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fightback develop?
The BNP win the Millwall by-election, yet 50,000 march on
October 16. What is the real situation in Britain today?
T BAFFLES ME", said Nick Ross, presenter
of the special BBC TV programme After
Millwall, "why, if as you say the Isle of Dogs was a protest vote, Labour didn't win the seat". In fact, Labour's vote fell from 45% in the 1990 local elections to 34% in the by-election. "Im baffled too", was all Keith Vaz MP, Labour's inner-city spokesperson, could reply.
Yet there is no mystery in the Millwall result. At root it was a sympton of the despair that is accumulating, particularly in the inner-city areas, as the consequences of the growing crisis of British capitalism bear down on the working class - while no alternative is offered by the Labour Party leaders.
The Isle of Dogs is 'unique' in that, in some respects, it represents a concentrated microcosm of the results of the 1980g boom. With billions of pounds of public and private investment in the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) 'Enterprize Zone' there could not but be some economic 'development' in the area. But its results have been to accentuate class divisions.
The net effect of the LDDC on jobs has been
2 • Britain
to increase local unemployment as many Island firms closed down. The service companies that have moved into the new office developments have employed only a handful of local workers, instead transferring existing staff from their previous premises to Docklands, with its business rate concessions.
The LDDC, controlling the bulk of potential housing development land on the Island, pursued a policy of 'social engineering, with 3,000 homes built in private developments and luxury housing projects beyond the reach of local people.
But Millwall was also the consequence of another important national trend in British society, the march to the right of the Labour Party. The media featured the racist propaganda of the Liberals. But more significant is that Tower Hamlets, after a local purge in the early 1990g, is an example of the Kinnock/Smith 'new model Labour Party.
Labours by election campaign was launched in the local press as signalling 'the end of the loony left. Labour's 'new look local team', introduced by deputy leader Margaret Beckett MP at a £20-a-head dinner on the Lady Gwynfred barge,
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far from answering racist lies, repeated them. No
other answer was offered to the housing shortage,
cuts in services and poor facilities on the Island
Nonetheless, the BNP victory in one council
seat does not mean that we are at the beginning
of a dramatic growth in support for fascism. The
by-election result is a serious warning for the
future to the working class, and an immediate
threat to the black and Asian community and
socialist activists in Tower Hamlets and certain
other areas. But the response to the BNP victory,
above all the magnificent mobilisation of 50,000
for the October 16 YRE/ANL Unity demonstration,
indicates the limits to the growth of racism, and
fascism in particular, at this stage. On the contrary,
by alerting millions of working class people to
the danger of fascism, we are at the beginning
of an awakening of a new generation of fighters.
This is indicated in the fear displayed by the
ruling class at the reaction to the BNP victory,
particularly its effect on the consciousness of black
and Asian youth. This explains the moves by the
police and the courts when they arrested BNP
members on their way to Brick Lane and held
the BNP national organiser in custody for four
weeks.
It also, on the other hand, explains the attempts by the police and media to undermine the turnout on the October 16 Unity demonstration, by threatening the demonstration organisers, by creating the idea prior to the event that 'violence was inevitable', and by their provocative tactics on the day and the vilification of the event afterwards. Another aspect of this effort was the promotion of the so-called 'Anti-Rascist Alliance' demonstration in central London, also on October 16. Unprecedentedly, a march that was announced on the day on LBC radio as being, on police estimates, 1,000 strong, became 5,000 strong on Sunday 17 October and 10,000 strong on Monday! Despite this broadbase' of backers, from the BBC to the TUC, even on the best estimate it was dwarfed by the 'unofficial' YRE/ANL demonstration.
Fundamentally, the organised working class is still far too powerful to let fascism come to power. The social weight of the working class in Britain remains unbroken. So what then are the medium-term perspectives, economically, politically and socially, for Britain? How will events unfold?
N ANALYSIS of the development of world
and British capitalism shows that any econ-
omic recovery will be feeble and possibly very short-lived. In any case, after a recession or a small slump such as we experienced in 1991-92 (at least in the Anglo-Saxon countries), a certain recovery is inevitable at a certain stage. The question is, a recovery from what and to what? The car industry, for instance, has experienced a growth in production but will find it difficult to sustain this with the contraction of European markets. Manufacturing industry increased in the first quarter of this year, but hardly made up
for the 207,000 contraction in manufacturing employment in the last 12 months.
