Labour’s Troubles – only Just Beginning
EVEN THE New Labour government’s most loyal
supporters in the media were forced to admit last week that the Blair “magic
has started to fade”. With New Labour approaching its thousandth day in office,
word went out from Downing Street not to celebrate the occasion.
The recent upheavals experienced by the Blair regime will no doubt be one
factor behind the government planning for an election within the next 18
months, possibly even as early as this autumn.
The bad news for New Labour is that their problems are only just beginning.
After a week of bad headlines: the NHS crisis; the inability to deliver on
other election promises; Straw’s decisions on Pinochet, Tyson and the right to
trial by jury; the government’s betrayal of its ‘ethical’ foreign policy and
last but not least the cover-ups and spin that accompanied all these fiascos,
New Labour then saw further catastrophes sailing over the horizon.
The Geoffrey Robinson/Transtec scandal could become New Labour’s “cash for
questions” - a scandal that could go all the way to the top as Blair and Brown
have been heavily subsidised by Robinson. The London Mayoral Labour nomination
has seen Blair and Brown tormented by the normally mute membership of the
Labour Party.
But it is last week’s massive jump in the public-sector borrowing requirement
that will be causing the most anxious flutters in both 10 & 11 Downing
Street.
The doubling of the expected figure - if continued - would mean that New
Labour’s projected £20 billion pre-election war chest would be wiped out. All
its limited promises (very limited in most cases) would be unfulfilled.
Even before the economy hits the sands Blair has changed his NHS promises into
“aspirations”. You cannot live on or cure health problems with “aspirations”.
Added to this more gloomy outlook is the increasingly sharp warnings - such as
in last week’s Economist - that the US economy is now more likely to suffer a
hard landing of such a scale to send massive shockwaves throughout the world
economy.
All the media commentators agreed that a feeling of crisis is starting to
envelop the Blair government. They are also desperately searching for the root
cause or fatal flaw that has led the Blair government to this point.
The government’s bewildered media supporters argue that it has half implemented
some ‘decent’ reforms - minimum wage, New Deal, union rights etc - but that
these limited reforms are outweighed by the duplicity of the government or its
inability to deliver in other matters.
All these things may cause the government’s former friends much agony but
regular readers of this paper will remember what we said even before New Labour
came to power. We warned in May 1997 that under this government “the needs of
big business and finance, the drive for profit will dominate over the needs of
millions of ordinary people.”
That is the ‘fatal flaw’ at the heart of this New Labour government. Blair
thinks that he can run Britain as if he were the chief executive of a public
limited company. But Britain PLC was not in particularly great shape after 18
years of Tory devastation.
That weakness will be underlined time and again as the world economy faces
turbulence in the years ahead. Blair realises his best bet is to cut and runin
the hope of winning an election against the discredited and divided Tories.
But the events of the last few weeks have fundamentally changed the perception
of the New Labour government. Working-class people have seen it is weak and
will not advance their interests.
That’s why, even if Blair were to win a general election, it will be on a
massively reduced turnout and with a slashed majority. Moreover, there will be
increasing and bitter anger against it from amongst working-class people.
Such anger will give New Labour much bigger troubles in the years ahead.
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When Workers Showed their
Discontent
THE 1970s was a decade of capitalist crisis.
Heath’s Tory government was brought down in the 1974 miners’ strike, sending
shock waves through the capitalist class.
For many years, the central political question was the power of the working
class - in the early 1970s, opposition to Heath’s Industrial Relations Act had
ruined his anti-union strategy. Now workers’ industrial strength had brought
down his government.
The 1973-74 oil crisis which erupted in the Middle East sent oil prices
rocketing. In 1976 Callaghan’s Labour government bent the knee to the
International Monetary Fund implementing public spending cuts, showing clearly
that power lay with finance capital, not right-wing Labour prime ministers.
Callaghan again sided with the bosses, bringing in three rounds of pay
‘restraint’. Every year from 1975 to 1979 inflation soared by almost 16% but
wages could not go up by more than 5% - in real terms this was a pay cut.
At the 1978 Labour Party conference, delegates decisively voted down pay
restraint. Ford workers - already on strike - ignored the 5% limit. Solidarity
spread as dockers and London TGWU members blacked Ford goods. Within a month,
Leyland workers, bakery and British Oxygen workers had all joined forces with
the Ford workers in smashing the 5%.
