The Labour GLC was elected last May in a wave of euphoria. 'London was ours' was how the chief spokesperson for the left, London Labour Briefing, heralded it. Tessa van Gelderen assesses one year in office of the new Labour GLC.
After four years of Tory rule under the dreaded Horace Cutler, the new regime at County Hall had a clean sweep, threw out right wing Labour leader, Andrew Macintosh, and installed Ken Livingstone to lead the new band of merry people against the nasty Sheriff Heseltine.
There were genuine grounds for optimism. The manifesto on which Labour had been elected was the result of a thorough discussion in the Labour parties throughout London and to a certain extent in the trade unions, culminating in a special conference to finalise the details. The London Labour Party had established what the left were fighting for nationally: a manifesto decided by conference and not by the outgoing Labour Group or a few gurus in regional office. Just as important was the fact that the manifesto was a break from the right wing policies of previous Labour administrations.
The left throughout the labour movement placed great hope in the manifesto and what a Labour GLC could achieve. It coincided with the beginning of the campaign for Tony Benn for deputy leader of the Labour Party. Here was an opportunity to put into practice, at least at a local level, what a Benn government would do nationally. There was a huge press campaign against Livingstone, who had come to symbolise the left group on the GLC. Although there had been a concerted campaign by the press during the elections, this intensified in the first few months of office, and Ken Livingstone was hardly ever out of the news, certainly in the London press. He and the Labour GLC were vilified mercilessly, and the ferocity of the campaign meant that time and energy had to be spent in answering these mainly false accusations of 'reds under the beds', rather than on informing and publicising the plans and achievements of the Labour group. And like the party nationally, the Labour group was affected by defections and rumours of defections to the SDP. Yet the programme on which the GLC was elected was a moderate one. It was the enthusiasm and sincerity of the leading left councillors that brought the media, the Tories and the SDP down on their heads, but which at the same time made it seem to everyone that this time Labour was going to keep its promises.
The way of all manifestoes?
What were these promises and how many have been carried out? The best known and most controversial was the 25 per cent reduction in fares. This was duly carried out on 4 October 1981, but by 21 March fares were doubled because the Law Lords had ruled the GLC's fares scheme illegal. More council houses were to be built but central government has withheld the money. Sales of council houses were to be opposed as was the transfer of council estates from the GLC to the borough councils. In the event there was no opposition because of 'legal' threats. Rents were to be frozen; they have just been increased. The Inner London Education Authority was to receive more money; £11m has been lopped off its budget in response to legal threats. School dinners were to be reduced from 35p to 25p. Threat of surcharge saw that promise fly out the window. Virtually no progress has been made on the 35 hour week for manual staff and the Greater London Enterprise Board, intended to create jobs, remains on the drawing board. Finally all these promises which involved a major expansion of public services in London and redistribution of expenditure to the less well-off would have been financed by 'each London household paying another £1 a week rates by 1983/4'.
Thanks to Michael Heseltine, the GLC's contribution to the rates bill rose by the equivalent of 11.9p in the £ from 24.7p — before the Law Lords ruling. This was mainly to finance the fares increase, pay the deficit on London Transport's budget inherited from the previous administration, and meet the government's penal withdrawal of grant. In effect, every £1 spent on support to London Transport added £1.70 to the rates. In contrast to the views held by some on the left that rates increases buffer the working class from cuts, they have in fact financed Tory cuts. Londoners have been paying more and more for less and less.
Some promises have been implemented: the GLC has declared London a nuclear free zone; it has to some extent democratised the committee structure at the GLC and in particular within the Labour Group itself; and it has given grants and loans to community groups and projects. But not many would doubt that the heart of the manifesto has gone the way of all manifestoes, into the waste disposal unit. Inside County Hall today there is a small group of dispirited and tired councillors who don't know where they went wrong, tending to resort to internal bickering which all too often becomes public. They are divided among themselves as to who is to blame and whether or not there is any point in staying in office. Could things have worked out differently and what are the lessons to be learnt for the labour movement as a whole?
