16 November 1981 Today

County Hall, London: home of the Council

Interview with Ken Livingstone

Interviewed by Jeff Rodrigues

the local authorities' senior officers and with establishing a superior and Ken Livingstone was born in 1945 and went to Compre- decisive role for the elected representatives. hensive school in . He worked for eight years as a medical Do you share this concern? technician at a research institute and subsequently did a three year course at the Phillippa Fawcett teacher training college. I think it's a mistake to make a comparison between and He became a Lambeth councillor in 1971 and served for seven the GLC. The big additional resource which we have, and they years. In 1978 he became a councillor for the London Borough of don't, is that we've got sixteen members who are virtually full time Camden. But in 1973 he also became a GLC councillor and he has here, and who operate in much the same way as an executive body carried that job on a full time basis ever since. itself, whereas in Lambeth there are only really three members who Following the Labour victory at the GLC elections in May 1981, are full time. We have overlaid the officer structure with our own he became Leader of the Labour Group. member level structure. Also, the Labour Group meets every week, He joined the Labour Party in 1968. He has been a member of unlike Lambeth's six week cycle, and every decision as it arises goes ASTMS and NUT and is currently in the Transport and General through the Group. So there's that effective level of control. Within Workers' Union. each committee all the Labour members are given a specific role with responsibilities for overseeing some executive function. Say on the transport committee, one member's responsible for bus lanes, one's responsible for reviewing the roads programme etc. And those One of the problems I want to explore in this interview is the way in committee groups tend to meet fairly frequently to discuss what which a left wing leadership intervenes in local government, the way in they're doing. which it has to re-create its relationship with firstly, the committees So in a sense the difference in the way we operate is that we've which elected it and, secondly the local authority administration with tended to give each of the members a role within the bureaucracy, in which it has to work. terms of trying to oversee the bureaucracy and guide it. Lambeth, The emergence of this Labour leadership in the Greater London having so few full timers, has a more centralised leadership, whereas Council is London's second experience of a left wing local authority leadership here can be more collective. leadership: the first began in Lambeth in 1978. In Lambeth, one of the first acts of the newly elected Labour Group So you feel that the Labour Group holds the initiative in County Hall? was a review of the council structure, with a particular emphasis on establishing what called 'member will'. Yes. The problems arise from legal constraints rather than chief The Left has been increasingly concerned with challenging the power of officer ones. We know we are working in a hostile environment. Marxism Today November 1981 17

There's no question of that. But the major problems we face are the Now, in terms of transport we want to set up eight district Government and the district auditor, and the fact that our income committees, corresponding with the bus districts, and these com- base is the rates. mittees will involve commuters' representatives and the bus trade unions. We've also asked the transport unions to start to consider In a recent interview on Radio 4 you said that 'all bureaucracies are methods of workers' control. I would like to see us implement a inherently anti-socialist'. The danger of regarding a bureaucracy and its system of genuine workers' control throughout London Transport senior officers as potentially obstructive is that all Town Hall workers because it's the largest near-industrial employer we still have in are tarred with the same brush. As a consequence left wing leaders have London. Had the GLC retained its housing stock we would have often alienated their workers by failing to use and develop worker- devolved the complete power of control to borough-based units potential and believing in an authoritarian and abrasive manner. without any central bureaucratic involvement by the GLC.

