The map of British politics is changing very fast. Those who underplay the significance of such events as the shift to the left in the Labour Party, the formation of the Social Democratic Party, and the rumbling internecine strife in the Tory Party risk losing their way altogether. Nowhere has this increased pace of events been more evident than in the Labour Party. The results of the four Labour conferences held since Thatcher won office has exceeded the wildest expectations of those on the left of the party who associated themselves with Tony Benn's critique of the performance of the Callaghan/Wilson governments. The right of constituency parties to reselect their parliamentary candidates has been won. The stranglehold of the parliamentary party over the election of the leader has been broken. If the left did not succeed in its other main objective — the drawing up of the final election manifesto by the National Executive Committee — then it advanced with giant strides on policy at the 1980 Blackpool conference, winning unilateral disarmament and withdrawal from the EEC, policies completely unacceptable to the British ruling class as the platform for a future Labour government.
Speculation on the outcome of the next election, particularly within the ranks of the Tories, has an astonishingly urgent tone for a government not two years into its five year term of office. But the events of 1981, particularly the victory of the miners and the almost universally hostile reaction to the March budget has put an earlier election on the agenda. The prospect of the Labour Party winning such an election fills ruling class circles with dismay. It would be a government that would dither and dabble, irritating both the ruling class and the working class, opening up the way to further inner party divisions and perhaps a lurch to the left in mid-office. Such a prospect explains the extraordinary reaction to Tony Benn by the media.
The serious intent behind the hysterical reaction is to deny Labour the chance to form such a government. The Social Democratic grouping within the Labour Party last year was formed to threaten a split in the party unless the policy drift to the left was halted. This rubber Damocles sword was treated contemptuously by the party rank and file. The split was carried through. The function of the grouping then became and still remains to deprive the Labour Party of the votes necessary to win the next election. However the unpopularity of the Tories means that such a tactic can cut both ways. The defection of Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler in the House of Commons was a weak reflection of the findings of opinion polls which show the Social Democratic Party gnawing into Tory support, often proportionately more so than into Labour's votes.
Ruling class opinion does not yet seem ready for wholesale reform of the two-party system. When the Economist drew up a programme for 'the pinks', as it refers to the Social Democrats, it pointedly omitted any reference to the introduction of proportional representation. There is no doubt that such a proposal would meet with the most ferocious opposition from Tory politicians as it would spell the end of the alliance between big business and the frenzied middle class base that represented by Thatcher in the ranks of the Tory party. The decimation of the Tory party is a high price to pay, even for permanently excluding Labour from government.
There are many options that can be exercised before such reforms become urgent including dumping Thatcher from the leadership of the Tory Party and the holding of referenda as a device to extricate the government from a deep conflict with the unions. At the same time serious and sustained efforts are now being made to reverse the trend of victories for the left in the Labour Party. The formation of the Labour Solidarity Campaign as a new right-wing in the party, now including within its ranks the large majority of the parliamentary party in alliance with the centre and the right in the trade union bureaucracy, heralds the advent of a bureaucratic counter-offensive. Benn will not be the only target. Michael Foot has promised that supporters of Militant will also be in the firing line in the next year.
However the left is far from helpless in resisting this counterattack. The vast bulk of the 80,000 recent recruits to the party will find their way into the camp of the constituency left. In the trade unions the more discussion there is around the question of the method of selection of the party leader the more the left can consolidate its base amongst the rank and file and start on the discussion on the democratic reform of the trade unions themselves.
The shift to the left in the party is the result of a long process tied into the decline of British capitalism. Militants unable to find answers for the problems of defence of living standards through factory by factory struggle are looking to the Labour Party for political solutions to the crisis. This tendency was first revealed in the events around the UCS work-in in the first on-set of mass unemployment in the 1970s and, despite the experience of the 1974-79 Labour governments, has deepened since that time. Rank and file activists in the party have increasingly realised through their struggles that the mobilisation of the whole labour movement in united action is necessary to sweep away the Tories. They also realise that the battle in the unions over the questions at issue in the Labour Party will decide whether the gains of the left are to be defended and extended or eventually lost.
The implications of these developments have not been acted upon by most of the organisations to the left of the Labour Party. The Communist Party, only too well aware of the implications of the formation of the Social Democrats for its own organisation, has nevertheless only been able to respond to the advance of the left in the Labour Party with a feeble discussion around whether they should renew their traditional policy of requesting affiliation to the Labour Party. This is a serious position but in the hands of the Communist Party leadership it has become an aspirin against the ever-increasing flow of members from the CP into the Labour Party.
There is no doubt that the existence of a strong unified far left organisation could have had a profoundly positive role in influencing developments inside the Labour Party. However, both fighting for such a unified organisation and in relating to the battles in the Labour Party, the Socialist Workers Party has shown a depressing inability to act. Whatever the criticisms that we have made of the SWP in the past, failing to relate to new openings as they arise has not been one of them.
For our part we will continue to insist on the importance of these events and the necessity of building a left wing based on policies of class struggle both in the unions and in the Labour Party. The objectives of that left wing must be to fight for the greatest possible unity in action between the trade unions and the Labour Party to throw out the Tory government. In addition the fight for socialist policies as an answer to the crisis must be taken into the heart of the Labour Party — the fight to commit the next Labour government to socialist policies.
The conditions for revolutionary socialists influencing developments in British politics are better than at any time since the early seventies. The time must be seized.