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The Rise and Fall of
the GLC Labour Left
In his recent book, If Voting Changed Anything, They'd Abolish It, the leftwing Labour MP Ken Livingstone describes his time as leader of the Greater London Council (GLC) from 1981 to 1986. In that period the GLC faced major confrontations with the government over cheap fares on public transport, the abolition of the GLC and ratecapping. Through a serious analysis of the campaigns organised by the Labour left led GLC, rank and file activists today can learn valuable lessons and prepare for future battles against the Tories latest assaults on local government - in particular, the struggle against the poll tax.
The first big battle between the government and the GLC was on the issue of cheap fares on public transport. Following their election in May 1981 the new left Labour council immediately moved to carry out their manifesto promise and cut fares by 32%. Although this was extremely popular amongst the millions of workers who use London Transport (LT) everyday, it outraged the lories. The government attempted to obstruct the 'fares fair' policy by imposing a f119m clawback in government grants and preventing BR from reducing fares in line with LT's.
Judgement
Following this decision, Tory controlled Bromley Council took the GLC to court on the grounds that the fares reductions were unreasonable and that Bromley did not get the same benefit as those boroughs served by the tube. Despite losing their case in the High Court, in October 1981 Bromley's case was upheld by the Court of Appeal, and then by the Law Lords in December 1981.
Ken Livingstone explains what the Lau Lords' decision meant: "The five separate judgements spelt out that London Transport should be run on 'ordinary business principles ...The estimate was made that in order to reach this point and comply with the law that we should increase fares by 200%. We would also have to close down those bus routes that made the greatest losses and about 10% of the tube system. A quarter of LT's workforce would lose their jobs in what 20
would be the greatest retrenchment of any public transport system in history. The officers advised that fares should double immediately with a further 100% increase in August. As the Law Lords had made any social subsidy illegal, free travel for pensioners and the disabled would have to end."
This reactionary decision caused an eruption of anger amongst LT workers and London's working class as a whole. According to Livingstone, "the trade unions decided to start their campaign with a one-day strike and the prospect of an indefinite stoppage if the Government failed to intervene." The GLC launched a 'Keep Fares Fair' propaganda campaign including a series of public meetings across the capital. The flavour of these is captured by Ken Livingstone's description of a meeting in Dagenham. "The meeting of several hundred people was electric and angry; older political activists present claimed it was the largest public meeting in the borough since the Second World War. Whereas in previous months I had been speaking to packed and supportive meetings of party sympathizers and students, this was the first meeting in which the audience was composed mainly of the general public."
As Ken Livingstone himself outlines, the mood existed to build a mass campaign, led by the LT unions. Militant supporters at the time called for all-out strike action by the 40,000 LT workers supported by a 24-hour regional general strike of all London workers. Linked to an appeal for all Londoners to join mass demonstrations in support of cheap fares, a campaign could undoubtedly have been built to compel the courts, and behind them the Tory government. to retreat. Unfortunately this strategy for victory was rejected by the left leaders of the GLC.
Uncertain of the prospects for victory, when it came to the vote on increasing fares by 100% or defying the Law Lords ruling, the Labour Group split. Twenty four Labour councillors voted against a fares increase and 21 voted for. With three Alliance councillors and three Tories joining the 21 Labour renegades the decision to increase fares was passed by 27 to 24.
In the face of this setback, instead of
building a mass campaign led by the LT trade unions to oppose the completely undemocratic decision to increase fares, the left GLC leaders limited themselves to propaganda against the fare increases, even after they had actually carried them out.
