IMPASSE for a while they are simply straining at each other, neither being able to move, neither finding a stratogy to defeat the other. But as soon as one decisive shift is made, the apparent equilibrium is explosively overturned. What was proved by the October 10 elections is that even when the ruling class is in severe disarray and crisis, the Labour party cannot decisively win elections by running on a right-wing program that inevitably fails to galvanize -- or even catch the imegination of.the working class. The narrowness of the electoral victory is precisely a reflection of the combination of the inability of the ruling class to organize it own forces and the fact that the leadership of the working class is projecting no clear orientation which even in a distorted wny can provide a perspecfive for the rising struggle of the mosses. Winter 1973 and its aftermath When Heath called the election of lost February, both he and the ruling class believed they were toking an important decision about the development of the struggle in Britain. But the reality was different. Confronted with the miners strike, the ruling class had three tactical options, but no strategic ones. The first option was to have granted the wage claims. But with the whole working class lined up behind the miners, this would have opened up a breach in the Incomes Policy through which the rest of the unions would have flooded. The second option was to have attempted to break the miners strike through repression. Given the relationship of forces between the classes, this would not have worked in the best of cases. At worst, it could have provoked a general strike. The third option, the one that Heath chose, was to attempt to use the political strength of the ruling class to outmaneuver
3
BRITAIN the trode-union bureaucrats. The Tories certainly did outmaneuver the bureaucrats, but the rank and file forced the miners union to call the strike anyway. Once that occurred, and given the ruling out of the second option, Heath's bluff had essentially been called. Despite the tittle-tattle in the press about "options, " the realiry of the elections was very clear. The fundamental issues were not decided by the voting. Heath and the ruling class had already been defeated when the election was called. Indeed, calling the election was merely the acknowledgement of defeat -- and an attempt to gain a breathing space before the outbreak of even more decisive struggles. Even Heath was forced to admit that he would give in to the miners. Once that was done, it was inevitable that the rest of the working class would begin to try to push through the gap that the mine workers had openad. Of course, it was still possible for Heath to have won a small majority in the election, and that no doubt would have been tactically useful for the bourgeoisie, but the main fact was that any government that came out of such an election, regardless of its political coloration, would have been a weak government. There is no doubt that the bourgeoisie decided to call the election because they were frightened that resorting to the option of repression might have led to on even more dangerous development -- the open challenging of the power and authority of the bourgeois state itself. Almost certainly, the bourgeoisie calculated correctly in this. But, as always, what is important is not what the bourgeoisie would like to do, but what it is capable of doing. The bourgeoisie succeeded in heading off a sudden and explosive development of the "French May" type. But given the relationship of forces, avoiding a French variant could be achieved only at the price of ending up with an "Italian" one, that is, a longer and more drawn out but just as deep working class upsurge, The bourgeoisie will see it institutions undermined in a whole series of steadily rising struggles instead of through a sudden, sharp conf-ontation. To be sure, the difference is of toctical importance; but it can hardly be said that the ruling class is going to enjoy -- or deliberately choose - either. The decisive factors in Britain today lie not in the will of the bourgeoisie but in the economic crisis and the working-class upsurge. There is only one area -the North of Ireland -- in which forces objectively aligned with the ruling class have taken an important step forward. In Britain, the best the ruling class can achieve of the moment is the already frayed fig leaf of the "Social Contract. " (See INPRECOR, No. 1, June 6.) Since last winter The consequences of the outcome of last winter's crisis have continued to develop since then. As prime minister of the Labour government, Harold Wilson has attempted to carry out the policy of the Social Contract, but it is quite clear that the Social Contract is steadily disintegrating -- beginning in those issues and sectors where the hold of the bureaucracy is weakest. Almost immediately after the election last February, a fierce row broke out over Labour's policy on Chile This was followed by strikes by nurses and health workers, which continued throughout the summer. Also during the summer, an intense round of antifascist struggles took place, leading to four national demonstrations. An important wave of struggles by women workers is beginning. In recent weeks, sections of the "heavy battalions" of the working class have started to join in, with an important series of strikes among auto workers and growing discontent about the agreements negotiated by the burecucracy of the miners union. The acceptance by the Trades Union Council (TUC) of the Social Contract is rapidly being revealed as tenuous. Not a single important union hos put forward wage claims within the bound set by the