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Sociali 


fabian tract 477 
the labour party and the new left 

chapter 1 
2 
3 
Three ideologies: ultra-democracy, modern 
British Trotskyism, social democracy 
Relations between the three ideologies 
Modern British Trotskyism and Labour 
1 
8 
11 
Party policy 
4 The growth of Trotskyist influence over the 17 
5 
6 
Labour Party 
Where do Trotskyist ideas lead 
Prospects 
24 
32 

muoducuon ______________ 


Since the May 79 Election, as the "Left" in the Labour Party have scored one 
victory after another, many people have become aware that this "Left" is 
different in character from the familiar Tribunite or Bevanite left, or from the 
old Communist left. Its protagonists are said to be intolerant, to have an appetite 
for class conflict and to be opposed to Parliamentary democracy. Talk of 
Trotskyists has become increasingly common. In speaking of a "new model" 
Labour Party, Peter Shore voiced a widely shared view that this new left is 
changing the whole nature of the Labour Party -a view corroborated by Paul 
Foot of the Socialist Workers' Party who wrote "large numbers of socialists 
have joined the Labour Party, which is being transformed before our very eyes'' 
(Socialist Worker, 30 May 1981). 

The object of this pamphlet is to has come about. There is a brief 
examine the new Labour left as a discussion of the consequences of 
political phenomenon: its nature, Trotskyist policies, were they to be 
ideological origins, social roots and implemented, and finally , the 
processes of growth. How close is it to prospects facing the Party are 
control of the Labour Party? And considered. 
where would its ideas lead, if it were It is hoped that the pamphlet will be 
to win governmental power? of value not only to those aware of the 

The pamphlet will look first at the dangers, but also to many presently 
ideological currents at work in the influenced by Trotskyist ideas. For, 
Party and then at the relationship while the ideas may be flawed, their 
between them. It then examines how revival has real social roots and their 
far the key ideology of Trotskyism is proponents are often sincere and 
reflected in the policies and values of idealistic, moved by a genuine spirit 
the Labour Party and at how its rise of enquiry. 


1. 
Three ideologies: ultra-
democracy, modern British 
trotskyism, social democracy 
There are three main identifiable systems of ideas in the Labour Party and 
unions at present: here called ultra-democracy and modern British Trotskyism, 
and social democracy. Trotskyism and social democracy are both varieties of 
socialism and offer more or less complete philosophies, or worldviews, while 
ultra-democracy is more limited in scope, and is compatible with a variety of 
other ideologies. This list of three does not exhaust the ideologies found in the 
Labour movement -others, such as orthodox Communism and the newer 
"ecologism" are also important. But these three are crucial. 

Ultra-Democracy 

Since the mid 60s, there has been 
widespread acceptance of the idea that, 
whatever the economic or political system, 
power should so far as possible be passed 
downwards, or "decentralised". Where, 
for practical reasons, decision making 
must remain at higher levels, full 
dissemination of information should take 
place from higher to lower levels, with 
people at the lower levels being consulted 
before decisions are made. Many political 
developments in the last 15 years have 
been organised around this theme: Welsh 
and Scottish devolution, demands for 
industrial democracy, constitutional 
changes in the Labour Party, Community 
Health Councils, the Skeffington Report 
on participation in local planning, tenant 
participation in housing management, the 
revival of the cooperative idea, the 
demand for a Freedom of Information 
Act, "open access" in the media, wider 
disclosure rules in the Companies Acts, 
parent, student and pupil representation 
on governing bodies. Ultra-demoeracy has 
also featured as an element in the 
opposition to the Common Market. 
Similarly, its guiding spirit, that people 
should make decisions for themselves, is 
seen not only in the area of collective 
decision-making but also in that of private 

behaviour, so that the decriminalisation of 
homosexuality and abortion are part of the 
same trend. 

The term ultra-democracy is used not to 
disparage, but to differentiate this 
ideology from more traditional ideas 
about democracy, in which "rule by the 
people" was not usually thought to involve 
much direct participation by the ordinary 
man or woman in the street. The term 
"ultra" is used to indicate that this 
ideology, in itself, implies the furthest 
possible downward extension of decision 
making: limitations and exceptions are 
only reluctantly admitted, if at all. 

Ultra-democracy has been a potent 
political force and , since the reform 
programme implicit in it is uncompleted, it 
remains so. Its rise is due to higher living 
standards, the spread of further and higher 
education, the growth of leisure , 
technological changes making the 
dissemination of information easier, and a 
reaction against bureaucracy. There is no 
need to go into this here: it is sufficient to 
establish the political potency of ultra-
democracy . For this is the key to much of 
the jockeying for position of other 
ideologies within the Labour Party. 

Modern British Trotskyism 

The essence of Modern British Trotskyism 


(so called here in recognition of its 
historically specific character) lies in the 
claim that the failure of Marxist-Leninism 
in Russia and elsewhere was due not to any 
essential feature of the doctrine itself, but 
to accidents of history. The corollary of 
this claim is that the theory and political 
strategy may be applied without any 
essential revision. It is therefore very 
much a fundamentalist variety of Marxism 
-essentially a revival of Bolshevism. In 
case this characterisation seems 
overdrawn, let us quote the Marxist writer 
Ralph Miliband, writing about 
organisations such as the Socialist 
Workers' Party (SWP) or Workers' 
Revolutionary Party (WRP) : "All these 
organisations have a common perception 
of socialist change in terms of a 
revolutionary seizure of power on the 
Bolshevik model of October 1917" 
(Socialist Register, 1976). 

Classes 

The notion that society is divided into 
classes, whose essence lies in their 
relationship to the means of production, is 
basic to any form of Marxism. Modern 
British Trotskyism is distinguished by its 
peculiarly crude and rigid view of the class 
structure. Trotskyists believe that Britain 
is run by a small, homogeneous and 
immensely powerful ruling class, formed 
of the owners of the means of production 
and their principal agents, which among 
other things exerts tight control over the 
media. Dominated and exploited by this 
small capitalist clique is the "workingclass". 

For sophisticated Marxists, a basic 
difficulty in the conceptualisation of the 
"working class" is the analysis of the 
extensive middle strata of highly educated 
non-manual workers. Trotskyists follow 
Trotsky in insisting that it is industrial 
manual workers alone who can bring 
about revolutionary change. This class 

must emancipate itself, without relying on 
allies from any other social groupings. The 
concept of a "broad progressive alliance", 
favoured by Eurocommunists, is rejected. 
This narrow view of the "working class" 
leads to great difficulties for Trotskyists 
who are not manual workers. Such 
difficulties are frequently resolved by 
resort to "workerism"-the conscious and 
artificial adoption of styles of life , 
including dress, speech and types of 
entertainment, which are typical of the 
traditional industrial working class. 

Class Conflict 
Modern British Trotskyism is a doctrine of 
conflict: struggle and violence are wholeheartedly 
accepted. It is believed that 
capitalism (the economic and social system 
based on private ownership of the means 
of production) is bound to collapse sooner 
or later. Trotskyists tend to believe that 
this collapse is imminent. They conclude 
that any intensification of class conflict is 
unequivocally good , in heightening the 
contradictions within capitalism and 
bringing about a "raising ofconsciousness" 
and mobilisation of the working class for 
revolution. This' is the reason for the unremitting 
appetite for industrial conflict 
which distinguishes Trotskyists in the 
unions and in the Labour Party, and for 
their otherwise apparently irrational choice 
of trivial or (from the workers' point of 
view) self-destructive issues on which to 
fight. 

It is also the fundamental reason for the 
remarkable "economism" of Trotskyist 
tactics -that is the pursuit of narrowly 
financial goals at the expense of wider 
political objectives. Economic issues are 
those on which it is easiest to mobilise 
struggle, since it is relatively easy to win 
support among non-socialist and nonpolitical 
trade unionists. This concern 
overrides any doubts about the justice of 
supporting groups defending positions of 

2 


affluence and power -for instance, the 
upper ranks of the civil service and local 
government. Within a Trotskyist perspective 
, all that matters is to overthrow the 
capitalist system. The machine of history 
will ensure that socialism will follow. 
"Workerism" and "economism" together 
imply uncritical support for unions and, in 
particular, union militancy. This contrasts 
with the view of Lenin and the classical 
Bolsheviks, who were most insistent upon 
the limitations of " trade union 
consciousness". 

The pursuit of conflict leads to a 
conscious disregard for truth, the most 
important instance being the practice of 
the politics of exposure. Ralph Miliband 
comments: "Supporters ofa 'revolutionary' 
as opposed to a 'reformist' strategy have 
generally tended .. . to press for reforms 
which they did not believe to be attainable, 
as part of a 'politics of exposure' of 
capitalism -and also of 'reformist' labour 
leaders" (Marxism and Politics, 1977). 

The Revolutionary Party 

The key role in carrying through the 
overthrow of capitalism is attributed to the 
revolutionary Party whose basic model 
was set out in Lenin's 1902 tract What is to 
be done? The Leninist Party is extremely 
tightly disciplined, secretive apd , in 
practice, authoritarian. Lenin attempted 
to reconcile the need for authority with the 
desire for democracy with his concept of 
"democratic centralism". This is merely 
verbal resolution ofthe dilemma: effectively 
the model is elective dictatorship. The 
history of the Bolshevik Party showed how 
power really lay at the top, and could be 
monopolised by a determined General 
Secretary in the form of Stalin. 

is not a necessary feature of this transfer. 
But Trotskyists believe in the overthrow of 
the state by force . They insist that a 
socialist society cannot come through 
Parliament, and they therefore believe 
that Parliament must be overthrown. 
Subsequently, the rule of the working class 
through the Party will be enforced by 
violence on the rest of society -the 
"dictatorship of the proletariat". However, 
within the working class, direct rule by the 
masses will be ensured through the workers' 
councils or "soviets" which will spring up 
everywhere during the Revolution . 
Trotskyists have never resolved the contradiction 
between the desire for a strong 
centralised authority to . smash their 
enemies, and the commitment to direct 
rule by the masses. 

The Socialist Planned Econamy 

After the seizure of state power, all the 
means of production would be 
nationalised, markets abolished, and 
production organised through state 
central planning. Nationalisation before 
the seizure of state power cannot, it is 
believed, bring about socialism, but is 
favoured because it weakens the capitalist 
ruling class. This emphasis on the 
dominant role of the state has been 
labelled "statism" by its critics. In the long 
run , however, Trotskyists believe, with 
Lenin, that the state will ;"wither away"why, 
or how, it is not easy to discover. 

International Perspective 

The international perspective ofTrotskyism 
is distinctive. Usually summed up, misleadingly, 
in the phrase "socialism in one 
country", it in fact means that socialism is 
not attainable in one country alone; international 
working class solidarity will bring 

Insurrection about revolution simultaneously in all (or 
The term "revolution", within Marxism, at least most) countries. The almost 
need only imply the transfer of state power mystical faith in the working class leads to 
from one social class to another. Violence the belief that working class solidarity can 

3 


transcend international barriers -hence 
policies such as the "solution" to the 
Northern Ireland problem to be brought 
by joint working class action in all 36 
counties; the slogan "for a united socialist 
states of Europe" to replace the EEC; and 
the opposition to any form of import 
controls. 

To sum up: whereas Soviet-orientated 
communists accept that Russian experience 
shows that compromises are necessary in 
the building of socialism, Trotskyists reject 
all unpleasant aspects of historical experience 
and cling to a naively hopeful 
perspective, as if the Soviet Union had 
simply been a bad dream. The naivety in 
Trotskyism is well captured by the Marxist, 
Regis Debray: "At bottom Trotskyism is a 
metaphysic paved with good intentions. It 
is based on a belief in the natural goodness 
of the workers, which is always perverted 
by evil bureaucrats but never destroyed. 
There is a proletarian essence within party 
and workers alike which cannot be altered 
by circumstances. For them to become 
aware of it themselves, it is only necessary 
that they be given the word, that objectives 
be set for them which they see without 
seeing and which they know without 
knowing. Result: socialism becomes a 
reality, all at once, without delay, neat and 
tidy" (Revolution in the Revolution, 1967). 

How has the Revival of 
Trotskyism Come About? 

The extraordinary revival ofTrotskyismin 
Britain can be traced back to the growth, 
since the 1960s, throughout the Western 
world, of varieties of Marxism hostile to 
the orthodox Communism of the Soviet 
bloc. 

