"Comrades I think it would be a sad thing, when the media prevents us speaking to each other every day, if on the one
occasion when we do get together we shout so loud we can’t hear each other in this hall.
If we are ready to continue and the issue is about Ireland I’ll tell you my view, and it’s always been my view. I
was brought up to believe that the partition of Ireland was a crime against the Irish people, I’ve said so on many
occasions and I recently proposed to the National Executive Committee that the unity and the independence of Ireland
should be set as an objective in the terms of reference of our new committee on Irish policy to be reached by consent.
But I must also tell you that I do not believe that the immediate withdrawal of the troops from Ireland would be a solution
to that problem.
My starting point is a very simple one. It is that everyone here who call themselves socialists are part of the failure that
we are discussing. I say that without criticism of others. But in fairness Paul Foot has had the absolute freedom to
organise the SWP for many years and go round and make his impassioned speeches. He is part of the failure just as I
am who has served in Labour governments since 1964. I go further that that and I give you two examples.
First , the idea that it’s all right at the grass roots. In this hall about a month ago I spoke at a demonstration against
the Corrie Bill and I said to the meeting, mainly made up of women, that it was right that we should support the
campaign against the Corrie Bill and that the women should support the steel workers. There was violent opposition to
that statement from of the crowd who shouted: ‘It’s nothing to do with us about the steel workers.’ Then
last night I was speaking at a steel strike committee in South Wales and when we were talking about the media one of
the steel workers said ‘And when we have a Labour paper, let’s have a nude on page 2 and page 3 in order to
boost the circulation’ without realising what he’d said , and not meaning it. But one reason why some women
voted the Thatcher government into power which is now cutting back on the steel industry was that they suspected the
trade unions did not back women’s rights. Therefore what we have to do is to recognise that we may be an
enthusiastic audience of socialists but we do not have a majority of support outside for any of our solutions to the
problems : neither the solution of the socialist groups, nor the solution that is put forward by the Labour Party.
This is not an academic debate, at least that’s not how I see it, it is not a test of socialist credentials and I have
brought no quotations from Paul Foot or Tariq Ali.
I see no winners and I see no losers amongst us. The starting point must be what is happening now, how did we get
here, and how do socialists respond in a way that is successful. First how do we defend the interests of those we try
to represent? Secondly how do we enlarge the political consciousness of our own people? How do we campaign for
change? Hilary Wainwright, in my opinion, put the most important question of all which is : how do you inter-relate the
efforts of people at the place of work to the work of the trade unions and the political parties at national level, and
above all, when you’ve got a support how do you carry it through?
To have had a discussion without any reference to the fact that Britain is caught in a world slump with a weakened
capitalist system and with deliberate policy of de-industrialisation would be to leave out the background against which
we meet and to miss the major problem that we now have to discuss. The fact that we have a capitalist system in this
country which is no longer capable of sustaining the welfare upon which so much of our post-war politics rested. The
real problem is not that the Tory government are pursuing their policy, but that there is no alternative to their policy
unless we are prepared to achieve a ‘fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour
of working people and their families�, if I may be allowed to quote myself for I am myself responsible for setting that
objective for the labour movement in 1973.
The last Labour government, within the framework of market forces, did try to protect the people it sort to represent. It
is no good pretending that there is no difference between the Thatcher policy and the policy of successive Labour
governments because if you do that you destroy the credibility upon which support must rest. The Labour government
did, in some respects, shift the balance of power by the repeal of the Industrial Relations Act and by erecting the Health
and Safety Act and the Employment Protection Act.
The reality is that we have come as far as can possibly be advanced within the basically capitalist system. Indeed we
have come now to the point where the capitalist system cannot even allow us to sustain the gains that were made
before. It is true that socialists, both inside and outside the Labour Party, have said all this before. It is the role of
socialists to look ahead, and our privilege to be proved right. But I would say this to colleagues who are not members
of the Labour Party. To forecast the future correctly is not the same as to forecast the remedies that would succeed in
changing that future. That is the great difficulty that we confront. If the Labour Party has not achieved socialism
neither have the socialist groups. It would be a great mistake if we were to pretend at this meeting that this is just a
matter of allocating blame and then going home and starting all over again.
