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Militant International Review Editorial: How Labour can win Business Manager's Report:
MIR expansion—a significant step . . 4 Arms race, war in the 1980s- 'Politics by other means'
by Ted Grant Sinn Fein blocks workers' unity- A reply to Ken Livingstone ...... 11 by Peter Hadden Famine: 'The divine hand of Providence'? ..
• by Jim Hensman Part one in a series by Alan Woods on the history of Bolshevism: The birth of Russian Marxism . ... 21 Economic Notes by Bob McKee Letters to the MIR ..
How India won independence .... 31 by Roger Silverman When Spencer ruled-Memories of a Notts miner, 1926-39.. by Sid Richmond Book reviews Printed by Militant Publications, 3 - 13 Hepscott Road, London E9 5HB. 3/13 Hepscott Road, London E9 5HB Editor: Alan Wood:
Cover Design: Alan Hardman 1 •••• .... 5 ....
..16 .. 28 ..29 ..36 .. 38 • • Editorial How Labour can win "victory" over the miners vividly recalls the words of the general who greeted news of a similar success with the celebrated remark: "one more victory like that and we're done for!" In her swell-headed stupidity, Thatcher thought that this strike would be an action-replay of the Falklands War, which would furnish her with a new popularity and unite the Tory Party behind her unquestioned leadership. Unfortunately, things did not quite turn out as forseen. The collapse of the government's fortunes are now reflected even in the rigged opinion polis. Labour, which according to all the pundits (not excluding members of the Shadow Cabinet and the "Red Professor' Hobsbawm of the "Communist" Party) was not supposed to have a cat's chance in hell of winning the next election because of the alleged damage to its "image" caused by the miners' strike, is now in front. The nose-dive of the Tories in the moment of their supposed "triumph" has put the cat among the pigeons on the Conservative back-benches. In an atmosphere halfway between Rasputin and the Ides of March, plots are being hatched as respectable gentlemen from the Shires and the City cast lots for the role of Cassius and Brutus. atcherism is out of vogue even with . e hired hacks of the Tory press: " A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged. Nor tackle, sail nor mast: the very rats Instinctively have quit it". How are we to explain in s. cte. face?
After all, it was not so o-gag:: a: Thatcher's position seemed ass- t= Let us recall that, before the miners strike, the only tendency in the entre labour movement-indeed in the whole of society- which explainer me extremely fragile basis of inis phenomenon was the Marxist :ender. cy represented by Mittent and the Mat
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Labour's right-wing are responding to the prospect of a Labour government resulting from the next election by stepping up the witch-hunt -as a prelude to jettisoning party policy. MIR June 1985: Editorial We explained that, on the basis of the crisis of British capitalism, Thatcherism would rapidly reveal its bankruptcy. Under the pressure of relentless economic decline, Thatcher is driven to impose cuts in wages and pensions, driving down the living standefenceless sections of society. Even the Wage Councils, set up by Churchill before World War One, are now threatened by the Tory axe. Nobody now believes the Tory lie that all this will lead the ailing British economy back to health. Lawson and his friends have spent the past six years mumbling that "everything will be all right in the long run". run, as old Keynes used to say, we are The restlessness and unease among the middle class is reflected, at least temporarily in the increased vote of the Alliance. Faced with the prospect of a big swing away from the Tories and towards Labour, Fleet Street hurriedly bundles out the Liberals and SDP as a safety net to halt the movement of disenchanted middle-class voters to However, in the nightmare conditions of the decaying inner-city areas, in the mining villages of Yorkshire, and in the devastated industrial regions of Wales, Scotland and the North, there and a hatred is a seething anger towards this government which surpasses anything seen since before the Not since the 1920s have relations between the classes had such an embittered character. The burning sense of indignation and discontent which seeths in the poorest layers of society has now spread to sections of skilled workers in the Midlands and the South who voted for Thatcher in the last The effect of the miners' strike was to act as a catalyst to express all the accumulated discontent which has built up within the working class. Far from harming Labour's electoral prospects, the courageous fightback of the miners has helped to re-awaken the class-consciousness and fighting spirits of large sections of society. This has played a major part in the revival of Labour's electoral fortunes. Despite the sullen millionaire press, there has been an upturn in the number of strikes at local level, up and down the country. The magnificent movement of the school students against industrial conscription showed the profound effects of the miners' strike on the minds of the youth. That fact alone must have caused the ruling class to tremble for the future. Worst of all, despite a bitter 12 months struggle, and the expenditure of five billion pounds, Thatcher has not succeeded in her fundamental aim of crushing the NUM. The miners are not cowed. Their union is not broken. Order and harmony has still not been restored in the industry (witness the continuing dispute with NACODS, the campaign for amnesty, local strikes and walk-outs). It is not hard to predict that in two or three years, perhaps less, a new miners' strike will again be on the order of the day.
