LEFTWARD TREND IN BRITISH LABOR MOVEMENT
After the last elections, the revisionist extreme-right of the British Labour Party — Messrs Crosland, Jay, & C° -opened up a full-scale offensive against the party's programme and traditions. This programme is far from being Marxist: it is a mixture of syndicalist and Social-Democratic doctrine, with a clearly visible Fabian label; its authors were people like the Webbs, G DH Cole, et al. But it includes, in its famous Clause 4, a profession of socialist faith in favor of the collective appropriation of all the means of production, distribution, and exchange. It was that profession of faith that it was aimed to eliminate, so as to "modernize" the Labour Party, i e, to transform it into a sort of left liberal-conservative party.
The extreme-right's offensive was ill-received, not only by the mass of members of the Labour Party, but even by a good part of the trade-union bureaucracy who retive to the feelings of the workers. Gaitskell made the mistake of identifying himself with the revisionists. He was on the point of being put in a minority at the Labour Party Conference that was to analyze the causes of the electoral defeat. The centrist formula of Bevan, according to whom it was necessary to nationalize "the dominant positions of the economy," rallied most of those who were hesitating.
Finally the Party Executive worked out a compromise. Clause 4 would be kept as it was. But this "Old Testament" would be completed by a "New Testament" which would state that, though it was necessary • to nationalize the famous "dominant positions," a socialist economy ought at the same time to keep a broad private sector controlled by the state. This compromise was vigorously backed by Bevan and his closest friends. Nevertheless,
12 file both of the constituency parties and of the trade unions were farther left than the left wing of the Executive, and rejected the compromise. One after another, the trade-union conferences took their stand in favor of just plain keeping Clause 4 without any amendment or complement of any sort. (For details of this whole foregoing process, see the "News" section, p 73.) Finally, in the beginning of July, the Executive recognized its defeat.
decided to withdraw the complement to the party Constitution from the agenda of the next Labor Party Conference, while reserving the right to present it at a later conference.
Paralleling this debate, a discussion was going on about the party's military policy. It will be recalled that in 1958 Bevan prevented the Labour Party Conference from taking a stand in favor of unilateral nuclear disarmament by Great Britain by stating that he did not want "to appear naked at the summit conference." Since then, supporters of unilateral disarmament have been considerably reënforced. First there was the amazing success of the March from Aldermaston to London, organized by the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament (there were 100,000 demonstrators at Trafalgar Square on Easter 1960 in the greatest political demonstration that London had witnessed in a century). Then came the failure of the "Blue Streak," the nuclearheaded missile manufactured in Great Britain. The Macmillan government had to admit that the country had been incapable of ensuring its own nuclear-missile armament and had to borrow its weapons of mass destruction from US imperialism.
As a result, those favoring unilateral nuclear disarmament opened up a powerful offensive inside the Labour Party. They received the support of several big unions, especially the Transport and General Workers Union (T & G WU), the metal trades union (Amalgamated Engineering Union), the miners' union, and the National Union of Railwaymen (N UR). Seeing that the left was about to carry the day on this field as well, Gaitskell retreated to a compromise position. This stated that Great Britain must itself stop making nuclear weapons, and that it must no longer tolerate launching ramps for nuclear missiles within its territory. At the same time, this motion comes out in favor of the Atlantic alliance. In fact the Labour Party right is taking refuge "under the US nuclear umbrella"; it is adopting the "centrist" position that Gaitskell so vigorously condemned as "hypocritical" a few months ago.
This compromise is unlikely to be adopted. Though it has the backing of the miners' union, the metal-workers by a small majority came out for unilateral disarmament, and the T & G WU, led by Frank Cousins, is leading the fight of the unilateralists.