Moreover, in a little over a decade, the number of workers employed in the key manufacturing sector has dropped from 8m to 4.2m today. The rise of general investment, always a key barometer of the capitalists' own expectations for growth, is put at a miserly 0.6% this year. Manufacturing investment will be 11% below the level of 1990, which in turn was not much higher than a decade before.
It is true that during the summer the CBI claimed that the economy could grow by 3%. But it is more likely that any recovery in Britain will be weak and could even be snuffed out by the continued downturn in the European economies alongside the economic contraction which is taking place in Japan. Economic analysts there have slashed forecasts for growth this year from 1.5%-3.2% to 0.3%-1.5%. A similar downgrading of expectations for the US economy is also taking place.
The by-election result is a
serious warning for the
future.
It is now clear that the economic scenario confronting world and British capitalism is of a drawn-out world depression - rather than the rosy economic, political and social scenario charted out by the soothsayers of capitalism. One thing is absolutely clear, there will be no return to the 1980s, let alone the long boom of 1950-75. This is clearly shown by the levels of unemployment which any recovery is unlikely to make a dent in.
Alongside of this is the almost Third World-like conditions which exist for millions of workers in Britain. The number of poor has risen from one in ten of the population just over a decade ago to a huge one-quarter of the population today. Through attacks on welfare benefits and the drive to lower wages, this army of poor people will increase, stoking up class antagonisms which will break out into open confrontation between the classes at a certain stage.
Moreover, in the future, so long as capitalism continues to exist, even today's conditions will appear almost like a 'Golden Age'. The capitalists are dearly preparing a worldwide offensive against the rights and conditions of the working class built up in the post-1945 situation, against the very concept of the welfare state'. This will take a particularly acute and vicious form in Britain, precisely because of the devastating weakness of British capitalism.
A foretaste of what is to come was given by right-wing Tory cabinet ministers before and during the Tory Party conference. Lilley, the unrecon-
Dritain a
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SAVE NHS WORKERS SUPPORT THE HospitaL MINERS tODAY Nurses march for the miners, October 1992. structed voice of Thatcherism, along with Redwood, the Welsh Minister, called for public expenditure to be cut to the bone. He is conducting a war against the so-called 'something for nothing society. However, these measures are being proposed with enormous trepidation by the Tory cabinet. They have already been given a bloody nose in the Newbury and then the Christchurch by-election, the worst result for the Tory Party since 1945, amongst other reasons because of the proposed increases in VAT on domestic fuel - a measure yet to be implemented!
Yet it is not only the poor, the old, the sick and the most vulnerable, such as the unemployed, who are coming under attack. The government, on behalf of the British bourgeois, has continued its offensive against employed workers. The government represents the collective will of the bourgeoisie to squeeze living standards as a means of increasing the surplus accruing to the capitalists, ie, to boost profitability at the beginning of what they believe to be a new cyclical upturn. A whole battery of measures has been implemented to further the interests of the bosses. The abolition of wage councils, which directly affects 2.6m workers, will lead to big reductions in hourly rates. Health and safety regulations are being swept away. • The stoked-up anger, bitterness and opposition to the government and the employers has reached explosive proportions. Major is lower in the polls than any other Tory leader since records began, lower even than the hated Thatcher at the height • & Britain of the anti-poll tax battle.
Moreover, the government is riven with divisions with the outline of a split already present within the cabinet and the Tory Party. The vicious attacks on Major from erstwhile former colleagues, with the usual parliamentary politeness abandoned, reflects the profound character of the crisis afflicting the Tory Party, potentially the worst in the whole of its history.
Tories has not yet been translated into mass movements or, when it has, such as in last year's movement around the miners or in the recent Timex dispute, it has been by right-wing Labour and trade union leaders. In addition, there is clear evidence that, amongst an older layer in particular, there has been a growth of racist feelings. This is a sympton of despair at the lack of alternative offered to deal with the problems which beset the working class. This trend was apparent even before the Millwall by-election and the opinion poll which followed, showing 36% in favour of enforced repatriation. Nonetheless, as the brilliant response to the October 16 demonstration showed, we should not exaggerate this. There is an even greater anti-racist mood, amongst the youth in particular.
Yet, when huge opposition develops to government measures, such as the attacks on the Nhs, it is sometimes tinged with certain racist feelings: The government is wrong, but let's face it, there are too many people coming into the country. Add to this the television scenes of Nazi and racist attacks in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, the barbarism of Bosnia played out nightly on TV screens, etc, and it is possible to paint a very pessimistic picture from which equally pessimistic conclusions can be drawn.