The break with the Communist Party in 
1956 of the original British New Left and 
parallel developments in the United States 

had an enormously liberating effect on 
Marxism. Under soviet control, Marxist 
ideas had become narrowly dogmatic and 
routine. The birth of an intellectual centre 
outside Moscow or Peking was almost 
bound to produce an enormous 
development of Marxian ideas, and the 
rediscovery of deviant Marxian writers 
including Trotsky and the early Marx. 

This development gained impetus from 
the events of the later 1960s. The Vietnam 
war was an enormously powerful 
mobilising influence over younger people, 
and the French May Events of 1968 and 
similar developments elsewhere -with 
their strongly anarchistic character, far 
removed from the style and ideas of 
orthodox Communism -also proved 
influential. 

As a result, the Marxist Left is 
immensely stronger than in the mid 60s. Its 
ideas are well represented among 
university and polytechnic teachers, and 
there is a well developed Marxian 
literature in most academic disciplines, as 
well as numerous political monthlies, 
weeklies and dailies, and a wide range of 
community newspapers and groups. Few 
people aged under 30 joined the Labour 
Party between about 1966 and 1979. 
Probably a majority of left inclined young 
people belonged to, or passed through, 
Trotskyist sects, such as the SWP, WRP 
(formerly the Socialist Labour League, 
SLL) and the International Marxist Group 
(IMG), or Trotskyist-influenced student 
socialist societies. Throughout the period, 
the main student socialist society of most 
British universities and polytechnics was 
"revolutionary socialist" in character; 
Labour Party-affiliated or inclined 
societies were usually in a minority. 

Within the Marxist left, the dominant 
position is held by Trotskyist groupings, as 
is conceded by Sheila Rowbotham, who 
writes of the "paralysis of libertarian 
Marxism as a challenge to the hegemony 

4 


of the Trotskyist groups in the British left 
which is apparent from the mid seventies" 
(Beyond the Fragments , 1979). 

This is due to peculiarities of British 
political history. In Europe, although there 
has been a growth of Trotskyism and anarchism, 
the most marked feature has been 
the development of " Eurocommunism", 
in other words, the movement of existing 
Communist parties towards abandonment 
of the notion of insurrection, to 
acceptance of Parliament and electoral 
and legal means of campaigning, and to 
the search for a broad class base 
comprising much of the middle class as 
weli as the traditional working class. In 
Britain, by contrast, while the very small 
Communist Party has moved in this 
direction, it could not offer an attractive 
home to those seeking a left wing 
alternative to the Labour Party. But 
Britain did have, during the 50s and early 
60s, a number of very small Trotskyist 
sects, which were well placed to take 
advantage of the opportunity presented to 
them, and experienced large scale growth. 

The rise of Trotskyism has been aided 
by certain features of the life experience of 
the generations aged under about 35-who 
provide most of its support. The 
expansion of higher education produced a 
crop of first-generation students from 
working class or lower middle class 
backgrounds. Although relatively privileged 
objectively by comparison with their 
parents, they have been acutely conscious 
of the poverty, narrowness and humiliation 
of their parents' lives and of their own 
distinctness, in the characteristic ways of 
the British class system, from their fellow-
students from the "higher" social classes. 
[n such cjrcumstances, an aggressive 
affirmation of working class identity corresponding 
to the 'workerism' 
mentioned earlier-is, for many, a natural 
reaction. 

Whiteley and Gordon's survey of 

constituency delegates to the 1979 Party 
Conference showed that only 30 per cent 
were blue collar workers, 70 per cent white 
collar -yet 72 per cent claimed to be 
working class and only 22 per cent thought 
of themselves as middle class (New Society , 
11 January 1981). 

''The 1956 break with the Communist 
Party, the events of the 60s, 
the strength ofTrotskyism amongst 
students in the 60s (when the left in 
Europe was moving to Euro-
communism), the growth of higher 
education, the decline ofdeference, 
rising expectations and. the absence 
of experience amongst the young of 
real violence -all here helped the 
rise of Trotskyism in the Party. '' 

Higher education was bound to create a 
strong demand for more theoretical 
politics than was generally on offer from 
the social democrats of the Party. 
Potentially, social democracy has a 
stronger base in theory than has Marxism. 
But its political theory is relatively 
underdeveloped-especially in the Labour 
Party. The rather isolated work of 
Anthony Crosland is not open to this 
criticism. But the drawback is that it does 
not spring from a first hand experience of 
being working class; in spite of the 
acuteness of its analysis, it does not exhibit 
the required intensity of feeling-it is too 
objective. It could not easily meet the 
emotional needs of this particular 
audience. 

In its Trotskyist rather than old 
Communist version, Marxism has also 
fitted in with important features of youth 
culture. The violence, or at least violent 
expressiveness, of much rock music has its 

5 


parallel in political insurrectionism. 
Rejection of "straight" culture in favour 
of " alternatives" has mirrored the Marxist 
critique of capitalist society, especially 
where this has drawn on the elements in 
Marxism -stemming from the Economic 
and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and 
the Grundrisse of 1859-which are more 
humanist and subjective in emphasis. 

Some broader influences have also 
played a role. The decline of deference is 
obvious: it must enhance the appeal of the 
ultra-democratic model of the Party, and 
of the Trotskyist vision of the self-
emancipating working class ruling through 
workers' councils. 

For those in work and on decent 
incomes, Britain in the last 20 years has 
been a rather self-indulgent culture: the 
attitudes expressed in the phrase "You've 
never had it so good", and the experience 
of the welfare state, have bred high expectations. 
For many, a perfect new society 
off the shelf on the morrow of a quick and 
po sibly rather enj,oyable revolutionary 
upheaval simply seemed a realistic expectation. 


Finally, this generation have never 
experienced political violence, or even 
military violence, except in fringe areas or 
by proxy. The rather farcical model of the 
French May Events has made playful 
revolution thinkable. The appetite for 
violence has had little chance to tum into 
disgust at the reality. It would be foolish to 
deny the importance of Marxist groupings 
which are not Trotskyist, such as the 
Communist Party or the intellectual New 
Left, or to fail to recognise their often 
deep ho tility to Trot kyism. The Marxist, 

E.P. Thomp on, for instance, writes of 
"Marxisms with which I cannot associate 
my elf' (Socialist Register, 1973), and 
observe that "Some sector of the 
organised left have a far greater command 
of the language of destruction than they do 
of affirmation . Apart from an extremely 
vague notion of something called 
'revolution' (a notion which should be 
subjected to a very serious critique), they 
have very few constructive strategies" (The 
Leveller, January 1978). 

But in practice non-Trotskyist Marxists 
are weakened either by lack oforganisation 
or, in the case of Communists, by their 
unpopular association with the Soviet 
Union. In relation to the Labour Party, 
they inevitably make common cause, most 
of the time, with Trotskyists, since they 
have much in common. Even when they 
do not, their presence tends to reinforce 
the strength of Trotskyist ideas, since the 
different varieties of Marxism resemble 
each other more than they resemble social 
democracy . 

Social Democracy 

The third major ideology in the Labour 
Party can be termed social democracy (as it 
is also called by contemporary Marxists). 
It is often referred to as "democratic 
socialism" -the relation between the two 
terms will be discussed in a moment. 
Because it has been taken for granted for 
so long, there have been few explicit 
statements of the ideology, political 
argument having focu sed on issues within 
the ideology, not on the principles 
themselves. It is only now, with the rise of 
Marxi m within the Labour Party, that 
explicit statements are appearing-by the 
leading social democrats in the new SOP, 
and by the many social democrats who 
remain in the Labour Party. 

The central idea of social democracy i 
that ofequality-equality, so far as possible, 
of wealth, income and opportunity; 
equality of e teem , in the sense of the 
repudiation of class, caste or tatu 
difference ; and, crucially, equality of 
political rights and political power. Marxi ts 
al o aim to achieve these-at the end of a 

6 


revolutionary transitio~-but in the here 
and now argue that class differences must 
be emphasised and antagonisms sharpened, 
and that political rights must not be equal : 
those of the ruling class must be removed 
completely and, within the working class, 
power must be substantially removed from 
the masses and vested in the leading circles 
of the revolutionary party. 

Social democrats, inspired often by 
humanism or religious feeling, reject the 
view that long term good will come of 
short term evil , and insist on the exclusive 
use of persuasion, within a Parliamentary 
system, and on the repudiation of political 
violence. 

Social democracy also involves a 
commitment to the mixedeconomy, that 
is, to private as well as state ownership of 
the means of production. This is not based 
on hostility to collective ownership but on 
the empirical belief that political democracy 
is not sustainable in a centrally planned 
economy in which the state has a monopoly 
of the means of production (see chapter 
5). 

The concept of "representative" 
democracy is also basic to social 
democracy. This stems partly from a 
genuine commitment to Parliamentarism, 
partly from the belief that elected 
representatives must be capable of 
listening and responding to the views of 
electors other than members of the 
majority party -essentially a humanistic 
belief -and partly from the knowledge 
that good decisions require· more intensive 
study and better advice than is possible in 
meetings of party activists. 

"Democratic Socialism" 

If these are the elements of social 
democracy, what, then, is democratic 
socialism? It is de rigueur for Labour 
politicians to deny that they are social 

democrats, but to claim the title democratic 
socialist. One typical definition was given 
by Roy Hattersley; " I am not a social 
democrat , because I want to change society 
fundamentally; I am a democratic 
socialist". While one may accept that some 
social democrats want more change than 
others, it cannot seriously be argued that 
social democracy is an ideology opposed in 
principle to social change. The term 
democratic socialist as defined by 
Hattersley is therefore without separate 
content, unless particular types of change 
are specified. 

In fact , there is one plausible definition 
which has a separate content: a democratic 
socialist is one who believes in a socialist 
(that is, centrally planned and collectively 
owned, economy) but wishe's to attain this 
by consent; and who believes that political 
democracy will be sustainable under total 
state ownership and control. Most people 
who claim to be democratic socialists do 
not in fact want or believe these things; 
they believe in a mixed economy and could 
equally well be called social democrats. 

Some members of the Tribune group 
probably do qualify as democratic socialists 
in the collectivist sense. But Aneurin 
Bevan, for instance, who called himself a 
democratic socialist did not: he believed in 
the mixed economy and wrote "Where the 
frontier between the public and private 
sector should be fixed is a question that 
will be answered differently in different 
nations, according to their traditions and 
stage of historical development ... In the 
Western world the extension of the 
principles of public ownership will be 
influenced by the extent to which large 
aggregations of private capital have 
coagulated into monopolies and semi-
monopolies in which profit is a clear tax on 
the community and no longer a reward for 
risk. So also, the existence of producer 
and consumer co-operatives may be 
expected to exert their influence on the 

7 


character and direction of the public 
domai n" (In Place of Fear, 1952). Bevan's 
own definition of "democratic socialism" 
i remarkable for its vagueness: "not a 
middle way between capitali m and 
Communism... It is based on the 
conviction that free men can use free 
institutions to solve the social and economic 
problems of the day" (ibid). 

It does not seem correct. therefore, to 
identify democratic socialism, in the 

collectivist sense, as one of the major 
ideologies active in the Labour movement, 
although it must have its adherents. To 
avoid confusion, this pamphlet prefers the 
term social democrat to democratic 
socialism used in a non-collective en e. 
Some people who share the ideas will prefer 
to use the term democratic socialism, but 
they will need to work hard to rescue it 
from its present ambiguity. 

2. Relations between the 
Three Ideologies 
The three ideologies of ultra-democracy, Trotskyism and social democracy do 
have certain points in common. These determine which political alliances are 
possible between their adherents. 

Perhaps the most important set of relationships is that between Trotskyism 
and ultra-democracy. The emphasis in Trotskyism on mass activity and rule 
through workers' councils has a close parallel in ultra-democracy. It will be 
argued later that this is entirely spurious: in practice, Trotskyism is extremely 
authoritarian, and must be so. But it claims to be ultra-democratic, and this 
claim is widely believed. The economic utopias implied by Trotskyism and by 
ultra-democracy are effectively identical. This connection was well caught by 
Tony Benn: "We too accept that any society requires discipline, though the 
discipline of the market place and the discipline imposed by the top people are 
both equally unattractive. We believe that the self-discipline of full democratic 
control offers our best hope for the future" (Arguments for Socialism, 1979). 

Ifultra-democracy is interpreted within a narrow Labour Party perspective, 
the two ideologies are also in agreement on the changes to the Party constitution 
which imply (or are held to imply) more control from below. Trotskyists, like 
ultra-democrats, are against government secrecy and elite control of the media-
when these are a " capitalist" government and " capitali t" elites. Support for 
" direct action" can also be found in both ideologies. 

