The brutal face of Toryism behind the ‘liberal’ mask
This September saw the death of Lord Gilmour of
Craigmillar who, as Ian Gilmour, was a Tory MP from 1962 to 1992,
sitting in the cabinets of both Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher.
The obituary columns described Gilmour as ‘an
old-school Tory’, an opponent of Thatcherism, who "put down a marker for
a Toryism reaching beyond tax cuts and class war" (The Guardian, 24
September). But while Gilmour indisputably became an opponent of
Thatcher within the Tory Party (he was sacked from her cabinet in 1981),
his differences were at the level of tactics not ends. He was a staunch
defender of capitalism, a conscious strategist of 'class war' in fact,
but he feared that the economic and political consequences of Thatcher’s
brutal policies would undermine the social basis of the system that they
both represented.
This theme, how best to ensure the continuance of
capitalism, was explored by Gilmour in the book, Inside Right: A Study
in Conservatism, published in 1977 under the Labour government of Jim
Callaghan, when Gilmour was a member of Thatcher’s shadow cabinet. On
the occasion of his death, we are reprinting a detailed review of
Gilmour’s book by PETER TAAFFE, first published in Militant
International Review (Issue No.14, Summer 1978).
The version of the article published in Socialism
Today has been shortened for reasons of space, with the original version
appearing in full here on our website.
WHEN IT WAS first published last autumn this book
attracted a lot of attention from capitalist commentators. Some hailed
it as a definitive answer to all shades of ‘socialism’ and elevated its
author Ian Gilmour – Tory MP and a member of Thatcher’s shadow cabinet –
to the level of a new Tory guru. Here at last was an ‘intellectual’
justification of Toryism and capitalism. Even the right wing of the
Labour Party was forced to sit up and take notice. They were stung into
exchanging salvoes with him in the pages of the capitalist press.
Gilmour accused them of not facing up to the left within the Labour
Party. One thing is clear; many of the ideas floated in this book have
become part of the arsenal of Thatcher and her crew in their grab for
power at the next election. For this reason alone the book would be of
interest to active workers in the labour movement. But there is an
additional and even more important reason for analysing Gilmour’s book.
Here is spelt out in the most brutal language –
something which could not be done in the Tory ‘popular press’ – the
manoeuvring and intriguing of the political representatives of the
British ruling class against the rights, conditions and organisations of
the working class. It therefore provides a timely warning to the labour
movement of the terrible dangers to itself on the basis of a
continuation of a diseased and clapped out system.
Under the stewardship of the capitalists British
society has been brought to the brink of ruin. Almost daily we witness
new examples of the collapse of British capitalism. In steel,
motorbikes, electronics, cars, etc the British bourgeoisie is
outstripped and beaten not just by the major powers but increasingly by
the secondary capitalist powers. Thus Italy now out produces Britain in
steel. Moreover a recent Financial Times article pointed out that steel
output per capita is now higher in Russia than in Britain. Britain is
being reduced to an industrial wasteland.
Profits increase
THE CAPITALISTS HAVE seen profits increase from just
over 2% in 1974 to 8.77% of gross domestic product last year. But the
degenerate British bourgeoisie still refuse to invest. During 1977
investment was down 4%, the lowest level for ten years. Total investment
will be 4% lower in 1979 than in 1974 according to even the most
favourable estimates. Manufacturing industry increased last year by a
derisory 0.5%. The greedy and myopic British bourgeoisie have refused to
re-tool industry preferring to invest in agricultural land and other
speculative enterprises. Thus the Financial Times recently reported on
the colossal increase in the buying of agricultural land in America by
British companies. And it is the working class which is paying the
catastrophic price for the collapse of British capitalism.
Mass unemployment has returned to haunt the valleys
of South Wales and the industrial areas of Tyneside, Merseyside and
Clydeside. Moreover the formerly sheltered areas of the industrial West
Midlands and London, which in the 1930s provided some kind of escape
from the ‘depressed areas’, now have unemployment figures which rival
those of the industrial North and South Wales. The whole of Britain is
now a gigantic ‘depressed area’. At the same time the bourgeois
Cambridge Economists Group estimate that on the basis of present trends
there will be five million unemployed by 1990!