There's no question that the staff association here, a house union for The remoteness of the GLC from London's communities which you white collar staff, is hostile to the new administration: they've made mentioned poses a particular problem for a leftwing leadership when it is it quite clear. related to the political changes which have affected the capital city's Look at the role of white collar staff in the borough councils: in people. Camden, the NALGO branch voted to undertake handling redun- The south east of England produced a strong vote for the Tories in the dancies for blue collar workers; in Lambeth, although the NALGO 1979 general election. Although London possesses an inner core of branch is led by a load of SWF activists, the branch has voted to call Labour local authorities, Greater London has a strong Tory on the council to make cuts in order to protect them from redun- representation. dancies if the Council is eventually crushed. The GLC elections that brought the present administration to power So, I think your question overestimates the degree of political this year did so on a Labour vote that was not as large as one might have consciousness amongst white collar town hall unions. I mean, the expected in the midterm of a Tory government as rightwing as this. majority of them clearly vote Tory and have done so consistently at Although the people may be disaffected with the effects of Thatcher's one election after another. They don't feel any great affinity to a policies, the basic rightwing shift that has taken place in the country socialist council, whereas they've often felt affinities to right wing seems not to have been shaken. administrations in the past, and I don't know to what extent the This seems in part to have created the conditions favourable for the election of a Labour GLC is going to radicalise that sort of strata of growth of the SDP, who won a couple of council seats in Lambeth, 16 society at all. It is regrettable, and it's one of the problems we face. seats in Islington and who are having some effect in your own council. In addition, the labour movement in London is relatively weak. But there are socialist officers in County Hall: what channels exist for The class and economic profile of London has also changed very them to involve themselves in any way with the plans or policies of the substantially in the last decade, with a major loss of manufacturing Labour Group? industry and a relative growth of service industries and administrations. In these conditions — Tory voting trends, potential SDP support, a Our problem is this log-jam with the Staff Association, which, in weak labour movement and a changed class profile — what strategy does relation to NALGO, has a majority on the negotiating committee. the Labour Party have to regain its mass base and revive support for Our white collar staff voted 2 to 1 against having a closed shop. Our 'municipal '? problem is that over the last 50 years the Staff Association has had a sort of symbiotic relationship with the right wing Labour lead- The problem is partly the one you've spelt out. The organised erships. It's been a fist and glove operation, and they are as appalled working class, industrial, skilled trade unions have left London. And by my election as the Tories are and at the moment they are doing London has very much gone the way that Paris is, in that it is everything possible to obstruct the implementation of our pro- composed of skilled middle class people that basically administer gramme. Now that isn't the chief officers, that is the society, the poor and the single parents, the immigrant families, and representation. This presents considerable problems. You would be the unskilled working class labour force. And that means a consid- making a very dangerous precedent for the political leadership of the erable weakening of the base here. Now, it's not a question of re- council to reach past the normal trade union representation and to creating the base because there's no prospect of the skilled crafts try and undermine them. Therefore, we just have to keep plugging moving back into London at all. It's a question of building on this on. new sort of alliance that is there, which is very similar in a sense to the sort of alliance that backed George McGovern in 1972 against Most welfare services are experienced by their clients in a way which is Richard Nixon. often distant and humiliating, and accountability and user-control is a What that means I think is, you have to re-create the mass base not call frequently made on the left. by hoping that we can go back to the days of the 1950s, with the huge One approach to this problem of 'statism' is for progressive left skilled trade union influence within the Labour Party, but accept the authorities to adopt community development policies, codes of 'open fact that the industrial skilled working class never did have a major- government' and participation policies. However, I noticed no mention ity of the population and is most probably progressively going to get of these in the Party's manifesto for the elections last less each year. And the areas where there'll be a growth in employ- May. ment will be service trades and white collar trades and so on. In a sense that impact is there within the trade union movement already, Well, it depends what you mean by open government. The differ- and the vote this year to change the method of organisation of the ence between us and a borough council is that the borough council TUG general council, I didn't see as a left-right shift although it was provides a whole range of personal services, housing and so on — that to a degree. In reality it represents a shift in the workforce and in we're about to cease to be a housing management authority in April, the population as a whole. And the Left was silly to resist accepting and we don't provide social services. So in a sense the only role of the that as a fairly inevitable change. Now, how the Labour Party GLC now is to be the transport and planning authority for London. responds, I think, is by saying that we have to start to articulate the 18 November 1981 Marxism Today

