tion was an own-goal defeat, scored by a leadership that did not want to win. And if they were the only ones to suffer by it, we would say they deserved to lose.
The campaign began with Labour well in the running to overtake the Tories. local elections gave Tories a lead of only six per cent in the popular vote. polls showed popular port for a lot of Labour's positions on issues unemployment and the EEC. There was a record number of undecided voters.
During the campaign, a torrent of leaked documents revealed that another five years of Thatcherism would mean the dismantling and ese ors the the are state, and new attacks on the rights unionists unemployed.
In spite of this, the gap didn't widen, Callaghan and Healey finished off the process. But at the base, the tale was different. Record numbers of election volunteers came forward io help, Labour canvassers reached more voters than those of any other party, and 15,000 new members were recruited.
This enthusiasm among the acwists was betrayed by a leadership did want CIO abour's radical policies, eterred a Tory victory which rened the prospect busebreaking a decimated Labour Party for the role of coalition part==: with the Alliance when or if the i aers turn against Thatcher.
are already •hat the reason was not them but :he unpopularity of Labour's leftwing policies. But this ignores the fact that Thatcher's most effective argument was the alleged lack of any alternative on the economy and jobs.
Socialist Action government.
with no lasting created.
The the The suplike means towards socialist aims.
policies for reason.
had a field of the past and had failed.
the of win railway worker one who has not done a I'm voting Conservative'.
saying alternative plans had ferent way because they had already had experience of the 'moderate' policies of Healey and Co under the last The argument was that pumping money into the economy would only lead to inflatión and a new squeeze, and real jobs Labour's manifesto did contain policies relating to planning and industrial democracy, and promised o dirept investment in the interests of need rather than protit. Socialist Action's objections to the Alternative Economic Strategy are well known. But the overwhelming bulk of party activists thought it was a leaders fear the exactly the same -That is why they never spoke about them. The Tories then day arguing that which Labour's policies had been tried in As a result, many voters agreed 'Mr Tebbitt's home truths are not infallible, but even in Bolton, where unemployment 'and despondency are great, no-one seemed to have anything much better to offer. This is one of the great strengths of Thatcherism and Tebbittism. They have half-convinced people that, somehow, unemployment at its present level is inevitable.' with the unemployed Stevenage quoted the Financial Times as saying: 'She is a heartless cow, but she is the only U-turn.
This meant that, without a clear Tories on the defensive, the leaks and revelations about Conservative no effect. Because if Labour had no fundamentally difrunning the what guarantee would there be that a Labour government because gramme' of old style reflation which as Tribune pointed out was smuggled in by the right-wing to enable them to avoid talking about the economic measures in Labour's programme.
This led to the humiliating spectacle of the television chat-show on dustry spokesman, a grey blur called, I believe, Cunningham, baldly denied to millions of viewers that Labour had any plans for naRubert Cornwell Financial Times 28 May tionalisation, only to have his Conservative opposite number prove him wrong by extensive quotes from the Labour manifesto.
This could only reinforce the voters' impression that Labour did not believe in its own policy, and regarded public ownership something to be afraid of. references to industrial democracy, new rights at work, and alternative production, to be found in Labour policy, were never presented.
This means that on i the economy Labour did not lose votes of its left policies raised on the doorstep as much as fears of unilateralism, those not against voting for a clearly unilateralist party were deterred from one which was not only divided, but led by a man who lacked the gumption to defend his own party's policies.
In- As one disillusioned voter put it to me, 'If old Gummidge won't stand up for unilateralism, will he ever stand up for anything?' The final Labour workers was to see Enoch Powell arguing defence policy more effectively and with more conviction than any of Labour's spokesmen.
Powell's radical than Labour's, and rejected not only the British bomb, but any reliance on America's bomb. He described the US as 'dominated by an obsessive sense of mission and a hallucinatory view of the world scene', and referred to powerful US economic interests in the armaments industry as a source of world tension.
