of MPs and the Labour Party NEC, which puts an alternative view of the purposes of Labour unity and how it secured. For airing his views Eric Heffer has, it goes without saying, come in for the now habitual attacks from a Fleet Street press that is. increasingly being shalled to help to impose Kinnock monolithism within AT A CONFERENCE held in the Memorial Hall, Fartingdon London, on Tuesday 27 February 1900. nell hardie. socialist moved: "That the conference was in favour of establishing a distinct Lavour grow in parlament, should have their own whip and argue upon their policy.' The proposal was pal ana carneu leni con The Labour Party was therefore formed as a parliamentary party, supported in the country by the ILP, the Fabian Society, the Democratic (Marxist character) and those trade unions who decided to affiliate to the new party. At that stage the Cooperative movement did not join, although the Cooperative Party affiliated later.
The Labour Party, from its inception, was based on working class movement. It, therefore, found that the affiliated trade unions were both DOSILVO negative. They gave the Party its class basis, mass membership, whilst some unions were progressive and quite revolutionary in outlook, they also acted as a brake on the party, at times holding it back, because or une cnaracier and nature of the unions, which had economic objectives, i.e. get more members. rather than going all oul for fundamental transformation society.
It was and continues to be a broad church. Various newspapers who supDOLL the like Herald, Organiser, London Briefing, Labour Leader etc compete with each other for the ear of the membership.
Over the years there has always been within the party a right, left and centre — people often moving from one position to another. also has seen many groups within it. The ILP was a party within the party until in the 1930s it decided to disaffiliate. The Socialist League was set up in the late 1930s, and was disbanded and some of its leaders like Nye Bevan and Mir Stafford Cripps expelled from membership. After the 1931 debacle, the party moved relatively the Labour After World Street, later une moune wroup. has, therefore, kaleidoscope, water-sheds, another aftect gressive reformist Social British politics, politics, for almost three with the Heath got organisea of the leader for their of stitutional changes.
changes. The party Tribune, lateral nuclear Weekly, Socialist The party leftwards, but never accepted a full-blooded left-wing socialist position.
War Il, the party LOTOS. again saw a number or groups arise such as Keep Left, the Bevanites, and The party been sort of moving and shifting, but basically being part of a whole Labour governments are usually which in one way or policy. organisation and future development. Ine 1940->- government was a pro government. It created the welfare state and affected ycals, including decades. centrist returns goverlineals werc the accepted norm, and it was only government, that some of the basic reformist concepts overturned, certainly in relation saw the 1971 Industrial Relations Act.
The 1979 Thatcher government, and the relative failure of the 1974-79 labour government changed all that. The Tories under Mrs Thatcher moved away from the middle-ground, accepting a 'radical right' emphasis, being opposed to 'creeping socialism'.
Within the Labour Party, because of arguments about what should be in the election manifesto, plus the role in drawing up the manifesto, and the dissatisfaction of party members with some of the MPs, a campaign gor under way lor conThere were also important policy accepted unidisarmament remove nuclear bases and weapons from and around British shores. The party urg ed the abolition of the House of settling manifesto, remove its powers concerning legislation. It said it would get Britain out of the EEC. It called for more public ownership, with greater planning on the nation's resources.
to the left and to a more socialist position.
somelling which many on the right of the party could not accept. They opposed both the constitutiona! changes and the policy changes, and unlike the majority of the left over the who had accepted a minority position, they refused to do that, and modern Democratic Party.
This split before the last 1983 general election undoubtedly had its effect. It caused confusion, and after the SDP had formed an alliance with the Liberals it meant that voters away from Labour I do not believe that the party los even though it was not properly ex plained in areas such as defence.
some areas loss votes. regard to the electorate, the working. class has not really shrunk, but it is clearly in certain ways different.
Labour's task, therefore, is not to turn its back porters, but to properly analyse where the changes have taken place and go out to get their support. It must, to: example, pay much more attention to the ethnic groups in society, especiall! the black workers. That means, in my have to agree with separate affiliated group which will cater for the special needs of those groups I socicly.
day as it was in the past. That does not in real mean being tied down to bureaucratic nationalisation, but it does mean that we cannot make it a genuinely democratic society unless the ownership of the means or producuon, change is taken out of the hands of private owners.
European type society, there must be many forms of public ownership Social Slalc. local, cooperative, firms etc -with both consumer and workers' interests involved control of the party is left with the nasome tional executive of the party, who are responsible to the party conferenc nd not allow it to be transformed t the parliamentary But we must have, not the ce of dia dividual, whoeve With might be.
membership must policy must be allowed to determine wha should or should not be in the party' sup election manifesto.
