Clive Heemskerk (22 August 1996)

TO DATE THE debate on the name has been posed in the form that there is no alternative but to drop Militant Labour. The only question appears to be, to change it to what? In fact this is a false choice -Militant Labour is not an ‘ideal’ name but, from where we are starting at, is a perfectly good name both in regard to how events will develop but also in regard to our strategical tasks in the period ahead.

Of course the name of our organisation – not a defining but a component element of its character – should always be the subject of review, in the same way that perspectives, and the strategy, programme and tactics that flow from them, must be constantly refined. On the other hand, however, a name is different to a slogan or a demand. We ‘experiment’ with demands, in a ‘dialogue’ with the class, correcting ourselves if they are inappropriate for a particular audience or period. A name, however, is both the product of, and must serve for, an ‘era’, not a conjuncture – there should be compelling objective or subjective reasons before a name-change is embarked upon.

So what are the perspectives that lie behind the proposal to change our name? Do they provide an adequate guide to the strategy and methods that will be necessary for us to adopt? Do they lead overwhelmingly to the need to change our name? Or are other changes more appropriate in preparing our organisation for the events to come?

Perspectives behind the Socialist Party proposal

THE PERSPECTIVES OF the EC majority are developed from a broad characterisation of the present period. “The collapse of Stalinism”, the comrades write, “along with the boom of the 1980s, the move towards the right of the leaders of the workers’ organisations, and the increased bourgeoisification of the traditional organisations” have produced a unique historical conjuncture. (Statement on the Name, p3). Social democratic governments internationally have carried out the programme of the bourgeois without resistance; the trade unions generally have been ‘incorporated’ into the counter-reformist programme of the social democracy – they will not provide an independent centre for workers’ opposition. But, while these broad features of the period have ‘thrown back consciousness’, in particular demobilising older activists who had a ‘general socialist understanding’, the working class has not been, and will not be, passive.

Already there has been a weakening of the electoral base of the social democracy. There have been mass movements of opposition to austerity measures: in general, to date, these “have been a revolt not against the market as such, but against the effects of the market, in terms of cuts, the deterioration of the workers’ conditions etc”. (Members Bulletin No. 18, Reply to Points Raised, p4). At a certain stage, however, there will be “a revolt against the market, that is, a pronounced anti-capitalist mood, a rejection of capitalism. This will be accompanied by the re-emergence of socialist ideas, first amongst an advanced layer and later amongst a broad mass”. (Ibid). “Socialism and socialist ideas will come back onto the agenda in a big way once a mass movement of the working class takes place. The next big wave amongst the working class will be towards socialism”. (Statement on the Name, p5).

In this situation, the comrades argue, the strategical task of Marxists is to accelerate this process by propagandising for socialism – “the main task facing us now is to win support for a socialist programme and for socialist ideas generally” (Reply to Points Raised, p3) – and aiding in, or pioneering, the establishment of a new, independent workers’ party, “a mass, independent, class-struggle party of the working class”. (Ibid, p7).

Developments under a Blair government will proceed along these general lines. “No mass left-wing… will develop in protest against the pro-capitalist policies of a Blair Labour government” within the Labour Party. (Statement on the Name, p4). There will be limited opposition from the trade unions – parallels have been drawn, for example, with the Swedish unions where “despite (social democratic premier) Persson’s attacks, leading trade unionists from the main union federation, LO, have now been drawn into closer collaboration with the government. Shades of what Britain’s right-wing union leaders will do under a Blair government”. (Militant, 7th June 1996).

In this situation, the prospects for the formation of an independent workers’ party will be delayed -compounded by the negative experience of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) which will remain “a relatively small organisation”. (Statement on the Name, p7). However, while a new workers’ party is not likely to be on the agenda in the short term, nevertheless, very rapidly a Blair government will provoke a mass reaction, and Labour will be completely discredited. The idea of ‘France coming to Britain’ has been raised – ie drawing parallels with the rapid turnaround in Chirac’s position, from electoral triumph in May 1995 to facing a mass movement against his austerity measures just six months later in November 1995.

When such developments take place, the comrades argue, “a huge vacuum (will) exist on the left… other organisations are organically incapable of filling this vacuum. We can fill this gap at least partially and to a much greater extent than others. But the pre-condition… is that we are properly situated to take advantage of a big working working class revival towards socialism. Consequently, it is essential that we should have the word ‘socialist’ in our name”. (Statement on the Name, p5). On this basis, “there is no reason why we cannot build a small mass party numbering tens of thousands particularly in the next two, three or four years”. (Reply to Points Raised, p6).

