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Now the tide is turning Contents Editorial: Now the tide is turning ..................3 The Battle against the Poll Tax .. By Eddie Donaghy.
Northern Ireland: Tories reach an impasse ... 12 By Peter Hadden.
Economic Notes..
By Bob Mckee.
The economics of Perestroika.. By Lynn Walsh.
The last three months have seen the beginnings of a sea change in British politics. ( The measures taken by the Thatcher government have opened up irreparable chasm between the an classes, into which the Tories will Thatcher has thrown all caution to the winds by introducing the most outrageous pro-rich budget since the war, combined with a crushing attack on the poor through the social security measures. And she is ploughing on with the iniquitous poll tax to replace the rates. As a result she has created real worries among the more far sighted representatives of the ruling class that this time she really has 'gone too far'.
Only recently, in a written answer to a parliamentary question, the government was forced to reveal that the budget handout to the top one per cent of taxpayers was, in total, greater than the reductions given to the 'bottom' 70%! And almost with the same breath the Tories introduced their new social security measures, which, it is no exaggeration to say, represent a return to the age of Dickens, the poor laws and all the other evils of capitalism that existed prior to the introduction of Militant International Review 3/13 Hepscott Road London E9 5HB. Editor: Alan Woods.
By Phil Frampton.
...7 By Peter Jackson.
Letters.......
..18 Science Report.
By Pete Dickenson.
..19 By Alan Woods.
Book Reviews ..
Editorial the welfare state. Despite the huffing and puffing of Thatcher and her lap dog Social Security Moore, John the Minister, all the experts agree that over 60% of those presently receiving the already inadequate benefits will be worse off under the new regime-that means the unemployed, the sick, the old, the young and disabled. Pre-Victorian values Thatcher remains obsessed with the mad idea that the best way forward for British capitalism is to return to Victorian or to be more exact pre- • 'the Victorian) values where only market rules' in an environment of competition'
between individuals 'freed' from the obstructions of government 'interference'. As she recently put it, quoting her guru, Friedrich Hayek: "There is no such thing as 'society', there are only individuals-men, women and their families". In other words collective action and support as represented by the welfare state, the Jesse Jackson and the black struggle.......... 22 West Bank revolt-the masses intervene. .28 .35 .36 The history of Bolshevism, part eight.. ..37 44 public sector, trade unions etc are dangerous evils to the welfare of capitalism and must be liquidated. Thatcher's nostalgic desire to return to a capitalism that never really existed anyway is preparing the way tor a massive response from working people against the Thatcher government. And the fear of what is ahead is opening up visible splits within the Tory government and within the ruling class itself. The reaction by commentators to the budget showed the signs of unease. Hugo Young in The Guardian lamented the final demise of the "last vestiges of the post-war consensus". The reaction of Tory backbenchers to the social measures which attacked security many of their own voters (particularly older ones with some savings who would lose housing benefit under the changes) was one of horror and even anger.
Of course, what has prompted these first stirrings of revolt in the Tory party is not concern for the victims of Thatcher's measures. Rather it is a profound unease at the prospect of the social upheavals their policies are helping to fuel. The first tremors of this subterranean mood of bitterness surfaced in the movement that developed
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MIR Summer 1988: Editorial in defence of the health service earlier this year. Whole new layers never previously involved in struggle took part in the days of action, protest luding the 100,000 strong demonstration on 5 March, the biggest labour movement turn-out in London for over a Actions speak louder than words. That old proverb holds especially well when dealing with Thatcher and the Tories. The nurses and health workers demonstrated that with their tremendous struggle-and at the answered those sceptics at the top of the labour movement who argued that once the Tories had won the election in 1987, nothing could be done to stop their untrammelled rule. The nurses took national industrial action for the first time in their history and they would have gained even more than the eventual government funded pay rise if the labour and trade union leaders had not derailed the movement by refusing to organise national solidarity action. The nurses were not alone in successfully taking on the Tories and big business-the Ford workers went onto the offensive and their partial victory led to similar if shortlived action by other car workers to match the Ford deal. Teachers, civil servants and the seafarers, in a particularly heroic and painful struggle, also moved into ac- Election win This journal has argued for some time that the Tories were steadily undermining the social base of their support by their measures. The budget, the social security changes and soon the poll tax, are opening up a class divide that threatens to destroy support for the Tories. The May local government elections gave a glimpse of future developments. Denied and hushed up by the Tory press and refuted. On the basis of those results, if there had been a general election, Labour would be the largest party in parliament now.
