By Michael Faulkner – January 16, 2011
2011 promises to be a turbulent, troubled year. A palpable
mood of apprehension and anxiety looms like a threatening cloud above the
obligatory joviality and faux optimism accompanying the end of the decade. Even
the ConLib government’s defenders and apologists cannot easily pretend that the
coming months and years will not be painful. They know that they are heading
into mined and uncharted waters. They are hoping that the painful medicine soon
to be administered will be swallowed without protest. Their hopes will almost
certainly be vain.
It would be pleasant to report that the government faces a
determined army of popular resistance led by an opposition party in parliament
willing and ready to lead a mass movement against the most draconian cuts in
public services ever attempted in peacetime. But it is not so. There will be
resistance. It will come from the trade union movement, from students and young
people and from the still disparate but increasingly determined and experienced
grass-roots campaigners such as UK-Uncut, who have recently appeared on the
streets with dramatic effect. But, unless it is dragged unwillingly into the
fray, the opposition parliamentary Labour Party will be ineffectual at best,
and – at worst – obstructive. Against the inevitable popular anger
that will become more potent as the cuts begin to bite, the forces of reaction
are already mobilizing. Police handling of demonstrations will become more
brutal; the government will attempt to impose harsher restrictions on the
already seriously curtailed right to strike; ‘anti-terror’ laws will be used to
demonize those deemed to be ‘trouble-makers.’ Already all ‘respectable’ and
‘moderate’ opinion holds that the demonstrations that have so far taken place
have been irresponsible. This will be the charge leveled against all striking
workers and all who take part in public demonstrations.
Those, including members of the opposition shadow cabinet,
who regard themselves as paragons of moderation, apparently believe that those
millions whose livelihoods and prospects are soon to suffer savage assault
should meekly accept their fate, or, at best confine themselves to grumbling
and hoping for a silver lining. Nothing would suit the ConLib government better
than this. No matter how unbearable the pain, you must, in the interests of
wiping out the deficit, accept it. If you are amongst the millions of young
people who were encouraged to believe they had ‘the right to buy’ their own
homes but now don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of doing so, you will be
expected to wait for better days. If you find yourself amongst the 500.000 soon
to be made redundant without prospect of finding work, you will be expected to
endure your plight patiently. Whatever you do, don’t protest too much. Trust
us. We’re all in this together. We have the national interest at heart. That is
the sentiment and the advice of a cabinet of whose 23 full-time members, 18 are
millionaires.
Turning to the parliamentary opposition this New Year of
2011, one is struck by the almost complete absence of anyone of serious
political substance. This applies not only to the shadow cabinet, but to the
parliamentary party as a whole. It is commonplace now, from the standpoint of
supposedly sensible, ‘non-ideological’ political moderation, to attach the
label ‘old Labour’ to those remaining on the left of the party who still
describe themselves as socialists. The term ‘socialist’ itself is now regarded
as a badge of sclerotic antiquity, derided as the delusion of incurable
nostalgists. This attempt by the political mainstream and its compliant media
to elide socialism from serious political discourse, is itself a highly
ideological enterprise. It is part of the intensified assault against the left,
Marxist and social democratic, launched in the 1970s and 80s by the Friedmanite
Chicago School responsible for the lurch to the right under the banner of
neo-liberalism. Not only was the term ‘socialist’ virtually banished from the
vocabulary of New Labour; it became – and remains - obligatory never to
use the term ‘working class’. Instead one must always refer to ‘hard working
families’.
One of the most lamentable effects of this right wing
offensive has been the seemingly deliberate encouragement of ignorance and
disdain for history. It may be objected that this is too harsh; that television
is overflowing with historical dramas and documentaries. Most of this is not
serious history but part of what may be termed the ‘heritage industry’. It is
very popular but has more to do with nostalgia than history. There is a woeful
ignorance, not only about the more distant past, but also about the past that
is part of the living memory of older people in this country. Those who have
been politically active on the left for most of their lives, may be forgiven
for occasionally succumbing to sentiments of despair when contemplating this
pervasive culture of forgetfulness and ignorance about the history of the
Labour movement in Britain.
The title chosen for this column, ‘Past Years’ Unhonoured
List’ attempts to address this elision. For those unfamiliar with what has been
called the ‘preposterous charade’ of the British honours system, there are
three occasions during the year when the queen, on the advice of the prime
minister, confers honours on certain people nominated for the outstanding
contribution they are said to have made to public life. Additionally, for
others there is the supreme accolade of elevation to the House of Lords –
the creation of life peerages. Thus we have an arcane array of Lords and Dames,
Knights, and Orders of the British Empire. Nearly 1000 have been ‘honoured’
this year. It is worth noting that of the fourteen bankers to have been
knighted in past years, eight received their knighthoods under New Labour. Sir
Fred Goodwin, who brought the Royal Bank of Scotland to its knees, received his
knighthood from Blair for his ‘services to banking.’
Those old enough to recall political events of fifty and
even sixty years ago may have difficulty in remembering much about the past
recipients of honours and peerages. But those with any knowledge of, and
affection for, the Labour movement in Britain will have vivid memories of many
others who neither sought nor received rewards of that kind. To the wider
public some of those on the ‘unhonoured list’ will be unknown. They deserve to
be remembered and honoured. Many of us, in the past, may have been critical of
them for one reason or another. From the standpoint of a somewhat puritanical
Marxism, they sometimes seemed too closely wedded to reformist social democracy
rather than to revolutionary socialism. Most of them were members of, or
closely associated with, the Labour Party. Many were MPs. They were all proud
to call themselves socialists. Many more could be included, but here are some
who were outstanding in their day and who dedicated their lives to the cause of
the working class and socialism.
