ferent parts of the front like the industrial struggles of the moment, or Cheltenham, local authorities, Liverpool, London, Greenham and so on.
It also depends on whether we are ready to discuss much more openly the whole socialist alternative and to open up the dialogue within the socialist movement between the various strains, tendencies, groups or whatever. Because if you don't do that then of course the Labour Party could decline back into the idea of how much of an injection of public money would be needed yet again to keep capitalism going. And I've no doubt that you can keep it going for a year or two more with bigger and bigger injections of public money but that's not what we're about.
And I think that the third ingredient, preparation, is of critical imporlance.
Preparation not only in terms of what we would do when we were in office, which is very important, but also preparation in the sense of the politics of the here and now and us, against the then and there and them which is what ARE WITH US the interests of capital. She has used the power that the statute book gives her with a Commons majority to enfranchise capital against labour. To give power to capital to run their own affairs in order to beat labour. We should develop the idea of the enfranchisement of the working class.
Here the argument about the parlamentary road becomes much more interesting. You go there, you get a majority, you use your majority to enfranchise the working class so the! can then advance their own interests without legal obstacles.
That is very different from the ide of taking the onership of capita away, putting it in a state corporation. and running it on behalf of the working class whether they like it or not. This idea of enfranchisement, or empower. ing the working through parliamentary action, would I thiri help to resolve some of the rather sterile arguments about what the reie parlament is as compared to the cle :: extra-parlamentary action. 3E:3Le 'enfranchisement' provide: that links outside. parlamentar!. ettar.
Sinch dt rott
Socialist Action 4 May 1984 n relation to that argument I want to take up the recent Campaign group pamphlet Parliamentary Democracy and the Labour Movement which put forward a number of measures for radicalty extending democracy in parliament. Obviously по document everything but the Campaign group pamphlet concentrates rather narrowly on the area of parliament and the relation of the Labour Party to parliament.
In addition to these questions however there are very much greater areas in which the question democracy arises. For example you've aready referred to the question of industry.
MacGregor calls for a ballot of the miners on whether to strike. But the miners have no right to vote on the actual MacGregor plan itself. That is the "dictatorship of capital' There is so the question of the civil service or the armed forces. What do you think on these areas?
The pamphlet was explicitly on the extent to which the labour movement was able, as things now stand, to use its parliamentary arm for the purpose of advancing its interests. It was narrowly conceived. It wasn't a major treatise on the whole future of democracy on a national scale. I think you're absolutely right to raise the question.
The democratic argument needs now 1o be made, I think, the main banner under which we campaign. Because •hai is happening is that as capitalism decines, and it becomes clear that it •I have to hammer the working class to survive, then of course the battles by tbe government against the British people become an anti-democratic campaign.
We can see this on the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill, the attack on the metropolitan boroughs, the attack on the workers at Cheltenham, and so Cr.
I think it is very important that we raise the democratic question. Not only for reasons of industrial democracy which you refer to, or workers control, but also because if we don't raise the democratic question then parliamentary elections are seen as narrow little popularity contests.
You've only got to look at the sickening contest between Gary Hart and Mondale in America to see where you end up when the democratic prodess becomes a choice of a personality, «here politics are secondary.
That's why I've devoted so much of my attention, and I think its getting through now, to the Chartists and the Suffragettes. To reestablish sature of parliamentary power. bos the people can use it and what it is really about. And if you do that you en sweep away the personality cult.
I think we should be doing the same with local democracy and with trade anion democracy. If that could sire. combined with the restoration or rectablishment of campaigns for common ownership and so on, I think we would be filling has been a varium caused by the explicit abandonment of aspirations for socialist transformation which have characterised so much of the party since 1959. Indeed these aspirations have been abandoned since the 1950 consolidation manifesto which Herbert and Socialism forced through the party at the time.
Would it be fair enough, in other words, to say that at the present time you see the struggle for socialism ver! much developing on the terrain of a radical struggle for democracy?