Labour improved substantially on its corresponding 1984 vote, which was regarded as a Labour 'high' then. It took eight more key councils including Aberdeen, Clydesdale and Kyle and Carrick in Scotland, where the Tories were humiliated. Labour also made inroads into the Tory heartland in the 'soft' South. Southampton, Cambridge Brighton were brought under control. In the Labour held Birmingham comfortably and took back Wolverhampton and Walsall. The most remarkable result there was the victory of Marxist Richard Evans in the previously rock-solid Tory ward of Bournville, the area named after the village for workers built there by the paternalist Quaker chocolate Cadbury. The rightwing Labour leader Dick Knowles was unsure if Labour would hold the council, let alone win any new seats. The result in Bournville was an earthquake not just for the Tories!
Again the best results nationally were achieved in Liverpool. For the first time in the local elections, Labour won a majority of votes-54%. And the most outstanding results were gained by those who supported the ideas Militant and the 47 surcharged councillors. The Tories lost two seats and just hung on to two others. But for that Liverpool would have been the first city in Britain without any representation from the Tories. The Tories-in-disguise in Liverpool, the Liberals, also did so badly that Sir Trevor Jones (no longer 'Jones the vote!) resigned shortly afterwards as party leader. Wiped out in Scotland, massacred in the North, and wounded the future disintegration of the Tories are being sown. To date the ruling class have rallied round the Thatcher clique at the the Conservative because of her apparent success, even luck, in meeting the opposition of the working class. They did not expect to get away with as much as they have without provoking a social explosion. But that is precisely what looms ahead in the struggle over the poll tax. This is already reaching fever pitch in Scotland as the article in this issue of the MIR explains. Yet Thatcher ploughs on regardless of the consequences for the Potentially the struggle around the poll tax could be the most serious since the miners strike, with greater repercussions than even the movement in Liverpool. That was confined to one city whereas this will be an all- Scottish struggle, with the possible involvement of millions. Thatcher's stooge in Scotland, Malcolm Rifkind, has referred to the powers of the Secretary of State for Scotland as being "not unlike those of a colonial governor." But if Thatcher and her clique hoped that a colonial policy of divide and rule would work by imposing the poll tax in Scotland first, they have severely miscalculated. Once the mass movement really develops, and fundamentally it is the class struggle that frays the nerves of Tory leaders and undermines the confidence of the strategists of capital, the splits in the Tory party will deepen. She is conjuring up forces that she cannot control and which threaten to shatter the Tory This crisis in the party of the ruling class is not confined just to Britain. In fact, it has gone a lot further already in France and Spain. The right in France is in confusion and disarray following Mitterand's victory; in Spain they have been in that condition for some years. Now the first signs of division and weakness have surfaced in West Germany with the loss of a formerly 'safe' Christian Democrat state, Schleswig Holstein, to the SPD by a landsiide. There is a new mood of opposition and capitalism Behind this growing class polarisation and the unease among sections of the ruling class about the strategy of Thatcher, there is the economy-the key to future perspectives. Since the general election the Tories have ridden along on a production and spending boom. The stock crash in October seemed to have been 'shrugged off' to use Lawson's complacent words. But this 'boom' is based on an avalanche of credit and consumer borrowing surpassing even the 'Barber boom' early 1970s-the terrible experience of which originally converted Thatcher and Lawson to monetarism.
Fissures This situation has opened up a new and deeply damaging fissure between ministers. Ranged on one side are Thatcher, her most sycophantic supmonetarists' like Tory dissident Biffen, and the Bank of England, representing the interests of finance capital. They wanted firm controls over this money spree because they fear renewed inflation caused by uncontrolled consumer demand, exploding house prices and easy credit. To this end they wanted interest rates to rise to choke off borrowing even if it meant a rise in the value of sterling against other currencies. In fact a 'strong' pound, they argued, will make imports cheaper and keep down costs.
On the other side are Lawson and his new ally Sir Geoffrey Howe, with the CBI and the industrial wing of the ruling class. Rising interest rates increase the cost of borrowing for investment and production, and as the value of sterling rises inexorably against the dollar and the mark, British goods cheaper in home markets. The result is an ever greater balance of trade deficit threatening the very foundations of growth. So Lawson wanted lower in-
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NUP SAS SUPPORT BOCHDALL HEALTH молись BRANCH 15b5.
rates and a lower value of battle over economic policy reached an open conflict in the press. Eventually, Thatcher was partly because of the very market forces she praises so highly. Interest rates were reduced to the Chancellor's satisfaction. But this is only a temporary ceasefire. Overbetween sections of the British ruling class is the spectre of world slump which is drawing ever closer, possibly towards the end of 1988 or next year. World slump, or even just a recession, would have a devastating effect on the feeble British economy. The uncertainty, hesitations and recriminations this will create, will make the present But incredibly, just as British and world capitalism is on the eve of a terrible crisis which will expose the rottenness of the system of private profit and the market, Labour the eaders produce a series of policy reviews' which laud and praise the workings of the market as modern socialism'! Only the Marxists still defend the planned economy and workers' control and management. The socalled socialist states, the Stalinist totalitarian regimes of Russia, China 'perestand Eastern Europe, under roika' have also turned to 'markets' as another article in this issue describes. NUPE SAYS PUT HEALTH FIRST SUPPORT THE N. H. S.
