WHEN THE ruling class embarked on the policies of the Thatcher government in 1979 it set in train an irreversible change not only in the British but in British politics. More precisely it began to create the most profound shifts in of British politics Ine structure since World War I.
The reasons for these changes are easy to understand once the demagogy peddled in the press is discounted, and the real facts of the political situation sidered.
Already in 1979, at the time Thatcher's first electoral victory, the Tory Party received its lowest share of the vote in any election it had won since World War I. In 1983 Thatcher's vote in that election she received the lowest percentage of the vote of any government with a safe majority in parliament in British history.
This combination of a government carrying through extremely reactionary Shah policies, but with a low level of direct popular support, was bound to create extreme strains in the political structure of the country.
The alarm bells were already soun ding for British capitalist politics in 1981. The outcome of the right wing policies of the Wilson and Callaghan governments and the revolt against them that came to a head with the winter of discontent of 1978-79 — produced in Bennism the most powerful left wing in the British Labour Party since World War II. Simultaneously the unpopularity of the first two years of Tory government created a situation where Thatcher was rated the most unpopular prime minister since opinion polls began.
In 1980-81 the Tory Party suffered annihilating electoral defeats both in local government and by-elections.
This development was of tremendous significance, and of serious concern, for the British ruling class. While it is true that Thatcher's policies -and particularly their intitial impact during the slump of 1979-81 - sharply hit sections of British industry they were in the direct interests of the most powerful groups within British capital.
Output While the output of British-based manufacturing industry fell by 1s per cent in two years, the great multinational companies, banks, panies, retan and property groups boomed as virtually never before.
More than £46 billion of foreign investment flowed out of Britain in the four years from 1979-83. After decades of decline Britain's share of world foreign investments began to rise again — increasing from 11.2 per cent in 1975 to 14.5 per cent in 1980. The Thatcher government reinforced still further the imperialist character of the economy and British capital.
This development -the privatisation of new boom sectors OT munications, aerospace, helped to reinforce the position of the most powerful groups capital. Their position has been reincon- forced still further by the merger boom of the last three years. of Capital In addition strengthening of British capitals international operations tration of capital that was produced Thatcher succeeded in shifting the distribution of income between capital and labour within the domestic economy.
The share of profits of industrial and commercial companies economy, after declining in 1980, increased from 13.5 per cent in 1979 to 16.7 per cent in 1983 — the highest sustained level since the 1950s.
Parallel with this redistributing income from labour to capital, Thatcher also began a major redistribution of income working class. A combination of mass unemployment, tax changes, sector pay policy, cuts in benefits and every other available means, was used to widen income and other differentials within the working class.
The effect of these shifts even in purely electoral terms was evident in the sharp increase in the political divisions which began to appear between the different regions of the country the deepening "north-south gap' which has become such a favourite topic of discussion among the electoral commentators.
Owen The reasons for this shift are not hard to find. The south of England is by every measure the most prosperous Power Bemploy the, ghest chest unemployment, mortality and so on. The Tories' vote held up well here.
But in the north, which was increasingly hit by the economic crisis from the beginning of the 1960s onwards, Tory oll com- electoral support fell sharply.
The rapid increase in unevennesses and differentials within the working class produced by Thatcher's policies deepened that process still further. The • coupled with such as telecom and oil within British Thatcher also be seen in studies of the social base to the immediate of the Tory vote. Tory support in virtually every single - and the concen- population declined between Heath's electoral victory in 1970 and Thatcher's significantly in 1979 — the fall across Britain as a whole being three percent. in Tory support was among skilled, and higher paid, manual workers. Here the the Tory Party's vote actually increased by more than four shift that decisively won Thatcher the 1979 and 1983 elections.
process of shifts could be seen. the right wing in the already begun to re-asser itself -1972 Manchester engineering sit-ins. public 1975 severely hit skilled workers.
of revolt against this. shift to the Tories in combination Policy capitalist politics.
fitted perfectly lowest reverse them.
absolutely fundamental capitalism that without Thatcher' great Tories.
