From opposing the Falklands war to his angry demonstration against Margaret Thatcher, Ron Brown MP has become a well known figure on the Left. Alan Freeman spoke to him about the role of the Labour Party in the struggle for socialism.
You took a very strong position in favour of the Argentine claim for sovereignty over the Falklands, saying Michael Foot was absolutely wrong to back Thatcher. What balance sheet would you draw now of the whole affair?
Obviously the chickens have come home to roost. We can appreciate now that Thatcher went to war quite deliberately as a diversion from mass unemployment and low living standards, saying to British workers: 'Forget all the problems, we're going to deal with these nasty Argies in the South Atlantic.' It's the old reactionary theme. The big disappointment for me, I suppose, was that the TUC General Council had the opportunity of inviting representatives of the Argentinian CGT to this country to build up links so that we could encourage the Argentinian working class to fight back. Indeed there are signs that they are going to fight back, but from our movement they've had no encouragement whatsoever. Len Murray didn't even have the courtesy to reply to our letter. But having said this I still believe that the Argentinians have a right to the Falkland Islands.
What do you think should be done now? Should the Labour Party disassociate itself from the proposal to establish a garrison of 3000 people in the South Atlantic?
The Labour Party has taken many strange positions. I'm thinking about the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) as well as the real party. Perhaps they don't want to say too much simply because it may be unpopular. I believe that we have to disassociate ourselves from this garrison and the colonialism of this society because at the end of the day we are socialists. We have got to argue a principled point. It's not going to help the islanders or the British people to hang on to the coat tails of Thatcher's bankers and backers in big business.
The person who has gained from the whole Falklands affair has been Thatcher who is now on the verge of calling an election with Labour flagging behind in the polls. What should the Labour Party do now to pull back from this position, where there are 4 million unemployed and support for Labour policies [illegible]?
It's not easy, but if you are going to fight on the issues and say that we're a fighting, campaigning party, and you go out to win their support, then they will respect you. It's no use simply sitting here in the House of Commons in these comfy Chairs, drinking booze and so on. You've got to go out and speak to folk. Go to the factory gates, street corners and urge workers to fight back, to resist. It won't simply mean that they will agree with you overnight, but I do believe that Michael Foot and others have tried to kid on working class people that you could do certain things within Parliament. Of course you can stand up, you can ask questions, you can make certain points, you can even deliver magnificent speeches. But I'm not in that category, I'm not a speechifier. All I say as a basic working class individual is that the working class are not in this place: they're outside. They're looking for a lead, for a response from our party. We've got to give them it. It's no use simply blaming it on the press, the media. We've got to do the basic work. If [illegible] that we're not a Labour Party in the real sense.
It seems to me the problem we have got to resolve is that Labour voters can't really have the confidence that Labour will carry out even the policy to which it has been committed. From your experience in Scotland do you think that is a factor influencing the way voters are responding to the Labour Party?
In part it's difficult to give a total explanation of views, simply because opinion in Scotland varies just like it does in England. But overall you can say that the present feeling is very anti-Thatcher. Indeed I'm sure it's quite pro-Labour. But I don't think we should take the working class in Scotland or anywhere for granted. The working class are looking for inspiration. They're looking for a lead. They're looking for the party that's going to come out of the corner and start challenging the Tories. And the problem has been for so long that the party has been making excuses: saying they couldn't do this, they couldn't do that. Indeed they have done the obviously wrong thing, of trying to persuade the Tories, persuade Mrs Thatcher that she was wrong, appealing to her reason.
We have an almighty crisis of capitalism in this country. It's worldwide. And the reality of the situation is that Mrs Thatcher is under pressure to resolve this crisis at the expense of the working class. So she's not interested in reasoned arguments. That might have been all right in the boom period. Today she is going to do her job of work for her backers, that is mainly the bankers. So the working class are going to suffer and Mr Foot and others can say what they like: the fact is we need to put our policies where our mouth is. We have got to organise direct action — linked obviously with action in this place. Then you win the respect and support of the working class.
