The contradictions of 'radical realism'

London Labour Briefing no. 61, July 1986, p. 12

Transcribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.

By-line as printed: Phil Hearse (Hampstead and Highgate CLP).

The Labour Co-ordinating Committee is having a rethink. The May '86 issue of Labour Activist, the LCC newsletter, carries a major editorial declaring that there has been some 'stagnation' in LCC perspectives and that therefore a new strategy has to be worked out. The source of the LCC's disquiet is revealingly set out in the article. The LCC takes exception to the widespread impression that it is part of a 'soft left' axis together with Tribune, Marxism Today etc; it admits that 'many constituency parties are still dominated by Briefing/Campaign Group or other politics'; and it claims that there has been a 'misleading impression on the ground' about LCC initiatives. In short, the LCC wants to challenge the assumption that radicalism in the party is represented by the 'hard left' and stake its own claim to being the 'realistic' radical left.

There are in the article some welcome signs of realism about Kinnock and what the party leadership represents. It admits that there 'may have been an initial over-estimation of the political space around Kinnock' and that in the policies of the party leadership 'we can observe all the hallmarks of a Keynesian technicism reminiscent of Wilson in 1964 rather than a preparation for a radical assault on the power of capital'.

But if this is what the LCC now think about the leadership, and they seriously want to fight it, they will find themselves pushed into alliances with the hard left inside the party, whether they want such alliances or not. For it is precisely the 'Briefing/Campaign Group' left which has been saying that Kinnock is moving party policy to the right in a manner reminiscent of Wilson, and exactly this hard left which has been trying to fight it. On the other hand it is the conscious and specific objective of the LCC, outlined in the article, to 'marginalise' the hard left in the party and 'detach the more realistic and open-minded sections of the hard left' from people like Briefing.

In fact the LCC are in a bind. As we shall see, their project of trying to create a radical space between Kinnock and the hard left is thoroughly utopian and will come a cropper; between now and the general election every section of the left in the party is going to have to decide whether to go with Kinnock in the name of 'unity' or fight the shift to the right, and thus line up with the hard left. Despite this recent profession of radical faith by the LCC, we suspect that the choice for most of them will be the former rather than the latter.

A caricature of the left

The basic line of argument of the LCC is that there is a 'third way' between Kinnock and the hard left 'ultras'. This 'third way' position is very reminiscent of the recent argument by Peter Carter, CP industrial organiser, that there is a 'third way' in the labour movement which includes 'Sawyer, Bickerstaffe, Knapp, Livingstone and . . . the LCC' (!). In order to argue for the 'third way' the LCC have to make a sweeping caricature of the hard left. This is what they say:

'The "fundamentalist" left . . . is expressed through certain common themes, including the assertion that Thatcherism is business as usual for capitalism; the denial that the left and the Labour Movement has been on the retreat, or that there has been a rightward move in British politics; the espousal of traditional "class politics" as the crucial ingredient of socialist advance. The "business as usual" approach is the essence of the fundamentalist camp'.

On most of these particulars of the analysis of the hard left, the LCC explanation of our positions is simply false. We would precisely argue that Thatcherism is NOT business as usual for capitalism; that there HAS been a shift to the right and that the labour movement in many respects has been in a period of defensive struggles and retreat; and that 'business as usual' is hardly an adequate response.

The problem is not one of recognising that Thatcherism represents a specific, very class conscious and 'tough' capitalist response to the crisis (although not an 'exceptional form of state' as Marxism Today theorists say), but of deciding what the appropriate response to Thatcherism is. This is where the difference between Briefing and the LCC/soft left lies.

The soft left, and above all Marxism Today, have responded by saying that Thatcherism is a massive threat, and to get over it we have to create a 'popular front' by lowering our sights, jettisoning our socialist objectives and above al[l] avoid getting involved in hard struggle[s] against the Tory government. We hav[e] said the opposite; that Thatcherism is [a] massive threat to the labour movemen[t] which has to be fought here and now, i[n] struggle, to preserve and extend the socia[l] and political gains of the labour movement and its allies. Now where exactl[y] does the LCC stand on this question? 'Fundamentally' with Marxism Today, o[r] basically with the 'hard left'?

Let's put it another way: is th[e] appropriate response to the rightwar[d] polarisation of British politics b[y] Thatcherism to move to the right ou[r]selves and become more 'moderate'? Or [is] it to stand out against the predomina[nt] trend and create the basis for a fightba[ck] and for a swing in the other direction?

The urgency of this question is pose[d] by the activity of the Labour Part[y] leadership which is engaged in a dete[r]mined and very coherent attempt to pus[h] the party in a moderate direction, incl[u]ding what the LCC themselves describe [as] 'Keynesian technicism rather than [a] assault on capital'. In the coming peri[od] in the Labour Party no-one is going to get anywhere by abstaining on this central question.

The witch hunt

Nowhere is the incoherence of the LCC's response to the present situation more clearly shown than in their reaction to the witch hunt inside the party. Once you admit, as does the LCC at least tacitly, that the party leadership is engaged in a process of moving the party to the right, then you have to put the administrative measures being taken against Militant and other left wingers (for example in Birmingham and Exeter) in that context. Just why has this obsession with chasing out the 'ultras' come now? Is it purely and simply an accident? Or is there some political relationship between the shift to the right by the party leadership and these anti-left organisational measures? And why does the LCC itself choose this very moment to make isolating the hard left its number one stated task?

The LCC says in their article that on Merseyside 'this has not been a witch hunt against socialist beliefs, but a corrective action against a vanguard party which has hijacked Labour's administration'. It is difficult to know whether this is naivety or duplicity.