Social Contract. A very big series of workem strug gles is on the agenda for the winter and spring -- although the bureaucracy will surely try very hard to head them off, Perhaps even more important, unemployment is beginning to bite under conditions in which the working class is obviously not going to sit back passively, already there have been a number of foctory occupations. Since no government could do anything to avert the coming crisis, it is quite clear that the new Labour government will engage in fierce clashes with the working class during the winter and spring. But while Labour is unable to satisfy the working class, it is equally evident that it cannot meet the needs of the ruling class either. No significant section of the bourgeoisie hos any confidence in the ability of the Social Contract to keep the working class under control. Consequently, there has beer a marked hardening of position within the ruling class since the February election, with, for example, a very abrupt shift to the right in the policies of the Confederation of British InBut the ruling class shift is not fully reflected on the field of electoral politics. In Britain it is completely impossible to win an election without securing a significant proportion of working class votes. Before 1974 the Tories had never received less than one-third of the working-closs vote. Naturally. onless the workers have been defeated, such votes cannot be won through violent attacks on the unions and the organization of the working class. The Tories learned this -- to their regret -in the February elections. For this reason, in the October elections Heath retired to a much more low-key "National Unity" approach -- which was not very convincing in view of the Tories record on the question of the three-day week. Indeed, in his attempt to get the message across, Heath even offered to establish a coalition government, with his own nesignation possibly paving the way for this. The pro-election disarray in the ruling class was caused by the disparity between what the bourgeoisie, considers economically necessary and what it main party considered palifically feasible. Some representatives of the industrial bourgeoisie, the magazine The Economist, for example, became enamoured of the Liberal party. A section of finance capital in Scotland defected to the Scortish Nationalist party, Enoch Powell continued his Bonapartist operation by standing in the North of Ireland on an Ulster Loyalist ticket. Some Tory politicians, in an obvious play for the leadership of the party if Heath is dumped, began urging a policy of allowing unemployment to rise to 3 million and the setting up of citizens antistrike milifia. Other sections of the ruling class, represented by certain leading newspapers, appeared to have abandoned any hope of a party of the bourgeoisie winning the election and took to proposing a concerted effort to change the electoral system so •as to bar any possibility of Labour ever winning a parliamentary majority in the future. One thing is clear. The new government created by the Octo ber elections will not possibly be strong enough to meet the needs of the bourgeoisie. Most Fundamentally, the working class is undefeated and has already demonstrated its ability to destroy policies, or even governments, that attack it frontallyBut if the bourgeoisie is in disarray, the Labour party is not much better off. The party's holding office and the crisis of the ruling class have temporarily bolstered the partisans of extreme right-wing policies within the party. The factors that pushed the party to make a left turn -- the bourgeoisie's moves
toward a strong state and the upsurge of the working class -continue to operate, but these factors are held in check by the weight the right wing is granted by the party's being in government and by the fact that the ruling class crisis is so severe that Wilson can marginally win an election even with this line, which in the February election hod succeeded in reducing the Labour party to its lowest total vote since 1935 and its lowest percentage since 1931. Now that Labour has won the election, the turn to the left is going to take the form of an acute crisis in the party -- either the ignominious collapse of the government in face of rising hostility of the ruling class and rising indifference of the workers, the split from the party of the extreme right, or the resignation of the "left" from the government. Ironically, it was exactly this crisis in all the parties that produced the apparent calm and somnolence of the election campaign. The bourgeois parties were too weak to come out with an open attack on the working class movement. The Labour party's line was too right-wing to fill the working class with any enthusiasm that the socialist goal was at last within reach. The fascist movement was too weak to polarize the situation. The revolutionary left was not yet strong enough to come forward as a viable alternative. Hence the apparently unruffled surface. But in spite of the apparent calm, the prospects are very clear and far from tranquil. The new government will foce very big workers struggles in the winter and spring. From the standpoint of the working class it was tactically important for the Labour party to have won the election. The Labour victory will increase the confidence of the masses. In particular it will accelerate the process of politicization. The task of the revolufionaries in the elections was to prepare for the post-election struggles. It was this priority that determined the attitude taken during the elections by the International Marxist Group (IMG), British section of the Fourth International: The IMG and the elections