needs of the minorities and the dispossessed in a way that Labour those broad class groupings are still predominant, and it works on governments and the Labour Party never have in the past. I mean people. Here in London they really aren't. People are likely to see the very poor have never done well out of a Labour government. themselves much more as a group of local tenants on an estate, or one They've usually lost out quite considerably. They tended to be of the other groups you just mentioned. And this I think is a neglected. And that has to be a change we make within the Labour potentially very dangerous weakness for the movement as a whole Party — the minorities have to be represented, the lower income because those groups can be reached by Social Democrats and groups have to be represented, and we have to look to their interests Liberals all of whom can strike particularly good positions on any as well as the interests of the organised working class in the skilled one issue. But they can't in the long term deliver what those groups trade unions. want, simply because there isn't a class based approach to politics Now how you reach these people isn't easy to see. I mean a lot of from the people that are leading those movements. them can be reached by approaching them on an issue basis rather than a simple class approach. For a lot of them what matters, Is it not a theoretical weakness that you do not articulate this strategy of particularly the younger element in London, is our position on an alliance? It was never mentioned in the manifesto or election address. issue. The issue of women, or the issue of blacks or the issue of gays or whatever. An issue about say the position of ecology, the peace I most likely don't approach politics on a theoretical basis anyhow. movement and so on. And in a sense in London I think the Labour Part of the problem is that 10 years being a local councillor you are Party's coming to reflect that, being very issue-orientated, and the driven from one crisis to another. Theory gradually gets pushed very activists being younger, less likely to be white, less likely to be male, much into the background. than they were in the past. And that slow change is working its way But you'll reach these people by actually showing them that you're through the GLC Labour Group where there has been a dramatic taking up the issues that matter to them. And if you start from the reduction in the age and for the first time some youngish women position of the Labour Party, where you have to start by apologising have been elected. The influx of people that have given the GLC this for it before you can recruit anyone to it, and explain away its past great reputation in the gutter press for being the end of civilisation as record, then people really do look to us to actually do something, and we know it, is the fact that it is the post-1968 generation in politics, make it quite clear where we stand before they're prepared to start to the people that became politically active after the student troubles develop a relationship with us. and after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, after key events in the war in Vietnam. People who tended to be motivated, as I was at that time, Another aspect of such a relationship is credibility — which isn't easy, to finally say we've got to get involved and do something. Now, that given a hostile press media and a general political atmosphere which is you can build on, simply on the basis of what you do on each issue. not sympathetic to the Left. But it's important that a left-wing lead- The response from the gay community to my speech on gay rights ership such as yours appears as a credible alternative both to the anti- has been really incredible. The response from the various ethnic collectivism of the Tories on the one hand and to the concensus politics of minority groups to what we've said about setting up a police com- the SDP on the other. mittee, the ethnic minorities unit, has been very favourable indeed. But could it not be argued that the style with which you handled, for I think we have to establish such links, and really make the Labour example, the Royal Wedding invitation and the H Block campaign Party represent the working class living in inner London, to be seen minimised rather than maximised your support in London? to carry on fighting for those positions, even if it involves losing initially. I think there could be setbacks, we could be defeated. But Well, take the two issues separately. The Royal Wedding: the our real problem to overcome is that a lot of these groups look on the Labour Group spent all of 10 seconds deciding not to go to it, and we Labour Party with a record of 30 years of betrayal and defeat. We didn't issue a press release and we didn't draw any attention to it actually have got to establish first that we're different from what's because we all knew it would be a diversion. But once someone has gone before, that we are not prepared to back down and make all scuttled off out of the Labour Group and leaked to the press, that we sorts of immediate compromises necessary to save our jobs. wouldn't be going, you got this deluge of press interest and, once you've got it, it's there and there's not much you can do with it. It's The reason I asked about community development earlier was to try to not something we sought. assess what type of political relationship a leftwing leadership should On the question of Ireland: I think there is overwhelming support have with the communities it serves. What you seem to be saying is that a for the concept of'troops out now'. At least, if we had a referendum relationship cannot just be based on class but should also be based on I've no doubt that we'd win it by 2 to 1. issues. In the Communist Party's programme, The British Road to Social- Not necessarily for the best political reasons though, is it a 'bring our ism, the movement to socialism is seen through the formation of a set of boys home'approach . . ? alliances grouped around the working class. These groups, or 'social forces' as it describes them, are not reducible to class, and their identity is Oh, undoubtedly it is. That was the major reason for getting out of defined by primarily ideological and social experiences —women, youth, Vietnam, but it was still a great victory. I don't think that anybody black people and others. For us the realisation of this broad democratic that represents a working class Irish Catholic community, like alliance is an essential part of our strategy. , or Brent, or Islington North, which are all areas we Do you regard these social forces as issues without a particular relation hold on the GLC, can possibly ignore the strength of feeling to your strategy or are they essential to your strategy? amongst the Irish community behind Bobby Sands. So we are in no doubt at all that for one of those minority groups that we were Well, I think they're essential because I think they are in a sense the talking about earlier on, that was very much the key issue, and it growing area of influence and power on which we all have to base wasn't good enough to be mealy mouthed and sort of say, well, I ourselves. Increasingly people see themselves aligned to one of those can't support the demands of the hunger strikers at all. To have smaller groupings rather than in the sort of broad class concepts that denied support would merely have been to have broadcast to all the people saw themselves thirty years ago. Now if you go to the north world that well, yes, the GLC's just the same as all the Marxism Today November 1981 19 other old Labour GLCs and the other Labour governments. And I believe my position on the H Blocks and on 'troops out now' is correct. And the question is actually how to get that across to ordinary working class people.

