Despite Kinnock and Hattersley: Why we fight for a Labour government

Labour Briefing, pilot issue pilot issue, July/August 1986, p. 13

Transcribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.

Millions of people in Britain are yearning to get rid of Thatcher's government.

At home and abroad Thatcher has represented right wing reaction hitting the rights and living standards of workers, youth, women, the elderly, black people and the unemployed — huge swathes of the population who have been made to pay the price for the crisis of British capitalism.

A big majority of these people probably see a Labour government as the only way to end the nightmare of the Thatcher years.

It would be impossible to miss seeing that this popular sentiment has meant a huge pressure on the left to subordinate everything to getting Neil Kinnock into Downing Street.

Sceptical

Briefing supporters have refused to bend to this pressure, to subordinate our support for working class struggles and socialist policies to uncritical support for the leadership. While we shall fight tooth and nail for the election of a Labour government, we remain extremely sceptical of what a Kinnock government will bring.

Briefing would like nothing better than to campaign for a Labour victory in the expectation that it would result in a radical socialist government. But self-deception is no better that fooling other people.

The sad truth is that since Kinnock's election as Party leader in 1983 the Left has been pushed back, and Party policy shifted decisively to the right. A Kinnock-Hattersley government is likely to be anything but radical.

Unemployment

The next Labour government will be judged above all on what it does about unemployment. Creating millions of jobs will require vast amounts of investment. Such a level of investment is inconceivable without full control over the banks and finance houses. It is a simple case of only socialist policies beginning to tackle the problem.

But far from proposing such a programme, shadow cabinet spokespeople like Roy Hattersley and John Smith have talked only about a "National Investment Bank" into which financiers will be "encouraged" through "incentives" to invest.

The real truth is that, apart from some increase in public expenditure, there are no real plans by the Party leadership to mount a serious attack on unemployment, because such a project requires radical anti-capitalist measures.

Equally, since 1983, party policy on a wide range of issues has been pushed to the right — on union laws, on NATO and nuclear weapons, on renationalisation and expansion of public ownership, on nuclear power and on many other issues — Party policy has been degutted of its radical content.

Capitalist

The consequence is that if Labour wins the next election we shall almost certainly see a pro-capitalist "Wilson-Callaghan" type of government. Socialists would be utterly foolish to forget the 1964 and 1974 Labour governments and to believe that Kinnock represents something fundamentally new.

Why then do we fight for a Labour government?

First and foremost a failure by Labour to win the next election would in all likelihood create a mood of desperation and despair in the working class, especially if the Tories were re-elected.

Reaction

While the Tories seem a lame-duck government today, with a further electoral mandate they would attempt new draconian attacks on working class rights and living standards. A carnival of reaction could ensue, including further moves to the right in the labour movement.

On the other hand, whatever the policies of the Party leadership, the defeat of the Tories and the return of Labour could create much better conditions for a renewal of working class struggle and for the advancement of the Left.

The defeats which the working class has suffered during seven years of Thatcher rule have created a "keep your heads down" mood among many workers, which is seized upon and encouraged by the trade union bureaucrats to isolate militant workers in struggle.

Once there was a Labour government, the whole atmosphere would be changed. Working class expectations would soar, and people would expect something to be done about unemployment, anti-union laws, poverty and privatisation.

Defuse?

And it is not at all certain that a Kinnock government would be able easily to defuse working class struggle in the way that Wilson did after 1974 with the "social contract".

A Labour victory at the polls would put the Kinnock-Hattersley leadership to the test of practice, enabling the left to push forward demands for class struggle and socialist policies.

Take for example the sacked and jailed miners: with a Labour government, the campaign for justice would be put on a new footing, with the Left demanding the implementation of Labour conference policies.

The Left could also step up the fight for the implementation of real anti-nuclear defence policies; for jobs not profits; for women's rights, for justice for black people — a host of anti-capitalist policies.

In government it is very hard, over any length of time, to talk Left and act Right — it is much easier to do it in opposition.

Labour in government either means significant steps forward in the interests of the workers or (as we believe much more likely) disappointing the hopes and aspirations of millions.

For the Left in such a situation there is both an opportunity and a big danger.

The opportunity consists in showing thousands of workers what Kinnockite policies mean in practice, and why there is no alternative to mobilising the working class behind socialist policies to go forward. The danger is that mass disappointment could result in the growth of right and extreme right-wing political forces.

The only answer to that, the sole basis for any progress, is the organisation of a militant left wing in the labour movement, in both the trade unions and the Labour Party, prepared to lead the fight against right wing betrayals and mobilise a fightback.

Whatever the strictures of people like Briefing, millions of workers will continue to put their hopes in a Labour victory, and to a greater or lesser extent in the present leadership of the Labour Party.

Our task, to paraphrase a great socialist thinker, is to share the struggle for that victory, but not the illusions in what it will bring. On that basis we shall create the best framework for a renewal of the militant Left of the labour movement.

transcribed from the page image, 2 Nov 2026; spelling as printed ("better that fooling other people" for than; degutted). The by-line (By PHIL HEARSE) is set between rules in the fifth column, mid-article, not at the head or foot; the article fills the upper part of the page and the text runs on below the headline. No jumps. Bold paragraphs inside the article are kept in bold as printed. Left out: two John Chapman photos (Kinnock before a "Labour Putting People First" board; Kinnock and Hattersley) with no captions; the "Football as oppression" piece by Di Parkin on the same page.