8 


There are, of course, important differences 
between ultra-democracy and 
Trotskyism: such as the intolerance shown 
by Trotskyists, and their manipulativeness, 
and the authoritarianism and centralism of 
the Trotskyist state. It can also be argued 
that the rule of law is an essential corollary 
of democracy, so that illegal action, 
favoured in a Trotskyist perspective, is 
impermissible in a democratic one. As far 
as inner party democracy is concerned, 
"one man one vote" seems more in conformity 
with ultra-democracy than does 
the indirect democracy of the Leninist 
model. 

Social-democracy can also claim affinity 
with ultra-democracy: it is consistently 
democratic, and against concentrations of 
power. But it has been hampered by its 
association with phenomena which are 
unattractive when seen from an ultra-
democratic perspective: the bureaucracy 
of the welfare state, "corporatism", 
Morrisonian nationalisation, opposition to 
Freedom of Information. And it suffers 
from another qisadyantag~. Denis Healey 
and David Owen (Face the Future , 1981) 
have both quoted with approval the emigre 
Polish writer, Leszek Kolakowski: "the 
trouble with the social democratic idea is 
that it does not stock and does not sell any 
of the exciting ideological commodities 
which various totalitarian movements ... 
offer dream-hungry youth. It is no ultimate 
solution for all human misery and 
misfortunes." They could equally well have 
quoted Bevan: "The philosophy of 
Democratic Socialism is essentially cool in 
temper. It sees society in its context with 
nature and is conscious of the limitations 
imposed by physical conditions. It sees the 
individual in his context with society and is 
therefore compassionate and tolerant. 
Because it knows that all political action 
must be a choice between a number of 
possible alternatives, it eschews all absolute 
proscriptions and final decisions. Con


sequently it is not able to offer the thrill of 
the complete abandonment of private 
judgement, which is the allure of modern 
Soviet Communism and of Fascism, its 
running mate" (op cit). 

Thus Trotskyism has been well placed to 
benefit from the advance of ultra-
democracy ; social democracy has been 
much less well-placed . 

The Thoughts of Tony Benn 

The forging of the ideological links between 
ultra-democracy and Trotskyism is shown 
at its clearest in the development of the 
thinking of Tony Benn, who could fairly 
be called the principal ideologist of 
Labour's New Left. 

Tony Benn's earliest essay in political 
thought was the Fabian pamphlet The New 
Politics: A Socialist Reconnaissance (1970). 
This is an almost pure statement of ultra-
democratic ideology, and while the 
ideology was running strongly-as shown , 
for instance, in the upsurge of the Liberal 
Party's '' community politics" -Tony Benn 
was the first national politician to espouse 
it fully. Many familiar themes are already 
there, including industrial democracy, 
abolition of government secrecy and 
democratisation of the mass media. 

There is little sign of any anti-capitalist 
feeling. The only exception is this 
comment: "The potentiality of greater 
industrial democracy in the mass media 
forcing the owners of existing outlets to 
share their power with those who work for 
these papers, or on their stations, may have 
a significant part to play." 

Benn's successful advocacy, later, of a 
referendum on EEC membership fits the 
same ultra-democratic pattern. But during 
the early 70s, a second element entered 
Benn's thought and was for a long time his 
most distinctive position. This was the 
economic programme of the AES (Alternative 
Economic Strategy): import 

9 


controls, planning t,tgreements, action 
against multinationals, extensions of state 
ownership. Commitment to this strategy 
was the main theme in his hostility to the 
EEC. 

Much more recently, a third element 
has shown itself: Marxism. 

The 1976 speech which provoked the 
famous exchange with Shirley ·williams 
argued that Marxists were entitled to play 
a role in the Labour Party (Arguments for 
Socialism , 1979). At that time Benn's own 
thought was clearly not Marxist. But the 
Marxian element in his thinking has 
become increasingly prominent. In the 
Debate of the Decade , 1980, for instance, 
he says: "The reality is that we have come 
as far as can possibly be advanced within 
the basically capitalist system. Indeed we 
have come now to the point where the 
capitalist system cannot even allow us to 
sustain the gains that were made before". 
It may be doubted how far Benn's Marxism 
goes beyond rhetoric. For time and again 
he seems to get to the point of revolution 

but then draws back. No specific proposals 

for the transition to socialism appear in 
this or other speeches; his commitment to 
parliamentary democracy is reaffirmed. 
The weakness was identified by Eric 
Hobsbawm: " Democratic socialism as you 
(Benn) put it is neither a policy nor a 
structure; it's a political style, democracy 
combined with an aspiration, socialism and 
social change. But what's in between?" 
(Marxism Today , October 1980). Nevertheless, 
anti-capitalist declarations of this 
kind are bound to attract Trotskyists 
within the Labour Party and outside it. 
And the affinity of Benn's thinking with 
modern British Trotskyism is not merely 
superficial. 

The two elements which were present 
before Benn's thinking became explicitly 
anti-capitalist, -participatory democracy 
and centralist statist economic policies correspond 
to the main elements in 
Modern British Trotskyism. Both are 
equaUy naive in believing that centralisation 
and decentralisation can be pursued at the 
same time. 

10 


3. Modern British Trotskyismand Labour Party Policy_ 
Ifour assessment of the potency of the ultra-democratic ideology is correct, we 
would expect to find the Labour Party's policy and ideology moving in this 
direction. However, if an ultra-democratic advance were all that were involved, 
this pamphlet would never have been written. What is alarming is the extent of 
the inroads made, especially since 1979, by Trotskyist ideas. 

A preliminary word is needed about the nature of the changes. It is vital to 
look beyond formal, official policy statements, important though these are. Such 
statements tend to use soft, evasive formulations: in any case they come at the 
end of the process of policy formation. We must also look also at the nature of the 
demands which are gaining support, and at the speeches of leading politicians. 
More fundamentally, since we are talking about the growth of a new worldview, 
we need to examine statements of belief, and at the values implied by people's 
behaviour and by the symbols they adopt. 

Let us begin, with the ultra-democratic 
ideas. Later in the chapter, some of these 
will be reinterpreted from a Trotskyist 
viewpoint. 

"Ultra-Democratic" Policies 

Some of the most important ultra-
democratic demands are those which the 
1974-79 Labour Government has been 
most attacked for not carrying out: 
abolition of the House of Lords, 
introduction of a Freedom of Information 
Act , large scale introduction of industrial 
co-operatives and industrial democracy. 
The programme of constitutional changes 
(automatic reselection, widening the 
franchise for the election of Party leader, 
and the writing of the Manifesto by the 
NEC) has also drawn on ultra-democratic 
support , although the specific proposals 
do not fit as easily within an ultra-
democratic framework as would possible 
alternatives -especially "one-man-onevote" 
for reselection and for the election 
of rhe Party leader. 

There are a number ofother issues where 

ultra-democratic support is likely to fall 

clearly on one side (the "left"): the EEC, 

incomes policy, unilateral nuclear 

disarmament, nuclear energy, reform of 
the Press, and the ending of a British 
presence in Northern Ireland. A 
distinguishing feature of all these issues is 
their complex nature: in every case, it is 
possible for a wholehearted democrat-or 
even a Marxist -to oppose the "left" 
position for excellent reasons. For 
example, in the case of the EEC, there is a 
strong current of pro-European feeling 
within the Marxist left (John Palmer, 
" Europe's Left Opposition," New 
Statesman , 7 November 1980; Tom Nairn, 
"The Left Against Europe?" New Left 
Review 75 , 1972) and even among 
Trotskyists (Ernest Mandel: Europe versus 
America?, 1970). 

On all these issues, a simple-minded 
approach fits more easily with an ultra·· 
democratic perspective. One of the less 
fortunate implications of the rise of ultra-
democracy is that populism must be 
expected to grow correspondingly. Hence 
any politician who takes up a more complex 
approach tends to find his democratic 
credentials being challenged; this has been 
partially responsible for the difficulties 
experienced by the Labour Parliamentary 
leadership in the last two years. 

11 


Trotskyist policies 

Let us now turn to explicitly Trotskyist 
ideas. The most important of these are the 
rejection of Parliament and the rule of 
law , and the acceptance of insurrectionary 
methods. 

Parliament and the Rule of Law 

The most striking example of an 
insurrectionary policy becoming official was 
the adoption at the 1979 Party Conference, 
virtually without debate, of the commitment 
to renationalise without compensation 
public assets hived off by the Conservative 
government. This policy reappeared in the 
NEC Statement, Peace, Jobs, Freedom , 
approved at the May 1980 Special 
Conference, without being separately voted 
upon. 

Expropriation has long been demanded 
by Trotskyists within the Party. It is 
essentially insurrectionist because it makes 
no sense except in a revolutionary perspective, 
so high is the level of conflict it 
would precipitate. It would obviously make 
the sort of collaboration between public 
and private sectors envisaged in the Labour 
Party's "Alternative Economic Strategy" 
(AES) impossible. It is also profoundly 
"statist" in that it elevates into a crime the 
shifting of any activity from the public to 
the private sector, instead of viewing the 
boundary as involving two-way traffic; and 
it is inconsistent with the rule of law in 
creating retrospective penalties for acts 
legally done. It is significant how cautious 
the Communist Party has been, by 
comparison, in handling the concept of 
expropriation. The 1978 edition of its 
programme The British Road to Socialism 
states that "In all cases (of nationalisation) 
only limited compensation should be paid 
to shareholders". 

The implications of "renationalisation 
without compensation" were spelled out 
in the Briefing issued at the 1979 Party 

conference by the Socialist Campaign for a 
Labour Victory (SCLV): " It involves a 
revolutionary measure, for in all probability 
a Labour Government which even 
attempted to nationalise industries without 
compensation would be met with refusal 
of the Royal Assent to its Bills ... To go 
forward , the Labour Government would 
have to defy the Crown, defy the Armed 
Forces chiefs. . . and base itself on our 
movement's combined industrial. and 
organisational strength to take the power. 
And if our leaders faltered , we would have 
to take the power ourselves on behalf of 
and in defence ofthe elected Government." 

More recently , a similar policy -a 
commitment to the cancellation of local 
authority debt -was inserted into the 
Labour Party's 1981 GLC Election 
Manifesto. The implications of this policy 
are similar to those of the preceding one, 
although it makes even less sense either in 
purpose or in mechanism. Once again , 
negligible debate occurred-the policy was 
simply inserted into the Manifesto by the 
Executive and never separately voted 
upon. More recently, the 1980 Party 
Conference adopted a resolution calling 
for the repurchase of council houses bought 
under the Conservative "Right to Buy", at 
a price set to recover the value of the 
discount. Statist, punitive, retrospective 
and deeply insensitive to ordinary people's 
feelings, this policy has now been rejected 
even by the NEC as totally impracticable. 
But its adoption shows the strength of the 
Party's newly found confiscatory impulse. 

More direct attacks on Parliament and 
on the rule oflaw can be found in statements 
by leading politicians, ifnot in formal statements 
ofpolicy. 

For example, at the 1979 PartyConference, Joan Maynard MP, speaking 
for the NEC, commented: " . . . we have to 
bear in mind that the law has never been 
on our side. It was made by the other 
people for their people and not for ours. 
Let us hope that we can stop these sales (of 

12 


council houses) and these cuts within the 
law. I am personally doubtful, but one 
thing is certain, that the sale of council 
houses and the cuts must be stopped." At 
the 1980 Party Conference, Tony Banks, 
now chairman of the G LC Arts Committee, 
declared, to applause, that "the streets in 
the end are going to be as important as 
Parliament in building socialism in this 
country." 

More recently, an article in the London 
Labour Briefing, attracted national 
attention. Commenting on the Brixton 
riots, it said: "An alternative view would 
be that the street fighting was excellent, 
but could have been (and hopefully, in 
future , will be) better organised! Some of 
us feel that there are occasions when, in 
defence ofgenuine legality and democracy, 
insurrectionary methods become 
necessary" (The Guardian, 3 June 1981). 
The Financial Times reported Michael 
Foot's view that the actions of "extreme 
left wingers in the Labour Party, including 
supporters of the Militant Tendency and 
self-styled Trotskyists" in support of the 
rioters in London, Toxteth and Manchester 
had been "deliberately inflammatory" (10 
July 1981). 

