How the right made Labour safe for business
Fightback! Labour’s traditional right in the 1970s and 1980s
By Dianne Hayter
Manchester University Press 2005
£14.99
Reviewed by Tony Mulhearn
DIANNE HAYTER sets the scene: "How did the
right wing, which was internally unpopular with rank and file active
party members, wrest control from the left?"
She prefaces her analysis with a description of
labour movement protocol from 1945 until the 1960s, when local party
members "having selected (with union input) their parliamentary
candidates, largely respected MPs’ decisions, concentrating on
campaigning and supporting them within the constituency". Thus the
autonomy of MPs was acceptable to the Labour Party right wing and
capitalist establishment. Hayter characterises this cosy arrangement as
the ‘settlement’.
The settlement was first breached on the issue of
unilateralism, when Hugh Gaitskell was defeated at Labour Party
conference in 1961. Instrumental in getting the following year’s
conference to overturn that decision was the Campaign for Labour Party
Democracy, dominated by the right-wing trade union bureaucracy. This was
a harbinger for the protection of right-wing MPs in the 1970s and 1980s.
Running through the book is the outlook that
anything the left proposes which vaguely challenges capitalism causes
splits and undermines ‘electability’; right-wing policy, supportive
of capitalism, is deemed to create and maintain harmony. Of course, the
socialist proposals of Militant (predecessor of the Socialist Party)
invited the united wrath of all to the right of Tribune and some within
that group.
Hayter explains the role of the key organisations
working assiduously to destroy the left’s influence and drive Militant
out of the party. The alleged motive was to ‘save’ the party, and
make it ‘electable’. She does not explain for what purpose a Labour
Party should be elected.
The book says nothing to those who were active
during the period under discussion. But revealed in detail is the role
of the trade union bureaucracy whose fear of fundamental change in
society fuelled its commitment to restoring the ‘settlement’, which
began to fracture after Labour’s defeat in 1979 and the election of
Margaret Thatcher.
Driving the right wing to organise was the challenge
to Labour MPs’ independence from rank-and-file party organisations.
National Executive Committee (NEC) and conference support for rule
changes to facilitate the removal of MPs and for NEC control over the
election manifesto, drove the Manifesto Group of Labour MPs into
hysterical demands for change in the composition of the NEC and for the
expulsion of Militant. More astute right-wingers recognised that this
group was so unpopular and so clearly motivated by self-interest that
they had little chance of winning support among the party’s heavy
reserves, the trade unions. Thus the principal elements in the
right-wing assault were spearheaded by Labour Solidarity, Forward Labour,
Campaign for a Labour Victory and, the key piece in the jigsaw, the ‘St
Ermins Group’ of right-wing union leaders (who met at St Ermins Hotel,
Westminster). The initial core of the latter consisted of Frank Chapple
and his lieutenant, John Spellar, Terry Duffy, Roy Grantham and Brian
Stanley, together with John Golding and Charles Turnock (later dubbed
‘Jackboot Charlie’ for his role as chairman of the committee that
launched the witch-hunt in Liverpool). Each of these groups would
subsequently claim credit for ‘saving the party they loved’.
What separated the St Ermins group from the others
were the resources at their disposal and the organisational expertise of
full-time officials. The GMB, EETPU and GPMU unions all released
full-time officials to wrest control of the NEC from the Bennite left,
thus facilitating the expulsion of Militant. Whilst these groups had
tactical differences, policy differences did not exist: "The St
Ermins Group (and its smaller cousin, Forward Labour) and Labour
Solidarity were effectively policy-free zones". The issues which
united them were rolling back rank-and-file control of MPs, electing the
leadership, and drafting the election manifesto. The glue holding them
together was a shared hatred of Militant, whose clarity in policy,
organisational skills and growing support drove them to paroxysms of
fury.
The election of Michael Foot as leader, after Jim
Callaghan’s defeat in 1979, opened up a new period of infighting. Foot’s
initial refusal to attack Militant – fuelled by his experience as a
victim of the Gaitskell-inspired witch-hunts of the 1950s – provoked
the wrath of the Manifesto Group. It split to form the Social Democratic
Party (SDP) after the 1981 Labour Party conference in Brighton, after
the conference had transferred responsibility for electing the party’s
leader from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) to an electoral college
in which MPs had only 30% of the vote.