The IMG raised four main themes in its intervention in the elections: *The struggle against inflation, centering on the demand for a sliding scale of wages, a national minimum wage of 530 as a first step to a E40 minimum, equal pay for women, rejection of any form of Incomes Policy under capitalism, nationalization of the oil and food industries. * The struggle against unemployment, centering on the demands for a reduction of the work week to 35 hours with no loss in pay, occupation of factories introducing layoffs, sharing of all available work with no loss in pay, nationalization without compensation and under workers control of all firms creating redundancies, immediate nationalization of the motor and construction industries. *The struggle for self-determination for Ireland, centering on the demands for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Ireland, the ending of internment, the release of all Irish political prisoners, solidarity with the IRA. *The struggle against the development of the strong state, centering on the demands for the organization of workers self-defense (especially of pickets), the disbanding of the Special Patrol. Groups of the police, the ending of all joint army-police maneuvers, the introduction of full polifical and trade-union rights in the army, no platform for fascists. In addition to these central themes, we were able in the period preceding the elections to carry out significant work on the questions of the oppression of women, solidarity with Chile, and the struggles in the health services. We also have been attempting to develop a campaign against Britain's membership in the Common Market. In addition to these immediate campaigns, the IMG also odvanced three slogans that sum up the general orientation it advocates for the period ahead: *A trade-union plan for the nationalization of the economy under workers control. This is the logical extension of all the demands around factory occupations and nationalizations. *A government responsible to the organizations of the working class and not to porliament. This demand assumes particular importance with Labour's victory in the elections. The strain between the government and the mass trade-union membership of the Labour party will be tremendous, despite the fact that the period of upsurge, with its possibility of developing new forms of working-class organization, will break out before any credible alternative working-class party to Labour emerges. Under these conditions, the essential orientation revolutionaries must give to the workers is to fight for a govemment that -- whatever it formal political membership -- will be responsible to the organizations that will develop out of the mass struggle. This provides on excellent opportunity to explain the nature of parliament to the working-class vanguard and to point out the type of altemative to parliament that must be created. This sort of campaign takes on special importance in Scotland, where concrete conditions allow us to put forward the slogan of a Workers Assembly counterposed to the bourgeoisie's project of a pseudo-parliamentary cssembly. We explain that any such Workers Assembly would have on overwhelming Labour majority at the outset, but it would be a body to which the worker would have a qualitatively different relationship than they do to a parliamentary-type body. While such a slogan remains essentially propagandistic at present, it offers an orientation that can be concretized around initiotives such as conferences to organize struggles against attempis to close key industries and companies in Scotland and around themes of workers control over and nationalization of North Sea oil and the fuel industry. This has been a crucial issue in Scotland. *A general strike to win the basic working-class demands on inflation and unemployment. This will be concretized in the form of the demand for a general strike for the sliding scale of wages counterposed to the Incomes Policy that the Labour government is most likely going to impose in the spring. This campaign is linked to popularization of the themes of the formation of strike committees and action committees and of the importance of workers self-defense. The agitational slogan that was raised by the IMG os a summary
5
The broad workers vanguard and the IMG's tasks
BRITAIN of its general orientation was "Vote Labour -- But Against the Social Contract. " The IMG also gave critical support to
TOLLEY& SMALE 145 The situation of the working class struggles to which the IMG is oriented is sharply contradictory at present. The combativity of the masses is extremely high, and the worsening economic crisis will undoubtedly be met with a big upsurge of struggle. Objectively, the workers resistance has continued to block implementation of the strategy of the ruling class and is now beginning to throw all bourgeois institutions into crisis. Subjectively, however, the process of politicization is proceeding slowly and unevenly. The organizing cadres of the working cless will lead very broad working-class struggles in the coming period. These struggles will break the Social Confract, deepen the political crisis profoundly, and plunge the country into something approaching economic chaos. But despite the objective political impact of their octions, the vast majority of these cadres remain almost completely under the political and ideological domination of the Labour party, even though they are no longer under it organizational control. The combativity of this layer remains a constant obstacle to all the maneuvers of the ruling class. But subjective understanding of the political effects of their actions and the consequences that must