The Labour youth movement of the early 1960s was the seedbed of the modern British Trotskyist movement. The history of the The Labour left in the struggles of the Trotskyist groups wlth each other wlthin that youth movement and with the Labour Party leaders has a great deal to teach us today. early 1960s Many of the dramatic events of that time are closely paralleledby events T ITS SCARBOROUGH - A confer- So can the lurch by the Marxist left now Militonls lurch into sectarianismparallels that of the Healy Fl ence in 1960, the Labour Party away frorn work in the Labour Party organisation then, for example. voted in favour of unilateral nuclear dis- and into'build-an-independent-revolu- armament by Britain. tionary-party' sectarianism.As a result The politicalatmosphere in Britainthen, as the Young Socialistsgot going This decision had tremendousimplica- of their bitter disappointmentwith the after 1959,has much in common with conditionsnow. Then too, the Labour tions for British politics for it openeda outcome of the 1960-l struggle between fundamental breach in l,abour-Tory for- left and right in the Labour Party, the Party was tightly controlled by a right,wingpolitical sect, socialism was eign and'defence' policy bipartisanship, major Trotskyist organisationof that declareddead, the bourgeoisiewas very confident. one of the pillars on wbjch classcollabo- time - the SocialistLabour League- ration rests and on which dependsthe turned away from the Labour Party, pio- Then socialists too had to resistthe pressuresaround them and at t}re same possibility of orderly changesin party neering the sort of politics today time redefinethemselves in relation to the seeminglynew world of government at Westminster. expressedby the SocialistWorkers' prolonged prosperity. British unilateral nuclear disarmament Party. implied the disruption of NATO and In the late '50sa great wave of alarm at In 6ct, without knowing it, the socialistsin the LPYSwere closeto rhe eve probably British withdrawal from the the prospect of nuclear war ran through western military alliances all of which Britain and of a tremendous upsurgein working-classindustrial militancy. many other countries.People relied on nuclear weapons.In 1960 had not got used to living in a long-term Britain still had an empire of sorts, nuclear stalemate.and the idea that it This pamphlet consists of a series of articles publishedin SociolistOrgoniser in 'special clairned a relationship' with the could continue for two or more decades late | 99l, and basedon articlesfirst published in 1979. USA, and in general still had some would have beenconsidered improbable. weight in the affairs of the world. Tbe eruption of the cold war into The author, SeanMatgamn4 was a participantin the youth movementhe The Scarboroughdecision committed nuclear holocaust seemedan imminent describes;a member of the SocialistLabour League[SLL]. He broke publicly the Labour Party to challengepolicies threat in every conflict involving the with that orSanisationover the events around the EngineeringApprentices' and cornmitments which the British nrl- USA and the USSR. ing class consideredfundamental to its Of 443 resolutionsat the 1957Labour strike in November 1964[see text]. interests. Party conference,no lessthan 127 were The story of how the ruling classfought concernedwith nuclear weaponsor gen- back, relying on its supportersin the eral disarmament.A resolution from Labour Party led by Parliamentary Norwood Labour Party, inspired by Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell, and Trotskyists, advocating unilateral how in a matter of months they whipped nuclear disarmamentwas defeatedat the the Labow Party back into line with the 1957 conference- but only after ruling class'spolitical needs,is a tale that Aneurin Bevan,the personalityaround sheds much light on the problem of whom the Labour Left had crystallised bringing about changein the Labour since l95l had marked his reconciliation Party. with the right wing with a notorious The strugglearound the Scarborough speechexplaining that he, as a future decisionwas one of the most important British Foreign Secretary,could not "go and decisivepolitical experiencesfor the naked into lhe conferencechamber" post-war Labour left and for the revolu- denudedof Britishnuclear weaponi. tionary left too. But Bevan failed to carry the Tribune Much of the feebleness,demoralisation left with him Even Jennie Lee, his close and ineptnesswhich the Tribune left political associateand wife, explained in Published '60s '70s by WL Publications Ltd, PO Box 823, London played in the and can be traced Tribune that she had abstained on the SE15 4NA, and printed by voluntary labour. May 1gg3 to tlreevents of 1960-61. question.