Nor do the capitalists now expect any kind of
redemption from North Sea oil. The Marxists pointed out from the
beginning that the ‘El Dorado’ of North Sea oil was a chimera. This year
it will contribute about 1% to government revenue! It has proved as
illusory as entry into the Common Market as a lifeline for British
capitalism.
This is the background to Gilmour’s book. In the
section dealing with the economy he shows the same stupidity as the Tory
leadership in relation to manufacturing industry. He writes: "Some...
seem to think that the structural fault in Britain’s economy of too few
people in the productive sector is the sole explanation for our poor
economic performance". (p229) His shadow cabinet sidekick Howell argues
that investment abroad is the key to the revival of the British economy!
In this respect the Tory leadership is reflecting the pressure and the
arguments of finance capital in the City of London. So blind and palsied
are these representatives of British capitalism that they have forgotten
that the real source of wealth is not bits of paper but production
itself. And it is these worthies who use millions of words and acres of
print to accuse the working class of sabotaging the economy!
Gilmour begins his book with an historical excursion
and analysis of those figures whom he believes constitute the pantheon
of Toryism. He points out that "A Tory was originally an Irish robber
and outlaw; a Whig (out of this Party came the Liberal Party) was a
Scottish outlaw". (p24) What emerges from this section of the book is
that the Tories have been able to survive, at least until the recent
period, as the most successful bourgeois party in Europe by a
combination of trickery and by adapting themselves to changing
circumstances.
At the beginning of the 1850s Karl Marx expected
that the Tories would disappear and be absorbed by the Liberals. The
opposite has happened with the Tories as the major force and the
Liberals as the junior capitalist party (Macaulay the historian
described them as the front and back legs of the same horse).
Camouflage
MARX’S PREDICTION WAS based on the expectation of
the growth of the revolutionary movement of the working class around the
Chartists. This in turn would have compelled the various wings of the
bourgeoisie to organise a common front within the same party and the
Liberals were at that stage the party of industrial capital. But Marx
wrote on the eve of the economic upswing of 1851 to 1873 which resulted
in the decline of the Chartists and the restriction of the workers’
movement to the trade union field for a whole epoch.
The bourgeoisie used the struggle between the
Liberals and Tories as a means of ventilating the grievances of the
workers in an attempt to prevent the growth of an independent Labour
Party. But the increasing threat to British capitalism, particularly
from German capitalism, led to the discrediting of ‘free trade’ (the
Liberals watchword) by ‘protectionism’. Together with the growth of
imperialism this led to the supplanting of the Liberals by the Tories as
the main capitalist party. The development of the Labour Party was
largely at the expense of the Liberal Party.
But it is not just the ‘cleverness’ of the ruling
class which allowed the Tory Party to survive for so long and so
successfully. The main reason was that, resting on its wealth and power,
with a mighty Empire at its back, it was enabled to give concessions to
at least a layer of the working class, particularly to white-collar
workers and also to the middle class. Even in the post-war period, with
the rapid decline of British capitalism, it was still possible to do
this. This enabled them to skilfully camouflage the real nature of the
Tory Party, masquerading as one representing the whole ‘nation’ not as a
capitalist party. Their traditional policy has been to blunt class
antagonisms and thus prevent a collision between the classes.
Indeed Gilmour states: "capitalism as such in so far
as people know what it is, is not very popular". (p131) He adds: "The
Conservatives have lost every election since the war when they did not
get 50% of their vote from the working class". (p257) What is even more
horrifying is the fact that "the renewal of the electorate has been
helping Labour; there are more new electors reaching voting age from
Labour than from Conservatives homes, and as there are more elderly
Conservatives than Labour voters more of them are dying". (p258) Thus
capitalism and its social reserves are literally withering away and
dying!
But the support of the backward sections of the
working class for their own worst enemies has also been due primarily to
the fact that the leaders of the Labour Party and trade unions have been
incapable of advancing a programme which could solve their problems.
Social democrats
INDEED THE LABOUR and trade union right wing
leadership have in the past been the most reliable bulwarks of the
system. Leon Trotsky pointed out that capitalism would not last for six
weeks without the support of the trade union leadership. The Labour
Party leaders were pliable tools of the capitalists. In policy, outlook
and even their social origins they did not differ substantially from
their Tory opposite numbers. This was summed up by the ideas of ‘Butskelism’.