The London Transport workers' claim
The real turning point for the Labour GLC was not the school meals issue, or even the fares debacle. It was the mess it got itself into over paying London Transport workers their wage claim last summer.
Demanding a rise of nothing less than the rate of inflation, the National Union of Railwaymen, led by Sid Weighell, who later was to sell out British Rail workers over flexible rostering, threatened an indefinite strike. Ken Livingstone played directly into the right wing's hands, both in the unions and in the press. Although he announced that the GLC would 'underwrite any [illegible] the unions and management come to', he did not openly instruct the London Transport executive to pay the full claim.
It was this fudging of the issue that left a bitter taste in many people's mouths and allowed people like Sid Weighell to drive a wedge between the left in the GLC and rank and file trade unionists who have seen too many Labour leaders make promises they don't keep. Support for the GLC at that time, despite the press campaign, was high: it gave marvellous hospitality to the People's March, it was then about to introduce its cheap fares policy. Livingstone himself had been on picket lines, had openly supported the Irish hunger strikers and the Polish workers and had demanded that the Asians arrested in Southall during the summer rebellions should be 'released without charge'. Yet, when he was in a position to really use his position as GLC leader, he went on the defensive.
A strategy to unite with the [illegible]
It has been the inability of the GLC to build a real base in the unions that has shown its manifesto to be built on sand. Unfortunately, the GLC has found itself in a [illegible] spiral. On the one hand, aside from a few heroic councillors, the majority in the group has been reluctant to take a stand to defy the law because there is no mass movement outside County Hall waiting to support them. On the other hand, without taking such a lead, the GLC can hardly expect the labour movement to take the initiative in defending them. At a time when the working class has suffered a number of setbacks, particularly through mass unemployment, when trade union leaders have not been prepared to take on the Tory government, the GLC could have provided a beacon.
In fact Livingstone, even before he was elected, and for a number of months afterwards, claimed that what was needed:
A council that campaigns against the government. The government has the power to prevent us from building new housing, extending the tube, buying new buses or undertaking any works of improvement to housing or the environment. The new council will have no alternative but to lead a massive and continuing campaign to mobilise public opinion and force the reversal of these policies. (Socialist Challenge, 26 March, 1981).
We will stand by our programme ... If Heseltine tries to stop us raising revenue, that would be an attempt to stop local government. We would expect trade unionists to launch a campaign of industrial action and Labour MPs to make the continued working of parliament impossible. (Socialist Challenge, 11 June, 1981).
Ken Livingstone understood the vital necessity of basing the promises of the manifesto, not on the administration or even the political will in County Hall, but on the mass, independent actions of the working class. But after less than a year in office, [it appears the] elementary [illegible]:
Whilst Labour remains the administration at County Hall we will continue to implement each policy in our manifesto until the government defeats us. (London Labour Briefing, March 1982 — emphasis added).
The almost total collapse of the left in the GLC cannot simply [be] attributed to the media campaign against it, bad though it is. Unless the left is completely naive, such a campaign is only to be expected and it will certainly be repeated tenfold under a Labour government committed to carrying out socialist policies.
The effect on local elections
It has been this inability to provide a lead for the labour movement in London that has led to the real mess the Labour Group, and by association, the left in the London Labour Party, find themselves in. It is not so much that all the policies in the manifesto would have been passed. Far from it. But a mass campaign led by the GLC on its manifesto, against the Tories would have thrown off the yoke of sell outs that has been hanging round Labour's neck for decades. Now the GLC is 'like the rest, promises, promises' while a few individuals have managed to keep to their principles. But they are up the proverbial creek, without a boat, never mind the paddle.
Some of these individual councillors on the GLC, including Ken Livingstone, together with many who have been elected at the local elections this month, have pledged themselves to fight cuts in services and to defy district auditors and judges. Their Statement, published in London Labour Briefing, before the elections, also starts out with the same hopes and, dare one say it, promises, that the GLC manifesto did just 12 months before. 'We will seek to unite Labour local authorities and the trade union movement in a mass campaign to bring down this government and the system it represents at the earliest possible opportunity.'
