SPOKESMAN BOOKS
|
|
|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation
|
|
Catalogue
|
How to Lose a War
The Spokesman, 90
Dianne
Hayter, Fightback! Labour’s traditional right in the 1970s and 1980s,
ISBN
0719072719 £14.99
This
claims to be an insiders’ account of how the right wing in the Labour Party
regained the traditional pre-eminence it appeared to have lost following the
fall of the Callaghan Government in 1979, thus preparing the way for its
triumphant return in the form of New Labour.
In
1960 the left-right battle had swung towards the left with the adoption of a
policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament at the Scarborough Conference –
thanks to dedicated organisation by the Party’s rank and file. This victory
was ignored by the leadership – particularly in the Parliamentary Labour
Party, who refused to acknowledge that the Party’s official position had
changed – and was subsequently reversed.
The
rank and file took the position that there was little point in working to gain
support for policies within the Party if, once carried, these were ignored by
the leadership. They argued that the Party belonged to its members (which was
certainly true at law) and not to a handful of Members of Parliament who had
always assumed they had the right to appoint the Leader and determine the
Party’s policy. Although the Party was set up by trade unionists, they had
always deferred to their parliamentary colleagues.
This
approach led to the formation in the 1970s of the Campaign for Labour Party
Democracy (CLPD), dedicated to securing constitutional changes that would make
the Party more democratic, and more accountable to its members. It is
generally accepted that it was CLPD’s success in securing the mandatory
reselection of MPs by their constituencies before each general election that
was the final straw that led to the breakaway of a right faction to form the
SDP in 1981. They were so out of
sympathy with their constituency parties and the National Executive that they
were afraid they would not be re-adopted by their constituencies and therefore
had nothing to lose by going it alone.
Hayter
describes the limited efforts of the right in Parliament to organize against
the left-controlled National Executive Committee, but she sees them as more
concerned to safeguard their own jobs rather than to take up positions of
principle which might leave them vulnerable to attack.
Much
more effective, in Hayter’s view, were the trade unionists in the secret St
Ermine’s Group whose aims were:
‘taking control of the NEC and then to fashion the party outside the House into an election-winning entity. This would mean expelling Militant, changing head-office personnel and concentrating on winning back public support. Their first service to the party was not to defect in the aftermath of Wembly (1981); their second was to take control of the NEC by 1982: their third was to deliver the leadership to Kinnock, in whom they saw someone equally committed to the task of returning to government’.
By
1987, the right had gained control. Kinnock was leader and felt strong enough
to start reshaping policy. With trade union backing he launched a Policy
Review at the ’87 Conference which, by ’91, resulted in four reports which
formed the basis of the 1992 manifesto. The Party dropped its opposition to
the Common Market and returned to its traditional positions on defence and the
mixed economy.
With
the death of John Smith, in 1994, and the election of Tony Blair as leader,
the ground was prepared for the further reforms of New Labour –
restructuring the National Executive Committee to bring it under the control
of Downing Street, together with the Party apparatus, with a so-called
Chairman appointed by the Prime Minister. ‘Spin’ and ‘control’, the
result of secret machinations of groups such as St Ermine’s, became apparent
for all to see, so that the Party became a laughing-stock to the general
public and repugnant to its membership, which fell from 400,000 to less than
200,000 over the period of the Labour Government.
Opportunist
to the end, the self-styled modernizers are now seeking to turn to their
advantage the scandal of undeclared loans to the Labour Party in exchange for
hoped-for peerages. They are arguing that such abuses would not occur if
political parties were funded by the state. They would thus achieve their
dream of doing away with members altogether; the political parties would thus
become self-perpetuating oligarchies, answerable to no one but themselves.
At
present we have an electoral system that has not produced majority rule since
1931 – the year of Labour’s great débâcle. It could perhaps be defended
on the grounds that single-member constituencies can, in theory, select their
own Members of Parliament. There doesn’t seem to be much other justification
for a system which never manages to achieve democracy – that is, rule by the
majority. With selection of MPs controlled by party officials with subventions
from the state, ties with local constituencies will become meaningless, as
with many of the continental party list systems, and our present electoral
system will lose all legitimacy.
The
trend towards secret manipulation, started by the St Ermine’s Group, must be
countered by moves towards openness and transparency at all levels in the
Labour Party. The work of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy is more
important than ever.
Richard Fletcher