At the same time, in protest at the decision of the GLC, a small number of left councillors organised a 'Can't Pay, Won't Pay' campaign, urging people not to pay the increased fares when they came into effect on March 21, 1982. Ken Livingstone describes what happened: "The campaign attracted major publicity but little support and only a few hundred people protested on the day...Bus and tube workers feared the campaign would put them in the firing line between protesting passengers and senior management. As 21 March approached, in each of LT's 64 garages the workers voted to call on the organisers to drop the campaign. Bitterness mounted when these calls were ignored, and in a handful of garages the workers passed motions of censure against those councillors who persisted in the campaign. ",
Protests
'Can't Pay, Won't Pay' was a model of how not to organise a mass campaign. Instead of patiently explaining the issues involved to the ranks of the trade unions and the need for industrial action to defend cheap LT fares and LT workers' jobs and conditions, a handful of prominent Labour lefts made individual gestures of not paying the increased fares. This approach proved to be totally bankrupt. Now, however, the idea has been raised that a number of left MPs and councillors, in individual protests, will not pay the poll tax in Scotland. But the lesson from the GLC 'Can't Pay, Won't Pay' fiasco is clear. Unless it is linked to patiently building a genuine mass campaign, in this case the organised nonpayment of the poll tax as the demands arrive in April 1989: the opposition of a few individual 'heroes' will prove to be ineffective and short lived.
An opportunity was lost in 1982 to inflict a major defeat upon the Tories, at a time before the Falklands War when Thatcher was the most unpopular prime minister in history. But the lesson was
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not learnt. On the contrary, the failure to
mobilise the council workforce was even
more starkly revealed as, following their
election victory in June 1983, the Tories
moved to abolish the GLC.
"After the election I contemplated Mrs
Thatcher's majority of 140 and I knew
there was no chance of defeating the
abolition proposals... There seemed to
be no chance of industrial action against
the legislation by the trade unions at
County Hall. The Staff Association
would complain but do nothing. The
government would pretend to protect
the fire brigade from any real damage,
thus avoiding a conflict with the FBU
the only disciplined trade union within
the GLC...The only other union of any
size was NUPE, which was prepared to
fight but did not have the numbers. The
GLC staff would reap a bitter harvest
from the years of neglect of proper trade
union work by the GLC Staff Associa-
tion."
The pessimism of left reformism, born
from the lack of a scientific analysis and
perspectives, is revealed in these few
lines. The Tory government is all
powertul, the trade unions are seen as
weak, divided and impotent. In advance responsibility for defeat over the issue of abolition is laid at the door not of the Labour leaders of the GLC but the trade unions who would 'reap a bitter harvest from years of neglect'
Yet just nine months later the miners struck to defend their jobs and communities. As part of that same tendency to centralise power increasingly in the hands not even of parliament but Thatcher' 's own trusted cabinet colleagues revealed in the abolition of the GLC and the Metropolitan County Councils - the government had recently banned trade unions at GCHQ and imprisoned a civil servant, Sarah Tisdall, for leaking details of the Tories' use of the secret services to smear CND. During this period the Tories proposals to 'rate-cap' local authorities were also revealed. Who could doubt the willingness of GLC workers to struggle against abolition if the issues had been explained clearly and a call to battle issued by the Labour leadership in London?
Indeed, at the same time as Ken Livingstone was ruling out the idea of struggle in London, the Liverpool Labour Party, where Militant supporters had a dominant influence, had just won control of Liverpool City Council. Within a year they built a mass movement, mobilising in effect a city-wide general strike in March 1984 in support of the council in their demand for more money from the government. The same opportunities to mobilise the working class in defence of the GLC were there at that time. In November 1984 100,000 London workers
Ken Livingstone speaking at 'Fares Fair' came out on strike in the boroughs threatened by rate capping and in opposition to the abolition of the GLC. Thirty thousand marched in the capital.
Opinion polls showed over 70% of Londoners were against abolition. But this enormous latent support for the GLC was never effectively mobilised, not because trade unions were not willing to take action but because the left Labour leaders never asked them to take action.
Ruling out the prospect of a mass campaign based on the trade unions, the GLC leadership turned to the idea of a 'broad based' protest "involving all parties', including a GLC exhibition at all the party conferences. 'The GLC Roadshow', as it came to be known, was particularly well received, according to Ken Livingstone, by the Liberals: 'The young Liberals were wearing I'm Red Ken' badges and almost the entire conference turned up to our fringe meeting"
This was followed by fun days. festivals, glossy adverts and opinion polls: all demonstrated the enormous potential support for an effective campaign against the government but. having no confidence in the ability of the mass of ordinary Londoners to struggle, the GLC leaders turned for salvation to those historic guardians of British democracy...
rally March 1982.
the House of Lords!
