be made.
Such demands - extending 'workers control' over the factories, mines or depots - should be counter - posed to the 'integrationist' plans at present being discussed by both employers and trade union leaders. Schemes such as the Bullock Report - with proposals to integrate trade union representatives onto boards of directorsare not a class-struggle solution to the problems facing workers but a form of class-collaborat -ion.
Far from extending workers! control over the enterprise, their main aim is to make the workforce identify with the profitability of individual firms thus getting it to a)co-operate in the major 'rationalisation' schemes afoot which will create large-scale redundancies and cut-backs in working conditions; and b) compete with workers in ¡rival! firms thus atomising the labour movement instead of uniting it in anti-capitalist action.
While moving into struggle around demands in their interests, socialists are aware that the labour movement and its allies still retain deep illusions in the ability of the Labour Party to champion their rights and will increasingly look towards it as an. instrument for social change. This process has already opened up, in the past few years, as the struggles of almost all layers of the population have begun to find a confused & distorted echo in the party against the govern -In order to ensure that such a process - which will deepen in the period ahead - is not hegemonised by the reformist leaders of a 'left' or 'right! variety, it is important that socialists intervene in that process with a clear understanding of what the Labour Party represents in the conssciousness of working people.
SOCIALIST ACTION
The fact that the Labour Party was created by the unions - and still retains the allegiance of the vast majority - means that socialists stand unconditionally for a victory of Labour over the Tories. The struggles of working people with Labour in power are posed more favourably in two ways:
1) First, because of the organic links with the 'unions, it is limited to the extent to which it can erode the past gains of the class;
2) Second, it allows working people to go through a concrete experience of their reformist leaders (free of the 'left' talk that occurs when they are in opposition).
Support for the Labour Party as a step forward towards independent political activity means the same, however, political programme which is a tool in the hands of the class enemy. While mass base of the Labour Party, socialists counterpose to the programme of its leaders one based of working people and their Conference decisions must be binding on trade union and Labour Party leaders.
It is by supporting Labour and, at the same time, demanding that it implement a programme in interests of working people that ever-wider layers will come into conflict with the reformist leaders and see the need for an alternative. This long-term orientation is summed up in the call 'Labour to Power on a Socialist Programme'.
It has been argued by certain tendencies that such an orientation creates illusions in the possibility of the reformist leaders actually being able to implement 'socialist measures!. Such an 'argument' misses the point. The majority of working people already have 'illusions!; already believe that (perhaps with a change of leadership, substituting a Benn for Callaghan), the party can be 'pressurised' into implementing demands in their interests. The growing importance of the Labour 'lefts', over the past few years, is an embryonic example of this process The aim of such an orientation, taking the present level of consciousness of the labour move -ment as its starting point, is to show increased layers, through concrete experience, that the Labour bureauctats (of the 'right! or the 'left!)
are incapable of implementing their demands.
The way to do this is not by ignoring the Labour Party or sectarianly 'denouncing' it from the sidelines. It is by calling on its leaders - who claim to represent working people - to implement demands in their interests.
It is only on the concrete experience of the inability of the Callaghans - or Benns- to respond to their needs that ever-wider layers will begin to see the need for a socialist alternative. This will not take place overnight but will, undoubtedly, be the result of a long process both inside and outside the Labour Party. In the long term, the building of a mass revolutionary party is unthinkable without a major struggle inside the Labour Party against the reformist leaders that will educate growing numbers in the need for a different kind of party. There is no substitute for such a struggle.
Intervening in and developing such a process is, from a marxist, viewpoint, dependent on two inter-related approaches:
1. Mass Action The attempt to take growing layers through a concrete experience with the reformist leaders is not a propaganda exercise (as in the case of Militant) but has its roots in the living struggles themselves on the streets and in the factories. It is only by participating in and building these struggles around clear anti-capitalist demands, and directing them towards the Labour Party, that increasing layers will be confronted on the basis of struggle with the limitations of the reformist leaders.
Such struggles include not only those in defence of the democratic rights & living standards of the labour movement that will be increasingly threatened in the coming years. They also include those pioneered by women for 'abortion rights', those of 3lack people against racist Immigration laws or anti-imperialist struggles such as that launched by TOM to withdraw the troops from Iretand.
Directing all these movements towards the Labour Party, which allows the apparantly fragmented and disconnected struggles to find a 'focal' point, does not signify subordination to electoralism. On the contrary, it is by encouraging at all times independent mass action, and demanding that the Labour leaders implement demands stemming from such action, that ever - wider layers will begin to see through the limitations of reformism. 2 Class-Struggle Left-Wing The growth of mass struggles, in the period ahead, will increasingly find a reflection in the Labour Party. The crisis that has opened up will be both deepened and accelerated as ever-wider layers look towards it as an arena for hammering out a political alternative to the Labour govern -ment and turning it into a force for social change. Such a development should be consciously participated in by socialists as part of directing the growing struggles into a clear programmatic opposition to the policies of the labour leaders.
Entry into the Labour Party is not, in this sense, a 'raid'. It is a long-term, non-split perspective aimed at pioneering the struggles growing outside the party - those of the unions, of the women's movement or the Black Community - inside the party and ensuring they are not headed off by the 'right' or 'left' reformists.
The aim of such an intervention should be to create a class-struggle left-wing in the party on a clear programme of demands reflecting those pioneered by the masses on the streets and in the factories. Such a leit-wing should also take up demands for the democratisation of the party as an integral part of building a real opposition to the right-wing: 'For a Labour government to carry out Party conference decisions'; 'For the recall of any MP who fails to carry out these policies'; 'For an end to all witch-hunts - Freedom for all political groupings'.
Such a tendency should be willing to co-operate with all forces in the Labour Party, whatever their general political 'colouring', around any given concrete aspect of such a programme. While adopting a non- sectarian stance, however, its aim should be - by pioneering the demands of the class and its allies in the party - to allow latter to test out the various leaderships loffering' themselves from the 'right! through to the It is through the inter-relation of mass action outside the party and a current reilecting this action programmatically inside the party that tie hegemony of the Labour leaders can be successfully broken down and a concrete 'alternativel posed before the entire labour movement and its Such a long-term perspective is not entered into in the belief that the Labour Party Iwon' to socialist policies or can be 'democratised'. Such a perspective would be utopian. It is entered into to show growing numbers of working people and their allies that, while the Labour Party is a step forward, it is not sufficient to fulfill their needs. Thousands, if not millions, will discover this not by being lectured at.
They will begin to discover it in the active course of trying to make 'their! party act in their interests. It is out of this struggle, out of the splits and re-alignements that will take place as part of this struggle, that a new iorin of party SOCIALIST ACTION
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