I am not here to ask for your support for me. What I am saying is that the Labour Party has made formidable gains
since 1945 in the maintenance of full employment, the development of the welfare state, the extension of public
ownership and the establishment of trade union rights. I accept that much of this was the unfinished business of the
1906 Liberal government but it laid the foundations for welfare capitalism which had a profound effect upon a
significant section of the Labour Party in diverting them from socialism.
I don’t say the whole Labour Party gave up socialism. This was one of Paul Foot’s errors. He detected no
difference in his analysis between some sections of the Labour Party, the Parliamentary Party and trade union
leadership, and the socialist case that has been consistently argued by the Labour Conference. But it is true that,
from 1959 and basing themselves on the apparent success of welfare capitalism, there was an attack upon socialism
within the Labour Party reflected by the attempt to repeal Clause 4, the breach with the unions, and the abandonment
of self-government in two important contexts: one, the decision of a small majority of a Labour cabinet to recommend
our membership of the Common Market, and second, the acceptance of American missiles in the United Kingdom
without a British veto.
Having said all that I must repeat that a Labour government was better than Thatcher then and it would be better than
Thatcher now. But the policies it followed would not be good enough to tackle the problems that have now to be
tackled.
I emphasise better than Thatcher then and now because the problem that Paul Foot and Hilary Wainwright speak
about - ‘why doesn’t the agitation continue when Labour is in power ?’ is because the rank and file of the
Labour Party know that it is better to have a Labour government than Tory government and they are not prepared to
put it at risk. Paul thinks that it is parliamentarians who go and persuade the rank and file to stop agitation. The
reality is that the rank and file of the Labour movement do not want to put at risk the survival of a Labour government.
We must be prepared to face the fact that the problem of the balance between agitation and loyalty has got to be
solved. Unless we can deal with that problem we are going to continue to be radical in opposition and somewhat
conservative in power.
Comrades, there must be so many people from MI5, people from the MI6, the CIA and the KGB here that I’m not
sure they aren’t the ones who are shouting! Please be very careful that we don’t prevent ourselves from
having a serious discussion. Let me say this about Ireland. Nobody could argue that when a Labour government was
in power the agitation for Irish independence and unity didn’t continue. It did, but even that was not successful in
achieving a real debate in this country about policy in Ireland without which we shall not solve the problem. I genuinely
plead to those who come to this meeting to put the Irish issue on the agenda, not to organise themselves in such a
way as to prevent this discussion or anything else from taking place.
If we are serious we have got to ask why it is that the socialist groups have also failed to prove the efficacy of their own
solution. I think the reason lies in an analysis that we must go through. First of all most of the socialist groups have
confused the absence of reform with the failure of reform. The real complaint that I have is not that we reformed and it
failed, but that we didn’t reform. That is what the argument going on within the Labour Party at the moment is all
about. It is that industry was not reformed, despite the 1973 programme. It is that the banks were not reformed
despite the insistent demand for the abolition for the House of Lords. The media were not reformed despite the
reports made by the Party and put before Conference. The civil service was not reformed, Education was not
reformed. The control of the police and the security services was not reformed.
I say to this meeting, if you’ll listen to me, that reform is an honourable and radical course. To argue that what is
wrong is that the reforms have failed is to miss the reality. They have not carried been carried through.
