With the referendum vote having gone in their favour, the campaign being run by the capitalist press to get rid of Benn has reached a new crescendo. Wilson, heartened by the success of his treacherous tactics in the EEC campaign, appears to be too scared to sack Benn completely from the Cabinet, but he will probably consign the Minister for Industry to a 'safer" post. Only the fear of a massive response from the workers' movement has so far held Wilson back.
Benn is not for the overthrow of capitalism. His policieslike the National Enterprise Board-are designed to prop up the long term interests of capitalism. Benn is merely one of a whole series of 'left' leaders, like Mitterrand in France, whose role is to safeguard the bureaucracy's position by giving it a new and more 'left' image.
These left' bureaucrats fear that the increasingly open and unashamed right-wing policies of Wilson will lose so much working class support that the entire bureaucracy will be discredited, resulting in a loss of electoral support which would permanently exclude them from office. ment's policies. Certainly the working class must oppose Benn's removal - not because Benn can defend the working class, but because this would simply be the opening round of an even more open war by Wilson against the working class. Victory for Wilson here would just intensify the Government's attacks still further.
Nothing decisive will be settled simply by keeping Benn as Minister for Industry. The real questions will be decided not by manoeuvres within the Labour Cabinet but by how much the working class movement organises its forces for the extra-parliamentary struggle against Wilson and his policies. The only people who will be playing a really determined role in this will be those who come out clearly for mass industrial action against the Government's anti-working class economic measures, for the maintenance of living standards and defence of the right to work, and for the removal of the Wilson leadership of the Labour Party.
The Labour left will be playing no really determined role in the class struggle unless it stops relying mainly on parliamentary games and pressure in the corridors, and instead begins openly to organise forces for the fight. So far it has not shown the slightest intention of taking up this struggle. Instead it is the main defender of a new Social Contract and the other policies which will constitute the first stage of Wilson's stepped up offensive.
Benn must be defended against Wilson's attacks, but the future of the class struggle is much too important to be entrusted to the Labour left.