If the Labour Party wins the next election, that will have been in no small measure thanks to the miners. Yet the Neanderthal men of the right wing and their "soft left" allies persist in maintaining that so-called "Scargillism" has been an electoral liability. These ladies and gentlemen are completely overawed by the lies of the Tory press. They imagine that by pandering playing at to the press barons, "responsible statesmen" and ditching Labour's programme they will curry favour with Fleet Street and thus become "popular".
The situation is no better with the leaders of the trade union movement. The same people who proved utterly unable (and in some cases downright unwilling) to organise effective assistance to the miners are now trying to ward off the attacks of the Tories "lying down and and employers by playing dead"'.
With three million unemployed, vicious attacks on wages and conditions, the wholesale privatisation of the public sector and the demolition of the welfare state, there is no sign of any leadership from the heads of the major unions.
Right wingers like Hammond and Duffy have come out in their true colours long ago. But, sad to say, the erstwhile leaders of the trade union left, such as in NUPE, in practice have offered no alternative.
"official' Labour and union leadership has drawn all the wrong conclusions from the miners' strike. They are like blind men who cannot see the elemental process of polarisation between the classes which is opening up at their feet. Neil Kinnock has shown that he has no understanding of the real situation which would face a future Labour government. The frightful collapse of British industry and the likelihood of a new world recession in the next period means that such a government would be faced with a stark choice: either, or! Either take drastic action to put an end to the stranglehold of the parasites of the City and big business, or passively accept the role of the tool of the bankers and capitalists, continuing the policy of vicious cuts and attacks upon living standards and leading the Labour Party into a catastrophe along the lines of 1929-31.
The policy documents, speeches and articles of the labour and trade union leaders, leave the reader struck by a sense of hopeless unreality. It appears that they would like to go back to the discredited old ideas of an incomes policy (first "voluntary", of course
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then statutory) in the hope of encouraging the capitalists to invest. They forgot that in 1974 - 79 the selfsame policy was tried and failed. The "thank you moneybags merely said:
, pocketed the loot and sent it abroad, or frittered it away on speculation, property, office blocks, gold and silver, or the odd Picasso. The workers footed the bill and when finally their patience ran out, we had the winter of discontent, the collapse of the Labour vote and the victory of Thatcher. We have been paying the consequences ever since.
Defeated armies learn well, they say. As a result of Callaghan government, the rank-andfile of the trade unions and the Labour Party moved to the left. The renegades of the extreme right wing split away to form the SDP. The rank-and-file - the real Labour Party - began to impose its will, pressing for socialist policies, conquering democratic rights such as the selection of the Leader, control of the manifesto and, above all, re-selection as a concrete means of abolishing the repulsive "divine right of MPs". Now all these democratic gains are being threatened. Those right wingers who remained like a Trojan Horse within the party-the Hattersleys, the Healeys, the Frank Fields, etc-have never reconciled themselves to the democratic control of the Labour Party by the rank-and-file. They are bitter and implacable foes of socialist ideas. In reality, they stand far nearer the ideas of the Liberals and the SDP traitors than to socialism. And behind these people stands the might of the Tory mass media, which openly supports them against the left, constantly egging them on to organise witchhunts and expel the "extremists" lie. the socialists).
