Careless Talk Costs Votes

by Les May

I RECENTLY described how Labour MP Chris Williamson had been given a platform for his ‘Democracy Roadshow’ and was given a standing ovation at the end of his talk.

My assumption was that an attempt had been made to deny him a platform at the recent event to remember those killed at St Peter’s Field in August 1819 for much the same reasons that are detailed in the Wikipedia entry at;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Williamson_(politician)

These boil down to the fact that some Jewish groups object to him speaking.

Having listened to him speak I am more inclined to accept that the only other reason mooted, that he is ‘divisive’, may have some merit. Although he made it clear that he is a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn and I accept he was ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’, I was not convinced he was singing quite the same tune.

I see Corbyn’s approach to domestic issues as being in the same mould as Clement Attlee, someone who was never mentioned by Tony Blair. Williamson’s concerns seemed more in the mould of Tony Benn with some vague ideas about worker’s co-operatives and some ideas about finance which did not seem to have been worked out. He also found time to criticise Denis Healey’s Chancellorship, Ed Millibrand and shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. (The Wikipedia entry on Healey’s stint as Chancellor is well worth reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Healey)

Many of the Fleet Street scribblers are old enough to remember Labour in the days of Tony Benn, but too young to remember what the Atlee government did for people like my parents, and hence for me and my siblings. So it’s easy, very easy, for them to frighten voters into accepting the story that Corbyn is part of the ‘extreme Left wing’ of the Labour party.

When I sat and reflected upon what he said I came to the conclusion that Chris Williamson was trying to convince his audience that the socialist millenium was just around the corner, if only we followed his nostrums. I don’t think it is. The pressing issues I want Labour to put right before we start thinking about anything else, including arguing over Trident, are the obscene inequalities in income and wealth in this country, the lack of council houses with affordable rents, the rise of the ‘rentier’ class, lack of job security, the no pay/low pay cycle which means the ‘poor’ stay poor. As Denis Healey pointed out in the 1970s these have to be paid for, and it’s the very rich who are going to have to do some of the paying. And they are not going to like it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/30/wealth-banks-google-facebook-society-economy-parasites

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Vain Expectations on British Road to Socialism?

Blackballed MP, Chris Williamson, addresses Rochdale folk 

  by Brian Bamford

IN 1951,  I had a newspaper round and I use to deliver the odd copy of the Daily Worker to one customer up Long Hill in Rochdale.  The Daily Worker attracted my curiosity as it, the Renolds News and Sunday Citizen.^[5] and a Polish paper a refugee family took were unusual compared to the News Chronicle which my Dad read mainly for its coverage of horse racing and sport.  One day on my paper round I would read of a conference in which the slogan was 'FOR the MILLIONS & AGAINST the MILLIONAIRES', and the next I would see some story about a communist program about 'The British Road to Socialism'.

Last night, I listened to Chris Williamson, the Labour MP, who has fallen foul of some senior people in the Labour Party for making light of the claims of anti-semitism within the party, and for daring to suggest that there had been too much apologising for this 'sin'.  One can sympathise with him for the treatment he has received over this and for the vicious attempts to 'no-platform' him at events like the recent Manchester Peterloo commemoration: see (North West TUC Snubs Peterloo Rally over Chris Williamson MP!)

Yet there was something very quaint about Mr. Williamson's approach last night:  In 1951, Harry Pollitt, who had been elected as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1929 wrote a Forword to the Programme titled 'The British Road to Socilism', which was adopted by the then Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).  In the Foreword Pollitt wrote:  

'This is the message of this programme. It is a call above all to the whole Labour Movement to recall its glorious traditions of struggle for the immediate interests of the working people, and to safeguard their future interests in a Socialist Britain.  But it is no less a call to the great majority of the British people to join with the Communist Party and the whole Labour Movement in the struggle to win a new future for Britain in the socialist world which history is now shaping.'

