LONDON - Margaret Thatcher's victory in the British general election and her winning a parliamentary mandate for five more years for her government is a bitter blow to working people in Britain and throughout the world.
Her victory will embolden the bosses' attacks on the working class and strengthen Reagan and the international imperialist counteroffensive. It will undermine the confidence of more back ward workers that it is possible to defend their rights against Thatcher's vicious assaults.
Thatcher was backed by every serious bourgeois force. She had the backing of the bosses' organizations, the banks, the Confederation of British Industry, and the Institute of Directors. The boards of 21 top British companies signed a much publicized statement calling for her return to power. And of course she had the near unanimous backing of the bourgeois press.
They all gave a blanket endorsement to Thatcher's record and pronounced their confidence in her program for the next term.
Ronald Reagan managed to give her an electoral plug in a thinly disguised statement issued at the Williamsburg summit. Even the Japanese bourgeoisie poked its nose into the campaign in the shape of a threat by Datsun not to set up a car factory in Britain if Labour was returned to office.
Thatcher's plans for working people
Thatcher chose not to fight the election on her record, which has been disastrous. Nor did she campaign on her proposals for the next five years, which amount to a dramatic attack on the workers.
Instead she concentrated on exposing the contradictions in the Labour leadership and its program and on a campaign of red-baiting. Nonetheless, through a series of leaks, some of her precise plans became known.
Thatcher will:
• Increase unemployment beyond the present real 4.5 million to 6 million;
• Privatize large sectors of the nationalized industries, including British Telecom and parts of British Leyland;
• Push ahead the destruction of welfare services and introduce a two-tier health system, with decent medical care only for those who can pay;
• Introduce further draconian anti-union legislation, including provisions to weaken the links between the unions and the Labour Party;
• Dramatically increase police powers and step up the repression of Black people;
• Install cruise missiles, strengthen Britain's ties with NATO, and back Reagan's counteroffensive, especially in Central America.
A Thatcher 'landslide'?
Thatcher achieved a 144-seat majority in the House of Commons. Yet the remarkable fact is that such a majority was gained on the basis of a 2 percent fall in the percentage that she polled compared to the last election, and a much greater fall in the actual proportion of the electorate voting for her. She was elected on a mere 43 percent of those voting (31 percent of the electorate. The Tories actually got the smallest vote this century for any government achieving an overall majority.
The Tory press talked gloatingly about the Tory landslide and about an overwhelming endorsement of Thatcher's policies. But the reality is that the clear majority voted against the Thatcher government. Only the workings of the British electoral system masked this fact.
Indeed, Thatcher was unable to win any serious section of the Labour Party vote. The working class remains profoundly hostile to Thatcher and everything she stands for. The truth of the matter is that this election was not so much a Thatcher victory as a Labour defeat.
Labour's defeat is severe and should not be minimized. But the attempt by bourgeois commentators to characterize it in historic proportions is misplaced.
Comparisons with previous low points of Labour support in 1931 or 1922 are historically inaccurate. Despite its low overall poll of 28 percent, Labour maintained its position in the industrial heartlands of Britain and therefore returned 206 MPs to Parliament. By contrast, in 1931 Labour received 31 percent of the poll, but coming on the back of the defeat of the 1926 general strike and a deepgoing split in its ranks, it achieved only 52 seats, losing ground among industrial workers.
Continuing class polarization
In essence, the 1983 election still shows a continuing polarization of British society. Scotland and Wales voted massively for Labour. The Tory Party was virtually wiped out in these heavily industrial areas. The northern and western Midlands industrial region remained solidly Labour, as did the workingclass areas of London. Moreover, although the solid Labour vote was smaller this time, all reports indicate that this vote was more committed and the campaign activists more enthusiastic than any time since the 1945 Labour landslide.
Black people voted massively for Labour. Seventy-one percent of Black people in London voted Labour.
But outshining all this and crystallizing a new situation in British politics was the success of the fighters for a united Ireland in the Northern Six Counties of Ireland. Gerry Adams, vice-president of Sinn Fein, was elected by a 6,000-vote majority. Overall, Sinn Fein polled 90,000 votes, making them the majority party of the nationalist working class in Northern Ireland.
So, despite all the vain hopes of the bourgeoisie and the Tory press, Labour remains the mass party of the British working class and is still capable of reasserting its full position by the time of the next election. The electoral showing of the so-called Alliance parties does not change this judgment.
The Alliance was a bloc between the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (SDP, a split-off from the Labour Party). This bloc polled 6.5 million votes, or 26 percent of the electorate. But this resulted in a mere 22 seats in Parliament. The SDP in particular, despite taking votes from Labour, lost all but 6 of the 29 seats that it previously occupied.
The Alliance leaders and most of the Tory press blame this result on the workings of the "first past the post" [i.e., "winner take all"] British electoral system. But the fundamental reason for its showing was that the Alliance's vote was primarily of a protest character. It has not managed to root itself in any stable social layer. It remains primarily a party of the rural areas and the suburbs, and was backed by no serious bourgeois force.