I believe there is a very important relationship here between what Hilary Wainwright said and what I am saying. I have
had many shop shewards come to see me from UCS onwards to raise their problems with the minister. What they did
not want from a Labour minister was a lecture on the efficacy of revolutionary socialism. What they wanted was a
solution to their problem now, and the opportunity to learn from their experience as to how to safeguard jobs and
change society on a wider scale. But if anybody really imagines that when a group of shop stewards, from Alfred
Herbert or from the River Don Steel Works, had been treated to an address on revolutionary socialism by a Labour
Minister, that they would have been more likely to respond to that government, they are totally misunderstanding what
it is about. If we only talk to those who have major problems about revolution then they will say to us: ‘you are trying
to use our crisis to promote your revolution. We want to use you, the Labour movement and the Labour leadership to
solve our problems.
I warn those who think that agitation - important as it is to clarify issues - is the same as preaching revolution to those
who come to a Labour government to settle their problems, that they really do miss the point. Of course we must go
on to learn the lessons that go beyond individual cases. The Labour Party is a reforming socialist party and that is the
basis upon which it operates.
Now I come to the second criticism: and that is that the socialist groups confuse real reform with revolution. They want
reform and talk of revolution. It implies, and nobody believes it, that there is a short cut to the transfer of power in this
country. It implies that a violent overthrow with power passing to others would, by some coup d’etat by vanguard
forces, without consent, create a democratic socialist system that would, in some way, erode the power of the state.
Most people know that to do it that way revolutionary groups would have to seize the power of the state and use it
against those who disagree. It ignores all the historical evidence. Stalin had no more choice in my judgement, than
Mrs Thatcher has given the fact that she has inherited a collapsing capitalism and he had inherited a post-
revolutionary communist state. I believe that the socialist groups are not serious revolutionaries at all. What the
socialist groups in this country really do is to analyse, to think, to support struggle, to criticise the Labour Party, to
expand consciousness, to preach a better morality. These are all very desirable things to do. But they have very little
to do with revolution. In effect they help to create a demand for real reform.
The third error of the groups is that they misread the role of democracy in parliament as one instrument for real
reform. The reason the labour movement will never give up its belief in parliamentary democracy is that it rightly
believes it created parliamentary democracy. That is why it will never give up its support for it. Whatever may be
said by the modern theorists of the socialist groups, the Chartist campaigns and the suffragette campaigns cannot be
dismissed as having lead to a fraudulent advance. It was a real advance. And anyone who thinks the labour
movement ever gave up extra-parliamentary struggle in favour of parliamentary reform must have been asleep over the
last thirty years. What do you think happened in 1974 when the miners struck and created circumstances in which
the government went to the country? How do you think we won our liberties except by struggle? How do you imagine
that the Corrie Bill was beaten except by a combination of the efforts of the women’s movement with the efforts of
those in parliament?
The difficulty that the socialist groups are in, and I think they must face it, is that they are confusing extra-parliamentary
struggle, which I fully support, with anti-parliamentary campaigning which invites the labour movement to repudiate itâ
€™s past. It is absolutely absurd to invite the labour movement to abandon its concept of the role of parliamentary
charge as a part of its great campaigns. Here is the paradox: What is the ballot box but a revolution? Of course it is a
revolution. I invite you to go round the world today, and find how many people would give up their lives for the right to
do what we can do which is to dismiss our government when it comes to a general election. I think that Paul Foot’s
party and the IMG and the other socialist groups are so small partly because people fear that if power was acquired the
way Paul and Tariq and the other groups wish to acquire it, the people would lose the right to dismiss them if they were
not satisfied with what followed.
My next point is that in saying that the labour movement has failed, Paul Foot preaches defeatism. He argues that it
has not only failed but it must always fail and he cites Allende. Well on that definition let me give him some other â
€˜failures’ of history: Tolpuddle was a failure, Lansbury was a failure, Clay Cross was a failure, Grunwick was a
failure, Rosa Luxemborg was a failure, Trotsky was a failure – because the people involved did not achieve in their
lifetime the objectives which they set themselves. Yet we all know that in reality none of these were failures. Our only
strength lies in our unity and our confidence. Those who preach defeatism are not revolutionaries. They are left-
talking revolutionists, who are trying to destroy the two pillars of our strength which are, our unity and our belief that if
we organise within the labour movement we can change society.
