Labour may have lost millions, and the right wing may be dying to wave goodbye to the proletariat. But for the left in the labour movement the diagnoses and cures for Labour's ills are still hotly disputed. John Ross talks to Peter Hain, vice-chair of the Labour Coordinating Committee (LCC), about the state of the Labour Party and its chances for rejuvenation.
What is your explanation for Labour's defeat in 1979 and 1983?
These are headline reasons rather than a full explanation, but I would say first of all that Labour's class base has been contracting. Since 1951 this has been expressed in electoral terms where the Party's vote has declined at every election, with the exception of 1966 which was a freak in this trend. That is due to a number of factors, one of which is that the party's past appeal has been too generalised and woolly and based on a rather romanticised, old-fashioned view of what the British class system is about. Increasingly recently it has been appealing to male, manual workers in the manufacturing industry, which is a contracting sector. But side by side with that is the party's 'statist' type of socialism, which we've been unable to win support with. At an ideas level bureaucratic centralism is unattractive to people. Also I don't think that it actually allows ordinary workers or voters to engage in socialist politics — it's all top-down rather than bottom-up. So there's both a values issue and a strategy issue there in the kind of statism that the party has been associated with. Of course the party's traditional millstone is its incorrigible parliamentarianism, at an activist and at a leadership level, both suffer from the same problem — an almost total concern with elections. Those would be my major reasons for Labour's defeats. I don't accept the cretinous view often prevalent in various sectarian groups on the left, that it's all a matter of leadership: the leadership's sold socialism down the river, and if we had a good leadership we'd be marching to the sound of gunfire. I don't think it's all a matter of leadership.
Why do you think the Labour Party vote has declined so spectacularly at a time when the French and Spanish socialist parties had such electoral successes?
It seems to me that you've got to look at it in a specifically British context, and that context must pay attention to the rise of a third party in British politics — which is another change since the fifties. Whether or not the SDP had broken away I suspect that the Liberal vote would still be on a higher level than it was in the early seventies. Each period of Liberal revival has been a third force revival, also to be found in the rise of the SNP in Scotland — that's the critical factor.
Let's come back to the point you made about the recomposition of the working class. You've put forward a factual objection to a widely held view which is that in the '79 and '83 elections the sections of the working class that swung furthest from the Labour Party were male manual workers living in the south-east and Birmingham. How would you explain that?
Those groups, the classic skilled manual (inevitably) male worker, their class ties to the party have been weakened by these other factors. You could equally say, well look at the swing there's been away, particularly since '79, among women voters. So even recent polls in the last few weeks show us in the lead among male voters, but behind amongst women voters. But if you look at that point, there is a more complex phenomenon. It's true that the Labour Party's failed to win over women voters. But on the other hand the single biggest erosion of the Conservative Party vote itself has been the loss of women voters. If you take the 1950's the Tories had roughly 8 per cent more women than men voting for it. This fell to about 6 per cent in the 1960's, 3 per cent in the 1970's and it completely disappeared by 1983. This is not the case among skilled male workers. Among these, the Conservatives actually increased their support, whereas they've been losing it among women.
Why the rise of third force parties and the inability of the Labour Party to combat them?
I'm not saying there is a simple, single explanation that accounts for both of those specific factors and the wider collapse of the party's base. By the way, if this what you're getting at, part of the story of Labour's contracting base is the story of the Tories' contracting base. The Tories have been winning elections recently on a lower proportion of the vote, successively. That factor's important as well. I also think there is something — and this is almost an instinctive feeling rather than anything that can be explained at a high theoretical level — I think that the party's socialist appeal has been increasingly at odds with the skilled workers that are still in work, with their daily experience. For that matter many workers, not necessarily skilled workers but people who are in work on average or above average earnings — a very sizeable proportion of people — felt that the labour movement is not offering anything. Because we've fed the electorate on a diet of very conventional consumerism, without any real socialist content to it, they've been very vulnerable to Thatcherism moving into that breach. They've said 'we'll let you buy your own council house', 'we'll let you keep more money in your pocket' and so on. It was a basic failure to actually give any socialist content to our policies or our appeal.
If you take the policies of 1975 to 1979 that were pursued by the Labour Party, you had average wages of people in work falling by about 8 per cent over this period, particularly those of skilled manual workers who were hit most severely of all. Here is Thatcher's policy of increasing the differentials inside the working class, which she's done, and actually increasing the real wages of those in work. Don't you think that must have a really major effect on Labour's lost support among skilled male manual workers?