Why Labour lost
Any explanation for Labour's defeat must begin with the war in the South Atlantic last year. Britain's victory over Argentina in the Malvinas was not just a defeat for the Argentinian working class but a defeat for British workers too. Up to that time Thatcher was trailing Labour in the opinion polls. But her chauvinistic campaign allowed her to galvanize behind her leadership the middle layers who were wavering in the face of the assault she had unleashed. The Labour leadership, far from opposing Thatcher, tried to present its own chauvinist case for victory over Argentina.
This detestable reaction by the Labour leadership was only a specific instance of a deeper and more general crisis of leadership that the British working class faces.
The truth is that Thatcher's assaults on the rights and living standards of the working class over the last five years have been achieved with the acquiescence of the right-wing Labour and trade-union leadership. There have been victories against Thatcher and the bosses, but such victories have been gained despite the sabotage of the right-wing leaders. What is worse is that on many occasions these leaders have intervened to grab defeat from the jaws of victory. Most signally, they have totally failed to support the fightback against unemployment, let alone provide a perspective to mobilize the anger and opposition of the working class to the mass unemployment policies of the Thatcher government.
Behind all this the working-class vanguard have been striving to forge a more adequate leadership for the Labour Party and the unions. A number of left victories have been scored in various unions. And of course, the Labour Party swung decisively to the left at the Wembly conference in October 1980. As a result, the manifesto presented by the Labour Party in these elections reflected the policies pioneered by Tony Benn and the left-wing activists. Yet the leadership team, elected by the parliamentary caucus of the Labour Party, which is not accountable to the ranks of the party, remained dominated by the old, failed workhorses of the right.
Labour's election manifesto
The Labour manifesto pledged to reduce unemployment below 1 million in five years. It pledged unilateral disarmament and withdrawal from the European Economic Community. It promised to nationalize more sections of British industry and impose planning on others. "To make British industry work for Britain, rather than Britain work for British industry."
It committed itself to furthering women's rights and to weakening the racist immigration laws.
Faced with such a program, the Tories launched a massive red-baiting campaign on the basis of the biggest advertising budget ever seen in British elections. Its efforts centered on showing the similarities between Labour's program and that of the tiny Communist Party and charging that Labour's program would take away democratic rights.
The Fleet Street press waded in with the dirtiest press campaign perhaps of all time. It politically utilized the opinion polls to do as much damage to Labour as possible. It highlighted findings damaging to Labour and hid those that would reinforce it.
All the polls greatly exaggerated Thatcher's support and talked up the support for the Alliance. Undoubtedly, they were a major factor in conning many people into backing the Alliance in those places Labour could not hope to win, thus boosting the overall Alliance vote.
This by itself, of course, could not have led to the dire Labour results. British workers are brought up from birth to distrust what Tories have to say. What made this campaign tell was the main Labour leaders joined in the cats' chorus. They openly and cold-bloodedly sabotaged Labour's campaign by publicly rejecting the central tenets of the party's manifesto during the election campaign itself.
Right-wingers sabotage Labour
Denis Healey, Labour's main public spokesperson in the campaign, led the pack. In the middle of the campaign, he took it upon himself to denounce the manifesto commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament. And just after this had been patched up, in weighed James Callaghan, ex-Labour prime minister, on the same theme. Thus, Labour's biggest votecatching issue — the commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament — was turned into a liability.
Equally, on the economic issues. Despite Labour Party policy, the Labour leaders interpreted the manifesto as requiring wage restraints under a Labour government - the issue which turned working-class opinion against the last Labour government in 1979.
The economic program in the manifesto under all circumstances was utopian. Unemployment could not have been drastically cut without breaking the capitalist stranglehold over the economy. But at least the manifesto included proposals to transfer resources away from the military and into job-creation, and measures attacking some of the privileges of the rich.
In the hands of the right wing, however, even these mild reforms were dropped in favor of the ridiculous suggestion that the future Labour government would borrow its way out of the economic crisis. This is especially laughable to working people since it was the intervention of the International Monetary Fund in bailing the British economy out during the last Labour government which signalled the Labour government's turn to a ferocious assault on the living standards of the working class in 1976.
Of course, such sabotage was not some aberration. For the past two years and more, workers have been opening their daily paper or turning on the television to see some rightwing Labour leader denouncing the policies of the Labour Party, or charging that it had been taken over by "extremists.
"The Labour Party is sick," intoned shadow cabinet economic minister Peter Shaw. "It is time to act against the conspiracy."
James Callaghan, ex-Labour prime minister, agreed and added, "I want the Labour Party to win the next election, but not the Labour Party as it has come to look in recent months."
Every single one of the right-wing leaders joined in on this, so much so that they organized a witch-hunt against "Trotskyists" inside the party and succeeded in expelling the editorial board of the left-wing newspaper Militant.