Ken Livingstone explains in graphic detail the systematic, organised campaign waged by the GLC leaders to persuade the House of Lords to vote against abolition. "Working with the opposition whips we contacted everyone and planned a fleet of cars to get them to and from the Lords. We hired rooms in the Lords in which food and drink would be continually available on the day so none of them had any excuse to slip out of our sight"
The campaign was coordinated by Reg Race (ex-Labour MP), Maurice Stonefrost (author of the infamous 'Stonefrost report' which recommended that Liverpool City Council make draconian cuts and massive rate increases to balance their budget) and Roland Freeman (a staunch Tory who 20 years earlier had led the campaign for the abolition of the London County Council).
The Queen, according to Ken Livingstone, also played an important part in the campaign. She had agreed to open the Thames barrier, one of the biggest projects undertaken by the GLC. Livingstone relates "On the day itself I noticed that although the Queen had pressed the start button, two of the seven barrier gates had stuck in the mud. Fortunately they freed themselves just seconds before what would have been my fatal heart attack."
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The GLC anti-abolition campaign was regarded as an extremely successful "broad based' campaign. It is this type of 'broad based' campaign against the poll tax the STUC has been waging in Scotland and the TUC plans nationally. Unfortunately, however, neither the wining and dining of the octogenarian House of Lords nor appearances by Her Royal Majesty at a GLC gala prevented the abolition of the GLC. The only force capable of doing so was the organised working class led by the GLC trade unions, but the idea of mobilising this force never even entered the heads of the GLC leadership.
The defeat inflicted on the GLC over the issue of abolition prepared the way for what Ken Livingstone himself calls "the ratecapping fiasco". He relates that "during that summer Liverpool council had refused to make a rate because the Tories had withheld much of their rate support grant. This tactic was quite new and had the govemment worried. In contrast to the action taken against Liverpool and Lambeth the following year, the government's response in the summer of 1984 showed signs of weakness. The fear of collapse of financial confidence in the City followed by bankruptcy and disorder at the same time as the government were trying to defeat the miners caused Patrick Jenkins to make several concessions...it was against this background that the borough leaders hit on the idea of 10 to 20 councils all refusing to set a rate at the same time.
Rate-capping
As Ken Livingstone is well aware, in 1984 Liverpool City Council had not 'refused to make a rate'. They did set a rate at a level that would leave a gap of £30 million between what they planned to spend and the income they would receive, raising the demand that the government make good the deficit by returning the £30 million it had stolen from Liverpool in rate support grant. However, when the leaders of Liverpool Council proposed that the 20 other ratecapped Labour councils should follow their example of setting a deficit budget and mobilise a mass campaign for the return of the money stolen by the government, not a single council leader supported them. Instead the left leaders of the councils, Sheffield's David Blunkett, Islington's Margaret Hodge and Ken Livingstone, proposed the strategy of not setting any rate until the Tories had made concessions.
This disagreement, apparently a secon dary dispute over tactics, in fact revealed a more fundamental difference. For Marxists, tactical decisions are determined
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Transport workers demonstrate
by which course of action best raises the understanding of the issues involved in the struggle amongst the widest possible layer of workers. The tactic of an illegal deficit budget clearly showed the working class what the Tory government had stolen from them. In Liverpool in 1984 the demand for the return of the £30 million penetrated the consciousness of the whole population, from council workers to school students. The 'no rate' tactic, on the other hand, while apparently a more dramatic gesture of 'def- ¡ance, obscured the issues involved and thereby complicated the campaign of explanation. And without the mobilisation of, centrally, the council workforce, supported by workers in the private sector, the campaign against rate-capping would fail.
In fact from the beginning the lett leaders of the GLC had no intention of not setting a rate. However, when in February 1985 the Tories on the GLC announced that they would vote against the government' 's ratecapping limit of 36.5p as too high, it was clear that even with the right wing voting to set a rate the left would have a majority not to set a rate.
