Council house building a 1920s levels

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Council house building under the Tories is set to return to the levels of the 1920s.

Is this a wild statement by a left-wing fanatic? No, it is the forecast of an all-party Parliamentary Committee which last week criticised Environment Secretary Heseltine for failing to spell out the full impact of his programme of cuts.

New public sector housing starts by 19834 are predicted to slump to a miserable 2530,000-less than half the inadequate figure for 1979-80.

As a result, there could be a shortfall on official figures of 500,000 houses by the mid 1980s!

By the end of this year Heseltine's 48% cut in the housing budget will have brought the rate of council house building to 100,000 a year less than the minimum required.

And this is linked in private housebuilding as soaring interest rates and mortgage costs bar many families from even contemplating buying a house, and force would-be developers into financial crisis.

Meanwhile special steps are being taken to steamroller through the House of Lords Heseltine's pet scheme for further reducing the stock of council housing-by flogging off existing council houses at knock-down prices to those tenants rich enough to be able to afford them.

This move alone will cost hundreds of millions of pounds in lost rents and further intensify the housing crisis.

Only the defeat of the Tory government and a socialist programme for the nationalisation of the land, the construction companies and the banks and building societies can lay the basis for a crash programme of action to end the housing shortage and stabilise rents. Glasgow housing

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Conlerence of the Lab There is no doubt that in the wake of the heavy electoral defeat brought upon the Labour Party last year by the policies of Callaghan and Healey, the Party itself has been wracked by a growing political crisis.

A left wing opposition, reflecting albeit feebly -the militancy of the working class, has emerged from the original successful challenge to Phase 4 of wage controls at the 1978 conference, to push through the call for mandatory reselection of MPs at the 1979 Brighton conference.

Since then, the new dominance of this left-wing within the Party's rank and file has been underlined by the contrast between the chilly reception for Callaghan and the standing ovation by constituency delegates for Tony Benn at the Party's Special Conference on May 31.

As a result of this shift, an increasingly irate and isolated right wing has begun to weigh its options. Shadow Defence Secretary William Rodgers has come out into the open in defiance of Party policy on the Cruise Missile question:

Social Contract Callaghan, Healey and many top union bureaucrats have begun feeling their way towards a new wage-cutting ' social contract"

There is even talk of right wingers splitting from the Labour Party to join an explicitly anti-socialist "Centre Party" along with Eurocrat Roy Jenkins.

Meanwhile in the run-uß to the October conference Callaghan is busily buttonholing TUC chiefs to prepare the ground for what he hopes will be the defeat by their block votes of democratic reforms demanded by the left-reselection of MPs; NEC control over the Party manifesto; and democratic election of the Party leader.

There is no doubt therefore that the Labour Party in 1980 is very different in its internal life from the Labour Party of two or three yèars ago.

• This change opens up new political possibilities for revolutionaries.

It is essential that Marxists fight alongside the Labour left in demanding democratic reforms to the constitution, while fighting against the inadequate and misleading political programme advocated by the left in the NEC's Draft United front While it is correct to seek in this sense a united front with the left in the struggle against the Party's right wing, it is essential to find ways to dispel in the course of the fight any illusions that the Labour left has a correct or coherent political alternative to offer.

And it is equally important not to allów Labour militants to draw from the appearance of The Brighton conference the present political ferment the false conclusion that the Party as a whole is on the verge of being transformed into some kind of revolutionary party.

On the contrary, it is more vital than ever that Marxists fight to construct a disciplined revolutionary organisation capable of giving consistent and principled , direction to the struggle for new leadership and for socialist and revolutionary policies-within both the trade unions and the broader labour movement, including the Labour Party.

Different emphasis

A very different emphasis, however, emerges from a series of three major articles spelling out the orientation of the paper Workers Action, whose politics are a reflection of the International Communist League.

Workers Action draws from the 1979 Brighton conference the conclusion that the political wing of the Labour movement has begun to change.

"and to change sufficiently for it to be now not fantastic to set as a goal its transformation (at least partially and on condition that further changes are pressed through) into a real instrument of the working class.

The decisions of the Brighton conference, if they are pushed through and consolidated to make the Parliamentary Labour Party accountable and therefore more or less controlled by the labour and trade union movement, open up But even justifie: a new perspective"

(WA 174)

To envisage the Labour Party, after 75 years of commitment to piecemeal parliamentary reform of the capitalist system, being transformed by one or two constitutional changes into "a real instrument of the working class" is, to say the least, extraordinary.

But for Workers Action precisely this view is made the starting point of a whole political orientation towards demanding a 'workers' government" which-would effectively amount to a 'left' Labour "The Brighton decisions are -or rather can be made to bethe beginning of a process of renovating and reconstructing the labour movement...

Brighton demonstrates that transforming the political wing of the labour movement is a possibility, and thus that it is possible to raise the transitional demand for a workers' government in Britain ...

(WA 174)

This workers government' demand centres exclusively on the Labour Party and the existing organisations of the working class-which Workers Action argues need to be simply "renovated" to equip them for service in the hands of the working class.