I'm sure that the working class would respond to Michael Foot going up and down the country speaking to people at the factory gates, particularly those under threat of closure and so on. The tragedy of Michael Foot is that he was elected by a left-wing constituency and yet he has moved to the right. He hasn't learned from his own past that the party does win support, does win elections when it's a radical party, when it's a fighting party, a party that sets out to challenge the Tories and the capitalist system. When it's moved to the right — the last Labour government, for example — the result was a disaster. If Michael Foot doesn't realise that then he has simply sold his soul to the right wing.
You have raised the fact that there's not been a fighting lead from the Labour Party, but I think that many trade unionists [illegible] the leadership of the TUC has [illegible] done everything that could be desired in the health workers dispute, for ASLEF, and so on. Do you think that this is connected with what's been going on in the Labour Party?
Yes. You have the same leaders basically, who operate within the trade union movement and the Labour Party. That's inevitable. After all the Labour Party was born out of the trade union movement. The trouble is that those leaders in the trade unions — that we have at the present time anyway — don't reflect the aspirations of the membership. The members by and large are to the left, and this is proved by most of our conferences, particularly about the EEC, about unilateral disarmament, and so on. These leaders are certainly not in sympathy with those policies. Yet they can go to conference like Sid Weighell — Sid Weasel some people call him — and try and fix votes. Now presumably many others would like to do the same and reverse those policies to get back to what they would term the 'traditional style of trade unionism', which is to play second fiddle to the capitalist system — at the end of the day to collaborate with big business. Well that is something that we will have to face up to as socialists within the Labour Party and within the trade unions — and I speak as an AUEW sponsored MP.
The block vote shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, saying that this is total corruption and we can do nothing about it. That is far from the case. We've got to work, as we did in the Labour Party, to effect democratic reforms, to ensure that the rank and file members have a say so that policies are not just agreed but implemented. And that means that many unions have to ensure that their officials are elected or subject to re-election. But the top leadership in any case has to be accountable to the membership. In a sense we're going back to square one. Really the empires that have been built up in the past do not serve the interests of the working class. And we've got to go out, courageously, openly, to the trade union movement and explain that.
We might get vilified by the press, but the press were never in our favour. I think it was Keir Hardie that made the point many years ago that if you are ever praised by the capitalist press you couldn't be doing your job for the working class, so we shouldn't worry about that. With an almighty crisis on our hands it's only going to be the working class that will challenge the Tories, it's only going to be ourselves in particular, not because I'm an elitist or anything, who appreciates the problem. The top leadership won't do that. They will try and kid on that there's nothing you can do, that the Tories are so strong that it's impossible to challenge them in any way whatsoever.
The reality of the situation is, of course, that you've still, despite redundancies, got over 11 million organised trade unionists, and if you include their families there's far more. So the potential is there. The working class once organised, once encouraged, would be unstoppable. Perhaps that's what frightens these leaders. I'm sure it does, but nevertheless it shouldn't frighten us just because certain people put the finger on us and threaten us by saying we're left wingers, we're socialists, we're whatever. We shouldn't be frightened of their pointed finger. We should always remember that in a sense history is on our side.
But the problem is that the TUC hasn't given that kind of lead, and the Labour Party hasn't given that kind of lead, precisely because they are tied to the coat tails of the capitalist system, as you said. The Left therefore has a problem. It is saddled with a right wing majority in the TUC, the NEC, and the shadow cabinet or at least a soft left/right wing coalition. What can we actually do to organise to try and change that situation?
