The Labour Party Conference is a unique institution, the like of which exists virtually nowhere else in the capitalist world. Gathered together to discuss the major political issues of the day are representatives of practically all the important Trade Unions along with the rank and file of the Constituency Parties and the other smaller organisations affiliated to the Labour Party. The thousand-odd delegates cast their voices on behalf of [illegible] million individual and affiliated members, [illegible] the most important event in the annual calendar of the organised working class movement. Conference, and the decisions it takes, reflect the general political level within this movement. No socialist organisation which is genuinely interested in bringing the mass of the organised working class over to a revolutionary, internationalist position, can afford to ignore it.
Having said this however we should also stress that while the British working class has succeeded in building up one of the strongest and most durable organisations existing anywhere, that organisation has been constantly under the control of a leadership whose main characteristic has been timidity and a fear of radical social change. This is [illegible] throughout its history, socialists have always found it very difficult to affect the party's course.
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Thus the rank and file delegate frequently suffer from an acute sense of frustration at the way that Conference is manipulated in order to minimise the expression of dissident opinions. And he cannot fail to notice that when decisions are made contrary to the line of the party leadership, the latter conveniently ignores them. The system of block voting by the delegates of the Trade Unions is of course particularly destructive of control over the leadership as is the method of election to the National Executive Committee, which is heavily weighted in favour of the delegates of the Unions because of their decisive weight in the election of the 5 women members. He sees the nauseating spectacle of members of the government sitting on the Executive and demonstrating their fawning acceptance of the constitutional norms of the capitalist state by always voting for government policy. The totally undemocratic principle of allowing members of the NEC (usually Ministers) to answer debates at enormously greater length than proposers of resolutions are allowed, exposes the view of the Party leadership - that Conference is primarily a public platform for themselves rather than a forum for the expression of the opinions of the rank and file.
While it is of course necessary to expose and try to change all these abuses, it is not enough [illegible] of the Labour Party "left" appear to [illegible], that [if] they were rectified, the Party itself would rapidly be changed into a body capable of bringing socialism to Britain. For the undemocratic practices of the leadership, and the inability of the rank and file to overcome these, reflect the generally low political level in the British Labour movement. From time to time sections of the movement have conducted militant struggles [in] which they have acquired a much clearer consciousness of the class nature of British society, but the leadership has invariably been totally unwilling to challenge the entrenched power of the capitalist state.
FAILURE OF LABOUR LEADERSHIP TO CHALLENGE CAPITALIST STATE
Thus during the 1st World War, while workers on Clydeside, in Sheffield etc., conducted struggles to defend their living conditions, which led to a confrontation with the state, members of the Labour leadership participated in the coalition government which prosecuted the imperialist war, leading a solid and unified force into the General Strike of 1926, the TUC leadership was so horrified by its revolutionary implications that, to the amazement and dismay of the rank and file, it capitulated totally before the government after nine days. Ramsay MacDonald was the archetype of the Labour Leader mesmerised by the trappings of power, with a tremendous reverence for Parliament, the monarchy, etc. and led the Labour Party into its greatest defeat, the debacle of 1931. In 1945, elected to power on a wave of postwar enthusiasm for radical social change, the Labour leadership confined itself to taking over a few bankrupt industries under a bureaucratic system of management and some important reforms of the social services. But no attempt was made to challenge the commanding heights of capitalist power and influence.
RECORD OF WILSON GOVERNMENT
But the nadir of the British Labour Party has undoubtedly come with the Wilson government. In an increasingly unfavourable context of chronic crisis in the international monetary system, the impossibility of coupling a programme of social reform to a commitment to the maintenance of the private ownership of finance and industry has been clearly illustrated. The absence of serious big business opposition to the Labour Government the lack of enthusiasm shown by industry and the bourgeois press for the Very Party of Edward Heath, show clearly which path the Wilson leadership has chosen. The sole measures of public ownership have been the takeover, at munificent rates of compensation, of the ailing steel industry, thus guaranteeing private industry's supplies of a crucial raw material, and the ports takeover, which is leaving the most profitable handling businesses in private hands. State intervention through the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation is promoting the rationalisation of industry through the creation, with massive public subventions, of huge monopolies. The result is redundancy, as at GEC-AEI, for thousands of workers.
