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| credit: Joe D / Cotch.net |
Hackney Wick. 1983.
The Labour Party fundraiser has run its course. There are empty Red Stripe cans
on the floor and a slick of homous and Turkish set yoghurt in the sink. Mixed-up
B52s, Human League and Talking Heads tapes lie entangled in the spaghetti of hi-fi
wires.
Some Motown is played for one last rally before the
party closes. Martha and the Vandellas sing but the words are changed by the dancing
chorus of near everyone who remains:
Tony, Tony, oh Tony
Benn, when are you coming back?
Tony, Tony, oh Tony
Benn, you better hurry back.
Benn’s death will produce a glut of obsequiousness and wholesale editing of Labour history, including bromides from those who were to his Left.
I
am writing this obituary now to correct these distortions, but Benn's political
obituary could have been written at the time of that party in Hackney. Although not then settled,
by 1983 he was yesterday's man; the Bennite feint had run its course and Labour
would not make any Left turns for the next thirty years.
Earlier in 1983, Benn had been the star-turn at a packed meeting in
Hackney Town Hall. Many who were in the Labour
Party then, and who would later become a Council Leader, a lobbying
company Chief Executive or a Queen's Counsel, came that night to fawn before the Benn.
Following too many soft-ball submissions from that audience,
I asked, 'When do you intend fighting
back and stop making concessions, like that of the Peace of Bishops Stortford?'
The loud groans I heard when putting the question made me feel a little
like my friend's mistress might have done when she turned up at his funeral and
introduced herself to his wife, if only she had but a smidgen of diffidence. That barracking during and after I spoke meant we did not hear whether Benn even bothered
to reply. But their Benn was simply there for them to
behold.
Before Benn
The Sixties are seen as a radical decade but I think they
have a strong, both backward and postwar tone; my mother was still giving us austerity
spam fritters for our tea.
There was not any move Left by Labour, even in the
late Sixties, nor much disquiet about the paltry advances made by the 1964-70
Labour government compared with that of the same from 1945-51. Whatever Left moves happened in the sixties (e.g. the start of 'Gay Liberation', or student occupations) were not associated with Labour, or included
people leaving that party. France
in 1968 might have gone to revolution; the same year in Britain saw
inner-city Labour councils turn Tory.
That was followed by Labour, in government again, from 1974, as part of the fossilised
establishment; the monolith that lumbered on right until Thatcherism.
For a
flavour of the times before the revival of activism in Labour party at the very
end of the Seventies, watch Youtube on the early travails of the Sex
Pistols. Places in Wales
simply near banned the band - the interchangeable be-hatted magistracy and
municipal leadership (overwhelmingly Labour) pushed for bookings to be cancelled and
coaches to be diverted. You are reminded of those American films where a sheriff tells the
newly arrived longhairs that they are on the next bus out of town. |
But then the late Seventies saw some movement, albeit only temporary
leftward advance. In 1970, 11 million working days were lost through strike
action; 30 million days were lost in 1978 (249,000 were lost in 2012).
Some
long-held social conventions started to be ditched - library workers could
wear what they wanted, rather than their previous undertaker's drab or today's
corporate uniform. A few schools abolished uniforms; a course now unimaginable
as it is apparently accepted that tie-wearing means a higher standard of
education - like in Finland or
in the Netherlands. Time for Benn to make his move.
Enter Benn
WW2 pilot, Oxford
graduate, son of a Cabinet member, a member of the Cabinet himself and Privy
Councillor, Tony Benn was a man determined not to deny others the full benefits
of his talents.
He had come fourth in the ballot amongst Labour MPs to
replace Wilson
as Prime Minister in 1976. He then put forward the 'Alternative Economic
Strategy' to Callaghan's Cabinet but this was defeated in favour of agreeing to
the IMF loan.
Benn saw that it was proving harder than it should be to convince
his fellow Labour MPs that he was the best choice to lead Labour. Perhaps when drawing
thoughtfully on his pipe, it had occurred to him: 'what if I recruit a plebeian
chorus to make the Labour leadership listen to me?’