This was not reflected in the tops of the unions. Right-wing union leader Frank
Chapple, head of the electricians’ union EEPTU, could not find time to talk to
his members, instead denying them strike pay. 200 furious stewards occupied
EEPTU headquarters.
One of them wrote in Militant, the forerunner of The Socialist: “What the hell
is going on? ... Doesn’t Frank Chapple take notice of his members or even his
own officials any more?”
In the same week Militant reported: “A scarred face, bruised limbs, torn
clothes and eight arrests: that is the price of the right to strike and picket
after the first few days at H.W.Neill (a London bakery) ... boots and fists
flying, the police got four vans out. Charlie Shepherd, branch secretary, was
knocked to the ground and kicked.”
Compared to some of the union leaders Sam Maddox, general secretary of the
Bakers Union BFAWU, put forward a clearer class position on the front page of
Militant: “To make industry viable it has got to be nationalised. The nation’s
bread would thus be produced for need and not for profit. Our call goes out to
all trade unionists for support. Our fight is your fight!”
The call was answered within days. Workers at the GKN ‘defence’ company struck
against the 5% on 20 November. Eight days later, 3,000 print workers
demonstrated in Fleet Street and lobbied Parliament.
In December the oil tanker drivers announced a nationwide strike. Labour
ministers were panic-stricken. Tony Benn wrote in his diary: “15,000 troops
would be deployed... The PM wants an emergency committee made up of (mostly
right-wingers)... There will be an operations centre and something called the
OSG - Organisational Sub-Group ... We shall meet on a daily basis.”
Benn protested: “We must not run this like a military operation against an
enemy.” In fact it was precisely that - a military operation by the capitalist
class against its class enemy, the striking drivers.
On 3 January 1979 BP drivers walked out in Northern Ireland. The next day
Texaco drivers announced an all-out strike. By 5 January Benn recorded: “The
Texaco strike is worse and Manchester, the North East and parts of Scotland are
running out of oil.”
Thatcher demanded a state of emergency and the withdrawal of social security
from strikers. While the Emergency Committee met with the oil monopolies, Benn
noted that “about half the oil company plants are closed either by strikes,
like Texaco, or by picketing.
“Oil supplies are down to 50%; one-quarter of all filling stations are closed,
in Northern Ireland there are no deliveries, as in the north-west, where
supplies are down to 5%.” The strike ended on 11 January with pay increases of
11%-15%.
That very day, lorry drivers began official TGWU action. As Benn pointed out:
“There is no point in having a state of emergency for the road haulage drivers
because the troops couldn’t provide emergency coverage of that magnitude.” The
truckers’ strike ended after eleven days, winning pay increases of 15% to 20%.
In the next three weeks there were four one-day rail strikes, local authority
and health service workers struck as did school caretakers and maintenance
workers.
On 22 January Militant reported: “The most impressive display of trade union
solidarity ever mounted by public-sector manual workers... 80% of the workers
concerned supported the call.” 80,000 marched through London “shoulder to
shoulder despite the bitter cold”.
Yet incredibly Callaghan claimed: “There is no legal or moral obligation on
anyone not to cross a picket line” and said that he would scab himself. This,
from the Prime Minister of a Labour government sponsored by the unions! Little
wonder that a February poll showed a 19% Tory lead, with Thatcher, then the
leader of the opposition, more popular than Callaghan.
Towards the end of February, a civil service strike brought out 75% of
unionised civil servants. The government lost a “no confidence” vote in the
House of Commons on 28 March and called the general election for May.
Five days later, half a million civil servants were on strike. The civil
servants’ union CPSA won a 9% increase although they could have achieved more.
Union members accepted, but out of realisation that “the leadership do not have
the will to fight on and that they must accept a compromise.”
Today the bosses, through their media, their mouthpieces in the Labour and Tory
parties, and through their supporters in the trade union leaderships, all tell
us the same old lie: the Labour government was brought down by the strike
movement, that workers’ struggles were a “mistake”.
The truth is that the Labour government lost to Thatcher because it betrayed
the workers. Millions of workers abstained in protest. It was Callaghan - and
after him Foot, Kinnock and Smith - who paved the way for Blair and his
destruction of all the Labour Party stood for.