Gaitskell's position as party leader is thus badly shaken, even if his compromise on military policy squeezes through. If it is rejected like his amendment of Clause 4, it is hard to see how he could retain his post. In reality, the question of who will succeed him is already open. If he succeeds at all in hanging on, it is because it is difficult to find his successor. Bevan, who might have maintained party unity, died just at the moment when his ambitions were about to be realized. Robens, the most serious candidate that the Labour Party apparatus could put forward, preferred to accept a well-paid post as president of the National Coal Board. Brown and Callahan, the other candidates of the right, lack scope and have little influence on the rank and file. As for the left, it has only one candidate: Hugh Wilson, who is far from having the popularity of a Bevan. Cousins, Bevan's real successor a: the head of the Labour Party left, refuses any political mandate. He wants to be king-maker rather than king.
The left trend in the labor movement, an impressive historical phenomenon that began about ten years ago and has continued slowly but surely almost without interrup-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL tion, thus reveals a crisis in Social-Democratic doctrine and leadership, both left and right. Bevan's death takes on the significance of a symbol. Bevan personified the best qualities of the old Social-Democracy, which, let us not forget, developed as a mass movement in Great Britain 20 to 30 years behind that on the European continent. Rising out of the working class, it never lost contact with it; it thus kept a certain disdain for the morality, usages, and customs of the bourgeois world. It found the words to express the 7 spirit of rebellion and the will to rebuild society on a socialist basis which are latent in the hearts of most British workers. With all the differences of period and of place, Bevan was, as it were, the Bebel and the Jaurès of the British proletariat, the heir of Keir Hardie, contemporary of the great leaders of the pre-1914 Second International, who did not have at his disposal a party of the strength of the present Labour Party.
Bevan was, at the same time, the faithful mirror of all the weaknesses and inadequacies of the old Social-Democracy. He had no doctrine. He was a pure empiricist, who was satisfied to solve problems as they came up. He was not opposed to national defense under the capitalist regime; he protested only against excessively high military budgets. He did not want to break with the Atlantie alliance, but only to obtain a greater independence within that alliance. He did not want to overthrow capitalism in a revolutionary way, but only to speed up the rhythm of socialist-type reforms. His incomprehension of organizational problems made him in practice an individualist, an "outsider," a "trouble-shooter," whom others accepted as a leader but who obstinately refused to build a tendency Hence Bevanism died with Bevan. What remains is a vast unorganized current, with very broad foundations both in the working class and among young intellectuals, that Frank Cousins will try to lead.
The fundamental weakness of a Gaitskell is his toial lack of traditions and of ties with the workers' movement, his inability to foresee and to sense the reaction of thousands of trade-union and Labour Party militants. He could, at a pinch, lead the party if it had fallen into a state of lethargy, where the working class was completely passive. He cannot lead it when political activity is growing in the ranks and they are steadily moving left.
This steady leftward trend, together with Gaitskell's failure and Bevan's death, threaten to overturn the whole political system on which bourgeois order in Great Britain is based. The bourgeoisie has understood this very well. It advises Gaitskell to come out in open conflict with the annual Labour Party Conference, to refuse to be bound by conference decisions. It prediets that the minority of the parliamentary group that is "faithful" to the conference will not get many votes in the country. It is in fact speculating on a deep split in the labor movement, which is the only chance for its own salvation in the long run.
Its calculation, however, seems to be erroneous. The British MP - candidates have to be designated by the trade unions and the constituencies; if MPs refuse to recognize decisions of the annual conferences which are the emanations of the trade unions and the constituencies, they will no ionger be chosen as candidates. The great mass of the Labour voters would follow the candidates of the unions and the party, not some individual candidacies. Such a split à la MacDonald might prolong the Tory domination for a few terms of Parliament; but it would create a Labour Party much more radicalized and in the long run more dangerous for British capitalism.
It is the duty of British revolutionary Marxists to penetrate more and more into the left current in the trade unions and the Labour Party, and to offer this current a programme of transitional demands capable of unifying it and leading it to victory against both the Tories and the Labour Party right wing.