The statement also makes reference to seeing their victory in London as necessary to secure for 'a future socialist Labour government some part of that base of strength ... which it will need in order to defend itself and carry through its programme to the full.' While acknowledging that the GLC has been 'forced to retreat on a number of issues', it does not come to terms with the fact that these retreats will affect both the elections of future Labour councils and government and their ability to carry through their promises in alliance with the trade unions.
The problem with the left in London is that its base rests almost entirely on constituencies. The left has a majority on the Greater London Regional Executive because the CLPs together with the socialist societies give them a majority over the trade union section. The same pattern is repeated at constituency level where the left dominate the wards and the right the unions. It is the situation inside the national party in microcosm. Without a radical change in that situation all manifestoes, pledges and so on are liable to crumble away at the first possible opportunity.
A strategy to overcome localism
Does this mean the left should not stand for local councils? It is not an easy question to answer, but first and foremost such a decision cannot be taken on the basis that all that is needed is sincere individuals who are prepared to martyr themselves. Local government has come under attack from the Tories for two essential reasons: it is part and parcel of the Tories' overall central strategy to attack the standard of living of the working class and hence decrease its combativeness. At the same time it is a direct attack on those councillors and councils who do want to fight against both Tory policy and previous Labour administrations both locally and nationally. Hence the inability to fight on the part of these councillors weakens the whole movement against the Tories nationally. The fight of local councils has to break out of localism and lack of concern for anything that goes beyond borough boundaries.
Local councils have to become centres of resistance. They have to take on board each and every struggle that is being waged against the Tories, no matter where it is happening. That is why the GLC was correct to support the Peoples March; that is why it is right to support the campaign against nuclear weapons and Reagan's visit to Britain. That is why, on more controversial issues, it was right for Ken Livingstone to oppose consistently Britain's war in Ireland and now its war against Argentina. But in general the GLC has not gone far enough along this road and all too often it is left to the odd individual to make 'personal' statements.
Ken Livingstone and the others have pointed out that the only real option facing Labour councils is the return of a Labour government committed to socialist policies. But a Labour government elected on the defeat of the working class will be as right wing and reactionary as the Wilson/Callaghan/Healey government. That is why every defeat of the working class over the past period is a nail in the coffin of the GLC. At the same time the victories of the miners and the railworkers, as well as numerous smaller gains, have threatened the survival of the government. Thus, Labour councils like the GLC have no choice but to support openly these struggles, whether they take place in London or not. Administering County Hall to make cuts as painlessly as possible (Valerie Wise argued that the reason why she ended up voting for the budget was that if the Tories took over they would make worse cuts than Labour!), and paying out a few paltry pounds to local groups, can in no way justify the high hopes of a year ago.
A Greater London Council and local Labour councils that openly supported the train drivers, that gave financial assistance to the workers of Laurence Scott, that came down on the side of the Barking teachers against the local Labour council, would do more for Labour's chances at the polls than 'disengaging' and causing chaos. The working class elects Labour councils and a Labour government to act in its interests, not to hand over the reigns of office to the Tories, or the SDP. The only way to oppose the cuts in services being foisted on it by the Tories was not to go into opposition, or some other variant, but to vote against each and every cut, each and every rate and rent increase and each and every loss in jobs. Then and only then was there potential for building a mass movement.
Nor is it enough for the left not on the councils to get complacent. The failure of the GLC to implement its manifesto which as Livingstone himself points out is hardly revolutionary but 'predominantly reformist' has lessons for us all. When the GLC was first elected it was seen by some, the media in particular, as a forerunner of a Labour government led by Tony Benn. There was some truth in that analogy and the present debacle bodes ill for such a future Labour government.
If Ken Livingstone thinks that such a government is the knight in shining armour to the fair maiden GLC, then who will defend that government when the forces of the state, including the courts and the army, are launched against it? The answer is the same as to who is the real saviour of the GLC: only by relying on the mass actions of the workers themselves can either this government be brought to its knees or a Labour government be forced to carry out policies in the interests of the workers and not the bosses.
TESSA VAN GELDEREN is a journalist on Socialist Challenge and an active member of the Labour Party.