The Appetite for Conflict 

There is other evidence of the Labour 
Party's growing appetite for conflict: the 
clenched fist salute, now often seen at Party 
conferences and gatherings; and the greater 
emphasis put on marches as opposed to 
debate and discussion. This is especially 
apparent when those marching are MPs, 
who have much more effective methods of 
persuasion open to them : The march by 
100 MPs on the Department of Employment 
was one striking example; the threats 
made by Colin Barnett, North West 
Regional Secretary of the TUC against MPs 
not taking part in the "People's March for 
Jobs" managed to highlight both the 
militancy and the intolerance of the new 
Left (national press, 11 May 1981). 

Shirley Williams is no longer alone, as 
she was in October 1980, in drawing 

attention to the incidence of intimidation, 
together with a more general intolerance 
and abandonment of debate. In his 
reproach to Tony Benn, Michael Foot 
wrote: "Our appearance will not be 
improved by examples of sectarian 
intolerance or by the ruthless pursuit of 
internal feuds ". (Guardian , 4 June 1981). 
John Silkin, Denis Healey and Janey 
Buchan MEP have all made similar 
comments. 

We must also consider the changed 
values in the unions as evidenced in the 
"winter of discontent". The willingness of 
so many trade unionists to extend industrial 
conflict into hitherto sacrosanct areas of 
life -leaving the dead unburied , the sick 
untreated, schoolchildren untaught profoundly 
shocked many in the Labour 
Party and outside it. Here was a hardening 
of feeling which had never been seen before 
in the Labour movement. And the excesses 
of the closed shop -bitterly defended by 
Trotskyists -have cast the unions in the 
embarassing role of persecutor, instead of 
defender, of the ordinary man or woman. 

Economic Policy 

The main outlines of the Alternative 
Economic Strategy (AES) were laid down 
in the early 70s. While Marxist in approach, 
the AES could not be described as 
Trotskyist: indeed it has been bitterly 
criticised by Trotskyists outside the Labour 
Party, and supporters of Militant regularly 
put up resolutions embodying their own 
policy. In some respects, the AES draws 
on much wider, and non-Marxist support, 
particularly in its stress on import controls, 
which is shared by Wynne Godley's 
Cambridge Economic Policy Group. 

The strategy is attractive to the Left 
because of its emphasis on state ownership 
and control. It would involve a massive 
intervention in people's choices if 
implemented in full . On the other hand, it 

13 


explicitly accepts the continuation of the 
mixed economy, although speeches by 
Tony Benn have undermined the 
commitment of the AES to a mixed 
economy and therefore undermined its 
coherence. At the 1979 Party Conference, 
he argued that "compassion in administering 
decaying capitalism does not 
make that system work." In the same 
speech he declared . that to restore full 
employment "means taking on, I fear, the 
business and banking community .... 
There will be a tremendous battle. " 

The difficulty with this attitude, which 
fits perfectly the Trotskyist conflict model, 
is that it is incompatible with the basic 
philosophy of the AES, which is that while 
state influence over the economy should 
be increased, the non-state sector should 
be positively aided to function effectively, 
and (implicitly) profitably, in order to 
contribute to economic growth. Itis clearly 
not possibl$! simultaneously to sponsor 
prosperity in the private sector and to fight 
a war against it. The attitude expressed by 
Benn (and presumably taken also by those 
who applauded him) makes sense only in 
an insurrectionary perspective. 

In fact, there are many new writers on 
the Marxist left who do see Labour's AES 
as being about conflict. In the journal 
Capital and Class, the London Group of 

·the Conference of Socialist Economists 
wrote: "the central demands of the 
AES . . . would necessarily conflict with 
the interests of big capital ... the response 
(of the AES) ... is essentially aggressive, 
attacking the power. of big capital 
domestically and through its foreign 
connections. . . The perspective would 
then be for further and more decisive 
struggles" (Summer 1979). Francis Cripps 
quotes Bob Rowthorn, "a persuasive supporter 
of the Strategy", as supposing "that 
it could eventually lead to confrontation 
with the power of capital on such a scale as 
to end in Chilean-style destabilization and 

a military coup" (New Left Review, July-
August 1981 ). 

Pressure from nsmg consumption 
demands can lead to inflation. The AES is 
particularly vulnerable to inflationary 
pressures, because of the desire to shift 
resources into investment and because 
import controls reduce real national 
income. While some Marxists have always 
been willing to consider incomes policies 
favourably, Trotskyists have been one of 
the main centres of opposition to any 
acknowledgement that some form of 
incomes policy is unavoidable in the AES. 
Their position is that there should be no 
class collaboration of any kind -only 
intensifying conflict; some also perceive 
that a competitive wages struggle reduces 
profits, investment and economic growth, 
and should therefore be encouraged as 
hastening the onset of economic crisis. At 
the 1980 Wembley Special Conference, 
Tony Benn made some genuflection to this 
view in his ringing declaration that "no 
incomes policy or wage control can 
revitalise capitalism when it has declined 
to the level that it has in this country." 

Trotskyist opposition to any form of 
wage restraint is due not only to a 
commitment to class struggle but to a belief 
in the efficacy of the "politics ofexposure". 
For the Labour Party to accept an 
incoherent set of economic policies is 
positively advantageous, since their 
inevitable failure will discredit "reformism" 
in favour (it is believed) of insurrectionary 
socialism. Another important example of 
the "politics of exposure" at work is the 
recent adoption by the NEC of the demand 
for a 35 hour week with no loss of living 
standards. This has long been campaigned 
for by the Militant Tendency. Itis incapable 
of being realised quickly, and even over 
time could only be achieved if substantial 
economic growth were forthcoming. 

The Trotskyist perspective involves, 
during the revolutionary transition, a 

14 


drastic extension of state ownership. 
Present Labour Party policy on nationalisation 
is intriguing. Tony Benn does not 
appear to envisage a fully state-owned 
economy. Indeed, he has written explicitly 
of Clause IV of the Labour Party 
Constitution: "The phrase 'common 
ownership' is cast widely enough to 
embrace all forms of enterprise, including 
nationalised industries, municipal and cooperative 
enterprises" (Arguments For 
Socialism, 1979). The NEC's new policy 
statement, The Socialist Alternative, even 
adds to this list "ownership by Workers' 
Capital Funds". Yet rhetoric from the NEC 
and at Labour conferences still stresses 
massive extensions of state ownership. 
Arthur Scargill recently called for "a 
commitment by the Party to take into 
common ownership (without compensation) 
the means of production, distribution 
and exchange in the weeks (not 
months and years) following the election 
of a Labour government" (speech to 
Labour Co-ordinating Committee Conference 
, 18 July 1981) and has made it 

clear that this means nationalisation. 

The Battle over Local 
Government Spending Cuts 

An increased emphasis on statism and on 
conflict has been evident at local government 
as well as national level. 

Since 1979, much of the political running 
has been made in the course of struggles 
over local authorities' response to the 
Conservatives' pressure to cut spending. 
Two policy "lines" have stood out: "no 
cuts" and "no cuts and no rent or rate 
rises". The former need not necessarily be 
specifically Trotskyist, but does fit into a 
Trotskyist framework much more easily 
than into a social democratic one. It is 
essentially statist and insensitive to 
individuals' needs. It asserts that any state 

spending, no matter how marginal in terms 
of priorities, must take precedence over 
any private spending. New carpets for the 
Town Hall are more important than a new 
pair of shoes for a working-class child. A 
resident was shown on TV putting the point 
very effectively at one of Ted Knight's 
public meetings: "You talk of 'No cuts' but 
there are cuts: all you are doing is 
forcing us to make the cuts instead ofyou.'' 

''New carpets for the Town Hall 
are more important than a new pair 
ofshoes for a working class child. '' 


The policy also exhibits the economism 
of the Trotskyists' trade union practices: it 
suits the short term interests of the largely 
middle class trade union, NALGO. And 
Ted Knight has made it clear that the policy 
is about confrontation: "Let's say to 
Heseltine and the Tories, we have gone so 
far, we go no further, we are prepared to 
threaten your existence!" (Speech to the 
1980 Party Conference). 

The policy of " no cuts, no rent or rate 
rises" -which has received much support 
in the last two years-is very expressive of 
the characteristic outlook of modern British 
Trotskyism: taken literally, it implies the 
sharpest possible confrontation with central 
government. Its logic is the abandonment 
of elective office (regarded as worthless 
anyway) in favour of bankruptcy and direct 
mass action. At the same time, it has the 
characteristic naivety: the assumption that 
mass support would be forthcoming and, 
for some of its supporters, the assumption 
that resources can always be got from 
somewhere to sustain unaltered real levels 
of spending in the face of reduced real 
revenue. 

/5 


Policies with a double 
meaning 

Some policies which are fundamentally 
ultra-democratic in impetus look different 
when seen from a Trotskyist prospective. 
Perhaps the most important of these is the 
programme of constitutional changes. 

Although some changes are, or could 
be, liberalising, the salient point is that 
their overall effect is to bring Labour closer 
to the Leninist model of the Party. The 
basic features of representative democracy 
are largely abandoned; instead of being 
open to influence by people at large, the 
elected Member becomes a prisoner of the 
Party, through reselection, exclusive 
control of the Manifesto by the Party, and 
loss of the right even to elect the Group or 
PLP leader. Demands are being pressed to 
make the Member subject to direction by 
the Party between elections; in the case of 
a Prime Minister, this is already so, since 
he or she can now be subjected to a contest 
for reselection by a simple majority vote of 
the Annual Conference. 

''The overall effect of the constitutional 
changes is to bring 
Labour closer to the Leninist model 
of the Party. The basic features of 
representative democracy are 
largely abandoned. '' 

To compound the exclusion from 
influence of the ordinary voter, the Labour 
Party and unions are both already characterised 
by an extremely indirect form of 
democracy. In the Labour Party, 
conference delegates are elected by GMC 
delegates who are in turn elected by the 
usually tiny meetings of activist Party 
members. At the lowest level, election of 
GMC delegates is often effectively self-

selection by those who are interested. In a 
typical trade union, the pattern of indirect 
election normally involves at least as many 
stages and sometimes more. 

There are only two important respects 
in which the new constitution diverges from 
the Leninist model : entry is still open to all 
who wish to join and, although refusals of 
membership do occur, the rules are 
weighted in favour of the applicant; and 
trade unions are given the dominant role, 
both in Party conference votes (at national 
and regional level) and in the new Electoral 
College for the election of Party leader. 

The leading role of the trade unions tits 
in well with the Trotskyist perspective 
which, as already noted, differs from 
Leninism on this point. 

Trotskyists have attacked Parliamentarism 
on the grounds that it gives the 
citizen nothing more than a single vote 
once every five years; ironically, the Labour 
Party's constitutional reforms reduce his 
role exactly to that and no more. Even 
where an extension of democracy is sought 
within the workplace-through "industrial 
democracy" or "workers' control" nominations 
will be controlled by the same 
tight apparatus of the trade unions. 

A consistently ultra-democratic position 
on the constitutional reforms would have 
come much closer to that pursued briefly 
by Frances Morrell and Brian Sedgemore 
(The Guardian , 26 November 1979): rank 
and tile election for all trade union 
Conference delegates, parity for CLP and 
unions in voting at Conference, selection 
of MPs by all Party members, two day 
single subject policy making conferences. 
That such proposals have not been pursued 
by the Labour Co-Ordinating Committee 
(to which both authors belong) shows how 
the ultra-democratic impulse has been 
forced to accommodate to less democratic 
perspectives. 

Abolition of the House of Lords assumes 
a very different meaning within a Trotskyist 

16 


perspective from that which it has had in 
the past. The unpleasant fact is that a single 
chamber Parliament, elected on a "first 
past the post" system, in a state without a 
written constitution or any entrenched 
safeguards (such as are provided in the 
USA or West Germany by the existence of 
a constitutional Court) would be ideally 
suited to the seizure of power by Parties 
either of the left or of the right (see Stuart 
Bell, How to Abolish the Lords, Fabian 
Society, 1981). In Britain, little over one-
third of the popular vote would be required. 
A second chamber is not the only possible 
guarantee of the constitution -but there 
has been negligible discussion in the Party 
of any alternatives. 

One other ideological connection is 
worth a brief examination. This is the 

relative Trotskyist success, in the Labour 
movement , in gaining support from an 
apparent espousal of ecological issues , 
especially opposition to nuclear energy. In 
reality, as the split and subsequent electoral 
collapse in 1980 of the West German 
"Greens" suggested, this is not a feasible 
long run marriage, any more than is that 
between Trotskyism and ultra-democracy. 
This is due not only to the essential 
centralism of Trotskyism , but also to its 
economism . Pressure for higher wages and 
salaries in pursuit of higher material 
standards is simply not compatible with 
the economic self-abnegation objectively 
required of a genuine ecologist. For the 
time being, however, this incompatibility 
has not been recognised. 

