Sharing skills, discussing Marxism

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BENNETT ists drew our attention to GLENDA writes:

THE Women's Fightback conference on the Bank Holiday weekend at Wydale Hall, near Scarborough, was the first Fightback event I had attended. This report is a purely personal view of what I saw to be the strengths and weaknesses of the conference.

The aims of the conference were to share campaigning skills and to further political development in discussion, specifically on the questions of Marxism and feminism, reform and revolution, and Stalinisn.

The first day was, therefore, a series of group discussions, breaking down into smaller workshops. The second day was an attempt to apply theory to practice, working in small workshops on campaigning against the cuts, on unionisation struggles, on using the media, and on a woman's right to work.

One of the real strengths that emerged from the discussions seemed to me to be the diversity of sisters' experiences as reflected in their contributions.

Three delegates from the Labour Party Young Socialists drew our attention to the plight of young women; faced with the relentless prospect of life at home, destined by unemployment always to work in their parents' or (as a means of escape) in their marital home.

They argued for the need for Women's Fightback to address itself to young women who may well never become unionised or join the They spoke up against the sexism of the Militant testified by its treatment of Thatcher as "Plunderwoman"

Another sister, from Another sister from Leicester, spoke of the need to use the language of the class, and not to mystify with the use of jargon such as "dialectical materialism"

She argued that if we are to involve more working class women within Fightback we must learn to clearly and coherently express our beliefs.

Such varied contributions seemed to me to reflect the strengths of Fightback in its ability to draw women into the organisation, and to allow their voices to be heard.

Wydale Hall was a rather beautiful, if ironic place for us to be. It comes under the diocese of York. We were embraced by Mother Church in the figure of the patriarchal rector. We duly bowed submissively to grace at mealtimes, and his benerolence extended itself to making jokes in the graces to ease the embarrassment.

Advantages

It is interesting that the Church is more tolerant to the left, than the left to the church.

Anyway, Wydale Hall did have its advantages - it was miles away from anywhere (and that included the pub), but it did offer space for sisters to relax and get to know each other.

Sharing was one of the keywords of the weekend -a chance to share experiences and expertise. In the workshops, sisters who had participated in the Royal Pride strike and in the Beal Street and Oxford Nursery Campaigns spoke of their experiences and gavi direction and advice on how to organise exhibitions, occupations and how to work on picket lines.

Practical advice

One sister who had used the media gave very useful practical advice and expertise which hopefully can be used in the future - as Fightback is investigating the possibilities of the new fourth TV channel.

One of the frustrations was the sheer lack of time to develop ideas. This was true of the workshops - where you had to decide between one of three - but it was particularly true of the initial day of discussion.

There was a good basic introduction to Marxism, which lead onto a discussion of the limits of reformism and the need for revolution - which surprisingly gave rise to very little debate.

The next question, which was how and why did the Russian Revolution fail to improve the position of women, seemed to me to be left unanswered. Not surprisingly, most sisters agreed that the Soviet claim to have improved the position of women was untrue, but the issues of the failure of Russian and other revolutions to improve the position of women were not dealt I felt many sisters might have left the conference with a utopian idea of socialist revolution - seeing it as something desirable but being unclear as to how it would happen and when, if ever it would come about.

It seemed to me too important an issue to be glossed over.

Similarly the evening discussion on Marxism and Feminism, the relationship between women's liberation and the overthrow of capitalism touched on the issues of paid housework, communal living and childcare, but failed to draw them to any conclusion.

This sketchiness was augmented by the lack of time that did not permit feedback from workshops.

One of the main values of the conference was that it brought sisters together, and allowed an exchange of opinion. However, despite the real enthusiasm of sisters at the conference to take up the tasks and commitment to struggle, there seems to be a lack of direction from the organisation.

It would be a real failure if the movement did not absorb these women, and if it failed to give a positive direction to their individual contributions.

I hope that these organisational and educational problems will be overcome by the setting up of Area Committees as proposed during the AGM. Equally, 1 would like to see priorities established as a result of the conference that would give directions and goals to be aimed for. (Tower Hamlets Target 82 group), and a Newham councillor.