What then comrades should we do now? I believe that we must build upon our historical strength and I believe that
there is a great deal more than we have recognised in the moral values of socialism against the rotten values of
capitalism. We must support the women’s movements, the peace movements and those who are trying to bring
about a peaceful united Ireland. We must build the unions, we must put forward a socialist analysis, we must have
democracy in the Labour Party.
The Labour Party is a socialist party. But what it does believe and I think it is right, is this: that if you rely upon an
ideological scholasticism alone to guide you, you will splinter as the SWP expelled the Revolutionary Communist Group
and they expelled the Revolutionary Communist tendency, and the Revolutionary Communist Tendency has now given
birth to The Discussion Group. The splintering and disintegration of the left – very evident at this meeting – is, in
the view of the Labour Party, a source of weakness. We believe that experience will educate in socialism and unite us.
What Hilary said about the women’s movement is very important. What may begin as a non-political movement
saying ‘it’s only about women’s rights’ will progress when people begin to ask themselves whether that
is really true. If half the places in the grammar schools were taken by women is that the equality the feminist movement
wants? Not at all. If half the chairman of the multinational corporations were women, is that the achievement that
would be wanted? No. I believe there is a very important place for socialist groups discussing and working on the
problems of society. There are many of them.
We have not got on this platform the Communist Party, the New Communist Party, the Socialist Party of Great Britain,
the Marxist-Leninists. We have not got the Revolutionary Communist Group or the Revolutionary Communist
Tendency. We have not got the Spartacists or the Posadists, the Workers Revolutionary Party or the Workers
Socialist League.
There is no substitute for united action within a united Labour Party. How can we improve the prospects? By
amalgamation? No. By popular front? No. By collective entryism to expose, polarise and split the Labour Party?
No. By taking each issue, by cooperation on racialism, on the women’s movement, on peace, on jobs – Yes, as
the Anti-Nazi League has shown and by individuals who want to contribute joining the Labour Party. We must also
retain the centres of socialist thought represented by the various journals that are published. I do not imagine that the
leaders of these will want to join the Labour Party as it would be impertinent to suggest that they do. But I do invite
those who are members of no groups, or those who have served in one, or other, or many of the splinter groups, to
consider what is happening in the Labour Party today.
The radicalisation of the main body of the labour movement, the genuine restatement of the socialist case, the debate
on democracy in the Labour Party today is sharper and more real that it has ever been. That is the case for
democratic socialism. I can only lay one claim for it, and that is that the British Labour Party is the instrument of the
British working class movement and nobody here can deny it whatever view they may take. What we offer is unity of
action plus diversity of thought – a pluralism within a democratic movement.
I may so this in conclusion. If the Labour Party fails it does not follow that there will be a swing to the socialist groups.
My own opinion is that if the Labour Party and the Socialist groups in Britain attack each other, as happened in
Germany before the war, you could easily move into a fascist situation in Britain. And it does not follow that socialism
will emerge automatically phoenix-like from the ashes of fascism. We’ve had the experience of Italy and Germany,
Spain and Portugal. When fascism was destroyed it did not follow that democratic socialism automatically emerged.
The British working class movement created the British Labour Party and we have the means to win consent for
socialism by democracy. Any other sort of socialism is unachievable and would not be worth having even if it could be
achieved. That is my case".
occasion when we do get together we shout so loud we can’t hear each other in this hall.
If we are ready to continue and the issue is about Ireland I’ll tell you my view, and it’s always been my view. I
was brought up to believe that the partition of Ireland was a crime against the Irish people, I’ve said so on many
occasions and I recently proposed to the National Executive Committee that the unity and the independence of Ireland
should be set as an objective in the terms of reference of our new committee on Irish policy to be reached by consent.