I would like to move on now to the last month: how do you account for some of the setbacks to the Left?

Well, the setbacks are quite interesting. One trade union delegation (the AUEW) shifted from being a narrow left majority last year, to a comfortable right majority this year. And for the Right to get over the moon because they've won on that basis, I think represents just how weak they really are. On all the major policy issues the Left tended to win, except on Ireland. And perhaps the Left in the Party has gone as far as it's going to go in this parliament, because you always find this dreadful trend towards unity once you get to the halfway mark in a parliament. This afflicts Labour Party Confer- ences as much as the Labour Party generally. A lot of fake 'Lefts' having now revealed themselves, their constituencies will try and make a major effort to get rid of those people off the executive next year. But our key weakness is the Parliamentary Labour Party. About a hundred MPs have been re-selected, yet only two have been kicked out in that re-selection process. If tomorrow we managed to get a Labour government with Benn as Prime Minister, there would still be terrifying constraints. When, for example, standing up to the I agree. I hope that we will get to that sort of position. I don't think IMF, there wouldn't be a majority in parliament because the Labour we should underestimate the amount of work that goes into keeping MPs would defect or vote with the Tories, or abstain or something. the Labour Party machinery just going. I mean, it's not just a Whereas what you need is a firm, committed socialist majority in question that they come along and work every election year. They do parliament, not just in the PLP. a large amount of work in between times, but it doesn't have the I think there is a real prospect of electing a socialist Labour impact on the community that one would like. government by the end of the decade; I don't think there's a great deal of prospect of doing that at the next general election. The They're not very visible . . . personnel in the PLP remain pretty vital, and unless there is an economic upheaval on a massive scale in the community then you No, I don't think they ever have been, actually . . . aren't going to bypass the PLP when you get to that crucial issue of how you construct a new Labour government. They probably were before the 1945 government, when the Labour Party did not consider itself a natural party of government. In the deputy leadership election there was huge support for Benn in the constituency section, which was obviously not reflected in the PLP A much bigger campaign went into electing the 1945 government section. However, it was also true that in the trade union section, support over the years leading up to it than we've seen since, and this was for Benn was also weaker. based on the issues, as you say. I mean the personalities that led Labour weren't even terribly well known. What's happened since is Well, Labour Party activists are much more immune to the press that we've got this idea that you just have to elect Labour MPs or than rank and file trade unionists. And in the TGWU and NUPE councils and let them get on with it and the campaigning side has branch consultations I think the major factor at work was the press withered away. And that's been the case I should imagine since the campaign of the last ten years, which has tried to depict war. It's a question now of going back and turning the Labour Party as some sort of madman bent on destroying all around him. And into an active campaigning and educational body. And to do that you clearly this sort of daily drip of poison out of the Mail and the really need a Labour Party leadership to give a lead on that. Now, Express and so on does erode a lot of working class support and that would have been the real advantage of having Benn as deputy commitment. And there is the real problem of how do you actually leader. Benn sees the Labour Party in that light — that it should be have the genuine participation of the mass base of the party when a out actively campaigning and organising. Whereas the present dep- lot of those people are corrupted on a daily basis by what they read in uty leader does not. the newspapers. Finally, the coming battle with Heseltine. The cat and the mouse But the significance of the struggle around the deputy leadership —which situation that has characterised the relationship between the Tory gov- after all, is not a particularly important post — was not the deputy ernment and Left Labour local authorities on the question of public leadership itself but the policies and strategies that each person repre- expenditure now appears to be coming to an end. sented. In the fight to resist the drift to the right amongst the people, and The Tories' fiscal and legislative attempt to control local government in the fight to develop support for Left policies, the role of the ward has reached a stage where there is now virtually no room to manoeuvre. Labour Parties is, I would argue, going to be crucial. And they would Heseltine now proposes to restrict supplementary rate increases by a need to be transformed from their correct electoral role into campaigning statutory requirement for a referendum. There doesn't seem much left of organisations that project and develop policies. 