lull in the class struggle, disillusion deteat. happened. and Public Margaret of But all the government is in for a rough ride.
policies they represent.
within the Labour Party and control government, and at the last election, indefinitely repeated.
decided and urgent fashion.
limits of the radicalism which we now see.
populist in character.
Tony • Benn's Socialism, cannot.
leadership.
Party's own functioning.
need to overhaul it is widely accepted even bourgeois circles.
Labour leadership to and conservatism. nOr the the British state.
business: are hy bound to be continued in THE LEFT is confronting both an unpredictable and a hopeful situation. Labour's election defeat, revealing a loss of support in certain working class communities, could easily have led to a prolonged with a background of In fact this has political debate may be still largely dominated by the monetarists and New Right.
Thatcher and Keith Joseph may still appear as the leaders with conviction and passion, while the Labour leaders stand for the status quo.
indications are that the , Thatcher The beginnings of a fightback so soon after the election show that wide sections of the labour movement do not regard the defeat of Callaghan and Healey as a defeat for themselves. They have no confidence in these leaders and no belief in the A further sign of this is the speed of the left in bringing up the question of democratic reform over its manifesto. This is a very welcome development.
Unless the Parliamentary Labour Party is made both individually and collectively responsible to the Labour Party and the movement as a whole, disasters like those during the life of the last will be Never has the accountability of Labour MPs been raised in such a However it is also necessary to question the In ideological terms the key themes which now define. the pronouncements of the left are democratic or If one scans the pages of the Labour press, from Labour Weekly to the New Statesman, if one considers the campaigns and propouncements.of prominent Labour supporters like Afthut Scargill or Edward Thompson, or if one studies the pages of collection for fail to be struck by dramatic, and welcome, resurgence of concern at the highly concentrated and secretive methods of rule embodied by the British capitalist state so often accepted, or even strengthened, by the Labour This is allied to a willingness to challenge the undemocratic features of the Labour Since we live in a country with the most archaic political system in the advanced capitalist world the in On paper the Labour Party is committed to abolition of the House of Lords — the failure of the make anything of this commitment is further proof of their utter timidity But it is not clear that the Labour left is really prepared to press home its democratic critique of Let me mention a few obvious issues that would have to be taken up by any socialist, or indeed radical democrat, who meant So long as there is a British army fighting a war in the North of Ireland the tendencies towards arbitrary and secretive state power, and towards more sophisticated systems of state repression, are and intensified. Tony Benn points-with alarm to these tendencies in Arguments for Socialism and yet, so far, he has said nothing about Ireland.
Similarly in the referendum on devolution a majority of the Scottish voters voted in favour even of the inadequate measures proposed by Callaghan and Foot. Can it be doubted that there would be an even larger majority for a radically democratic devolution proposal involving self-determination for the Scottish people?
Somehow Issue has been allowed to disappear from public discussion as if Labour's proposals were only a concession made to ward off thię Nationalist threat, which can be now forgotten: In fact'a really radical devolution would be an important componènt in any plan to challenge the power of the British state.
The political functions of the monarchy have been a taboo subject in British politics since the early Victorian epoch. Leon Trotsky warned that in any real crisis the British monarch would become the centre for extra-parliamentary forces of the ruling class. Who can doubt that he was right?
In Greece, in the 196Us, the Greek cousin of our own Queen engineered the destruction of the reformist Papandreou government and paved the way for the colonels' coup. In Australia in 1973 the Governor General, exercising powers derived from the monarch, dismissed the Labour government of Gough Whitlam, despite the fact that it retained a parliamentary majority.
Tony Benn has criticised the Prime Ministerial use of the royal prerogative but has drawn back from suggesting that this prerogative should simply . be annulled. Populist rhetoric on the inordinate expense of the monarchy is no substitute for an indictment of its arbitrary political power.
Other similar issues, which I cannot take up here, include the need to change the present highly undemocratic "first-past-the-post' allocating parliamentary representation, radical measures for democratising the media.
We live in an antiquated political system, in the most decrepit of the older capitalist powers, at a have to title, fails to produce. and confiscation extensive workers servicing.
socialist Vil, ideologists of the Labour Party.
system of been achieved, and ¡ time of global capitalist crisis. Sócialists urgently bring forward those Socialism' which Tony Benn's book, despite its Unless socialists are prepared to develop a detailed and comprehensive socialist programme the struggles against the Thatcher government could, at the decisive movement, run out of steam.
At the centre of such a programme would have to be uninhibited measures for actual expropriation directed. at capital — control throughout the economy. A socialist economic programme also has to establish the social priority of salvaging welfare services and reorganising them to be more responsive to the communities they should be In both the private and public sector working programme immensely challenging. Its broad lines can be based on socialist theory, but to convince large numbers we have to draw on the diverse experience and struggles of different sections of the labour movement.
It will also be necessary to look to those moyements that emerged out of the 1960s women's liberation, the ecological movement and so A programme for socialism must embody a qualitative emancipation of working people. After the experience of the 1970s it is very unlikely that the notion of quantitative economic advance withir capitalism will be credible. Thus greater boldnes and imagination is needed than is seen among the The priority today may be for the Labour Party to put its own house in order. It would also be good to see socialists outside the Labour Party more effectively organised. But very soon, and quite possibly before ideal organisational forms have resistance the Thatcher government will need to be guided by much clearer and more audacious programmatic watchwords than those we are hearing from any section of the
THE steering committee of the League met last Thursday to consider a number of Jull Laull problems people in this country.
ANL from the Friends of Blair Peach and the Southall Campaign Committee. called on the ANL to take up the plight of the 342 Southall defendents and the Special Patrol Group cover-up in relation to the murder of Blair Peach.
The steering mously that a call should be sent out to all ANL branches calling on them to organise pickets of police stations on 10 October, opening of the Blair Peach inquest at the coroners' court in London.
confronting black On the agenda was a joint appeal to the The appeal committee agreed unanithe eve of the Hammmersmith, West The theme of the pickets will be: 'Stop the Cover-Up, End the Southall Show-Trials'.
The ANL also agreed to organise meetings in several major cities on the Southall trials, in national character.
transmitted order to aid the defence campaign and give it a | Monday's Guardian have already given the The Open Door programme on Southall, on BBC-2 weekend repeated tonight, and Tariq All's article in last campaign SULLIC The attendance at Workers ANL conference.
would participate in co-ordinating committee to and weight into the campaign.
publicity. The possible defence needs to be built, preferably by ANL meetings sponsored by trades councils and other bodies of the labour movement.
the ANL committee by the central leaders of the three Associations reflected the importance of the decisions taken by the last It was agreed that the Anti-Nazi League setting Bright the Tory broad government's new proposals on immigration and the impending Nationality Act.
The ANL, it was decided, would support any national mobilisation planned against these laws in the late autumn, and throw its entire