THE LABOUR movement has been on the defensive ever since the June election. It still is. But through the gloom some chinks of light are beginning to emerge. Ironically they are being created by the same processes that ensured success last year.
The economic and political policy of the Thatcher government can be accurately summed up as 'divide and rule'. From 1979 onwards the full force of the capitalist market was let loose in British society. manufacturing industry and it also fragmented the working class.
Benefits For many of those in employment Thatcher's policies brought real benefits. In the year up to June 1983 average real take home pay rose by five per cent. The huge 1982-83 was the result of the major increase in real wages for those in employment.
It was those outside the core of employed workers who took the economic strain of ThatUnemployment rose by CICIAN Youth wages fell as a percentage of adult wages. Women's earnings fell as a percentage of men's. Black unemployment soared.
The logic and aim of Thatcher's policy was to create two working classes. prosperous Thatcherite heartland. The other an unemployed, young, proletariat.
Politically the result was the voting pattern seen in the June 1983 election. The Tories maintained their vote in the south and south east and among employed skilled workers. Labour was driven back into the north and big cities.
If Thatcher's economic capable of creating prosperity then the outlook for Labour would have been grim indeed. higher wages of the spread into the big cities and the north. Thatcher's 'property owning democracy' would have swept Britain.
Country But the opposite has happened. Thatcherite prosperity is not spreading throughout the country. The increasing political problems facing the government are an expression of the economic processes it has itself unleashed.
Even the 'prosperous' workers of the south and south east need a health service, transport, and education Many live in the big cities. unions. Women are not an 'oppressed minority but the majority of the population and the majority of the electorate.
The fiasco over Cheltenham, the storm over rate capping the Metropolitan Councils, the fact that there is no longer public support for big spending cuts, are immediate issues that threaten the government. They are superimposed on still more threatening long term trends for the Conservative Party -the huge decline in its vote among women, in Scotland, and in the cities.
The areas in which opposition is blowing up to the Tories are perfectly logical. They reflect a growing number of layers not brought within Thatcher's consensus.
particularly the alliances that are growing up against the Tories in the cities - have tremendous social weight.
Largely despite its leadership.
been pulling itself out of the ditch in the last three months. Binding together the forces which are emerging against Thatcher the unions fighting to defend them, those supporting the political levy to the Labour Party, those actending ne cities, those seeking to bring black workers actively within the partyin the next six months.
Editor: ALAN FREEMAN Published weekly except two weeks in August and the last week of December.
Signed articles by contributors do not necessarily represcut Socialist Action's views. These are expressed in editorials.
Thatcher's electoral It destroyed twenty per cent of boom two million.
One an employed, black, female subpolicies had been south east would have