DECISIVE HOURS FOR THE BRITISH LABOR MOVEMENT
From the Trades-Union Congress on the Isle of Man through the Labour Party Conference at Scarborough, the leftward turn of the British labor movement became steadily more clear, impressive, and laden with consequences. Observers of all tendencies are not mistaken: it is the future relations between the classes in Great Britain that are now being decided for a long period.
The right wing of the labor movement is increasingly exposed for what it is: yesterday apparenily all-powerful, behind the broad backs of vicious bureaucrats like Bevin or Deakin, it is today proving to be a relatively limited of direct agents of the bourgeoisie within the workers' organizations. The more and more obviously bourgeois character of its chief, Gaitskell, especially after his leading the parliamentary group into a mutiny against the clear political mandate of the Scarborough Conference, becomes under these conditions a fundamental cause of weakness for the right wing.
That was clearly shown concerning "Point Four." Gaitskell took the offensive on this question, which touches thu fundamental nature of the party as a party that wants to change the structure of society. He was crushingly defeated at the Trades-Union Congress by a motion reaffirming the need to put the great means of production and exchange under collective ownership. This orientation was confirmed at Scarborough, not only sealing Gaitskell's defeat, but also demonstrating the way that the overwhelming majority of the rank and file, both trade-union and political, rally round the fundamental principles of socialism. The debates on military policy - unilateral nuclear disarmament, and opposition to US bases in Britain and membership in the NATO — followed the same logic.
This double victory of the left closes a whole historical period in the British labor movement - a period that began in 1945 when the Labour Party formed the government. During that whole period, the Labour Party kept the loyal though critical support of the overwhelming majority of the conscious British toilers. The Communist Party, the Independent Labour Party, and all the little sectarian groupings steadily lost influence among the masses. At the same time the vanguard workers became more and more critical of the reformist "old guard." Spontaneously and empirically, they sought the way to arrive at socialism in Great Britain, rather than be satisfied with a "social" reform of capitalism. That search naturally led them toward the
Labour Party left, which Bevan and his friends had already started to crystalize in 1950.
But, having regrouped the great majority of the party "activists," the Labour Party left ran on a reef that it seemed impossible to get over: the bloc vote of the big unions, led by right-wing bureaucrats. For eight years the British labor movement was thus deeply divided between a political "left" and a trade-union "right."
When Frank Cousins took over the leadership of the biggest union, the Transport and General Workers, this equilibrium was overturned. Bul it would be wrong to attribute the fundamental cause to the matter of a single person. In reality, this overturn had been prepared by a long chain of rank-and-file revolts against the union bureaucracy. In the T & G WU itself, this revolt had reached a culminating point in the '50s with a succession of wildcat strikes by the dockers of almost all British and the appearance of a rival trade union that temporarily channeled this rising combativity. The spectacular fusion of the trade unions and the Labour Party "left," symbolized by the votes at Douglas and ScarboBritish labor movement -- a phase in which the majority of the movement, in favor of a more radical socialism than that of the old Social-Democracy.
The right wing was well aware of its danger. That is why, after Scarborough, it stiffened its attitude, despite the increased strength of the left. That strength was also shown by the fact that, though Gaitskell won a momentary success in getting the parliamentary group to mutiny against the Scarborough policy by reelecting him as leader, the vote for Wilson, even among these parliamentarians, was high.
Gaitskell, reëlected, has made no secret of his intention to disregard the Conference decisions. The resultant situation is extremely tense, with dangers even of a split sooner or later. But though a split seems after all unlikely for the moment, the struggle inside the party will not stop building up and will reach very acute stages. The left has very great chances of winning a victory - and on the most advanced platform yet in this post-war period.
The British revolutionary Marxists must judge both the r. 1 breadth and the limits of the fundamental turn by their class — or at least of its politicized and active wing -
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL and the acute intensification of struggle within the Labour Party that it has produced. Nobody can pretend that the majority of British workers have become Marxists overnight, or supporters of the Leninist theory of the state and the revolutionary conquest of power. But their interest in theoretical problems is steadily increasing, and the British comrades will meet it with a long and tenacious work of education and propaganda, in which Fourth International, more widely distributed, should prove a valuable instrument.
But in a mass movement action is more convincing than pure propaganda. British revolutionary Marxists will concerted and organized action, aimed a: certain short-term or medium-term transitional goals.
goals are easy to set. Despite its victories and Scarborough, the "left" remains, paradoxically, amorphous and unorganized. It is regrouping, partly around Tribune and partly around Frank Allaun's publication. Young and more dynamic people are being found among the young socialist that are reappearing, but especially in the Movement for Nuclear Disarmament and the Movement for the Boycott of South Africa. It is partly active in the unions and partly in the more dynamic local parties.
The central task of British revolutionary Marxists consists in regrouping, inside the Labour Party, all these scattered forces of the labor left — without being sectarian or ultimatistic, without artificially imposing on them a
7 "leadership" parachuted from outside — around a pro. gramme of transitional demands, in order to take by assault first the "dominant positions" of the movement itself and then a series of "dominant positions" of capitalist society as a whole.
This is not a matter of puffing up the illusion that the Labour Party can be "conquered from the inside" or can "change its nature." We have never advocated such reformist theses; and this is no moment to change our cunvictions. It is, rather, a matter of understanding that the British working class as a whole can draw the lessons from the extremely rich experience of the last 15 years only on condition that its organizations and combat generally rise to a higher level. In the course of these coming struggles, the vanguard wili expand, its theoretical understanding will progress more rapidly, the path will be traced out for the appearance, for the first time in British history, of a revolutionary Marxist leadership of an important part of the toiling masses.
This exalting task should now inspire all the Trotskyists,
Marxists, of Great Britain. They should rise to the height of the historical tasks and possibilities opened to them by the radicalization of almost the whole mass movement in their country. They should above all develop their qualities as leaders, patient yet daring, as coördinators and unifiers of the left. The programme, the tactics, and the technique to reach our goal are known and understood. Now all depends on action.