Evicted, Ting

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Surely picketing Mining Daniels: It's all right you Supplies, the docks and two passing the ammunition! mines, would still provide a I'm by rule answerable to THERE ARE now over 60 it was valued at fighting chance. What have MPs supporting the strikers. by Extel, yet he you got to lose? I don't underestimate Rather than spending their a third of that people like John Boyd. He's time sermonising about the Daniels: I can't understand been a full-time officer for number of bailiffs and their He then applied for Temwhy they lifted the picket- 35 years. He's a shrewd oper- socio economic background, porary Employment Subsidy ing. It was the best way ator and he knows all the they could more usefully knowing already that he raise the demand for a would close the factory But don't underestimate I might end up labour movement. inquiry the difficulties when you've caretaker's assistant! into the affairs of Laurence LSE products are used in got a national leadership that Scott and Mining Supplies. the miners, the power statisn't backing you. you think the lads Legal action is already ions and in ICl and Shell.

in with a prayer? pending against two ex-dir- Workers in these industries ectors of a Scotts subsidiary therefore should support who used inside information Laurence Scott strikers in There's always two sides to purchase a company offeto every problem. Take nst them. T&G offered to LSE in their own Open the books! someone like Arthur Scargill, name, allegedly conspiring Set up a labour whose role could have been pressure from with Hambros Bank to vital. To put it mildly, he to cross picket weaken LSE so that LSE itleft a little bit to be desired of the lads are self could later be purchased given his reputation. ilk about unem- Keep the factory On the other hand , he ›enefit, which with no redundancies! argued that he would initiate action when the rest of the Laurence Scott workers in other plants were taking action. An old-style trade But what about the careers of people like Bernard Panter and Hugh Scanlon (who Should he have shown an went over to the other example? And the dockers? side)? And the lack of stratIf they acted on every egy for the Left in the request for blacking, they'd We know it tact. never do a day's work. For example, when I ran for election last time the Eccles Journal didn't criticise me, But the alternative explanation is that if they do black they simply said vote for Jim Milner - Boyd's man. goods swiftly and efficiently, He's so good a candidate then the employers would concede very quickly indeed. own factory didn't know he that his own stewards in his on the wall as long ago as Short and sweet. Why aren't was standing! I'm well 1970. We had a Broad Left you organising the picketing meeting with Scanion, known and I still only won But aren't the problems Allaun and Orme, and only deeper than that? Workers by three hundred votes.

Yes, there is some swing Daniels: I think that don't believe everything they be an adventure. I'd be open read in the paper, otherwise the right, some workers uneven - we had to discipline. I think I'd be we wouldn't ever have had a are scared and confused and can't see any way out. The hundred for Bob in front of the Executive Labour Government. Hasn't the last election.

They know what my posi- sharpish. It's up to the lads. right, and hasn't this been there been a shift to the level of backwardness in some well organised factories in M inchester would terrify difficult for me. Remember Explaining our decline is partly due to our failings? the AUEW has never been really Left. Even in ScanSurely an attempt to disci- Daniels: You can't underest- Ion's heyday the Executive pline the full-time officials imate the influence of the was always four-to-three agwould crystallise the issues Press. I'm telling you, it's so ainst us, and one of our lot in the dispute and provide a detailed. and spot-on that One steward from British was the Maoist Reg Birch, clear focus for a fightback? Boyd obviously rings Wyatt Vita was working 23 hours who liked a bit too overtime a week. The rates there aren't bad, but when I dissuaded him he took up taxi-driving during the Some right-wingers were At Wilsons Breweries, we militantly against the Industgot them £155 for a consoli- rial Relations Action on the •| TOTALLY and utterly dated 40 hour week. All grounds of union independthey could say was, "What ence. We've had some deplore the behaviour of about our overtime?"

Duffy, Boyd, Ken Cure and The right-wing machine is The EC's idea of full-time the rest of our executive.