This step should not be taken with the expectation that we will become the new, mass party of the left but as a means to most rapidly develop our forces – ‘in two, three, four years’ or more – prior to the establishment of such a formation. When a new workers party does develop, providing a “seed bed for the growth in influence of the revolutionary organisation”, we will be in a position to utilise the opportunities it will create to “lay the basis for a mass revolutionary party at a later stage”. (Statement on the Name, p5).

What are the prospects for a new workers’ party?

HAS THE ESTABLISHMENT of a new workers’ party really been deferred now to the longer term?

So far in the name debate there has been only limited discussion about how a new party will develop or the role of intermediary tactics such as the formation of ‘socialist alliances’. The question is only touched on by the EC majority with a reference to the current weakness of the ‘socialist alliances’ that were established this year outside of Scotland – they “have not really taken off at this stage”. (Reply to Points Raised, p6). As to the future development of oppositional forces which could form the basis of a new, class struggle party, “what is raised here”, the comrades argue, “is the perspectives for future split-offs from the Labour Party”. (Ibid}. In fact, this is not ‘what is raised here’ at all.

The dominant feature of perspectives under Blair will be the fragmentation of politics. Included in this process may well be ‘future split-offs’ from the Labour Party but far more important for the prospects for a new workers’ party will be the flowering of oppositional movements that will develop single-issue protest campaigns, local or particularist movements against cuts, police harassment etc, specific groups of workers moving into opposition before others (the public sector ahead of the private sector) and so on – which will provide the terrain out of which the forces for a new party can be pulled together.

This has been the experience internationally -there has not been a simple linear development moving from the experience of the traditional workers’ party in power to the formation of a new party of the left, a ‘big bang’ where illusions are broken and a new party coalesces.

Sweden provides one such example – with the Social Democratic Party’s shift towards capitalism even leading to the formation of single-issue parties such as the ‘Health Party’, the ‘Old Age Pensioners Party’ and, at one stage, a proposal and public support for a ‘Women’s Party’ (Militant, 7 June 1996). Even amongst the unions, notwithstanding the role of the leadership referred to earlier, “the search for an alternative was previously shown by the development of the Workers’ List in 1990, by the largely miners-based Kiruna Party in the north of Sweden” (who won control of Kiruna town council in 1994), and, in last year’s European elections, by the Justice List, which involved important trade union forces. (Ibid).

Why isn’t this ‘shades of what will happen’ within the trade unions under a Blair government – pushed on, of course, by our intervention with the slogan for a new workers’ party and, where appropriate, at a local level especially but even nationally, with the tactic of electoral alliances? Isn’t this the significance for the future of the FBU conference decision, against the recommendation of the left-wing’ executive, to review the use of the union’s political fund to enable it to back non-Labour Party candidates? (Militant, 24 May 1996). Or the prospect of trade union affiliations to the Scottish Socialist Alliance, such as that of the Joint Shop Stewards Committee at the Edinburgh Royal Hospital? (see Militant, 14 June 1996).

Of course, the dominant tendency within the trade unions will be for the ‘(in)corporatism’ of the leadership – including elements at a local level – into Blair’s ‘project’. The intimidation of UCATT and the FBU at the 1995 TUC conference to get them to withdraw their resolutions for a specified figure for the minimum wage – where UCATT was threatened with disaffiliation if it proceeded – gives a clear picture of the role the TUC and the major unions will play under a Blair government. Coincidentally, it was the Building Labourers’ Federation (BLF) which was the first union to stand against the Prices and Incomes Accord between the Labour government elected in Australia in 1982 and the Australian Congress of Trade Unions (ACTU). Consequently, the BLF was deregistered and subjected to systematic repression by the government and the employers, with the full support of the ACTU.

But this tendency is only one side of a process, a clash of living forces. Significantly, at this year’s UNISON conference, the leadership were defeated when a resolution was passed that committed them to present to the TUC precisely the minimum wage demand (4-26) that the FBU and UCATT proposed but then withdrew last year – this in the union, of course, where last year 58,000 workers voted for our candidate in the election for general secretary. At the very least, the experience of a Blair government in power will create in the unions a favourable audience for us to intervene in, with the clear slogan of the need for a new workers’ party.

Moreover, the ‘audience’ for this slogan will not only be occupied by different groups of organised workers coming into opposition to ‘New Labour’. One difference with Sweden, for example, is that there 83% of the working population are still members of trade unions, compared to about 30% in Britain – there is far less scope for ‘incorporating’ the unorganised sections of the class who could explode into action in the changed climate that will exist after the defeat of the Tories.