Labour’s defeat by Thatcher in the post-Falkland
war election in 1983, assisted by the split in the anti-Tory vote by the
SDP, reignited right-wing attacks. Naturally, they did not blame SDP
defectors or the proto-Thatcherite policies of public expenditure cuts
and wage restraint pursued by Callaghan and Denis Healey but, with the
frenzied encouragement of the media spearheaded by the Murdoch/Maxwell
axis, the right wing went into overdrive in denouncing the left. Alarm
was fuelled by the election of Militant councillors in Liverpool and MPs
Terry Fields, Dave Nellist and Pat Wall. The resolve of the right wing
was strengthened by the departure of Jack Jones, left-wing leader of the
TGWU, and the replacement of engineers’ union leader, Hugh Scanlon, by
right-winger Terry Duffy. Between them these two unions wielded about
two million block votes which could have frustrated the machinations of
the right wing. But the road had been opened for the expulsion of the
Militant editorial board.
The right wing argued for the need to take control
of party organisations out of the hands of ‘activists’, a term which
now acquired opprobrium in the media, and hand decision-making to the
membership. They did a 180-degree turn from wanting the PLP to retain
all power to devolving power through ‘one member one vote’ (Omov).
The EETPU made funding available to constituencies which undertook to
ballot their whole membership on the election of leader and deputy.
This reached its apogee during the Benn/Healey
contest for deputy leader in 1983. The activists were charged with
failure to reflect the desires of the ‘ordinary members’ who were
cast as the sensible majority. Dave Nellist, among others, is quoted as
saying that the introduction of Omov would allow four millionaire press
barons to exercise immense influence in determining the leadership. The
riposte in a political bulletin of the EETPU smugly quoted the Earl of
Rutland who opposed an extension of suffrage in 1867: "I do not
think the state of education in the country is sufficiently advanced to
enable the government safely to propose so large a measure as that of
household suffrage". In 1867, however, there was no evidence of an
all-intrusive and powerful media, owned and controlled by a tiny group
of millionaires, virulently hostile to even the most faltering steps in
a socialist direction.
Hayter is uncritical of MPs who hysterically
denounced the very procedure which had selected and maintained them as
MPs for, in many cases, decades. The role of the media as an instrument
of the right wing is largely ignored, except to blame the left for
giving it ammunition with which to beat the party.
This Alice-in-Wonderland outlook is summed up in a
passage which reflects on the 1987 election defeat. With the right wing
in control – Neil Kinnock lionised as the saviour of the party,
praised for his attack on Liverpool – Labour scored the second lowest
vote since 1931. Brian Gould, described as the mastermind behind this
catastrophe, came top of the poll in the shadow cabinet elections
immediately following Labour’s defeat.
Naturally, the right wing claims credit for Labour
election victories under Tony Blair’s leadership, not recognising that
New Labour was elected in the main not for what it was but for what it
wasn’t: a sleaze-ridden Tory government, riven by revelations of
corruption at the highest level.
In closing, Hayter reflects on whether the changes
wrought by the right wing have served the movement well. She answers
with the observation: "The NEC, having ceded policy-making to the
National Policy Forum, is left with little role and has failed to retain
its pre-eminence over organisational issues (candidate selection issues,
campaign organisation, staffing) as these are now led by Number 10.
Furthermore, the creation of the so-called party chairman, appointed by
the prime minister and with a cabinet seat, has given unparalleled power
to the government over a political party".
This book will make interesting reading for those
who, in opposing the campaign for a new mass party of the working class,
argue that New Labour can be reclaimed. It reveals the role of
right-wing trade union leaders interested only in maintaining the status
quo in society. They, with complicit support of so-called lefts,
unleashed forces that ultimately marginalised trade unions, destroyed
internal party democracy and its socialist content, thus changing the
party of labour into an instrument of neo-liberalism.
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