of the crumbs went to the more privi- leged section of the working class, the leadership of the movement received, not merely crumbs, but a portion of the cake itself. More and more they became divorced from those they were supposed to lead and from the class they sprang from. A vast bureaucracy grew up, determined to defend their own privileged positions and . ‘the social order which had made it possible for them to elevate themselves above their fellow-workers. They were prepared to reform some of the grosser abuses of the capitalist system and to pay lip service to socialism as a distant ideal, for only so could they retain their hold on the rank and file. But overthrow it? They echoed the thought of the German social-democrat Ebert: ‘I hate the revolution like sin itself!’ Labour’s Left-wing leadership are today associated with the group round Tribune and usually lumped to- gether as ‘Bevanites’. Originally they were a group of intellectuals with various class backgrounds; the course of the struggle within the party has forced them to base ‘themselves more and more on the authentic working- class core of the movement. This has found reflection to some extent in the pages of Tribune. It has also been reflected in differentiations within the group. As the next Labour Government draws nearer, those who see in themselves future Cabinet Ministers adopt a more con- ciliatory attitude toward the Right-wing leadership, rely- ing on their ‘radical’ past to save them should they have miscalculated and a Left-wing leadership emerge in the next two or three years. The history of the Labour movement over the past few years shows very well how the law of uneven and combined development works out in practice. As the impulse toward socialism given by the Labour victory in 1945 began to lose its momentum a sharp division arose within the Labour movement itself. The great mass of the working class, whose standard of living had been advanced in the post-war years, tended to forget the lessons of the past. The trade unions had greatly in- creased their power, and there was a tendency to look upon their massive strength as sufficient to safeguard the gains achieved. Labour’s Right-wing leadership set the tone by talking about ‘consolidation’ and _ soft- pedalled any further advances towards socialism. Poli- tical action appeared to have had its day, and the apathy of the rank and file was demonstrated by the fall in the Labour Party membership and abstentionism on Polling Day. At the same time trade union membership con- tinued to increase. 135 This sense of complacency was the basis for the hegemony of the Right-wing leadership both in the trade unions and in the Labour Party. The trade union bureaucracy, in fact, provided the hard core of the Right-wing leadership in the party and ensured its pre- dominance at successive Labour Party conferences. Even the electoral victory of the Tories in 1951 did not immediately change this situation. Full employment ap- peared to be firmly established and the Government ap- peared to pay due deference to the powerful position of the trade unions. Everything seemed to be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. But while the complacency within the trade union wing of the movement was propping up the Right-wing leadership, within the political wing of the movement the conscious socialists began to sound the alarm. In the last days of the Labour Government a Left wing began to emerge under the leadership of Nye Bevan, and it soon became. apparent that this Left wing had the al- most solid support of the constituency parties. Only the solidarity of the trade union bureaucracy saved the Right-wing leadership from defeat. At conference after conference the constituency parties voted for the Left- wing candidates to the National Executive, only to find themselves confronted by the almost solid phalanx of the trade union block votes. At Brighton, however, Conference will meet in an entirely different situation. The full effect of Toryism in power is beginning to make itself felt. Full employment is no longer taken for granted; for the first time since the first world war the working-class tenant has lost the security of tenure of his home. On every front the capitalist class has launched its offensive against the working class, with the Tory Government spearheading the attack. Every worker can now see the truth of the Marxist dictum that the government is nothing else than the executive committee of the ruling class. The drive against the workers is directed, first of all, against the trade unions. An all-out attempt to break the power of the unions is on the order of the day. All the organs of capitalism, the government, the pulpit, radio, television and Press, are thrown into the battle. Every strike is transformed into a minor battle. The capitalist newspapers vie with each other in vilification of strikers, in a vain effort to destroy the solidarity of labour and to prepare for State intervention. The days of industrial peace are over and the trade union movement, from being in the rear of the struggle against capitalism, is now in the van. With their positions threatened, the trade unions fully realize that industrial action is not enough, and that political action against the Tories is part of the same fight which the busmen, the market porters and the dockers have been waging on the picket lines. All the union conferences which have been held in the last few months reflect this new mood of political militancy with- in the movement. While the Labour leadership, with its eyes on the past, produces perversions of the party’s tra- ditional policy such as Industry and Society, the union conferences reaffirm their faith in a policy of full- blooded nationalization as a necessary step towards socialism. The Executive’s policy statements on future nationalization and on the running of the nationalized industries are likely to receive rough treatment at Brighton. In the past, when threatened by the rising revolt of