The capitalists in effect controlled both parties through controlling
the leaders.
In his own inimitable fashion Gilmour recognises
this. Thus he correctly says of the right-wing Labour leaders: "British
social democrats or revisionists do not believe in socialism". (p172) He
also writes: "I remember a conversation with the formerly left wing John
Strachey in 1956 or 1957, in which he explained to me that now that
capitalism was working so well it was obviously pointless to try to get
rid of it". (p129) At the same time the right-wing trade union leaders
were there to add their ‘muscle’ in support of Strachey, Gaitskell and
co: "Up till the mid-sixties, the trade unions were more often than not
a brake on Labour’s extremists. ‘Our job now’, Vic Feather (then general
secretary of the TUC) told me in 1962, ‘is to keep the Labour Party
sensible, to support Gaitskell and squash [the left-wing MPs] Mikardo
and Silverman’." (p239) Not a whisper then from Gilmour or the Tories
about the ‘tyranny’ of the trade unions or the ‘undemocratic’ trade
union block vote at the Labour Party conference. The trade union leaders
were then on the side of the angels ie the capitalists and their shadows
within the labour movement. Gilmour argues that a ‘tame’ Labour Party
and trade union leadership was a vital ingredient of the ‘constitution’
and British stability.
But alas, and alack, events did not continue along
this groove. The period of Tory reaction between 1970-74 resulted in an
enormous shift towards the left within the Labour Party and the trade
unions. ‘The revolution sometimes needs the whip of counterrevolution’,
wrote Marx. With horror and with something approaching hysteria does
Gilmour survey the results of this period: "Up to 1970 the Labour Party
was firmly in the British empirical democratic tradition; that has not
been so during the last few years. There is probably a greater desire in
the Labour Party today to nationalise everything in sight than at any
time in the party’s history". (p185)
Gilmour puts these "frightening" and "shocking"
occurrences down to the lack of backbone of Harold Wilson and the
"ignominy and cowardice" of the social democrats.
How different things would have been if Gaitskell
and not Wilson had been in the saddle during the 1960s and 1970s: "Hugh
Gaitskell’s courageous leadership seemed about to bring Labour into the
modern age". (p184) Here Gilmour betrays the short-sightedness and
limitations of his class. With Gaitskell in the leadership his crude
right-wing position would have probably provoked tremendous upheavals at
an earlier period within the Labour Party. With his Lloyd Georgian
demagogy, by talking ‘left’ while carrying out pro-capitalist policies,
Wilson was able perhaps to temporarily delay the process of
radicalisation within the ranks of the Labour Party.
But the shift towards the left and the growth of
socialist consciousness within the Labour Party and the unions is the
result of the experiences of the working class accumulated over the last
eight years in particular and not because of the failings or otherwise
of Wilson as compared to Gaitskell.
Gilmour seems to recognise this when he deals with
the possibility of the ‘social democrats’ regaining their lost
positions: "only if there is to be a counter-revolution in the Labour
Party and Labour returns to being a genuinely democratic party acting in
the free empirical tradition of British politics". (p211) What is meant
by a "return to a genuinely democratic party" is indicated by the ideas
of the right wing on the Labour Party structures. Thus in a recent issue
of the Labour right-wing journal, Socialist Commentary, they suggested
annual meetings of local Labour Parties, with the wards and constituency
general committees transformed into tea parties! At least Gilmour’s
statement has the advantage of calling things by their right name! A
return back to the dark days of right wing domination, of witch-hunts
and thought control, would indeed be a "counter-revolution". Gilmour
foams at the mouth at the prospect of an end to the threat of
witch-hunts. This is what he writes about the recent attempts in this
direction:
"In 1973 the ‘proscribed list’ which declared
various far-left organisations ineligible for affiliation to the Labour
Party and members of those organisations ineligible for membership of
the party was abolished. This opened the way for far-left MPs to
co-operate with the Communist Party and with other outside left
organisations. In 1975 Ron Hayward, the general secretary of the Labour
Party, visited East Germany and described the German Communist leader,
Herr Honecker, ‘as a man of wisdom and experience, very proud of the
German Democratic Republic and with every right to be proud’. In 1976 a
report on Trotskyist infiltration into the Labour Party was for months
ignored by the National Executive Committee which then appointed a
Trotskyist to be the party’s youth officer. From 1974 onwards Mr
Prentice and other MPs were under threat in their constituencies from
various local Soviets and Commissars".
