socialist policies?
Labour leadership throw out such a movement and period of right wing control?
Alternately can the left, as some in the Labour Party think, deal with the witch-hunt by laying low and digging The to this depends on another why does the working class sce Labour Party as its mass party? Why is it loyal to Labour? There are two broad views on this.
The first says that the feature of the Labour Party is its socialist character. the Labour Party's unique record of achievement stands out above all others; that given time it can be turned into a genuinely socialist party; and that workers adhere to it because of their unbounded devotion to its cause and trust in its future.
The facts hardly bear this out. The Labour Party's record in 1945 is held up as a beacon, but it was a policy largely agreed by all parties. Most of the benefits were reaped later, under the Tories, and the greatest rise in working class prosperity was between 1953 and 1963.
The Labour Party's 1974-79 is nothing short of disgusting: but the same percentage voted for it in 1974 and in 1979. Nor is there any real cause for most sane working people to think the Party become genuinely socialist, and at least half its su they ers ught ofter voting for it if wise, since only half Labour's voters consider themselves socialist.
The Labour Party's achievements do not stand comparison with those of reform parties in other countries, or even of Britain's own capitalists wnen scized will rerormme balD struck by urgent necessity. hasn't even got as far as De Gaulle who nationalised the major French banks in 1945.
What stands out about the Labour Party is that because it confines itself almost exclusively to parliamentary action, it has a uniquely federal relation to the working class.
All bodies of the labour moveall points of represented in the Labour Party so that the Labour Party as sense of representing all components Or would the of it. vital question:
the unique It is argued that record in Clear of Cruise want, will ever demand in thought otheraround these issues state, the multinationals completely Labour ed.
the Party.
They view capitalism.
class regards the vital facts:
party in the • It always supports If the Labour leaders excluded a mass current of opinion they would wooenouse trains a snapping • When the chips are down it refuses to touch the unaccountable centres of power such as Whitehall, the monarWhich centitute and safeguard the or even the House of Lords British state. After sixty years of social rotors, Labour has not ever attempted a single serious democratic reform. We are now paying a severe The ban on "Socialist Outlook" two analyses of the Labour Party. One trend bases itself on the hope that the Labour Party can be won to socialism and its leadership can be captured by the working class. This leads to a constant tendency to unnecessary compromise burning issues in the futile hope of a future reckoning. Moreover it leads to a concentration on the resolutionary struggle for a more and more on today's them.
DUCESS prepared ship lies in be very broad in character because it could organise around a very small number of very important demands, many of which are already Labour movement policy, and fight to involve the Labour Party - particularly the youth - around actions in support of This is ine policy which Socialist Challenge promotes.
However, one further point re mains. If such a campaigning left wing cannot subordinate its aims to capturing the Labour Parry leadership, if Labour's leaders will split the party rather than see this happen, how can a genuine socialist party bo