2 The movement against nuclear mental a challenge to the ruling class But what would the left MPs do? ence,and thus the balanceof power in weaponscontinued to grow despitethe their proposal and its ramfications were. party Would they too mobilise and organise the Party would be shifted in favour of opposition of the Labour (and of From oppositestandpoints both the right and behavelike people engagedin a seri- the PLP. the then 35,000-strongCommunist Party, and the Marxists in the Labour Party ous political struegle?That was the key After Scarboroughthe Gaitskellites which initially denouncedCND for pointed out to them what those implica- 'splitting question. carried out this policy. They hi-jacked the peacemovement'). tions were. Labour's right wing under- '59, '60, Immediatelythe right beganto organise the machinery of the Party and their mix- At Easter1958, and therewere stood what was at stake. They mobilised its supporters. The Campaign for ture of intransigenceand aggressive enormous CND marches from the for a fight to the finish. Socialism was set up as a action paralysedthe labour left. Nuclear ResearchEstablishment at Under Hugh Gaitskell, the Labour Democratic combat organisa- The NEC decided to back Gaitskell Aldermaston to London. Each year the Party was then led by a har'd right-wing semi-secretright-wing which sent circulars marked'Private and the PLP against Party conference. march got bigger and bigger, reaching sect grouped around the magazine tion (Tony Benn MP, who was not thenr, so 100,000at Easter 1960and 150,000in Social ist Commentary which persecuted and Confidential' to key activists,coordi- nating their fight to reverse the far as I know, a unilateralist, resigned 1961. eventhe soft left. Many of them went on Scarboroughdecision. Its secretarywas from the NEC in protest at its attitude to Support for unilateralism became so 20 yearslater to found the SDP. William Rodgers, later an MP and a party democracy). powerful in the trade unions, partly They were not used to the 'fudge and founder of the SDP. Using its majority on the NEC, the through the work of TGWU generalsec- mudge' techniquesof a Harold Wilson, Gaitskell's campaign benefitedfrom the right went on the offensive immediately retary Frank Cousins, that by 1960victo- the techniquesNeil Kinnock is using now unanimous backing of the bourgeois after the conference.On November 23 ry at the upcoming Labour Party and will almost certainly use if he leads a press. It was adequately supplied with the NEC launched a witch-hunt against Scarboroughconference was in sight. Labour governmentto avoid having to funds whose origins were, understand- the youthpaper Keepl*ft. Even the Communist Party felt obliged carry out the Labour Party commitment ' job to the left and intimi- to abandon opposition to CND. That to scrapnuclear weapons. ably, the subjectof many nrmours. The was split The Labour Party machine swung date the feebler spirits - so they picked gave unilateralism a big boost in unions Before the vote at Scarborough,Hugh Gaitskell and againstthe on an easily identifiable target, the like the AUEW, and threw the ETU. Gaitskell boldly told the delegateswhat squarelybehind for largestorganised Marxist tendencyin the then led by the CP, behind unilateralism. the right would do if they lost. Party conference,organising meetings At the Scarborough Gaitskell and his supporters. Polite left- Labour Party. (Keep l-eft was the youth conferencethe The Parliamentary Labour Party 'requesrs' wing that these meetings paper of the Socialist Labour League, National Executive Committee (NEC) would, he said, not be bound by a deci- a/so of Labour which eventually mutated into the resolution of support for the westernmil- sionit did not agreewith. should feature supporters Party policy were twned down. wRP). itary alliancesand their nuclear weapons The MPs supported the NEC policy. Naturally some of these meetings The parallel with the way the witch- was defeatedby 300,000votes. A resolu- "So what", he asked,"do you expect becamerowdy and were accompaniedby hunt against Militant has recently been tion from the TGWU committing the them to do: Go back on the pledgesthey demonstrationsagainst Gaitskell. used to split and intimidate the left is Labour Party to unilateral renunciation gave the people who elected them from Thus unilateralism was shown to have very striking. of nuclear weaponswas carried by a theirconstituencies?... Do you think that wide and deep implications not only for So is the parallel betweenTribune's atti- majority of 43,000. we can becomeovernight the pacifists, British politics but for the labour Party tude to the witch-hunt then and its atti- Moving the NEC resolution, Sam unilateralistsand fellow-travellersthat Victory at Scarborough brought the tude under the editorship of Nigel Watson struck the two keynotesof the other peopleare?" too. left smack up against the unyielding Williamson to the witch-huDtnow.. campaign the right wing was to wage. Even if they lost the vote,.they would 'save' Gaitskellites,fighting to the Faced with the vigorous assault of the Witch-hunting: unilateralistsshould "fight, fight and fight again to save the feebly struck out at not be in the Labour Party, "we have no Partywe love". Labour Party for classcollaboration, right, the Tribunites their left. Tribunetook up the rallying cry right to acceptin our movement conlmu- He told conferencein the same speech entrenchedin the Parliamentary Labour usiug the Party macbjne against that the Marxists had no placein the uni- nists,Trotskyists, and fellow-travellers". that the leadership of the Labour Party Party, *The Conferencedecisions, and quite prepared lateralist movement becausethey were And the demand that unilateralists was none of its business. place to to split the Party in order to "saveit". not prepared to advocate unilateral draw the logical