IN JUNE 1983 the Labour Party sufenormous debate.
As a contribution to this debate JOHN ROSS from Socialist Action inconcentrates on two topics — the relationship between I's obvious, to go back to the June election, that this was a situation in which the Labour Party vote fell to the lowest level since the First World War. How do you explain this result? What do you think is the way out of this level of support?
Tony Benn: There's no point going back over the past except to learn from it. I think if you really want to find the roots of our defeat in 1983 you have to go back to the defear of 1959, when Gaitskell responded io this by saying that the Labour Party had got to change. Labour had to abandon its socialist commitment. It had to become a social democratic party like the German SPD. And he began that process.
What Gaitskell was doing in 1959 is roughly what Hobsbawm is doing today. To introduce, using the defeat at the election as an excuse, the idea of a complete reconstruction of the Labour Gaitskell's attempt to bring about the first stage of revisionism, which was the abandonment of Clause 4, was formally defeated in the sense the conference wouldn't have it. But the impact of such a long campaign against the socialist commitment was felt right through the party and is still felt.
The second stage of revisionism was when Wilson, with In Place of Strife, socialist society. beginning.
Tony Benn would destroy the value of the currency.
This process reached its climax on the night of 2 April 1979 when Callaghan made it clear that if the attempt was made to put into the manifesto one commitment to ine abolition of the House of Lords - it issue and not substance of the question - he would resign the leadership only three weeks before the general election.
These three attempts - the one to get rid of socialism, the second to get rid of the trade union connection, and the third to dispense with conference or party democracy — were three tremendously important stages in the process of weakening the Labour Party. And socialism and the alliance Labour must build to defeat Thatcher and create a We think that the issues which the interview raises are of great interest and importance to the whole labour movement, and we hope to print a series of replies. The interview took place just as the miners' strike was an interview with posedly believing in high public expenditure, accepted the IMF cuts - — which meant the end of the public expenditure alternative to socialism. This also was very important.
And when of course the monetarists arguments were accepted by the cabinet obstruction to it. Thirdly to reaffirm its position, that dated right back to the 1960s, for unilateral nuclear disarmament.
And having got those policies put into place by very big majorities at conference then the party decided to follow the defectors to attempt to destabilise and damage the Labour Party by saying it had lurched to the left.
Actually what had been happening over the vears was that the Labour Par ty had moved substantially to the right. I was looking at the election address fo:
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fered its greatest electoral defeat for a generation. It naturally provoked an
terviewed TONY BENN on the way forward for Labour. The interview