The capitalists are preparing a worldwide offensive against the idea of the 'welfare state'.
yes, we have a The reasoning can be thus:
deep economic and social crisis, which even provokes movements of the working class, but these have either been defeated or sometimes take a reactionary form. After all, in East Germany, did not mass unemployment and deprivation lead to a movement not to the left but to the right? This at least is the impression which is given by the media. Marxists do not close their eyes to the realities which exist under capitalism. Nor do we paint a romantic or idealised picture of the present state of consciousness of the working class. We
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recognise the manifestations of certain backward features within the proletariat. These features do exist, but they are by no means predominant. Nor will they stop mass radicalised movements of the working class developing at a certain stage. On the contrary, the growth of the racist and fascist groups has already stirred the proletariat into life. Rather than a decisive shift to the the period opening up will see a new radicalisation, with the formation of new combative layers of the working class.
Consciousness lags behind the objective development of events.
Undoubtedly, the present conjuncture, both in Britain and throughout the capitalist world, is still powerfully influenced by the political consequences of the collapse of Stalinism. Its effects were more pronounced in the colonial and semicolonial world where to some extent the Stalinist regimes were a 'model' which at least showed a possible means of satisfying the elementary requirements of food, shelter, employment, etc. Although for the workers of the advanced industrial world the Stalinist states were not so much a 'model' as a scarecrow used to frighten the proletariat away from the ideas of socialism, the collapse of Stalinism and the planned economy did provide the bourgeois with the opportunity to conduct an ideological offensive which has undoubtedly complicated the tasks of genuine Marxism for a temporary historical period.
This ideological barrage - 'socialism is finished' the socialist project has been wound up' could have some effect when world capitalism could counterpose the boom of the 1980s to the 'failure' of the 'planned economies. But the material basis for such an ideological offensive has been undermined precisely by the economic difficulties of world capitalism which affected first Britain and the US and are now drawing Germany and Japan into the economic vortex.
However, consciousness lags behind the objective development of events. To some extent, the consciousness of the working class, even of its guiding layers, has been thrown back by the devel opments of the past period. The idea of socialism, for instance, came up almost automatically in the tumultuous events of the early 1970s in Britain, within the Labour Party in the battles of 1979-81, in the struggle of Liverpool council in the mid-1980g, and even in the course of the anti-poll tax campaign. Now workers can move into action but the alternative is not at all clear or selfevident, particularly in the form of the socialist alternative. NE OF THE decisive factors in this process was the move to the right of the Labour and trade union leaders, together with the virtual disappearance of the left within the unions and the Labour Party.
The union leaders are trembling at the prospect of attacks on the check-off system for deducting union dues contained in the latest anti-trade union act. John Monks, recently-appointed TUC general secretary, bemoans the fact that the unions will now have to have 'six million conversations' with their members to obtain written permission for the check-off system to continue. This measure of the government can in the first instance appear to weaken the unions. Its net result, however, will be exactly the opposite. A new layer of stewards will be developed who will be forced to discuss and convince, collect union dues and thereby strengthen the base of the unions. This layer, in turn, will develop a new fighting spirit under the very blows of the capitalist employers' offensive. Right-wing union leaders can act as a break which can delay and thwart the struggle for a time. But they cannot act as an impenetrable historical barrier which dams up and prevents the outbreak of the class struggle.
Nor can the right-wing Labour leaders, who, if anything, are more to the right than the union leaders themselves. The Labour Party conference was another step in the process of evolution to the right, on policy issues and the party constitution, which has yet to run its full course. Having burnt their fingers in the 1987 and 1992 general Britain • 5
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elections, by creating the impression that they were going to tax those on average or just above average earnings, they have now gone to the opposite extreme. Out goes any hint of 'squeezing the rich until the pips squeak' as Dennis Healey once declared, and with it are jettisoned Labour's proposals for increased public expenditure.
Its policies are now virtually indistinguishable from the Tories, and particularly the Liberal Democrats. This further lurch to the right has provoked the opposition of former lefts, such as Blunkett and Tribune MPs like Peter Hain, who clearly perceives himself as a future leader of the Labour left.
However, this will not result in a rejuvenation of the left within the Labour Party. In fact, there is nothing within the Labour Party to attract workers, particularly the newer layers of the proletariat, into active participation. In opinion nolls. Labour is way ahead of the Tories and
pact of 1976-78.
One thing is certain: for the foreseeable future there will be nothing to attract substantial numbers of workers into the Labour Party.