Does the LCC really believe that the anti-Militant purge is motivated by a desire by the party leaders to pursue a relentless fight against abuses of procedure and dirty dealings in local parties? If that were really the case, why haven't the NEC launched an enquiry into Sparkbrook CLP, and the semi-mafia style operations of Hattersley and his supporters in that constituency?

And why hasn't the LCC put together a weighty dossier on such abuses by the right wing, rather than 'evidence' by doubtless fair-minded democratic socialists like Ken Cure, Tony Clarke and Roy Hattersley on the NEC? And why, comrades of the LCC, do you think that you are 'misinterpreted' on the ground by local party activists – is it perhaps because they see you in practice as lining up with the right wing?

Kinnock leadership

The LCC article concludes with a lengthy discourse on the nature of the socialist project and the agencies and tactics of socialist transition. It reasserts the need for extra-parliamentary action; argues against any notion of 'smashing the state machine'; argues that there are a 'plurality of subjects' in the transition to socialism, not just an homogenous working class; rejects coalitionism; defends the importance of 'market mechanisms'; and puts forward the notion of a 'new, radical left' to fight for all these objectives.

It is outside the scope of a brief article like this to reply in detail to all the LCC say on this. But the question we want to pose is what does it all mean, here and now in the class struggle and in the internal divisions in the party? Let's start with a quote from the LCC, which is deadly accurate and very well said:

'There is no surer sign of a real shift to the Right as when people start finding strikes, protests and campaigns outside conventional channels embarrassing and dangerous to electoral prospects. It is also the crucial area in which people engaged in action learn to make a critique of capitalist society.'

And so say all of us. But who exactly do the LCC have in mind when they write this? All the sectarian and vanguardist ultras down at Briefing, not to mention people on the miners' and Wapping picket lines, would probably think of Neil Kinnock. It is not totally outside the bounds of possibility that the LCC themselves were thinking of the party leadership when they wrote this piece.

But if this is so, and if the LCC genuinely believes that it is in struggle that people learn to make a critique of capitalist society – and that therefore mass struggle is the material foundation of any socialist strategy [–] how can it conceivably be a key strategic task to create a new left in the party which is, as the LCC says, 'supportive but critical' of the Kinnock camp?

Here you have a nice paradox which sums up all the contradictions of what the LCC is trying to do. The LCC, at least tacitly, admits we have a rightward moving party leadership which is going in a Wilson-type direction and is embarrassed by mass extra-parliamentary activity. It admits that it overestimated the potential of this leadership, and by inference the LCC became too associated with it. But instead of sounding the alarm bells, and warning what a Kinnock government might look like, and urging a struggle against the rightward drift, it wants a new left in the party which is 'supportive but critical' of this very leadership!

The LCC does not want to be misinterpreted. It wants to keep its radical credentials, and generate a debate about socialist strategy. But in the real divide inside the party – for the shift to the right or against it – there is not a lot of room for a political position whose 'radicalism' consists of basic support for the leadership and furtive visits to witch hunt committees carrying weighty dossiers fingering the left. Schizophrenics often feel that people don't understand them. Sad to report, the split personality of the LCC remains only in the mind; when you meet their supporters in your local constituency party, things become clarified very rapidly.

Labour government

LCC supporters would doubtless say that our judgement of them is one-sided. Indeed, there is no point denying that, at least on paper, the LCC remains committed to many radical social and political measures. The nub of the question – what stance to take towards the party leadership – must revolve around what we can expect from a Kinnock government, which is now a real possibility.

Briefing's view is that there is a very real danger that a Kinnock-led government would be a re-run of Wilsonism, but in a very different context. The 1964–70 and 1974–9 governments had a disastrous enough effect on the course of British politics, but a centre-right Labour government in today's conditions of mass unemployment and economic crisis would be an even bigger disaster. Apart from demoralising a labour movement already pulverised by the best part of a decade of Thatcherism, a Labour government which failed to take on board an assault on capital would be forced to administer capitalism's crisis [–] as did Wilson and Callaghan.

The experience of Mitterand in France shows what this can lead to in a period of severe crisis, a sharp shift to the right, and the growth of ultra-right radicalism. Therefore it seems obvious that the left of the party must set itself the dual task of trying to fight for radical socialist measures now, as the best way of trying to avoid this catastrophe, and of building a militant left which will not be disorientated by such a development.

Throughout the LCC editorial there is no inkling that a Kinnock government could turn out to be a right wing government compelled to launch attacks on the working class. If the LCC think this is excluded they are sleepwalking. We wait with interest to see whether their rethink will make them wake up.

transcribed from the page image, 2 Nov 2026; spelling as printed (Mitterand). By-line at the top beside the headline (Briefing National Supplement page 8); the article runs on across the spread to the lower half of page 9 (PDF 13) with no jump line. The scan of PDF page 12 cuts off the right edge of the third column: the lost letters are supplied in [square brackets] (jettisoning, al[l], struggle[s], hav[e], is [a], movemen[t], i[n], socia[l], exactl[y], o[r], th[e], rightwar[d], b[y], ou[r], [is], predomina[nt], fightba[ck], pose[d], Part[y], dete[r]mined, pus[h], incl[u]ding, [as], [a], peri[od]); the words after 'describe' and 'rather than' are cut away entirely, so '[as]' and '[a]' are conjecture (the latter may be 'an'). Two dashes on PDF 13 failed to print and are supplied as [–]. Left out: the reproduced front page of Labour Activist (May 86, 'A strategy for Labour's democratic left') set into page 8, and the boxed statement 'L.L.C. wound up' across the top of page 9, which is signed by LLC delegates, not by Hearse.