The result of the General Election 1970 presents the left with a golden but difficult opportunity-to break once and for all the hold of the Labour Party over the working class.
Labour fought the election on the premiss that class politics was no longer significant, and the whole Party accepted this without criticism. attempted to turn itself into 'national' Party by evacuating the last traces of socialism from its policies, and went to the country like prostitute, with nothing more to offer than itself.
The weakness and feebleness of the Conservative opposition seemed to give Labour a victory it had done nothing to deserve. But Labour outdid itself to prove that it could be even more wretched than Heath and the Conservatives.
Labour did not lose because it was inexperienced, because it was unprofessional, because it was badly led, or because the Conservatives had a better programme or more money— all excuses that have been used the past. Wilson's very skill at the Parliamentary game. deprives Labour of these time worn excuses and dramatically underlines the fundamental political and ideological weakness of Labourism.
Harold Wilson, self-seeking and self- regarding, has been publicly and deservedly humiliated. Obsessed with trivia, his incessent calculations made his opportunism appear to be a strategy. His onanistic manipulation of the media seduced the press and television, and of course, himself. Dizzy with success he was successful at nothing, and his failure was intrinsie to his entire politics. It is a continuation of Wilsonism to blame the defeat on tactical misjudgments or his personal quirks.
If Wilson has failed how much more so have the discomforted labour leaders who had so little belief in their own intelligence and powers that they surrendered their Party to his narrow calculations? Gone from the Foreign Office is the depleted absence Stewart, who trailed after American imperialism and ensured that in a time of crisis and international turmoil Britain had nothing to say. Gone, the bland Jenkins. About to lead us from one economic crisis into another, he can return to his studies of bygone Parlia mentarians. Gone, the thugish Callaghan, with his leering smile, an archytypal excrescence British Labourism. Gone the bloated visage of Healey, with his unbroken record of imperialist military policies in the so called Ministry of Defense. Gone the opportunist Barbra Castle, who took on the most viscious betrayal of the workers by the labour government.
Nerve The often repeated story of the 1945 Labour Government-the Attlee administration that laid the basis of the 'welfare' state is that it had three reforming years and then lost its nerve. It is now clear that the Labour Party has never recovered this nerve, and that it never will. Through the long years of the fifties, of Conservative prosperity, internicine splits and betrayals, Labour's leaders became convinced that they were a permanent opposition. Like drowning men they grasp ed in desperation at Wilson's rhetoric of technology, and scraped in victory over. Lord Home. Then, as they reformed the structure of British industry, and reversed the balance of payments deficit, the opinion polls tolled out the message: they were heading once again for opposition. With their task done, they have indeed found themselves back on the familiar benches, a chastened and defeated party.
The traditional Labour supporter will try to put the defeat down to tactical errors. The election should have been a week sooner; it should have been. in the Autumn or in the spring of next year; Labour machine didn't have time to get into action and, most damning of all selfcriticisms, the manifesto should have had a few "ideas.' The electoral structure defeat, the low turn out, the 'house wives' voting for Heath, racialists voting for 'Powell' are not reasons but consequences. They are the ballot, and so they remain to be explained.
One fundamental reason stands outthe bankruptcy of Labour. Its administration was one of the utmost nullity. What did it do on its own ini inititive? A record of non-events. The National Plan (that was scraped), Incomes Policy (that was temporary), Sanctions on Rhodesia (they've not been enforced) Trade Union legislation (that was withdrawn), the nationalisation of Steel (that was left over from 1951), the abolition of prescription charges Sta, sce and the What is 107 SET, invasion Anguilla. All the rest (devaluation, Ireland, long term withdrawals from East of Suez) were forced on them. The marginal but important reforms that have liberalised social life abolition of hanging, homosexual law reform, legalisation of Abortion etchave gone through as free votes.
This fundamental political failure of the Labour administration underlay the election campaign. Wilson put himself forward on a person to person confrontation with Heath. He seemed to win but victory turned sour. But what alternative? What ideas' could he have put forward without losing credibility? What alternative did the Cabinet have, given that they have no policies, but to follow Wilson? Labour's Election Campaign was not an accident, in its very nothingness it fullfilled the historical destiny of Social Democracy. In this sense Wilson's campaign was the most honest and sincere political manouver he has ever performed.
Nonetheless, whole sections of the British left still voted for Wilson and his clique. Some of them voted under the servatives impression would introduce a strin the Con- M gent, semi-fascist regime of racialist terror and repression against the working class. But as some of the contributors to our debate on voting Labour in the pre-election Black Dwarf pointed out, this will not be the case.
The victory of the Conservatives is a move to the right, but it is a move already presaged in the development of the Labour Party. From the very begining of the Labour Government when it refused to devalue in 1964, from the very model of Wilson's personal aspirations (Macmillian), it was crystal clear that the nation Labour wanted to lead was Conservative one.
But Wilson failed in his bid for Tory leadership. Now there is a true blue administration in office. will impose cuts in the social and educational services, it will profit speculators and businessmen, it will help South Africa, even with aplomb, it builds more houses than Labour, and directly assists the very poor) now that Labour has ceased to socialist the Conservatives can safely increase welfare when they want to). The Conservatives will put through Trade Union legislation, they may even engineer a boom, but they will not in any crucial political respect alter the relationship of the working class to the State, any more than Labour would have.
The new Conservative government must be seen in this light, without crocodile tears for the epigones of Attlee. The right-wing policies of Heath and his cabinet are not an excuse for wailing lamentations, even though Heath (like Nixon loser who won) has in Enoch Powell his Spiro Agnew. Powell, who attacks the media while staring into the TV cameras, is the man who blasts the students, the workers, the foreigners and the liberals. Like Nixon, Heath keeps a distance on his Agnew, and picks up the benifits For Blacks as in the States, the existence of a figure like Powell in ther It also gives the prefudiced and ruling Party ground for the openly racialist, the Paki-bashers and the National Front, more solution from the Erith factory branch at the last C.P. Congress to discuss the "British Road', called for the rejection of the 'British Road' as predetermining a parliamentary transition to socialism and so betraying the interests of the working class. It was defeated by 350 votes to 9.
Since that time (1967) there have been new currents in the CP taking up the question of a revolutionary strategy. The tasks before them, among others, are to challenge the 'British Road's' concept of an elec toral alliance embracing the Labour Party, (the kiss-of-death method of artificial expiration), and the present concept of "Left unity' (leading in practice to tailism).
A new concept of united front work is needed, not geared to a debilitating electoralism, and based on a more rigorous analysis of the Labour Party. At present the CP supports the Labour Party, but has forgotten the second part of Lenin's advice *as a rope supports one who is hanged. In the interest of the working class, never did the Labour Party more deserve hanging.