The role of Callaghan’s Labour government in the 1970s was a shameless
abandonment of workers’ struggles. Yet this has always been, and always will
be, the role of the right-wing in the labour movement at the critical moments
in struggle. The majority of full-time union officials, prefer a comfortable
life on fat salaries. The idea of industrial conflict terrifies them.
As Militant pointed out during the 1976-78 dispute at Grunwick’s in London: “it
would take just the lifting of the TUC’s and Labour government’s finger to
ensure victory... Meanwhile they stand aside and let trade unionists get beaten
up by the British police force... If the enormous strength of the trade union
movement had been brought to bear on the company, the strike could have been
won... The TUC did not use the enormous authority it has in the eyes of
millions... Frankly the leadership of the labour movement did not match up to
the membership.”
Today Ken Jackson plays the part of chief strike-breaker with his “no strikes
Britain” and all the accompanying treachery. Other union leaders, however, are
not far behind.
The unions are crying out for a principled lead in the fight for their members’
rights, pay and conditions. The election campaign of Roger Bannister for UNISON
general secretary continues to show the growing support of organised workers
for a fighting and democratic leadership, and workers’ anger at those
right-wing union leaders who accept the bosses’ dictats.
The battle does not stop with the trade unions. Another mantra of the bosses,
echoed by their supporters in the Labour Party and the unions, is that “unions
aren’t political”. This is nonsense.
The Winter of Discontent shows us precisely that the workers’ struggles against
the bosses are political. Ultimately this is the greatest political struggle of
all.
The unions founded the Labour Party almost 100 years ago, to politically
represent the working-class. Today, the Labour Party is dead for that purpose.
The hypocrisy and kow-towing to the bosses of Blair, of his Cabinet, and of his
dwindling supporters, is that of pale blue Tories. Workers need mass political
representation, through a determined, democratic, fighting and principled
leadership. The most important task today is the creation of a new workers’
party for the millions of workers inside the unions and in the wider working
class who are trampled on by the bosses.
A mass workers’ party will give us the voice and the organised strength we need
to take on the capitalists.
Today, it is the forces grouped around the Socialist Party who still espouse
the ideas of socialism and class struggle. The working-class is starting to
move towards these ideas again - inside and out of the unions.
But workers’ struggles can ultimately only end in success if we transform
society - from the stinking nightmare of capitalism to a democratic socialist
society with working class control and management. That is our aim. Join the
Socialist Party, and join us in the fight to end all the poverty and misery of
capitalism - the fight for a new socialist world.
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BLAIR’S "stop Ken" bandwagon
BLAIR’S “STOP Ken’ bandwagon went into top gear after polls revealed
Livingstone’s massive lead over Frank Dobson in the race to be Labour’s
candidate for mayor.
Jim Horton
Even the Mirror had the headline ‘Dead as a Dobbo’. Their opinion poll showed
Dobson with just 3% support, so they’re campaigning for the more popular Mo
Mowlam to enter the race.
Blair and Co are shoring up Dobson’s flagging campaign. Dobson complains that
he’s carrying the can for growing disillusionment with Blair’s government.
Blair is attending anti-Livingstone ‘question and answer’ sessions with Labour
Party members. Both Blair and Brown faced frequent heckling from the audience
at a meeting of 1,400 Labour Party members called to attack Livingstone and the
GLC’s policies.
Dobson’s camp seized on Livingstone’s jokey comments in the The Face magazine
that he supported the direct action protest in Seattle, to suggest he supported
violent rioting.
Given the ferocity of Blairite opposition to Livingstone, how will Blair be
able to support Livingstone as Labour candidate? He has spent months warning
voters against him.
The first official opinion poll of London Labour Party members shows overwhelming
support for Livingstone, 63%, against Dobson’s 25%. Livingstone also leads in
the trade union section.
However, across the electoral college the result, due on 21 February, will be
close with Livingstone on 49% and Dobson, with majority support in the MP
section, on 46%.
Interestingly the same poll shows that most people support Livingstone standing
as an independent if he fails to win the nomination.
Livingstone publicly says he won’t stand against the official Labour candidate.
He described Labour’s Blairite candidates for the assembly top-up list as “not
the best eleven”, but incredibly admits he’d like former Times editor Simon
Jenkins, and Tony Travers of the LSE as part of his cabinet.
Rather than looking to right-wing academics and being shackled by a Blairite
manifesto, Livingstone should use the support he has to mount an independent
challenge to New Labour.