[p011] of social ownership is to be realized then the capitalist class must be fought. ' _ The problems of the working class cannot be re- solved by a simple stroke of the pen. The real struggle on the factory floor stubbornly refuses to be ‘resolved’ by comfortable Fabian formulas. Is not the fight for more nationalization part of the class struggle, an ex- tension, in fact, of the tight which goes on in the factory? Contrary to the declarations of the Right wing, the capitalist is not inattentive to his ownership and control on the factory floor. Every militant shop steward knows that no matter how well organized the workers in the factory may be, there is a point beyond which militant industrial action is not enough. This is also understood by the capitalist class, which may give this or that con- cession, but will fight bitterly to maintain its ownership and control. For the working class, therefore, nationali- zation presents itself as a political act, the aim of which is to strengthen its own position in the industrial struggle. By this means the British workers seek to carry through the struggle against the evils of the system of exploitation and its attendant market chaos. In the trade union movement, nationalization pre- sents itself as a question of control—not abstractly, in the form of who owns most shares, but concretely, from the point of view of the class struggle. The workers argue that with the extension of nationalization to the rest of industry the trade union movement could demand a real plan of production and through this an end to threats of unemployment and, perhaps, a shorter working day. The trade union movement has noted the successes of even the limited planning achieved in those industries already _ lenge to capitalism. nationalized. It has however also noted the failure of the miners and the railwaymen to achieve any real con- trol over their own production. The NEC brushes aside this question as syndicalist nonsense and substitutes in place of workers’ control the hoary formula consulta- tions—a word detested in every nationalized industry. Consultation places the worker in exactly the same re- lation to the boss as he was before, a mere adjunct to the machine, whereas the worker is aiming for control of the factory, control of the productive process and liberation from the bonds of wage labour. To this end nationalization is the political form through which the workers now seek to press the attack against capitalism. There are of course doctrinaires who argue that nationalization is not socialism, that it is simply State capitalism, exploitation in another form. Strictly speak- ing they are right. The National Coal Board and British Railways are not yet socialism. Few in the Labour move- ment as yet are quite clear about what is meant by socialism. But what is of far greater importance than the sermonizing of the sectarians is that the Labour movement now pours into the demand for nationaliza- tion a class content which is clashing with the reformist policies of the Labour leaders. By this means, the workers are moving forward towards a decisive chal- The tasks of Marxists today are,-first, to strip the liberal mask from the programme of Fabianism and to expose it as one more form of class collaboration. Secondly, they must arm the movement with the pro- gramme of class struggle for the nationalization of all the major industries without compensation and with workers’ control. LEFT AGAINST RIGHT AT BRIGHTON AS THE 56th annual conference of the Labour Party draws nearer the preliminary verbal skirmishes take on a sharper tone. The Tory Press exult in the apparent disunity of the Labour movement, but their exultation only shows their lack of understanding of the real issues. The clash between the Left and Right wings of the Labour Party is not the sordid struggle for personal aggrandizement which the capitalist Press assumes it to be—or rather which it suits them to portray as such. True, personalities play their role in the Labour move- ment as in the Tory Party. The Labour Government’s record would have been somewhat different if Nye Bevan had been Prime Minister instead of Clement Attlee; but not all that different, for Bevan like Attlee would have been working within the framework of a capitalist social and economic order. Labour’s two wings reflect predominantly the different class pressures which are brought to bear on them. The susceptibilities of the various leaders to these pressures reflect their social background, personal ambitions and domestic environ- ment. Hugh Gaitskell had that much-reputed training in 134 C. van Gelderen leadership which is supposed to be the main virtue of a public school education. But the role of Eton, Winches- ter and Harrow is not to produce socialists or dedicated leaders of the Labour movement. On the contrary! The British public schools make a point of imprinting on the minds of their scholars that they are ‘top-drawer’, born to rule. They teach them to treat the working class civilly, but at a distance. How can these scions of Society, enjoying all the privileges a class-ridden social order has to offer, have any other thought than that this is the best of all possible worlds? True, their social consciences may have been roused by the misery of the *tween-war years. The hungry thirties tugged at their heart-strings and they were emotionally driven towards the Labour movement. War, with its horrors and suffer- ing, emphasized the more obvious insanities of capital- ism. The Labour Party not only offered them a balm for their consciences but also an opportunity for political advancement. Although they joined the Labour Party they never became part of the movement or felt themselves part of it. Their role, as they saw it, was to ameliorate the lot of

[p012] the working man but not to change the social order. In much the same way their Victorian grandmothers used to do the rounds of the working-class cottages at Christ- mas doling out buckets of charity coal. It made them feel they were doing some good in this world and en- suring for themselves a niche in the next. Today their grandsons have their eyes not so much on some heaven- ly abode as on a seat in Parliament. In addition to the products of the public schools, the Right wing also draws its strength, and perhaps its main strength, from the conservative-minded trade union leadership. Although these men and women have a social background vastly different from that of the Gait- skells and the Daltons, they too have their roots deep in the soil of capitalism. The British trade union movement has battened on the super-profits which British capital- ism derived from the exploitation of a world-wide em- pire. While some of the crumbs went to the more privi- leged section of the working class, the leadership of the movement received, not merely crumbs, but a portion of the cake itself. More and more they became divorced from those they were supposed to lead and from the class they sprang from. A vast bureaucracy grew up, determined to defend their own privileged positions and the social order which had made it possible for them to elevate themselves above their fellow-workers. They were prepared to reform some of the grosser abuses of the capitalist system and to pay lip service to socialism as a distant ideal, for only so could they retain their hold on the rank and file. But overthrow it? They echoed the thought of the German social-democrat Ebert: ‘I hate the revolution like sin itself! Labour’s Left-wing leadership are today associated with the group round Tribune and usually lumped to- gether as ‘Bevanites’. Originally they were a group of intellectuals with various class backgrounds; the course of the struggle within the party has forced them to base ‘themselves more and more on the authentic working- class core of the movement. This has found reflection to some extent in the pages of Tribune. It has also been reflected in differentiations within the group. As the next Labour Government draws nearer, those who see in themselves future Cabinet Ministers adopt a more con- ciliatory attitude toward the Right-wing leadership, rely- ing on their ‘radical’ past to save them should they have miscalculated and a Left-wing leadership emerge in the next two or three years. The history of the Labour movement over the past few years shows very well how the law of uneven and combined development works out in practice. As the impulse toward socialism given by the Labour victory in 1945 began to lose its momentum a sharp division arose within the Labour movement itself. The great mass of the working class, whose standard of living had been advanced in the post-war years, tended to forget the lessons of the past. The trade unions had greatly in- creased their power, and there was a tendency to look upon their massive strength as sufficient to safeguard the gains achieved. Labour’s Right-wing leadership set the tone by talking about ‘consolidation’ and _ soft- pedalled any further advances towards socialism. Poli- tical action appeared to have had its day, and the apathy of the rank and file was demonstrated by the fall in the Labour Party membership and abstentionism on Polling Day. At the same time trade union membership con- tinued to increase. 135 This sense of complacency was the basis for the hegemony of the Right-wing leadership both in the trade unions and in the Labour Party. The trade union bureaucracy, in fact, provided the hard core of the Right-wing leadership in the party and ensured its pre- dominance at successive Labour Party conferences. Even the electoral victory of the Tories in 1951 did not immediately change this situation. Full employment ap- peared to be firmly established and the Government ap- peared to pay due deference to the powerful position of the trade unions. Everything seemed to be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. But while the complacency within the trade union wing of the movement was propping up the Right-wing leadership, within the political wing of the movement the conscious socialists began to sound the alarm. In the last days of the Labour Government a Left wing began to emerge under the leadership of Nye Bevan, and it soon became apparent that this Left wing had the al- most solid support of the constituency parties. Only the solidarity of the trade union bureaucracy saved the Right-wing leadership from defeat. At conference after conference the constituency parties voted for the Left- wing candidates to the National Executive, only to find themselves confronted by the almost solid phalanx of the trade union block votes. At Brighton, however, Conference will meet in an entirely different situation. The full effect of Toryism in power is beginning to make itself felt. Full employment is no longer taken for granted; for the first time since the first world war the working-class tenant has lost the security of tenure of his home. On every front the capitalist class has launched its offensive against the working class, with the Tory Government spearheading the attack. Every worker can now see the truth of the Marxist dictum that the government is nothing else than the executive committee of the ruling class. The drive against the workers is directed, first of all, against the trade unions. An all-out attempt to break the power of the unions is on the order of the day. All the organs of capitalism, the government, the pulpit, radio, television and Press, are thrown into the battle. Every strike is transformed into a minor battle. The capitalist newspapers vie with each other in vilification of strikers, in a vain effort to destroy the solidarity of labour and to prepare for State intervention. The days of industrial peace are over and the trade union movement, from being in the rear of the struggle against capitalism, is now in the van. With their positions threatened, the trade unions fully realize that industrial action is not enough, and that political action against the Tories is part of the same fight which the busmen, the market porters and the dockers have been waging on the picket lines. All the union conferences which have been held in the last few months reflect this new mood of political militancy with- in the movement. While the Labour leadership, with its eyes on the past, produces perversions of the party’s tra- ditional policy such as Industry and Society, the union conferences reaffirm their faith in a policy of full- blooded nationalization as a necessary step towards socialism. The Executive’s policy statements on future nationalization and on the running of the nationalized industries are likely to receive rough treatment at Brighton. In the past, when threatened by the rising revolt of

[p013] the rank and file, the Right-wing leadership has been able to depend on the support of the trade union bureau- cracy, and especially on the leaderships of the three giants, the Transport and General Workers’ Union, the National Union of General and Municipal Workers and the National Union of Mineworkers. Today the TGWU leaders are compelled to reflect the pressures of. their rank and file and have moved sharply to the Left. The result is a complete transformation of the scene within the Labour Party. At Brighton the Left wing will emerge considerably strengthened and clearly in the ascendant, a warning to the leadership that the working class of Britain expects it to fight the next election on a socialist platform, and to put a socialist policy into practice when returned to power. The fight of Labour’s rank and file against its own bureaucracy has also been augmented by events on a world scale. The recent blows which have been dealt at the Stalinist bureaucracies in the Soviet Union, Hun- gary and Poland have also shaken the complacency of the social-democratic bureaucracies in the Western countries. All over the world the working people are stirring as they prepare for the task of eliminating capitalism for ever and establishing a socialist saqciety. Through its delegates at Brighton British labour has an opportunity to express its solidarity with that aim and set about ridding itself of the Tories as a first step on the road to socialism.