Yes, absolutely. I think it's among that group that a catastrophic haemorrhage took place under the '74 to '79 Labour government. I suspect that for the poorer working class, the really badly paid or those not in work, the beginnings of the rot set in for them in the '60s under Wilson and the failure to make use of what was then a relative condition of growth to actually deliver for the poor. Whereas what happened in the seventies was as you say. My only point is that all the evidence suggests that Labour governments have been the most damaging factors in eroding Labour's base. But it's interesting to note that our vote has held up better during periods of office compared with the opposition. Our vote has collapsed more quickly and steeply during periods of opposition than during periods of government.
If you look at that question of how to win elections, one fact that stands out in British politics since the Second World War is that no party pledged to an incomes policy has ever won a general election. What do you think of the prospects, therefore, of the sort of view put forward by the Labour Coordinating Committee or in the leadership to make incomes policy the economic bedrock of Labour's economic policy?
I think that the view that incomes policy would be the centrepiece of the economic policy is suicidal — that is a view shared by a lot of people on the Labour right. If you construct the whole of your economic programme around the idea that holding down wages is keeping the cork from exploding out then you're not only going to lose the election, but there's no possibility of building mass support. That's not my position.
How does the LCC see incomes policy and its relation to economic policy?
Only to this extent, that I think the left has to construct a credible position on what it sees as priorities, which is an issue the left has always dodged. I think that's true also on public ownership. Because we, understandably, have adopted a kind of oppositionalist position saying no incomes policy, no selling out on public ownership and so on we haven't actually constructed a credible alternative that looks at priorities, says what you do first and stops the thing going completely off course and onto the rocks. In terms of dealing with people's incomes I see low pay as one of the first priorities — that there's got to be a statutory minimum wage. That has all sorts of consequences in terms of the repercussions vis a vis differentials and so on. Women's pay has got to be again an incomes priority for a Labour government. There's got to be positive action both at a governmental and a union level to actually deal with that. Free collective bargaining hasn't, and I don't think as it has traditionally been conceived it can resolve that. Thirdly, my priority for a Labour government is jobs. These three priorities, low pay, women's pay and jobs are more important than, say, boosting consumer spending in the sense of putting more wages in the pockets of those already in work. It's that kind of approach to income that we ought to be talking about and seriously exploring rather than the traditional idea of incomes policy as the be all and end all of economic policy.
Let me put two objections to that. The first one is that the Labour Party cannot win an election and cannot sustain itself in office if it allows the working class to be disastrously split, for example between higher and lower paid workers, as undoubtedly happened in 1979. All incomes policies have had that effect. Secondly the policy is a very substantial reflation of the economy carried out in a specific way as you've outlined. This always comes up against the insuperable problem that people will not invest. How do you tackle these two problems?
I'm not talking about holding down wages of higher paid workers. What I'm talking about is giving priority to those other groups, to the low paid, to women and the unemployed. In other words, I think they should get more, and that higher paid workers should be prepared to take less of an increase. That's not screwing them down or reducing their real wages which is what happened during 1975 to '78/9. And by the way the really high paid workers escaped from the social contract, which they always do under an incomes policy. I'm talking about priorities, and I think the left ducks that, and if you duck that you don't get round to tackling the problem or resolving it in the end. In terms of investment it seems to me that the important areas are public ownership and democratic control of the economy, which I agree with you is necessary or else we're simply going to have a traditional attempt at Keynesian expansion which will fail. I think, by the way that's all we were offering at the last election. So the key areas for the left to push on for specific commitment in the party's programme and for action thereafter in government is on control of finance capital and control of the direction of investment — which can only be done by public ownership and democratic control. It's those areas where we have to concentrate rather than on renationalisation or public ownership of other sectors of the economy. Obviously those would come later. But that has to be the upfront issue.
One thing that's been widely discussed has been Alec Nove's book, The economics of feasible socialism. As far as I've seen this book it seems to be a relatively rational planned organisation of a future socialist society. Positively, it rejects simple models of statist centralised planning.
There are two big objections to it. One, it has no mechanism for getting there. This is a society that somehow comes into existence. Secondly, it doesn't deal with the problem of resistance to such a society.
if you look at the traditional model of the left — I don't believe that you can go and nationalise the top 250 monopolies tomorrow and this will solve all your problems sort of approach — but I do see an insuperable problem in capitalist society which you don't deal with. You cannot talk about control if people just refuse to be controlled. Also there are all sorts of mechanisms — economic, political, violent, foreign and so on — which are put in the way of any attempt to get control of investment and of the financial system. These seem to be the two problems you don't address yourself to.
