THE MONTH since the general election has seen a series of constitutional proposals put forward by the right wing ranging from one member one vote (OMOV) to abolition of the national execuțive committee. there is a coherence behind all these proposals — to take the Labour Party in the direction of the Eurosocialist' parties in France, Spain and Greece. LES HUCKFIELD MEP outlines how the structure of the French or Spanish Socialist Parties is used to force through their political line.
AFTER Labour's election defeat, the most incredible solutions are coming forward to the current problems we face. We are being told that we must drop our policy on defence, and drop our policy on what is euphemistically called 'social ownership' and that it we change the mechanism for the reselection of MPs then we've cracked it for next time. It is time for a cool analysis of this.
One member one vote isn't an attempt to extend the franchise. In fact it will diminish the franchise because it will take away the intluence and the exercise of power by local parties, and especially by delegates to local parties.
If OMOV is introduced even if it is with some kind of electoral college mechanism, that will quite change the shape of constituency parties especially outside London. GCs are comprised of up to 50 per cent trade union delegates. Many of those filiated trade union branches, if they know that in future they will not be able exercise the input they currently have, will rapidly come to the conclu sion that it isn't worth affiliating OMOV is about breaking the trade union link at constituency party level, and more importantly, about breaking the link between the accountability of an MP, on a regular basis, to the same body that reselects him or her. It is designed to take power away from conference and from local place it firmly in the hands of the leadership.
There are some lessons that we ought to be learning very rapidly. We ought to look at what has happened constitutionally in some of the other so-called socialist parties.
Why is it that Mitterand and Jospin of the Socialist Party in France, that Gonzales of the PSOE in Spain, that Papandreou of the Pasok in Greece and that the West German SPD leadership have been able to make massive policy shifts to the right? In all those cases it is because the party leaders have a tight constitutional and political grip on the party right the way down.
For example, the reason that Mitterand changed the voting system in during last assembly elections wasn't But organisational bureaucracy are chosen.
areas of the (OMOV)
leadership disagreed said.
Is that bureaucracy radically af- British Labour Party.
Consider
Clause meeting fluence of the party minimal.
parties, representation There was an interesting in Strasbourg, treasurer.
Labour's main economic policies main defence 'European socialist comrades'.
representatives national of the Confederation simply West Germany, structure. the because he hoped the Socialist Party would get a bigger percentage of the popular vote. It was also because a pro. The the party leadership and the central far more control over policy and over the candidates that Look too at the situations we have recently witnessed in Spain and Greece. pened to In Spain Gonzales has wound up large tingham PSOE because they disagree with him politically. In Greece Pasok candidates in both the European and national parliament elections have been taken off the ballot paper the night before the poll because the party with what they These parties vary in degree and in meloa but waal ley an mave mi com- not.
the central the central party leadership has acute control over the constitution and a strangle-hold over the selection of candidates - because of that the leadership can manipulate The only policy changes almost overnight. These trends are beginning to develop in the the last manifesto was put together. You might think it ticipate in was on the basis of that celebrated selection between Parliamentary Labour Party and the national executive committee. In fact place here. the influence of the NEC and the in.
was Based on the The leader's office and the shadow cabinet exercised a massive influence. The Labour leadership doesn't as yet feel the need for a proportional system, kind of centralisation of the consitution and of policy formation is happening here in the Labour Party in Britain.
article in Tribune recently by David Martin, the new leader of the British Labour group and Glyn Ford, the new ward by the they were hesitatingly starting to advocate that see a new policies shouldn't be determined by party conference and the NEC but that in future should be worked out jointly with what they call their Over the past few years there have been a number of meetings between of the national ecutive committee and representatives of Socialist Parties. There have also been a number of working party discussions with the SP in France and the SPD in with the specific task of working out joint policy statements. Until now the British Labour Party has always expressed reservations about the coyotel European defence policy and about progress towards a federal European within the common market When the latest meeting of Confederation of Socialist Parties took place in Lisbon, those reservations weren't expressed with anything like the same clarity.
continental socialist parties have already lost the freedom to choose their candidates at local level. They have learned to their cost that it is the central party hierarchy which is the dominant influence.
You only have to look at what hapKnowsley North and NotEast, SINCE to what L already starting to be said about the NEC choosing by-election candidates in future, to see that trend is already beginning here.The small print in the consultation document on the so-called choice of selection procedures to introduce OMOV also hints that the NEC will be the final arbiter of whether a CLP can hold a selection conference or The political developments in the . other West European socialist parties — shifts to the right by the party leadership are starting to work their way through the British Labour Party too way continental socialist parties have been able to bring about those shifts to the right is because they don't have active local party units with the constitutional right to parpolicy formation and the of candidates.
OMOV into the British Labour Party is fundamental to the same shift taking We must fight against that trend Campaign Group of Labour MPs in the House of Com mons, based on the various campaiges affiliated to Labour Left Liaison, bas ed on local Campaign groups up and down the country there is already the makings of a good national organiss tion the left has to build up an agreed of political demands. We want to see the defence of unilateralism, the in plementation of the demands put for.
Black Section and Women's Action Committee. We r to see reselection defended, we wan polic Ireland. All of those ought to be the framework : of the left's That is the agenda we ought to pe ward against becoming gradmalh alled into something that can owly b described as Euro-socialisma. That i what's before us on the horizon.
This is an edited version of a set tre at Socialist Action's Polis " * 1e
IN OUR last issue JUDE WOODWARD looked at the roots of the family system in class society. In this issue she looks at the family in capitalist society and its relation to the building of socialism.
THE monogamous family as it exists. throughout capitalist society today, in the working class as much as in the bourgeois class. is a thorougniy reactionary institution, not only founded upon the domestic slavery of women, but also embodying the absence of rights • OT children. 'modern' nuclear family is less modern than the monarchy or the House of Lords, and more deen rooted than. he tamiv resting as it does on the complete sub. jugation of women, is the site of the brutalisation of women and children, the mechanism which ensures an audience for pornography and prostitution, for the peddling of reactionary clerical ideas, and reactionary Valeis like those of Gillick, Whitehouse.
Tvoicallv the most extreme and brutal forms of capitalist rule are also Those most identitied will monogamous family and the values of the family home. As with the case of Hitler's Germany.
The character of the family system as a reactionary, oppressive system of class society determines the attitude of Marxists towards it. Marxists give no Succol or suboon to novons unal dive any progressive content to the existence of the family system, on the contrary camwomen were declared free to participate in the real 'joys of motherhood', all marriages were declared free of com pulsion so divorce was unnecessary, and women undertook the housewor out of love of the job! Abortion was made illegal.
Such a substitution was simply a reactionary abandonment of the strug gle for women's liberation. Other ap proaches, like setting the goal of a new and higher form of the family, where men share in the housework out of love of the job, are simply miasmas. They either turn attention away from the rea issue, the extension of public provision of such services, or serve to prettify and disguise the real social position of women in the family.
The goal of Engels, the substitution of public industry for private service, is the only goal worth setting ourselves And the achievement of this goal will have the effect of destroying the family as it has existed since the beginning of class society. The family as the location for the power of men over women; and the unpaid domestic slavery of women will be ended. Such a final conclusion is impossible without the overthrowing of capitalism, and the organisation of production solely for profit, and its replacement by a system of common ownership of the means of production, which would allow both the massive exof the productive forces necessary to achieve these goals, and a method of organising production that puts human needs as guiding principle.
We do not have to falsely claim that
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election conference on 4 la: Socialist Action 10 July 1987