In addition, we will also see the continuation of the process that developed under the Tories of the emergence of a whole range of ‘single-issue’ protest campaigns, from the anti-poll tax movement to campaigns against hospital closures, the anti-CJA movement, anti-motorway and animal welfare campaigns, and FACE, which grew from localised protests to a 20,000-strong national demonstration in a matter of weeks. Many of the new campaigns that will emerge could also be won to participating in an electoral alliance against New Labour’s anti-working class policies, as the first step to building from below a new, class struggle party.

This was certainly one lesson of the Dublin West by-election, where over 100 anti-water charges campaigners who were not members of our organisation, participated in election activity. This would also have been the case on an even larger scale, for example, if we had argued for the anti-poll tax movement to conduct electoral challenges in 1989-91. Why will not similar opportunities develop again, if we intervene correctly in the struggles to come, to both build our organisation and pioneer the establishment of a new workers’ party?

At local and national level whether we approach the different movements that emerge to conduct joint campaigns, including standing in elections, under the banner of ‘socialist alliances’ or broader ‘anti-cuts alliances’ etc (like the Justice in Taxation electoral coalition planned for next year’s Irish elections) will have to be decided on the ground as events develop. What is clear, however, is that what will be decisive in this situation would not be a name change for our organisation but the methods we adopt, the tactic of the united front and the programme of a new workers’ party.

Overall, what lies ahead is still a ‘transitional period’, in which the ‘reconstitution’ of the Labour Party as ‘New Labour’ continues but the new mass formation has still to be created.

It is in this context that, aside from those forces that will develop in opposition to the Blair government in the unions , in ‘protest campaigns’ etc, other, conjunctural, political developments around the Labour Party can also accelerate the process.

Europe, for example, will be as much a problem for a Blair government as it has been for Major, with opposition inevitable in the parliamentary Labour Party and the unions against an early commitment to monetary union. There could be clashes almost immediately following Blair’s victory if attempts are made to delay a referendum for the establishment of a Scottish parliament. Depending on the size of Blair’s parliamentary majority, there may be a need to make an early agreement with the Liberals – with a referendum on electoral reform within a year or so, and so on.

True, if such developments do result in a left split from Labour it will be, as the EC majority comrades argue, “in effect, a parliamentary split”, taking very few forces with it from the Labour Party. (Statement on the Name, p4). Nevertheless, as the comrades go on to say, it could then, however, become a factor in the situation, “finding an echo amongst socialist-inclined workers looking for a new mass organisation”. (Ibid). It is in this context also that the prospects for the SLP assume importance for, while it may well remain ‘a relatively small organisation’, it could easily pick up electoral support as, for example, the Left Party has in Sweden, without significantly increasing its membership. Again, our methods in such a situation, how we deal with such developments programatically and tactically, will be primary compared to the question of our name.

In fact Militant Labour is a perfectly good name for the period of ‘fragmented polities’ that lies ahead – not the best’ in abstract but starting from where we are. It is of course the name under which we have conducted preparatory work for precisely such a ‘transitional’ period and such tasks – and which has therefore the advantage of continuity and a certain, even if limited, tradition. On the other hand, there are no advantages to be had for trying to establish the authority of a new name in what could well be a shorter period than the EC majority comrades anticipate.

Certainly, no argument can be made that we need to change our name to enable us to pioneer the establishment of a new workers party or, for that matter, to argue for socialism. In reality, the only reasons being advanced to change our name are negatives – that retaining ‘Labour’ in our name will be such ‘a barrier’ even in the short term that it outweighs the advantages of keeping Militant Labour in the transitional period ahead. Or, alternatively, that, without the word ‘socialist’ in our name, we will ‘lose out’ (why???) when a ‘mass socialist consciousness’ develops. But both these arguments rest on one-sided, and therefore false, conceptions of how consciousness will develop in the events ahead.

Why will Militant Labour be a barrier?

THE LIKELY DEFEAT of the Tories after nearly 18 years in power will trigger a dramatic break in the situation in Britain, rapidly accelerating the realignment of British politics marked to date primarily by the unresolved civil war in the Tory Party and the ‘reconstitution’ of the Labour Party and affecting the outlook of millions.

The election result itself will resolve or at least clarify a number of conjunctural political factors which will play a role in shaping events, and which in turn will have an impact on consciousness. For example, the size of Labour’s majority and the perceived prospects for a Tory recovery, combined with the balance in the parliamentary Tory Party between the ‘left’ and ‘right’ – if Redwood or Portillo win the Tory leadership, for instance – will have an affect on consciousness. Fear of the Vlaams Blok in last year’s Belgian elections, for example, increased the vote for the Flemish Socialist Party, despite it being enmeshed in a major corruption scandal. Even the completely discredited PSOE put on 350,000 votes in this year’s Spanish elections, again in response to the perceived threat of the right. A Redwood-led Tory Party which had a prospect of returning to power, or even renewed electoral success for the fascists, would affect our performance on the electoral plane – a test of ‘consciousness’ – firming up support for Labour for a period in contests where ourselves, or a new workers’ party, were not seen as a viable alternative.