Benn had seen the start of a movement amongst some Labour
activists who were opposing the lack of progressive reform being made by their 1974-79 government. Those such as Councillor Ted Knight, later Leader
of Lambeth Council, who argued for resisting cuts the government was making as
part of the IMF agreement, like the 93% reduction in the Transport Supplementary
Grant to South Yorkshire County Council because they refused to raise bus fares
(bus fares then were more the price of confectionery rather than, as now, the
cost of a pint or even a packet of cigarettes).
Then war broke out in the Labour Party in places like Manchester. I would watch
arch-Tory, Stuart Hall sneer on BBC Look North
West reporting on the epic battle between Manchester Labour councillors in the early eighties.
The old
right manual-worker leadership of the city council's Labour Group fought dirty
to stop the rise of more Left, graduate Labour councillors - like the
then-Bennite Graham Stringer, who became Leader of Manchester City Council in
1984 and is now the MP for Manchester Blackley and Broughton. These Bennite insurgents
did then have some fire in their belly - although that is now replaced by foie
gras.
A Militant member of Stockport Labour party told me of the
late night/early morning meetings when members of the Women's Section, aroused
from thirty years of being expected just to make the tea, suspended standing orders
to extend the meeting so as to face down the Bennite librarians and housing
officers, knowing that their opponents would wilt around one o'clock in the
morning thinking of their nine o'clock start, when all the victors had to do
the next day was pick up their pensions.
A considerable numbers of Lefts flocked into Labour. SWP
branches disappeared because most of their membership had gone over. For a few
years it appeared that most activists you met would be Labour Party members.
"Official figures
indicate that the size of the party in Manchester
and Salford halved across the two cities
during 1965–1980...In 1982, Hulme Ward (Manchester)
recruited thirty-two new members... The ward subsequently called for:
investigations into police violence; an ‘indefinite’ strike in the National
Health Service and a boycott of the local Labour club for refusing to oppose
discrimination against lesbians and gay men." (The Rise of the Left Revisited)
A ferment of media coverage arose about the supposed extreme
path that Labour was now taking - it was this impression of radicalism that made
me join the Labour Party, whilst at school, in 1980.
Because what do you do when
you want to change things? Most people do nothing, some try and live the way
they want the world to be, many work on their cynicism but some join a political
party. But why would anyone radical join one of the main parties? I think it was because whilst you knew you
were being shoe-horned into something, that somehow seemed
better than having a million parties with just one member each.
It is that feeling of dislocation and enthusiasm that Benn -
after establishing himself as the leader of the Left in Labour - was able to use
to co-opt to his cause most of the new, young activists who wanted things done
in a hurry. Benn, as the only identifiable Left apart from Michael Foot in the
outgoing Labour Cabinet of 1979, had assumed leadership of the Left rebels whilst Foot
swung right to become the compromise candidate in his successful bid for the
Labour leadership in 1980.
Britain
does not have a tradition of local leaders taking national roles in the way that
a French politician may be both a mayor and a minister. This system meant that people like Blunkett and Livingstone could not forward their own
political careers from their respective positions as Leader of Sheffield City
Council and the Greater London Council (GLC); they needed first to trade down
to become MPs and then advance from there.
The Bennites, often associated with the magazine Labour Briefing, won local power and selection as parliamentary candidates in many big cities
and middle-sized university towns.
Some advances were also made by Militant and
a few minor victories fell to other Trotskyists in the Labour Party. There were
sharp lines of difference between these three groupings but that is a detail
not now often acknowledged.
Labour's Wembley conference in 1981 made right-winger Denis
Healey the Deputy Leader, but Benn was just 1% behind and if the votes of the
MPs who then defected to the SDP had been discounted, Benn would have won.
In 1981, a few days after being elected, the GLC Labour
councillors replaced their old Leader with Ken Livingstone. In 1982, the 22 Islington
council seats held by the SDP councillors (who had defected from Labour the
previous year) were all lost as Labour took all but one of the seats on the
council. 'Fortress Islington' was the front page photo of Labour Briefing as radical
Labour took control of several London
councils.
