NEIL unilateralism, and the clear crisis that it has produced, creates a new situation in the Labour Party. In particular it destroys the political basis of the soft left.
After all what on earth does the soft left claim to stand for any more? It no longer defends the positions of women and black people in the party — the need to bring Labour into line with the changing composition of the working class. For a section of the LCC this was simply a cynical manoeuvre as they believed that by taking up the demands of women and black people they could criticise the hard left. But now that the hard left has corrected some original errors on this among some of its members, and is the chief defender in the party of the demands of women and black people, the soft left has lost any practical interest in the subject - showing these issues did not form any point of principle, or even of political strategy. Magician Nor does the soft left have any viable economic strategy. The policy review document on A Productive and Competitive Economy, produced by Bryan Gould, is literally incredible. As Ken Livingstone has pointed out even a magician couldn't make the figures it proposes add up. It furthermore suggests that the entire British economy will be reoriented towards modernising the domestic economy but that measures of public ownership or control of capital will be unnecessary to do it — presumably British capital will repent of its ways and reverse its course over the entire last century in a sort of capitalist conversion on the road to Damascus? The economic policy document from the review is is not merely not socialist, it isn't even practical.
On unilateralism the issue is now brutally sharp. The soft left have spent the time since 1983 explaining, as Alice Mahon pointed out at Chesterfield, that even if other policies were going to be abandoned unilateralism would be maintained. Now the person for whom all these sacrifices of principle have been made, Neil Kinnock, turns round and delivers a crushing attack on unilateralism.
Furthermore the soft left has made the situation worse by its total gutlessness. A year ago a statement on left unity was put out which a few individuals from the soft left - Peter Hain, George Galloway and Joan Ruddock - to their credit signed. The truth of the matter is that if Kinnock had been confronted with a united left he would never have dared to make the retreats he has — unilateralism. But instead when the rest of the soft left kicked up a tremendous fuss, the soft left who had been prepared to work with the hard lett retreated in the face of the criticism. The result was that Kinnock, not being confronted with a united left on the key issues, felt emboldened to go in for further attacks on party policy.
Mid-air Robin Cook, who emerged as the chief opponent of left unity, has now turned up as the chief organiser of the Kinnock-Hattersley, that is the soft-left plus right, campaign. The soft left was more concerned to keep itself together on any old basis than to take a stand for principles in the party — and this despite the fact that those who signed the statement on lett unity were perfectly prepared to face up to criticism by more sectarian elements within the hard left.
in essence, suspended in mid-air. Its refusal to act left the space for Kinnock to carry through his attacks on unilateralism and much else besides. The soft left paralysed itself by the fact it started off by support by a sectarian refusal to work with others in the party. Instead it must always be principles and policies which come first.
renunciation of particularly on Today the situation is different. The soft left is,
----- pull-quotes -----
for an individual, Kinnock, and only then decided the policies it would support. It then deepened that