be drawn from them remain limited among these organizing cadres of the class. At a different level, it is clear that there is now a layer of workers -- especially young ones, and probably ters of thousands of them -- who have arrived at general political conclusions as a result of the sweeping economic and social cri6 the candidates of the Workers Revolutionary party in the districts in which they were standing. sis of the past five years. There is no doubt that the developing crisis within the Labour party, caused by the forces lead.ing it to make a left turn, has had considerable impact on all sections of the vanguard, most notably around the themes of Chile and nationalizations. Nevertheless, although the new broad workers vanguard has played a very important role in many working class struggles, its actions have remained frogmented among hundreds of focuses. The vanguard as a whole has not played a role in national politics on the scale seen in France or Italy, to take two examples. The reasons for this are both objective and subjective. The objective reason lies in the foct that although the economic crisis in Britain between 1969 and 1973 was the most serious one in capitalist Europe (with the exception of Italy), the great historic reserves of British imperialism cushioned the impoct of the political crisis, making it less overt and severa than it was in a country like France, where the economic crisis was much less severe. There was nothing even approaching the political crises seen in Italy or Spain. The vanguard consequently remained organized primarily around sectoral and trade-union struggles, instead of crystallizing around elements of the national and international political crisis. Although the consciousness of many young workers involved in the trodeunion struggles went far beyond the Immediate issues of these fichts, the organized activity of the vanguard remained concentrated on this more narrow field.
The objective base for the relative absence of action by the mass vanguard as a factor in the political arena was decisively weakened by the collapse of the Heath government and it aftermath. The palitical crisis is now acute and open. The trade-union struggles will of course confinue to be of enormous importance and weight, since the economic impasse remains the main cause of the political crisis. But the objective conditions for the vanguard acting on central political themes are now far more favorable than previously. The crisis of the subjective foctor, however, remains acute. The policies of the International Socialists (15), the largest group on the revolutionary left, have already decimated the potential of the vanguard that emerged in 1966-68 out of the movement in solidarity with the Vietnamese revolution. The economist and sectoralist policies followed by the IS and the group's consequent inability to offer a political orientation to a brood political vanguard resulted in the reduction of the vanguard -- which of is height involved some tens of thousands of militants -- to a few hundred people who joined revolutionary organizations and a few scattered remnants that remained outside. IF the IS were to retain hegemony over the emerging workers vanguard, this new vanguard would suffer the same fate; there is no doubt of that. A few thousand militants might join 15, but the potential of tens of thousands of workers who are now becoming politicized would be dissipated. In this situation the resporsibility devolving on the still relatively small forces of the IMG is very great. The development of the objective situation is toward a head-on confrontation between the classes. Since 1973 the IMG's strategic line has been toward preparing the optimal conditions for such a confrontation through an orientation towards a general strike and the creation of orgars of dual power. However, turning such a line into a practical and effective element in the closs struggle involves not merely agitation on the political themes butlined above, but also a concretization of our tactics in light of the particular development of the broad workers vanguard in Britain. The central tactical problem confronting the revolutionary vanguard is how to overcome the extreme fragmentation and dispersal of the brood workers vanguard. The main medium-term organizational goal is the establishment of a revolutionary trade-union tendency. At present, however, neither the political nor organizational preconditions for this development exist. The general acceptance among the vanguard of certain key nafional demands and the increase in weight of the brood workers vanguard among the working class as a whole (as well as a much greater degree of national focus within the broad workers vanguard itself) are lacking. Under these conditions, the simple "proclamation" of such a tendency, or even its projection as an immediate possibility, would lead only to the creation of a sectarian "front group" grotesquely posturing as a mass organization but actually representing only the periphery of some revolutionary organization. This is the error that has been committed by the International Socialist, who refuse to distinguish between the organization of their own periphery and the much broader organization of the vanguard, thus combining organizational sectarianism with their tail-endist politics. The IMG policy flows from an understanding that in order to create such a trade-union tendency, the political precondifions must first be created within the broad workers vanguard. (Primarily, this means gaining the common acceptance of certain key demands.) Corsequently, while the IMG retains the trade-union tendency as an intermediate organizational