An article from Workers' Action (a forerunner of Solidarity: no.153, 22 September 1979) on the prospects, as we saw them, from the big upheavals then underway in the Labour Party.
The outcome will probably determine the character of the Labour Party for decades.
Either the left will go on from a victory on democracy at Brighton [Labour Party conference, 1979] to consolidate the Labour Party as a genuinely socialist party seeking to overthrow capitalism on the basis of the class struggle of the working class, and build up a mass membership around such policies.
Or the left will be purged and the Labour Party transformed from its present ramshackle self into a tight and intolerant party modelled on the West German, Swedish, and other Social Democracies.
Under the Labour Government we saw the paradox of a comparatively left Labour Party together with a right-wing, reactionary, Labour Government. The rank and file have no way to control the MPs or the Party leader. The growth of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and the emergence of support for the current proposals was a direct result.
From the other side, that of the Liberals who lead the Labour Party, the situation was tolerable only because there were effective "checks and balances". Even then, sections of the ruling class were not convinced that the "checks and balances" were adequate from the point of view of the bourgeoisie and its need for a stable government, in face of the big contradictions between the Government and the rank and file. In 1975, the usually pro-Labour Observer and the Tory Sunday Express tried to provoke a purge of the Labour left by launching a witch-hunt against Militant and Workers' Fight.
Remove the "checks and balances", that is, make the Labour Party accountable to its members, and the framework for an easy coexistence within Labour's "broad church" is gone. The possibility of a Labour government ignoring the Labour Party conference without scuttling itself as a consequence goes. The option of muddling along and avoiding sharp, binding decisions and choices is diminished. Also diminished is the scope for the 'socialist' faking which for decades has provided so much of the cement for the Labour Party 'coalition'.
Much of the ground on which the Tribune left stands would disappear. The pro-capitalist right wing and the Marxist left both have a grip on reality, though from opposing class positions. The Tribunites' political solutions are unrealistic and often reactionary and utopian (though no less a thorn in the side of the Right for that) - like their import controls policy. Such vaporisings can only exist where no binding decisions are to be taken.
In a genuine democratic Labour Party, where decisions and politicis might immediately be tested for their relevance to the real world, the climate would suddenly turn unfavourable for this type of politics. The choice would be between the hard class-struggle left, and the hard class-collaborationist right.
The right wing and those 'socialists' who consciously fake understand this perfectly. They fight now with the weapons of bureaucratic manoeuvre, as at the AUEW conference. If we win on democracy at the Labour Party conference, they must either scuttle or go out and organise.
Already, Shirley Williams, James Callaghan, and David Owen - who, politically, are Liberals - have talked of the impossibility for them of accepting what the Brighton conference is likely to decide. Such people could just hive off (as the right-wing so-called "neo-socialists" hived off from the French Socialist Party in 1933). But it would be a mistake for the left to be complacent. It is unlikely they will hive off without a fight.
The Right has positions of great reserve strength and support within bourgeois society. They have backing from the bourgeois press. They could count on support from passive Labour voters and supporters if they could organise them - and there are powerful forces in British capitalist society which would be eager to help them organise.
They have powerful support also within the bureaucracy of the British labour movement.
The militant left cannot rely on even "left" trade union bureaucrats. If the proposed democratic measures had been in operation in 1975, then Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon would have had to support a massive purge of the Labour left as the necessary consequence of the political decisions with they (together with the Parliamentary Labour Party) made and the Labour Government carried out in defiance of Labour Party policy.
The left must organise. For the first time in over half a century the political structures built by the British labour movement and still massively supported by it (despite Labour's record in office) are fluid and are likely to be recast in a new mould, to serve the right or the left, either the bourgeoisie or the working class...
If we do not organise a serious Labour Party left in the coming period, then there is a big chance of left triumph at Brighton being followed by a decisive right-wing victory which will transform the Labour Party decisively and make it impossible for any left wing to exist within it.