Lawson's budget THREE hours after the budget the BBC duly interviewed four Household one: father a railworker, yearly income £7000, net weekly benefit from the budget 0.96p. postal worker, mother part time cleaner, yearly income £9000, net weekly improvement 14p. 'I'Il save it up to buy a share' explained the disgruntled father. Household three: a change. Household businessman expecting nover next year. Net week.
These figures surprise no-one. The next part, however, ought to give pause for thought to the backers of realignment. How would these people vote? The married women were not asked, so we don't know their intentions. But the railworker was changing his vote unemployed woman was going to keep right on voting lory.
Of course media stunts are always suspect. But these People just don t believe there is anything else responses over the horizon other than four million jobless, grinding rowing lispossessed, and the steady crumbling noise of the weltare state collapsing round our ears. Nobody can honestly believe that if Labour came to power tomorrow, anything substantial would change. So there is no reason to vote Labour.
This is why the most pathetic aspect of a pathetic budget is the pathetic response of the 'opposition'.
The is in a Unemployment permanently Manufacturing production is still lower than in 1979. An enormous trade deficit is covered up only by an oil surplus running out even quicker than expected. Only five million workers are left producing industrial goods. vice' sector, the much-vaunted employer, new jobs. And a new world slump is looming; the current wave of mergers and speculation is a sure sign of the financial frenzy that precedes a crash.
Only the most radical measures can solve economic problems of such a scale. The economic policy emerging from the stable of Roy Mattersley and John Prescott is simply not ar answer. Boiled down to the essentials, the ner policy abandons full employment. Planning for Jobs' document comes up with vir. tually the same answer as the SDP: authorities and local job creation schemes fiddle around creating a few jobs here and a few jobs there, but accept the basic Tory credo: don't pump too much new money into the ecomomy, and whatever you do, don't take on the City.
These policies convince nobody of anything. All they do is reinforce the despair and cynicism that lead to the reactions we saw in Fulham.
There is an alternative to Thatcherism. It is economic nonsense to keep four million people idle while people are crying schools and hospitals, and to throw away billions on gifts to the City while running industry into the ground. But unless movement has the political will to confront Thatcher's capitalist backers and fight for such an alternative, the Alliance will continue to reap the benefits from Lawson's failures.
The next issue of Socialist Action will be out on 2 Fulham households.
Household two: father a single unemployed woman. No four: self-employed 24 million turbenefit £3.56 per to The postal worker likewise. And the depressingly true.
poverty the gigantic mess. four million.
Last year the 'serreplacement created the grand total of 109,000 Prescott's let local ly out for houses, until the labour real to gle, Women Against Pit Closures conference that evaded the key political choices which faced the left. If fact two lines, and two analyses of the objective situation were built into it.
and which we looked at in Socialist Action last week, symbolise the fundamental choices which face the left. JOHN ROSS looks at the issues. THERE is no doubt when the foundation of the contemporary left should be dated from. In June 1973 the Campaign for (CLPD) wan formed. marked with qualitative break anything that had before in the party in recentecades ine reason was that the CLPD set out to transform the relations of power that existed in the party, and unrougn Inal It affected the relations of power in society.
The Labour left which had existed prior to 1973 might be popularly termed Tell.
Marxist phrase
ology it was a corporate left - that is one that accepts. the overall frame work decided by someone else (capitalism) and simpdefends specific interests, and protests inefwithin that overall framework.
Michael Foot is the idea representative such a left. Michael Foot is a pertect leader of 'the opposition'. He is at his best wiel morally belabouring someone else who is carrying out some vile policy or other. the more unlikely he to take power away those carrying out this policy the more magnificently Foot joins in the fray. But it is impossible to imagine Michael Foot wielding power for the movement.
The Labour Party itself, of course, historically has been a corporate, subcapitalism. It has accepted the frame-work of capital. ism and attempted, in the frame its policies within the framework set by capital.