I think we address ourselves to them, I don't think we're paralysed by them in the way that some of the ultraleft groups who continually raise these points are. Crudely speaking what you're saying is that the ruling class is not going to take this lying down, and that the forces of international capital are not going to take it lying down either. Well, to any decent socialist analysis that would be so blindingly obvious as to almost not be worth arguing about. The question is important though if it becomes a prescription for a state of paralysis where you don't do anything. If you simply keep on talking about it and pointing out all the defects of the strategies that the labour movement has inserted in its programme because it's going to be hammered by American dollars, or the international economy or whatever, I think that you fail to give people a credible strategy. What I would argue for is a position which pushes forward on these fronts and recognises that its going to face enormous opposition, and then it will seek to build maximum local support, maximum support among workers so there is a popular support for Labour's policies. I don't think you can legislate for socialism without a real base of support. I don't think there is any easy policy programme which you can construct which will actually remove that threat in a world dominated by international capital.
No, I certainly don't think we're paralysed. But there's a sort of choice involved in which economics and the social alliances that are made are integrally connected. To take for example the policies which Labour adopted in opposition from 1970-74. They weren't perfect and furthermore they didn't succeed in preventing the continued decline of the Labour Party vote, but they were sufficient, coupled with mass struggle, to defeat the Conservative Party and elect a Labour government which had some impact for the first year or so. It succeeded in unifying the working class rather imperfectly and defeating its opponents. In 1975 you had real resistance to the programme of the government and you had two choices: one was to proceed against capital and maintain the unity of the working class and the other was to go with the interests of international capital, completely split the working class — and disaster followed.
Yes, it's always been part of my analysis and stock-in-trade for the left in the parts but I don't see why you're raising it as a problem at all.
The reason that I raised it as a problem is that while it may be accepted on the left, it's not so widely accepted outside. But it's the track record of the Labour government when confronted with these choices. We're not discussing what Trotsky wrote in 1932 about the inevitability of capitalist sabotage — we have real examples of 1966, 1975. Each time the wrong decision was taken, each time it turned out to be not even electorally realistic but completely disastrous.
If you look at the experience of Tony Benn as industry minister in 1974/75 there are two lessons you can draw from that. One is precisely the one you made that the leadership of the party copped-out. The other point, though, is that it was only allowed to do that because there wasn't the support among shop stewards, let alone below shop steward level, for planning agreements or for the kind of approach with which I'm in broad agreement. And this is where there's a lot of the disagreement between ourselves and Socialist Action, for example. So that when the IMF and the CBI and so on were used by the ruling class they were able to be used because there wasn't the actual response from the rank and file of the movement to stop them.
I think you have a somewhat distorted view of what Socialist Action says politically. I don't think you can change everything by changing the leadership at the top, nor is it an accident that you have the people leading the Labour Party you do. It's not due to the fact that secretly people are not aware of the views of Socialist Action or something, and if they were then they would follow the glorious road to socialism. I think that the point is that you can only build mass support if you have policies which actually affect people deeply. Some of the things that are a magnificent example are what Maurice Bishop did in Grenada. He showed that socialist development, socialist revolution, transformed the fact of whether you had free milk, education, jobs and so on or not. And I believe that's the only way you can build mass support. The idea that people will cling to the Labour Party despite the fact it doubles unemployment or reduces wages — that is what is completely unrealistic.
But where the debate should be on the left — and I don't think it should be a sectarian debate — is precisely how to construct those policies. It's as much about strategy as it is about policy — about agreeing a party programme and about implementing it and winning support for it. So that you don't allow a good Labour cabinet minister honestly seeking to implement policies to be marooned on their own without any kind of base that is prepared to fight with them and for those policies.
if I wanted to sum up the problem of British politics today it would be how to construct a new Labour majority, that is construct a social alliance that is committed to the Labour Party — understanding that the previous one has disintegrated and that all attempts to say 'let's go back to where we were before' are doomed. Policies are important but not sufficient. Resolutions passed at conference on their own won't solve anything. One thing that's been discussed is what one could call a Party of Labour, or the sort of debate that's taking place on the question of affiliation at the present time.
One of the strengths of the Labour Party unlike other European socialist parties was the direct affiliation of trade unions, cooperative societies and so on, instead of just resting on individual membership. What do you think about that, particularly in relationship to black organisations, women's organisations and many other existing groups of the same sort. Should the Labour Party simply add to its present structure, or have a different kind of structure or what?
