EDITORIAL STATEMENT
During [1968] the Wilson government has continued quite unashamedly on its course of acting as the saviour of British capitalism. Its measures during the past year, from the savage post-devaluation cuts to the latest niggardly economies on school meals and the failure to control in any way rises in rents, prices etc., have continued to alienate more and more sections of its traditional support. In the best traditions of neo-capitalism the Incomes Policy, enforced with renewed vigour by the erstwhile "Left winger", Barbara Castle, has been the centre-piece of its policy. Its devotion to the 'strength of the £' i.e. to the interests of the City, has and will continue to have the effect of leading it into continual attacks on living standards in which the lowest paid sectors will suffer most hardship. In the field of foreign policy a complete sellout on Rhodesia now seems imminent, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia has served as an excuse to strengthen the commitment to N.A.T.O. Support for U.S. imperialism in Vietnam has been unflinching.
Electorally the Party can take no encouragement from the year's events. The swing shown in Bassetlaw would give the Tories a majority of 200 plus. In the traditional strongholds of Wales and Scotland the nationalist upswing which has had a particular appeal among young people continues. The latter is in some ways the most threatening sign for Wilson. Although it is clear that the nationalist upsurge was prompted by the complete disillusionment in these traditional Labour strongholds at the failure of the government to live up to its promises, it is apparent that nationalism, once aroused, may prove to be a more durable phenomenon, and these areas, already slower than elsewhere to register the effects of a national 'swing' may not return to the Labour fold. Such a development would spell real disaster from which it would be very difficult for the Labour Party to re-emerge as a viable alternative to the Tories. It is clearly becoming more and more difficult for Wilson to pull something out of the hat which will regain him popularity in time for the next election.
However the experience of the Humphrey campaign in the U.S.A. should caution us against making any absolutely firm predictions on this score.
The erosion of public support for the Labour Party has been reflected in increasing decay and disillusionment within its ranks. It is very difficult to chronicle the precise fortunes of the Party in terms of membership and degree of activity, but even the figures published by the Transport House show a decline in individual membership this year. These figures are of course gross overestimates because most constituencies [are] on the minimum of 1,000 members and it is safe to assume that a [illegible] number do [illegible]. No register for active membership exist[s], but an optimistic figure of 100 per Constituency would give a total of 63,000 - fewer people than participated in the October Vietnam Mobilisation.
A general haemorrhage of membership has occurred from all sections of the party. A large number of those who remain are either die-hard loyalists or blatant careerists. It is certain that the age structure has hardened in favour of the middle aged and elderly and that the Labour Party Young Socialists has declined appreciably. In [the] latter field the 1968 Conference was the smallest ever. The decision of the International Socialism Group to pull out of the L.P.Y.S. (which involved particularly the extremely irresponsible resignation of the only member of the National Committee actually elected by the branches in his area) has still further weakened the movement. It is likely that this year's L.P.Y.S. conference will be smaller than ever.
The level of activity in the Labour Party in the past year has become extremely low. There have been few instances of Parties participating in any notable campaigns either locally or nationally. Only one Labour Party banner was to be seen on the October Mobilisation for instance. At the Conference this year, in spite of the crushing defeats suffered by the platform, there was no sign of an organised fight from the left. A quick glance at the resolutions demonstrates graphically the extremely low political level in the Party. It is worth contrasting the situation now with that in the early sixties. At that stage a large number of those who considered themselves Marxists and revolutionaries and who were not members of the Communist Party participated in the debate within the Labour Party. Today the opposite is the case. Consequently the level of debate at local and National Conference level has plummeted. At the moment dismay and disillusionment at the government's performance are more common than criticism from a coherent standpoint.
The reaction of the Labour Party leadership to this year's Conference decisions has been more contemptuous than ever. Wilson flew to meet Smith on "HMS Fearless" with the clear intention of selling out the 4 million Black people of Zimbabwe only three days after Conference had passed a resolution expressing its support for these people. Barbara Castle blandly stated that the defeat of the Incomes Policy would make absolutely no difference to her intention of continuing to implement it. It is clear that such is the contempt of the leadership for the rank and file of the party that they do not even feel it necessary any longer to try and make gestures to indicate they might carry out some aspect of the [former's] wishes.
The most significant attempt to date to constitute a coherent left-wing standpoint in opposition to these developments has been [made] by the Tribunite's introduction of the Socialist Charter. This differs from previous 'one-off' campaigns of that group such as the "Never Again" manifesto, which were directed towards the Parliamentary Labour Party. The Charter at least seeks to reforge the links which existed between the Parliamentary "lefts" and the party at large. It also ostensibly provides a programme for a continuing campaign. There are certain serious deficiencies. The demands of the Charter are posed in the most vague and unspecific terms. No call is made for instance for the repeal of the Prices and Incomes legislation, the racialist Commonwealth Immigrants Acts etc. Although affiliations are being sought, the movement has been given no democratic structure which allows for discussion of the aims or for the creation of real co-ordinated activity around it.
The real significance of the Charter is that it shows that in face of the big growth of opposition to the government which has manifested itself right outside the traditional political channels these centrists have found it necessary to launch some sort of programmatic campaign to re-establish their credentials as leaders of the left.
