We must understand the mood of the Party, and the needs of the situation, after Brighton. The Labour movement wants, above all, to win the next election. It wants to do it because it wants to demolish Thatcherism. Anything which cuts across that goal, from either right or left, will be ruthlessly condemned by the Party membership.
Take the response to John Edmonds, general secretary of the GMB, on the first day of conference. He was cheered, including by CLP delegates, when he made clear he was prepared to use the GMB's leverage in the Party.
I don't believe he was cheered because people wanted right wing policies. When Deakin of the TGWU, or Carron of the AEU - who I'm not comparing Edmonds to - threatened or used the block vote in the 1950s they were jeered, not cheered. They used it directly to push through right wing policies regardless of their effect. Edmonds because he was stressing something else that without unity and discipline Labour could not win. The delegates know that is true.
Left I don't believe the left has anything to fear from this particular development.
The left wants Labour to win more than anyone else in the Party. They will win over the centre ground of the party;
membership, the 'party loyalists', because the left does have the greatest will, and the clearest strategy, to win.
Nor will the Party membership, including most importantly the trade union... membership, condemn any arguments in the party which are about how to win. What they are not interested in, and hunt v have svmpathv with them. Is a fight in the Party for its own sake. They are not interested in posturing, or protesting. They want power in order to destroy what Thatcherism has done.
This is why the right will have a tar rougher time than they think. Because the type of policy they destroy Thatcherism. They are discussing ways to 'build on' Thatcherism, not how to destroy it:
Mass Labour party members are not so demoralised, or so opportunist, that they want the party to have office for its own - that might be the ambition of a sake few hangers on, or careerists, but it is not the spirit of the mass Labour Party membership. Everything we do must be in the spirit of winning the next election Ior LaDour.
Where, therefore, will the difference cheered between the right and the lett develop -because, of course, they will?
First because the events that will determine whether Labour wins the next election won't be the elections that will take place in the next four years although obviously we have got to devote the greatest attention to winning these. It will be what happens outside parliament that will determine the outcome of the If the trade unions are defeated, if the fight in local government is defeated, if Labour doesn't 'aid. the international struggles, if the fight against the poll tax isn't carried through, then we can kiss goodbye to winning the next election and getting of understands that and the right doesn't.
policy carried out towards the miners was so misguided. If the miners had won Thatcher would have lost the election. Because the miners lost Labour lost. want won't key struggles outside parliament in the next four years, but it will be these which will, more than anything else, determine the outcome of the next election.
Second policies which eliminate it.
People Damaging that just at the couldn't happen to a be to demolish it and its support.
•This. IsSUC
Thatcher. The left
This is why, among other reasons, the It is impossible to tell what will be the Unions doesn't aim to demolish Thatcherism. We have to have underestimated how much Labour gained at the last election by defeating the Alliance and pushing it into third place In the last twenty years issue out openly. Labour has lost 45 votes to the Alliance for every vote it has lost to the Tories. The destruction of the Alliance increases chances of winning. dramatically Labour's chance to win - if we are prepared to use the opportunity.
This is why it is doubly damaging moment when the Alliance was plunged into crisis the right wing in the Party, such as John Lloyd of Vote the New Statesman, Austin Mitchell of the Fabians, Eric Hammond or Bill Jordan, comes forward to give the Alliance a lifeline by proposing coalition, proportional representation, or prettifying the politics of Owen and Steel. Our attitude to the Alliance crisis should have been It "nicer" group of people. Our policy to the Alliance should two years also shows Up the hollowness of right's claim to want to win. The right wing constantly goes on about how it wants to win and the lett doesn't. In fact it is the right which advocates policies, coalition, which would make it certain Labour would not win and that there would not be a Labour government. By explaining this we will make it clear to the vital rank and file middle ground in the party that it is the right, not the left, that is the obstacle to winning the next election.
It is the same in the unions. The rank and tie, ana tne enure madie ground l the trade unions, don't want anything to do with no strike deals. , which unfortunately some in the party leadership are playing with, and we have to bring that We also have to point out that it i fetishes of the right which harm Labour's Take, for example the witch hunt. This has now been seen not only to be anti-democratic but a complete waste of time. The swing to Labour in Liverpool was the second highest in the country after Scotland.
Terry Fields had a huge swing in his direction in Broadgreen.
I don't believe that this is because people are supporting Militant's politics - right wingers on Merseyside got just as big a vote as leftwingers, and the party in Scotland got even greater support.
But it does show people are completely uninterested in the whole issue of Militant. However the right ensured we spent with the NEC totally troverted and obsessed by this witch hunt. It was a complete and total waste of time, positively damaging, and this has to be explained to the Party. I believe this is getting through to the Party membership.
Take the right's activities in Birmingham prior to the election. The keep out of Birmingham' letter sent to Black Section members by Roy Hattersley and other Birmingham MPs been rightly condemned by Bill Morris focussed national attention' on a routine Black Section meeting and stirred up a racist backlash that damaged us both in the local and general elections → all the polls show that during the elec tion, even at the height of the campaign, Labour didn't make the slightest advance in the West Midlands.
Coalition I think we could do with a little investigating of Frank Field - - whose attacks on Labour Party candidates undoubtedly helped us lose Wallasey in the general election The discipline that is needed if Labour is to win doesn't just apply to the left. Indeed the left has never sabotaged Labour's chances - unlike the right. We have to point out, for example, the dif ference between the discipline of the left in the last election and the wrecking activities of Callaghan in the 1983 election If the left is going to win it must carry the centre ground of the rank and file with it. This can only be done by making clear that the left is not pursuing some goal of its own, but is seeking the general goal of the labour movement of destroying Thatcherism.
Finally I think we have to spend much more effort on international issues Obviously the outcome of the struggie
Socialist Action 9 Oct 1987