Tory, Liberal and
Labour political parties
IT
is A COMMONPLACE political observation that, in and even out of office,
the Conservative and Labour parties pursue very similar policies. There
is a simple reason for this. Both stand for capitalism and both are
used by the capitalists, with the support of the workers, to control
the State in the interests of the capitalist class. The wide sectional
differences which divided the ruling class in the nineteenth century
have gone, with the landowners turning their land-owning into a
capitalist business. The Conservatives tend to favour the farmers and
the financial interests of the City of London while the Labour Party
tends to favour nationalised or State capitalist industries, but the
policies of the two parties are basically the same because they are
both trying to solve the trading, financial and military problems of
British capitalism. A further reason for their similarity is that, in
order to get elected, they must compete for the votes of the workers.
Before
examining the historical origins of the Tory, Labour and Liberal
parties, a word about party politics. Working class problems arise out
of capitalism and will last as long as the system does. Tory
governments have failed to solve them; so have Liberal and Labour
governments; so have coalitions of all three parties. The Tories argue
that the Labour Party fails because it is incompetent and doctrinaire.
Labour says the Tories fail because they do not want to solve workers'
problems anyway. Labour excuses its own failures by blaming sabotage
from Tory civil servants, city financiers or foreign bankers. The
Socialist Party of Great Britain says that all capitalist governments
must fail because working class problems cannot be solved within
capitalism. No government, however well-meaning or efficient, can make
capitalism work for the benefit of all. All capitalist governments must
sooner or later come into direct conflict with the workers as they must
run capitalism in the only possible way: as a profit-making system in
the interests of the privileged few who draw a free income as rent,
interest and profit from their ownership of the means of production and
distribution.
Thus most political discussion about the alleged
merits and demerits of the various parties is irrevelant. It is not
just governments which cause workers' problems or are to blame for not
solving them. It is the economic system of class monopoly and
profit-making. Once this is grasped it is easy to see why no capitalist
party deserves the support of the workers and why the Socialist Party
has always been opposed to all other political parties whatever their
label.
Before the rise of the Labour Party in the past
half-century or so the two main parties in Britain were the Liberals
and the Tories. Modern parties, with their centralised organisation and
mass membership, only came into being after the passing of the Second
Reform Act of 1867 which meant that from then on, most electors were
workers (but not that most workers were electors). Before then parties
were loose parliamentary groupings that altered with the changing
interests of the sections of the propertied class they represented.
However, two distinct groups, dating back to 1688 — the year
parliamentary control of the government was firmly established — were
discernible: the Whigs and the Tories. Very roughly, the Whigs
represented the interests of trade and banking and the Tories the
interests of landed property. The Whigs were for parliamentary control
and the Tories were royalists, and so for many years were regarded as
potential subverters of the constitution.
With the industrial
revolution a third propertied group emerged, the factory-owner or
manufacturer. Under-represented in Parliament and so excluded from
political power
the manufacturers agitated for the reform of
Parfiament. The outcome, the First Reform Act, 1832, gave them a share
in political power along with the jumped-up speculators and landed
aristocrats. The Tories opposed any concessions to the industrial
capitalists and the latter formed an uneasy alliance with the Whigs.
These manufacturers were determined to shift some of the burden of
taxation on to landed property and to deprive the aristocrats of their
political privileges. Their first victory was the Repeal of the Corn
Laws in 1846, an issue which split the Tories with a section, including
Gladstone, going over to the Liberals.
The Liberals thus became
the party of industrial wealth and plutocratic privilege. The Tories
became the party of landed property and aristocratic privilege. This
division did not involve the workers though they were able to use it to
get such reforms as the early factory acts (pressed for by the Tories
to avenge for their defeat on the Corn Laws issue).
DECLINE OF THE LIBERALS
It
seemed that in time the economic and political development of
capitalism would lead to the demise of the Tory Party. This is
certainly what the Liberals wished people to believe, painting
themselves as the party of progress and the Tories as the party of
privilege. The success of this Liberal propaganda can be judged by the
fact that to this day anti-Toryism is exploited by the Labour Party. It
was Marx who pointed out that it was a feature of the British political
scene that any miserable compromise could be justified merely by
pointing out that it upset the Tories!