4. 
The Growth of TrotskyistInfluence over the Labour
Party________ 

So far, the discussion has been mainly about ideas. But organisation is also 
crucial, and we now turn to the mechanisms which have aided the growth of 
Trotskyist influence over the Labour Party. 

It has been shown how the potential existed for an ideological alliance between 
Trotskyism and ultra-democracy. For this potential to be realised, a practical 
political alliance had to be based on it. 

The essential precondition for this membership of the Labour Party. In 
alliance was the abolition by the NEC in practice, most of the main Marxist political 
1973 ofthe Labour Party's list ofproscribed organisations -the Communist Party, 
organisations -that is, of organisations SWP, WRP-have remained proscribed as 
membership of which is incompatible with a result of the automatic ban on those 

17 


contesting elections in oppositiOn to 
Labour candidates. But this has left unaffected 
many other Trotskyist groupings and 
the very large number of Trotskyistinfluenced 
people not in any Trotskyist 
organisation. More fundamentally, it has 
meant the disappearance ofany ideological 
boundary separating a parliamentary 
Labour Party from insurrectionary socialist 
ideas. There is, unfortunately, nothing in 
the Labour Party constitution which 
explicitly commits the Labour Party to the 
defence of Parliamentary democracy and 
the rule of law. Clause IV, 1, "To organise 
and maintain in Parliament and in the 
country a political Labour Party", is not a 
sufficient statement. 

The Labour Party has been left wide 
open both to "entrism" and to the growth 
of Trotskyist ideological influence. 

' 'The essential preconditions of an 
alliance between Trotskyism and 
ultra-democracy was the abolition 
in 1973 of the Labour Party's list of 
proscribed organisations . . . there 
is, unfortunately, nothing in the 
Party's constitution which explicitly 
commits the Labour Party to the 
defense of parliamentary 
democracy and the rule of law. '' 

Entrism 

Much attention has been paid to the 
question of "entrism" -the pursuit of a 
conscious strategy of infiltration of the 
Labour Party by members or supporters of 
Trotskyist or other far left groups, with 
varying degrees of approval by their parent 
organisations. There can be no doubt that 
entrism has been extremely effective. The 
"fools" of the Militant Tendency, who 

rushed in where the "angels" of the more 
intellectual Trotskyist groups feared to 
tread , have had a major impact on debate 
within the Labour Party, and succeeded in 
maintaining their identity. They now have 
at least two Parliamentary candidates. But 
it is important to realise that Militant forms 
only a small part of the Trotskyist forces ; 
many other sects helped to build up the 
hegemony now en joyed by Trotskyist ideas. 
This hegemony is now making entrism a 
phenomenon of a wholly different kind 
and scale from that seen during the 1970s. 
Conspiratorial entrism is now less important. 
What matters is the spontaneous 
arrival in the Labour Party of new members 
influenced by Trotskyist ideas. An article 
in the Communist Party magazine 
Comment says : "The leftist organisations 
that are openly Trotskyist ... have lost their 
attraction -and membership -to the 
Labour Party. But those who have entered 
the Labour Party have taken their politics 
with them" (8 August 1981). 

Differential Recruitment 

What could be called "differential recruitment" 
has been proving vital in the struggle 
for control of the Labour Party,and will be 
more so in the coming years. Every victory 
for the left makes it more likely that those 
in the large reservoir of Trotskyistinfluenced 
younger people will actually join 
the Party. At the same time, those victories 
make it less likely that social democrats 
will join. The setting up of the Social 
Democratic Party (SDP) has removed from 
activity in the Party some of the most active 
opponents of the left. The new left's 
widely-criticised intolerance and intimidating 
tactics have the same effect, often 
intentionally. 

18 


Many people, including the bulk of the 
Parliamentary Labour Party, political 
commentators and older Labour Party 
activists, have until recently been unaware 
of the sheer scale of the upheaval which _ 
has been taking place, for two reasons. 
Firstly, broadly speaking, it is only people 
in their 30s or younger who have been 
affected (that is, those who had their 
intellectual formation since 1966). 
Secondly, until 1979, the change largely 
occurred away from the structures of real 
political power. Politicians and 
commentators took no more than a passing 
interest in the activities of the Trotskyist 
sects, the student socialist societies or (less 
sensibly) Labour Party GMCs or Regional 
Conferences. But the people concerned 
are nonetheless alive, thinking, and often 
politically active. It could only be a matter 
of time before they made their presence 
felt at national level in the Labour Party 
and in the trade unions. 

The Party's Vulnerability 

A tentative glance at the arithmetic of the 
various groupings will make clear how 
vulnerable the Labour Party is, as a result 
of its decline. The Party's actual membership 
in 1979 was estimated by Labour 
Weekly at only 284,000, although by 1980 
the Party's own figures showed an increase 
to 358,950 (New Society, 16 April1981). It 
seems likely that only about 80,000 ofthese 
are active members (see Whiteley and 
Gordon , New Statesman, 11 January 
1981). Thus to win a majority among 
Labour Party constituency activists 
probably requires only about 40,000 
people. This is an order of magnitude 
probably smaller than , and at any rate 
commensurate with, the number of 
convinced Trotskyist or other revolutionary 
socialists. 

At any one time the SWP has around 
5,000 members-but the readership of its 

newspaper, The Socialist Worker , is about 
30,000. The number of people who, while 
not members, have been influenced by it 
must be much larger. The other Trotskyist 
sects have fewer members. The WRP has 
around 2,500, with several thousand more 
in its own Young Socialist organisation, 
and the IMG has between 500 and 1,000. 
There are various other Trotskyist 
groupings outside the Labour Party, such 
as the Revolutionary Communist Tendency 
and Big Flame, which must total several 
thousand more. Once again, all of these 
groupings have influenced many people 
who are no longer members. Then there 
are the Trotskyist groups active within the 
Labour Party. Militant has around 2,000 
"subscribers", but most ofthe membership 
of the Labour Party Young Socialists approaching 
8,000 -must effectively be 
counted in. Various other Trotskyist 
groupings within the Labour Party such as 
the Socialist Campaign for a Labour 
Victory (SCL V) and the Workers' Socialist 
League (WSL) , an offshoot of the WRP, 
may in total have several thousand more. 
The Communist Party, now standing at 
18,458, compared with 25,284 in 1977, has 
been losing members rapidly, and must 
have contributed several thousand 
seasoned activists to the Labour Party in 
the last few years. 

By contrast, the Fabian Society affiliates 
3,001 members to the Labour Party, and 
the number voting in the recent ballot on 
SDP membership -probably a good 
measure of total activists-was 2,887. The 
Campaign for Labour Victory (CLV) 
(which had a mailing list of 4,000) and the 
recently proscribed Social Democratic 
Alliance (which claimed 3,000) have been 
decimated by the setting up of the SDP. 

Whiteley and Gordon showed that, in 
1979, 36 per cent of the Conference 
delegates opted for the description "Left of 
Tribune/ Militant" as best describing their 
political position, and a further24 per cent 

19 


chose " Tribune/Left of Centre" (ibid) . 
There can be little doubt that by 1979 the 
inflow of the revolutionary left into the 
Labour Party had not gone nearly so far as 
it has done now. 

The Role of the NEG 

The Parliamentarist left on the NEC have 
been encouraging the movement of insurrectionary 
socialists into the Labour Party. 
The most notorious example is the 
appointment in 1976 of Andy Bevan, a 
Militant supporter, as the Party's Youth 
Officer. A more recent example was Tony 
Benn's invitation to Trotskyists to join the 
Labour Party: "These debates (on the 
manifesto and reselection) are now going 
on in as interesting a form inside the Labour 
Party as well as inside the ultra-left groups. 
That is why some on the left are saying this 
might be the moment to join. This week 
(the Party Conference) will have started a 
tremendous debate with the left groups .. . 
I wish they wanted to join us . .. I would 
like to make us a party those people would 
like to join" (The Leveller, November 

1979). 

Usually, the encouragement has been 
less overt. It has most often taken the form 
of a defence of the right of "Marxists" to 
join the Labour Party. Tony Benn has 
usually been careful enough to say that 
they should accept Parliamentary 
democracy-but has been unmoved by the 
manifest fact that all too many do not. In 
line with this stance, the NEC have refused 
to confirm any expulsion of Trotskyists 
from the Party -even in the most flagrant 
cases. For instance, Oxford Labour Party 
were not allowed to expel Ted Heslin, who 
is admitted by the IMG'sSocialist Challenge 
(25 June 1981) to be a supporter of the 
WSL and a seller of its newspaper Socialist 
Press, and who, according to the DailyMail (14 July 1980) is actually a member of 
the WSL's National Executive. 

It has also been common for NEC 
members to deny that there are any but a 
negligible number of Trotskyists in the 
Party. In taking up this postion, they have 
reinforced the taboo which already 
prohibited open discussion of Trotskyism 
within the Labour Party. 

By a striking dialectical process, the 
period of right wing dominance in the 50s 
and early 60s with the expulsions of 
Communists and other insurrectionary 
socialists led to a reaction among ordinary 
party members against any criticism of the 
far left. This position has become 
increasingly absurd as the strength and 
aggressiveness of the anti-parliamentary 
left has grown , and it has rendered 
parliamentarists in the party completely 
defenceless. Trotskyists have made the 
most of this advantage by never putting 
more of their cards on the table at any one 
time than they have had to. 

The most important encouragement to 
Trotskyists to join the Labour Party has 
been the adoption of policies such as 
renationalisation without compensation, 
which conform to a Trotskyist but not to a 
social democratic worldview. 

Trotskyism in the trade unions 

Paul Foot has stated that "The extent of 
the leftward movement among active rank 
and file trade unionists has been seriously 
underestimated everywhere, even m 

Socialist Worker" (op cit). 

Political commentary generally has paid 
far less attention to changes in the unions 
than to those in the Labour Party. Yet the 
simplest assumption is almost certainly 
correct: that the character of union activists 
has been changing in the same way as in 
the Party. Some of the unions in which 
Trotskyist activity has been most apparent 
(CPSA, NUT, NATFHE, NALGO) are 
not affiliated to the Labour Party and play 
no direct role in its affairs. But only very 

20 


strong assumptions about the mental 
isolation from the rest of their generation 
of the blue collar workers who make up 
the membership of most of the Labourparty 
affiliated unions would justify the 
view that they could have remained 
unaffected by the ideological hegemony 
exercised by modern Trotskyism. 

Itcould only be a question oftime before 
trade union votes at annual and regional 
Party conferences began to reflect the new 
outlook, as younger workers gradually took 
over the key positions on divisional and 
regional committees, national executives 
and conference delegations. Many people, 
including some union leaders, have been 
surprised at the growing difficulty those 
leaders have had in "delivering" union 
votes for the parliamentary leadership. But 
in view of the fundamental differences in 
ideology and values which are involved, 
no other result was to be expected. 

The Labour Party has added absurdly to 
its own vulnerability by allowing members 
of organisations ineligible for affiliation, 
including the Communist Party and all the 
Trotskyist groups, to play a full role in the 
choice of union delegates to Party 
conferences and of resolutions for 
submission to the Party. Entrism has never 
been necessary in the unions: every 
Communist or Trotskyist has already been 
an "affiliated" member of the Labour Party 
simply as a result of paying the political 
levy. Publicity has given recently to the 
role of three Communist members of the 
UCATT executive in swinging the union's 
vote behind Tony Benn in the election for 
the Deputy Leader. But this is only one 
example from what is a universal and 
consistent pattern. 

Mechanisms of Influence 

The use of "front organisations" is a timehonoured 
tactic of the revolutionary left, 

still in much use. Organisations within the 
Labour Party act to similar effect. The 
so-called "Rank and File Mobilising 
Committee for Labour Party Democracy" 
formed in 1980 brings together both 
"legitimate left" and Trotskyist 
groupings; of the ten organisations 
included, three are clearly Trotskyist-the 
Militant Tendency, the Militant-controlled 
LPYS, and SCLV, which according to 
Tom Forester (New Society, 10 January 
1981) , is an offspring of the WRP via 
"Workers Action" and the "Chartists". 

Trotskyist influence is also strong in the 
National Organisation of Labour Students, 
another member of the Mobilising 
Committee. The Tribunite Briefing, a daily 
broadsheet circulated at National and 
Regional Labour Party conferences, and 
an extremely important ideological and 
tactical influence over delegates has, since 
1979, merged with the explicitly Trotskyist 
rival daily broadsheet of the "Socialist 
Campaign for Labour Victory". Other 
similar alliances have been operating within 
the Labour Party-for instance in relation 
to the selection of candidates for GLC and 
London Borough elections. 