Aneurin Bevan. 1897 – 1960.
Best remembered as Minister of Health in the post-war Attlee
government, ‘Nye’ Bevan came from a working class Welsh mining background. He
was elected for Labour in Ebbw Vale in 1929, a constituency he served in
parliament until his death in 1960. He was one of Britain’s greatest orators.
Always on the left of the party, during the 1930s he was a supporter of the
republican cause in Spain and a staunch opponent of appeasement. As a minister
he spearheaded the formation of the National Health Service. In 1951 he
resigned from the cabinet when Gaitskell imposed prescription charges for NHS
dentures and spectacles. With Labour in opposition after 1951, Bevan became the
leader of the left wing of the party and was closely associated with the
newspaper Tribune. One of his greatest speeches was delivered at the huge Trafalgar
Square demonstration against the invasion of Suez in November 1956. It
galvanized the opposition to the war and led indirectly to the resignation of
Anthony Eden as prime minister.
Best known books: Why Not Trust the Tories. 1944. In Place of Fear. 1952.
Jennie Lee. 1904 – 1988.
Scottish socialist, married to Aneurin Bevan. Born into a
mining family, she was elected to parliament in 1929. At the age of 24 she was
the youngest MP in parliament. Her first parliamentary speech was an attack on
Churchill’s budget proposals. In
1945 she was re-elected for the mining constituency of Cannock in
Staffordshire. After Bevan’s death, in 1964 she was appointed Arts minister in
Wilson’s government and was responsible for setting up the Open University. She
died in 1988.
Ellen Wilkinson. 1891 – 1947.
Ellen Wilkinson was a dominant figure in the Labour Party
and wider labour movement in the1920s and 30s. She was elected to parliament in
1924 for the depressed north-eastern steel making constituency of Middlesborough
East. In 1926 she supported the General Strike. She lost her seat in 1931 but
was re-elected in 1935 as MP for Jarrow, where, during the depression, 80% of
the working population was unemployed. She was the main organizer of the Jarrow
march to London in 1936. She immortalized the event in her book ‘The Town that was Murdered’. She was a
supporter of the Spanish Republic and visited the international brigades in
Spain. In the 1945 government she was appointed Minister of Education –
the first woman ever to hold the post. She was only the second woman to be
appointed to a cabinet post. She oversaw the implementation of the 1944
education act.
Books: The Workers’ History of the Great Strike. (With Frank
Horrabin and Raymond Postgate) The Terror in Germany. 1933. Why Fascism. 1934. The Town that was
Murdered. (1939)
Sydney Silverman. 1895 – 1968.
Born in Liverpool into a working class Jewish family he won
scholarships enabling him to attend Liverpool University. Unable to find work
in England he spent some years teaching English at the National University of
Finland. He later read Law at Liverpool University and qualified as a
solicitor. As a conscientious objector during the First World War, he served
three prison terms. He was elected to parliament in 1935 for Nelson and Colne,
a constituency he served for the rest of his life. During his years in
parliament he stood consistently on the left of the party. The Labour whip was
withdrawn in 1954 over his opposition to German re-armament, and again from 1961
– 63. He was one of the founders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
and in 1960 became Chair of the Victory for Socialism group. His most enduring
achievement was his tireless campaign for the abolition of the death penalty
which he pursued from the back benches. His private member’s bill was finally
passed in 1965. He died in 1968.
Konni Zilliacus. 1894 – 1967
Konni Zilliacus was one of the most extraordinary MPs of the
modern era. He was a left-wing socialist and internationalist who had the
unique distinction of being refused a visa for both the United States and the
Soviet Union. He was expelled from the Labour Party for being a communist
‘fellow traveler’ and, during the Stalinist trials in Eastern Europe in the
late 1940s and early 50s, accused by Moscow of being an agent of British
imperialism. The son of a Swedish-Finnish father and an American mother,
educated in Sweden, Finland, England and America, he was fluent in eight
languages and understood several more. He served in the First World War and was
later a member of the British military mission in Siberia. He became a
supporter of the Bolshevik revolution. He joined the Labour Party in 1919. From
then until 1938 he was also a member of the League of Nations Secretariat. In
1945 he was elected Labour MP for Gateshead. Zilliacus was described by Bernard
Shaw as ‘the only internationally minded member of any note in the House of
Commons.’ He was an indefatigable campaigner for peaceful co-existence during
the cold war and a scathing critic of NATO and the Anglo-American alliance.
There has been no one remotely like him since.
Best known of his many books:
I Choose Peace. 1949. New Birth of Freedom? World Communism after Stalin. 1957.
These are just a few of the outstanding MPs who belonged to the
left wing of the British Labour Party fifty and more years ago. Today, more is
the pity, there is no-one to compare with them.
The next ‘Letter from the UK’ (Fellow Travelers of the
Right) will return to this theme with a serious consideration of the evidence
that after 1947 the right-wing leaders of the British Labour Party were
suborned by the U.S Central Intelligence Agency, which was determined to
destroy the party as a viable vehicle for radical social change.