It would be wrong for me to suggest that we can turn the tables overnight. The working class have to become convinced, particularly those in the trade union movement, that we're in business to change things for their benefit. So it won't be easy. The one thing that strikes me at the present time is this: you go to all sorts of meetings and all sorts of left wing groups speak and give their point of view. But we don't have any basic unity. In the present situation what we've got to try and arrange is a [illegible] front. It's the [illegible]. We can argue the case against the witch hunt, against the register, but if we are going to take it further, and have some influence in the working class, we've got to talk about some basic issues, we've got to talk about employment, about living standards, about what we're going to do as far as the various struggles are concerned. We've got to not simply talk about what's happening in the crisis of capitalism: we've got to be involved in those struggles, to be quite clear to workers that we're with them, and however limited our resources we give them the maximum support. Certainly I think that if we show we are acting in a very concrete, basic way we can unite all sections of our movement — the political side, the trade union side — supporting us. It must be shown, overall, that we're fighting not just for one or two reforms but to change society and to see a Labour government returned pledged to socialist policies, and that if a situation develops with certain individuals who won't do the job they should be replaced, both in the trade unions and in the PLP. That goes without saying. We're not simply saying we want a Labour government, we've got to have people who really mean business. And we want individuals not just to get policies — and we know that policies are fine — but we've got to have complete commitment from all sections of the party. No-one, by the way, should be put on a pedestal. If you look at the AUEW for example: not so long ago Hughie Scanlon was regarded as a great figure, along with Jack Jones, and really it was all about a simple fanfare in his support. The Broad left said elect Hugh Scanlon, but we've got to have control of these individuals. We've got to ensure that they do the job for the working class. But the movement is the important thing. We've got to ensure that we have an organisation that is flexible enough, based on principles which will take the working class forward, and where anybody who has an important position like an MP, official, leader, or whatever will be accountable to us.
Do you think factory branches would help?
Factory branches have their strengths. Their big weakness is that they tend to hold workers within the four walls of the factory. It's a concept that should be developed, but we should work to take the strengths of that system into the constituency parties, the GMCs so that these workers do participate and give their views about their struggles. In a sense it validates the strengths of both sides of the movement. You've got these tremendous talents in the working class. It's just that so often workers, particularly industrial workers, feel strange when they leave their factories. They feel like a fish out of water.
Isn't part of the reason that the actual purpose of the constituency parties has not been traditionally to involve themselves [illegible] concerns of the workers in a factory who's engaged in industrial struggle, or social struggle, or whatever.
Well, many CLPs simply wait until a local or general election and say 'we need support' and ask for local helpers to involve themselves. Some trade unionists have become more active as a result and been involved in the political side. Mind you, there has not been the same effort to win people as there should be, simply because, I suppose, people who run CLPs feel 'Well, that's that, the work's been done', and everything reverts to normal after a local or general election. The fact of the matter is that nothing's normal these days because of the crisis. The old ideas which perhaps worked, in a sense, during the boom period when things were relatively good, certainly don't work now.
We hope to build up a mass Labour Party, but the Labour Party doesn't help to build up resistance in the trade unions because at the end of the day, if we are saying that the Labour Party is the vanguard of the working class, it's no good for meetings to take place divorced from that working class. We've got to be effectively trying to link up with local activists, the best elements within the various workplaces, offices, factories, wherever. The fact is the working class are there, and we've got to go out to them and try and develop these links. It's a job that should [illegible].
To get back to Leith, where we attempt to do that, we do find that from some years ago when many in the workers movement wouldn't even take leaflets, now they're taking them and reading them because they're looking for some sort of lead. They're looking for some sort of answer to this crisis. While they may have a job at the moment they could be thrown on the scrap heap at the end of the week. So, you know, we've got to appreciate this concern of the working class and do the obvious sort of things. It's not that workers suddenly get this inspiration and say: 'Well, Labour's the party for me.' It won't happen that way. They could well go to the right. They could go to the SNP, or down in England they could even go to the National Front.