‘Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you
who you are’. The ranks of the labour movement will note that it is the
vicious reactionaries like Gilmour and the capitalist press which has
looked with dread towards the prospect of a Labour Party armed with a
Marxist programme. Those sections of the right wing and Labour Party
officialdom who still hanker after a Labour Party purged of its left
wing are doing the dirty work of the capitalists. They want a tame,
‘controlled’ Labour Party and trade union movement which will attempt to
mute the inevitable resistance of the working class to the programme of
savage cuts in living standards which the bourgeoisie consider is vital
for the maintenance of their system.
But this prospect seems to have completely receded
so far as Gilmour is concerned. The right wing are incapable of
preventing the ‘lurch to the left’. In the tones of an outraged
benefactor Gilmour lashes the right wing for not, in his opinion,
putting up a fiercer resistance. He now considers them redundant and
therefore unworthy of their former lush living. Ponder for a moment the
following statement of Gilmour: "In the British system the duties of
Opposition are almost as important as those of the governing party.
Their prime responsibility is to preserve the allegiance of their
followers... to parliamentary democracy and to the freedoms that go with
it. This is in a sense a governing function, and that is why the leader
of the Opposition is paid by the state... the opposition should be
helping to deliver the consent of their party to the parliamentary
process... Wilson drew his salary as leader of the Opposition but failed
to perform the duties of his office". (p204)
By ‘parliamentary democracy’ Gilmour means
capitalism, as we shall see later on. Thus the payment of a massive
salary to the Labour leader together with the thousand and one
privileges and perks doled out by the capitalists is conditional on the
right wing being able to keep the ranks of the movement ‘in line’.
Because they are now incapable of doing this they
are washed up and no longer deserve their former privileges. This is the
substance of Gilmour’s fulminations against the right wing and the
recent sly hints in The Times and other capitalist journals about their
‘life-style’.
But if the right wing are incapable of checking
‘socialism’ what other measures must the capitalists undertake? Gilmour
is pre-occupied with this question and in fact it is the main theme of
his book. The sheer hypocrisy of Gilmour and the strategists of capital
is shown here. He contends that Britain faces a "constitutional crisis".
In the past the hallowed British constitution was the best in the world,
argued the bourgeois ideologists. The ‘two party system’ of ‘ins and
outs’ and of ‘first past the post’ was superior to any system yet
invented. With lofty disdain did they view the idea of ‘proportional
representation’ which resulted in ‘instability’ in France, Italy, etc.
No matter what proportion of the vote a party got, ‘a majority of one’
was sufficient as Churchill argued.
But now everything is turned on its head. ‘Reason
becomes unreason and unreason becomes reason’. Gilmour writes: "The two
party system in this country is crumbling and will continue to crumble".
Horror upon horror, the Labour government was elected in 1974 on a
minority vote and the two major parties together only polled 55% of the
total electorate! The government has no ‘mandate’ from the people
because people don’t read manifestoes, shrieks Gilmour!
What factors have wrought this astonishing change in
the attitude of the bourgeoisie in Britain? After all Gilmour freely
confesses that ten years ago in a book he subscribed to De Gaulle’s
praise of the British constitution! Most governments since the war have
only received a minority of the votes cast in elections. The highest
percentage for Labour was 48% of the votes cast in the 1945 election.
Nor did the Tories hesitate to invoke the doctrine of the ‘mandate’ to
launch their vicious assaults on the working class and trade unions when
they were in power. It is not at all accidental that Gilmour and other
bourgeois thinkers have raised the need for ‘constitutional change’ at
this stage. They have noted the processes at work within the labour
movement. They have also reflected on the experiences of their cousins
in other countries. Looming in the future they see the coming to power
in Britain of a left Labour government similar to Allende’s in Chile,
probably led by Tony Benn. Although Allende received only 36% of the
vote in the 1970 election when he came to power the masses pressed
forward and compelled his government to nationalise approximately 30% of
industry, introduce a land reform, and ratify the ‘illegal’ occupation
of the land by peasants. This in turn resulted in the Popular Unity
parties, primarily the Communist and Socialist Parties, increasing their
vote to 44% of the vote in the March 1973 congressional elections.