"This". explains Ken Livingstone frankly, I presented several problems. not the least of which was that as everyone had assumed that behind all the rhetoric there was no real possibility of this happening, none of us had even begun to explore the question of how to run a bankrupt council. Certainly, no one had given any thought to how staff would react to no pay or how we could
the puli to provide essential services to
He continues: "There were also personal considerations. I was damned if 1 was going to allow the money I had saved to be seized by the District Auditor, so larranged to cash it and give it to Bill Bush for safe keeping. The parliamentary selection procedure was about to
start in Brent East and if bankrupted | would be barred from standing as a candidate."
Here Ken Livingstone confirms the arg ument put by Peter Taaffe and Tony Mulhearn in Liverpool: A City That Dared To Fight that the 'no-rate' tactic was an "an attempt to avoid (or, at best, postpone) giving battle to the Tory government in a clear and unambiguous fashion." In reality, the campaign against ratecapping had been conceived by Ken Livingstone and the other left council leaders as one of verbal, symbolic opposition with no risks, already seen once in 1982 with the GLC's climbdown over the Law Lords ruling against the original Fares Fair policy.
Consequently, the GLC, legally obliged to set a rate by 10 March, became the first council to abandon the field. As Militant commented at the time: "Livingstone's misfortune is that he had to be the first Labour council leader to be seen to buckle under the Tories threats, thereby letting other council leaders indulge in strong rhetoric against the GLC before their own councils caved in". By the middle of June Liverpool City Council was left alone to confront the government. (A full analysis of these issues can be found in the chapter, 'The Battle Against Ratecapping' in Liverpool: A City That Dared To Fight, p179-201).
Tittle tattle
Trotsky once commented that it was the fate of left reformism to consider the incidental serious and the serious incidental. The whole of Ken Livingstone's book serves to underline this idea. His method is not Marxist. A critical analysis explaining the processes unfolding in the economy and society is replaced with personal anecdotes and tittle tattle. True, he does write that "personality clashes and the conflict of competing ambitions are a thin mask over the developing economic and social forces to which individual politicans respond." But what those 'economic and social' forces are he never explains. Reflecting on why it would have been , "impossible tor anything resembling the 1981 GLC administration to gain office at County Hall in the 1950s or 1960s" he misses out the tiny detail of the ending of the post-war boom, the return of mass unemployment and the growing poverty and desperation in the inner cities that underpinned the growth of support for the London left.
In reality, before the late 1970s, the majority of London Labour councils were in the hands of extreme right wing neanderthals. The then Bermondsey MP Bob Mellish was chair of the London Labour Party. When the 1974-79 Labour government slashed the local authority rate support grant from 15.5% to
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13.2% of GDP, these cuts were dutifully
passed on by the right wing council leaders. The 1973-77 Labour GLC
abandoned its manifesto and made large cuts in transport and housing, provoking a split in the Labour Group and paving the way for the Tories' victory at the 1977 GLC elections.
It was in opposition to the cuts and the other counter reforms of the last Labour government that the London left originally crystallised. At that stage supporters ot the Militant played an important role in organising the left in the GLC and on the London Labour Party executive. The central platform of the left then was the defence of jobs and services. with the main plank of the 1981 GL.C manifesto being its commitment to cut fares and improve public transport.
However, Militant supporters explained at that time that if the new left councils were to be successful they could not rely just on resolutions and manoeuvres in the council chambers. Instead the council had to be used as a platform to build a mass movement. around clear demands, linking the councillors with the council workers and the wider public to force the Tory government to grant the necessary cash. This idea was expressed in the 1981 GLC election manifesto itself in a section written by Militant supporters: "A Labour GLĆ and ILEA will resist any cuts and demand the Tory government provides the necessary finance to maintain and improve all council services. Understanding that the Tory government does not listen to pleas. but only responds to pressure. a Labour GLC and ILEA will appeal to the labour and trade union movement to take action, including industrial action. to support this stand."
Abolition
Unfortunately the London left paid lip service to these ideas. They displayed a contemptuous attitude to the working class and its ability to struggle. They were also total empiricists.
Ken Livingstone even once declared "I've never been a theoretican. By the time I reached the stage where I wanted to read theoretical works, I was already on the Council and ever since I've being reading council agendas." Their lack of the compass of Marxism meant that, with no worked-out perspective or understanding as to how struggles would develop, they were always cynical about the possibility of building a mass movement against the government.