However, the Tory Party did
survive and it was the Liberals who went under. The backbone of the
Liberal Party had been the alliance between the textile manufacturers
of the north and the metal-working firms of the Midlands. For most of
the nineteenth century their interests coincided in opposing
aristocratic privilege and in demanding free trade. Britain, as the
first capitalist power, was the workshop of the world and its goods
were unrivalled on world markets. Towards the end of that century
competition in world markets, especially from Germany and America,
became tougher. The Birmingham capitalists, led by Joseph Chamberlain,
began to turn against free trade and laissez-faire, and to call for
State intervention to help them retain old and gain new markets. They
wanted protective tariffs and imperialist expansion. The Lancashire
capitalists, relying on cheap imports, remained committed to free
trade. So Chamberlain took a section of the Liberals over to the
Tories. The specific issue was Home Rule for Ireland. Hence the
dissidents were called Unionists, a name which still appears in the
official title of UK Tory Party. The Tories had thus acquired an
industrial base and were in fact better equipped to survive than the
Liberals who were squeezed out by the rise of the Labotn Party and the
loss of industrialist backing as more anc more industries suffered from
free trade.
The Tories are openly a capitalist party, clearly
supported by the vast majority of industrialists and wealthy property
owners. They are the party of the rich, though since the last war they
have had to spend great sums of money to create the image of a popular
reform party.
The Liberals have become a pathetic remnant,
sustained only by discontent with failures of both the Tories and
Labour and desperately trying to find some programme that will mark
them off from the two main parties. But the fate of most of their
policies has been for them to be stolen by their rivals. Only in
co-partnership have they come up with a proposal so impractical that
neither Tories nor the Labour party wants to touch it. Profit-sharing
is merely a device for ensuring that workers work harder to provide
greater profits for the owners. To imagine that the conflict of
interest between workers and capitalists can be reconciled by handing
out a few shares or appointing a few workers to the board of directors
is indeed wishful thinking.
Those workers who had the vote in
the last quarter of the nineteenth century found themselves at election
times confronted with a choice between two rich men: Sir Graball
D'Encloseland and Mr. Samuel Sweater as one wit called them. Many of
the politically aware workers asked why they should not also have their
own party and,after a number of false starts, the Independent Labour
Pirty wa formed in Bradford in 1893. The ILP played a major role in
bringing together the trade unions which in 1900 set up the Labour
Representation Committee. When it won some support in parliament the
LRC in 1906 became the Labour Party. The ILP left the Labour Party in
1932 and soon lost all influence on that party's affairs.
THE EARLY LABOUR PARTY
At
the start the Labour Party was intended merely as a trade union
pressure group in Parliament. It had no socialist pretensions, and was
indeed merely the tail-end of the Liberal Party. Nearly every Labour MP
returned before the first world war owed his election to Liberal votes
in accordance with a shady deal Ramsay MacDonald had made with that
party.
In 1918, under the influence of the Fabians, the Labour
Party adopted a new constitution which included the now notorious
Clause Four. This clause in fact committed it not to Socialism, but to
nationalisation or State capitalism which was the real aim of the
Fabians. Thus the Labour Party, committed on paper to a programme of
the gradual introduction of State capitalism, began its rise at the
expense of the Liberals.
By 1922 Ramsay MacDonald was official
Leader of the Opposition, instead of Asquith, the Liberal leader, and
by 1924 he was Prime Minister. Sections of the capitalist class were
alarmed by the prospect of a Labour government and this worried the
Labour Party. Led by MacDonald they were determined to show that they
were fit to govern capitalism. They had themselves photographed in full
court dress. But more seriously they prepared to use troops to break a
threatened transport strike and they sanctioned the bombing of
tribesmen in Iraq. They did not even make a start on their
State-capitalist programme. This was plausibly justified on the ground
that they were only a minority government dependent on Liberal support
— in other words, only a Liberal government, and indeed a number of
Liberal MPs as well as voters went over to the Labour Party.
The
Liberals also supported the second Labour government, returned in 1929,
which was to collapse ignominiously two years later after helplessly
seeing unemployment rise to record levels. They might be fit to govern
in the interests of the capitalists but they could not make capitalism
work in the interests of the workers.
THE ATTLEE LABOUR GOVERNMENT
When
in 1945 they were returned with an overall majority the war in the East
was not yet over and Prime Minister Attlee had a personal
representative at the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. With the coming of
peace they nationalised a large section of industry; but those who
thought that State capitalism coupled with a Labour government was in
the interests of the workers soon learned the truth. In administering
capitalism Labour did what was required to protect and further the
interests of the British capitalists. They retained war-time
legislation banning strikes; they sent troops into the docks; they put
gas workers and dockers on trial; they imposed wage restraint and then
a wage freeze; they introduced peace-time conscription for the first
time; they began the development of the British atomic bomb; they sent
troops to help American imperialism in Korea — but they did not solve
the housing problem as Bevan had promised.
Disgruntled workers
turned to the Tories in 1951 in sufficient numbers to throw Labour out.