Contrast

Workers Action goes further -and explicitly its abrupt turn towards the Labour Party by politically contrasting the Party in 1980 with its positions in earlier years:

"so far [!] the Labour Party in office has never been other than a capitalist government based on the reformist organisations of the working class"

(WA,173)

"To spread the idea in 19734 that the Labour Party could be a workers' government would have been to spread confusion". (our emphasis).

(WA 173)

But surely to spread the idfa in 1980 that the whole Labour Party, with the aid of a few yetto-be-implemented constitutional reforms and no substantial change of political direction, could now form a workers' government, is equally to spread confusion?

Demand on lefts'

Sooner than raising the sharp demand on the left wing NEC fakers that they embark on an open campaign for the removal of the Callaghan right wing and abandon the class collaborationist strategy spelled out in the new Draft Manifesto, Workers Action merely follows on the existing leftward current in the Party, and implicitly subscribes to its illusions.

The articles studiously avoid any call for a revolutionary party-satisfying themselves with an enigmatic formula declaring that:

"It is not required that the Labour Party becomes a revolutionary party-or that one should think it can or will become that"

(WA 174)

Maybe it is not "required" that Workers Action readers cherish such, illusions: but if they do, they certainly receive no categoric rebuttal of them in the three articles!

Abstentionists

• Indeed in attacking the abstentionist stance of the SWP and others who refuse to champion a struggle inside the Labour Party, Workers Action effectively argues that the Party as a whole can be made into a revolutionary instrument:

«When the SWP and others denounce the idea that the Labour Party can be made an instrument for socialist change, we explain that they are actually doubting that the working class can be in the period ahead. Can the 'trade unions be such an instrument? Can the class itself? If so does that not mean action through the Labour Party, with the necessary reorganisations and replacements?"

The Labour Party-for all its undoubted political dominance in Britain-remains only a component of the working class, not the class itself.

So while a strategy for the construction of a revolutionary leadership and the fight for a workers government is useless if it leaves out the problem of the Labour Party. it must take Wednesday account of it in the context of an overall fight to win and mobilise the working class as a whole!

This means fighting for more than "reorganisations and replacements" in the Labour Party apparatus: it means developing the independent strength of the class in practical struggles which alone can offer the basis on which to implement a socialist programme.

We can of course whole heartedly agree with Workers Action when they attack the sectarians of the Socialist Workers Party (whose reluctance to fight the reformist bureaucracy takes, in the unions, the form of the building of "Rank and File" organisations which spearhead no real struggles, and in the Labour Party the form of organised abstention):

"There is nothing revolutionary about abandoning the political wing of the organised labour movement to bourgeois agents, naive or shamming semileftists, and the passive sectarians around Militant"

(WA 175)

But while this correctly spells out the necessity for an intervention into the Labour ence in the one tear ence in te entire tired series to even the possibility of a split in the Labour Party.

"To the pedantically-minded who ask Do you think the

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This is the second of two articles by JOHN LISTER and COLIN MORROW examining the political positions contained in a series of three articles on the fight for a workers government Leftward move within the ranks forced Lahour leaders to call national anti-cuts march last Novemher our Part The labour Workers Action has indeed likely to ceased for some months even to With Workers Action thus interpret our call for a workers' appear on a regular weekly stressing at every turn the government as just a r call for a basis, since its production takes possibility of "transforming" Labour government. That is second place to the production Healey Callagi in WORKERS ACTION Nos 173-175. revolutionaries can take over the whole Labour Party?' • we say that it is the wrong question. Do they themselves think that the whole of the trade unions can be won for revolutionary politics without divisions and plain that: splits?"

(WA 175) movement now are l the Labour Party with i or without a split into "a re al instrument of the working c lass" and into an instrument of socialist change* , it is hardly s surprising that the authors shot uld com"Many people in ti Than beyond our control... To the degree that we win support for our programme and for the work of renovating the labour movement, we become a force to help ensure that there will never again be a Labour government like the ones of the past"

(WA 174)

It is not only people in the broader labour movement, but also some Workers Action supporters who have been taken aback by this latest policy turn, and begun raising questions about its political wisdom.

Founding statement It is clear for instance that the current Workers Action indifference to the question of building a revolutionary party stands in stark contrast to the founding statement of the International Communist League in 1975.

In Britain its declared aim was:

"to build the League as the most healthy revolutionary tendency. We are pioneers of the future revolutionary party or we are nothing"

(Political Resolution of the ICL fusion).

Yet as the prospects of winning cadres to such a party become more favourable than ever before under conditions of a leftward movement in the working class, we see Workers Action displaying all the hallmarks of political and organisational liquidation.

The paper itself, expanded only a year ago to a l12-page weekly in order to provide more detailed background and theoretical material for workers coming towards Marxism, has contracted to 8 pages, as Marxist theory takes second place to involvement in the currents of left reformism.

TGWIN

of Socialist Organiser (paper of the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory) and Women's Fightback-both publications of 'broader', ? left-reformist groupings within the Labour Party.

The refusal of Workers Action supporters to fight in practice for its Action Programme among such "broad" forces was graphically demonstrated at the abortive June conference of Women's Fightback, where a vacuous series of proposals divorced from the slightest • commitment to practical struggle was passed with their assistance.