"They have completely fantastically well-oiled and appointed branch officials of course their control of the is a danger. Bigger branches National Committee resolu- distorted the meaning of our "They are the people union apparatus is vital. A are as well. We've got to young opportunist these watch amalgamations with who are suffering, the people "They have refused who've got a lot to lose. days is going to be not unions like the EETPU. accept the aspirations of the "When were Boyd branches, ideally, with I'm in favour of factory members directly involved Duffy last on strike? and have sought to ram the settlement down their "It takes some arrogance Whether we get rid throats. We haven't seen when you've got a safe, well- at the way Boyd postal ballot easily is ar union leaders like this since paid desk jobs like them, to uses the Journal matter. In the short Attila the Hun and Genghis decide other people should for electioneering we've got to learn to join the dole queue" There's supposed more effectively.

STEVE TAYLOR, AUEW LES HOWARD, AUEW moratorium during And of course disputes senior steward, Massey Ferg- convenor, Kelloggs, Trafford Before Duffy b like this one can be importuson, Trafford Park. Wright he was nev ant in strengthening the the Journal, while power of the centre over the almost confined to District. There is a long way the Executive.

forward. tricks.

Do still Reputation Daniels: The fact that the dispute is no longer official must tell agai officials have been on to me talking of lorry drivers lines. Some starting to ti ployment they can't get while in dispute.

union position.

Unless picketing blacking are sucr they'll TUr out of and money . I think and Duffy have • won Snipe.

In how do of th Daniels: Well, the main problem is the po stal ballot and the role of the media.

in other areas!

would tion is.

"Surely the people should decide when a ends, when a settlem satisfactory. e the s themselves.

tions.

to Khan!"

Park.

cheaply.

When and Levin. essful, up by the steam local press.

Boyd it for ther em?

you. evenings.

who strike lent is trikers left.

Look blatantly Road. It's then picked leg-men in the right, purposes. to be a Seat Bob er out of Bob was Peckham chased LSE paid only figure.

down. demanding: "

ment inquiry!

No acceptance viability!

AUEW?

Daniels: They played a part. C Broad Left has decline.

I think the 40 turned up.

On the other much.

successes.

branch ballots.

to go yet. may lave ertainly the gone into writing was hand, it's over three Wright in of the other term use it

Scan page 10

Organiser, Thursday September Page He is still a member of he propose to do about it! anti-Marxist academy of civil service? Adopt a version middle-class socialism which of the system of the US was deliberately created to Republic, under which key What workers on the big Lahour Party demonstrations hear is not the same as what Benn says. One worker at the Cardiff "If erer a bloke was nerded here today, it's font Benn TONY BENN'S politics are strangely at odds with his reputation and his standing with both the bourgeoisie and the working class.

This has never been so starkly expressed or more clearly brought out than in his important new article, •Britain as a Colony'*, which ties many of the threads of his thinking into a dangerous nationalist/populist knot.

Reading 'Rritain as Colony' forcefully reminded me of the story of one of Karl Marx's most profound works. The story is illuminating, and with the reader's permission I will re-tell it briefly.

Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme' is one of the central texts of Marxism. Written in 1875, it was publ ished after Marx's death, by Engels, 16 years later, in 1891.

Criticised In this well-known document, whose proper title is Marginal Notes to the Programme of the German Workers' Party', Marx rigorously criticised the dratt programme which was to be the political basis on which the two separate segments of the socialist workers' movement in Germany were to unite at Gotha in 1875 - the followers of Ferdinand Lassalle with the supposed disciples of Marx and Engels, the so-called Eisenachers.

Marx analysed the draft's loose 'socialist' revolutionary'-sounding ideas and phrases for example, the idea that beside the modern working class all other classes are "one reactionary mass", , the notion that labour is the source of all wealth, etc. He showed them. to be grievously mistaken, wrong, unscientitIc, and, despite the socialist commitment and conviction of the draft's authors, ideas which would confuse and therefore harm the young German labour movement.

Demolished

The Gotha Programme was essentially - so Marx demonstrated - a compilation of ubsolete pre-Marxist socialist ideas of the sort which Mars and Engels had criticised and demolished 30 years later, replacing them with the ideas of the Communist Manitesto.