The hub of the government's economic policy has been the much-vaunted incomes policy. This has evolved from appeals for restraint, through the introduction of legal penalties for breaches of the policy, to the sustained attack on the trade union movement mounted under the leadership of the government earlier this year. The main objective of this offensive was to break the powerful shop stewards' movements in key industries, which had been pushing up wage rates and improving conditions throughout the '50s and early '60s. The resulting "compromise" by which the TUC agreed to play the role of "policeman" of industrial disputes, was highly satisfactory to those strategists who sought to whittle away the freedom of the Trade Union movement, tying it closely to the pursuance of government objectives.
Attempts to promote a faster rate of growth in the British economy have largely foundered on the rock of commitment to the existing international monetary arrangements. The role of sterling as a reserve currency has been a "sacred cow" of government policy which has proved to be increasingly incompatible with the weakness of the domestic economy. Eventually, after three years of proclaiming the sanctity of the £ exchange rate, the government was forced into the devaluation of November 1967. However, an acceptable solution to the chronic balance of payments crisis appears even more distant, notwithstanding the recent improvement in the trade figures. For the savage deflationary measures aimed at cutting domestic consumption and securing a decisive shift of resources into export industries in order to comply with the IMF demand for an annual surplus of £500 million for the next ten years, can only lead to further attacks on working class living standards.
SOCIAL SERVICES - ELECTION PROMISES [illegible]
The rather modest National Plan of 1965, which was to be the blueprint for growth, was no sooner produced than dropped. In the field in which the Labour Party's reputation was highest, that of the social services, election promises have been slowly watered down, then abandoned. The modest target of building 500,000 houses a year is now dropped and Minister of Housing Greenwood rationalises this away by talking of a supposed rapid satisfaction of housing need - this when thousands of families are homeless in London alone. The Rent Officer system is producing verdicts more frequently favouring landlord than tenant. Council house rents are soaring under the pressure of record-high interest rates. Prescription charges have been re-introduced, school meals charges increased and school milk partially abandoned. Certain sections of the National Health Services are threatened with breakdown. The problems of the depressed areas remain acute. In Scotland and Wales they have in part been responsible for the emergence of nationalism as an important political force. In Northern Ireland they have played an important part in engendering the profound social crisis which now engulfs that part of the island.
The government has capitulated to racism with the 1965 White Paper on Commonwealth immigrants and the 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act. In foreign affairs the main feature has been the subordination of Britain to the dictates of U.S. imperialism, represented at its most obnoxious by Wilson's craven support for the U.S. role in Vietnam. Economic pressures have forced a partial withdrawal East of Suez, but care has been taken to ensure the continuation of imperialist interests there. The South African arms ban has been effectively liquidated, while only the extraordinary perversity of the Rhodesian Front leadership has prevented Wilson negotiating a sell-out settlement with the Smith regime.
REFORMISM AT A DEAD END
The evolution of the Wilson government provides yet another example of the dead end reached by reformism. In a period of expansion, e.g. post 1945, the Labour Party was able to make important social reforms, thus securing some improvement in the standard of life of the workers within the framework of the capitalist economy. In the ailing economy of the 1960s, increasingly under pressure from the general slowdown in the international capitalist economy, the old reformist policy would not work. Disabled by its whole tradition and ideology from leading the working class into a real anti-capitalist struggle and breaking decisively with the world imperialist system, the Labour leadership has to accept the priorities of a struggling capitalism: to safeguard profits even at the cost of attacking the social services and working class living standards.
The scene is being set just now by the press relations men for the presentation of this year's Conference as a great triumph for Wilson. This is to be the turning point, after which it will be plain sailing into the next General Election and the inevitable pay-off of another five years in power. Socialists would do well not to be over-cynical about such a prospect. The indifferent performance of the opposition and the loyalty which a majority of the working class have traditionally shown towards the Labour Party make it not inconceivable that the Party could make a comeback in time for the election.
LOYALTY TO LABOUR
This loyalty to the Labour Party, demonstrated by the fact that leftwing offshoots like the I.L.P. have usually rapidly decayed, is both a strength and a weakness in the movement. On the one hand it demonstrates a remarkable loyalty by the British working class towards its political organisations: but it makes the task of those trying to change the politics and leadership of this organisation doubly difficult. For that leadership can and does continually make appeals to the loyalty, desire for unity, etc of the rank and file, and uses this quite unscrupulously to maintain its own position. It helps to explain why socialists with a serious perspective cannot envisage the development of any new left wing political force in Britain except, at least in part, as developing out of an organic struggle within the Labour movement itself in which large numbers of the Party and union rank and file come to identify with a coherent opposition to the existing leadership and to the rotten politics of reformism.