Another example of a conjunctural political factor that will affect consciousness will be the number of Liberal MPs elected and the composition of the parliamentary Labour Party, which will affect the prospects for an early Lib-Lab arrangement and a possible referendum on electoral reform. This in itself would affect consciousness for a period- as did the referendums on electoral reform in New Zealand in 1992 and 1993, and the Segni referendum in the midst of the ‘meltdown’ of Italian politics in 1993 – lending support to the idea that a change in the electoral system can solve society’s problems, a ‘democratic consciousness’ or illusion.

All these factors and others – the ideological confusion that will prevail in the European debate, how events will develop in Scotland after the election etc – will have to be taken into account when we draw up our post-election perspectives. Perspectives are precisely an estimation of the inter-relationship of political, economic and social developments and the consciousness of the different classes. Moreover, the more concretely we attempt to map out perspectives, the more significant conjunctural factors become. But nonetheless, if we leave aside other factors for a moment, we can, in general, anticipate what will be the immediate impact of a Labour victory on the consciousness of the working class.

The coming to power of a Labour government, we wrote in the most recent major internal article on this question, “would lift from the backs of workers the yoke of 18 years of Tory rule, and thus raise their confidence. It would unleash the pent up frustrations which have built up over this period… For the masses, such a victory will be seen almost as a liberation’. An avalanche of hopes and expectations dammed up for almost two decades will burst forth”. (Members Bulletin No.9, April 1995, p19).

On the other hand, for “the more politically advanced workers”, the “best they hope for is a more favourable, less hostile and perhaps better framework within which to work. They are already half-conscious of the fact that it will be down to the strength and combativity of workers, and not the actions of a Labour government, if past attacks are to be reversed and new conquests made”. (Ibid).

That’s why, in fact, Militant Labour is not a bad name – standing with the ‘hopes and expectations’ of the masses but also with the consciousness, or ‘half-consciousness’, of the advanced workers that ‘combativity’, militancy, is needed to make gains.

Of course, it is true, this appraisal of the consciousness of the working class was written in April last year and events have moved on. Undoubtedly, the ‘half-consciousness’ of advanced workers in particular that struggle will be necessary to make gains under a Labour government has been re-enforced. Yet the point about the different levels of consciousness towards Labour still applies.

For example, a recent ATL/Harris poll on attitudes to the parties’ education policies, reported in The Guardian (23 July 1996), found that, “despite the strips of Velcro attached to Gordon Brown’s lips over any additional expenditure commitments, a surprising six out of ten voters have consistently polled that a Labour government would invest more cash in schools”. In contrast, while the Liberals have repeatedly pledged a Ip income tax rise to pay for additional education spending, “less than half believed that, once in power, they would actually come up with the money”! What is this but a ‘hope and expectation’ in Labour (in distinction even to the Liberals) – which, of course, we have to explain, in a skilful, transitional fashion when addressing a broad audience, will not be fulfilled.

But isn’t this the way we operate anyway in our day to day activity? Despite Blair and Brown we do not deal with the Labour Party as if the consciousness of workers towards it was the same as their consciousness towards the Tories or the Liberals. For example, in the recent Save Our Schools campaign against the closure plans of Glasgow’s Labour council, alongside our strategy of occupations to keep the schools open, we also put forward the demand in campaign meetings and in the council chamber “for the school closure programme to be put on ice until after a general election”. (Militant, 24 May 1996). Why? Not because we believed that an incoming Labour government would provide money to keep the schools open but as the best way of putting the Labour councillors on the spot, of showing to those parents who do not believe Gordon Brown’s ‘pledge’ not to increase spending, that they have false ‘hopes and expectations’ and that the only alternative is to build the resistance to New Labour.

Yet if we make a differentiation between the parties in our slogans and demands, because of the differentiation made between the parties in the consciousness of the class, why can we not continue to do so in our name?

But what about the situation in the first year or two of a Labour government? “The term ‘Labour’ is now synonymous with Blair and the abandonment of socialism”, the EC majority comrades write, “and will be a barrier (for us), if not now, then in the near future”. (Statement on the Name, p6). Why? Our name is Militant Labour, not Labour! Why won’t this name fit in with the mood of disgust and anger at Blair as ‘hopes and expectations’ are not realised? As we said in the 1994 British Perspectives document, commenting on our electoral successes as Scottish Militant Labour, “we are seen by a growing number of workers as continuing the socialist traditions of the pioneers of the Labour movement, while the leadership has abandoned them”. (p25). Why won’t this be even more the case when Labour is in power?

