As the delegates assemble for the Labour Party conference, the working class movement in Britain stands at a crossroads. In February 1974, the miners, in the most important working class victory since the Second World War, swept the Heath Government from office. For a few months the working class reaped some benefits from this triumph. Living standards, which had fallen sharply under the Tories' Phase Three incomes policy, rose once more. A freeze was imposed on rents. The hated Industrial Relations Act was swept aside.
BOSSES' AGENTS
Eighteen months later the situation is very different. It is sunmed up in the Healey measures — which are driving down living standards, and driving up unemployment, even more rapidly than under the Tories. A Labour Government which was elected against the wishes of the capitalist class is now openly used to impose the policies of the employers. This does not apply simply to wages and unemployment; the Government is also pursuing directly anti-working class policies on Clay Cross, Shrewsbury, Chile, defence, Portugal, Ireland, abortion. and virtually every other issue of national and international life and pontes What is more, it is clear that this policy, Photo: JOHN STURROCK (Renort far from saving the Labour Government - as Jack Jones claims — will in fact lead to the greatest electoral disaster for the Labour Party since 1931. Already in February and October 1974 the Labour Party received the lowest share of the poll since the 1930s. Today every opinion poll and by-election shows that Labour would do still worse.
But the total destruction of the Labour Government has hardly even started. International experience shows what lies in store for Socialist Parties which in present conditions pursue openly right-wing policies. In 1969, before it turned to the 'Union of the Left', the French Socialist Party received a mere 5 per cent of the vote in the Presidential elections — its lowest total since the First World War. In Denmark the Socialist Party lost nearly 20 per cent of its vote in eighteen months through its attempt to introduce incomes policy. In Australia the appalling right-wing policies of Whitlam have led to the Labour Party losing seats which it has held for 20 years.
These developments give some idea of the scale of the disaster which awaits the Labour Party if it continues on its present course. To lose 100 or 150 seats, to see virtually the whole of the Labour left wing swept out of Parliament, to be discussing not the fight which Benn and Hart are making inside the Parliamentary Party but how to save their seats or get them back into Parliament - that is in all seriousness the prospect which faces Labour Party delegates in the coming year if the present policies of the Government are not defeated. But even so, a much worse threat faces the Labour Party than that of electoral disaster.
When the Tories came to office last time, they were faced with a working class which tought back with a strength which broke the back of Heath's policies. The struggle against the Industrial Relations Act, Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, the first miners strike, the freeing of the Pentonville Five, the second miners strike and finally the fall of the Government were the landmarks in Heath's road to defeat.
Today, however, Wilson's policies threaten to create the conditions in which such a fight back is infinitely harder. The betrayal by their leaders cannot but demoralise sections of the working class. The creation of 1½ or 2 million unemployed must inevitably weaken the ability of the unions to fight back. Worst of all, by continually saying that working class 'restraint" is the only answer to the crisis, Wilson, Jones and the Labour leadership encourage every tendency within the working class which bel ieves struggle is useless and pointless and which wants to capitulate before the employers' and Tories' offensive.
It is also clear that the employers and their spokesmen fully realise the havoc which Wilson is trying to wreck in the working class. Thatcher openly proclaims in New York that when she is elected she will dismantle large sections of the welfare state. Liberal MPs talk of returning to the 1930s and making strikes in the public sector illegal. Lock-outs and imprisoning of militants have reappeared for the first time since the immediate post-war years.
REMOVE WILSON
The reality must be squarely faced and spelt out. Wilson is leading the working class movement to disaster. Everyone who supports him in his manoeuvres or who covers for him - from Jack Jones to Benn - is aiding and abetting in that disaster. They are savagely attacking the working class themselves and preparing the way for the coming to office of the most anti-working class Tory Government since the 1930s - and they are at the same time systematically weakening the ability of the working class to resist that Government. It is starting from these facts that the labour movement has to work out its future actions and policies.
6 labour party red weekly