The Socialist Ideas of the British Left's Alternative Economic Strategy

The Socialist Ideas of the British Left’s Alternative Economic Strategy baris tufekci The Socialist Ideas of the British Left’s Alternative Economic Strategy Baris Tufekci The Socialist Ideas of the British Left’s Alternative Economic Strategy 1973–1983 Baris Tufekci Treasury Committee House of Commons, UK Parliament London, UK ISBN 978-3-030-34997-4 ISBN 978-3-030-34998-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34998-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To my parents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am extremely grateful to Judith Bara, Madeleine Davis, Patrick Diamond, Andrew Gamble, Michael Kenny, Ray Kiely, Tom Quinn and Raj Veerasekaran for their advice and feedback on all or parts of this project. All its errors, however, are the author’s alone. It was a pleasure to speak about my research with Ben Fine, Geoffrey Hodgson, Stuart Holland and Bob Rowthorn, each of whom once sup- ported the economic strategy that is the subject of this book. I am grateful for their time and recollections. It was also a pleasure to work with Anne Birchley-Brun and Ambra Finotello at Palgrave Macmillan. Their editorial guidance and sugges- tions were invaluable. Much of my work on this project was carried out at the People’s History Museum in Manchester, the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, the Trades Union Congress Library and the Senate House Library, both in London. I am thankful for the abundant help and advice that I received on each visit. Finally, my deepest gratitude is due to my parents, without whose support and encouragement this book could not have been written. vii CONTENTS 1 Introduction: A New ‘Marketplace for Ideas’ 1 2 Class and Party: The Historical Context of the Rise of the AES 11 3 Reform or Revolution: The AES as Socialist Strategy 39 4 Planning the Market: The AES and Capitalism 65 5 A Britain Oppressed: The AES and the Nation 101 6 Class Confict and Class Collaboration: The AES and the Working Class 131 7 Conclusion: The AES, New Times and the Death of British Socialism 175 Afterword: Corbyn—A Socialist Rebirth? 207 Bibliography 219 Index 245 ix LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 7.1 Total number of working days lost to strikes in the UK, 1945–2015 (Source Offce for National Statistics) 196 Fig. 7.2 Number of trade-union members in Great Britain, 1945–2015/2016 (Source Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) 197 xi CHAPTER 1 Introduction: A New ‘Marketplace for Ideas’ Few periods in the Labour Party’s history intrigue the British political imag- ination more than the years leading up to the 1983 general election. Rou- tinely characterised as a time when ownership of Labour fell into the hands of its hard left, the lasting impression has been one of a party signing its suicide note before an electorate increasingly bewildered by its ‘loony left’ excesses. As subsequent Labour leaders have come to appreciate, almost nothing is seen as more politically damaging than their association with the dismal memory of June 1983, when electoral disaster apparently suc- ceeded a progressive, decade-long over-indulgence in left-wing nostrums. For many on the Conservative right, meanwhile, Labour policies which deviate from the ‘pro-market’ New Labour approach established since the 1990s—particularly with regard to public ownership—are to be con- demned as threats to take Britain ‘back to the 1970s’, to a time of crisis and uncertainty seen as a direct consequence of a socialist mismanagement in government.1 Among some sections of the left, however, an alternative narrative has also emerged, defending aspects of the Labour left’s agenda in those years as viable responses to economic crisis. One account endorses the Labour left’s economic strategy, points to Tony Benn’s ‘crucial and at times heroic role’ in challenging the ‘British establishment’, upholds Labour’s ‘social contract’ and the union leaders’ role in maintaining it, while commending the self-restraint shown by British workers in the face of capitalist crisis.2 © The Author(s) 2020 1 B. Tufekci, The Socialist Ideas of the British Left’s Alternative Economic Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34998-1_1 2 B. TUFEKCI Other commentators have also sought to ‘revisit’ Labour’s 1970s strategy in favourable terms3; and, with the rise of Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, ‘Old Labour, not New Labour’ appears to have become a slogan among those on the British left seeking to recapture some of the radicalism in Labour’s politics in the 1970s and early 1980s.4 Indeed, with ‘Cor- bynism’, the politics of that period have been presented as something of a benchmark, a standard of Labour-left radicalism against which to measure the radicalism of Corbyn’s agenda. While the Labour left’s politics of the 1970s and early 1980s expressed support for a variety of causes—feminism, anti-racism, anti-militarism, uni- lateral nuclear disarmament—at the heart of its agenda was the Alterna- tive Economic Strategy (AES), its programme of economic reforms that informed the Labour Party’s official economic platform between 1973 and 1983. With support and input from the Communist Party of Great Britain, left-wing trade-union leaders, left-wing economists and sections of the New Left, the AES was the rallying point for the bulk of British socialism. Demanding economic reflation, import controls, price controls, public ownership in profitable firms and sectors, compulsory planning agreements, industrial democracy and a withdrawal from the European Economic Com- munity (EEC), the AES presented itself as a radical and, at times, even a revolutionary response to the deep crisis of British capitalism. This self- justification by the AES, at the level of its policy and rhetoric, has played an important role in the Labour left’s subsequent representation as a radical force in this period of Britain’s post-war history—by political lore, the contemporary left and, as discussed below, the academic literature. The aim of this book, therefore, is to determine the extent to which the AES has been mischaracterised. Focusing on the political and theoretical ideas of the strategy, it questions the predominant view in the academic literature that the AES represented a radical left-wing break with the mod- erate, revisionist politics that dominated Labour’s approach in the two decades after the Second World War. Locating the rise of the AES in its historical context, it examines the political ideas with which the prominent proponents of the AES responded to Britain’s economic crisis and the con- current breakdown of the post-war ‘Keynesian consensus’. It aims to show that the AES was characterised by a high degree of involvement with radical left-wing ideas, and that several of its key advocates sought to justify their strategy through the language and theoretical frameworks of Marxist theory. However, through an examination of AES approaches to socialist strategy, the capitalist economy, Britain’s economic decline and the rise of 1 INTRODUCTION: A NEW ‘MARKETPLACE FOR IDEAS’ 3 class conflict, the book also argues that existing academic accounts have significantly overstated the radicalism of the strategy. What was perhaps more notable about the AES, especially in the light of its stated ‘revolutionary’ aims, was the extent of its moderation—its continuities with post- war Labour revisionism, its marked reluctance to look beyond the market economy, the degree of its preoccupation with Britain’s global-economic status, and its inability to break with Labourist politics of class co-operation in the national interest. While the book will argue that the AES was the last mainstream political strategy in Britain identifiable as a ‘class politics’ socialist initiative, it will also point to some of the ways in which its ideas perhaps prepared the way for New Labour in the 1990s. Prominent Academic Views on the AES The academic literature has tended to emphasise the left-wing radicalism of the AES. According to Tomlinson, the AES ‘represented a violent break with the whole of post-war British approaches to economic policy’.5 Seyd argues

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