class and democratic struggles, uniting the movement seeking out allies in a broad anti-Tory fight is the way forward...' Similar That approach creates the conditions for the return of a Labour government. The extent to which that would be a left government of a new type will depend upon the success and popular impact of the left over the next few years.
What are the points of agreement with Tony Benn here! (Socialist Action, 4 May). The most welcome point of agreement is on the priority given to mass campaigning among the people, with with the miners as the immediate task. This forms the most crucial common bond across the left. Further, the support for the elected Labour leadership symbolises a desire for unity to enable the most effective campaigning proceed.
But there are substantial difterences. some or wnich nave come out more clearly in Benn's other postelection interviews. As this is a debate there's no point in fudging them. The Next Stage In British Politics The critical point at issue is over the next stage in British politics. Increasingly, Benn argues that the way forward now is for Labour to present itself as an 'explicitly socialist alternative'. "Ine real answer found next time round ... in organising a real socialist campaign' (SA, 13 January). The view that the answer to Thatcherism is instant socialism well as the Trotskyist left.
Firstly, 1959, or a bil and struggle solidarity quires a socialist answer.
to sider the revealing interview all is well at the grass-roots. also advocated by Eric Heffer (see Marxism Today December 1983) as It is based on three assumptions.
that at the grassroots the movement is healthy, confident and socialist. The left is 'very strong' and 'deeply entrenched'. Secondly, that historically the Labour Party has been a socialist party which has been blown off course by revisionist leaders since earlier, DuR WAUSE socialist essence is undiminished and has now been reaffirmed. And thirdly, that the deep capitalist crisis reIt is these assumptions and assessments that are most sharply contested by the broad left and the Marxists within it. Firstly, Benn in contrast to Peter Hain, refuses to face up to the reality of the present low level of socialist consciousness. Labour election result is still described as 'amazing' when to most of us it was catastrophic. He refuses to conLabour's long-term electoral its decline or, for example, why the Sun has a circulation of four million (see with Bea Campbell, City Limits 20 January) since serious answers to these ques tions would undermine the myth that Secondly, the analysis is based on a myth about the past. Tony tells us that labour history is so important and he has countless references to refounding' and 'reconnecting with' the Labour Party's socialist traditions. His picture of a socialist Labour Party which shifted rightwards some time after the war and in which Gaitskell represented 'the first stage of revisionism'. This is unsound historical judgement, with serious political consequences. Benn equates the profound Labourist character of trade union and working class support for the Labour Farty with socialism. A quick read of Miliband or, dare one whisper it, Hobsbawm, should dispel dialogue movement' seems Hobsbawm 'who isn't even a member of the Hobsbawm shares McGahey, Bea Hall, Paul Foot and thousands of others. Are we all disqualified?
Or, sign of Benn's ridiculous attitude to Hobsbawm. The statements he purports to come from Eric in the interview are lust absurd.
Hobsbawm said that Labour 'could not have won sociological changes in the class structure of society'. It is also time to stop the anti-intellectual smears directed at Hobsbawm and others like 'high intellectual defeatists' (Morning Star, 3 October) and 'intellectual pessimists' (SA, 13 January). Our movement is meant to eradicate all prejudice, not to foster it.
The Future Character of the the Labour Party There is a key issue at stake in the debates with which Hobsbawm has been involved but its not around possible electoral arrangements with other parties. character of the Labour Party. Here there are two contrasting views on the left.
March has developed as a broad class and progressive front containing views from the the social-democratic the socialist exclude portance fact with Mick Campbell, Stuart perhaps, this is just another Nowhere has is playing an closures.
and other influence right.
To The real issue is the future sober The first recognises that Labour right to the Party as individuals. favour entrism. The Communist Party prefers to remain an independent organisation with a clear strategy for socialism; a commitment and ability to organise class and popular struggle - with the most extensive industrial network on the left; a belief in the imof autonomous social movements above all for women's liberation and peace and journals which present these politics to the democratic movement, although this is hampered at present by the attempted hijack of the Morning Star from the Communist Party.
This approach gives us a clear role on the left without slipping into sectarian hostility to Labour. Our party part in the development of the broadest struggles against Thatcherism, most notably al the moment in the fight against pit We see tremendous opportunities for the left to develop new levels of unity and militancy in this campaigns and to inflict defeats on the Thatcher government.
Mass struggle is the surest method to isolate the government, reduce the of Liberals/SDP and to regain Labour's lost millions. It's a strategy which if conducted correctly win hegemony in the movement, where it would be wrong to ignore the strength of the centrereject the passivity defeatism of 'new realism' requires a left approach able millions of trade unionists and other movements into struggle now. Unit! in that task is crucial if we are 10 resume Labour's forward march. • Jon Bloomfield is a regular contributor to Marxism Today.