Reaching out to the soft left
Socialist Outlook newspaper1990sPhil HearseTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
The undemocratic rules of Labour's leadership election have excluded Ken Livingstone and Bernie Grant from being formal candidates. But a 'shadow' campaign continues with meetings all over the country. Socialist Outlook talked to KEN LIVINGSTONE about the campaign and the future of the left.
John Smith is about to become Labour leader. Is this a continuation of Kinnockism or a further shift to the right?
UNLIKE Kinnock, John Smith doesn't come from the left of the party, so there isn't the personal bitterness against the left.
Kinnock hasn't spoken to Tony Benn since 1982 or me since 1986, but Smith has left the lines of communication open. As far as I remember John Smith is almost unique in never having attacked another Labour Party member. This is one of the things used against him by people like John Cunningham: 'where were you during the fight against the Trots'?
But on the issues of policy, such as 'targeting benefits', which is a codeword for supporting means testing, and the danger of coalitionism, then there is a big danger of a further shift to the right.
In 1981 Tony Benn got 49.5 per cent of the electoral college in the deputy leadership battle. This time you got only 13 nominations from the PLP. This obviously reflects a decline in the Labour left nationally. How do you explain this?
YOU'RE comparing the absolute high point of the left in Britain since the war with a very different situation today. This has to be the low point. But I'm not pessimistic.
I think there are going to be a lot of industrial struggles against attacks on the welfare state. And is clear that Smith is coming up with an agenda which is going to galvanise the left against him.
Instead of proposing big defence expenditure cuts Smith will propose cutting welfare benefits to a huge swathe of middle income families, which is what the 'Commission on Social Justice' is all about.
This fits in with what is going to happen throughout Europe. The absence of a welfare state in Japan means that Japanese capitalism has a distinct advantage; and the United States has the same advantage. Now capital throughout Europe is going to move against the welfare state, giving rise to the most massive struggles.
Equally we're moving into a decade in which environmental issues are going to come to the fore dramatically with the destruction of the ozone layer. So this is going to be a decade in which both economic and social struggles, and the ecological and economic crises, are going to put left issues back on the agenda.
Still 13 nominations is a small base to start with?
ACTUALLY it was fourteen, Ronnie Campbell's vote got 'lost'. But in any case this small block of votes represents a bigger parliamentary left, because there were numbers of people pressurised by their local parties, or disgusted with the whole process, who couldn't or wouldn't vote with me this time.
We have a left core from which we have to expand. And that means reaching out to the soft left. Obviously a lot of the people supporting Gould share concerns about the welfare state, the environment, the trade union link, devaluing the pound, and of course shared our concerns about the Gulf war. About a third of the PLP can be won to the left, so the Campaign group has got to find some way of reaching those people.
Equally we have got to reach out to the trade union lefts, because these people are going to be at the forefront. And this is why we have launched a Socialist Forum, to see what kind of common ground and common agenda there is on the left.
The 13 points we've put forward may not satisfy every left group, but they are a realistic basis for discussion. It's 'objectivist', or voluntarist, to imagine that in this situation we could suddenly recreate something like the old Bennite left.
Over the past five years a lot of people have left the Labour Party. Surely left organisation has to reach out to trade union and campaign activists who refuse to be in the Labour Party?
THAT'S fine. I don't have the slightest objection to the widest umbrella organisation of the left, including many people who don't want to be in the Labour Party. Provided that doesn't exclude the essential task of actually organising in the Labour Party.
The Socialist Movement could have been the ideal framework for that. The problem was that there were a lot of people who quite openly saw it as the forerunner of a 'red-green' party, or new socialist party, for which there was no basis.
Once you start talking about that, no union broad left will touch it. It's a clear waste of time.
In the end, should the left vote for Gould and Prescott?
I SPENT two years on the economic policy review group chaired by Gould. And for nearly all that time we were fighting together against people like Gordon Brown and Patricia Hewitt, who were taking a classic neo-liberal line of 'let the market do it all'.
Bryan Gould and myself both argued for intervention, subsidies and planning, the differences being solely those of scale.
Bryan Gould was demoted by Kinnock for all that, and removed from the industry portfolio – the same way Michael Meacher was demoted for still defending some trade union rights.