But I must also tell you that I do not believe that the immediate withdrawal of the troops from Ireland would be a solution
to that problem.
My starting point is a very simple one. It is that everyone here who call themselves socialists are part of the failure that
we are discussing. I say that without criticism of others. But in fairness Paul Foot has had the absolute freedom to
organise the SWP for many years and go round and make his impassioned speeches. He is part of the failure just as I
am who has served in Labour governments since 1964. I go further that that and I give you two examples.
First , the idea that it’s all right at the grass roots. In this hall about a month ago I spoke at a demonstration against
the Corrie Bill and I said to the meeting, mainly made up of women, that it was right that we should support the
campaign against the Corrie Bill and that the women should support the steel workers. There was violent opposition to
that statement from of the crowd who shouted: ‘It’s nothing to do with us about the steel workers.’ Then
last night I was speaking at a steel strike committee in South Wales and when we were talking about the media one of
the steel workers said ‘And when we have a Labour paper, let’s have a nude on page 2 and page 3 in order to
boost the circulation’ without realising what he’d said , and not meaning it. But one reason why some women
voted the Thatcher government into power which is now cutting back on the steel industry was that they suspected the
trade unions did not back women’s rights. Therefore what we have to do is to recognise that we may be an
enthusiastic audience of socialists but we do not have a majority of support outside for any of our solutions to the
problems : neither the solution of the socialist groups, nor the solution that is put forward by the Labour Party.
This is not an academic debate, at least that’s not how I see it, it is not a test of socialist credentials and I have
brought no quotations from Paul Foot or Tariq Ali.
I see no winners and I see no losers amongst us. The starting point must be what is happening now, how did we get
here, and how do socialists respond in a way that is successful. First how do we defend the interests of those we try
to represent? Secondly how do we enlarge the political consciousness of our own people? How do we campaign for
change? Hilary Wainwright, in my opinion, put the most important question of all which is : how do you inter-relate the
efforts of people at the place of work to the work of the trade unions and the political parties at national level, and
above all, when you’ve got a support how do you carry it through?
To have had a discussion without any reference to the fact that Britain is caught in a world slump with a weakened
capitalist system and with deliberate policy of de-industrialisation would be to leave out the background against which
we meet and to miss the major problem that we now have to discuss. The fact that we have a capitalist system in this
country which is no longer capable of sustaining the welfare upon which so much of our post-war politics rested. The
real problem is not that the Tory government are pursuing their policy, but that there is no alternative to their policy
unless we are prepared to achieve a ‘fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour
of working people and their families�, if I may be allowed to quote myself for I am myself responsible for setting that
objective for the labour movement in 1973.
The last Labour government, within the framework of market forces, did try to protect the people it sort to represent. It
is no good pretending that there is no difference between the Thatcher policy and the policy of successive Labour
governments because if you do that you destroy the credibility upon which support must rest. The Labour government
did, in some respects, shift the balance of power by the repeal of the Industrial Relations Act and by erecting the Health
and Safety Act and the Employment Protection Act.
The reality is that we have come as far as can possibly be advanced within the basically capitalist system. Indeed we
have come now to the point where the capitalist system cannot even allow us to sustain the gains that were made
before. It is true that socialists, both inside and outside the Labour Party, have said all this before. It is the role of
socialists to look ahead, and our privilege to be proved right. But I would say this to colleagues who are not members
of the Labour Party. To forecast the future correctly is not the same as to forecast the remedies that would succeed in
changing that future. That is the great difficulty that we confront. If the Labour Party has not achieved socialism
neither have the socialist groups. It would be a great mistake if we were to pretend at this meeting that this is just a
matter of allocating blame and then going home and starting all over again.
I am not here to ask for your support for me. What I am saying is that the Labour Party has made formidable gains
since 1945 in the maintenance of full employment, the development of the welfare state, the extension of public
ownership and the establishment of trade union rights. I accept that much of this was the unfinished business of the
1906 Liberal government but it laid the foundations for welfare capitalism which had a profound effect upon a
significant section of the Labour Party in diverting them from socialism.