In New Zealand, the left party that was formed in opposition to the Labour government was called ‘New Labour’ (!). Yet New Labour won significant support, in the trade unions and electorally, in a situation where Labour had been in power for six years, carrying-out a ruthless Thatcherite dismantling of the oldest welfare state in the world.

In Belgium, where the Socialist Party has been in coalition with the Christian Democrats since 1987 and has carried through vicious austerity measures, the anger at the Socialist Party is such that workers organised counter-demonstrations against the Socialist Party’s May Day parades this year. (Militant, 17 May 1996). But the slogans of the demonstrations were revealing: ‘We are still socialist! What about the Socialist Party?’ ‘Still socialist – but never again supporting the Socialist Party’.

Why will workers in Britain, facing similar attacks from a Blair government as their New Zealand and Belgian counterparts have done, not also be able, similarly, to distinguish Militant Labour from Labour? As, after all, the workers of Dublin West did, after four years of Labour in (coalition) government, where the CWI achieved our best ever result in a parliamentary election contested under our own banner, standing as Militant Labour.

How does consciousness develop?

TODAY, THE EC majority comrades argue, “the throwing back of consciousness means that… one of the most important tasks of Marxists is to rehabilitate socialism, in collaboration with other forces, in a mass sense”. (Statement on the Name, p3). “To move towards a ‘Socialist’ Party”, therefore, “would be a big step forward in the consciousness of workers”. (Reply to Points Raised, P6).

In fact these are strong arguments, provided by the EC majority comrades themselves, for why we should keep our name at this stage – and certainly, for why Militant Socialist Party would be an even worse name than Socialist Party for a broader audience. In response, of course, the comrades would point to how they believe consciousness will change in the future.

On the surface, however, the arguments of the EC majority about how consciousness will develop are contradictory. On the one hand, they argue that “socialism and socialist ideas will come back onto the agenda in a big way once a mass movement of the working class takes place. The next big wave amongst the working class will be towards socialism”. (Statement on the Name, p5). Which is why, they insist, “it is essential that we should have the word ‘socialist’ in our name”. (Although it does not follow that a party needs to be called ‘socialist’ to argue for socialism).

Yet elsewhere, referring to “the massive mobilisations of the working class” since the collapse of Stalinism – “in Britain in October 1992 around the closure of the pits, in Belgium in the public-sector revolt in 1993, in the massive general strike and the biggest demonstration in Italian history in the autumn of 1994, in the revolt of the public sector workers in France in 1995/96” etc -the comrades correctly argue that these were movements, in general, “not against the market as such, but against the effects of the market, in terms of cuts, the deterioration of the workers’ conditions etc”. (Reply to Points Raised, pp3-4). France could well ‘come to Britain’ – but it would not necessarily result in a ‘socialist wave’.

Yet this is only contradictory if consciousness is seen as one-dimensional and as developing in a linear fashion, without ebbs and flows, without the possibility of rapid regressions as well as progression. Instead, in the same way as individuals can make enormous leaps forward in understanding, for example when they are involved in strike action, while still retaining backward ideas which can come to the fore at a later stage, so the class as a whole has a many-sided consciousness, not static but dynamic, changing and contradictory.

Unfortunately, the arguments have sometimes been unavoidably simplified in the debate, obscuring this all-sided understanding of how consciousness develops. This, of course, is not our approach in practise, for example, in the skilful and sensitive fashion the comrades in Northern Ireland track and respond to the many-sided and constantly changing elements of consciousness in the situation there. But even to speak of ‘the direction’ in which consciousness is moving, ‘towards socialism’, lends itself to a false conception of the relationship between ‘socialist consciousness’ amongst the mass and the prospects for building a revolutionary organisation or, for that matter, for the prospects for revolution itself. It is wrong, for example, to argue as the EC majority comrades do, that “a basic socialist consciousness amongst the mass (is) a pre-condition for the development of the revolutionary tendency”. (Statement on the Name, p5).

In reality, there will never be a ‘final triumph’ of a socialist consciousness on a mass scale up to and even after the coming to power of the working class, possibly even for a generation or so. Lenin argued that even the socialist revolution itself “cannot be anything other than an outburst of mass struggle on the part of all and sundry oppressed and discontented elements”. Inevitably the revolutionary upsurge will draw in backward workers: “without such participation, mass struggle is impossible, without it no revolution is possible. And just as inevitably will they bring into the movement their prejudices, their reactionary fantasies, their weaknesses and errors”. This, remember, is consciousness during the socialist revolution!