The Critique of the Gotha Programme' is one ot the basic documents ot Marvism because, in opposition to the ideas of the dratt.

it critically expounded Mary's ideas and historical perspectives. It remains an * Published in issue no. 1 uf the Labour Party's theoretical journal, New Socialist, and in a fuller version as the first article in Benn's new collection, 'Arguments for Democracy, edited by Chris Müllin, which comes out later this month. incomparable text for educating revolutionaries to think like Marxists, because of the powerful and vigorous way it carves out and establishes the distinction and difference between serious working class ideas and politics, on the one hand, and the bandying about of mere 'socialist' and 'revolutionary' sounding words and phrases • 'phrasemongering' without science, system or even the aspiration to think things through rigorously, like tor example the revolutionary politics' which flourished on the left after 1968.

But little heed was taken of Marx's privately circulated 'Marginal Notes by the German Socialist leaders. The two organisations duly united on the programme that Marx had attacked as confused and even reactionary.

Marx and Engels were outraged. They considered their associates Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel to be guilty of little less than an ideological betr betrayal. They decided that they must separate themselves publicly from the theoretical/political document adopted at the Congress at Gotha.

Held fire •

In the event, however, they did not break with the new organisation, nor did they publicly criticise it.

After Marx's death Engels held his fire for eight years until the time came to write a new party programme for the congress at Erfurt in 1891, and then published it as a contribution to the discussion which helped prepare for the congress.

Writing to August Bebel on October 12, 1875, Engels explained why Marx and he had not. finally, felt obliged to come out with public criticism.

•The whole thing is untidy, confused, disconnected, illogical and discreditable. If the bourgeois press possessed a single person of critical mind he would have taken this programme apart phrase by phrase, investigated the real content of each phrase, demonstrated its nonsense with the utmost clarity, revealed its contradictions and logical howlers and made our whole [international, party look frightfully ridiculous.

Intentions

*Instead of that the asinine bourgions papers took the programme quite seriously, read into it what it does not contain, and interpreted it communistically.

The workers seem to be doing the same.

"It is this circumstance alone that made it possible for Mary and me nor 1o dissociate ourselves from such a programme. So long as our opponents and likewise the workers view this programme as embodying JOHN O'MAHONY looks at the politics of Tony Benn.

The movement could develop, and did, despite the limitations and confusion.

Tony Benn today is very like the German Workers' Party and its programme then in his relationship to the bourgeoisie and to the working class.

Not since Nye Bevan 25 years ago has anyone been so maligned and misrepresented by the bourgeoisie and its press as Benn Is.

Destabiliser

He is depicted as the wild eyed incendiary, the fomenter of revolution, the destabiliser of the political system - a crazed Samson trying to pull down the pillars of bourgeois rule in britain, the gravedigger of the old Labour Party, the impresario of 'picket-mob rule' In short Benn, the former minister, Privy Councillor, etc., has become the personification of a radicalising labour movement which is becoming dangerous.

So the increasingly unnerved and baffled British bourgeoisie and their agents in the press (and in the labour movement too) go for are maumant toni on for him, wildly and repeatedly, blood in their eyes.

If the TV and press lynch mob which bays so ferociously at Benn, could ANDREW WIARD, REPORT use rope instead of lies then Benn would be dead by now. Instead they have killed his "respectable' reputation.

Now there is some justice in this attitude to Benn from the bourgeoisie's point of view. Not since Nye Bevan's crusading meetings of 26 and 27 years ago have there been labour movement meetings like those that assemble for Benn.

Enthusiasm

No-one since Bevan Inen has been able as Benn is to evoke such interest and enthusiasm among workers for socialist polities, to draw out and focus the anger workers feel at what is happening to our society and to create contidence in masses of workers that their desires and hopes for a better existence and a ditterent system count for something now and can be made reahty in the tuture.

