After Blackpool: Where Next?

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Dear Comrades, Earlier this year, Socialist Press published a series of articles by me on the counterrevolutionary history of social democracy. In those articles, using the examples of Germany in 1919, the General Strike in Britain, the international crises of the late 20s and early 30s 1 tried to show the way in which reformism's commitment to a gradual evolution towards socialism within the continuing framework of acapitalist society has historically driven social democrats to line up with their own bourgeoisie against the working class.

• Your article on the Labour Party conference raises, I think, a number of fundamental questions for Trotskyists, not least on the role of centrism.

To describe the events at Blackpool as being evidence of the emergence of a mass anticapitalist movement within the organised working class is both somewhat premature and also politically rather dangerous.

What we saw at Blackpool was a confused expression of the frustration and anger within the working class and the recognition which has begun to develop amongst sections of workers that the right wing leadership inside the Labour Dear Comrades, Your reports of the Labour Party conference at Blackpool in SP218 contain, I think, some rather dangerous political formulations. I refer to the headline Victory at Labour Party Conference' and the article on page five which begins "Telling confirmation of the emergence of a mass anti-capitalist current within the British labour movement was offered by this year's Labour Party conference.

As revolutionaries we must be clear on what precisely the nature of this "victory" was.

Benn and Co., in creating the conditions for the removal of Party do not represent any formal alternative to Thatcher and the Tories.

Essentially that was the lesson drawn at Blackpool from the experience of the last Labour government. But being anti-EEC and unilateralist does not yet constitute anti-capitalism.

This empirical rejection of the bankrupt policies of the Callaghan clique does not however necessarily constitute the emergence of a mass anticapitalist movement although that possibility certainly exists as part of that process.

Confines

At present the search for solutions remains firmly within the confines of bourgeois parliamentarism.

In practice the political confusion of the rank and file members expresses itself in the capacity of hardened centrists like Benn to head off and channel working class hostility into a series of reforms inside the Labour Paety which would create conditions for the carrying out of the 'lefts' alternative economic strategy, which is itself formulated within the context of the continuation of the Callaghan/Healey clique from the leadership, failed to in any way link this to the necessary mass action of the working class to bring down the Tory Benn and Co's moves at Blackpool represent, I feel, not such a victory for a working class&prepared to fight but lacking the political leadership necessary to overthrow capitalism, but rather a victory for hardened centrists, like Benn, to channel and divert the energies and strength of the working class into a fight for reforms inside the Labour Party and the continuation of capitalism in the guise of the alternative the capitalist system.

Benn's polities remain those of social democracy at the point when it betrayed the class struggle to line up with its own ruling class in the First World War.

withdrawal His support for a phased withdrawal of troops from Ireland rests on no principle but rather the same sort of tactical assessments which lead him to argue for import controls.

As a consequence of this the central task for revolutionaries in this particular period must be to challenge the rights of the centrists to lead the labour movement.

That Benn and co should find it both possible and desirable to line up with Moss Evans at Blackpool as Evans arrived hot-foot from the betrayal of the Adwest strike shows clearly the counter-revolutionary content of the machinations amongst the upper echelons of the labour movement.

For class fighters today what is fundamental is not the potential for a mass anti-capitalist movement but the necessity to arm that movement with a programme which begins from the economic strategy.

On the question of the "mass anti-capitalist movement" we must recognise that while the Labour Party conference expressed the hostility of the working class both to the Tories and to Callaghan, the emerging mass movement remains fundamentally an anti-Tory movement. It is the task of revolutionaries to turn it into an anticapitalist movement!

This can only be done by arming the working class with a programme starting from the independent interests of the working class and by the building of the organs of working class power which independent interests of the working class.

I would suggest therefore that rather than being rolled over with enthusiasm for what happened at Blackpool, Socialist Press ought to be raising some questions about what didn't happen!

Fraternally, Colin Morrow Leicester Callaghan cannot only bring down the Tories but prepare the way for the taking of power.

This means building councils of action, uniting struggles in every area against the Tories as the prelude for the creation of soviets, not with the limited objective of "creating the conditions for ousting Callaghan from the leadership of the Labour Party" (and presumably replacing him with a "left"

Bennite government?) but to lay the foundations for a workers fraternally, William G.

Leicester EDITOR'S REPLY Have comrades Morrow and William G. actually read the articles in Socialist Press 218 to which their letters apparently refer?

The question is worth asking because they solemnly inform us as if for the first time, of a series of points which were in fact clearly contained within the original articles, while on the other hand they appear almost wilfully to leave out perhaps the most crucial element in our assessment.

Our articles of course gave no revolutionary credentials to Tony Benn: Socialist Press would not even grant him the status of "hardened centrist" allotted to him by comrades Morrow and William G.

Social democrat

We make it clear that Benn remains a left talking social democrat, whose quest for reforms and socialism legislated through parliament mean that he stands, quite openly, opposed to the necessary mass strike action to bring down the Tories.

Unlike comrades Morrow and William G, however, we also take notice of the fact that Benn's left rhetoric and fight for important democratic reforms within the Labour Party have reinforced illusions amongst large sections of workers that such politics can lead to socialism.

We therefore point, (particularly in our inside page article to the kind of approach necessary to show workers the falsity of these illusions.

While there is of course a certain abstract historical validity in equating Benn's positions today with those of the social democrats prior to World War I it is unlikely that such literary denunciations and extravagant comparisons are likely to change the thinking of more than a tiny handful of workers.

Socialist Press 218 on the other hand pointed out that, in terms of a willingness to mount tangible action to defeat the Tories, particularly around the cuts question, broad layers of Labour activists showed themselves at the Blackpool conference to have gone already way beyond Benn's parliamentary, propagandist perspective.

In the next period the further development of this conflict-through the fight in practice for strikes, occupations and a stand by Labour councils against the cuts-can bring workers in large numbers face to face with the political limitations of Benn and his fellow left-talkers, in a situation where revolutionaries can spell out clearly the necessity for an alternative leadership.

As our front page article pointed out:

... the next period offers the best conditions to put such leaders to the test; by their willingness or refusal to fight for extra-parliamentary action to defeat the Tories; by their willingness or refusal to press home the gains of the Blackpool conference and drive out the right wing leadership, workers can quickly assess the real character of those who now put themselves forward as opponents of the Callaghan gang.

We offer our full support to every step forward taken by the lefts in the fight for enited class action to bring down Thatcher; at the same time we fight consistently against the limited policies of the Labour left, to win support for the kind of programme that is vital to defend the interests of the working class in the next period.

In this way we seek to win the most principled sections of trade unionists and Labour activists to the fight for a new, revolutionary, leadership in the labour movement."

In telling us that we must build such a leadership, oppose Benn's politics and fight for a comrades Morrow and William G. tell us nothing we did not clearly say ourselves last week: what they signally leave out is any appreciation of how or under what new political conditions, these tasks must be carried out!