In other words Workers Action is engaged in a process of political adaptation to the left reformist forces now emerging in the Labour Party: an adaptation which involves the junking of previously established political positions.

In 1975, for instance, the ICL declared that the Labour "is not a two-class party, not are its left reformists a proletarian tendency. It can neither be ignored syndicalist fashion, nor transformed into a revolutionary party.

It is a dual party, politically and tactically capitalist and sociologically working class. Not to recognise its overall, fundamental capitalist character is to fall into illusions in its potential for transformation"

Opposite

As for work in the Labour Party, again we find a somewhat different emphasis than exists today.

"Such work must be seen as a tactic and not a strategy. The guiding principle must be the idea that the direct struggle of the working class is primary above any parliamentary or Labour Party considerations"

These formulations stand in direct opposition to the current positions being adopted by ICL in its drive to renovate the labour movement.

But the contrast is not simply between 1975 and 1980. In fact, as recently as July 1979 we find the ICL still arguing:

"A revolutionary programme bases itself on the organisations thrown up by the working class in the course of the struggle against the bosses, seeing these organisations as simultaneously fighting organs within capitalism and also as the basis for à future workers' state. Although revolutionaries are in favour of using parliament as a means of propaganda, •a revolutionary programme is not centrally based on parliament but on the self-activity of the working class"

(WA 148)

Finally, it is impossible to ignore the following statement from WA 156 on the question of the tasks of revolutionaries in a general strike:

... Revolutionaries in such a situation would raise the slogan of a workers' government as the immediate objective of the strike and move to coordinate and consolidate the tion and defence into a counter state which could challenge and decisively smash the bosses state and establish a workers' state"

This last passage in fact veers towards sectarian schematism in that it leaves out any real account of how the working class can be broken from reformism and the Labour Party in the course of mass struggles.

But it certainly rings very differently from the line in Workers Action twenty issues later!

Critical Socialist Press has consistently pressed for a strategy that will lead workers in the course of their struggles towards the necessary break from their existing Labour and trade union leaders and the development of independent organs of power as the basis for a workers state.

This strategy in no way precludes, but at present actually would require a critical vote for Labour were an election called: a critical vote which would in no sense depend upon the supposedly 'new" nature of the "post-Brighton" Labour Party, but upon the need for the comparatively small revolutionary forces to adopt in 1980s conditions Lenin's formula for Communists in the 1920s:

"At present the British Communists very often find it hard to approach the masses and even to get a hearing from them. If I come out as a Communist and call upon the workers to vote for Henderson [Labour] against Lloyd George, they will certainly give me a hearing. And I will be able to explain in a popular manner not only why Soviets are better than parliament and why the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the dictatorship of Churchill (disguised by the signboard of bourgeois "democracy"), but also that I want with my vote to support Henderson in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man-that the impending establishment of a government of Hendersons will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of the Hendersons and the Snowdens just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany". (Left Wing Communism)

No faith Our critical support for Labour in elections is thus a tactic to hasten its political exposure and its death-and to win the support of the masses to the struggle for socialist For us to vote Labour is not a sign of our faith in the possibilities of a Labour government being transformed constitutionally or programmatically under mass pressure into a "workers" government", but an essential part of our fight to demonstrate to the masses the inadequacy of reformism of the left and of the right.

Indeed it is curious that the Page ICL and Workers Action, who were some of the most pessimistic proponents of the view that the working class had accepted the social contract and the class collaborationist politics under the last Labour government, should now come forward with a perspective that leans so heavily on workers making a spontaneous political devel pment.

Boldly they declare that even if the Labour Party is not immediately transformed:

... given these conditions and given the activity of organised revolutionary militants raising revolutionary political perspectives the ferment and mobilisation of the working class against a Tory government will do the rest".

(WA 174) (emphasis added)

The deluded belief that existing reformist, Stalinist or petty bourgeois nationalist leaderships can be pressured by the mass movement of the unslina diace into adantin cas centrist or even revolutionary politics has a long and unsavoury history in the postwar Trotskyist movement. The Workers Action view of the transformation of the Labour Party from a reformist roadblock into an "instrument for socialist change" fits in with this method of approach, and leads towards the same conclusion: effective political liquidation-in this case into left reformist layers within the Dispel illusions.

If the present crisis within the Labour Party is to provide a source of strength and not of confusion and crisis for Trotskyists, it is essential that in fighting alongside the lefts against the right wing, the fight to dispel the illusions of the left is also stepped up.

This means spelling out unambiguously that a reformist Labour government elected through the ballot box will never seriously break from the bourgeoisie, and that in order to carry through the fight for a government to genuinely represent their interests, workers need to mobilise in mass struggles and construct independent bodies, including councils of action and workers' defence squads, to confront the power of the capitalist state.

lo lead such a struggle a revolutionary party is required. And though Workers Action and the ICL appear to regard the task of building such a party as secondary to their work in the Labour Party, the Workers Socialist League believes that only in the context of the overall struggle to build a new leadership in the labour movement can Labour Party work be seen correctly.

We know which way we are headed. Which way is Workers Action going to go?

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