Those were the utterances of Harry Pollitt in 1951, when the country was then, as now we suspect, facing a General Election and I was about to start delivering the Daily Worker.   Allowing for the time lapse, the utterances of Chris Williamson last night were only slightly different in tone from those of Harry Pollitt almost almost 60 years ago.  His rhetoric was all too easy, suggesting we can do it; a sovereign Labour Government after Brexit could print the money and build a better Britain afresh, no trouble there he claimed.

Working people could take over failing companies to save them from the asset strippers, and establish cooperatives to manage business.  Denis Healey, when he was Chancellor, was wrong in the past to go to the IMF for money and fall into the hands of the Wall Street bankers.  'He should have listened to Tony Benn', who knew what was what!*

This is all post-facto 'What if?' stuff, if you like:  But, what if the James Callaghan government had accepted Tony Benn's 'Alternative plan B' in the 1970s would it have resulted in avoiding Thatcher, Hayek's 'The Road to Serfdom revisted', Milton Freedman economics, and the consequent problems of what came to be called neo-liberalism as Chris Williamson claimed in his theatrical performance last night?  **

Tony Benn admitted his own plan would result in a 'siege economy', but he claimed the difference is that in the monetarist course 'you will have the bankers with you and the British people, the trade unions, outside the citadel storming you; with mine it will be the other way round'.^[3] ***

All this was referred to in the speech of Chris Williamson last night at Woolworth's Social Club in Castleton, Rochdale, but it was not easy to discern among the gabbling annunciations from the megaphone beneath his mouth.  Les May has criticised this presentation in the post below entitled 'Our Answer to "No Platforming".'

Despite our concerns about his performance and some the things he has to say, we are anxious to continue to hear him speak.  Unlike some senior people in the Labour Party!

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* Healey became Chancellor of the Exchequer in March 1974 after Labour returned to power as a minority government. His tenure is sometimes divided into Healey Mark I and Healey Mark II.^[21] The divide is marked by his decision, taken with Prime Minister James Callaghan, to seek an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan and submit the British economy to IMF supervision. The loan was negotiated and agreed in November and December 1976, and announced in Parliament on 15 December 1976.^[22][23] Within some parts of the Labour Party the transition from Healey Mark I (which had seen a proposal for a wealth tax) to Healey Mark II (associated with government-specified wage control) was regarded as a betrayal. Healey's policy of increasing benefits for the poor meant those earning over £4,000 per year would be taxed more heavily. His first budget saw increases in food subsidies, pensions and other benefits.^[24]

 **  The Alternative Economic Strategy (AES) is the name of an economic programme proposed by Tony Benn, a dissident member of the British Labour Party, during the 1970s and 1980s.
The Secretary of State for Industry in the Labour government, Tony Benn, wrote a paper for his Department in January 1975, which he described in his diary: "It described Strategy A which is the Government of national unity, the Tory strategy of a pay policy, higher taxes all round and deflation, with Britain staying in the Common Market. Then Strategy B which is the real Labour policy of saving jobs, a vigorous micro-investment programme, import control, control of the banks and insurance companies, control of export, of capital, higher taxation of the rich, and Britain leaving the Common Market".^[1]
 
***  With Britain in economic crisis in October 1976, Benn put forward the AES in Cabinet with the partial support of Peter Shore.^[2] He claimed the two courses open to the government were the monetarist, deflationary course recommended by the Treasury and "the protectionist course which is the one I have consistently recommended for two and a half years...protectionism is a perfectly respectable course of action. It is compatible with our strategy. You withdraw behind walls and reconstruct and re-emerge".^[3] Benn further said that both courses were a "siege economy" but the difference is that in the monetarist course "you will have the bankers with you and the British people, the trade unions, outside the citadel storming you; with mine it will be the other way round".^[3] However the Cabinet rejected the AES (along with two other proposals) on 1/2 December and accepted the terms for a loan from the International Monetary Fund on 12 December.^[4]

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