conclusionsfrom unilat- decidethe leadershipis not here but in Befor e tt,e Scarborough conference, nucleardisarmament by the USSR. eralism: he asked them if they actually the ParliamentaryLabour Party". Anthony Crosland, one of Gaitskell's The AGM of the broad left organisa- wanted to leave NATO. Did they under- On November 3, the majority of the lieutenants, had written in the Nerv tion Victory For Socialismin January stand the implications of what they were Parliamentary Labour Party endorsed Leader (an American publication associ- 196l appointed one Roy Shaw to review saying? Gaitskell'srevolt against Labour Party ated with the Congress for Cultural its membershipbook to seeif any known In fact, all the leading Labour Party conferencewhen it re-electedhim as which was financed by the Trotskyistshad joined. proponentsof unilateralismwanted to Party leaderby 166 votes to 8l (for Freedom, that a conference defeat for the By contrast with the right, the official stayin NATO! Harold Wilson)and sevenabstentions. CIA) wing might be to their advantage.It left dawdled and looked for a way to The political level of the unilateralists The majority of the Parliamentary right give avoid a full-scaleclash. tended to be pacifistic and utopian. Labour Party would pursue Gaitskell's could the Parliamentary Labour assert To consolidateits Scarboroughvictory Generally they did not grasp how funda- policy.not that of the Party. Party the chanceto dramatically its independenceby defying Party confer- the left neededto face up to the implica- 3 4 tions ofunilateralism, and to organise. soon transmuted into a unilateral politi- 'official Certainly Tribune didn't know. "No controversies about defence in the Tribune, the organ of the left', cal disarmamentby the Tribunites. doubt also there must be consequential Labour Party". at that time still had some seriousinflu- Immediately after Scarborough changesin the Labour Party itself. It is Foot was looking for a compromise,or ence on the rank and hle. The organised Michael Foot, soon to be returned to too early to discern their exact nature", rather a ladder to climb down. was quite left weak. Only 100 people Parliamentfor Nye Bevan'sold seat of wrote Tribune after Gaitskell announced But the Gaitskellitesgave the left MPs attended the annual meeting of the Ebbw Vale (Bevan had died in July that the PLP would defy conference! no points for their willingness to 'com- Tribune organisation Victory For 1960),declared his support for the right Sinceno bilateral compromisewas pos- promise' and to climb down from unilat- Socialism in 1961. 50 attended the of MPs who disagreed with the sible with the Gaitskellites. Tribune now eralism. They insisted that they toe the Scarborough fringe 'unilat- meeting of the Scarborough decisions to vote in opted for what rnight be called a line of the PLP or get out. Trotskyist influenced Clause Four Parliamentaccording to their conscience. eral' compromise,by way of unilateral They gave them no credit, either for Campaign Committee. But the many The Gaitskelliteshad a right to defy con- political disarmament. their docile unwillingness to organise to thousands of CND supportersand ferenceand hijack the Labour Party! In December, a few weeks after the deprive Gaitskell and the PLP of the activists formed a reservoir from which a The necessaryresponse to the revolt of Scarborough victory, Tribune simply right to speakfor the Labour Party. mass left wing could have developed,as the MPs, a fight to kick them out and began to shift its political focus away A few days after Foot's Tribune article, part of a fight for the Scarboroughdeci- replacethem, was not even aired for dis- from unilateralism. In that month in March 1961,he and four other MPs sions. cussionby Tribune.The executiveof Tribune carried this astonishing piece of were expelledfrom the PLP for daring to Unilateralism then implied a sharp Victory For Socialismrejected out of front-page advice to Gaitskell on how to defy the PLP whip and vote against the break with proposal the capitalist establishment hand a by Hugh Jenkins that fake. Tory government'sair estimates. and with its Labour supporters. Such a they should advocatethe selectionof new "And here was a proposition [the Tory Konni Zilliacus, a prominent radical break could not be confined to candidateswhere Labow MPs refusedto government proposal, debated in left-winger, was suspendedfrom the (So one issueif it was to be sustained. abide by conferencedecisions. Parliamenl, to set up a Polaris missile Labour Party for publishing an article in Its natural complement was a break Jenkinstold a VFS meetingin 1961,as basein the westof Scotland/ which could an international Stalinist magazine.In with the war root cause of and of the reported in The Newslettel on June 3 be frontally opposed:not only by those these ways the Gaitskellites gave notice - threat of nuclear war capitalism. 1961). who support the Scarboroughdecision of of their willingnessto split the party if principle In all the leadersof Labour's Rejecting such action, Tribune }lad the Labour Party but also by the parlia- they didn't get their way. unilateralist left were long-time oppo- nothing else to do but surrender to the mentary leadersof the Labour Party who They kept up the pressureon Foot and nents of capitalism. But there was for all unyielding PLP. have criticisedNATO's strategyon the company to 'compromise'away their vic- great gap of them a betweenbeing Tribune's leaders thought they had an technical grounds that it is too reliant on tory at Scarborough. 