Pat Wall: Selected Writings and Speeches of a Socialist MP and Workers’ Leader
Edited by Iain Dalton
Published by Mentmore Press, 2024, £12
Reviewed by Dave Nellist
Iain Dalton has done an important service by bringing together key articles and speeches to celebrate the life and work of Militant MP Pat Wall and his contribution to building the movement for the socialist transformation of society.
Pat’s political journey began in 1950 when he joined the Labour Party in Liverpool. Within a year, while still a teenager, he became the youngest constituency secretary in the country. He was a founding member of what became the Militant Tendency (the forerunner of the Socialist Party), served as a Labour councillor in both Liverpool and Bingley, and was president of the Bradford Trades Council from 1973 to 1990.
He was elected as the Labour MP for Bradford North in June 1987 after facing intense opposition from the Tories, the national press, and the Labour right wing. He should have been elected in 1983 but narrowly lost because of two right-wing ex-Labour candidates and a serious campaign of character assassination.
The press attacks followed a debate where he had warned – less than a decade after Pinochet’s military coup in Chile – that the ruling class would stop at nothing to retain their control of society, unless the working class used its power to effect the socialist transformation of society. It would be the capitalists, not the Marxists, who would threaten totalitarianism and violence. The last item in the book is a detailed rebuttal by Peter Taaffe from the Militant International Review in June 1982 of the press attempts to portray Marxism in general, and Pat in particular, as advocates for ‘violence and civil war’.
The book contains four key parliamentary speeches from Pat’s three years in the Commons, showing how he explained the need for socialist policies. Along with the other two Militant-supporting MPs, Terry Fields and myself, he lived on a worker’s wage and donated the remainder of his parliamentary salary to the labour movement. He also made his London flat available at weekends and in the parliamentary summer recess for party members to use – in exchange for voluntary contributions to Bradford North Labour Party funds.
Iain Dalton’s book offers a powerful and timely reminder of the vitality of Marxist thought within the British labour movement during the tumultuous latter half of the 20th century. It covers a wide range of subjects, from Pat’s articles and speeches on Marxism, the development and prospects of Stalinism, through analysis of the character of the Labour Party to the celebration of the life of jazz genius Charlie Parker. This review can only give a flavour of the volume’s contents.
Significant are the examples of Marxism’s sustained and principled opposition to Stalinism, both in its domestic and international impact, and where Pat explained the necessity of democratic workers’ control as the cornerstone of genuine socialism.
This analysis emerged from Pat’s deep involvement in the struggles of the working class. His speeches at the Labour Party conference and in parliament and his articles for the Militant newspaper connected Stalinism’s distortions to the concrete realities faced by workers in Britain and beyond.
For instance, Pat’s ideas about internationalism flowed from Marxist criticism of how the Soviet Union was run. In his 1958 and 1962 writings on the Algerian struggle for independence, the Cuban revolution and, later in 1987, the events in Chile, Pat demonstrated how the Stalinist strategy of subordinating workers’ movements to alliances with ‘progressive’ bourgeois forces was a policy that repeatedly led to tragic defeats. Instead, he argued that only the independent mobilisation of the working class, pursuing a socialist programme, could achieve genuine liberation from colonial oppression and capitalist exploitation.
Marxists have consistently argued against policies that prioritised the interests of the capitalist class to those of the workers, whether through national unity governments or through policies like the Social Contract that sought to depress workers’ wages in the 1970s.
Pat used a 1987 Commons speech on events in Chile to draw lessons from the Popular Unity government’s failure to prevent the 1973 coup by not sufficiently breaking the power of the capitalist class and of the military to destroy the left-wing government. Instead of relying on ‘reformed generals’ or sections of the capitalist class for support, a workers’ government should have fully mobilised the working class in its defence.
Pat’s 1962 Marxist analysis of the early years of the Cuban revolution was particularly perceptive. While expressing solidarity with the Cuban people against US imperialism, Pat’s writings did not shy away from criticising the emerging bureaucratic deformations of the Castro regime. He correctly identified the revolution as overthrowing capitalism and landlordism, establishing a workers’ state but lacking the crucial element of democratic workers’ control.
This, he argued, stemmed from the absence of a strong, independent working-class movement and the influence of the top-down, bureaucratic Stalinist Soviet model. He argued that the Cuban revolution demonstrated the potential for socialist transformation even in underdeveloped countries but highlighted the dangers of bureaucratic degeneration if the working class was not at the helm.
The collection also provides valuable insights into the nature of Stalinism itself. Pat’s December 1989 parliamentary speech, delivered amid upheaval in Eastern Europe, was a particularly powerful condemnation of Stalinist rule. He described it as a “one-party, authoritarian, dictatorial rule” that arose from the isolation and backwardness of the Soviet Union following the 1917 revolution. He highlighted the bureaucratic privileges, corruption, and inefficiency that became endemic under Stalinism, contrasting them with the principles of workers’ democracy advocated by Lenin and Trotsky.
Pat’s analysis correctly identified the Stalinist bureaucracy as a parasitic caste that usurped political power from the working class while maintaining a nationalised, ‘planned’ economy. This, he argued, created a system that was neither capitalist nor genuinely socialist but a transitional formation that could either have moved towards the restoration of capitalism or, through a political revolution, towards genuine workers’ democracy.