I don’t say the whole Labour Party gave up socialism. This was one of Paul Foot’s errors. He detected no
difference in his analysis between some sections of the Labour Party, the Parliamentary Party and trade union
leadership, and the socialist case that has been consistently argued by the Labour Conference. But it is true that,
from 1959 and basing themselves on the apparent success of welfare capitalism, there was an attack upon socialism
within the Labour Party reflected by the attempt to repeal Clause 4, the breach with the unions, and the abandonment
of self-government in two important contexts: one, the decision of a small majority of a Labour cabinet to recommend
our membership of the Common Market, and second, the acceptance of American missiles in the United Kingdom
without a British veto.
Having said all that I must repeat that a Labour government was better than Thatcher then and it would be better than
Thatcher now. But the policies it followed would not be good enough to tackle the problems that have now to be
tackled.
I emphasise better than Thatcher then and now because the problem that Paul Foot and Hilary Wainwright speak
about - ‘why doesn’t the agitation continue when Labour is in power ?’ is because the rank and file of the
Labour Party know that it is better to have a Labour government than Tory government and they are not prepared to
put it at risk. Paul thinks that it is parliamentarians who go and persuade the rank and file to stop agitation. The
reality is that the rank and file of the Labour movement do not want to put at risk the survival of a Labour government.
We must be prepared to face the fact that the problem of the balance between agitation and loyalty has got to be
solved. Unless we can deal with that problem we are going to continue to be radical in opposition and somewhat
conservative in power.
Comrades, there must be so many people from MI5, people from the MI6, the CIA and the KGB here that I’m not
sure they aren’t the ones who are shouting! Please be very careful that we don’t prevent ourselves from
having a serious discussion. Let me say this about Ireland. Nobody could argue that when a Labour government was
in power the agitation for Irish independence and unity didn’t continue. It did, but even that was not successful in
achieving a real debate in this country about policy in Ireland without which we shall not solve the problem. I genuinely
plead to those who come to this meeting to put the Irish issue on the agenda, not to organise themselves in such a
way as to prevent this discussion or anything else from taking place.
If we are serious we have got to ask why it is that the socialist groups have also failed to prove the efficacy of their own
solution. I think the reason lies in an analysis that we must go through. First of all most of the socialist groups have
confused the absence of reform with the failure of reform. The real complaint that I have is not that we reformed and it
failed, but that we didn’t reform. That is what the argument going on within the Labour Party at the moment is all
about. It is that industry was not reformed, despite the 1973 programme. It is that the banks were not reformed
despite the insistent demand for the abolition for the House of Lords. The media were not reformed despite the
reports made by the Party and put before Conference. The civil service was not reformed, Education was not
reformed. The control of the police and the security services was not reformed.
I say to this meeting, if you’ll listen to me, that reform is an honourable and radical course. To argue that what is
wrong is that the reforms have failed is to miss the reality. They have not carried been carried through.
I believe there is a very important relationship here between what Hilary Wainwright said and what I am saying. I have
had many shop shewards come to see me from UCS onwards to raise their problems with the minister. What they did
not want from a Labour minister was a lecture on the efficacy of revolutionary socialism. What they wanted was a
solution to their problem now, and the opportunity to learn from their experience as to how to safeguard jobs and
change society on a wider scale. But if anybody really imagines that when a group of shop stewards, from Alfred
Herbert or from the River Don Steel Works, had been treated to an address on revolutionary socialism by a Labour
Minister, that they would have been more likely to respond to that government, they are totally misunderstanding what
it is about. If we only talk to those who have major problems about revolution then they will say to us: ‘you are trying
to use our crisis to promote your revolution. We want to use you, the Labour movement and the Labour leadership to
solve our problems.