In July 1981 the Labour Co-ordinating 
Committee set up an apparatus similar to 
the Mobilising Committee, to work within 
the trade unions. The description of this in 
the press as a "broad left" alliance is rather 
misleading; the term "broad left" has 
normally meant an alliance of 
"Eurocommunists" with left social 
democrats from the Labour Party against 
Trotskyists. Here it means an alliance 
which includes Trotskyists. 

The tactical voting discipline made 
possible by arrangements of this kind has 
been very important. It is not always 
realised just how strong is the position of,a 
minority which knows what it wants vis-avis 
a majority that does not. A single 
coordinated block of votes within a much 
larger total can win most of the time if the 

21 


remaining votes are cast randomly -and 
there has been no united opposition in 
recent years to Trotskyist propositions. 

The block of around 50,000 to 60,000 
votes in the constituency section of the 
NEC which can be clearly identified as 
Trotskyist controlled, together with the 
larger number swayed by the Rank and 
File Mobilising Committee, have proved 
remarkably effective at keeping the left in 
line , given the presence of a considerable 
number of candidates clustered aound the 
250,000 to 350,000 level. Briefing, at the 
1979 Party Conference, for instance, had 
this message: "USE YOUR VOTE 
WISELY! The Briefing team will vote : 
Allaun, Benn, Heffer, Kinnock, 
Richardson, Roberts, Skinner. (We 
cannot support Joan Lestor this year-she 
blotted her copybook last year by her 
conduct of the Chair.)" And the penalty 
meted out to Ian Mikardo for 
compromising over automatic reselection 
is well-known. Each NEC member knows 
that if he or she develops doubts others are 
ready to take their place. 

Campaigns against individuals taking a 
social democratic line (for example the 
attack by Militant on John Golding which 
led to his libel suit, for which he was again 
attacked) have served to encourager les 
autres . Since the 1981 Wembley 
Conference, the use of "hit lists" has 
become routine. 

The Effects of the "Generation 
Gap" 

The difference in age between those 
holding the new ideas and those continuing 
to hold social democratic views has added 
the sharpness of a generational conflict to 
what would already be a bitter clash. 
Matters of lifestyle unrelated to political 
differences have increased the sense of 
distance between the antagonists, and 
reduced the possibilities for dialogue. A 

review in The Leveller of the 1979 Labour 
Party Conference illustrates this sense of 
distance: "(the Conference) had none of 
the fringe culture characteristics of the 
extra-Parliamentary left, no discos ... no 
theatre, no happenings, no life." The age 
gap has had another effect. People may 
lose some of their energy and freshness of 
response as they age, but they do gain in 
their understanding of the complexities of 
politics and of the defects of apparently 
simple solutions. The naivety of many of 
Labour's new left policies does not prevent 
them from winning the support of the 
younger and newer members of the Party, 
but obviously leaders in , or close to, 
power, simply cannot afford to go along 
with them. If such policies are pressed by 
the left, they can be' used to bring the 
leadership into conflict both with "left" 
backbenchers in their council or Parliamentary 
group and with the Party outside. 
The leadership can, in the last resort, even 
be successfully ousted. This device must 
be as old as politics itself; it can also be 
seen as another form of "the politics of 
exposure" already mentioned. Whether 
consciously or not, it forms an essential 
part of the battle plans both of Tony Benn 
in relation to the Parliamentary Labour 
Party (still in progress) and of Ken 
Livingstone in relation to the GLC (already 
successful). 

Existing Features ofthe Labour 
Party and Trade Unions 

Various characteristics of the Labour Party 
and of trade unions have also aided the 
advance of Trotskyism . There are long 
standing elements in Labour Party ideology 
which correspond more closely to a Marxist 
than a social democratic perspective. In 
1956, Anthony Crosland noted the unusual 
strength in Britain of class resentment, and 
of an ideology of class betrayal -"the 
touchy, defensive, almost neurotic fear that 

22 


'the class enemy' will somehow fatally 
weaken the working class" (The Future of 
Socialism). He concluded that "our class 
stratification is a direct incitement to social 
antagonism and resentment" (ibid). Sadly, 
this is equally true today. 

Social democrats in the Labour Party, 
other than Crosland and his followers, have 
been victims of their own ideological 
vagueness. The Party's aim has been 
universally agreed to be the achievement 
of "socialism". But this has rarely been 
given a clear content other than the 
collective ownership of the means of 
production. The deference paid to the term 
by almost everyone in the Party has been 
bound to work in favour of those who do 
believe in what they see as the "real thing". 

Some events in the Party's recent history 
have also played a role. The dominant 
interpretation of the 1970 election defeat 
was that the Party had lost not because of 
economic mismanagement, but because 
traditional working class labour voters, 
alienated by wage restaint and anti-union 
proposals, had stayed at home. The 
inference was that closer links were needed 
with the trade unions. This view,. deeply 
held in the Labour movement, and 
apparently confirmed by the election 
victories of 1974, has conformed with some 
of the fundamentals of the Trotskyist 
worldview and aided its growth. in fact, 
these closer links have not improved the 
Party's electoral performance, but the 
first-past-the-post eiectoral system enabled 
the Party to ignore its declining electoral 
support, since the prospect of government 
has remained intact. 

Events of the last 15 years have also 
promoted a climate within trades unions 

favourable to the growth of Trotskyist 
influence. The two attempts (In Place of 
Strife, 1968, and the Industrial Relations 
Act, 1972) at curtailing trade union power, 
by invoking the sanction of imprisonment 
against shop stewards, created a feeling of 
persecution which fitted perfectly the 
Trotskyist worldview. Penal sanctions and 
industrial militancy fed and justified each 
other. 

''The first past-the-post electoral 
system enabled the Party to ignore 
its declining electoral support, since 
the prospect of government has 
remained intact.'' 

Debates and stuggles over incomes policy 
have favoured the Trotskyists. The rational 
case for incomes policy is strong -but it 
makes the role of a trade union ambiguous 
and complex. Trotskyism legitimates 
economism, which makes the unions' role 
clear and simple, and tends to maximise 
membership. 

Finally, modern Trotskyism has been a 
more convenient ideology for the trade 
union movement to adopt than ultra-
democracy pure and simple would be. The 
latter would in many ways be profoundly 
threatening -suggesting universal postal 
ballots, abolition of the closed shop, which 
would dilute the power of union 
apparatuses and of activists. Trotskyists 
have benefitted from that most powerful 
of political forces -inertia. 

23 


5. 
Where Do Trotskyist Ideas 
Lead?______________ 
It is not difficult to show that the promise offered to many in the Labour Party by 
the ideas of Trotkyism is false. Since this pamphlet is addressed as much to those 
who have encountered the influence of Trotskyist ideas as to those who have not, 
use is made here of Marxists' own writings in order to demonstrate that, in 
reality, Marxism and, with it, Trotskyism is disintegrating intellectually ironically, 
at the very same time that the Labour Party is succumbing to it. 

Class Analysis 

Undoubtedly, a traditional manual working 
class continues to exist in Britain, probably 
to an extent greater than in other industrial 
countries. There is a very sharply 
differentiated working class culture and 
lifestyle; distinguished most of all in modes 
of speech, so that it is very easy to tell 
exactly which social class someone belongs 
to and say, for instance, that playing football, 
eating a main meal in the middle of 
the day, and drinking beer are all working 
class things to do. Snobbery is endemic 
and ferocious. Furthermore, a recent study 
by Goldthorpe has shown that upward 
social moblility within an occupational 
structure in which the number of higher 
status jobs has been rising has left a large 
part of the manual working class completely 
untouched (Social Mobility and Class 
Structure, 1980). Thus, with few entrants 
from the downwardly mobile, it has 
remained extremely homogeneous and 
relatively isolated. For socialists or social 
democrats, the reduction of such social 
class divisions must be one of the most 
important issues on the political agenda. 

There are , however, two fundamental 
difficulties with the political conclusions 
drawn by the Trotskyists from the 
continued existence ofa traditional working 
class, even supposing that Trotskyist ideas 
had much popular appeal: firstly, the small 
size of this class and, secondly, the nature 
of its presumed allies. 

The general level of skill in the workforce 
has been rising, so that by 1978 only 

28.8 per cent of male employees were 
classed as semi-skilled or unskilled manual 
workers, compared with 45.0 per cent in 
1951 ; foremen and skilled manual workers 
had risen to 40.0 per cent in 1978, from 
35.3 per cent in 1951; professionals, 
managers and administrators had risen to 
31.9 per cent, from 12.8 per cent. The 
trends for women workers have been 
similar (Royal Commission on the 
Distribution of Income and Wealth, Report 
Number 8, 1979). Important geographical 
changes have been occuring also: industrial 
production has been moving out of the 
cities into smaller towns and peripheral 
areas, in which working and living 
conditions tend to be better. Thus the 
proportion of the population who would 
identify themselves with the traditional 
working class has been falling, and is clearly 
now in a minority. And the traditional 
working class is less powerful than it once 
was. To some extent, the decline of the 
traditional manual working class may be 
seen as offset by the growth of unionisation 
amongst white collar workers. The question 
is: does unionisation imply that white collar 
workers can be expected to throw in their 
lot with the manual workers? 
There are many militant Trotskyistinclined 
socialists active in white collar 
unions which consequently appear to have 
policies indistinguishable from those of a 
manual union. This, however, is not 

24 


surprising, since hierarchies of authority 
are as important an organising principle as 
ownership of the means of production and 
it is quite easy for a white collar worker 
in a junior grade to see himself as being in 
the same position as a manual worker. But 
the crucial question is whether white collar 
occupational groups as a whole have the 
same economic interests as manual workers. 

Statistics do show that a small proportion 
of the population owns a large proportion 
of total wealth; for instance in 1978, 5 per 
cent owned 44 per cent of all personal 
wealth (although their share falls to 25 per 
cent if occupational and state pension rights 
are included). But over 40 per cent of 
personal wealth was in the form of owner 
occupied housing, which yields no return 
in the form of profit or interest, and a 
further 4 per cent was in the form of other 
non-interest or -profit yielding assets. As a 
result the share of national income going 
in the form of profits and interest is 
relatively small, at 11 per cent in 1979 
(National Income and Expenditure) . The 
amount available for consumption is very 
much smaller, since the bulk of income 
from profits and interest is reinvested. Total 
consumption out of profits must have 
amounted to less than 5 per cent of national 
income over the last decade. It is this alone 
that is available for redistribution. But 
divided up among wage and salary earners 
it would make very little difference to them; 
on average, there would be a once-for-all 
gain of perhaps 1 per cent-less than would 
be yielded by one good year's economic 
growth! And even this calculation exaggerates 
the benefits to be obtained by 
raiding profits, since occupational pension 
schemes now control over £20 billion of 
funds, and together with life insurance 
schemes take over one-third of each year's 
profits and interest. 

The conclusion is of fundamental 
importance: objectively, the important 
differences of economic interest in our 

society are among those whose income 
comes from employment, and not between 
the owners of wealth and the rest. 

The notion that it is the ownership of 
capital which is the main source of 
inequality in income can be rehabilitated if 
the concept of capital is extended to include 
human capital -that is, the productive 
powers formed in an individual as a result 
of education and training. But while this is 
helpful to the Trotskyist case in one sense, 
it is subversive of it in another, more important, 
way. For it reinforces the view 
that the effective reduction of inequalities 
can only come from the redistribution of 
wealth and income among those in 
employment. This means that the idea of a 
broad political alliance ofmanual and white 
collar groups against a capital owning ruling 
class, on a programme of expropriation of 
property owners, is simply not feasible. 

If the political trends of the last 20 years 
in Britain are examined, it is hard not to 
conclude that the revival of the Liberal 
Party is partly the effect of the new middle 
groups finding their own political voice. It 
is only the "first past the post" electoral 
system which has given the impression of 
great instability in the Liberal vote: if the 
overall share at general elections is 
examined, it shows a succession of waves, 
reaching steadily higher at each peak. From 

2.6 per cent in 1951, it rose to 11.2 per cent 
in 1964, falling back to 7.5 per cent in 1970 
but rising again to 19.3 per cent in February 
1974. Its decline in 1979 was only to 13.8 
per cent. The corresponding long run 
decline in the Labour vote was from 48.8 
per cent in 1951 to 36.9 per cent in 1979 (a 
mere 27.7 per cent ofthe electorate). Why 
would these developments have been 
occurring if the effective result of changes 
in the economy was to extend, rather than 
shrink, the scope for political mobilisation 
around a self-consciously working class 
party? 
25 


' 'A broad political alliance of 
manual and white collar groups 
against a capital owning ruling class 
and programme of expropriation 
of property is not feasible. 
However, the Trotskyist road though 
militant action by a minority 
working class party with few allies 
from other classes cannot lead to 
success via an electoral majority. 
The electoral system may produce 
a parliamentary system of only a 
third of the popular vote -but in 
carrying through major changes, 
there is no substitute for real 
popular support. Such changes 
would be reversed after the next 
election.'' 