Parliamentary cretinism
CHILEAN CAPITALISM WAS only able to check this
development by the methods of ruthless civil war. The lessons have not
been lost on Gilmour and his ilk. This is what he writes on page 214:
"The only sure way to prevent a revolution is to prevent a revolutionary
situation arising". One way of doing this is, he maintains, to prevent
the coming to power of a left Labour government. Therefore the electoral
system should be changed to some kind of proportional representation
system. He estimates that this will keep Labour in the position of a
permanent minority. At the same time, it could, hopes Gilmour
plaintively, lead to a "return to sanity" by Labour and a "moderate"
resurgence within its ranks. This is an example of what Marx called
‘parliamentary cretinism’, which in turn is a reflection of the
degeneration of the British bourgeoisie and its strategists.
Firstly an attempt to move in this direction would
provoke the furious resistance of the working class. Secondly if it
appeared that Labour was kept in the position of a permanent minority –
by a Tory, Liberal and Nationalist coalition which Gilmour clearly
favours at some stage in the future – the working class would be forced
to the left and into the extra-parliamentary arena.
Moreover it cannot be assumed that Labour will never
receive a majority of votes just because this has not happened in the
past. The Portuguese revolution showed that on the basis of a stormy
revolutionary upheaval those parties which stood for ‘socialism’
received a crushing majority of votes. Events in Britain will raise the
British working class to their feet on no less a scale, indeed on an
even greater scale, than in Portugal. The upheavals of 1970-74 are a
dress rehearsal for such events, particularly if Thatcher, Gilmour and
co return to power.
At the moment the Thatcher leadership of the Tory
Party, in its lust for a monopoly of power, has rejected the idea of
proportional representation and coalition. Nevertheless, events, and
particularly the failure of a Tory government, will revive the interest
of the bourgeoisie and the Tory Party in this idea. At the same time
Gilmour also raises the urgency of transforming the House of Lords from
an unelected second chamber into one that is elected or partially
elected.
In so doing he is not at all motivated by a desire
for greater democracy. In order to prevent the ‘elected dictatorship’ in
the House of Commons from going "too far and too fast and in the wrong
direction", a "bulwark against revolution" (p214) is necessary. Thus the
bourgeoisie with all the checks and balances at its disposal – including
the monarchy, clearly referred to by Gilmour as a "reserve" weapon – are
so afraid of the pressures which a left Labour government would be
subjected to by the working class that it is preparing itself, is
building trenches, to bar the way forward for such a government.
This is the clearly stated aim presented by Gilmour
in this book. He can see the pressure already generated within the
Labour Party for the complete abolition of the House of Lords. The last
Labour Party conference passed resolutions virtually unanimously in
favour of its abolition. A ‘second chamber’, no matter on what basis it
is cobbled together, will be a weapon aimed at frustrating a Labour
government from carrying through radical measures. Gilmour’s book
provides the evidence to show this.
He also proposes the use of referenda by Tory
governments. Thatcher has subsequently taken up this idea and threatened
to use it against the trade unions in a situation like another miners
strike for instance, if she comes to power. This is another
demonstration of the idiocy of the Tory leadership. It could completely
rebound on Thatcher if she was ever to use it. The working class would
not accept the verdict of a referendum with the bias of the press,
radio, and TV. Nor would it mean necessarily that a Tory government
would always get a majority. Its defeat would precipitate its downfall.
Nevertheless as outlandish as this proposal is it shows the direction in
which the bourgeoisie in Britain are moving. Referendums are the usual
devices of Bonapartist regimes ie military police dictatorships. No
longer able to rely completely on parliament the ruling class is
searching for other means of thwarting and curtailing the powers of the
working class. Gilmour’s mentor Hailsham has suggested another
‘safeguard’ against parliament, the strengthening of the judiciary with
the right to reject legislation passed by parliament! In the long term
they foresee a head-on collision with the labour movement. This is
underlined by Gilmour’s remarks on ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ and his
hysterical denunciations of the trade unions.