N THIS EPOCH, more than at any other time
in the post-war period, the problem is posed
in the way that Trotsky put it in 1938: the crisis of the labour movement, indeed, the crisis of humankind, is reduced to a crisis of leadership. However, leadership has to be earned. The mere unfurling of an independent banner does not automatically gain the leadership of the working class. The shift towards the right of the Labour and trade union leaders, for that matter, does not automatically mean that the working class, or even its advanced layers, would quickly transfer its support to a new independent organisation. That support has to be won and the confidence of the working class gained in the course of
polls, Labour is way ahead of the Tories and ' of the working class gained in the course of
the Liberals. The support for Labour, however, results from negative feelings towards the Tory government, rather than positive support for Labour and its policies.
With the shift towards the right has also grown the idea of coalitionism
between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Already, at district and county council level, some coalitions of right-wing Labour and Liberals are in place. This could be a dress rehearsal for the situation after the next general election.
The norm has been for dinantiafind Tamer untono tr
Monto and Portilin - atta
voting for the Liberals in by-elections and then returning to the Tories in a general election. In the South of England, such is the widespread disenchantment with the Tory Party, reflected in the organisational collapse of the Tory Party machine, it is not guaranteed that this process will automatically occur in the future. In the South outside of London, and in the South West, the Liberals could pick up some Tory seats. This could see Labour with the largest number of seats but without an overall majority, dependent on the votes of Liberal MPs.
If the link with the unions is completely broken, which seems unlikely this side of a general election, then Labour's right-wing would not be adverse to going into a coalition government with the Liberals. After all, there is now no fundamental difference in programme and policy. On the other hand, collaboration could take the form of an unofficial coalition along the lines of the Lib-Lab
6 • Britain
register their protest by
struggle over an extended period of time.
Militant Labour has a great reputation in the eyes of many workers. What we achieved in Liverpool, in the anti-poll tax struggle, over water privatisation, in the CADV campaign, and now in the
battle against racism and fascism, has been registered in the minds of the advanced workers. But in a period like this, for one worker who would actively support our organisation, there can be ten, 50 or 100 who are watching and waiting to see how we equip ourselves in the course of the next period.
T TO
A revolutionary organi-
sation is tested not just at high points of the class struggle but in periods like this, when the ideological offensive of the bourgeois has had a certain, although now diminishing, effect. Of course, it is entirely false to picture the present situation as one primarily of 'difficulties'. However, as pointed out above, a combination of objective circumstances, the collapse of Stalinism, the move towards the right at the top of the labour movement, and the ideological offensive of the bourgeois, have produced certain cross currents which particularly affect the older layers of the proletariat. To explain this situation, not just the present conjuncture but how events will change the outlook and consciousness of significant layers of the working class, is a key task for Militant Labour.
revolutionary organisation must utilise all opportunities to push ahead in campaigns, some of them with a mass character. But this must go hand in hand with theoretical training, to
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, understand the character of the period, the rhythm of the class struggle, and perspectives for Britain and internationally in the period that we are going into. Activity, in other words, must be underpinned by a greater understanding of perspectives and theory.
Militant Labour has a great reputation in the eyes of many workers.
The broad framework which we confront, if one looks to the next year or so, is not one of reaction, but of powerful, radicalised movements of the proletariat. Some of the spokesmen of capitalism have a dim recognition of this. They recognise the fragile character of their alleged 'victory over 'socialism'. Former Tory chancellor Lawson, for instance, recently mused over the future of capitalism: "Market capitalism may have triumphed worldwide over socialism since the 1970s but the atmosphere of hostility to capitalism is as pervasive as ever". Recognising that the growing wealth gap between the classes is preparing ferocious outbreak of the class struggle, the authoritative journals of capitalism are full of articles arguing for a new 'moral base', for business to adopt a 'social conscience'. This is at a time when capitalist governments of all hues are preparing to attack the social gains of the past. This is not to underestimate the growth of the forces of reaction, in the form of racism and, to a lesser extent, fascism in Europe and elsewhere. The racists and fascists have been given their opportunity by the paralysis of the labour movement, due to the rightward evolution of the Labour and trade union leaders. But this in turn, like a crack of thunder, has awakened the new generation, which sometimes through our initiatives, has already begun to partially reverse the situation. In a sense, the racists and fascists in countries like Germany are the whip of the counter-revolution, which have provoked mass demonstrations and the awakening of a new generation.