Pat saw a restoration of capitalism in the USSR to be a defeat for the working class; one which would have negative consequences – such as the domination of those economies by Western capitalism and the imposition of market reforms. He quotes the Fiat motor company’s desire for the Russian working class to be a source of cheap labour.
Pat’s unwavering opposition to Stalinism also moulded his work within the Labour Party. He was a key figure in the internal battles that shaped the Labour Party in the 1970s and 1980s, as the inherent tensions between its working-class base and its pro-capitalist leadership erupted. He consistently fought against any attempts to stifle internal democracy or to purge the party of its left wing, recognising these as tactics borrowed from the Stalinist playbook. His commitment to democratic debate and accountability was evident in his articles, particularly his 1979 speech at the Labour Party conference arguing for mandatory reselection of MPs – which sought to make Labour MPs more accountable to the party’s rank and file.
He understood that the Labour Party had, in Lenin’s terms, a dual nature as a ‘bourgeois workers’ party’, a contradictory formation containing both the aspirations of organised labour and the ideological influence of the ruling class. This inevitably led to internal struggles, with the right wing constantly seeking to maintain the party’s commitment to managing capitalism. At the same time, the left strove to push it towards socialist policies.
Pat’s article in the centre pages of the Militant newspaper on 20 February 1976 regarding the 1929-31 Labour government, led by Ramsay MacDonald, is a powerful indictment of reformism’s limitations. He detailed how the government, faced with the onset of the Great Depression, abandoned its promises of social reform and implemented austerity measures dictated by the bankers and industrialists. MacDonald’s eventual defection to form a national government with the Tories and Liberals was a stark example of the ultimate betrayal of reformist policies that refuse to challenge the foundations of capitalist power.
Pat drew a direct parallel between the MacDonald betrayal and the policies pursued by subsequent Labour governments. He argued that the Wilson-Callaghan governments of the 1960s and 1970s, faced with a similar crisis of British capitalism, also resorted to attacking workers’ living standards through wage restraint, cuts in social spending, and rising unemployment. The ‘Social Contract’ of the mid-1970s, in which the trade union leadership agreed to limit wage demands in exchange for vague promises of social reforms, was a particularly flagrant example of class collaboration that ultimately benefited the employers at the expense of the workers.
Pat’s critique of the Labour right wing, however, was not limited to their economic policies. He also exposed their deeply ingrained anti-democratic tendencies, manifested in their repeated attempts to stifle internal dissent and purge the party of its left wing. The article in the Militant in September 1975 on the right wing’s use of witch-hunts provided numerous examples of how leading figures, often self-proclaimed ‘democrats’, resorted to bureaucratic manoeuvres to silence their opponents. The expulsion of Stafford Cripps and Aneurin Bevan in the 1930s, the disbanding of Constituency Labour Parties, the imposition of loyalty oaths, and the proscription of left-wing organisations, were all cited as evidence of the right wing’s hypocrisy.
Pat argued that these actions were not merely aberrations but were necessary to maintain the party’s subservience to the capitalist establishment. They were designed to prevent the party membership from having a say on the policies implemented by the Labour government.
Pat’s analysis of the Labour Party in the 1970s and 1980s was not static. He recognised that the party was a site of constant struggle and that its character would shift depending on the balance of forces within it. He noted the growing influence of the left in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly within the Constituency Labour Parties and some trade unions. He argued that this leftward shift reflected the deepening crisis of capitalism and the growing radicalisation of the working class.
The election of Militant supporters as MPs, the adoption of socialist policies at party conferences, and the increasing support for mandatory reselection were all signs of this changing balance of forces. However, he also warned against complacency. He understood that the left’s gains were precarious and that the right wing would fight tooth and nail to regain control of the party.
The left’s subsequent defeat and New Labour’s rise under Tony Blair confirmed Pat’s warnings. The right-wing, having learned from their previous setbacks, launched a systematic campaign to marginalise and ultimately expel the left, particularly the Militant Tendency. The abolition of mandatory reselection, the weakening of the trade union link, and the adoption of pro-market policies were all part of this counter-revolution within the party. The Labour Party was transformed from a ‘bourgeois workers’ party’ into an outright capitalist party, largely indistinguishable from the Tories.
Despite these defeats, Pat’s writings on the Labour Party remain relevant today. They provide a valuable historical perspective on the internal dynamics of social democratic parties and the challenges of building a socialist alternative within them. Now that after the Jeremy Corbyn ‘interlude’ the Labour Party under Keir Starmer has moved decisively to the right, expelling the left, including the former leader, and embracing a pro-capitalist agenda, the need for a genuinely independent political voice for the working class has never been greater and needs to be built.
Pat died at the early age of 57 in August 1990. His legacy, as embodied in this collection, is a reminder that the struggle for socialism requires both a principled commitment to Marxist ideas and a strategic understanding of the concrete conditions in which those ideas must be applied. His life and work will inspire those who continue to fight for a socialist transformation of society. This collection of articles and speeches can encourage us to engage with working people wherever they are organised, to explain socialist ideas patiently, and to build a powerful movement capable of challenging the power of capital and creating a genuinely democratic socialist society.