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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 185 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 185, April 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Labour’s new statement of aims and its replacement of Clause Four ‘rescues the left of centre from a false historical perspective which linked it to a Marxist intellectual analysis’.
So said Tony Blair last month in a speech which also stressed individual responsibility over collectivity.
The ‘rescue’ amounts to glowing references to ‘the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition’.
These words will ring hollow to those protesting over school and hospital cuts, or on the receiving end of sackings at Northern Foods, Midland Bank or Rumbelows.
These have all been victims of the rigour of competition over the last few months.
The adoption of the new clause, due to be voted on later this month at Labour’s special conference where it is certain to be agreed, was hailed by Blair as a ‘defining moment in the history of my party’.
The length of the clause owes something to Blair’s need to keep the ‘soft left’ on board, but what are the supposedly left wing additions to the clause? One is that the word ‘market’ was left out of the phrase ‘dynamic market economy’. The other more substantial addition is the phrase ‘to create... a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few.’
At the moment, of course, power, wealth and to a very large extent opportunity are in the hands of the few, not the many. How is this change to be effected? Neither the new Clause Four nor Labour’s leadership has anything to say on this question.
Indeed, Blair and his allies rule out any policies which might do something – in however small a way – to reverse the balance of wealth and power. He specifically rules out a commitment to full employment and refuses to give a figure for a minimum wage, even though figures published last month showed over 1 million people earning £2.50 an hour or less. There is now very little that Labour will commit itself to when it comes to power. When pressed to answer whether Labour would remove the hugely unpopular VAT on fuel Blair would not even make a commitment to what would be a definite vote winner.
How is a government which refuses to make even these sorts of demands on employers going to be able to transfer ‘power, wealth and opportunity’ into the hands of the many?
The commitment is completely empty – nothing more than words. But the ‘modernisers’ – so anxious to drop Clause Four because it did not talk about race or gender – have barely even given words to these issues. There is only a vague commitment to ‘equality of opportunity’ which itself sits alongside a commitment to strengthening the family.
Blair is winning because Labour supporters are desperate to see him elected. After 16 years of Tory rule many people would put up with any wording if it means there is a Labour government. But many of these same people are bitterly opposed to any further encroachment into the public sector, and find themselves wanting exactly the policies Blair is now planning to ditch.
The fight to defend any commitment to public services has not been helped by the feeble opposition of Labour’s ‘soft left’, who have refused to campaign openly against Blair for fear of being marginalised. MP Peter Hain said of the new clause, ‘It’s not worth going to the barricades over.’
We have been here before. At every point when Labour has moved to the right during the past decade, a section of the left has gone along with the leader on the grounds that this will unite the party and get it elected. Each time the right wing and the media have simply cried for more as they are doing now.
Labour’s leadership has made it clear through the attack on Clause Four exactly how little a Labour government will deliver. Increasingly those wanting to defend their living standards will have to follow the actions of those already fighting back against the enterprise of the market and rigour of competition.
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