I warn those who think that agitation - important as it is to clarify issues - is the same as preaching revolution to those
who come to a Labour government to settle their problems, that they really do miss the point. Of course we must go
on to learn the lessons that go beyond individual cases. The Labour Party is a reforming socialist party and that is the
basis upon which it operates.
Now I come to the second criticism: and that is that the socialist groups confuse real reform with revolution. They want
reform and talk of revolution. It implies, and nobody believes it, that there is a short cut to the transfer of power in this
country. It implies that a violent overthrow with power passing to others would, by some coup d’etat by vanguard
forces, without consent, create a democratic socialist system that would, in some way, erode the power of the state.
Most people know that to do it that way revolutionary groups would have to seize the power of the state and use it
against those who disagree. It ignores all the historical evidence. Stalin had no more choice in my judgement, than
Mrs Thatcher has given the fact that she has inherited a collapsing capitalism and he had inherited a post-
revolutionary communist state. I believe that the socialist groups are not serious revolutionaries at all. What the
socialist groups in this country really do is to analyse, to think, to support struggle, to criticise the Labour Party, to
expand consciousness, to preach a better morality. These are all very desirable things to do. But they have very little
to do with revolution. In effect they help to create a demand for real reform.
The third error of the groups is that they misread the role of democracy in parliament as one instrument for real
reform. The reason the labour movement will never give up its belief in parliamentary democracy is that it rightly
believes it created parliamentary democracy. That is why it will never give up its support for it. Whatever may be
said by the modern theorists of the socialist groups, the Chartist campaigns and the suffragette campaigns cannot be
dismissed as having lead to a fraudulent advance. It was a real advance. And anyone who thinks the labour
movement ever gave up extra-parliamentary struggle in favour of parliamentary reform must have been asleep over the
last thirty years. What do you think happened in 1974 when the miners struck and created circumstances in which
the government went to the country? How do you think we won our liberties except by struggle? How do you imagine
that the Corrie Bill was beaten except by a combination of the efforts of the women’s movement with the efforts of
those in parliament?
The difficulty that the socialist groups are in, and I think they must face it, is that they are confusing extra-parliamentary
struggle, which I fully support, with anti-parliamentary campaigning which invites the labour movement to repudiate itâ
€™s past. It is absolutely absurd to invite the labour movement to abandon its concept of the role of parliamentary
charge as a part of its great campaigns. Here is the paradox: What is the ballot box but a revolution? Of course it is a
revolution. I invite you to go round the world today, and find how many people would give up their lives for the right to
do what we can do which is to dismiss our government when it comes to a general election. I think that Paul Foot’s
party and the IMG and the other socialist groups are so small partly because people fear that if power was acquired the
way Paul and Tariq and the other groups wish to acquire it, the people would lose the right to dismiss them if they were
not satisfied with what followed.
My next point is that in saying that the labour movement has failed, Paul Foot preaches defeatism. He argues that it
has not only failed but it must always fail and he cites Allende. Well on that definition let me give him some other â
€˜failures’ of history: Tolpuddle was a failure, Lansbury was a failure, Clay Cross was a failure, Grunwick was a
failure, Rosa Luxemborg was a failure, Trotsky was a failure – because the people involved did not achieve in their
lifetime the objectives which they set themselves. Yet we all know that in reality none of these were failures. Our only
strength lies in our unity and our confidence. Those who preach defeatism are not revolutionaries. They are left-
talking revolutionists, who are trying to destroy the two pillars of our strength which are, our unity and our belief that if
we organise within the labour movement we can change society.
What then comrades should we do now? I believe that we must build upon our historical strength and I believe that
there is a great deal more than we have recognised in the moral values of socialism against the rotten values of
capitalism. We must support the women’s movements, the peace movements and those who are trying to bring
about a peaceful united Ireland. We must build the unions, we must put forward a socialist analysis, we must have
democracy in the Labour Party.