Thursday September 17, 7.30, THAP bookshop, 178 Whitechapel Rd. PUBLIC MEETINGS TO LAUNCH THE NEW WEEKLY OXFORD Wed. 16 September 8.00 pm next to East Oxford Community Centre Princes St., Oxford LEICESTER Thursday September 17 'Build a fighting left' 7.30 pm Leicester Socialist Centre (above Blackthorne Books)

High St., Leicester BRADFORD Friday 18 September (details from Barry Turner: 0274 636994 Speakers: Pat Lally John O'Mahony SHEFFIELD Sunday September 7.30 pm irown cow, The Wicke Sheffield LAMBETH Friday September 25 Lambeth Town Hall 7.30 pm

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John O'Mahony continues his discussion of Tony Benn's recent article on "Britain as a Colony"

The City and the London Stock Exchange (above) are still major iteelworkers focussed their johs fight on opposition to Germoni and got derail attle of id wealth and power "If we are to attempt serious reforms, we shall find that we need to restore democracy by taking back our rights of self-government. We shall need to rebuild our self-confidence as a nation, to build it upon a clearer and better concept of human values, and to take charge of our own economic and political destiny.

"To attempt all that is, in effect, to embark upon a national liberation struggle (emphasis added).

"This is the true challenge confronting the labour movement and the socialists within it, and all believers in democracy. The role of the British labour movement must be to offer leadership in that liberation struggle to end our colonial status, and to allow the people to enter into their rightful inheritance"

THOSE ARE the words which end and the summary answer to the question he puts earlier like this, "Is Britain a colony like any other? On the face of it this may seem an outlandish question to pose... Yet he does pose it, and answers it with a call for a national liberation struggle.

He has said all this before (for example in the interview with Eric Hobsbawm in last October's Marxism Todry, a f ammunist Party journal). But now it becomes the framework, package and focus of Tony Benn's programme.

The very title of the article is of course a programme. For it Britain is a colony. then it should be liberated, and that conclusion from the definition of Britain as a colony would not be contined to. the labour movement, or even to democrats.

The liberation of Britain, to restore its lost/former independence is what Benn proposes to the labour movement as the immediate goal (and therefore the effective political content) of the working class lightback to kick out Thatcherism.

The ideas in Tony Benn's article, which sets up the restoration of British greatness (though that is not his word) as the historic goal of the working class and socialism. are loosely and, in my opinion. badly worked out. The article has sketchy notions of history or obviously wrong ones. But as a contribution to the discussion in the labour movement now. Benn's article will be a valuable contribution to clarifying our minds and our perspectives if it provokes, as it should, a thorough discussion of the issues Benn raises.

Benn argues that Britain is a colony because:

1. "The Lords' veto. the prerogatives of the Crown to dismiss and dissolve, and the loyalties of the courts and the services to adjudicate upon legitimacy and to enforce those judgments might all be used * In no.l of the Labour Party magazine 'New Socialist' and, in a fuller version, in the book 'Arguments for Democracy'.

MINOTS LONWY to defend the status quo against the parliamentary majority elected to transform it.

"This may seem far-reaching, but at least those forces opposed to democratic reforms could argue that they were operating in accordance with the letter of the constitution. even though in no sense within its spirit.

"Unlike countries where the overthrow of elected governments by a non-elected military elite has to take place in open detiance of the constitutional safeguards enjoyed by the people, and is thus seen 1o be illegal, the British Constitution reserves all its ultimate safeguards for the non-elected elite. The democratic rights of the people can, in a crisis, be adjudicated to be illogal, thus logitimising the military in extinguishing them.

"Within that essential legal ditterence between the British Constitution and the constitutions of other parliamentary democracies lies part of the proof of the continuing colonial status of the British people"

Crown

He makes the analogy situation of'a Crown Colony.

2. Because of the vast power over Britain, British affairs and the people of Britain exercised by the international market and the multi-national companies that dominate it. These are, he points out, outside possible control by the British governmeni.

"These global corporations in oil. engineering and minerals have long since outgrown nation states in the sheer size of their wealth and income and the worldwide scale of their operations. They perceive their prime responsibility to lie with their shareholders, and they have the regard to fror force to those base is Britai lance to the territory they tiers. This applies with equal multinationals whose home 1, since they feel no allegnation from within whose grew"

Morality

3. Because of the power of the IMI , an institution whose policies reflect the interests and ideas and morality of the dominant imperialism. He speaks of "the humiljation that IMI imperialism imposes upon colonial Britain"

4: Because Britain is in the EEC, which has the right to make laws for its component parts under the Treaty of Rome and which under the British treaty of accession can make laws binding on Britain which (in theory) overrule decisions by Westminster.

5. Because Britain is in a subordinate place within the USA-led military alliance. "Parallel with the colonisation of post-war Britain by the multi-nationals and the bankers came the much more specifically political supervision of another area of our policy - defence • by the USA"

Because the USA has missile bases in Britain, it could ettectively declare war for Britain. Britain thus. says Tony Benn. lacks one of the essential characteristics of state, the right to make an independent war or peace.