projection, its orientation is focused ground more limited and conjunctural united fronts able to unite significant sections of the broad workers vanguard and the revolutionary left in action around common demands that both serve as immediate responses to the needs of the class struggle and begin to lay the political preconditions for the creation of a revolutionary tendency within the unions at a later point. This orientation of the IMG is beginning to have some effect in overcoming the sectoralist fragmentation of the vanguard. During the cutumn of 1973 the IMG was able to play an important role in helping to launch a campaign for the defense of workers on trial in Shrewsbury for picketing. This spring and summer the IMG wes instrumental in launching actions and campaigns in solidarity with the Chilean people and agains! the British Fascists. Both these campaigns drew in thousands of militants and brought about united oction by the revolutionary left for the first time in a considerable period. in oddition, both campaigns, particularly the one against foscism, penetrated beyond the periphery of the revolufionary left into the broader worker vanguard and the working-class movement itself. In the months ahead there is the possibility of developing such campaigns around the oppression of women (in the fight for a Working Women's Charter) and, particularly, around the issue of Ireland. Intervention to generate common action by the vanguard on the vital questions of unemployment and inflation remains far more difficult, in view of the vast forces Involved in these struggles and the as yet relatively small implantation of the IMG in the working class. There is no doubt, however, that during the past period the IMG has quantitatively. though not qualitotively, strengthened its position within the vanguard and even within trade-union struggles, in which the organization has for the first time been able to play an active role. Our comrodes' leadership of an exemplary struggle of oil pipeline construction workers in Scotlond - - involving an elected strike committee, daily mass meetings, and a strike bulletin -- and the role we were able to play in creating an oction committee that led important struggles among London teachers are the main gains made on this front so far. The IMG remains aware of its relative weakness in face of the gigantic tosks confronting it. But there are greunds for cautious optimism. The gains we have mode in our work, and the fact that a period of crisis and regroupment is underway within the revolutionary left indicate that favorable conditions one emerging for the development of a powerful section of the Fourth Infernational in Britain. Our tosk now is to capitalize on the gains of the past period and summon up all our resources to prepare for the working-class storms that will come after the elections. The return of the Labour government creates the best possible conditions for the rapid politicization of the working class vanguard. October 11, 1974
7
PORTUGAL Spinola's second attempt to modify the relationship of forces on the governmental level, to set up insfitutions more capable of confronting the workers movement, and to hold back the decolonialization process has failed. But this round was different than the earlier one lost June (see INPRECOR, No.5-6, August 3). First, the right and the for right mode their first attempts to develop an attack of brood scope. Second, the mobilization of the mass movement was on important element in the response to Spinola's attempt and in halting the "attempted coup." For the moment, the Armed Forces Movement (especially its "centrist" tendencies), the Communist party, and the Trade Union Federation have come out of the confrontation in strengthened posifions. But none of the crucial questions has been setfled. Instability and political crisis can only intensify. The steps in an offensive Afler the rout of 'Operation Palma Carlos" -- which was an attempt to call a plebiscite on Spínola, set up a presidential regime, and postpone the elections -- and taking account of the weaknesses of the instruments it commanded for going into the elections scheduled for Merch 1975, the right sought to take the initiative again, using Spinola os a rallying banner. His prestige was supposed to guarantee the success of the maneuver. The differences that had emerged on the govermental level, especially in relation to decolonization, made a more or less camouflaged assoult carried out under the pretext of supporting Spínola seem all the more credible. Spínola chose to make his remarkable declarations at the moment when the "small whites" of Laurenco Marques were responding to the occords concluded in Lusaka between FRELIMO and the government by taking to the streets, occupying the radio station, and "proclaiming independence. " Thus, on September 10 Spínola explained that decolonization is a "process that does not consist, as some people naively think, in a pure and simple transfer of power to the organizations that led the armed struggle against the old regime. " That was for the "African provinces, " espeçially Angola. Then, for the situation in Portugal itself, he made his appeal to the silent majority: "The silent majority of Portuguese people must wake up and actively defend themselves ogainst totalitarian extremists who are working in the shadows, utilizing well known methods to manipulate the masses. (who are) plunged into confusion after half a century of political ignorance. " After this opening bid, Sprnola announced on September 23 that he wanted to take total and sole charge of all affairs relating to decolonization in An8
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