'socialists' principle in and mobilising for alternative to both surrenderand a fight. nuclear weapons. Now a dramatic opportunity to endorse a seriousanti-capitalist struggle.From They looked for a compromise. "But Gaitskell put down a motion something that could be passedoff as a that flowed the tragedy that engulfed the Prominent left-winger Anthony which could not possibly be voted for by 'compromise'presented itself to Foot Labour left. Greenwood MP said at the end of supportersof Scarborough...implicitly and his friends - the lyingly misnamed If Labour's left had faced up to the fact October: "l believeit would be a disaster acceptingthe nuclear strategyand specif- 'Crossman-Padleycompromi se'. that unilateral nuclear disarmament for anybody to split the Labour Party on ically approving in principle the govern- In February a drafting committeefrom could only be carried in society or sus- an issue which changesfrom day today. ment's plan accepting Polaris." If only the TUC and the NEC agreedby 8 votes policy tained as Labour Party as part of Neither side can be too dogmatic or Gaitskell had beenWilson! to 4 to accepta new right-wing'defence' general a anti-capitalistmobilisation of demanding". Which only meant that he In the following weeks Tribune and the statement(&afted by Denis Healey) for "dogmatic the working class against both Labour's wouldn't be or demanding". left leaderslike Foot shifted their ground the next Labour Party conference.The ground. right wing and the capitaliststhey served, The Gaitskellitesstood their decisively.While they remained nominal- dissidentminority - Walter Padley, then such a mobilisation could have Talk like Greenwood'scouldn't mollify ly unilateralist. their specific focus Tom Driberg, Frank Cousins,apd the given real life to a strugglefor socialism them; it could, however,not fail to becamea criticism of NATO (within cynical operator Dick Crossrnan- pro- in the Labow Party. It could have linked dampendown the fighting spirits of those which they wished Britain to remain) for duced their own defence statement. youth, up the unilateralists, especiallythe who took Greenwood seriously, and beingtoo reliant on nuclear weapons. Though three of them at least were did. with activists in the trade unions, to many Labour Party activists Their'proposal' changed to the prominent unilateralists,they came out from the shadow transform the Labour Party. Greenwood resigned demand for a British declaratiannever to with a'compromise'basedon the idea of Gaitskell publicly that For that to be possiblethe left would cabinet and told use nuclear weaponsfrs/. a pledgenot to strike first. behaviour was "quite incompatible have had to take their own ideas serious- his Should Prime Minister Macmillan and "While we recognise that the with the democraticconstitution and ly. But they didn't. PresidentJ F Kennedy be "pressed"to Americanswill retain nuclearweapons so In fact the left responded to the spirit of the labour movement". Just so "declare" that they would never use long as the Russianspossess them, we - but what to do about it if you rejected Gaitskellitesby an ignominiousself-dis- nuclear weapons first? That question, reject absolutelya NATO strategybased the only seriouscourse, a fight to deprive avowal. The left's Scarboroughvictory Michael Foot wrote in Trhune on March on the threat to use them first and a disatmamentwas the PLP oligarchsof their position? on unilateral nuclear 3 1961,"goes to the root of the recent defencepolicy which compels NATO

5 6 I ' -v'7yY:13:*::t:1::rY: forces to rely on these weaponsin the the baseline was beyond which they ceededto disarm them completely.A for- cravencapitulation without struggle.The field". could not move without betraying their 'career mer leftist'. he knew how to throw tendency that suffers it must inevitably Tribune jumped at the chanceto advo- own cause. 'Crossman them inconsequentialsops. have its belief in itself sappedand under- cate the compromise'.Thus it By contrast the official left was utterly The Labour left counted for nothing mined. undercut and in effect abandoned the confused, only half-understanding the throughout the 1960s,and until well into The Bevanite/Iribune left never recov- official Labour Party unilateralist posi- meaning and implications of the policy the seventies. ered. It was a new left that srew in the tion. Foot wrote that it would be a major they had won the Labour Party to at No defeat is so demoralisineas a '70s. step forward if the Crossman document Scarborough.When the right wing bru- (or a less cynical variant on similar lines tally spelledit out for them and told worked out by Frank Cousins)could them it wasn't on, they crumbled. "secure the general backing of the Against the hard bourgeoisright wing - Labour Party". the future SDP - the left had no serious Workers'Liberty In fact there was never any chancethat programme. it would get the backing of the Pentagon The programme of class struggle and publshes and Whitehalllinked Gaitskellites What working-classsocialism was not adhered The Nliance for Workers' Liberty a magazine,Workers' was happening was that the left leaders to by the mainstreamunilateralists, who Liberty. wereselling'compromise' to the unilater- wereat best utopians and frequently con- ,ssues Workerc'Libefi include: alistrank and lile. sciousleft-fakers like Crossman. Somepasf of available 'compromise' The now became the Hence it was more than a question of Magniflcent Miners - the history and issues in the 1984-5 strike 75p + 34p p&p left's alternative to the Healey draft of the personalcharacter of the lefts. Foot's - the rightwing position, and it was touted record before 1960was not contemptible. lllusions of Power the history of the local govemment left, 1979-85 p&p as a basisfor unity. It was fundamentally a question of their 60p + 34p Gaitskell referred contemptuously to left reformist politics and their character- Le Pen: a Hitler for the 1990s? lncludes "The Stalinist roots of left anti-semitism" the wriggling ofthe Tribunites andjustly istic failwe to think things through to the 95p + 34p p&p scornedthem for their "lack of princi- end and to draw the necessaryconclu- ple". The right would