Standard bearer

The high general regard in which Benn is held by rank and file labour movement activists Inore because of than in spite of the media campaign - is the proot that the media, the bourgeoisie, and the right wing and soft left of the Labour Party are not entirely misdirecting their hatred.

Benn is today the standard bearer and the personification of a labour movement reviving itself and trving to ready itself to meet the on- ILYIYUIE -- -slaught of Thatcherism in Britain and the challenge of the worst capitalist crisis for four decades.

15G Like the German socialists in the 1870s and after or, according to his own favoured analogy, like the Labour Representation Committee which created the Labour Party - Benn, whatever his ideas, is building and rebuilding the labour movement, and playing a great part in helping it to shake itself awake politically from the long wasting torpor of the '60s and "70s.

The labour movement would be reviving even without Benn and his activities. But it happens that the revival has so far taken the form of a 'Bennite movement, lea by Benn and influenced, it not quite dominated, by his ideas.

Christian

Yet Benn, measured by his formal political ideas, political proposals and positions, is not very radical. His political ideas and proposals lag far behind the role he is playing.

Not only is he not a revolutionary -- which of course he does not claim to be - he is simply not yet even very left-wing in formal and conventional labour movement terms.

He is not a Marxist .. though against the witchhunters he insists that Marxism is an integral and legitimate part of the labour movement: Tony Benn is a Christian.

Fabian

the Fabian Society - that O+ EN # 00000C combat Marxism in the labour movement, and historically has been the ideological breeding ground and nursery for the bacillus of reformist class-collaboration that has helped tie the labour movement to the ruling class for 100 years and has stunted and wasted its strength and potential.

Benn combines

tremendous work of agitation, using his own very wide experience in Parliament and government, against the existing system, with. the most limited conclusions and recommendations on what to do about it.

Of course, many of his devotees favour radical or revolutionary solutions and many more will come to do so, partly on the basis of Benn's agitation: those who hate Benn so much understand this and dread it.

Civil service

For example, he proves in speeches and writings that enormous, even the decisive power in Britain, is not exercised by elected representatives at all, but by the permanent civil service, linked by à thousand threads of wealth, family, education and social intercourse with the bankers, industrialists and landowners. What does Break the power of the af public officials ected?

Nothing of the sort: he just wants to set up countervailing pressures from the labour movement to balance the pressure on 'the Minister' and keep him from buckling!

He speaks convincingly about the dangers of a military coup in Britain to stop radical socialist change. He does not propose agitation and action to make that impossible - by, for example, disarming the officers, OI replacing the standing army with a militia Opposed He rightly insists that the monarchy's reserve powers, and constitutional formalities whereby things are done in the name of the monarch, could be used against the labour movement, and would be, to stop radical change. Is he a republican? No, he is not!

He is now against nuclear weapons and for British unilateral nuciear disarmament. and the expulsion of US nuclear bases from Britain. NATO is entirely dependent on such weapons. Does Benn want Britain to leave NATO? Not that he has said.

He denounces the decisive power of the giant multinational companies, British-based and others over our lives. He does not advocate or favour the nationalisation of these firms. He successfully opposed a resolution at last year's Labour Party conference to commit Labour to nationalise firms declaring redundancies.

Other points could be added to the list. In terms of policy, Benn remains confined to proposals to put a Labour government in 'control' of the economy by way of tariff barriers ag ainst cheaper foreign goods, withdrawal from the EEC.

and planning agreements between the government and privately-owned firms. He favours workers' participation in the control of these firms, and profit-sharing:

also, where appropriate, co-ops.

People

Most significantly, whik Benn is devoted to the lab our movement built by the working. elass, he rarely speaks of class, instead pre ferring people on one side and establishment on the other.

Evidently Benn recognis es the class struggle as a 'fac ot lite', and sympathise with the right side in it. Thr decisive thing, though, is to accept it as something to br tought to a conclusion, an won by our side.

•Britain as a Colony' dis plays all Benn's strength and political weaknesses, ant accentuates the weaknesses.

