Exit stage right An appreciation of Neil Kinnock
Socialist Outlook newspaper1990sPhil HearseTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
An appreciation of Neil Kinnock
IF THERE is one image of Neil Kinnock that I will remember it is his speech at the 1985 conference, denouncing the 'obscenity' of a Labour council, Derek Hatton's Liverpool, sending round redundancy notices by taxi.
Of course the redundancy notices were a tactical ploy by Liverpool's rate-capped council, never meant to be implemented. But Kinnockite councillors nationwide have since then been busy making real cuts and redundancies, destroying jobs and services.
The second image of Kinnock which sticks in my mind is him standing frozen, embarrassed and wishing he were somewhere else, on the one occasion that he actually turned up to a miners' picket line.
There is no doubt that Kinnock started out as a left winger of the traditional Tribunite type. He trod the well-worn path of the bright young leftist seeking 'career' and personal advance.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s something happened not in Labour's traditional game-plan. A very different type of left emerged, associated with the name of Tony Benn.
Fighting to bring the labour movement under democratic control and implement across the board radical policies, they shook the Labour and union bureaucracy to its core.
After Michael Foot's 1983 debacle, panic set in. Cometh the hour, cometh the 'man'.
Bully
Destiny arrived in the form of the 'dream ticket', Kinnock and Hattersley, charged with smashing the left and 'modernising' Labour.
Destiny (and the union bosses) had chosen well. Kinnock revealed himself to be a ruthless, cynical bully. Miners, council workers, printers, dockers – indeed the whole of the organised labour movement – paid the price.
But Kinnock was more than just a right-wing thug. He was also profoundly empty of vision, programme or principle. Labour policy fashioned in his image became little more than an advertising slogan, capitulating at every turn to Thatcherism.
The great turning point of 1980s politics was of course the miners' strike. Upon its defeat the Tories built their 1987 victory; and paralysed Kinnockism delivered them another in 1992.
And it was during the miners' strike that Kinnock's betrayal of the labour movement was most foul. In time-honoured fashion the Labour and union leaders prepared their own defeat by undermining workers' struggle.
Kinnock departs washed-up and humiliated, but with the prospect of a social democratic sinecure, and big fees from memoirs. His utter failure signifies but one thing; the complete inability of right-wing social democracy to give an answer to capitalism's crisis, or to defend the most basic interests of the working class.
One of the most stupid sayings ever is that the working class gets the leadership it deserves. British workers never deserved Neil Kinnock, any more than they deserve John Smith.