concedenothing. sions in practice from political positions Stalin's heirs face the workers. Includes symposium on the class nature of the The Crossman-Padleycompromise was like unilateralism. Stalinist states €1.80 + 58p p&p. a transparently cynical device to get the Before Scarborough Foot wrote in left off the hook. Padley's union, Trhune (in a front page article revealing- P/ease send chequelpostal order, made out to Publications", to: 'compromise' "WL USDAW, adopted the but ly entitled "Don't be afraid of victory"), AWL PO Box &3, London SEl5 4NA. did not even move it at the Blackpool "Scarborough will be momentous. No party conferenceof 1961.Once it had one can doubt that. done its work of demobilisingand under- Either it will mark the rebirth of the cutting unilateralism, USDAW aban- party or the name will become the sym- OVERSEASBATES donedthe'compromise'. bol for tragic and dismal confusion". In The unilateralist victory at the 1960 fact it becamea symbol for the inconse- For one copy of the magazine: conferencehad been something of a quentiality of the Labow left and of its windfall for which the left was unpre- dismal incapacity to do other than make EUROPE: postage. pay pared. 'oppositionist'noises. f,2.20 including Please in sterling. You can pay us through Giro aocount 5l 379 18(D if you wish. Almost by accident they had begun to As early as December1960 Tribune had pull down the structures and political tried to give Gaitskelllessons in how to USA AUSTRALII\: prerequisitesof classcollaboration and fake ifhe wanted to lead them gently by M post free frorn Barry Finger: $6 post free from thus provoked a backlash for the the nose;he didn't. He wanted to smash 153Henderson Place WL, PO Box 313 ruling-classagents in the labour move- and humiliate them. But soon enough East Windsor Leichhardt ment that they couldn't handle. they got Wilson as leader, and he didn't New Jersey08520 NSW 2040 Intimidated by the right's threat of a need any lessonson the arts of faking (Chequespayable to Barry Finger) (Chequespayable to "SocialistFight") split, the official left ran away in confu- and bamboozle. sion. Gaitskell followed up his victory at Subscriptionsto "Workers'Liberty": The Gaitskellites had the interestsof Blackpool in October 1961with an Uk Five issuesfort5, postfree. the ruling class and its state systemto anti-EEC campaign that largely dis- relate to and preserve.They knew where armed the left. Wilson, succeeding Outside UKzFive issues: - - (From they stood and were in no doubt where Gaitskellat the beginningof 1963,pro- f,urope f,10.00; USA $18.00 Barry Finger,address above); Australia- $Z.fi) (From addressabove). dency that it refused to specifically what-you-likeparty it becameover the Seedbed of the left oppose the proscription of the SLL in 20 yearsthat endedin the mid-1980s. February1959. In the late'50s,as now, it wasa tightly On the Liverpool Trades Council they controlled social-democraticparty. Then publicly I N 1959THE revolutionaryMarxist tator Nikita Khrushchev supported a resolution which evadedthe it was armed with a long list of banning I movementconsisted of one major denouncedStalin's tyranny at the 20th concreteissue on the banning of the SLL orders ("proscriptions") againstleft-wing organisation,possessing a continuous Congressof the CPSU in 1956 and then by opposing bans and proscriptions in pressruegroups. It was a party run by an tradition, a cadre, a serious sttucture, Russia brutally suppressed the general but not specially the one just ideological sect around Hugh Gaitskell; and an implantationin the labour move- Hungarian uprising at the end of that enacted.Earlier, in 1954,when the editor almost all the swviving rrembers of that - ment the SLL, numbering a few hun- year. of Socialist Outlook and one of his com- sect were to leave the Labour Party and dred members - and a number of tiny The Healy tendencywon over some rades (Bill and Ray Hunter) were being help found the SDP in l98l (Dennis groupings, without a cadreexcept for one hundreds from the ten or fifteen thou- expelled from the Labour Party in Healeyis the exception).In 1960they or two leading figures and with little sand who broke with the CPGB in 1956 Islington, Ted Grant abstained. '57, were witch-hunting membersof CND! organisation or implantation in the and and made the greateststep for- The personal and factional animosities When the October 1959 General group labour movement. ward any Trotskyist in the world ran very deep and came sharply alive Election defeat led the Labour leadersto group (later well a was The Socialist Review IS had made for over decade.It again in the YS. The smaller groups com- the decisionto restart a youth movement work- and then the SWP) had a few dozen strong enough to call five hundred bined among themselvesand with with a national structure, what they members. It was a mainly middle class ers, rnany shop stewards,to its industrial Tribunites and others against the Healy wanted was a tame, apolitical election group, organisedloosely as a seriesof rank and file conferencein 1958. tendency, often cutting across the grain machine to serve them. But the youth discussioncircles. It did not then consid- The setting up of the SLL marked a of their nominal politics. who began to join the YS were far from er itself Trotskyist or Leninist. [It became new departurefrom the previouspractice To round this picture out it needsto be apolitical. "Leninist" in 1968and after.l of Labow Party work by the Healy ten- added that it would not have been possi- A sizeablenumber of youth sectionsof The Grant tendency, the prehistoric dency,in which there had beenno public ble. becauseof the bureaucratic and ConstituencyLabour Parties already ancestors of what mutated into the pre- presencefor the Marxists. In 1954 their authoritarian character of the Healy existedwhich had survived as isolated sent