The Times newspaper headlined its report of Tony Blair's Labour conference speech "To Thatcher -- a son". A report was issued detailing the overwhelming support of Britain's bosses for the Labour government and its policies. Blair even topped Thatcher as their favourite politician. They had every reason to be pleased with the proceedings at Blackpool.
Over 23,000 delegates and visitors thronged to a right wing jamboree without precedent since the halcyon years of Thatcher. Blair's speech, the highlight of the conference, was a ticket only affair. It was broadcast to five local cinemas to accommodate demand from the press and corporate interest.
Blair gave them exactly what they wanted. To the strains of Saint Saens -- music used for the funeral of Princess Diana -- Blair delivered an oration that was a quasi-religious hymn to the glories of the British nation. References to the "British character" and its role as a "beacon to the world" framed an agenda for the complete dismantling of the welfare state and a dramatic escalation in authoritarian measures.
Blair's proclaimed "giving age" is all take as far as the ruling class is concerned. "A decent society is not based on rights. It is based on duty", he insisted. Calling for "compassion with a hard edge," he said that, "a strong society cannot be built on soft choices". The hard choices on offer from Labour included an end to universal state pensions and the dismantling of the welfare state in favour of private insurance for those who can afford it. "Government's role from now on is going to be to organise provision -- like the new stakeholder pensions -- not fund it all through ever higher taxes." Not even the NHS would be protected from the wind of change from Downing Street: "Money is not the only problem with healthcare in Britain," he pronounced in the day after Health Secretary Frank Dobson admitted that hospital waiting lists were set to get even longer.
A Tory agenda
Every bête noire ever employed by Thatcher and Major was trotted out to justify Labour's continuing with the Tory agenda: single parents, rising crime, moral decline, the break-up of the family. Again and again the answer to all these social problems was increased repression. Home Secretary Jack Straw announced curfews for children and fines on parents. He is to head a ministerial group dedicated to "strengthening the family". Notorious right winger Frank Field -- supporter of the slash and burn theory of welfare reforms -- is to produce a White Paper on the welfare state by Christmas. Its aim will be, "to support work not dependency", Social Security Secretary Harriet Harman declared.
Occasional claims were made that these measures were a short-term sacrifice to overcome the legacy of Toryism, but Chancellor Gordon Brown exposed this particular lie:
"Just as you cannot spend your way out of recession", he explained, "you cannot, in a global economy, simply spend your way through a recovery either".
Labour is not asking workers to tighten their belts for better times ahead. It is telling them that the success of British capitalism in the new era of global competition demands a permanent end to the policies of social reformism. Everything must be geared up to the rapacious demands of the international corporations for low taxes and cheap labour.
Attacks of the scale now planned cannot be carried through whilst upholding democratic forms of rule. They will inevitably provoke mass opposition. The evocation of a society based on sacrifice, duty and nation, not rights is the rhetoric of dictatorship.
No opposition from the "lefts"
Blair is portrayed as an unstoppable force, sweeping all before him as he is carried on a tidal-wave of popular support. This is largely a media creation. Despite endless sycophantic coverage by every paper from The Sun to The Guardian, there is no evidence that the majority of working people agree with what New Labour is doing. More often than not workers will say "give them time" to redress 18 years of Tory rule, while expressing their own growing unease and disquiet.
Blair's constituency is a coalition of upper middle class former Tory voters and a layer of liberals and radicals anxious to repent the sins of their "socialist" past. He combines his opposition to tax raising and pledges to continue in Thatcher's footsteps with the identity politics of black, women's and gay rights. He offers these forces their place in the sun after almost two decades in the political wilderness. In return they are quite prepared to reconcile themselves with a Stalin-type cult of the personality.
The Labour Party conference also showed that Blair's apparent strength rests not only on media adulation, but the prostration of the former Labour "lefts" and the trade union bureaucracy. Glasgow Kelvin MP George Galloway said, "It was a brilliant Prime Ministerial address to the nation... achievements require hard choices -- decisions with a hard edge -- I have no problem at all with that." Tottenham MP Bernie Grant trilled that this was "the best conference speech I've ever heard." Typical of the response of the union bureaucracy was GMB General Secretary John Edmonds that, "this partnership theme, which the TUC has been pushing so strongly in industry -- it was very good to hear the Prime Minister commit himself and government to that".
The conference voted massively for constitutional changes which give all policy making decisions over to Cabinet and committees appointed by the Prime Minister. Resolutions opposing the imposition of student fees and cuts in single parent benefits were both remitted, as was a call for renationalisation of Railtrack. Blair and the NEC won every policy vote. On the last day of the conference teaching unions agreed to a new fast track disciplinary procedure which will enable teachers to be dismissed in just one month and a six month trial period for those deemed incompetent. Labour's Chief Inspector of Schools Chris Woodhead has targeted 15,000 for removal.
End-product of national reformism
A significant passage in Blair's speech was his justification for establishing Cabinet-level collaboration with the Liberal Democrats. He listed amongst his heroes not only Labour's Ramsey MacDonald -- who crossed the floor of the Commons to form a National Government in 1931 -- but also Liberals like Lloyd George and J.M. Keynes. He attributed the ascendancy of conservatism to the division between "radicals" over a 100 years ago. It was his mission to heal this rift so that the 21st century would be "the century of the radicals".
This goes far beyond a call for coalition. The rift Blair speaks of is the founding of the Labour Party in 1906. As far as he is concerned this was a terrible mistake that is now being rectified. This is hardly surprising given the role he has played over the last period. But the standing ovation his speech received and the voluminous praise of the lefts shows how completely the Labour Party has broken with its past.
This is not just the failure of an organisation but of the historical attempt to build a workers party based on a national reformist programme. Labour's evolution proves that it is no longer possible to reconcile support for the profit system with the defence of workers living standards. All attempts to build a new reformist vehicle -- such as Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party -- will fail. A new type of party is required that fights for the replacement of capitalism with socialism. The Socialist Equality Party is that party. It stands for four basic principles:
The SEP stands in the revolutionary tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky and their work to build an international party for working people. It is only on these firm programmatic and historical foundations that the workers' movement can be revitalised.
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