Last week a debate took place in London with large implications for the future of the Labour movement. On one side were Harriet Harman and Robin Cook - Neil Kinnock's campaign manager for the leadership of the Labour Party. On the other were Beatrix Campbell and Eric Hobsbawm two of the leading writers of the Eurocommunist wing of the Communist Party. The event was the discussion on 'Labour's Missing Millions' between Marxism Today and the Labour Coordinating Committee.
To say that the debate represented a confrontation of ideas would be to engage in a considerable exaggeration. Indeed Robin Cook went out of his way to emphasise that he had mainly differences of 'emphasis and nuance' with Campbell and Hobsbawm.
Sarah Benton, reviewing the debate in the Statesman, truthfully, wrote the purpose of the debate was to wheel to public view the new axis that has formed on the left. Organisationally, the axis runs from the Labour Co-ordinating. grouping within the Labour Party) to the middle y the Communist Party. This is not a very grea distance. But such an axis puts both the LCC anc the 'eurocommunists' in a stronger position for their separate fights for dominance in their own parties.
Between In one curious sense the LCC-Marxism Today axis is a step forward. The British labour move ment British politics, dominated by an almost total indifference to any -explicit political ideas or political theory. Eric Hobsbawm, and others in Marxism Today have done the left a service by lifting its vision of debate. Instead of skulking around in intellectual corners, discussing who said what about who in 1917, Marxism Today has helped force the left to come out of its hote and begin to face up to some of the big contemporary questions of British and international politics. The fact that the answers they give are totally wrong is a different matter.
Marxism Today have a common political and social framework. Their policy is alliance with the European im perialist/powers against the United States. The political milieu oriented in this direction is undoubtedly the most rapidly growing in Britain. It is seen not only in the success of Marxism Today, and Kinnock's success in taking the leadership of the Labour Party, but also in the sales growth of the Guardian newspaper relative to its rivals the Times and Daily Telegraph. political goal on the left is destroy 'Bennism' as the most influential current among Labour ac tivists.
Differences There are still differences - and more than those of 'emphasis ana nuance Marxism Today and the LCC.
Kinnock are oriented to building up the Labour apainst the Alliance. aready oriented to a 'broad popular front with the Alliance against Thatcher.
But of the two Marxism Today is by far the 112 U Arab ance by this approvingly, Amal Committee (a soft left was for years.
Bob Rowthorn, Beatrix Campbell also and the LCC furthermore Its immediate between The LCC and Neil Marxism Today is Neil Kinnock will fail in his atid Labour to the point where it can a general election. Then the th the Alliance will come ::oriary 1957 WHEN ISRAEL invaded Lebanon they calculated that it was Christian Phalange party by kicking out the PLO. The events of the last two weeks have shown that their calculation was wrong. Gemayel has been flattened by a generalised insurrection of the Muslim masses. The basic reality of Lebanon — that the Christian Maronites in a reasserted itself.
Since the beginning of 1983 Gemayel's Phalangist government has been try Musa extena lis area OI control around Beirut.
West Beirut Ior years the centre of left wing and Nationalist - had been subdued the Israelis, and was policed fiercely by Gemayel's army.
unC of month army units began massing on the Iringes of Beirut's southern suburbs. Their objective was obviously to make inroads into the power of the Shi'ite Muslim militia, which controls tion. south Beirut On the evening of Thursday 2 February the army units advanced, had tillery and tanks blazing.
The army attack was co- units related with Lebanese Forces, the murderous Phalangist militias, responsible for the massacres at Shabra an Amal fought back, Amal utilising only rocket propelled grenades thus rifles against the tanks of the army. They won a famous victory, overruning four outposts of the Le•anese army. Fighting erupted at Souk-alGarb in the Chouf hills overlooking Beirut, with the Druze militias joining Amal in fighting the army.
On the morning of Friday 3 February the leaders of the anti-Gemayel Na tional Salvation Front met in Zghorta in the north of the country and demanded Gemayel's resignation. As the army counter-attacked southern Beirut, it Now became known that 250