On to the shoulders of the working class is heaped
the blame for the catastrophic position of British capitalism. Even
while dealing with the remotest historical figures Gilmour cannot
refrain from hurling abuse at the working class, its leaders and
organisations. Disraeli, he claims, showed that "all government is
oligarchic, but the extent obviously varies. The Labour Party enshrined
oligarchy in its constitution when it gave the block vote to trade
unions at the Labour Party conference. And the ‘Venetian’ oligarchy of
today are the leaders of the TUC who sometimes reduce the leader of the
Labour Party to a mere Doge". (p84) The real oligarchy in Britain is the
handful of millionaires who own and control the monopolies. They in turn
exercise an iron grip over the Tory Party and fill its coffers to the
tune of over £3 million every year.
On page l89 Gilmour growls: "No baron in the
fifteenth century acted with such arrogance or with such sublime
indifference to the national interest as have Mr Scargill, Mr Buckton
and many other trade union chieftains... great economic damage has been
caused by trade union leaders’ ruthless use of the strike weapon in
pursuit of their own interests. All this is often accompanied by
considerable intimidation. Business morality may occasionally be
deficient (!); all too often trade union’ morality seems non-existent".
Trade unions
THE LOCKHEED BRIBES, the British Leyland slush fund
scandals, not to mention the Poulson affair and the Watergate
conspiracy, are just a few blemishes on an otherwise spotless ‘business’
banner! Gilmour also makes the ritualistic denunciations of the ‘closed
shop’ and wistfully hopes that it will become as outmoded as ‘duelling’.
The vicious denunciations of the trade unions by
this worthy shows that the bourgeoisie in Britain understand that the
chief danger to their position comes from the trade unions. Forced to
tolerate them the bourgeoisie examine every avenue in an effort to limit
and restrain their power. In a really cold, calculating and brutal
fashion Gilmour discusses the various alternatives open to his class in
its approach towards the unions. He gives a glimpse of the kind of
discussions which take place in the board rooms and fashionable clubs:
"A possibility favoured by some is to smash trade union power by very
high unemployment". (p242) This is rejected not on any ‘moral’ grounds
but solely because of its impracticality – for the time being – and the
consequences for capitalism if such attempts are undertaken: "The
trouble is that a free society would probably be smashed at the same
time. At the very least, high unemployment is unlikely to help the
promulgation of free-market doctrines or to cement loyalty to the
country’s free and democratic institutions". In a sly dig at Thatcher
and her high priest Keith Joseph, with his philosophy of letting the
market rip and cutting spending on social services to the bone, Gilmour
is warning that capitalism itself will be called into question if such
policies are pursued.
Freedom?
THE FORMER TORY premier, Ted Heath, has recently
issued the same warning. But in the long term the capitalists will be
forced to take such measures. In Gilmour’s ruminations on ‘democracy’
can already be discerned the outline of the terrible threat which is
posed to the working class in the future. Time and time again he accuses
the labour movement of wanting to establish an ‘East European’ state, of
threatening ‘liberty’ and cherished ‘freedoms’. It is obvious from this
and all the recent speeches of Thatcher – where this has been a constant
theme – that the Tory leadership is contemplating fighting a scare
election campaign. In 1945 Churchill attempted to make the flesh creep
by warning that Labour wanted to establish a ‘Gestapo’ regime. According
to The Times recently Mrs Thatcher is considering "an unashamed
socialist scare argument, a scare election in which Mr Callaghan is
shown as the Kerensky of an irreversible socialist revolution".
This is a desperate attempt by the Tories to grab
power but also to link the labour movement and Marxism with
totalitarianism. This clearly emerges from Gilmour’s book. On the one
side he boldly declares: "If there is no private property there will be
no freedom". (p149) Freedom for whom? The Chilean regime is the armed
gendarme of private property. It denationalised industries and restored
them back to the former owners thereby restoring the ‘freedom’ of the
capitalists to ruthlessly exploit and starve the Chilean workers and
peasants. At the same time the real freedom, the real democracy which
existed in Chile, the right to vote, to strike, a free press and right
to assemble, has been stamped out by the junta. The same thing happened
in fascist Germany under Hitler, in Italy under Mussolini, and in Spain
under Franco. Gilmour lumps together the fascist and Stalinist regimes
as an example of "collectivism".
Stalinism
BUT THIS TRICK can easily be countered by the labour
movement. Hitler oiled and financed his Nazi machine out of the coffers
of the German capitalists. When he came to power and murdered millions
of German workers and trade unionists he was supported by British
capitalists like Vickers.