Labour went into the last election with the most orthodox economic team we had since 1929. All the talk is now that John Smith won't allow anyone like Prescott or Gould any economic portfolio at all.
So if that is the case there is the basis here for a long-term working arrangement and community of interest between the hard left and the soft left, on questions like defence, Europe, rejection of the Maastricht accords, the environment etc.
But the key thing here is the attitude to the unions. The left can't vote for any candidate who is calling for the ending of the trade union link. Prescott is in favour of keeping it, so no problem we can all vote for Prescott.
As for Gould, it depends which way he comes down. There was a good letter in the Guardian last week from the Gould camp saying 'keep the block vote but democratise it'. That's fine. But unless Bryan Gould openly comes out on this question we can't vote for him.
But there's another question coming up before this election, and that's the debate on the Maastricht accords. Part of that is tying Britain to the Exchange Rate Mechanism, and this quite clearly means, as the Campaign Group said, a deflationary policy putting another million people on the dole. So we should call for the Labour Party to vote against the Maastricht accords. And we want to see people like Gould and Prescott, if not actually voting against the accords, then at least criticising them.
The Campaign Group has a block of votes which could determine the outcome, at least on the deputy leadership election. So we should say we want something for those votes. We should demand that Gould and Prescott also come out against all witch hunts.
In this respect, it's worth noting that Bryan Gould's main organiser is Nigel Stanley of the LCC, which is precisely the body organising a witch hunting campaign against Bernie Grant in his own constituency for standing in the deputy leadership election.
But surely Gould is compromised by years of clear support for Kinnockism?
WHICH is precisely why without some clear commitments, to the union link and stopping attacks on the left, then there's no point in voting for him.
Is coalitionism really being prepared? Or it just fantasy?
YES, for certain. The whole of the Guardian/New Statesman type of 'left' are talking about it.
It will be delayed if Labour's support begins to pick up, but as we approach the next election, if there's the slightest doubt about the outcome, the right wing in the party and the unions will start to demand an electoral pact with the Liberals.
Frankly, it's not realistic to expect that MPs who had no qualms about supporting the killing of 100,000 Arabs in the Gulf war will be disturbed about an electoral pact with the Liberals!
Despite the fact that you and Bernie Grant are not formal candidates, the campaign goes on?
YES, we have meetings all over the country. And beyond that there will be plenty for socialists to do.
We are entering a most turbulent and dangerous decade, the world is being torn apart. There's the most massive crisis in the ex-Soviet Union and eastern Europe as well as the third world, and a real danger of fascist governments arising in Europe.
During the last period when the US and British economies were in crisis, capitalism was sustained by Germany and Japan. Now, Germany's economy is turning down and there is the banking crisis in Japan. Just one major mistake and you'll get a slump. They may avoid it, but the danger is there.
What are the key tasks for the left?
THE FIRST task is to preserve the trade union links with the Labour Party. Without those links the Labour Party would decline into just another capitalist party, and that would be a massive blow to working class organisation.
The second is defence of the welfare state. It's quite clear now with the financial crisis of the state that either the government has to cut back sharply on defence spending, or deeply attack the welfare state, and no prizes for guessing which one they'll choose.
The third point is international organisation of the socialist and labour movements. There's not the slightest doubt now that capitalism now is totally globalised, and to respond to that the socialist left has to build genuine rank-and-file links between working people, not just trips round the world for top parliamentarians and union leaders at the expense of the Second International. It's question of building links between working people in struggle to stop them being divided by the multinationals.
The period when the world was divided ideologically, and that you had to choose sides between different states, is now over. We are entering what is more like a pre-1914 period, which means one where the working class has to build its own internationalism.
I think that in the next period of crisis if you got a single breakthrough, like Lula winning a presidential election in Brazil, or any broadly anti-capitalist force making a major breakthrough, then the whole situation would explode and be transformed.
When you had Nicaragua standing up, or Peru defying the IMF, then these places were small enough to be crushed. But it would take just one anti-capitalist force to come to power in a major country, which couldn't be easily crushed, to divide the world on international class lines. That's how turbulent and fragile the international economic and political situation is.
Interview by Phil Hearse and Patrick Baker