ANYONE WHO is getting interested in socialist ideas for the first time must
find it incredible that the Labour Party ever had the aim of replacing
capitalism with a publicly owned and democratically run economy, i.e.
socialism, enshrined in its constitution.
Steve Score
Today’s Labour Party, with its zeal for privatisation, funding from big
business and advocacy of the virtues of "the market" is a long way from the
one that had "Clause Four" printed on all its membership cards.
It is true that the party leadership never had any intention of
implementing that clause, but many ordinary party members saw it as what they
were aiming for. The fact that ten years ago, within a few months of getting
elected as party leader, Tony Blair was able to get it ditched reflected how
much the party had changed.
It was now clearly a party that had a pro-big business agenda and socialist
ideas could get no real echo even from below. Today, Labour for example does
not countenance nationalising Rover to save jobs. Yet this is not in itself a
socialist measure, even the Tories nationalised Rolls Royce in the early 1970s
to save a prestige name for British capitalism.
Clause Four
Even in the 1950s when the party had shifted massively to the right, Hugh
Gaitskell, party leader of the time failed in his attempt to get rid of Clause
Four because of opposition from union activists.
The clause had been put in the party’s constitution in 1918 following huge
support amongst Labour Party supporters for the Russian workers in the
revolution of 1917. The wording of the clause, with its use of Marxist
language, had been written by Sidney Webb from the party’s Fabian right wing.
This was to ensure that even more direct revolutionary language was not
passed!
For example the 1908 conference passed a resolution saying: "… the Labour
Party should have as a definite object, the socialisation of the means of
production, distribution and exchange, to be controlled by a democratic state
in the interest of the entire community, and the complete emancipation of
labour from the domination of capitalism, and landlordism."
Right-wing Labour leaders were always embarrassed by the "socialist clause"
in Labour’s constitution. But it wasn’t until 1995 that a Labour leader could
get rid of it. This was because of the level of support for it in the past
from party members, even if in some cases it was seen as something to be
achieved in the dim and distant future.
Militant
HOWEVER, MANY responded to the ideas of the Socialist Party’s forerunner –
the Militant. We argued that its immediate implementation, in the form of the
"nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy under democratic
workers’ control and management", was necessary to solve the problems caused
by capitalism.
Resolutions proposed by Militant supporters along those lines were passed
at party meetings and national conferences in the 1970s and 1980s as the
Labour Party membership shifted to the left. We argued that capitalism needed
replacing; it could not be "reformed" out of existence, these measures would
need to be backed up by a mass movement of workers in the workplaces.
A shift to the right began with the expulsions of Militant supporters in
the mid 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s after the so-called ‘communist’
countries of Russia and Eastern Europe, collapsed.
These regimes, named Stalinist by Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, were
not socialist. They were based on planned economies and nationalisation but
they were one-party totalitarian states, where a bureaucratic elite dominated
both state and society.
However, the collapse of these regimes was an enormous propaganda victory
for the capitalist class internationally. They used it to launch an
ideological attack on ‘socialism’, claiming that there was no alternative to
the capitalist free market.
Transformation
In the ten years since, the Labour Party has qualitatively changed. Now,
Labour’s transformation into a bosses’ party raises the need for a new mass
party that represents working-class people’s interests. Socialist Party
members are campaigning for the establishment of such a broad party.
But we also still raise the ideas of "common ownership" of the economy and
democratic control by the working class. These are necessary to provide a
socialist alternative to the attacks on working-class people by New Labour and
all the other parties of capitalism.
It’s only by taking control of the economy out of the hands of big business
and using the resources of society in a democratic plan that we can start to
solve the problems of poverty, inequality and poor services and injustice.
Steve Score is the Socialist Party’s general election candidate in
Leicester West