Thatcherism economic section the But the one exception to this decline percent. It was this among skilled manual workers Within the trade unions the same During the 1970s the AUEW had particular following the defeat of the But the right wings' dominance was greatly reinforced by the policies pursued by the Wilson-Callaghan governments. The wage controls introduced in The strikes among Leyland toolmakers in Goldsmith 1976 and 1977 were the first sharp signs The same shifts which produced a in turn, among skilled workers in the 1979 and 1983 elections helped reinforce the Duffy-Boyd right wing of the AUEW. By the late 1970s and early 1980s the AUEW right wing represented a quite new hardened right with the SDP. A wing within the trade union movement.
Thatcher in short had carried out a classic imperialist policy. She has reinforced the international positions of British capital. She had used this to mount a massive offensive against the labour movement. A major part of this was to divide the working class and pull its better off sections closer to directly tionalisations.
The development of the SDP, and reducing, the accomodation to it of a whole series of trends within the labour movement Politics into that context.
Because the policies pursued by Thatcher were indispensible for the most powerful sections of British capital it was vital that no government should Labour however, and particularly the Labour Party under strong left wing pressure which emerged from 1979, was in no way a reliable instrument for continuing the policies of Thatcherism. It therefore became for British Thatcherism should be COltinued. The solution to that problem Handsworth showed up in a brutal fashion the tensions which are developing in Overall there is a clear shift to the right. Thatcher, the SDP-Liberal Alliance, Kinnock, Willis, and the extreme right of the TUC, are all developing policies which will ensure that the fundamental changes brought about under the Thatcher government are that.
was found in the grisly face of Dr Death The SDP must be counted one of spectacularly successful political operations ever mounted by deal made oI une 'Falkland's factor' but the point purely factually is that there was no increase in Tory support in 1983. On the contrary the Conservative vote fell still further from its already low level in 1979. The entire decline in the Labour vote in 1983 went to the SDP and not to the The goal of the SDP was simple. It was not to provide an alternative to but to ensure that its essential policies were continued.
Following the 1983 election Owe announced the SDP's support for th 'social market economy" • the very words Thatcher used to describe he coins strike the a followed a in goals. During of total opposition to the NUM. Ower is totally determining the defence polic of the SDP-Liberal Alliance. The SDP in short, is not an alternative to the fundamental structural policies pursued by Thatcher, it is precisely their guarantor.
The pressure exercised by the SDP, has helped reinforce That- Photo: MARLIE FOLK cherisms impact in the labour move ment. Owen has maintained the closest possible links with the right wing of the TUC. The leadership of the EETPU works directly with sections of the coalition government of Labour and the Alliance is the political cage within which Owen is attempting to imprison the labour movement.
Kinnock and Willis in their turn have moved to shift Labour and the TUC to the right to fit within the mould Thatcher and Owen have created. The TUC is slowly but remorselessly shifting to accept the ballot and other provisions of the Trade Union Acts. Hattersley and Kinnock have already abandoned any pledge to a policy of renationalisation of privatised companies policy of new naLabour's pledges unemployment alC being slowly whittled away.
What is being created is a quite new framework for British politics. One in which certain questions are negotiable — notably the exact degree of welfare spending and certain measures of reflation of the economy - but where the fundamental structural shifts brought about by Thatcher remain unviolable.
That consensus now stretches right from Thatcher, through Owen, Stee and Hammond, to Willis and Kinnock.
It is the new emergent right wing majority bloc of British politics. same time the most radical and minority currents seen in British politics for sixty years have developed.
JOHN ROSS looks at why an overall shift to the right in British politics can be combined with a development of radical left wing minority currents inside and outside the labour movement: and what should be the response to IF THE radical imperialist politics pursued by Thatcher explain her success in consolidating a shift to the right, then they equally help to explain the radical minority trends which have developed in opposition to her.
The old imperialist politics of British capitalism was summed up in Disraeli's famous phrase of one nation'. The Conservative Party consciously set out to integrate almost every section of British society into an imperialist consensus. Those sections which were not integrated by the dominant Tories were integrated by the trade union and Labour Party bureaucracy.
La period of crisis around World War I - marked by the suffragettes, the struggle in Ireland and militant trade unionism before the war, and the effects of the Russi revolution and the creation of the Co munist Party after it - this consens succeeded in smothering revolt within Britain itself for well or a hundred years.