Nevertheless, he went on, “objectively they will attack capital, and the conscious vanguard of the revolution”, the mass revolutionary party, its leadership, its cadre and its broader ranks, “expressing this objective truth of a variegated and discordant, motley and outwardly fragmented, mass struggle” must strive “to unite and direct it, capture power, seize the banks, expropriate the trusts” and introduce other measures “which in their totality will amount to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the victory of socialism, which, however, will by no means immediately ‘purge’ itself of petty-bourgeois slag”. (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol.22, p356). There is no fixed measure of ‘socialist consciousness’ necessary before a revolutionary party can be built, before a mass movement can develop, or even before the socialist revolution can be accomplished.

In fact, with regard to a ‘socialist consciousness’ even today – of course, not a worked-out understanding but a sentiment against inequality etc -social attitudes surveys have consistently shown a high degree of support. In 1993 for example 46% of the population thought that ‘more socialist planning’ was the way to solve Britain’s problems, while 28% disagreed. Yet, in an example of uneven consciousness, a Red Pepper survey conducted in 1994 found that ‘only’ 6% saw themselves as being ‘to the left of the Labour Party’ – which was certainly not arguing for socialist planning!

For the mass then what aspect of consciousness predominates at a given moment is determined by objective factors – for example, the character of the issues compelling them to question society -but also by subjective factors, including the presence or otherwise of an authoritative or viable alternative.

What this means for how consciousness is developing in Britain today can be seen in the recent BBC Black Britain poll. The poll reported that 40% of black people under 25 were so alienated from the established parties that they wanted a separate black party – although this will not necessarily cut across the 86% black vote for Labour, it still signifies a marked shift in consciousness. On the surface this poll makes a case for a more radical name for our organisation – although what is expressed here is not a ‘socialist consciousness’-but that misses the point that what is necessary for a revolutionary alternative to gain broad support is for it to be seen as really offering a way forward.

Another example was provided in the recent interview in the Militant with an organiser of the Reclaim the Streets movement. Recalling the ‘distant experience’ for this ‘new generation’ of the miners’ strike – “I remember the unions being completely de-structured by Thatcher and seeing decent struggles dissipated” – he explained how he sees Reclaim the Streets as a channel for resistance, in the absence of other centres of struggle. (12 July 1996). The problem that we have had in the past period in winning this ‘new generation’ involved in ‘Do-lt-Yourself polities’ is not that they necessarily have no ‘consciousness’ of working class struggle or ‘socialism’ – for example, the key

spokesperson for the model for ‘DIY polities’, the Exodus collective, is an ex-ASLEF branch secretary – but that at this stage they don’t see a viable means of achieving fundamental change. This consciousness of course is not fixed, it will change as the working class shows itself once again as potentially the most powerful force in society. The very early beginnings of this has already been seen, for example, in the organisation of a cycle blockade by Reclaim the Streets in support of the tube workers during one of the recent strike days.

Overall then, mass struggles will be on the agenda very rapidly under a Blair government, as the working class acquires a new infusion of confidence from the defeat of the Tories. France could come to Britain within months – although, as this year’s congress perspectives statement emphasised, ‘big bangs’ are “rare in history, and are prepared for by ‘small’ intensified battles at a factory level, at a district, regional and then at a national level”. (Members Bulletin No.12, p!2).

Nonetheless, whatever the scale and tempo of the movements that will explode under a Blair government- however ‘variegated and discordant, motley and outwardly fragmented’ the consciousness of those in struggle may be – they will pose questions about society. They will provide an audience for us, not to ‘proclaim’ socialism but to argue for socialist ideas – in a concrete and transitional fashion, starting from the level of the movement and pushing it forward, where a programme and tactics to show how the movement can advance will be far more important than a banner in winning support for the revolutionary party.

By intervening in this way in future struggles, we will be able to ‘rehabilitate’ not socialism in general but the idea that socialism is possible. But this depends on our ability to win the confidence of those in struggle, for which changing our name to have ‘the word socialist in it’ is not only not ‘essential’ but could only ever be secondary in importance to sharpening up our methods of intervention, our programme and our tactics. This is the change we need to make to prepare our organisation for the events ahead.

How should we prepare for the coming events?

THE DECISIVE FACTOR that was missing in the November-December events in France last year was not a mass socialist consciousness but a viable alternative leadership to the old workers’ parties’ and union leaders, with a previously earned authority amongst the advanced layers of the working class and youth and, through them, amongst the masses. Such a leadership, with sufficiently prepared roots, may well have been able to have broadened the strike committees that developed during the movement and either have compelled the official union leaderships to call a general strike (starting with a one-day strike and then developing the movement further) or even to have organised a general strike from below. “The question of bringing down the government”, we wrote, was certainly posed by the French events but, “once again, a right-wing French government was saved by the policies of the workers’ parties and the unions”. (Socialism Today, No.5, p!7).