Benn
and Bennites
Benn's feint against the Labour Front Bench
was about getting him into power and he wilted. Benn and the Bennites failed to stop the resurgence from the right of Labour that
then developed, especially after Neil Kinnock was elected Leader in 1983.
But in support of his campaign, Benn had encouraged a generation of Labour
activists - who initially had a lot more credulity than political comprehension - up to the top of the hill of local political power.
When they got there, they briefly admired
the view before beginning their long
descent - first raising the rates and then privatising, smashing the trade unions and slashing, and slashing again,
as their fall accelerated towards the gutter.
Many Bennite councillors I knew - one with her hair cut and dyed in the shape
of a red star, and another who lasted just one council meeting before resigning - did not have a plan to deal with the financial responsibilities of municipal power
and the obligations that were foisted upon them, by both council officers and their
own party apparatus.
With a very few honourable exceptions, these councillors either headed for
the exit. Or they knuckled down and went to M&S, for maybe their first suit, and then
kept a discreet eye out for forthcoming Labour Party parliamentary candidate selections.
Most former Bennites who managed that quick-change routine
have now, in turn, been displaced in the metropolitan areas by younger
Labourites; by those who have never experienced anyone arguing against the
leadership consensus.
In places like former mill-towns or mining areas, it is not
uncommon to be a councillor for thirty-plus years; Labour Councillor Ray Davies, former miner and steelworker, who led the protests against the Sex
Pistols gig in Caerphilly in 1976, is still a councillor there, fifty years
after he was first elected..
It might surprise some in these smaller towns - the Caerphillys
and the Merthyrs, rather than the Cardiffs and the Swanseas - that their present, local
political bosses - who long ago conceded everything to private companies (or their
near twins, such as Housing Associations and social enterprises) and to council
officers (both the Chief Executive and his Deputy at Caerphilly Council have
been charged with misconduct in a public office after receiving massive, secret pay rises) - may once have had
a radical Bennite flush in their youth.
Political leaders who are glad that Google can not yet mine
thirty-year old copies of the Pontypridd and Llantrisant Observer to reveal
how they once batted for Benn. Or they don't care - the most
divisive issues now amongst such councillors can be about who gets the Royal
Garden Party invitation or be conflict ignited by the awarding of an
OBE to one of their number.
Not all former Bennites kept selling out. Some found that
their souls had become too blunted to slash any more. You might now occasionally
see their name in a local paper or on an online forum. If in the North, they might
be organising a Real Ale Fayre or a Preserved Bus rally or writing up their travels
ground-hopping at Non League football clubs. I saw one in the stands at a
Football Club United of Manchester match; I remember him as a Leicester City
supporter.
All this activity of theirs is wallowing in some supposed better yesterday. Their
socialism has been replaced by hobbyism.
It is now near impossible to imagine a Bertram or a Bedi leading
a future Left movement in the Labour Party, as both Benn and the earlier Bevan (who
was opposed by Benn) once did. The present organisation most dominated by the
political expression once known as Bennism is Left Unity.
The end of Benn
For all Benn’s vainglorious grandstanding, he did maintain
a commitment to every good cause going when these could no longer be of any
personal benefit to his career. It is not his fault that all sorts of political
waste, like Louise Mensch, doubtless saw his name trending when he was admitted
to hospital and so dispensed a few words of anaemic benignancy to the old man. His
foul litter of children still active - Harman, Abbot, Bassam etc. - will soon
be fading away (his real kids and grand-kids are a Labour hereditary bigwigs family).
The old right that remained in the Labour Party during the Benn insurgency picked up
their tools and just stayed in their
Labour Clubs and trade union retired member branches. I wonder if Labour might now be slightly less right-wing if they
had beaten Benn at the beginning.
Jeremy
Corbyn was due to speak at the east London Momentum rally on Chilcot Day. I booked
my ticket. I guessed that it would also be about when either a leadership challenge
was mounted, or Corbyn would announce whatever dirty deal had been cooked up. Never
ask me to predict anything. 