In Britain up to the 1840s a radics and even revolutionary, tradition h existed within the reached its peak with Chartism. B from the beginning of the 1850s o wards the entire British labour mor ment was thrown politically backwar by what Marx termed the 'period corruption' created by the rise British imperialism.
Britain became the classic land ‹ the labour aristocracy' in the real sense
in which Marx and Lenin used the term. The 'new model unions' created from the 1850s onwards were based in the relatively secure and privileged sections of the working class. It was almost 40 years the unskilled organise. Fifty years before the working class created its own political party.
A real line of descent, distorted, exists between the unions of this period and today's right wing. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers, the skilled craft ancestor of the present AUEW. It WAN refused to admit unskilled workers until after World War I. It refused to acpt women into i43. The Electrical Trades Union, the edecessor of the EETPU, was conmodelled on malgamated Society of Engineers.
The benefits that rialism provided for significant secins of the working class helped create abour movement that was classically iss collaborationist in both its intertional and domestic policies. It was dded to the empire, imbued with 'ism and chauvinism. It failed to ganise women and youth. It had no ISS Marxist wing.
While the Bntish imperialism unevenly distributed nevertheless they affected, as Marx pointed out, the labour movement as a whole. It was precisely for those reasons that the most radical currents politics were always most powerful amongst those who tegrated into system and benefits.
Most important of all was Ireland. Ireland was an oppressed nation directly integrated within the British state and subject to the most savage national oppression. tinuously against British rule even at the height of Britain's imperial splendour in the last part of the nineteenth century.
The second crucial Here dustrialisation was far more rapid than in England. Un Ine west coast, above all in Glasgow, was created one of the greatest concentrations of industry and slums in Europe.
The third key force less integrated into une impertast consensus women. The benefits of British imperialism were never extended to them in the same way as men. While the struggle for the vote at the beginning of the twentieth century had a powerful component among middle class women it also had a big impact among working class women. Sylvia Pankhurst's work working class women in the East End of London is just the most famous example of that.
These three currents interacted with in Ireland inspired the most advanced forces both in Scotland and among It was these catalysed later by the Russian revolution, which came together at the time of THATE World War I.
into were to however to the war crushed direct membership until the old tain.
War British imprivileges granted by were always rise of within British were least inimperialist majority virtually conwing was DaLC of in- Wilsons Citrines, cocks Lense yes and early1970s.
imperialist Break and above all the struggle three trends, deeds dictum by his imperialism. were Carrons, They period of which followed trend in British Those CURSCHILD. weren't were dominated by the Communist Party which by the 1930s, never mind later, was thoroughly stalinised and thoroughly reformist.
When the break down of British imperialist stability began to occur once more, from the mid-1960s onwards, almost inevitably that too began with those currents least integrated into the prevailing social order.
First was the impact of the great international perialism did British politics.
In miners' strike, a subjugate it.
to submission.
Nation
unintegrable the Woodbased 60 years.
that since World War I.
Handsworth in 1985, explosions.
the tion. imcontrol. The capitalism no give Thatcher's 'Great Where they vanguard of the British working class, has arisen the most advanced mass working class leadership in Britain for One that not only led the longest mass strike in the history of any imperialist country but forged the most advanced social alliances seen in Britain The black community in Britain, together with the people of Ireland the most oppressed section of all those within the British state, is also another great assimilable for Thatcher's new Britain. The inner city revolt of 1981, were elemental But in the black sections movement in the Labour Party, and black organisation in the labour movement in general, there is beginning to
Undoubtedly section
bourgeoisie. Against The solidarity, SCLUDES amnesty for sections, Socialist Action 20 September 1985 the movement; the Pit see do exist.
Willis preventing TOP of the fight for the liberation majority, provided they of British ultra-leftism. wil flow for _ for with internatoday. To the to fight for.
Socialist Action 20 September 1985 under the Export of Goods JCCHCCS Ihe company was staying in South Africa.
overcome the embargo on Bank s Week terpreted it as a sign that the bank believer issues have fused with economic ones that the risk of future lending to Africa outwieghs potential profits.
Chase Manhatten moved out, at least temporari-
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2. The radical minorities