'local' government. There appears to be no more avenues left to explore 20 November 1981 Marxism Today except to fight out the battle on a political basis, aiming to maximise our Not willingly by the existing trade union leaderships. But given that support. The question is: how do we conduct this fight? Tebbitt's legislation will be going through parliament at the same time, and that we'll be on the 4% pay limit problem, there's a chance, We have to start by working out what our strategy is and sticking to it of welding these three struggles together into one and in that case rigorously. I believe that if we can't defeat Heseltine's proposed there would be trade union support for the defence of councils. It's a legislation in parliament — and I think we should have a major question of what happens on the shopfloor between now and next campaign at doing that — then we should refuse to implement it. March. What happens, whether the movement is galvanised and The Party has got to decide that, firstly, its councillors won't make becomes more militant, or whether it becomes weaker and more the cuts necessary to comply with Heseltine's deemed level of cautious. And those aren't events that we're in control of, it will expenditure and, secondly, that we won't pass on a subsequent rate largely be something that happens at the grassroots and comes up increase, given that Heseltine proposes to change the basis of rating rather than what we decide at the top and push down. in favour of the commercial ratepayer and against the domestic ratepayer. What strategy do you have for developing such a movement? Now that will mean that in many councils the threat of a surcharge for breaking the law would drive a lot of Labour moderates into not We have a series of regular meetings with other Labour councils who supporting that policy and we'd effectively find ourselves in opposi- are likely to take a firm position resisting the legislation, and we also tion. In some other councils there might be sufficient public support have a series of meetings with trade unions concerned in London, for that stand that we'd actually be able to carry the day in the discussing the strategy with them, and asking them to actually start council. The problem is actually mobilising that support behind the campaigning and building support. councillors and building up a major public campaign in the time that exists between now and March, which is when the crunch will come. This didn't happen on the 1979 anti-cuts campaign, which divided within itself on the rate increase issue, and the public sector unions only The GLC Labour Group recently recommended a strategy to the become marginally involved on a sectional basis in 1980 when their jobs Regional Executive Committee of the Labour Party. There were five were threatened. recommendations. One resolved to involve all sections of the Labour Party in 'a concerted campaign to oppose Heseltine's legislation.' Their own jobs are threatened now. If the legislation passes, and Another told the NEC and PLP to undertake to restore penalties. One Heseltine reduces council's spending as much as he wants, then a couldn't quarrel with either. But the first of the other three wants to get quarter of a million jobs will go. The unions have got the choice of 'Labour councillors and those about to seek election in 1982 to commit actually resisting those in a much weakened position in a year's time, themselves not to make cuts'. Is this at any cost, including surcharging or fighting them now and trying to prevent the whole package and. . . ? carrying through. D

Yes.

The second states that the PLP is 'to take all measures to delay and disrupt parliamentary business in order to prevent the passing of this legislation'.

Party Conference was unanimously in favour of taking that line of disrupting parliamentary business and preventing the passage of the legislation. And I think most Labour MPs will strenuously work their way through opposing every line of it.

Perhaps I have misunderstood you. When you say 'disrupt parlia- mentary business', do you mean all parliamentary business?

All parliamentary business, yes.

Is that realistic? Even the Left in the PLP could not agree on the vote for the Deputy Leader?

I think it's not a question of whether it's realistic. You don't ask for something assuming that its realistic, you ask for it on the basis that that's what you think is required. If the PLP don't think it's realistic, then they'll be quite out of touch with the movement.

The last recommendation was for 'the trade unions to launch a cam- paign of industrial action to support the PLP and to give a clear commitment that if Heseltine gets his new powers and forces councils into bankruptcy then they will support those councils defending jobs and services'. Any activist involved in getting industrial action knows how difficult it is to get it just on wages. Do you think industrial action on cuts can be delivered?