People's March for Jobs
There is no question that it was this rightist campaign which laid the basis of support for the Social Democratic Party in the first place, and it was the deliberate sabotage in the election campaign itself which boosted the alliance just when they were facing extinction. Before the attack on Labour's defense policy, the alliance was showing a mere 14 percent in the opinion polls.
Little wonder that an election campaign led by these types of leaders failed to draw in worker activists in a campaign of explanation and organization. Little wonder, too, that these leaders fought tooth and nail against hitching Labour's campaign to the mass activity of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament or the People's March for Jobs, or any other mass action initiative during the election campaign.
The People's March for Jobs in particular was a magnificent opportunity to show the reality of Labour's alternative to the Tories. This march had set out from Scotland before the calling of the election, and has marched through every industrial region and major city in the country. It culminated on the Sunday before the election in a 50,000-strong demonstration in London.
This march could have inspired and galvanized working people, but instead it was shunned by Labour leaders, who at first attempted to prevent it getting off the ground. And a possible three-quarter of a million turnout was therefore undermined in the mass demonstration at the culmination of the march.
This reality, understood by every Labour and trade-union activist, will now be an important component in the post-mortem that will now open up inside the Labour movement - particularly in the campaign around the election of a new Labour leader, as Michael Foot has decided to resign at the next Labour Party conference in October.
Prospects for left
The right wing predictably is arguing that it was the "extreme policies" that accounted for Labour's defeat. The situation in the Labour movement is such that the left trend, however, is unlikely to be reversed. Unfortunately, the fact that the main left leader, Tony Benn, failed to win a parliamentary seat will prevent this situation from being consolidated in the leadership of the Labour Party.
The direction of the class struggle will reinforce the weight of the left. This election was called at the time thought most favorable for Thatcher. The economic situation is showing a slight upturn, and inflation is at its lowest level in 15 years. But the illusion created in the minds of many people that the worst was over will soon be shattered as Thatcher goes for deeper assaults on the wages and conditions of British working people. Already there is a majority against Thatcher. This is bound to increase.
During the last four years of recession, British industry has seen sharp productivity increases. But this has primarily been the result of mass unemployment and large-scale bankruptcies — which in turn have been used as a battering ram to force massive changes in working practices leading to speed-ups and a marked increase in the rate of exploitation.
During this time, the take-home pay of those in work, however, has actually increased by 16 percent over the rate of inflation. This, incidentally, is one of the reasons why a layer of skilled workers voted for Thatcher.
But the historic crisis of British capitalism means that these economic gains have been nowhere near sufficient to meet the increase in interimperialist competition. No longer can the ruling class allow any significant layer of workers to raise their standard of living, and still more shopfloor rights need to be overturned. This demands the shackling of the unions and the destruction of the shopfloor organization of the working class.
Workers will fight back
A fightback against such an assault on a broad scale is guaranteed given the continuing organizational strength of the working class.
Immediately after the election, Arthur Scargill, militant mine union leader, reflected this pressure of his base. "In order to resist this government," he pronounced to rapturous applause from miners, "we should undoubtedly need to take extraparliamentary action and that includes the possibility of political strikes to prevent the massacre of our health, education, housing, and social services.
Other left leaders, including Ken Livingstone, the leader of the Greater London Council, and even to some extent Tony Benn, have expressed similar sentiments.
An index of the real situation in the organized labor movement was revealed by two recent left victories.
A couple of months prior to the election, rail workers rejected one of the most right-wing trade union leaders and replaced him with a left leader. The sacked general secretary, Sidney Weighell, had been the one who had campaigned for the resolution at the Labour Party conference demanding the witch-hunt of left-wingers.
Then, just one day before the election, telecommunication workers in their conference kicked out for the first time the right-wing executive committee and replaced it with one dominated by the left. It had been the representative of this union on the Labour Party National Executive Committee, John Goulding, who had masterminded the day-to-day tactics of the witch-hunt.
Perspective for struggle
So the perspective of Labour movement activists is to place their fight over the next period in the framework of preparing for an allout confrontation with this government with the aim of replacing it before its five years is up. Of course in the short run the Tory victory will have a depressing effect on such struggles.
This fightback perspective will be aided by the deepening of the mass campaigning for nuclear disarmament. The activity of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament will now increase as the date for the siting of cruise missiles approaches. This campaign will help deepen the anti-imperialist consciousness of the working class, especially as the fight against the missiles intermeshes with Reagan's war in Central America, where Thatcher is a strong supporter of Reagan's policies.
Anti-imperialist consciousness and the fight against the Tories will also be massively reinforced by the success of Sinn Fein and their continuing proletarian turn toward the struggles of working people in the Six Counties.
British workers have received a drubbing in these elections, mainly as a result of the tactics of our own leaders. But we are not mourning, we are organizing.