Socialists intervene in the mass movement, armed with the method of the Transitional Programme, to advance struggles around its demands which educate layers in independent action and increase their understanding of the need to end class rule. Building such actions constantly poses, however, the need • to Icentralisel them around a governmental slogan which poses ine question of power: who is going, concretely, to implement the demands raised by the labour, Black and women's movements? As Pierre Frank points out, the slogan of a "government of the working masses to carry out anti-capitalist measures" is "the culminating slogan" of the programme.
A key obstacle to the formation of such a government is the continued allegiance of the mass of working people to the Labour Party. Despite growing disillusion with the Callaghan leadership, working people still retain deep illusions in the party which they built and, as their radicalisation deepens, will increasingly seek to transform that party into a vehicle for anti-capitalist struggle. This has already begun to take place in the sharp shift to the left the party has undergone recently, bringing it into conflict with the government on numerous Breaking the illusions that working people (and their allies) have in the Labour Party is a central question for socialists. It is futile, however, to think that this can be done, in the manner of IS, by 'denouncing' it from the sidelines. Such a position, which ignores the deep loyalty the majority of working people have in 'their party, can only cut socialists off from the consciousness of wide layers as they enter into struggle. Far from denouncing the Labour Party, what is necessary is to devise a strategy which can show these layers -through their own experience - that the Labour Party cannot be won over to implementing demands in their interests.
Trotsky outlined such an approach in 1938, in the Transitional Programme, when writing: "Of all parties and organisations which base themselves on the workers and peasants and speak in their name, we demand that they break politically from the bourgeoisie and enter. upon the road for a workers and farmers! govern -ment. On this road, we promise them full support against capitalist reaction".
Such an approach has, as Trotsky stressed, "tremendous educational value". Calling on the Labour leaders to implement anti - capitalist demands allows those layers - who still retain illusions in these leaders of a 'right' or 'left' variety - to see in practice the limitations of reformism. They will only learn it through their own concrete experience of 'testing out! their present mis-leaders who claim to speak in their name.
Action Concretely, this means turning the mass struggles emerging - around the 'cuts', around abortion rights or the racist Immigration Act towards the Labour Party, and calling on it eaders to implement demands in the interest of working people. Taking layers through an experience of the limitations of the Labour confined to building mass action on the streets.
The struggles around such issues have to be complemented! by an attempt to carry the fight into the Labour Party itself by building a class-struggle left-wing ready to challenge the leadership on all aspects of its programme. a fight to pioneer the interests of the mass of working people would, in the process, off a serious debate around the issue democracy - particularly the right of the party conference to make its decisions binding on a Labour government. The past period has already given many embryonic indications of the importance of this issue.
Waging such a struggle both inside & outside the party is not aimed at winning the Labour Party to a 'socialist perspectivel. It cannot be. It is aimed at convincing the broad ranks of the labour movement who have illusions in the party - in its ability to be 'pressurised' into adopting class-struggle measures - that it is unequal to the tasks facing them.
The call on the Labour leaders to implement a socialist programme is, in this sense, the pivot of the Transitional Programme - the culminating slogan of all the others. Firstly, it provides all the diverse struggles - around different issues - with a common focal point. Secondly, it allows ever-wider layers to see in practice that the Labour Party is inadequate in the fight for socialism and educates them in the need to build a different kind of party: a party which is ready to challenge capitalism to safeguard the living standards and democratic rights of working people and their allies.