Not prepared or able to lead a determined mass struggle in defence of jobs and services, at the end of the day the
Chronology of the main
events, 1981 to 1986
MAY 1981: Labour victory in the GLC elections, 50 Labour. 41 Torles. 1
MAY 1981:
Liberal.
OCTOBER 1981: Fares Fair policy introduced, cutting London Transport far by 32%. Tory controlled Bromley council takes the GLC to court. DECEMBER 1981: Law Lords rule that the GLC fare reductions are Illegal. JANUARY 1982: GLC votes to Increase LT fares by 100%. FEBRUARY 1982: In protest at the GLC's compliance with the Law Lords ruling, 'Can't Pay, Won't Pay' campalgn established.
JUNE 1983: General Election. Torles Include plan to abolish the GLC in their manifesto.
FEBRUARY 1984: Government ban on trade unions at GCHQ announced. February 28 sees hundreds of thousands strike in support of the GCHQ workers.
MARCH 1984. Miners strike begins. Civil servant Sarah TIsdall gaoled Tories announce a GLC Paving Bill, abolishing the GLC elections scheduled for May 1985. March 29 one day strike in Liverpool and 50,000 march to th town hall to support a deficit budget.
MAY 1984: Local elections. Labour gains seven seats in Liverpool. JULY 1984: Liverpool council wins concessions worth up to £60 million the government. The GLC Paving Bill becomes law.
OCTOBER 1984: Sequestration of NUM assets. NOVEMBER 1984: The Abolition Bill is published, the second stage in the abolition of the GLC. November 17 sees a one day strike against rate-capping and the abolltion the GLC. 100,000 take action and 30,000 demonstrate.
MARCH 1985: March 7 ILEA sets a rate, breaking the 'No rate' front, followed by the GLC on March 10.
JUNE 1985: With the collapse of the 'No rate' front, Liverpool sets a deficit budget. Despite the GLC lobbying campalgn, the House of Lords passes the Abolition Bill.
JULY 1985: GLC Abolition Bill becomes MARCH 1986: GLC abolished.
in the GLC elections, 50
left Councils, led by the GLC, stepped back from the fray and carried out the Tories' dirty work. In contrast to Liverpool where the mass struggle led by Liverpool City Council has turned the city into a bastion for Labour and for Marxist ideas, the collapse of the London Labour left which led to Labour councils carrying through vicious cuts in jobs and services, has led to dismay and disillusion with the Labour Party amongst many workers in London.
The most recent example is Brent. The present Labour administration was elected in 1986 with a radical left manifesto committed in particular to improving the lot of blacks and women. Nevertheless, faced with the prospect of surcharge and disqualification and not willing or able to mobilise a mass campaign in the borough against the government, like the GLC before them, the Labour group in Brent abandoned their manifesto and passed an austerity budget with £16 million worth of cuts. This meant sacking teachers, savaging nursery provision and a massive increase in rents. In protest thousands of local authority workers struck and, at one stage, Brent town hall was besieged by more than 500 demonstraters chanting 'No cuts, Labour out!
Ironically Ken Livingstone, now Mr tor Brent East and no longer facing the threat of surcharge and bankruptcy, attacked the local Labour council in Brent. In reality Brent had merely pursued the failed policies of left reformism first put forward by Ken Livingstone himself when leader of the GLC.
The weakness of the left Labour Councils, of which the GLC was the most important, in the face of Tory aggression, has led to a situation today where local government faces a veritable onslaught: privatisation, sweeping new laws covering housing and education and, last but not least, the poll tax. If a mass movement is to be developed to stop the Tory juggernaut it is necessary to develop a leadership with a correct programme, strategy and tactics.
The Independent described the events recounted in Liverpool: A City That Dared To Fight as providing "a manual for municipal Marxists throughout the country." The same cannot be said for Ken Livingstone's book. Nonetheless, by making a serious study of the contrasting experiences of the left led GLC and the Marxist influenced Liverpool City Council, activists today can learn valuable lessons and prepare for future battles.
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