The Strategy of Conflict 

The Trotskyist road, through militant 
action by a minority working class party 
with few allies from other classes, therefore 
cannot lead to success via an electoral 
majority. But one of the consequences of 
the "first past the post" electoral system is 
that an outright parliamentary majority can 
be gained with many fewer votes than 50 
per cent-certainly under 40 per cent, and 
perhaps as few as one-third. In_ the long 
run, however, the comfort derived from 
the electoral system is illusory. In carrying 
through changes in society, there is no 
substitute for real popular support. 
Unpopular policies would almost certainly 
be reversed at the election following a 
minority victory. In fact the conscious aim 
of Trotskyists, rather than their fellowtravellers, 
is not to rely on electoral support 

at all, but upon industrial action, other 
forms of coercion and intimidation, and 
eventually violence (for instance, through 
the "workers' militia" called for by Socialist 
Worker) . 

But why should a minority be thought 
likely to succeed? Why should not the 
majority be able effectively to use violence 
against this minority? History shows 
numerous instances where it has been right 
wing violence which has prevailed -as in 
Nazi Germany or Chile. The logic of the 
pursuit of an insurrectionary strategy is to 
hope for a successful putsch, or coup d'etat, 
in which small forces are used selectively 
and the majority of the population are not 
involved. This is exactly what occurred in 
Russia in 1917-and the consequence is 
plain to see: for a minority to perpetuate 
its power over a majority all the apparatus 
of totalitarian suppression (and 
bureaucracy) must be brought into use. 
Trotsky was as much in favour of this as 
any of the Bolshevik leaders, both early in 
the revolution (see Terrorism and 
Communism , 1920) and in the middle 
1920s, when the object of the proposed 
coercion was the peasantry (Stalin later 
put this into effect). What Trotskyists call 
Stalinism was therefore the inevitable result 
of the revolution in the circumstances of 
the time ; it would also be the inevitable 
result of any insurrectionary seizure of 
power by a working class party in modern 
Britain, and for essentially identical 
reasons. The claims of the Trotskyists that 
they are offering something different from 
Stalinism are thus exposed as a cruel fraud. 
Put in these terms, the stark unreality of 
the path the Labour Party is embarking 
upon is unmistakable. 

Unfortunately, this Trotskyist 
programme is already implicit in the 
posture of parts of the trade union 
movement. It is precisely an alliance of all 
employed groups against the owners of 
capital which trade unions have been 

26 


attempting, with brief interruptions during 
periods ofincomes policy, to put into effect 
in the period of industrial militancy since 
the end of the 1960s. All trade unions 
together -including doctors, senior civil 
servants, university professors, top broadcasters 
and journalists, and so on-attempt 
to press for higher real wages, while 
preserving differentials among groups. In 
1865, Marx wrote in Wages, Price and Profit 
that "A general rise in the rate of wages 
would result in a fall of the general rate of 
profit, but, broadly speaking, not affect 
the prices of commodities." It was true 
then that such pressure could tap large 
reserves of profits or of luxury consumption 
(for instance, there were several millions 
of domestic servants in the labour force , 
who could be switched to more productive 
use). But in the conditions of Britain today, 
the only consequence ofsuch a broad trade 
union alliance, on these terms, can be 

and has been inflation. There is very little 
potential for redistnbution in this way. 

''For a minority to perpetuate its 
power over a majority, all the 
apparatus of totalitarian suppression 
(and bureaucracy) must 
be brought into use.'' 

Marxist writers have been well aware of 
this fact . Some have oorrectly concluded 
that to organise working class action around 
illusory goals is dishonest and must in the 
end be counterproductive. Thus there has 
always been an undercurrent of support 
among Marxists, especially on the Euro-
communist wing of the Communist Party, 
for an incomes policy of some kind linked 
to socialist political demands: examples of 
writers taking this view are Michael 
Barratt-Brown and Royden Harrison (New 
Left Review 37), Bill Warren, Mike Prior 

and David Purdy (Advanced Capitalism 
and Backward Socialism, 1975, and Out of 
the Ghetto , 1979) and Sam Aaronovitch 
(The Road from Thatcherism , 1981). 

The destructiveness of wage and salary 
militancy across all employed groups is , 
however, openly welcomed by Trotskyists. 
Andrew Glyn, one of the principal 
economic theorists of the Militant tendency, 
co-authored in 1972 British Capitalism, 
Workers and the Profits Squeeze , whose 
gleeful message was that a combination of 
industrial militancy at home and stiffer 
competition abroad was leading to a decline 
in profits which in turn must produce 
declining investment and real wages , 
increased conflict between employers and 
workers and eventually the collapse of the 
capitalist system. Trotskyist writers and 
organisations continue to advocate the 
same programme. 

Relatively few of those who have been 
responsible for the self-defeating wage 
struggles of the last decade-or those who 
brought down the last Labour government 
in the "winter of discontent" -actually 
intend to overthrow Parliament and the 
capitalist system. Unfortunately, 
Trotskyists can rely on the essential 
character of trade unions -their 
"economism" -in order to get the desired 
result. The fact that unions are actually 
doing what fits in with the Trotskyists' 
overall strategy is a source of enormous 
strength to them -but it is not bringing 
prosperity to ordinary people. 

Marxian Politics 

Modern British Trotskyism, like classical 
Bolshevism, is bitterly hostile to the 
institution of Parliament. Universal 
suffrage suffers from the defect that, since 
the ruling ideas in any society are controlled 
by the owners of its means of production, 
it is difficult for a political party 

27 


representing working class interests to 
obtain a Parliamentary majority; even if it 
did so, the ruling class would probably 
resort to violence against it; and even if it 
survived these two threats, its parliamentary 
representatives would succumb to the 
pressure of the existing establishment to 
conform with its ideas. 

What the argument boils down to is in 
fact a truism: that there is a real structure 
of power in society which does not necessarily 
correspond to the formal structure 
of power which emerges from the results 
of Parliamentary or local elections. The 
essence of Parliamentarism, and its value 
in any democratic or even humanitarian 
perspective, does not lie in any suggestion 
that the formal political power and 
legitimacy conferred on political leaders 
by the ballot box can in all circumstances 
and in an unlimited way override all the 
other sources of power. Rather, it lies in 
the belief that the use of the power which 
lies outside Parliament, and especially the 
use of violence, must be controlled and 
regulated through the rule of law, and that 
law must be made in a considered and 
careful way, after thorough and open 
debate, by representatives elected by a 
majority of the of the people. The only 
alternative to Parliament is the untrammelled 
struggle for power of the various 
actually or potentially organised groups in 
society, which must in the end imply the 
resort to violence and civil war. The 
Trotskyist wager is that the working class, 
organised by a revolutionary party, will 
prevail in this struggle. Not only is this 
unlikely, but if it were successful, the result 
would be Stalinism. 

The British writer who has contributed 

most to the dissemination of the contem


porary attack on Parliamentarism is Ralph 

Miliband, whose book Parliamentary 

Socialism (1961) was a lengthy catalogue 

of the alleged betrayals of the Labour Party 

(or of the working class) by Labour's 

parliamentary leaders, from the day the 
first Labour MP set foot in the House of 
Commons up to 1959. Although interesting 
as a narrative history, its theoretical content 
is extremely weak, amounting to little more 
than an assertion that since the Labour 
Party did not bring about a fully socialised 
economy during the period and, since it 
was a Parliamentary party, the former must 
have followed from the latter. Rather 
absurdly, the book takes it for granted that 
mass support was really there all the time 
for the revolutionary establishment of a 
socialist society. Nevertheless it has been 
extremely influential in fostering a climate 
of hostility to Parliament, being the true 
prototype of the betrayal theory which has 
since been deployed so successfully in 
Labour's constitutional battles. 

Interestingly, when in 1977 Miliband 
examined the Marxian alternative, he had 
to concede its extreme weakness (Marxism 
and Politics). Marx and Engels wrote little 
of a prescriptive nature about the practice 
of revolutionary politics, as opposed to 
critical history or economic analysis. 

Little of value has been written by 
Marxists subsequently, and Miliband is 
forced to write of "the absence in Marxism 
of a serious tradition of political enquiry." 
He goes on to provide a devastatmgly 
effective criticism of all the key ideas which 
the modern British Trotskyist programme 
relies upon. The notion that in revolutionary 
politics there is genuine rule from below, 
by the class rather than by the party, is 
sharply rejected: "some degree of 'substitutism' 
(that is, the substitution of a 
higher for a lower level) is bound to form 
part of any kind of representative 
organisation and of representative politics 
at all levels . . . the notion of the party 
achieving an organic and perfectly 
harmonious representation of the class is 
nothing but a more or less edifying myth". 
"Revolutions, even in the best of circumstances, 
are not made by majorities, least 

28 


of all revolutions which are made by way 
of insurrection .. . , revolutions are made 
by minorities, and have usually been the 
work of relatively small minorities." 

Miliband goes on to highlight the weakness 
of the argument that "workers' 
councils", or soviets, can function as an 
effective means of asserting popular power 
(this is what Trotskyists propose as the 
alternative to Parliament). He points out 
that neither Lenin nor Trotsky had the 
slightest idea how these councils would 
relate to the revolutionary Party and writes: 
"Nor can it be contended that the pyramid 
of councils, of the kind which Rosa 
Luxemburg projected in 1918, resolves the 
question of direction and democracy. For 
the structure which she proposed was, very 
reasonably, to be capped by an Executive 
Council 'as the highest organ of legislative 
and executive power': and it is clear that, 
whatever her intentions, this organ would 
have been, and would have had to be, an 
extremely strong state, possibly representing 
the 'dictatorship ofthe proletariat', 
but not amounting to it" (ibid) . 

There is, therefore, no coherent basis for 
the view that there are somehow alternative 
socialist political institutions which are 
better or more effective than Parliament. 

After noting "the extremely strong 
attraction which legality, constitutionalism, 
electoralism and representative institutions 
of the parliamentary type have had for the 
overwhelming majority of people in the 
working class movements of capitalist 
societies", Miliband opts for a model of 
socialist change which oddly enough , 
corresponds remarkably closely to that 
traditionally held by the Labour Party! 
Legislative action by an elected government 
is to be supported by a "a flexible and 
complex network of organs of popular 
participation operating throughout civil 
society and intended not to replace the 
state but to complement it". This is to 
involve "a vast extension of democratic 

participation in all areas ofcivic life" (ibid) . 

It is silly to suggest that anyone in the 
Labour Party ever thought that Parliamentary 
action alone could do much to 
change society; a whole range of activity 
by groups such as trade unions, pressure 
groups, voluntary associations and tenants' 
and residents' associations, has always been 
necessary to show what changes are 
possible, and to make them work. Ifthere 
is anything which characterises social 
democrats rather than modern Trotskyists, 
it is the belief in the need for such an 
extension in participation. Trotskyists, with 
the Labour Left, believe in a narrowing of 
power, especially within trade unions and 
the Labour Party. The constitutional 
changes in the Labour Party, and the model 
of trade union democracy, which are being 
pressed by Labour's New Left, cannot be 
reconciled with "a vast extension of 
democratic participation in all areas of civic 
life", or with the desire, noted by Tony 
Benn at the 1979 Party Conference, of 
"people . . . . impatient with the centralisation 
of power . . . to play a larger 
part in the control of their lives in their 
communities and at their place of work." 

The Socialist Planned 
Economy 

We now turn to the nature of the socialist 
society which, in the Trotskyist view, is to 
supersede capitalism. It is a centrally 
planned economy, democratically 
controlled, which operates entirely without 
markets. We are asked to believe first of 
all that such an economy is feasible , and 
secondly that it would yield better results 
economically and politically than the mixed 
economy which we currently have. 

Tony Benn and Labour's Trotskyists 
share the same view of how such an 
economy would operate. At the 1980 
Annual Conference, Benn spoke of "self


29 


management as an alternative either to 
market forces or the hideous bureaucracy"; 
at the 1980 Special Conference, Ray Apps, 
of Militant, spoke of enabling " the next 
Labour government ... to involve working 
people democratically in planned production." 