YOUR LETH SERVICE PIC NOT RAFE IN 1: N Now every Socialist leader from Gonzalez, Hawke, Lange, to Rocard and Kinnock ignore or attack socialism. Neil Kinnock revealed his true intentions when interviewed on LWT's Weekend World by Matthew Parris. Parris asked him: "Gonzalez in Spain told his party that what they had understood as socialism was effectively dead, that they had to bury it. He risked a great crisis by doing so, he lost his closest advisor, but he won in the end. Are you prepared to tell some people in your party the same thing?
Socialism Kinnock had no hesitation in his reply: "Well, I do continually... I've said when we launched the Aims and Values remembered selected versions of hisancient or modern, yourself a sense of definition; look around you to the realities of the society that you're in now and the challenge that you face tomorrow." This means that socialism is dead and new realism' has replaced it. And new precisely: support capitalism and the market and do not organise effective resistance to the Tories and capitalism because to do so is both useless and unnecessary. This is the approach not just of Neil Kinnock and the Labour leaders, but also of their trade union counterparts. Everywhere in the unions former lefts ZDAW NUPE SAYS PUT HEALTH FIRST SUPPORT THE N. H. S.
have gone over lock stock and barrel to new realism and in many cases have aligned themselves with the old right wing. This mainly explains the temporary defeat for the Marxists in the CPSA where the 'soft left' and 'communist' wing of the leadership have pro-capitalist right-wing. But it is a pyrrhic victory, as the CPSA deputy secretary John Macreadie pointed out. For now these former lefts will have to deliver for the membership in a future period of intense class struggle and battles.
The tide is turning against Thatcher and the ruling class in Britain. The economic and social situation is fragile, even volatile. The stock markets remain nervous, plunging hundreds of points on the idle words of an incautious Chancellor. The leaders of finance squabble openly about which set of policies to adopt; and each week a new problem for Thatcher springs up. Ahead lies world recession or Slump and renewed industrial and political confrontations. The whole process will unfold in a protracted way, with ebbs and flows in the tempo of events. But the events opening up before labour movement in Britain and internationally over the next few months and years are immensely favourable for the growth of Marxism-the only ideas capable of guiding the working class to success in the struggle to transform society.
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Business Managers Report
Bi-monthly MIR within
reach: if sales increase
The Militant International Review is poised to make a decisive advance. The Editors are currently discussing plans to move to bimonthly publication at the earliest opportunity. This would be an historic step forward-and an important landmark in the development of Marxism in Britain and internationally.
The MIR first appeared in the autumn of 1969, In the wake of the mighty events of 1968. The revolutionary general strike of the French workers, the crisis of Stalinism in Czechoslavakia, the turmoil in the ex-colonial world-all had confirmed the perspectives worked out by the Militant, shattered the post-war illusions in 'social peace' and opened up new opportunities to expand the influence of Marxism. A four page monthly Militant, however, was inadequate on its own to reach, in the words of the MIR's introductory editorial, the "whole new generation of workers, youth and students... awakening once again to the ideas of Marxism... demanding an explanation of these events, the role of the leaders of the mass organisations, and the programme and policies which can lead the working class to take power and establish a socialist democracy." And so the MIR was launched.
The very first issue was duplicated-the technical level of production was such that no photos could be included until No.5,
printed in January 1972. But from these early beginnings, the
MIR continued to develop as an
Indispensable auxilliary to the
Militant, with the task of drawing
out the general processes behind
current events, to prepare the
movement for future struggles.
As support for the Militant grew, so did the need to develop the MIR. At the end of 1983, resources were pledged to produce a 32 pager, with coloured card covers, three times a year. In 1985 it expanded to 48 pages, its present format. Now, as world recession looms and society stands on the eve of 'new 68s', we are determined to move to a 32 page MIR printed regularly every eight weeks.
A number of options for the bimonthly are being discussed: a retur to separately printed card covers and different printing techniques with more scope for design and better quality photos. But the decisions on these questions do not, in fact, rest in our hands. Of course, the Editors will produce the best possible quality journal within our means-but our means are YOUR sales!
The opportunities to sell the MIR at labour movement meetings and demonstrations have never been greater. Mike Pullin from Leicester told us how he, having picked up a handful for an NHS demonstration in hope rather than anticipation, sold out-12 in total by one seller on one demonstration. Sales are also there to be made amongst students: 28 were sold at the recent National Union of Students conference, 11 at FELS. What is needed, however, is for every reader to become a seller.
With a determination to see the newly launched MIR succeed, despite the weakness of the forces of Marxism at that time, one thousand copies of the first ever issue were sold. A similar commitment today-with every reader ensuring that wherever the Militant is sold, the MIR is sold as well-and the
bi-monthly is within our reach!
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