The whole structure of the party is going to be a big internal issue. Not so much accountability, because I think this argument has been won as much as we're likely to win it in the foreseeable future. But it's actually that structural problem in relation to the base of the party. But that is going to be totally overshadowed by what happens on the political levy. Because unless we win that battle we could see a Labour Party with its trade union base torn out at a structural level which is going to have enormous consequences particularly for the national party. Less so than locally, because the links are so weak at a local level.
I'm not in favour of being obsessed with direct affiliation at a national level. What we ought to be talking about is the practice of local parties. I'm in favour of women's sections being much more central to the way local parties operate. I'm in favour of black sections of local parties, because I think that's a key constituency that the party's not even beginning to reach out to. But I don't see that as particularly being relevant at a national level. Affiliation's not the big issue. What's important is how we work with women's groups and black groups outside the party.
Why do you think the campaign around the political levy is so important?
I think that the critical political issue for the party over the next few years is to win those ballots. It can only be done at the rank and file level. Simply to rely either on union bureaucracies or the national party bureaucracy to do this will be totally ineffective. I also see an enormous opportunity, which clearly we'd all rather not have had, to inject socialist argument and debate back into the workplace level. There is a vehicle, and we have to prepare now to do it. It can't be done just at a kind of declamatory level — just parading around senior figures in the party to spread the message. It requires organisation and intervention by local activists.
What do you think about the demands of the Women's Action Committee that the women's conference should be able to elect women members directly to the NEC, and put resolutions directly to national conference...
I support those fully.
One big debate that has obviously come up is over the attitude of the Labour Party and the labour movement to the law: around the NGA and around what to do about rate-capping and so on. What's your position on this?
The labour movement has historically always had to fight against the law, and the law is a ruling class instrument used against the interests of socialists. This confrontation is taking [illegible] form at the moment where Thatcherism is seeking to divert political struggle into the courts. This is the whole strategy of the employment law — to turn an industrial struggle into a law and order matter — and I don't think you can duck that issue. I don't think you can win the argument by saying that the law has to be obeyed. The law has had to be defied consistently by the labour movement in the past and it will have to be defied now. The argument that we should simply accept the law is politically wrong and is not a winning strategy. I think the party leadership was wrong in not coming out four square behind the NGA, and I think the TUC leadership behaved abysmally in rounding on the NGA. In terms of the rate-capping, again I think that is probably going to be necessary to defy the law. I'm not for empty gestures though. I think there's too much posturing on the left of the party. A lot of the groups involved on the left of the party are interested only in posturing and pulling positions which have no relationship with reality. If we are going to be in a position of defying rate-capping and defying the law, then you have to carry people with you, you have to carry the unions. You can't just go for empty gestures.
What do you think about the witch hunt inside the party? For example, the LCC's letter that was sent out immediately after the leadership election said 'no more witch hunts'. There have been at least two cases. One was the expulsion of Tariq Ali from the party. Secondly, the people expelled in Blackburn. Also there's the continuing ban on the sale of Militant at Labour Party meetings and so on. What's your attitude towards this?
The LCC and I have always been opposed to witch hunts and this was reaffirmed at our annual general meeting. That's why the open letter mentioned it. I think the expulsion of Tariq Ali — a shabby decision to which I was totally opposed — was a legacy from the previous two years. I think Tariq will be in the party in the foreseeable future. Blackburn was a very different matter, a more complicated matter involving a local party. I am unhappy about expelling supporters of Militant or any other similar group in the Labour Party. I'm opposed to the decision conference took on that. But where local party rights have been a key issue in the campaign for democracy, you have to be very careful about condemning out of hand what local parties do.
It's not the only example. For instance, in Birmingham five people have been effectively expelled by the local party who have refused their transfer. There is a form of witch hunt which isn't centralised, but is giving the nod and a wink to local parties to get on with it. Do you think that John Golding, for example, has given up his ideas of how the party should be run?
Of course not. But I think Golding's position in the party is marginalised, and the right is so politically bankrupt that we shouldn't over-emphasise their importance. The right is dying in the Labour Party — not in the unions, that's a different matter. The decision taken by conference — it was a problem for the left that there was a conference decision — is obviously giving an excuse for some local parties to settle old scores, and maybe even new scores. I don't think it achieves anything for the left to say that the most important single issue is the witch hunt. I think it's the politics of the kindergarten, really. The dominant issue for the left, as we discussed earlier, is how to reconstruct Labour's historic bloc.