In Britain the mobilisation against the BNP is a barometer of the mood that will exist once the working class finds the necessary leadership. Even without this, the objective development of events, the ferocious capitalist onslaught which has been prepared, will mean movements of a mass character will develop in Britain and on a European scale. This may not take the form of 1968 in France, or exactly parallel the revolutionary events of Portugal in 1974 or of Spain in 1976. There has been a certain weakening in the 'socialist culture' of the working class for the reasons mentioned above. However, it is entirely false, as the galaxy of Guardian writers have suggested, that the "socialist project has been wound up. Mass movements can arise which appear 'apolitical' or even avowedly non-political. We should never forget that the 1905 revolution in Russia began ostensibly as a 'non-political' event with a demonstration led by the priest, Father Gapon, petitioning the Isar. Even before the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party had managed to put down strong roots amongst the Petrograd proletariat, this working class had moved in 1905 in the direction of mass self-organisation, in the form of workers' committees, or soviets, and towards the idea of socialist revolution.
In France, in 1986, the mass movement of the students, which found an echo amongst the workers, began as an 'apolitical' or even non-political event. However, in the course of a movement over weeks, students looked for a political alternative which led them in the direction of socialism. At stages like this consciousness can appear to have been thrown back. Yet in the course of big events, it does not take decades, but weeks, months and even days for that consciousness to recover to its previous level. We are not faced with a period of reaction. There are cross currents within the proletariat, with different layers moving at different speeds. The new generation in particular, in the course of struggle like that conducted by the YRE, can rapidly embrace socialist and revolutionary ideas. They, in turn, will infect the older generation.
T IS ENTIRELY unjustifiable, from a Marxist point of view, to exaggerate the importance of timescales. Predictions involving timescales are always extremely difficult anyway. Socialism, in a mass form, will come back onto the agenda: precisely when and under what conditions, we cannot say. Lenin, on the eve of the February revolution, mused that he did not expect to see the revolution in his lifetime. He could be excused because he was cut off in exile from the huge turbulent movements that were developing precisely at that stage within Russia.
We are not faced with a period of reaction.
A colossal subterranean revolt is brewing amongst the proletariat. This inevitably means mass movements at a certain stage. The incapacity of capitalism to deliver even the basic essentials will be borne in on the working class. They will look for an alternative. This, at a certain stage, will lead to a revival of the labour movement, first of all in the unions, and then on the political plane. A recent poll recorded that 90% of the population have no faith in all 'politicians' who are out for themselves"
• Above all, this signifies the rejection of capitalist politicians. It indicates the breaking away of formerly conservative layers of the popu- Britain • 7
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lation from traditions and habits built up over generations. It is a prelude to a mass revolt which will shake British capitalism to its foundations.
prognosis is based not on emotion or wishful thinking. It arises from a careful assessment of the present state of British and world capitalism. Marxism is saturated with the spirit of optimism. This arises from its analysis of the workings of the capitalist system, of capitalism's incapacity to further develop the productive forces. This will be reflected in the consciousness of the working class at a certain stage, which will draw far-reaching, revolutionary conclusions.
Trotsky, as a young man at the dawn of this century, confronted a somewhat similar situation as we face at this present, temporary conjuncture. were summed up in an imaginary discussion between an optimist and pessimist on the prospects for the new century: "And now that century has come! What has it brought with it at the outset? In France - the poisonous foam of racial hatred; in Austria - nationalist strife... in South Africa - the agony of a tiny people, which is being murdered by a colossus (the Boer War)... dramatic 'complications' in the east; rebellions of starving popular masses in Italy, Bulgaria, Romania... Hatred and murder, famine and blood... JUSEND gegen DENT SCH October 1992: 40,000 march on YRE Brussels demo. 8 • Britain It seems as if the new century, this gigantic newcomer, was bent at the very moment of its appearance to drive the optimist into absolute pessimism and civic nirvana. Death to Utopia! Death to faith! Death to love! Death to hope!' thunders the twentieth century in salvos of fire dreamer. Here 1 am, your longer ted twentieth in the rumbling guns.
century, your future'. No', replies the unhumbled You - you are only the present."
optimist.
Within four years, the first Russian revolution of 1905-07 had broken out. Sixteen years later, two revolutions, in February and October 1917, and the proletariat took power under took place the banner of the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky.
The collapse of Stalinism and evolution to the right of the tops of the trade unions and Labour Party has complicated the position. But the other side of the picture is that Stalinism has disappeared as a major obstacle to the revolutionary movement grip of the and the authority and ideological Labour leaders has been weakened.
The next year will see opportunities, some areas and in some fields of work, opportunities, which can be seized to build forces for the great historic tasks which are our shoulders.
LUCKSA AND