Stalinism, Gilmour says, is the ‘inevitable’ outcome
of Marxism. On the contrary it is the result of the isolation of the
Russian revolution in a backward country. It is also a demonstration of
the impossibility of constructing socialism in one backward country.
It was Gilmour’s mentors like Churchill who
organised and financed the intervention of the armies of imperialism
against the young Russian workers’ republic and contributed to its
isolation. It was also the pressure of capitalism on the workers’ state
which resulted in the rise of a privileged caste and a totalitarian
regime in Russia. Moreover this regime is of the greatest value to
Gilmour and the capitalists. They fear the attraction of a planned
economy for the British workers but at the same time these regimes
provide them with a scarecrow to frighten the working class away from
‘socialism’. With Robespierre they could say ‘if it did not exist it
would have been necessary to have invented it’. But a socialist Britain
would not be totalitarian. It would allow the greatest flowering of
democracy in the history of this country, indeed the world. For the
first time the mass of people would be enabled to manage and control
society. The cultural level of the British working class, together with
the colossal resources which would be opened up by a socialist Britain,
would mean an immediate cut in the working day together with an enormous
increase in living standards. This in turn would allow the participation
of the most exploited and hitherto oppressed sections in the running of
the affairs of society.
Even Gilmour and Thatcher and the Tory party would
be allowed to preach the advantages of a return back to capitalism! Such
would be the advantages of a planned economy and workers’ democracy that
they would be seen as historical relics whose only interest to society
would be to remind us of our barbaric past.
No! It is not the labour movement which threatens
democratic rights but Gilmour and his class. This is spelt out in black
and white in this book. We do not believe in selective quotes and
distortions of the arguments even of the class enemy. It is therefore
worthwhile quoting the whole of one particularly telling passage:
"Conservatives do not worship democracy. For them
majority rule is a device. Each individual no doubt should be the best
judge of his own interests, and if he were, majority rule would be more
than a device to the Tories. But individuals do not always act in their
own interest, as Halifax and many others have pointed out; still less do
groups. Rational, economic, utilitarian man exists only in the
imagination of some economists and philosophers. Similarly, majorities
do not always see where their best interests lie and then act upon their
understanding. For Conservatives, therefore, democracy is a means to an
end not an end in itself. In Dr Hayek’s words, democracy ‘is not an
ultimate or absolute value and must be judged by what it will achieve’.
And if it is leading to an end that is undesirable or is inconsistent
with itself, then there is a theoretical case for ending it.
"Yet as Sir Karl Popper has remarked, ‘there are
only two kinds of governmental institutions, those which provide for a
change of the government without bloodshed, and those which do not. But
if the government cannot be changed without bloodshed, it cannot, in
most cases, be removed at all... I personally prefer to call the type of
government which can be removed without violence ‘democracy’, and the
other ‘tyranny’. Conservatives wholly accept Popper’s distinction, which
cuts through much cant and hypocrisy about democracy. ‘Numbers in a
state’, said Burke, ‘are always of consideration, but they are not the
whole consideration’. In practice, no alternative to majority rule
exists, though it has to be used in conjunction with other devices. And
in the Conservative Party unlike the Labour Party there is no extreme
wing which hankers after the death of parliamentary democracy and the
imposition of dictatorship. If our free institutions are overthrown or
totally perverted, the left not the right will be responsible. There is
no danger of a right-wing coup. Only if the constitution had already
been destroyed by the left, might the right react and the left find
itself overthrown in its turn by a counter-coup from the right".
(pp211-212)
Every serious member of the labour movement should
reflect on these words. Remember this is not a maniac of the fascist
National Front who is writing but ‘Minister of Defence’ in Thatcher’s
shadow cabinet! Gilmour betrays here the real thinking of the British
bourgeoisie: "majority rule is a device... democracy is a means to an
end not an end in itself... if it (democracy) is leading to an end that
is undesirable... then there is a theoretical case for ending it". A
future direct challenge to the right to vote, to organise, to strike, to
assemble etc is thus posed by this Tory theorist, if ‘democracy’ is
leading to an ‘undesirable’ state of affairs, ie if the working class
and its organisations are threatening the continued existence of the
rule of the bourgeoisie.
