Callaghan Gang

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Benn:attacked by Gang; will he fight back?

In July 1931 Labour MacDonald, faced with a run on the pound, decided to implement a savage package of spending cuts, including a cut in the dole.

Nine Labour cabinet ministers announced they would sooner resign than vote for such a policy, making it clear that the minority government could not carry on.

MacDonald formed an alliance with the Tories and Liberals, and became leader of a nnw National Government which forced through the measures.

As a result, in October 1931 a General Election saw Labour reduced from 288 seats to a rumpof 52. MacDonald and his supporters were expelled from the Labour Party, and MacDonald stayed on as Prime Minister of a largely Tory coalition government until 1935.

Now in 1980 three leading Labour right wingers and former cabinet ministers-David Owen, William Rodgers and Shirley Williams-have written a 3,000 word open letter to the Guardian and the Daily Mirror declaring that the Labour Party faces "the gravest crisis in its history-graver . even than 1931"

Comparison Indeed the comparison is interesting. The authors of the open letter, now dubbed the "Gang of Three" , emerge as the strongest 1980 advocates of MacDonald's politics of class collaboration and evolutionary "socialism".

And they conclude their diatribe against the Labour Party's left wing by threatening to split off and form a new "democratic socialist party" if they do not get their own way at this year's Party conference.

So what are the issues that have brought these latter-day Ramsay MacDonalds to adopt these unusual tactics?

Clearly the main problem that they, like the whole of Labour's right wing, face is the increasing militancy and leftward movement of the rank and file membership in the trade unions and the Party itself.

Confined

While at present. much of this growing left wing current remains confined in the channels of the so-called "alternative economic strategy" peddled by Tony Benn and others, the Gang of Three fear that it could develop further politically and also force through democratic constitutional 'reforms which would weaken the right wing domination of the Party leadership.

Seeking to cloak their essentially Tory views in the language of social democracy, the three signatories declare their unswerving allegiance to three main principles:

"Our commitment to the success of the mixed economy; our commitment to a truly international socialism; our unshakeable commitment to representative democracy"

What is the reality behind these trite phrases!

The "mixed economy" in normal language is the present capitalist system, in which a handful of nationalised service industries are used to provide a basis of profitable production for exploiters in the private sector, for bankers and 'speculators.

Bankrupt It means, therefore, precisely the bankrupt and moribund system that has brought industrial collapse, two million unemployed, the destruction of social services, and the prospect of still further attacks.

As the Gang of Three make clear, their vision of the "mixed economy" also includes a permanent system of wage controls, and oppositión to Instead, they call for cash handouts to private employers and "more public firms" financed by the National Enterprise Board.

And they insist that new forms of class collaboration should be devised to persuade workers to work harder for their exploiters, since:

"What happens inside a factory or office is at least as important as who owns it".

Out of the window, therefore, if the Gang of Three have their way, goes Clause IV (4) of the Party constitution and even a verbal commitment to a planned socialist economy.

What of their "international socialism"?

This in reality means unstinting support for the imperialist NATO alliance, for the deployment of Cruise missiles in Britain, and for the US Cold War offensive on the question of Afghanistan.

It mêans undying loyalty to the reactionary and anarchic Common Market.

And it means a policy of import controis to protect "British" capitalists-but only on a "temporary" basis.

Alliance

Such "internationalism" is in reality an alliance between social democracy and international capital against the working class in Britain and throughout the world. It has nothing whatever to do with socialism.

But the Gang of Three also pledge themselves to "representative democracy" What does this mean?

It means opposition to the left wing demand for mandatory reselection of Labour MPs; it means opposition to all proposals to democratise the Cont'd Page 11 S.Af ica trikes