Concretely, what does Benn propose to do to change things?

1 To make reforms SO that the House of Commons is the legal sovereign power in Britain.

2. The British government to resume the right to make tarifts for Britain and to enter various types of agreement to regulate the multi-nationals.

3. Resistance to IMF dictats.

4. Withdrawal from the EEC.

S. The removal of US bases from Britain (Britain to be a non-nuclear member of NATO, like Canada):

Removal of US bases is Labour Party policy and deserves the support of every sane person in Britain. Point 1 is woefully inadequate. The House of Lords would be abolished but the monarchy would not! Nevertheless, anything that strengthens democracy, even formally, deserves the support of socialists.

Points 2, 3 and 4 would, it implemented, surely strengthen or 'restore' Britain's formal independence. It seems to me a certainty that they would not decisively alter Britain's real situation.

For if Britain's economic decline continued — as it will under capitalism: and Benn would, essentially, leave capitalism intact, if lightly shackled - such measures must certainly continue and probably increase real dependence and subordination of Britain to the world market, to the EEC and to the IMI.

Disguised by the trappings - even the exaggerated trappings - of formal independence, it might well be. But the actual content of Britain's formal independence will not rise higher than the reality of its relative wealth, strength, might ano importance in the world and in Europe.

For Benn's solutions are concerned with formalities and legalities, not with the real relationships and economic realities that give - or take away - weight and substance to those forms. And his formalities and legalities would not of themseives seriously change the decisive factors.

Benn's solution is a uni-dimensionally "political' one (and, as we shall see, even a misunderstanding of the politics).

His solution flows from his analysis and diagnosis of Britain's situation. He describes the condition of Britain: "an accelerating spiral of decline into chronic mass unemployment; the dismantling of essential public services; a widening gap between rich and poor, with growing social tensions; the erosion of the rights of women, trade unions, and the black communities; mounting attacks upon civil liberties; and the increasing risk of nuclear war" • These are more or less attributable to Government policies.

In a key passage, he continues:

"The establishment has played its cards with exceptional skill in diffusing and defusing our anger (emphasis added) so as to preserve its own position. We are told that our economic difficulties are caused by our low productivity and lack of competitiveness; that our trade unions are destructive; that socialism is subversive; that our whole nation is afflicted by some malaise; and that our people are irresponsible and decadent. These are the themes that come through much of the media coverage of events. They add up to a barrage of propaganda designed to legitimise the present balance of power" (and 1o legitimise repressive, right wing ruling class solutions.

Propaganda

It is implied that all the things he lists are. self-evidently, not true, that they are no more than inventions or gross exaggerations created for propagandist purposes. There is nothing in the article that qualifies this.

Throughout the article Benn deals with real and possible I egalities and political proposals but not with the underlying ¿conomic problems except implicitly to dismiss them as propaganda by the ruling class.

He savs it is no more than aganda: -«The establishment and the media have conducted a long and reasonably successful campaign to win public assent for their strategy lot abandoning parliamentary democracy' and going into Europer by undermining the self-confidence of the British people and their faith in the vitality and efficacy of our democratic institutions. The media have presented the

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End of the People's March: the nationalist answer British people as being so irresponsible as to be untit to exercise ultimate control, and Britain as so weak in the world as to make self-government virtually meaningless. In that way our people became confused and diverted from an understanding of what was really happening, while our democratic rights were taken from us and were reduced to colonial status"

Let us examine these arguments.

Britain does not suffer from low productivity and lack of competitiveness? not. The reason why, of course, is not lazy workers but irresponsible profligate profiteering. Yet the results do exist as towering objective facts — as the soil on which British society and the British labour movement exist. It is not ruling-class propaganda, but the reality of ruling-class administration.

The trade unions are not 'destructive'? beginning.

Socialism is subversive, and working-class socialism should be consciously so.

Our whole nation is not "afflicted by some malaise", , says Benn. But surely it is, comrade Benn?

Not basically a malaise of the spirit and of morality, but the malaise of decaying and rotting British capitalism. British society is being poisoned at the roots by rotting capitalism. Benn says so, repeatedly.

But he attributes much more to the machinations and conspiracies of the ruling class than to the general decline of Britain and what it does to the ruling class and its options.

The EEC The British ruling class remained outside the EEC for 15 years, tried to scuttle it, opposed it, and organised an alternative to it (the European Free Trade great diversity of morbid symptoms" (Antonio Gramsci). That is exactly where we are at in terms of the problem to be solved. The British capitalism system is in a crisis of decline; the British labour movement is in a crisis of reorientation, of polities, of philosophy, and of leadership.

