This post is the second in an occasional series. This site already contains a large number of documents produced by Big Flame or its members. Most can be found in the 30 posts in Episodes in Big Flame History. Each post contains links to documents which relate to its theme. Links to the same documents are also listed on the website’s Publications page, this time sorted by type – pamphlets, journals, newspaper, internal documents.
This series aims to add to these documents by making available others I find interesting which didn’t fit with any of the post themes, were overlooked when the posts were written, or a copy was not available to me at the time of the post.
The second document I want to discuss is: Labouring Under the Tories? This short pamphlet was written in the summer of 1979. I’m not sure of the exact date, but it is first mentioned in the September issue of the Big Flame newspaper. Thus it was produced only a few months after the Tories General Election victory in May of that year.
Given the publication date, it is surprising that the analysis of Thatcherism is not especially prescient (what became known as Thatcherism only emerged over a period of time). This is not to argue that the Tory polices described weren’t important features of Thatcherism – structural long-term unemployment, removal of trade union rights, cuts in public expenditure, the strong state, etc. Like rest of left Big Flame not appreciate immediately how fundamental a change had occurred. The pamphlet did acknowledge that election victory signified that the Tories had won working class support for their “vision of an individualistic, competitive society”. However, the new government is mainly seen as “consolidating” the previous Labour government’s adoption of similar polices at the behest of the IMF.
The pamphlet is less about the Tories, than the Labour Party and need to develop a socialist alternative. The problem is how to break out of the cycle of militancy, followed by reformist politics and back again. The key message is to avoid the mistake made under the previous Tory spell in government 1970-74, and for those struggling against the government to limit themselves to calls for the return of a Labour government, and to rely on Labour and the trade union left to lead the struggles. In this respect the position laid out in the pamphlet is very similar to the 1971 broadsheet featured in the previous post in this series: How To Fight Them (link to https://bigflameuk.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/how-to-fight-them/). The key task is to develop wider perspectives which link defensive struggles to a challenge to capitalist ideas and control.
I can’t recall much disagreement in Big Flame about the pamphlet. However, there were clearly some members who weren’t happy with the contents. One referred to it a few years later (1983) as “that terrible pamphlet” and dismissed “the battle of ideas, ideologies, alternative plans and similar wishful thinking” by counter posing them to “solid working class organising”. This suspicion of the pamphlet may in part be due to the fact that by then some main of the authors had departed BF for the Labour Party. Myself I can’t see that pamphlet says much which leads on to that decision. Entryism in the Labour Party is rejected as based on a “fundamental misconception about the relationship of the Labour Party and reformism, and to the working class”. It also argues that “slogans and demands” will not prove to people that socialism is the answer, and that alternative plans are not ”the solution” and can’t be “a substitute” for more familiar forms of struggle.
If I have a criticism of the pamphlet it is that it is very limited in developing the wider perspectives it said were needed. I don’t disagree with any of the things it supports: alternative plans, rank and file organisation, solutions based on the needs of all oppressed classes and groups, material internationalism, a strategy based on the active participation of the working class, and making the struggle for socialism “meaningful, worthwhile and enjoyable”. The problem is that it fails to go beyond this level of generality. However, to expect much more is probably unrealistic from something brought out very quickly to promote a position as soon as possible after the election. Further, everyone else on the left, at the time and since, equally failed to develop much in the way of perspectives which would make socialism meaningful and popular.
If the coming election works out as predicted in the opinion polls, socialists will face a situation in some ways similar to that of 1970 and 1979. However, there is little need to warn anyone about the need to avoid having illusions in the Labour Party.
Click here to read: Labouring Under the Tories?.
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