THE CRISIS developing in Labour's soft left' since last autumn exploded into public last week. In the pages of Tribune, extreme right wing Labour Coordinating Committee (LCC) supporter, Nigel Stanley, launched an attack on Labour Left Liaison for exploding the soft left - and on other members of the soft left for supporting it. The same week the result of the ballot of its members was announced in which the LCC voted by two te one to overturn Labour party policy on the reselection of MPs — the LCC thereby openly attacking, for the first time, the democratic gains achieved in the Labour Party in 1979-81. Simultaneously the New Statesman, which acts as the weekly organiser for the right wing in the party, launched a call looks at the developments ripping the soft left apart — and what attitude for this right wing/soft left bloc. He whiles. Pally unily -was a pre-requisite for electoral success...A of this new concept of defence campaign. A polarised Labour Party would have precluded it. Instead both sides of the party have made compromises here!
Stanley makes it clear he is against left unity: "The only basis for left unity at present, given perspectives on the left, would be the right. This would similar perioo lo unal arter tne 19/9 where the party was deeply polarised. Success Quite bizarely Stanley claims that this right wing/soft left bloc is shown to be correct by the electoral success it has brought the party. Stanley speaks of: 'the first task set by the realigned left -a short term programme for electoral Ictory. and then claims. Kinnock's priority was to make the Labour Party electorally popular once more. (and others) have done, many of us expected.
This analysis is quite extraordinary given the eight per cent fall in Labour's vote in Knowsley • North, the four per cent fall in Greenwich, slump in Labour's position since the 1986 party conference, and the fact that Labour did not advance in the polls at all for three years after Neil Kinnock's election as party leader.
Far from being a success Kinnock's right wing course, right wing/soft left bloc, has been an electoral disaster.
the understood on the left, is that Labour under Kinnock has refused to adjust itself to the working class as it is today. Kinnock's course has sabotaged support for working class struggles, such as the miners, Wapping, and trade union rights. It has been complicit in the attack on the inner cities councils trying to defend their populations. It has refused to change either Labour's policies or lls structures lo bring it into line with the revolution in the working class constituted by massive entry of women and black people into the workforce.
Mismatch As Ken Livingstone put it in a neat but correct formula, there mismatch between the working class as It is now and the institutions of the working class.' The addition which has to be made to that statement is that this means not just changing the institu tions of the labour movement, vital as that is, but that Labour's policies, and Its support struggles, must brought into line with the new structure of the working class. must take in both the Labour Party and the trade unions.
The right/soft left bloc, by accepting rejection of anything would 'modernise' the Labour Party, in profound sense of structures and policies into line with the reality of the working class, has itself ensured electoral disaster for Labour.
left of the party good example olzanbalulai political choice. unity is the Base represented by Nigel stanley, the widely different mean entering attacking the ty of the working class today. right wing This he bureaucract more than Callaghan general that everv penny the course of the conventional The real tallure of increasingly hospitals and houses, • and on the the paign SWCOL their supporters.
Outcome clearer. At least ning be of MPs is what is involved.
These changes divided the LCC executive Wing the discussion on their argued against any weakening that Susten bringing its Vote' whether to unite with the right or the are simply the expression The situation is made still worse for the extreme right wing of the LCC, because the right wing of the party hold them in complete contempt, consider the soft left simply as a useful tactical tool for left, completely refuse to accept even the changes won in 1979-81 — let alone the more advanced which has developed since then and which are anderady unioninto lime with the reaty- necessary to bring the Labour The right wing has tried to overturn mandatory reselection of MPs at every party conference since it was adopted.
The right is now engaged on a full blooded drive, headed up through the Daily Mirror, New Statesman, and the of the taking James route -to overturn The 'soft left' therefore inevitably now has to choose between its verbal support for the principles won in 1979-81 and its bloc with the right. Modern Britain in a Modern World defence cocument first brought this policy crisis to a head for the base of the soft left by the fact that Labour, for the first time, pledged saved on nuclear weapons expenditure would be spent on government was now pledged to maintain military spending at the highest lever of any country in western Europe The TV political broadcasts launching this campaign were the most explicitly militarist in the Labour Party's entire recent history. Building more tanks, not was lul a blalform to inspire even the soft left, nor, in the real world, is it a very good platform for winning working class votes — in addition to the much more profound political objections to this policy.
A wave of opposition to this camactivists, The apologies which the soft left were forced to make for this campaign didn't convince even their own members and produced a crisis of confidence among The issue of reselection is even Labour remained formally pledged to the policy - although in practice the way to overturning it is being prepared. didates But with reselection it is open v overtur. jected of the previous gains made 1979-81, and weakening accountability The question of reselection already • parallellrelations with Labour Left Liaison. Livingstone of the . or accountabilly of MPs to their general committees. The LCC 'right wing' argued for replacing it with a system of 'One Member, - which in practice would be to ecutive destroy any accountability of MPs to the left should take to its crisis.
the only body capable of monitoring them, their GCs.
The right wing of the soft left has since been prepared to go still further than the LCC vote. Tribune editor Nigel Williamson wrote in last week's New Statesman: 'Deirdre Wood's defeat was, of course, partly due to the sustained and unpleasant media campaign waged against her. But therein lies the point. By-elections are now such a centre of national attention that the Labour Party has a duty to itself and its supporters all over the country to choose canwho cannot so easily be subto such damaging, campaigns.
Opposition It now seems clear that had Les Huckfield been allowed to stand in the Knowsley North by-election November (a right I championed in Tribune at the time) then that seat would have been lost, too. I reluctantly conclude that Labour's national ex was right to impose George Howarth. for a right wing/soft left bloc to purge the London Labour Party.
support the right of the party leadership to impose candidates on local parties. but no candidates unaccentable to the right wing media are to be selected! The logic of this would be that there must right throughout the country anyone media. The selection committee of the Labour Party will be Mr Rupert Murdoch - and this from someone like Williamson, left!
personal wing on the soft left are becoming more week's New Statesman. call for a purge of the London Labour Party. Its front page cover is entitled "The London Effect'. Its target is the legacy of the GLC.
last In its previous Statesman had editorialised that: "it is no longer enough, for example, simply to let a number of local organisations ¿ciliall dominated perpetuating clique whatever ideological stripe'. Labour's 'realigned left' is on the point of exploding. JOHN ROSS Nor merely does Williamson now wing candidates as clearly eise is unaccentable to the alll.
inner who claims to be on the The way the demands of the right controlled.' is shown cleariv in las This carries a According Brent, issue the paign and by set. of activists of In last week's issue it extended its target n simply to the injunction that "Trotsky! groups are poison but to a tul se: assault on London's white collar tra unions: White collar trade unions, li the local government, teaching, furthe education and even journalists unio tend more and more to use ward and . constituency Labour Parties to furthe of militant union branch leaderships. Thus the teachers union it London uses its powertu machine against the Inner Londo Education authority, which is labou Also coming under the hammer at the leadership of the black community State man: Ethnic minority politics radical at Its activist-leadershi level. All of the black leaders - Lindi Bellos of Lambeth, Merle Amory Bernie Grant of Haring together with leading activists like Mai Wadsworth of the black sections ca _Diane Abbott, prospecti candidate for Hackney North, are on o near the hard left, and most have show little sign of seeking a better relation ship with the party yet. They do diffe
Socialist Action 19 March 1987