Challenge of the 'Champagne' Budget: Take up the gauntlet!

Labour Briefing no. 59, 22 March 1988, p. 16

Transcribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.

By-line as printed: PHIL HEARSE (Islington North CLP).

Chancellor Lawson's budget was the most openly class-biased budget for decades. The super-rich will get thousands; the poor will get nothing. Even those on average incomes will see no increase in real income.

The Tories remain implacable in the face of a chorus of demands for more money for the NHS. As the health service goes down the drain, social security is subject to the biggest cuts since the war.

The "social fund" brings Victorian values back with a vengeance. Thatcher and Lawson have defied days of action, NHS strikes, massive demonstrations, and a huge wave of public opinion, and they're smiling.

All this is possible only because of the weakness of the opposition mounted by Kinnock and Willis.

Both in the public sector and in industry across the land there is an increased willingness to fight. In Scotland, there is a gigantic potential for a mass movement which could defeat the hated poll tax. Thousands of workers who have never before been involved in industrial action are taking to the picket lines and the streets.

But Thatcher and her cohorts remain smugly implacable because they know that the TUC and Labour Party leaderships are not interested in giving this movement any direction; indeed they wil do their utmost to undermine it.

Tony Benn has rightly denounced Kinnock's opposition to to the Tories as "weak". But it is more than weak; it is actually hostile to the current upsurge, and bent on sabotaging and demobilising it. Kinnock hasn't shown his face on a healthworkers picket line. He didn't even turn up for the gigantic March 5th TUC demonstration. His only loyalty is to his "respectable" and "moderate" image.

Briefing has argued that a leadership challenge inside the Party would galvanise support and create a much-needed focus for opposition. Whether or not a leadership challenge emerges, Kinnock and his supporters have to be challenged at every level. It is not Briefing and the rest of the left who are out of step with the healthworkers and others fighting back — it is Kinnock and the trade union "new realists".

Over the past couple of months much has been achieved to shatter the idea that the working class is down and out, and that the left is finished. Thatcher and Lawson have thrown down the gauntlet. We must take it up. But to do that means pushing aside the new realists and the Kinnockite witch-hunters who stand in our way.

transcribed from the page image, 2 Nov 2026; spelling as printed ("they wil do"; "Kinnock's opposition to to the Tories"). The article runs across the foot of the back page (running head: Labour Briefing No. 59 March 22nd-April 12th 1988 page 16, under the LABOUR BRIEFING masthead), with the kicker "Challenge of the 'Champagne' Budget" in a band. The by-line (By PHIL HEARSE, Islington North CLP) is set between rules in the middle column, mid-article. The whole piece is set in a bold sans face; only the larger opening paragraph is given in bold as the standfirst, and the paper's italics are kept. No jumps. Left out: "Labour movement and women: Marching to defeat the Alton Bill!" with the Graeme Cookson photo and caption, and "Have you ever been a member of FAB?" with the FAB contact box.