Militant tendency,also numbereda paper Socialist Outlook was banned. For regime in the SLL, for the smaller ten- branchesafter the disbanding of the few dozen people and was probably in a three years they did not even have a dencies to be in the main Trotskyist LeagueofYouthin 1955.There were 262 worse state than Socialist -Revlew,unable paper of their own, though they did very organisation. (Though, again, to explain in 1959.Something of a national link - to keep evena four pageprinted paper important work in industry, especiallyin the divisions entirely by the Healy regime betweenthese youth sectionshad been - nominally monthly going except spo- the ports and in engineering,despitethis. is to be apolitical. Massive and urgent kept up through the paper Keep Left, radically, and unable evento find the Their experienceafter 1956 convinced political questions were the first causeof which. of course.also influenced them energy to contribute to a joint paper them that to build an organisation capa- the divisions; and Healy was right as politically which they started with Socialist Review ble of combining the tasks of Marxists as against Cliff on support for Korea's right Keep lzft was started by the Wembley in 1961. regardsthe trade unions, the l-abour to self-determinationin 1950,and as Leaguesof Youth at the end of 1950,and The seedsof the IMG, predecessorof Party, and open recruitment, it was nec- against Grant on the need to try to becameassociated with the Healy ten- - the present day Socialist Outlook, essaryto combine having a public face orga.nisethe Labour Party left.) dency in the early 1950s.It becamea Socialist Action and Communist League, even if the Labour Party bureaucracy The history of the YS after 1959can be four-pageprinted monthly (more or less) - had just separatedfrom the Grant ten- disapproved with continuedwork in divided into the periods of domination of at the beginningof 1958. dency. (They would unite again in 1964 the massparty of the trade unions, the different segmentsof the revolutionary The Campaign for Nuclear and split cornpletelyin 1965.) Labour Party. left, first by the SLL, then by the Cliff Disarmament,which began its famous '60s), The SLL was launchedas an open Thus, in the newly re-establishedyouth group (which grew in the early and Easter Marches from Aldermaston in - organisationin February 1959 and movement,three of the tendenciesthat finally by Militant (wNch begar:to grow 1958,had as many as 50,000on the '60s). immediately proscribed by Transport had survived from the collapse of the in the mid to late The history of the march by Easter 1959.In Easter 1960 House, together with its small weekly Revolutionary Communist Party at the Labour Party youth movement in the and 196l there were 100,000people at lound themselveswork- '60s paper, The Newsletter. To sell the end of the 1940s is also the history of the early shap- the final rally in Trafalgar Square.Many organisa- Newslelterwas to risk expulsionfrom the ing and competingin the same ing and development of British CNDers were young people - often Labow Party. tion again. Trotskyism. middle class,but there was a lot of sup. The SLL had been formed from the A11were factional. Wheneverthere was port among left wing trade unionists too. merger of that Trotskyist group, led by talk of unity (for example,from the Cliff | 960: CNDers flocked into the YS, bringing Gerry Healy, which began working in the tendency)it was a factional posture by with them the samepolitics which shook Labour Party in 1948,and a large num- the most uninhibited and unscrupulous ClauselV andthe bomb the Labour Party at the Scarborough ber of workers and intellectualswho of factionalists.The Grant tendency was The Labour Party then was much closer Conferenceof 1960, when victory for broke with Stalinism after the USSR dic- so venomouslyhostile to the Healy ten- to what it is now than to the open, say- unilateral nuclear disarmament split the

9 10 party wide oPen. Scarboroughconference with sloganslike the YS to issuea journal for national cir- town ricbly endowedwith labour Clubs 'Quit Right at the beginning of the new youth NATO", "Close Rocket Bases", culation", its representativewrote to and their facilities, was the pioneer here. movement, the leadershipof the Party, "Stop Making H-Bombs", and "Bring Wembley North and Hendon North. Organisingdances, the original nucleus around Hugh Gaitskell, attempted to Down the Tory H-Bomb Government". They were ordered to c€asepublication. of half a dozen politicos soon recruited amputate even the generalaspiration The keynote for the next four years had 300 youth to the YS. towards a socialistsociety from the been struck, Keep Left had previously opposed Constitution of the Labour Party; in the | 960-6l: KeepLeft The right of the party was beginningits attempting to 'competewith the social wake of the election defeat they tried to campaitnsatainst Gaitskell assault on the unilateralist left with a facilities availableunder capitalism'. Like make the Labour Party respectableto seeminglyeasy target. Shortly after- the other tendencies. it had a "middle of the road" and middle class After the victory for the left at wards, Michael Foot and four other MPs sectarian-propagandistbias towards 'line' voters by removing Clause IV (which Scarborough,the control of the Labow had the Labour whip withdrawn for vot- comparing and discussing and fine commits the party to public ownership of Party machinery remained in the hands ing against the Tory government'sAir points of theory and analysis,rather than the meansof production, distribution of the right wing and of Hugh Gaitskell. Estimates. Ernie Roberts. an elected taking its political line into the working and exchange).This causeda big reac- Keep Left reacted to the Scarborough Assistant General Secretaryof the AEU, classyouth to fight for it there. tion against