THREE events in recent months have starkly illuminated the realities of British politics. First, the National Union of Mineworkers has demonstrated that notwithstanding her victory over the NGA, Thatcher and her government remain incapable of using the [illegible] laws to [illegible], in particular the NUM. This was the significance of MacGregor's retreat from his court case against the Yorkshire NUM. The tide is starting to turn against Thatcher. The government not only faces majority opposition to its policies on the NHS, on local government and on the missiles, it is now losing support for its attacks on the unions — the one policy area where it had support at the last election. For the Thatcher government the tide is threatening to turn from problems on particular policies to overall rejection of the government.
Secondly, the Chesterfield by-election had demonstrated that Labour cannot be held down to the level of the votes it attained in the general election. The opinion polls are starting to show Labour neck and neck with the Tories. Chesterfield itself showed near enough the same result as in the general election. But this [illegible] in the conditions of the [illegible] campaign by the Labour leadership to prevent Benn from being selected in the first place. if Benn had lost at Chesterfield the left-wing of the Labour Party would have suffered a shattering defeat with the right claiming that Bennite policies lose elections. In reality Benn's vote demonstrates not only that Labour's vote cannot be pushed below its 9 June level but also that Bennism cannot be driven out of the labour movement.
Thirdly, the crisis over Britain's contributions to the EEC revealed the underlying realignment of all the major forces in British politics. The SDP/Liberal Alliance and Tory wets leapt to the defence of 'Europe'. The Labour leadership was notable for its silence. The Tory government is being squeezed at home and in its international relations. Against Tory Gaullism the Tory wets and the Alliance are prepared to fight tooth and nail, to demand that the Tories accept the terms on offer from the EEC. Here was a real fight between sections of the British ruling class. Yet Labour had nothing to say. Why? Because the new Labour leadership is united on one thing above all others: defence of the interests of those sections of British capital most linked into European capitalism and the EEC. This is the real foundation of the 'dream ticket' and of Kinnock's Eurosocialism. It is not simply an opportunist bloc of the centre and the right. It is profoundly based in the project of re-orienting Labour into the Party of European Capital in Britain.
The realignment of both wings of the Party demonstrate this. On the right, the 'Europeans', Healey, Hattersley and company, have broken with the Atlanticist Callaghan in favour of a bloc with Euro-Kinnock. On the left, the fundamental aim of Kinnock and his new kitchen cabinet in the Labour Co-ordinating Committee is to eliminate the anti-EEC Bennite left-wing of the Party. This is why infantile notions that the EEC is a 'non-debate' in sections of the constituency left are so totally short-sighted. What is involved is a drive to transform the Labour Party into a British version of Mitterand's Socialist Party — the Party of European Capital and missiles against Labour.
It is this same realignment which today is ripping apart the Communist Party of Great Britain. The wing around Marxism Today, now the majority, aim to reorient the CP and the Labour Party into support of European Capital. In the peace movement they therefore unite with EP Thompson and Kinnock to attempt to substitute 'freeze' for unilateralism, because this stops American missiles but leaves British and French missiles intact. Marxism Today looks further and perceives that Labour is unlikely to be able to rebuild its vote sufficiently to win the next election. So they are for a grand coalition of all the anti-Thatcher forces and, we might add, pro European Capital forces — the Euro-socialist Labour Party, the Alliance and the Tory wets. To do this they understand perfectly that Bennism must be beaten back. April's Marxism Today carries an attack by Jon Bloomfield, on not only the Trotskyists in the Labour Party but also the 'fundamentalists', Benn and Heffer. Benn's crime in the eyes of Marxism Today? '... calling for campaigning on an explicitly anti-capitalist basis ... These sentiments may strike a chord among committed activists but they do not correspond to any sober assessment of the present political balance of forces'!
The truth is that there is a tremendous reorganisation of the politics of the labour movement taking place. But the divide is not between 'fundamentalism' and 'realism'. It is between the supporters of European Capital and European missiles, and the supporters of the European working class. Hattersley, Healey, Kinnock, the LCC and Marxism Today are on one side of that divide and the bulk of CND activists, the Europeace movements, the Greens in Germany, Bennism and this journal are part of the other side.