Here again, had a quasi-unilateralist policy, it could be denounced by the Tories, as but the case in favour was never The put. Peter Riddell, the Times reported on 25 May that leaders privately their unilateralist approach is unpopular with traditional working class voters and, in the campaign so. far, it has been played down'.
and even otherwise, senile House.
humiliation for for and logic position was more because Financial correspondent, recognise that By Stev Labour voters, traditional and however distrust • the warmonger in the White By going on the offensive against Thatchers' foreign policy of subservience to Reagan, Labour could have tapped a real mass curDemocracy's leaders, using Tony Benn's own words to the 1982 Labour Party conference: that the left should ane une party around, une existing membership, the existing policies and the existing leadership•
This is why the parliamentary left did not put up a candidate for the leadership in 1982. They then endorsed a fudged election manifesto whose wording created the space both for Healey's sabotage, and for all the Labour leaders to claim that Labour was in favour of incomes policy.
Then they refused to speak out in defence of Labour's conference policies and against Callaghan and Healey's sabotage.
Their policies proved disastrous. It did not stop the right from sabotaging Labour's campaign. It did not unite Labour, but divided it as never before. It did not win the election. It has put the left into its weakest began.
The left must now rethink and draw the lessons of this experience.
What was wrong with the strategy? The big mistake, lies ir CLPD's own rallying cry: 'The existing membership, policies and leadership'. This sounds nice in theory. In practice it is useless. The existing reauersmp does not want ine existing membership or policies, and was prepared to lose an election rather than have to form a government on these policies. t, Tories won The leadership therefore witch-hunted the membership for six months instead of preparing to fight the fores. and then attacked Labour's policies in the middle of the election campaign The tragedy of the parliamentary left's approach is that when the final sabotage look place, по-опе was aore to defend the policies. Foot didn't detend them because he didn't want to break with Healey. Benn couldn't because of his self-imposed silence and naive trust in Bishops Stortford. The leaders of Labour's campaien couldn't defend them because they simply didn't agree with them!
Tony Benn and the parliamentary left signally failed to understand a message which revolutionary socialists have consistently argued that Labour's right wing do not play by the same rules as the party rank and file, because they are beholden to a different class. Healey and his crew are literally traitors.
They decided long ago, as did the bureaucrats who support them, that their influence, prestige and position depends on avoiding a confrontation with the ruling class at all costs. When the IMF told Denis Healey to impose cuts against the working class in … he unhesitatingly did so, and the rigni wing trade union leaders unhesitatingly helped him.
This was their alternative to a noholds barred fight with the monetary blamed the US for the arms race.
Apart from that, Powell to make challenging the Thatcherite argument that the main threat to world peace is in the 'Kremlin drive for world domination'. establishment, and they were not prepared to have such a fight. now tell Healey that no government will de given a Dll or neal Dy tel unless it keeps Britain in the EEC, and imposes a savage incomes policy Healey's conclusion is that it is better not to govern at all, rather than face a fight with these people To seek unity with Healey was therefore as unpromising and doomed a policy as seeking unity with In the event, the left leadership held its tongue while the right cut it into pieces and thereby threw away Labour's only hope of victory.
present attempt to get unity in the İeadership. This is doomed to failure. • Hallely All the signs are that the section of the left previously grouped around Tony Benn understands this and will now - al lasu But it will do so under the disastrously weaker conditions of a terrible Labour defeat, and moreover a defeat of the worst possible kind — a defeat at the hands of the Party's own leadership.
ensure that this time a lett in the Party and unions will emerge which draws the lessons of this defeat and saboteurs of the Labour Party election campaign — its own right wing leadership. it was left to the running in policy.
When the Pentagon and the banks endorses US nuclear policy, Thatcher. Both defend the same class.
'here are two roads ahead. One proposed by CLPD, is to continue the • come out ngaling.
We in Socialist,Action will try to fights to the bitter end against the true hock to TUC, can't be too keen on told of the context of Healey's