The Labour Party is a socialist party. But what it does believe and I think it is right, is this: that if you rely upon an
ideological scholasticism alone to guide you, you will splinter as the SWP expelled the Revolutionary Communist Group
and they expelled the Revolutionary Communist tendency, and the Revolutionary Communist Tendency has now given
birth to The Discussion Group. The splintering and disintegration of the left – very evident at this meeting – is, in
the view of the Labour Party, a source of weakness. We believe that experience will educate in socialism and unite us.
What Hilary said about the women’s movement is very important. What may begin as a non-political movement
saying ‘it’s only about women’s rights’ will progress when people begin to ask themselves whether that
is really true. If half the places in the grammar schools were taken by women is that the equality the feminist movement
wants? Not at all. If half the chairman of the multinational corporations were women, is that the achievement that
would be wanted? No. I believe there is a very important place for socialist groups discussing and working on the
problems of society. There are many of them.
We have not got on this platform the Communist Party, the New Communist Party, the Socialist Party of Great Britain,
the Marxist-Leninists. We have not got the Revolutionary Communist Group or the Revolutionary Communist
Tendency. We have not got the Spartacists or the Posadists, the Workers Revolutionary Party or the Workers
Socialist League.
There is no substitute for united action within a united Labour Party. How can we improve the prospects? By
amalgamation? No. By popular front? No. By collective entryism to expose, polarise and split the Labour Party?
No. By taking each issue, by cooperation on racialism, on the women’s movement, on peace, on jobs – Yes, as
the Anti-Nazi League has shown and by individuals who want to contribute joining the Labour Party. We must also
retain the centres of socialist thought represented by the various journals that are published. I do not imagine that the
leaders of these will want to join the Labour Party as it would be impertinent to suggest that they do. But I do invite
those who are members of no groups, or those who have served in one, or other, or many of the splinter groups, to
consider what is happening in the Labour Party today.
The radicalisation of the main body of the labour movement, the genuine restatement of the socialist case, the debate
on democracy in the Labour Party today is sharper and more real that it has ever been. That is the case for
democratic socialism. I can only lay one claim for it, and that is that the British Labour Party is the instrument of the
British working class movement and nobody here can deny it whatever view they may take. What we offer is unity of
action plus diversity of thought – a pluralism within a democratic movement.
I may so this in conclusion. If the Labour Party fails it does not follow that there will be a swing to the socialist groups.
My own opinion is that if the Labour Party and the Socialist groups in Britain attack each other, as happened in
Germany before the war, you could easily move into a fascist situation in Britain. And it does not follow that socialism
will emerge automatically phoenix-like from the ashes of fascism. We’ve had the experience of Italy and Germany,
Spain and Portugal. When fascism was destroyed it did not follow that democratic socialism automatically emerged.
The British working class movement created the British Labour Party and we have the means to win consent for
socialism by democracy. Any other sort of socialism is unachievable and would not be worth having even if it could be
achieved. That is my case".
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| The Crisis of the Left |
| On 17th March 1980 a debate on the future of the left was held in Central Hall Westminister. The debate featured various speakers with differing points of view; Paul Foot, Tariq Ali, Hilary Wainwright, Audrey Wise, Stuart Holland and Tony Benn. The debate could crudely be summed up as those representting the left within the Labour Party and those representing the left outside. From reading the transcript, it was a rowdy meeting with lots of heckling. Below is the transcript of Mr Benn's input into the meeting. Although this took place 26 years ago, it still has relevance to the role of a socialist who doesn't fit into the revolutionary lefts agenda. |
| The Crisis and Future of the Left with contributions from Tony Benn, Stuart Holland, Audrey Wise, Tariq Ali, Paul Foot, Hilary Wainwright and edited by Peter Hain was published by Pluto Press in 1980. |
| "The British Working Class movement created the British Labour Party and we have the means to win consent for socialism by democracy. Any other sort of socialism is unachieveable and would not be worth having even if it was achievable. That is my case". TONY BENN - March 1980 |