IN 1932 the left Labour Party founded Socialist League. It called for 'the immediate nationalisation of the banks, land, transport, iron and steel, cotton, and control of foreign trade'.
The leader of the Stafford Cripps, proposed to the 1933 conference party's national executive should be instructed to 'specify the means to be adopted by next government' to ensure that 'a rapid transition to socialism may be carried through constitutionally, dictatorship avoided'.
The Socialist League thought that the anti-working Government would inevitably fall in the next election. Accordingly, it saw no need to link up with mass struggles against the National The league did National Movement and it failed to fight the wing of the the League, that the Labour and Stafford Cripps National Labour united front against fascism.
Government.
back the Workers' the unions.
in 1929.
Party's refusal to join a Cripps and friends thought their role was to give Labour a left-wing manifesto for the day it came to Lave office. That day never came. In the 1935 general election there was a Tory landslide victory The Socialist League was only one of a long line of left social democratic groupings which saw parliament only road change, therefore subordinated mass struggle to inner-party manoeuvres. Not all Labour lefts have taken this road.
In the 1920s the National Left Wing Movement was set up to fight the drift to the right and the expulsion of Communist Party members. It had clear class policies and active links with the Minority Movement in the The National Left Movement refused to compromise these principles, but sadly suppressed by the Communist Party Will the Labour left of the 1980s draw any lessons from the past?
In an interview in the Leveller last Tony Benn remarked: 'When they accuse me of being a left talking reformist I plead guilty.
denigrated the exceptional radicalism of reform. The problem is we have not reformed enough.' matters into their own hands by Others are more radical. Francis Cripps wrote in Labour Activist. 'The central point about the alternative as strategy is that it requires a seizure of power by a democratically elected government institutions like the IMF, the EEC, and foreign companies and banks. will be seized by fighting the next election on the basis of the Alternative Economic Strategy. What do we do in the years between? What do we do now?
It is mass struggle not elections Wing which decide whether fall and power passes was class hands. This is what finished ofi Heath. This is the test that awaits the Labour left.
Can they throw
Party's resources into the struggles against the Tories, be they on the issue of cuts, the defence of union rights, the mounting campaien tor brush They pressure for general strike action? There are indications of a desire for change. In a paper ordinating argues:
solidarity COUL ALL bowel workplace community campaigns rights •governeal unions.
the Labour the Wing for its 22 manoeuvres March conference, the Labour CoCommittee's executive believe it is emphasises the need for and strikes against Tory policies; the setting up of branches of the Labour Party; the use of party offices as action centres and women's and black the women's and black movements.
Plans are a so afoot for a rank and file movement at the base of the These steps should be welcomed. But vital tests confront the new left forces. Will they be compromised by inner-party diplomacy in other words bow to the party bureaucrats - into avoiding active unity of all working class forces?
Or will they, like the National Left Movement, decide that class unity is more important than party
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sufficient to rely on electoral politics alone to win socialist advances.'