Never did Labour seek establish the working class as the leading class of society - and indeed the entire idea of a class strugand a leading class, was historically rejected by • the official party. But the disputes which have erupted in the LLC, Within the Party itself the left was the embodiment embosinional corporate, spirit — even a caricature left endlessly framed resolutions to win 'protest' over the state of ? the world. These were then the Parliamentary Party and the party leaderof this was Programme 1973 -most left programme the Never whatever for CLPD the moan or make rhetorical will.
changes within the 1 alie tremendous ment That against meone but which its its of course means to the scale tion.
seen elements such left Ken Livingstone, London, created something 1n the GLC that authentically changed th framework of Labou politics. The GLC achieved mass popular support by creating an of working tions, women, black people, young people, and the London was undoubtedly done on a reformist basis the foundation of the GLC's policies wal the huge rates income possessed but then other previous leaders had had such an income had made nothing of it. Livingstone created Labour as a hegemonic, leading force in London for a brief period - before the debacle of the defeat on the rate capping struggle.
Vladimir Derer of CLPD Tony Benn achieved something of the same on more diffuse national level. The mixture of democracy and socialism which Benn increasingly put forward for the first time contained significant elements truly hegemonic politics for the left within it. The social basis of that development was strongly confirmed by the unequivocable support which Benn gave to the Finally it was the leadership given to the miners with Scargill as a symbol of the entire struggle and those involved in it whicl raised the left itself to qualitatively higher level. Scargill showed that the social alliances which Labour needed could be created not in collaboration with capital, through taxing it, but in a stru the leadership which was given to the strike permitted the broadest social alliances seen since the 1920s to come into exBlack sections news conference istence - and by that the strike broke the mould of the existing left.
What occurred during and at the 198 Labour Party conference - with the miners in open alliance with the black section, supporting demands of women's self-organisation within the party, linking up with the Labour Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Rights, and supporting the fight in local government - capped off the most impor alances seen in the social series social gle for socialism in Britair for six decade The embryo of a truly hegemonic force had emerged within the labour movement. breach which had been started by CLPD in 1973, had become a decisive series of social alliances tremendous social force It would of course be completely utopian to im agine the level of socia alliances, and organisation of the left, which was put together in the strike could be maintained at the same level after it. But what is important is that the key elements which came together to make up tha left have not been rolled back. The divisions which nave occurer since, because the left now has to be reconstituted on'a new higher basis — because the tasks are now on a new higher plane The initia break through of CLPD was met Sp hand one offensive of formation of the The miners strike was me by the highest level repression seen for decades.
It is not possible to go back and start off in a mechanical sense where CLPD began in 1973. The battle around accountability, around power within the party, remains a fundamental element without which nothing will be resolved. But a higher level of hegemon and of strategy is needed within the movement today No strategy for the left can be adequate today which does not place as its foundation the key social alliances, the organisations which symbolise and register them, il the party. These alliance must directly take in their dimension. black section, Women Against Pit the Action the NUM, and many other together with CLPD, mus be the bases on which a higher level development of the left within the party must be based. These need to forge links with the Campaign group of MPs, and mos fundamentally, to recreat their links into the trad unionhe tasks which con front the left in the party are clear!
First the struggle against Thatcher that means putting right a the top of the agenda • solidarity with struggles such as wice for the securing justice miners.
Second the against coalition because the right wing of the trade unions, and thei intellectual advisers in Marxism Today, JOHN already preparing coalition with the Alliance their political project for ment.
native for uniting ning over Fourthly the Fifthly creating can on a fai gle, another The Thomas what oft the FSIN intend to whine moan or set It -It was constantly by that lower level. that was th what to relearn again.
Socialist Action 21 March 1986
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WOMEN ASAINST PIT CLOSU MIDAMOS NORTHUMPERLS YO NOT
WHEN THE Labour Left Coordination (LLC) was formed in autumn last year it was done on a basis
said that