Gaitskell, which ultimately decisionswith a demand that the left had Transport House approval with- The'massYS'policy provokedthe hos- forced him to abandon the attempt. It fight to consolidateits victory, as yet a drawn as Labour candidate for tility and jeers of other YS leftists, more put the youth on its mettle.too. paper victory. It called a conferenceof its Horsham, and was called to account for concernedwith having exclusivecircles of From the beginning of the YS and supporters,trade unionists, and young 400 speecheshe had made! As late as friends and congenial fellow 'thinkers' throughout 1960the controversyover CNDers for November 6th, in 1962, there were attempts to exclude than with organisingworking class Clause IV raged, and it becameclear as Manchester'sFree Trade Hall, under the Bertrand Russell and Canon Collins youth. In fact, it did prove possiblein the year advancedthat there was a seri- slogan, "Implement Scarborough from the Labour Party. rnany areas to 'refine' from mass YSs a ous chance that the Labour conference Policy". Keep l*ft's responsewas as decisiveas hard core ofworking classboys and girls would commit the Party to a policy of Keep Left for October-November 1960 the NEC's. The December 1960issue had who developedpolitically and got unilateral British renunciation of the argued that the Scarboroughpolicy - a banner headline: "Our reply to the dis- involved in campaignsand struggles.The H-bomb. official Laboru policy - was the way to rupters and witch-hunterson the NEC: policy meant that the hard-core Keep Enonnous support had built up for uni- win youth to the YS and to build a mass we shall not shut down this paper". And Left srtpportershad to transform them- lateral disarmamentsince the Norwood youth movement.150 youth, from 47 YS just under the mastheadwas a list of 16 selvesfrom smug,bookish contemplators resolution, inspired and moved by the branches,attended the November 6th YS branchessponsoring KZ where there and'thinkers'into peoplewho could talk Healy tendency,had beendefeated at the conference,and pledged ttiemselvesto had beentwo! on all the varied levelsrequired to the Brighton conference three years earlier. fight for the Scarboroughpolicies. By Januaryl96l therewere27 sponsor- real raw material of a YS movement - Unilateralism as Party policy would "We have come to bury Gaitskell, not ing branches; by February 32; and even- working class youth; take up their con- mean a break with foreign policy biparti- to praise him", said Gavin Kennedy, tually the sponsorshovered around the cerns; draw them into activity. It was sanshipand pit the Labour Party against organiser of Keep Left and secretary of 45 mark luntil Keep Left was proscribed often very difficult - for somepeople it the vital interestsof the ruling class. Hendon North YS, which sponsoredKL in May 1962.This was the strongest proved impossible- but it was an anti- Thus, tensionrose throughlate 1960as together with Wembley North. The con- argument against tbe right wing! Many dote to the sort offrozen impotencethat trade union conferenceafter trade union ferencealso pledgedthat if the Labour labour movement bodies supportedKeep gripped the Labour Party youth sections conferencefell into line in support of uni- Party did not call the promised YS con- Left and protectedit. For example,250 in the later'60s and. wder Militant con- lateralism in the build-up to the October ferenceat Easter 1961,then Keep Left delegatesto Liverpool Trades Council trol, all throughthe'70s and early'80s. Party conferenceat Scarborough. would call a YS conferenceat Whitsun unanimously defended Keep Left's ri$tt A spokespersonfor the Keep l*ft ten- At Scarborough, unilateralism became 1961.It wasin tune with the atmosphere to publish. dencyput the policy like this: "Building Labour Party policy. Hugh Gaitskell and the battlesof 1960,and the open While frantically organising to defend large YS branches,initially from socials, flatly refused to be bound by it, and defiance of Labour conferenceby the their paper, and their existencewithin the is not easy...Anyone who thinksbecause declaredin a passionatespeech that he PLP and its leader; it expressedthe need Labour Party, Keep lel supportersalso he can quote from volume 2 of the would "fight, fight, and fight again, to to fight for the Scarboroughdecisions. turned outwards to build mass working SelectedWorks of Lenin that he is better savethe party we love" - i.e. to saveit Yet already here the characteristic classYS branches. than the young working class boys and for capitalist politics. Healyite note of braggadociomakes its A turn was made away from inward- girls who come to rock and roll, is not The turmoil until the right wing did win appearance. looking small discussion-circletype just on the wrong foot - he is on the at Blackpool the following year pitched The NEC's reaction was swift and branches,towards organising branches wrong planet. We must realisethat these the YS into the thick of baule. The yS sharp. which combined social activities for young peopleare potentially the future washeavily unilateralist and known to be At its meeting of 23 November 1960it working classyouth with some often ele- leadersof the labour movement". so. 200 Young Socialists,organised by decided to destroy Keep l*ft. "It is not mentarypolitics. The policy allowed Keep Left to Keep l*ft, had demonstratedoutside the the function of a branch, or branches.of Wigan YS, existing in a small and dull mobiliseworking classyouth, and, ulti-