La broad church. Groups, even highly organised ones, bu the constitution, must be allowe to exist. We should not go back to the days of proscribed lists, some sort made Public ownership is as essential to- unrealistic.
The transform society, distribution and exTo avoid an East individual not allow 1l all of which must have slavishly The party must also ensure that eventually with the fort to individua i must obe in the ri making, and no one persor socialist The party must also continue to br , as long as they abide personal with people table. and centre MPs) and the Solidarity group, a party right wing group, who in a sense are the heirs of the 'Gang of Four' who with the help of the media created the SDP As long as the contradiction exists in the type of socialism Labour stands for, and the way it will be achieved, with class politics at the centre of the there will always be different groups and attitudes This is not a bad thing, something which has to be accepted, and exhortations to a phoney type of unity, as used to be the Bevanite days, immediate perspective for Labour is to win the next general elec. tion. Every group and section in the party agrees with that. The feeling for party unity is rightly very strong. This has led some in the party, especially : amongst the right wing (but not confined to them) to argue that argument and dialogue over policy matters should cease. But that cannot happen. The nature of the party wil The Labour Party was not created for anv individua and when it rathe followed Ramsay MacDonald, it got into real difficulties. The party was created to carry out the task of building a just society, of eection of Labor socialism The governments are only a step in that direction. Labour believes that one must make every efdemocratic parliamentary means, but a socialist at the same time, if the need arose t fight to keep democracy (if it were anti-democratic force to keep it.
If therefore, the party has such a perspective, then image conformity, disciplinarianism, are unlikely to be membership. Voluntary quietism for a period.
are acceptable but to try to foist authoritarian con party, not a centralist party, like the Bolsheviks or Stalinist parties of the recent past were I believe a Labour government. even a miserable reformist one, is better than a Tory government, but i cannot be an end in itself. governments must have clear objec tives, and they must go out to create and build the type of society that Keir Hardie and his colleagues worked for That is still our task, and therefore, to do it, we need a socialist campaignins party, not just a campaigning party but one which really is determined t change society, not merely reform it
Socialist Action 1 November 1985 tradiction utterly reactionary relation in South Africa.
certail development Africa's 1982 so on.
fion is in industry -cent of South Africa's exports.
sector.
is cone facing the apartheid state.
There bourgevisic manufacturing dous poverty among the compulsorily confined to tustans. THE CHIEF specific feature of South Africa, the one leading to its explosive crisis today, is the conbetween the rapid development of its economy and its That political structure in turn not only inhumanly oppresses and exploits the black working class but distorts and mangles every social teatures of its structure South relatively advanced of South Africa's output was accounted for by Inaustry - Inal is mining, manulacturing, gas and electricity production and Twenty seven per cent of South Africa's economically active popula- what only slightly less ¿ability of South Africa to build an infernationally competitive manufacturwhich leaves its economy most totally dependent on fluctuaTons in its revenue from gold exports of the primary contradictions Blacks comprise 80 per cent of the workers in mining and manufacturing.
significant black either mining In the agricultural sector tremenand oppression exists African rural population the banBut the core of South African agriculture is a rich and prosperous capitalist farming sector entirely owned by whites. In this sector blacks are confined solely to hired labour who are denied any rights of trade unionism On the land therefore the black population is divided into a completel impoverished peasantry on the Ban tustans and a black rural proletariat working in the white capitalists agriculture. significant agricultural bourgeoisie exists at all.
The service sector of the economy in South Africa is divided almost completely into two. One part provides the most minimal and primitive services for the black labour force. The service sector for the whites in contrast is up to the highest European and North American standards.
In the service sector is concentrated small black bourgeoisie exists But it is in reality tiny. Owners of small businesses, sionals', even black puppets flunkies of the apartheid state, simply do not compete, or compare, with the giant white monopolies from Anglo-American downwards.
What in reality exists as a social class is really a black petty-bourgeoisie - a 'middle' class in the most literal sense. In no sector of the economy, not even in the homelands, is there any really major black capitalist class.
The great bulk of the black population in the service sector are of course proletarians wage earners. work in the transport system, in the mail system, in health, in eduation, in the state apparatus. There is also a significant layer of black 'domestic servants'.
in the direction of the proletariat. This black 'profes They
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political struc- ture based on the apartheid state.
than the thirty three per cent in Britain. a Mining products account for 55 per The in-