For thirteen years the Labour leaders were in the wilderness. They
fought viciously amongst themselves — the Bevanite episode, nuclear
disarmament, Clause Four — but behind the scenes the Labour leadership
decided it was time to stop attacking private enterprise and the profit
motive. Elected in 1964 they were once again able to show their
commitment to capitalism — another wage freeze, incomes policy
legislation, proposed trade union legislation and a tougher immigration
bar.
The Labour Party is now obviously just another party of
capitalism. Its leaders (and the bulk of its members and supporters)
accept the class ownership of the means of production, the profit
motive, the wages system, the armed forces including nuclear weapons,
and have proved willing and able to do whatever the interests of
British eapitaism demand. The Labour Party, from the capitalist point
of view, is a useful alternative government to the Tories for the
capitalists realise the dangers of a long period of one-party rule.
They have, for instance, cynically exploited their link with the trade
unions to try to get tbem to accept measures which they would not have
accepted passively from a Tory government.
The evolution of the
Labour Party is a practical confirmation of the theoretical case
against reformism. With a working class that has never at any time
understood or
wanted Socialism, the Labour Party, instead of
gradually transforming capitalism in the interests of the workers, has
itself been gradually transformed from a trade union pressure group
into an instrument of capitalist rule. It was the chairman of the
Parliamentary Labour Party, Mr. Houghton, M.P. (now Lord Houghton), who
claimed in 1967: "Never has any previous government done so much in so
short a time to make modern capitalism work" (The Times, 25 April
1967). The result has further confused workers as to the real nature
and meaning of Socialism.
The miserable failure of the Wilson
Labour government has led in Scotland and Wales to growing support for
nationalist parties, the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru. The
basic argument of the nationalists is that social problems in their
areas are caused by London government. The implication is that with an
independent government in Edinburgh and Cardiff a start could be made
in solving their problems. This is not so. Social problems in Scotland
and Wales are caused not by government from England but, as elsewhere,
by capitalism. Re-arranging frontiers or constructing new States is no
more a solution to working class problems than electing a new
government of capitalism or changing the Prime Minister. Such political
changes, no matter how far-reaching, are irrelevant from a working
class point of view since they leave the economic basis of society, the
class monopoly of the means of production, unchanged; and it is
precisely this that is the root cause of their problems.
The
Socialist Party no more supports Scottish and Welsh nationalism than it
does British nationalism which, of course, is supported by the Tories,
Labour and the Liberals. We are opposed to all nationalism and insist
that the solution lies in the establishment of Socialism throughout the
world.
PACT WITH THE LIBERALS 1977
In
1977 a new stage was reached in the Labour Party's abandonment of its
'principles' in order to hold on to office. In the years immediately
following the end of the sscond world war the overwhelming majority of
electors voted Labour or Tory. At the General Election of 1951, for
example, only three per cent of those who voted supported the Liberal
Party and other minor parties. But discontent with Labour and Tory
Government enabled the Liberals and the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists
to increase their support. The consequence was that between 1951 and
1974 the Labour vote declined by 2 1\2 million though the electorate
had grown by 5 million. (The Tory vote fell by 3 million in the same
period.) After the election of October 1974 the Labour Government had
only a bare majority in the House of Commons, and had to depend on
support by M.P.s of one or other of the minority parties. Among those
who on occasion supported the Labour Government was Mr.Enoch Powell.
His opposition to Britain joining the European Community, and his too
extreme opposition to the immigration of coloured people, had led to
his leaving the Tory Party and urging electors to vote Labour at the
two elections in 1974.
On 23 March 1977 the possibility arose of
the Labour Government being defeated on a vote of confidence, and in
the week before the vote was held discussions took place between the
Government and the Liberals, the Ulster Unionists (including Mr.
Powell), and the Scottish Labour Party, with a view to getting their
support on the vote of confidence. The outcome was a 'deal' with the
Liberals. In return for Liberal votes in the House of Commons an
arrangement was made with the Liberal Party for regular consultations
on measures to be introduced by the Government. (The Liberals had had
similar discussions with the Tories after the February 1974 General
Election which. however, came to nothing.) According to Mr. David
Steel, the Liberal leader, the arrangement made with the Government
would have the effect that the Labour Government would not proceed with
"the granting of more power to local authority direct-labour
organisations, the nationalisation of some banking and insurance
compnies, and what the Queen's Speech described loosely as other
measures that would be laid before Parliament" (The Times, 25 March
1977).
Thus did the Labour Party demonstrate not only its
acceptance of capitalism but also its acceptance of the cynical
political manoeuvrings that it had long ago denounced when practised by
Liberals and Tories.
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