The consequence of the Wilson government for the party itself has been increasing sterility in its internal politics. A few years ago most of the important political issues were reflected in far-reaching debates in the party. Local constituencies were reasonably lively foci of political discussion. All this has changed quite rapidly. There has been a general haemorrhage from all sections of the party; in particular there has been a total failure to attract young people into its ranks. The low-level is reflected in this year's conference agenda where such burning issues as Vietnam and racism have not produced any resolutions.
FAILURE OF TRADITIONAL "LEFT"
A very large part of the responsibility for this lack of clear and organised opposition to the policies of the Wilson leadership lies with the traditional "left" in the Labour Party, especially that around the journal TRIBUNE. There is a long history of left-wing anti-leadership activity in the party, but an almost uniform aspect of this has been an unwillingness to go beyond criticism of specific details of policy to an overall and principled opposition to the pro-capitalist policies of the leadership. This failure of the left to have any real perspective, its fetish of Parliament and its unwillingness to mobilise the base of the movement, has meant that it leads a very unstable existence. The career of Bevan, with his ultimate capitulation to Gaitskell in 1957, provides a perfect illustration of this point. In the present era many erstwhile "Tribunites" like Castle and Greenwood have joined the government. Those left MPs outside of the government have on the whole totally failed to mount any real opposition to it. Those who signed the famous "Never Again" manifesto after one round of cuts in government expenditure were soon to be found voting for the even more slashing post-devaluation cuts. Their Socialist Charter movement has been a stillborn animal. This is hardly surprising since its manifesto, while being quite unexceptionable in general terms, does not put forward any really concrete and specific demands. No mention is made for instance of an end to the incomes policy or the racist immigration laws.
Because the leftward looking rank and file of the party have customarily seen these people as their leadership, it is precisely their failure to come out in clear opposition to the rightward drift of the Wilson leadership that has been such an important factor in ensuring that no effective opposition did emerge, and in disillusioning many thousands of activists.
TRIBUNE has of course entirely failed to grasp what has been far and away the most important political development of the past few years. That is the rise of a new generation of revolutionary minded young people who are on the whole quite outside the ranks of the Labour Party. From the workers' control campaign, through apprentices' committees, and student campaigns, and above all in the anti-imperialist movement, a new generation has come very quickly to political maturity.
Many Labour Party and trade union activists are profoundly disturbed by the contempt with which the radical youth often appear to view their organisations. They should understand that this is a fundamentally healthy reaction which is a mirror of their own disillusionment with a [illegible] corrupt conservative leadership. They should also regard it as a matter of urgency that the struggles of the younger generation be linked to their own. For it is not from the tired "old left" that the dynamic will come for revolutionary socialist action in Britain in the future, but from the new generation which has no illusions in the present set-up in the Labour Party.
FOR STRUGGLE
Having said this we should however stress that the International Marxist Group does not believe that the present generation of youth activists will somehow develop into a new revolutionary party capable of overthrowing capitalism. Nor do we advocate that all militants should leave the Labour Party. It still remains an absolutely fundamental axiom of our politics that socialism in Britain will only be created by the action of the working class. This is why our long-term strategic aim must be to promote the idea within the organisations of the class that it is absolutely necessary to organise a consistent fight against the present leadership and for a programme of real anti-capitalist demands. When such a fight is seen to be beginning we can be quite certain that the ranks of opposition will rapidly be reinforced by thousands of young people who now, and with a great deal of justification, decisively reject the politics of the Labour movement.
Unfortunately the present climate in the party is highly unfavourable for such a struggle. A combination of disillusion with the Wilson leadership and the bankruptcy of the traditional left has brought party militants to a despairing impasse. That's why we insist that the most important task facing socialists just now is to organise and link up with those forces which are fighting and to bring them to a conviction of the necessity ultimately to bring their struggles to bear on the mass of the working class movement. This is, of course, no automatic or easy process; but when it is done the British labour movement will contemptuously dismiss the Wilsons of this world and the way will be clear for the conduct of a real anti-capitalist struggle by the British working class.