Of course, the lack of such an alternative leadership is a product of objective as well as subjective factors, including the demobilising effect on many of the pre-1989 generation of activists of the ‘ideological defeat’ of socialism which the collapse of Stalinism represented. This means that an alternative leadership, the core of which is the revolutionary party, has to be built primarily from the new organisers of struggle in the workplaces, community campaigns and so on, with their ‘disparate’ consciousness, without broad experience, etc and not from a ‘pool’ of ‘already prepared’ socialist-minded activists.

Yet France 1995 also showed the limits of this objective factor of the ‘defeat of socialism’, compared to the importance of the subjective factor, in accomplishing the ‘dual task’ of advancing the struggles of the working class, while building the revolutionary party. The former was shown in the historic 1.6 million votes for the Trotskyist’ Lutte Ouvriere in the first round of the presidential elections in March; the later in the failure of Lutte Ouvriere to develop itself and the movement after March.

Certainly, the beginnings of a viable alternative leadership could have been in place for the November-December movement if Lutte Ouvriere had used their election result as a platform, with other forces, to build a new workers’ party – as, obviously in a more limited way, the Irish comrades are attempting to use the Dublin West result. (These examples, incidentally, show the importance of the electoral plane – and therefore the importance of how we relate to a broader audience, an advantage of our present name – in establishing the authority of a revolutionary organisation).

Unfortunately, however, the methods of Lutte Ouvriere, their refusal to adopt a united front approach and their abstract propagandism, their ‘untransitional’ programme with no link between socialism and the tasks of the day (the establishment of a new workers’ party), led them to throw away an historic opportunity – not only to act as a catalyst in a political regroupment of the working class prior to the November upsurge but also, in the process, to enhance the authority of their own organisation. There were ‘no (objective) reasons’ why they could not have developed as ‘a small mass party of tens of thousands’, within a broader formation, if their methods had been correct.

In Britain we are not in the same position at this stage as that which faced Lutte Ouvriere in the aftermath of March 1995. However, there is no reason, with our cadre prepared from a difficult period still intact, with important points of support still in the unions, our electoral record, etc – an outline ‘combat party’ in place – why we could not be in a similar ‘catalyst position’, depending how events develop, very rapidly under a Blair government.

There is also, of course, no comparison to be made between our methods and those of Lutte Ouvriere. Our strength is precisely our capacity to gain the confidence of working class people and youth in the experience of campaigning activity, from Liverpool to the poll tax, to countless local and workplace struggles. Our election successes, for example, have been primarily a measure of this, rather than an ideological commitment to ‘socialism’. Earning an authority in a leadership role in the daily struggles of the class, however small, is precisely how a revolutionary party has to develop, once it moves from the stage of purely propaganda work to accumulate a cadre, to the beginnings of mass work. With this approach almost ‘organic’ for our organisation, we are well-placed for the events ahead. Nevertheless, although a name-change is an unnecessary and therefore wrong change to make at this stage, we do need to change our organisation to fully prepare for the complexities of the situation that will develop. We need to ‘sharpen-up’ our methods, to critically examine our strategy in each field of work and to urgently update our programme, with the slogan for a new workers party at its core.

It is by intervening in different struggles with the slogan of a new workers’ party as the culmination of more limited, partial demands, that the Swedish comrades, for example, have achieved their recent successes. As they write, the slogan acts as a bridge, “linking today’s situation, the particular struggle of different groups, strike movements etc, with the needs of the next stage, for a generalised political movement of the working class against capitalism”. (Sweden – Reform or Revolution, April 1996, p!8). This will also be the case in the events that will develop in Britain.

In the trade union field, for example, this slogan, and the intermediary steps towards it such as freeing-up the political levies, the establishment of local electoral alliances etc, will become central to our intervention, especially to distinguish ourselves from those ‘left’ leaders who will verbally chastise Blair but who will not draw any practical conclusions (except to suppress their critics).

For example, this year’s UNISON conference formally adopted a whole series of progressive demands, mostly with the acquiescence of the union leadership: a 4-26 an hour minimum wage; a 37-hour week in local government; increased spending on the health service and local authority services; the restoration of national pay bargaining in the NHS; the abolition of compulsory competitive tendering in the public sector; the return to public ownership of privatised services and the utilities, and so on. (See Militant, 2 August 1996).