Over the recent period there has split in the balance of forces at the top of the Labour Party. The main reason for this has been the going over in droves of former "lefts" to the camp of the right wing. The socalled "soft left" is now virtually indistinguishable from the right. At meetings of the NEC the tail now wags the dog. Formally in a minority, Hattersley and the right can get their way on most questions. This was revealed most scandalously on two key issues: the new Labour-TUC economic document and the witch-hunt against Tony Benn has described this document as 'violently anti-socialist''. That is, perhaps, the most adequate description. Nevertheless, at the NEC, Neil Kinnock not only sprang to its defence in person, but also launched a scurrilous personal attack upon Benn. Despite the fact that the last party conference was assured that there would be "no witch-hunt" after the expulsion of the Militant Editorial Board, there have been a spate of expulsions up and down the country, as well as a spiteful attack upon the LPYSsponsored Youth Trade Union Rights Campaign and the Further Education The only people who can draw aid and comfort from this disgraceful persecution of socialists are the Tory and Liberal enemies of Labour. The systematic undermining of party unity by the right's witch-hunting activities is causing incalculable damage to Labour's chances of winning the next election. So why do they do it? There is absolutely no doubt that the to organise a witch-hunt against Militant is directly linked to the right-wing's campaign to reverse all the gains made by the rank-and-file in recent years, not only on organisational questions but above all on policy. The programme which is being touted by these people is the most right since the war. It implies the wholesale abandonment of socialist policies. The sale of council houses is accepted at the very moment when that policy is less popular than ever. The best property has mainly been sold off already. With interest rates soaring, many people who bought their homes now want to sell them back to the council! In this climate, the selling of council houses is not the vote-catcher the right wing imagines.
So far has the backsliding gone that there is now a question over Labour's committment to re-nationalise the priceless assets looted from the public sector by the Tory spivs and their „friends in the City. Even the Tory antitrade union laws it now appears, are not to be revoked in their entirity! It is an absolute scandal that a minority of discredited right wing leaders should be able to ride roughshod over the aims and aspirations of the majority of the Labour Party. They have only managed this by means of the active connivance of the so-called "soft left" and also, unfortunately, because of the silence of the In previous MIR editorials, predicted that the majority of the "trendy lefts" would move to the right. Temporarily halted by the pressure of the miners' strike, this process has re-commenced with a vengence in the past few months. The open capitulation of Ken Livingstone over the issue of rate-capping is only the most glaring example.
The flight of the "lefts" has acquired the character of a shameful rout. Yet, paradoxically, the further they go to the right, the more vociferous and spiteful 3 MIR June 1985: Editorial, they become in their attacks upon the genuine socialists, especially the Marxist tendency represented by the Militant. Some of these erstwhile middle- "lefts" have taken it upon class themselves to openly support and advocate the witch-hunting of Militant. Typical of these specimens is the Labour Co-ordinating Committee which has now openly reneged and gone over Of course, there are many honest Labour Party members who in the past have had illusions in these people,, imagining them to be genuine lefts who will have nothing to do either with the desertion of socialist policies or with the hounding and expulsion. of The great majority of Labour Party activists want unity, not witch-hunts which play into'the hands of the Tories. The great majority want to defend and extend the democratic gains of recent years. And the great majority want a fighting socialist policy which alone can lead to a crushing defeat of Thatcher and a massive Labour victory at the next election.
The same is true of the trade unions where similar tendencies may be observed. It is truly. ironic that, just when the mood for struggle is building up within the unions, we have the disgraceful spectacle of a witchhunting anti-Militant resolution being smuggled through the NUPE conference by a typical Stalinist Theoretically, the leadership of NUPE are supposed to be on the left. Nevertheless, people like Sawyer and Bickerstaff cannot be absolved of their responsibility. If the leadership of NUPE had lifted their little finger, this manoeuvre would have collapsed. The platform behaved like Pontius Pilate, in effect allowing the witch-hunters a free hand to get on with their dirty business before the majority of delegates knew what was going on.
Such shameful behaviour will not halt the process of radicalisation in the unions. The spectacular success of BLOC within the unions shows how the rank and file are looking for a real fighting left alternative. No amount of witch-hunting resolutions will put a stop to that. Instead, they will incense the rank-and-file who will redouble their Within the working class, there exists a powerful feeling in favour of unity: that precious unity which is needed to defeat the Tories and return a Labour government with real s. alist policies. Those who set about disrupting unity and organising witch-hunts with a view to getting cheap praise from the Tory press will not be kindly regarded by thẹ overwhelming majori-