This is what Gilmour says. He adds the ritualistic
defence of ‘parliamentary democracy’, of course. But what does this
actually amount to? He writes: "no alternative to majority rule exists".
He could have added, ‘at the moment’. Three years ago the bourgeoisie
were openly discussing the possibility of a military coup in Britain.
Both Harold Wilson and Jack Jones, the Transport & General Workers’
Union leader, have since confirmed that discussions along these lines
were taking place behind the scenes in bourgeois circles.
Pondering on the experiences of the ruling class in
Portugal, Greece and Chile, the British bourgeoisie rejected any idea of
a coup at that stage. It is one thing to impose a dictatorship but the
inevitable dismantling of such regimes unleashes mass pressures which
threaten the very existence of capitalism itself. The Portuguese
revolution which has been mulled over by the strategists of capital
together with the developing Spanish revolution confirms this. It is
this factor and not any squeamishness about ‘bloodshed’ or
hostility towards ‘tyranny’, as Gilmour pretends, which leads him and
his class to reject this road at the present time. The long-term threat
to the working class is shown precisely in the careful formula of
Gilmour about a future coup: "There is no danger of a right-wing coup.
Only if the constitution had already been destroyed by the left might
the right react and the left find itself overthrown in its turn by a
counter-coup from the right". The phrases about the ‘constitution’ and
the ‘threat’ of a ‘left-wing coup’ are a smokescreen to disguise
Gilmour’s thinking. In Chile in 1973 Allende’s ratification of the
nationalisation of many firms, following their occupation by the workers
as an answer to the failed June 1973 right-wing coup, was interpreted by
all the bourgeois parties as a gross violation of the constitution! The
Chilean equivalent of the Tory Party, the Christian Democratic Party,
called for the overthrow of the Allende government, and its right wing
obviously had prior notice of this when it subsequently occurred.
At the same time they greeted the junta of Pinochet
as ‘saviours’ who had prevented a ‘left wing coup’. There is no doubt
that the right-wing of the Tory Party, probably coalescing with some
former members of the ‘liberal wing’, would act in like manner in a
similar situation in Britain.
The labour movement in Britain can ignore the
warnings contained in Ian Gilmour’s book only at its peril. A military
dictatorship, backed up by fascist bands, is not on the agenda in the
next period. On the contrary the next few years will see a further shift
towards the left after the relative pause in the workers’ movement in
the past three or four years. But the organic crisis of British
capitalism demands further attacks on the already reduced standards of
the working class. A Tory government led by Thatcher will attempt to
take up where the Heath government left off.
Thatcher has correctly characterised the next
election as a ‘watershed’. Such are the desperate straits of the British
ruling class that they have been compelled to abandon all those policies
based on so-called ‘class harmony’. They have resorted once again to the
brutal policies of class war. This is the only hope they see of
salvaging their system.
On the other hand the British workers will resist
these policies. They have extended a period of grace to the Labour
government, ‘their government’, in order that the Labour leaders be
provided with an opportunity to ‘put the economy on its feet’. All their
sacrifices have been in vain. The colossal bonus given to the big
monopolies has been squandered by the greedy owners of industry. This
has stoked up the anger and bitterness of the working class. If a Tory
government comes to power this will burst open. Attempts to roll back
the clock in wages, conditions and rights will result in a might
collision between the classes which could end with a general strike.
Ammunition
EVEN IF A Labour government was to be returned the
working class will present the bill for payment for their sacrifices
over the past four years. No matter what the results of the general
election the Labour Party and trade unions will shift towards the left.
The process is already visible in the hitherto inert and backward layers
who have swung leftwards in the past period. The same developments will
also take place in the engineering union and the electricians’ union
notwithstanding the recent results of the election of Duffy and the
consolidating of the right wing in the AUEW. The upswing in the class
struggle will undoubtedly affect these unions. The growth of Marxist
ideas within the Labour Party will also be paralleled in the unions. An
opportunity will be provided to rearm the labour movement with the
programme of Marxism. And in these titanic events which impend in
Britain it is only this programme which is capable of completely
eliminating any possibility of the programme of Gilmour and his like
from being realised. In the meantime his book should be used by the
active workers in the labour movement to acquaint all workers with the
real, brutal face of Thatcherism. It will be an invaluable source of
ammunition in countering the Tories’ scare tactics in the forthcoming
general election.
|