The difficulty is that centrally planned 
economies suffer from certain inherent, 
and not accidental, weaknesses. These may 
be summed up as follows. First the problem 
of information . To function at all, a 
complex economy requires phenomenal 
amounts of information to be transmitted 
between consumers and producers, and 
among producers, about needs and 
preferences, production possibilities and 
the availability of supplies of finished 
goods, materials and labour. In a capitalist 
or mixed economy, it is the price 
mechanism which conveys information of 
this kind, and automatically lets the rest of 
the system know the results of any decisions 
by individual consumers or producers. 
Central planning limits the amount of 
information which is made available. 

Second, the problem of incentives. Why 
should anyone in a socialist economy 
attempt to produce more or better? Even 
if it were sensible to expect a permanently 
high level of political commitment from 
workers and enterprises, the effect of their 
trying harder may be counterproductive, 
upsetting the planned programme of 
production. But if they are not committed, 
it is all too easy to fulfil production plans in 
ways which conform to the planners' 
specifications but are wasteful or unsatisfactory 
(for instance, volume may be 
emphasized at the expense of quality , 
materials may be used wastefully, 
innovation may be avoided as inconvenient 
and disruptive). 

A third characteristic of a planned 
economy arises from the problem of 
decisions about production quantities and 
methods. In an economy without markets, 

the task of ensuring consistency between 
the activities of the various producers and 
consumers must fall to a central body. 
Hence a planned economy must be 
characterised by a high degree of 
centralisation and bureaucratisation. Once 
again, the emergence of the much-abhorred 
phenomenon of Stalinism is not an 
accident, but a structural necessity. It was 
Trotsky who first argued that bureaucracy 
was not a necessary characteristic of a 
planned economy; Trotskyists today argue 
the same. But, as Assar Lindbeck argues 
in The Political Economy of the New Left 
adherents of this stream of thought simply 
do not reflect much consciousness of the 
necessity to make a choice between markets 
on the one hand and bureaucracy on the 
other (1971). This dilemma was recognised 
in classical Marxism. But the answer given 
then -in the optimistic climate of the late 
19th Century -was that abundance (that 
is, the existence of enough wealth to satisfy 
all imaginable demands) was not far away 
and would quickly be attained under a 
rational organisation of society. Who could 
seriously argue this now, as we face acute 
shortages of raw materials and energy 
sources? In conditions of scarcity, there 
are only two ways in which an individual or 
group can acquire goods: they can be free 
to buy them (in a market economy) or be 
obliged to ask permission (in a planned 
economy). 

The model put forward by Labour's New 
Left is based on an evasion of these truths. 
It means that to the cumbersome process 
of plan-making will be added a further 
complex and difficult process of consultations, 
with the certainty that not all will 
be satisfied with the eventual outcome, 
which must still be decided centrally. The 
truth is that those who want decentralisation, 
and democracy exercised in smaller 
units, 'llust be in favour of the use of 
markets to some degree. 

It has also to be remembered that, in the 

30 


words of Aneurin Bevan, "Ifconfidence in 
political democracy is to be sustained, 
political freedom must arm itself with 
economic power" (op cit). Just as Marxists 
argue that under capitalism political 
freedom is worthless to the poor, so it must 
be conceded that under fully collective 
ownership no one could be independent of 
the power of the state bureaucracy. 

''Centrally planned economies 
have three inherant weaknesses: the 
impossibly high level of information 
required to plan sufficiently; the 
centralised bureaucracy needed to 
take decisions, and the lack of incentives 
in the system. '' 

It is time that socialists recognised that 
the whole notion of a choice between 
"capitalism" and "socialism" is in reality 
outmoded. There is such a thing as pure or 
almost pure capitalism, in which almost all 
capital is privately owned and almost all 
production is for the market. It is unattractive, 
we do not want it (nor do we have 
it or have to have it). There is also such a 
thing as pure socialism, that is collective 
ownership of the means of production, with 
central planning and the abolition of 
markets. No democrat could seriously want 
it. 

What we do have is a mixed economy, 
with elements of collective ownership and 

of private ownership; elements of central 
planning and extensive use of markets. We 
need to change elements in the mix, but 
not to abandon it. Some form of mixed 
economy is the best attainable form of 
economic system, so far as can presently 
be seen. 

It is significant that there is a powerful 
emerging criticism of the "statism" which 
is indissolubly linked to the demand for 
central planning, corning from both Marxist 
and social democratic writers. On the 
Marxist side, examples are Phil Leeson's 
"Capitalism, Statism and Socialism" (in 
The Popular and the Political, edited by 
Mike Prior, 1981); and Hindess et al's 
Marx's Capital and Capitalism Today 

(1978), which includes the comment: "State 
spending does not as such contribute to 
the development of non-commodity and 
co-operative relations. Arguably, 'private' 
co-operative bodies and popular mutual 
aid may make more of a contribution in 
that direction." 

On the social democratic side there is 
Evan Luard who in Socialism without the 
State (1979) consciously draws on earlier 
elements in the socialist tradition in reaffirming 
the necessity for non-state 
initiative, by both private and community 
groupings. Many of the genuine goals of 
those who regard themselves as either 
"social democrats" or "democratic 
socialists" could be realised by changes in 
the nature of the authority and ownership 
relations within individual enterprises, 
without any extension of the boundaries of 
state activity-and even with a shrinkage. 

31 


6. Prospects ______ 
It would be wrong to suggest that the outcome of the struggle for control of the 
Labour Party must necessarily be a simple victory for one side or the other. It 
has been argued that modern British Trotskyists an increasingly dominant 
element in the Left coalition; but there are many elements in that coalition which 
would reject some of their key ideas. It has also been shown that there are crucial 
contradictions at the heart of the Trotskyist ideology, which must eventually 

lead to political divisions. 

The possibility of victory for the Left 
coalition but the dilution of the Trotskyist 
elements is a real one and is what many 
parliamentarist left wing leaders are aiming 
at. The chief difficulty in their way, 
however, is that they are vulnerable to 
exactly the same processes of ideological 
compromise and differential recruitment 
as the social democratic right has been. It 
is difficult to maintain the support of the 
Trotskyists without making concessions to 
them; but the more concessions are made, 
the more the support is lost of those to the 
right , and the more Trotskyist supporters 
are encouraged to come into the Party. 

The practice of politics is essentially 
about forming alliances with those with 
whom one disagrees. However, the tactical 
alliance of the Labour "left" with insurrectionary 
socialists is a peculiarly unprincipled 
one. Some principles are more 
fundamental than others, and to compromise, 
by obfuscation, the most 
fundamental political freedoms , for which 
generations of working people have 
struggled, may be considered as extreme a 
betrayal as can be imagined. No doubt 
many on the "legitimate left" argue that 
they can keep the upper hand. But who is 
to say that, having emulated Faust, they 
will not suffer a similar fate? Unhappily, 
given the balance of forces we have discussed, 
it seems likely that they will. 

What Is To Be Done? 

Since the argument of this pamphlet is that 
the strength of the Trotskyist position in 
the Labour Party stems primarily from the 
widespread acceptance of the world view it 

implies, it follows that any fightback must 
be based first of all on a direct challenge to 
that world view, and a reassertion of social 
democratic values. Those who have left 
the Labour Party to set up the SDP have 
obviously recognised the importance of 
doing so. The social democrats who have 
remained in the Labour Party have usually 
been content to prevaricate about fundamental 
principles. This is fatal. 

Only repeated, open statement of social 
democratic principles can permit the clear 
identification and rejection of ideas which 
belong exclusively in a Trotskyist framework. 
Trotskyists have gained enormous 
tactical advantage from their ability not to 
identify themselves as such. This has permitted 
a gradual erosion of the Labour 
Party's traditional values, by the insertion 
little by little into inner-Party debate of 
ideas which are in conflict with a social 
democratic worldview. To force out into 
the open the Trotskyist worldview as a 
totality must erode the support it has from 
people who have never thought things 
through. 

The most obvious place to start with an 
assertion of social democratic values is the 
Party constitution. At present, this lacks 
clear commitments to Parliamentary 
democracy, the primacy of public elections, 
and the rule of law, and any repudiation of 
political violence. 

That it might be difficult to get appropriate 
changes to the constitution is 
revealing-it shows how strong within the 
Party is the position of those who oppose 
these principles. Indeed, it may already be 
too late. But the call for such changes would 

32 


be a rallying point and could, if successful, 
split the Trotskyists from their fellowtravellers. 
This call would need to be 
accompanied by others, some relating to 
organisation, and some to policy. In either 
case, it is essential that they should unambiguously 
express a genuinely social 
democratic worldview: anti-elitist 
organisational measures in the unions and 
the party (such as postal ballots, 
one-member-one-vote and reform of the 
block vote) and policy measures which 
involve a commitment to the mixed 
economy but also to social democratic 
values -a genuine and far reaching 
redistribution of wealth and of incomes, 
including through an incomes policy; 
equality in all aspects of life, at home and 
at work ; protection for individual liberties 
and an increase in involvement in decision 
making, including through industrial 
democracy. Furthermore, those elements 
in the Left programme which have been 
opposed out of conservatism should also 
be accepted and fought for. Freedom of 
information and automatic reselection, for 
example, really are more compatible with 
social democracy than with Trotskyism. 

Fortunately, but probably not 
accidentally, a collective statement ofsocial 
democratic ideas-of democratic socialism 
in the non-collectivist sense -has been 

taking shape, by various hands, although 
up to now relatively unnoticed. Whatever 
the appearance on the surface, real intellectual 
debate has been moving away from 
insurrectionist varieties of socialism. But 
the underlying strength ofsocial democratic 
ideas represents only a potential. The battle 
for values, attitudes and beliefs in the 
Labour Party still has to be fought. For 
there is much at stake. Permanent control 
over the Labour Party of the degrading 
and inhuman ideas of political Marxism , 
the totalitarianism and intolerance, the 
acceptance of violence, the glorification of 
conflict, could set back for a very long time 
any hope of achjeving what generations of 
Labour supporters have really meant by 
socialism : a society in which freedom is 
real, in which people really do emancipate 
themselves, but at their own pace and in 
their own way; not a utopia, but a society in 
which the sources of inequality are 
constantly counteracted; a tolerant society, 
in which contrary beliefs are respected, 
and rational argument and the pursuit of 
knowledge are valued as much in politics as 
in other areas of life. For men and women 
to delude themselves that they are merely 
cogs in a Marxist history machine, and to 
lose, or fail to develop, the capacity to 
respond to the personal reality of other 
people, is to forego part of their humanity. 

October 1981 ISBN 7163 0477 5 ISSN 0307 7535 

Cover design by Dick Leadbetter/Printed by Blackrose Press (TU) 
01-251 3043/Typeset by Range Left (TU) 01-251 3959 


The Labour Party and the New Left 

The pamphlet examines the three main ideologies currently commanding 
support in the Labour Party -named by the author as "social democracy", 
"ultra-democracy" and " modern British Trotskyism" and considers the extent to 
which Trotskyism is now reflected in party policy, values and terminology. How 
Trotskyism has grown so rapidly is detailed as are the potential effects of its 
proposals should they be implemented. The author believes that many of the 
beliefs of Trotskyists are fundamentally in conflict with those of the traditional 
Labour Party and he calls on the Party to add to its constitution a commitment to 
parliamentary democracy as the only vehicle of change and also a renunciation of 
violence. David Webster sees the trends towards a Leninist model of a political 
party in the Labour Party -where an elite minority control the apparatus and the 
policy -as a danger to its continuation. 

The Author 

David Webster has been a member of the Labour Party for 17 years. He is a 
former Chairman of St Pancras North Constituency Labour Party and ASTMS 
Branch Treasurer. He has served on the Labour Party NEG's Housing Sub-
Committee and is a member of the Fabian Society's Social Policy Committee. 
The author of many articles on housing, he was a contributor to the Fabian book, 
Labour and Equality, 1980. He works in local government. 

This pamphlet, like all publications of the Fabian Society, represents only 
the views of the author and not the collective view of the Society. However 
trenchant these views appear to some, they are, in the view of the Society, 
worthy of consideration in the Labour movement. Other assessments of 
the role of certain sets of ideas current in the Party would be welcomed by 
the Society and, hopefully, this pamphlet will be just the start of a debate 
that should take place. 

Fabian Society, 11 Dartmouth Street, London SW1H 9BN