This is the point, though: Bermondsey has probably been promoted more than any other by the national press for wanting to have that kind of orientation. The symbol has become Peter Tatchell for the media. He wants to take the constituency party out into the estates, into the factories, engage it in extra-parliamentary campaigning and so on, and Michael Foot virtually staked his career on saying: 'We can't have this sort of person representing us.' So you've got an immediate problem: the leadership don't want that kind of orientation for the LP. Well, that's certainly true. Michael Foot issued a statement in the House of Commons denouncing Peter Tatchell. It's incredible that anyone should use his parliamentary status to act as judge, jury and prosecution on a party member, responding to an enemy outside the party. It's fairly obvious he felt that Tatchell was a real enemy and not Thatcher. At the end of the day, Thatcher's not going to be worried about Michael's speeches, however brilliant they are. Thatcher is not going to be moved by that, but if Tatchell promotes extra-parliamentary activity, then that is the only way you're going to change the attitude of this government: in fact it's the only way you're going to change this government. And I don't think we should apologise for saying things like that.
[illegible] Campaign Group represented a possible step [illegible] of actually getting some MPs together to use their position in parliament to promote extra-parliamentary action?
It's interesting that the Left has always been accused of splitting or creating unnecessary divisions. That may have been true in certain situations. But it would be wrong to suggest that the Tribune group is a left wing organisation. There may still be some good individuals in it, but really it's extremely right wing with many careerists, many opportunists within its ranks. Indeed, if you look at the record of the Tribune group, it hasn't done much to fight against the right wing; indeed it's generally apologised for attacks on the left: justifying the register, justifying [illegible] the role of the Left. The old Tribune Group was in no way a radical organisation. It created the impression that it was indeed a party which felt strongly for the working class. But there was no link with the working class, and that's a crucial issue.
Now we have a group of 22 MPs, maybe less than that, we just don't know. Individuals who were clearly dissatisfied, and said so at the Blackpool conference, and they've got to make up their minds what they're going to do. It's not a question of numbers, a lot of people say, 'Only 22, maybe 12'. But at the end of the day when you're talking about a struggle against the right wing in the party, against Thatcher, against the capitalist system, it's a question of saying 'Would these 12 have more effect being in the old Tribune group or linked up with other groups outside the party, rank and file groups, left wing groups?' I would hope these 12, or hopefully 22, make these links so that we can develop a movement which will really transform British politics.
To us it seems that the group could play a crucial role. The bulk of ordinary trade unionists and constituency activists think that parliament is very important and can change things. Therefore they look to the MPs to give a lead, so that if a group of MPs [illegible] organisation, a united front, we're going to lend our [illegible].
That's true, I agree with you on this, that working class people, even Labour Party activists, look to MPs as being something special. They're not of course, but we've got to accept that, it does happen. MPs have a certain influence that can help in the struggle, indeed we should be using that input to go out to the working class, even in a small number, to say that we're linking up with these organisations on the understanding that we will put up a principled fight against the Tories, against the right wing, and fight for socialist policies in this country, because we're not going to get socialist policies unless we do organise effectively, and you can't organise parliament, you organise outside. But nevertheless you use the talents, the influence, even the special abilities of MPs to do this, as part of the same team.
We should be explaining the reality of the situation, explaining that Peter Tatchell said nothing wrong and that in fact he just confirms what the working class have been doing in the past. In fact we need more of Peter Tatchell in this party. We need more individuals like him because he obviously responds to the real feelings of the folk outside. Now I don't know his [illegible] and his views. They support him because they know full well that the old discredited right wing policies don't work. They only work for the capitalists, they only work for big business, they certainly don't work for working folk. So what he's saying is very important for us and really it's absolutely disgraceful that a leader of the Labour Party, a so called left winger, has spoken out in that way against him.
We believe socialism comes down to team effort and really, if we bring it together, there's no way we can stop the working class and that's the whole point of any struggle: the role of the working class. If we can get that moving, and I'm sure we can, then we can really say that we've got an opportunity to bring socialist policies into being in this country. Because we won't otherwise.
RON BROWN is Member of Parliament for Edinburgh Leith sponsored by the AUEW.