Yes. I think that democracy are absolutely indissoluble.
Socialism without democracy
socialism at all and has no durability — because a regime that has aspirations but doesn't of democratic foundation is living on borrowed time. And democracy, if extended and developed is bound to lead to people wanting to use their democratic rights to produce a more egalitarian SUCICLy So I do say that yes. I've seen that for some time now. The books I've wallen Arguments for Socialism, Arguments for Democracy shows this. And the next one I hope will be Arguments for Freedom in which the question of freedom will be linked with the democratic argument and seen as a necessary preamble to the achievement of socialism.
Perhaps you could still develop that just a bit further because it seems to me the relation of democracy. and current struggles is an absolutely central strategic question.
I think that when you look at it, and its only a matter of studying experience and no more than that, that what we are now witnessing is an absolutely major attack upon our freedoms in the guise of protecting them.
That's true if you military side - where in the guise of protecting our freedoms from an attack by Russian generals, we've actually surrended our rights of national self-determination to American and British generals. That's one aspect of it.
The other aspect of it is in the guise of rolling back the frontiers of the state the ine true be Morrison socialism socialist have the frontiers of the state are being extended in order to protect the interests of capital and so on and so on.
have to recapture for ourselves because freedom in its fullest context means the right to develop your life and future free from the dictates of capital - dictates that derive their power exclusively socialism Irom many cases now from international extra-parliamentary centres — whether it be the media, the military, the civil services, the IME, the EEC, NATO or whatever it happens to be.
look at the vote')
ment of socialism in Britain.
are incompatible?
So I think that freedom is a word we for a long time.
plicit.
extra-parliamentary centres. In I think the recapture of the word freedom for us is a very important idea — not the way it has been articulated by Mrs Thatcher, which is the freedom of the market, or the democracy of the shareholders meeting which is very different from one person one vote (and is of course 'one unit of ownership one rediscovery of freedom, and the reinterpretation or reassertion of the rights to democracy are necessary preambles to the achieveSo it is capitalism and democracy which Totally. Absolutely. I've argued that But I think that's becoming explicit now. Absolutely exDha. John Harris Coming on to another question be two models being put forward at present for the nature of the Labour Party itself. • One is that Labour should move towards a more individually based parweaker links to the unions. The other has been expressed as developing a 'Party of Labour' - in the sense that the Labour Party was: formed out of the trade union movement but there are now many organisations which have been formed which must be added to the Labour alliance, which you would support affiliating to the Labour Party. I assume you would support the second model for Labour as you have become centrally identified with it?
Yes. First of course you do need a much bigger individual membership. That's certainly true.
But secondly we are, and always will be, an alliance. If you take the register of groups within the party - which 1 was opposed to — once you identify the register the best thing is that each one of them becomes affiliated to the party. And then you have a further founding conference like 1918 when the sixty three registered groups affiliated. And when they affiliate then they have their own votes rather like the Socialist Association, the Fabian Society, etc.
There's absolutely no reason why the Fabian Society should have a vote for the National Executive but the Labour campaign for whatever it is shouldn't.
Iam also extremely interested by that point because it seems to bring out something which I thought was implicit, or perhaps explicit, in what you were saying earlier.
You talked about the 'refounding of the Labour Party or a similar phase. It seems to me that what you are suggesting is that in some historical sense we are going through today a process which is equivalent to a new refounding of the Labour Party.
Yes I do believe that. And I think it's very interesting if you look back - and that's why labour history is so important at the moment for all sorts of reasons.
Socialist Action 4 May 1984 ne of the things that links into the question of the 'Party of Labour' is the proposals in the party to change the method of election of the women on the NEC, to elect them at the women's conference, and to have the right to put forward resolutions to the party conference.
Yes I'm in favour of the women's demands. Because I think despite all the achievements of the Labour Party, in seeking to represent working people
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reaching demands