When, of course, a Blair government fails to deliver on these demands, we would not get the response from public sector workers that we could do if we merely counter-pose our demands to those where we believe UNISON’S programme does not go far enough, for example, for a 6 an hour minimum wage, a 35-hour week etc. The key question will be: how will even UNISON’S demands be achieved, against the opposition of a Labour government? The slogan, skilfully explained, for a new workers’ party, as the culmination of demands for industrial action etc, would answer this, and would put leaders like UNISON’S Rodney Bickerstaffe – ‘I am not Blair’s poodle’ – on the spot. At the FBU conference, for example, it was significant that the ‘left-wing’ executive vehemently opposed the resolution to review the use of the union’s political fund.

Amongst the student youth, another example, the main task is not to explain why students need a free education with decent grants etc but how to get it against the opposition of all the political parties. Our programme – of what we would do if we led a local student union or NUS itself-would have to include the call for student unions, student anti-cuts campaigns etc to link up with other forces in struggle outside the colleges, firstly through participation in (or the initiation of) socialist or anti-cuts alliances but with the goal of a new mass party of the left. This approach will be particularly important in distinguishing ourselves from all other political forces in the student work, where NUS has a ‘New Labour’ leadership while the main opposition forces in the structures of the student movement-the Campaign for Free Education and Left Unity – are also led by Labour Party members. At the same time the SWP also has a significant presence amongst students.

But is it really necessary to counter-pose the need to revamp our programme – and to re-orient our organisation around the central slogan of the period – to the proposal for a name change? Unfortunately, the answer is yes.

In the student field, for example, we have changed our name-to work as ‘Students for Socialism’ – but we have not pioneered the establishment of a new party of the left. How many resolutions did we put to student union meetings, for example, to back our candidates or sponsor their own, in the 1996 local elections, even just in the areas where we were standing? Or to raise the question generally, for that matter?

Similarly, in the trade union field, it was not our resolution that was put to the FBU conference on the political fund. In fact, only in UNISON, on a specific question that came out of the merger of the old NUPE and COHSE political funds, did we have a resolution in any union even on the question of the political levy. On the other hand, at this year’s CPSA conference, in order to avoid a major clash within the newly-launched Left Unity organisation, we were obliged to vote for a resolution calling for CPSA affiliation to the Labour Party!

Firstly, this circumstance indicates, once again, that there will not be a linear progression amongst all the unions away from attempts to change the Labour Party. In fact, this was the experience in New Zealand where, in response to the Labour government’s Thatcherite programme, initially there were attempts by some trade unionists to ‘take back’ the Labour Party. At one point, the Labour government took the Labour Party to court to prevent the deselection of a cabinet minister by a local party that had been taken over by a ‘trade union caucus group’, labelled in the press as ‘New Zealand’s Militant Tendency’! It was only after the formation of New Labour did a majority of unions disaffiliate from the Labour Party.

Secondly, it also indicates the importance of our role in pioneering the slogan of a new workers’ party – and that to accomplish this we will have to conduct a sustained campaign of explanation. Yet, for example, in the only centre-page article on our general programme for the unions that has appeared this year, published as recently as August (Militant No.1287), we did not mention once the need for a new workers party.

Another question we will also need to resolve in this context is how we are going to deal with the SLP, which will not just disappear. It was reported at the June National Committee, for example, that some SLP branches have indicated that they will re-open the constitutional question at the May 1997 SLP conference and call for open affiliation. Are we in favour of this now? If so, what are our plans to help this process along?

These are just some of the ways in which we need to ‘sharpen ourselves up’, regardless of what our name is. Even if we were to decide, wrongly, to change our name at this stage, it would be a purely symbolic change if we did not also critically examine our preparedness for the events ahead

Proposals for the National Committee

THE ARGUMENTS OUTLINED above are not a defence of ‘a name’ in abstract but of our currently existing name, with all its features both negative and positive, within a stated outline of perspectives and methods.

It is in this context that the following proposals are presented to the National Committee, in opposition to the proposal to change our name from Militant Labour to Socialist Party:

1. That we resolve not to change our name at this stage and not to formally re-open the debate (unless compelling new factors emerge) until after the general election, while preserving the right of members to submit material to the Members Bulletin on the issue.

2. That the special congress provisionally scheduled for the autumn be cancelled in favour of a full congress at the usual time in the new year.

3. That, in preparation for the congress, a full perspectives document be produced, synthesising ‘sectional’ perspectives for the economy, the Conservatives, the Labour Party, the trade unions, women, youth, students, the black and Asian population, the SLP and other organisations etc.

4. That, also in preparation for the congress, a draft programme be produced, to be circulated prior to the congress and open to branch amendments in the usual way, with a full congress session devoted to our programme.

5. That we immediately begin preparations to conduct our general election campaign under the name Militant Labour.