Continued

Scan page 11

BACK IN 1887, a certain Mr. A.G. Russ (BA) informed the Shelley Society that:

"Now no-one can contest the right of anyone, even though he may be a mere sans culotte who runs around with a red rag, to quote Shelley when or where he pleases, but when the blatant and cruel socialism of the street endeavours to use the lofty and sublime socialism of the study for its own hase purpose it is time that with no uncertain sound all real lovers of the latter should disavow any sympathy with the former.

To judge from the general reaction to Paul Foot's book on Shelley from the academic literary establishment and the bourgeois press, the spirit of Mr Ross (BA) is still alive and well.

For a journalist ot all people - to write a book about a great poet and thinker would appear to be bad enough. (The critic of the Times Literary Supplement criticizes Foot for not having the same mastery of style as Shelley!

But when & socialist attempts to free Shelley from his "academic prison . .. to pass on Shelley's political enthusiasms to today's socialists, radicals and feminists in the hope that their commitment will be strengthened and enriched by Shelley as mine have been" - well the image of hordes of 'sans culotte' lefties quoting Shelley for their 'base purpose' , is obviously sufficient to send OWn the scholars into apoplexy!

For many of us, Shelley, along with most of our literary heritage, has probably been successfully killed off by the English educational system. I any image remains of him it is that of a bit of a pooftah who wrote about skylarks — or to put it more kindly "a beautiful but ineffectual angel."

The life-long political agitator who was kicked out of Oxford for publishing a pamphlet on atheism, who railed against the monarchy and who incited the masses to: 'Rise like lions after slumber In unvanquisable number Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you -Ye are many - they are few" is severely suppressed.

The opening chapter of Foot's study describes the background of social and political oppression that prevailed in Britain during Shelley's adult life (1810-22).

The governments of Castlereagh and Eldon attempted to stop the spread of revolutionary ideas from across the Channel by Riot Acts and censorship, and the exploitation of the working class through such measures as the Speenhamland system of poor relief.

Labelled as an atheist and republican, publication of his writings stifled, Shelley lived most of his life on the move, much of it in exile in France and Italy. This isolation no doubt led to inconsistencies in Shelley's political thought; his horror of physical violence led him to cling to a notion of peaceful revolution that intellectually he knew would not enable the workers and peasants to achieve power.

He was, however, capable of great political insights, such as the need for political parties or 'associations' in which workers could achieve their aims by collective action. His awareness accentuated, perhaps, _by his own isolation and that of the philosophical reformers of his time, he wrote that political change:

... will not be kept alive by each citizen sitting quietly by his own fireside and saying that things are going on well, because the rain does not beat on him, and he has books and leisure to read them, because he has money and is at liberty to accumulate luxuries to himself.

'Individuals acting singly, with whatever energy, can never effect so much as a society... for carrying by united or individual exertion such measures into effect when determined on."

A major part of Foot's book is on Shelley's view of feminism. His assertion 'Can man be free if woman be a slave?' can well he considered today, as much as in Shelley's time when divorce and property laws allowed women virtually no freedom whatsoever.

As Foot points out, however, there is some controversy (not only amongst feminists) that Shelley's own relationships with women did not fulfill his ideals - his first wife committed suicide after _Peterloo Massacre, 181!

printing: he had left her for Mary Godwin. However, lines such as those he wrote to Mary during her sadness after the deaths of her two children show the love and respect he held for her: 'My dearest Mary, wherefore has though gone And left me in this dreary world alone?

Thy form is here indeed - a lovely one -But thou art fled, gone down the dreary road, That leads to sorrows obscure abode; Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair, Where for thine own sake I cannot follow thee." 'Ironically, soon after Shelley met his death by 20:12. Thursday WENDY reviews Pa Shelley" Sidgewick £5.95. FRANKLAND Il Foot's "Red published by and Jackson,

----- pull-quotes -----

9 hn Ba Pass resolutions *Black Snipe

-Battle of ideas- TONY BENN AND SOCIALISM

our intentions we can afford to keep quiet about'it"