We can take absolutely no comfort from the general tendency for the Labour Party apparently to atrophy and sink into a gradual decline. Many sectarian groupings have seen this as a positive sign that the working class has turned away from its allegiance to social democracy. In reality if this were indeed the case we would have seen the most thorough-going fight within the Labour movement in which the Left would have sought to prevent Wilson from taking over entirely the Party machine. If Wilson leads the Party into electoral disaster which accelerates the present process of decay without provoking a real fight from the left to reinvigorate the Labour movement, the working class will have suffered a major defeat which could lead to the dominance of reaction for a whole period.
MARXISTS AND THE LABOUR PARTY
In 1963/4 many Marxists [including supporters of THE WEEK, our predecessor] thought that the most likely development was that quite rapidly after the election of a Labour government, and its implementation of incomes policy and other anti-working class measures, the general disillusionment which this would lead to would be reflected in a split of major proportions within the Party, which might even involve Cabinet Ministers and [which] would certainly force the Trades Unions to take sides on the issue. The whole purpose of our Labour Party work at this period was to attempt to harden out the potential left wing and to ensure that we would be able to play a major role in any new formation that emerged. It was hoped that THE WEEK would serve as an organising centre for the left. A very large amount of our time was spent on work of a routine nature in order to establish our credentials as loyal members of the Party.
Because of the profound desire existing in the Party at this time to [see] the election of a strong Labour government and the mistaken illusions in its potential (a view which we did not share but which thoroughly permeated the milieu in which we operated) we were not able to differentiate ourselves at all clearly from the centrists. It was only when we began campaigning consistently on the Vietnam issue in 1965 that we became a seriously recognisable tendency. From that time onward our relations with our centrist allies became progressively more strained.
At the 1965 Labour Party Conference our comrades were prominent in speaking on the Vietnam issue, and immediately subsequent to this the witch hunt was initiated. Simultaneously we were forced into taking a more and more hostile attitude to the Government's actions and it became increasingly clear that the centrists would not join us in this. In fact there was a total lack of any principled opposition to the Government's rapid rightward drift amongst the ranks of the Parliamentary left. The 'left' Trade Union leadership proved similarly incapable of political opposition.
The main feature of this period was the failure of our hopes that the left would prove capable of putting up at least some fight against the Wilson leadership and therefore the invalidation of our prognosis that there would be a split of significance in the Party. Instead we saw a gradual erosion taking place whose continuation in 1968 we describe above. The following factors go some way towards explaining why we had been capable of this mistaken assessment:
(i) We failed to appreciate that at a time of such crisis for capitalism and consequent cul de sac for reformism only those who had been able to make an ideological break with capitalism would be able to chart a way forward.
(ii) We overestimated the sensitivity of the Constituency Labour Parties to Government betrayals and underestimated the strength of loyalty to the leadership.
(iii) We did not take into account the possibility of such a tremendous radicalisation outside of the traditional channels as occurred around Vietnam, the student question, nationalism etc.
THE FUTURE
[We] can reaffirm that at present there is no perspective for the development of a mass revolutionary Party outside of the traditional working class movement. Of all such social democratic political formations the British Labour Party is the one which has the most closely knit ties with the organised working class. At both local and national level the Trades Unions play a major role in the Party. This means that any political [ferment amongst] Trade Unionists rapidly finds reflection in debate in the Labour Party. The views of the Communist Party's industrial militants for instance gain expression here. It is not excluded of course that the Wilson Government's behaviour may become so intolerable to the mass of trade unionists that their disgust will be expressed through the disaffiliation of their Unions. For the time being however there is absolutely no indication of this possibility being [realised].
As long as such links exist there is every chance of the Labour Party making an apparently miraculous comeback even from an absolutely disastrous electoral defeat. In 1931 the Party was apparently destroyed, returning only 44 M.P.s. However a leftward shift in the leadership and the [illegible] brought about such a reversal of fortunes that in 1935 154 seats were won and the Party once again [illegible] could complete the process. It [illegible] ment that we cannot discount the residual strength possessed by the Labour Party — a strength which derives in large part from illusions perpetuated by its continuing organic links with the Trade Union movement.
Our long term perspective for the emergence of a mass revolutionary party remains a split in the ranks of social democracy involving, necessarily in Britain, a really significant section of the Trades Union movement. But such developments occur only in objectively favourable circumstances. At a period when there is no political leadership coming from the ranks of the Trade Union movement and even though the bankruptcy of the left reformists has been so clearly exposed there is no likelihood of such a development immediately.
The single issue campaigns developing around support for the Vietnamese Revolution, Student Power etc, are the most important developments of the sixties in revolutionary politics. A feature of such campaigns is that they have grown up completely outside of the traditional structures and modes of thinking of Stalinism and Social Democracy. The young people involved are frequently completely contemptuous of the Labour Party and of anyone involved in it. This is a fundamentally healthy attitude on their part which indicates a thorough going revolutionary attitude. In Germany and France this movement has produced real revolutionary youth organisations in the SDS and JCR. Indeed at this stage any revolutionary Marxists who bury themselves in the Labour Party can expect to find themselves the object of contempt amongst revolutionary minded young people.
However it is precisely in the events in France that our long term orientation toward the traditional workers' movements finds vindication. It [illegible]. The stranglehold of Stalinism and Social Democracy at this level ensured a [illegible].
Our task remains to prepare for its eventuality [and] Labour Party work must be based on this [perspective].