I have explored this passage in such detail because central to Benn's whole view of "Britain as a colony" and to his shallowly formalistic and 'political' nationalist solution is a refusal to face up to the reality of the decline of Britain. Everything he misdiagnoses and mis-prescribes flows. I think, from that.

Formalities

He measures Britain's decline in self-government in terms of formal treaties and the formalities of relationships, and he proposes changes in those formal relationships like BEC withdrawal. But the real measuring rod for understanding what has happened and why, and what needs to be done, is the real decline of Britain.

The central fact of what Benn has rightly called the tragedy that has overtaken the British people and threatens to overwhelm the labour movement, is fundamentally a catastrophic economic decline. By whatever measure you choose - production, productivity, financial operations, ares under its control - Britain's relative position has declined sharply since 1945 (and indeed was declining before then).

Britain was among the tew most privileged states for centuries. In one of the first countries of bourgeois development, then the pioneer of industrialism, the British bourgeoisie - . motives of selfenrichment granted, but not detracting from this - was the bearer of a new system of production and of the great world capitalist civilisation now in decline.

All that is gone, and gone forever. The decadence of the ruling class and its inability to impose its chosen solutions to Britain's problems have pushed Britain down imperialist bloc. No force other now keeps Britain in the EEC.

All these were not the negation of their (the ruling class's) self-determination, but its expression.

Apart from the central fact - which would in itself be decisive for invalidating Benn's assessment - that Britain is itself still an important, though enteebled, monopoly capitalist imperialist power, the analogy on which Benn pins so much is thus radically false (and, in the notion of Britain being ruled as a Crown Colony, strained beyond breaking point).

To define Britain's decline as lack of political self-determination is not only inadequate and likely to lead to a false search for solutions in external details. It is a dangerous act of ideological packaging, prepared for by this extraordinary definition of what the revolutions against colonialism were all about:

Economics "What we have to do is comparable to a national liberation struggle, of which we have seen many examples in the era of decolonisation which followed 1945. These colonial struggles were motivated by the desire for universal adult suffrage, self-government and political independence -all of which we regard as our natural rights..."

The completely formal, surface, "political' picture, devoid of awareness of the economics of imperialism -the motive force and the goal of the imperialist exploiters and predators - what is it but the model of the picture he draws of Britain?

There is a gross lack of proportion in the equation of the condition of the colonies with problems of reform in Britain. But the notable thing is that impenalism, a term which Benn uses in a number of different senses in the article, is here reduced to just a word.

For his general position Benn needs to 'ignore' the economics. An examination of the ex-colonies would show that in most cases the condition of real economic strength or lack of it has not changed.

This is not to disparage the struggle of any of the former colonies for independence: Indeed, some ex-colonies have been able to transiorm their societies substantially, even within capitalist limits, as a result of political independence. Algeria is an example - but one that shows up the inapplicability of the term 'colonv' for Britain.

Algeria's economy is still heavily linked with and even partly dependent on France. But the Algerian capitalist class can negotiate the links on much more favourable terms because it no longer has a huge French army on its territory, using terror to enforce massive privileges and racist discrimination. (The development of the oilfields has also boosted Algeria's strength).

The British capitalist class faces no occupying armies, but only the objective limits of its economic strength. It is not a victim, held down by armed force, of the imperialism of the multinationals - but a junior partner in • that imperialism (in world terms, not so junior as all that).

Serious change in Britain requires the overthrow of the capitalist class.

For the sake of the argument, let us agree (though personally I would not) that British withdrawal from the EEC has some advantages for the working class. It is still a very small degree of enhanced self-determination that is likely to become available to Britain from the taking back of what was voluntarily (by the ruling class, at least) merged into the EEC. Its absence now is not at all related to foreign coercion, but rather to a practical calculation by the ruling class. For that reason alone, the identification of weak imperialist Britain as a colony of imperialism is grossly misleading.

The weight of the British economy is what adds or subtracts weight from formal independence. No unilateral political decision could restore Britain's former level of self determination.

Outside of the EEC, Britain would have to find new arrangements with its neighbours, reflecting real strengths and real weaknesses.

Even if we agree that restoration of Britain's former level of self determination and self-sufficiency is a desirable objective, neither Benn's proposals, nor any others, can achieve it. Not even the socialist revolution can do that.

CONTINUED NEXT

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encapsulate Tony Benn's important new article, 'Britain as a Colony"*. They are

power to maximise their return on capital by deploying their resources without