11 12 Macdonald,is now head of ScottishTV. to be "state capitalist", at the very end of mately, it explains how they came to Right-winger Ray Gunter denounced The Grant tendency did not withdraw capitalist historical development,as dis- dominate the YS. In the context of a bit- Keep Left for once criticising Aneurin 'raw ft om Young Guard until September1963, tinct from the others, who saw them as ter three-way Iight in the YS, the Bevan,recently dead and already a but was little in evidencepolitically "post-capitalist". youth' were, it is true, often counter- labour movementsaint. In Bevan'slife- (though one of its people, Keith The Cliff group had startedin I 950 as a posed to the sort of discussionsof issues time, Gunter had tried to have him Dickinson, was businessmanager). Leninist, Fourth-Internationalist.group and political perspectiveswhich were expelled.Demagogy won, and by I72 to (70 strong essentialto the developmentof a realistic 148a motion deploring the attack on at the beginning, though by as well as a militant youth movement. Keep Left was lost. Only one Keep Left 1958it was 20), disagreeingwith the oth- 196l-62:Keep Left "state And, in the exigenciesof the faction representativewas electedonto the ers on capitalism". It circulatedthe fight, Keep Left cadres may too often National Committee, Uz Thompson. versusYoung Guard magazine of the American Shachtman group (the have been manipulative with the "raw In the heat ofthe conference,a number IndependentSocialist League) What divided the two groups, Keep waspolitically very youth". But that was causedby the ofthe left currents disagreeingvith Keep l*ft in the'50s.By 1960it and Young Guard? Keep Izft believed in decayed,organised as a loose federation, intensefactional warfare and Transport I*ft. decidedto pool resourcesand pub- building a seriousMarxist organisation recruiting youth on opposition to the House harassment;it was not something lish a new journal. Young Guard began to within the labour movement, and that Healyites'"toy-town Bolshevism",by intrinsic to the drive to turn out to work- appear six months later, in September the time to work at it was at hand. which they meant the self proclamation ing classyouth. It was that drive which 1961. So, in theory, did the Grantites, but and posturing that today's SWP lives off. marked Keep l*ft out as a seriousrevo- This split in the left had big conse- Young Guard'r majority rejected this At the centreofthe loosefederation, as it lutionary tendency. quences.Most of the supportersof idea. Many Young Guarders considered grervin the 1960s,was a "state-capitalist" If in the end nothing good came of this Young Guard considered themselves Stalinism to be the product of sectaround Tony Cliff and Michael policy, and little wasconsolidated, it was Marxists. ln Young Guard, Rebel, the Bolshevism,and 'Leninist Party' were because of the weak side of the Keep paper of the Cliff tendency,amalgamated a to be Kidron. but there other strandstoo: (Some prominent Left/SLL tendency, which led ultimately with Rally, the duplicated publication a Stalinist abomination. of the as late as 1968,some AEU to a grotesquedegeneration: that is, to its put out by the Labour Party supporters featuresof the Healy organisationrein- militants in Manchesterresigned from politics. of Ted Grant's group through Walton forced them in suchideas). the organisation becauseit opposed the group's propaganda The first YS conferencedid take place Young Socialists.The 'Nottingham The Cliff centred invasion ofCzechoslovakiaby the USSR at Easter 1961,and was relativelyfree of Tendency', forerunner of Socialist around such ideas. For example,in 1960 and the Warsaw Pact in August 1968! published pamphlet restraints. Outlook, which had recently separated Tony Cliff a big on The Cliffites explained war as being Rosa in which he declared to produc- Through 1960 Labour Party youth from Grant was involved. Left reformists Luxembwg tied capitalism becausearms that Luxemburg was right against Lenin tion kept capitalisrngoing. This was the groups had rultiplied almost threefold, from Nep Inft Review and the Voice of in being suspiciousof sharply-defined, "permanent economy" and by Easter 1961 721 YS branches the Unilns also enlisted. arms theory, a centralisedorganisation. When he reis- shibbolethfor the group then hardly less were registered.381 delegatesattended New Left Revlewwas then a journal of sued the pamphlet in 1968,he was again c€ntral than capitalism", but long the conference.Free political discussion those such as EP Thompson, Stuart Hall "state a "Leninist". The discussionand argu- ago abandoned.They took it frdm the was allowed, contrary to the initial (now a guru of Marxism Toda1,) and ment on the was reprinted Labour leadershipblueprint for the YS. Doris Lessingwho had split from the CP issue Shachtmanites. paci- A National Cornmittee was elected by after Hungary and, essentially,moved to unchanged from the first edition; only From it they developed a bland, conferenceon the basis of regional the right of the CP's nominal revolution- the concluding sentencewas changed, fist. socialistconclusion that socialism blocks of delegatessimultaneously elect- ary politics. and now it said that Lenin was right was necessaryand that CNDers should ing a representativefrom each of ll The war between Keep l*ft and Young against Luxemburg on organisationl come into the workers' movement. i.e. regions. Guard was from now on to be often as The Healyites and the Grantites the Labour Party and YS. produced greeting The conferencewas a prolonged battle bitter as Keep Left's war with the bweau- belonged to mutually hostile internation- They New Year - battle between the Labour leadersand crats, al associations the Healyites adhered cardsin 1963with the sameslogan as the to the "International Committee of CP: 'For Peaceand Socialism'. Both Keep Left for influence over the Despite its coalition character,politi- the Fourth International" set up by J P Russia and the USA, they argued, were non-committed delegates. ca\\y Young Guard was in fact heavily a Cannon in 1953,though they begana equally capitalist. Third World struggles The conferencevoted 222 to 97 against Cliff group paper. In 1962-3it was per- processofsplitting with Cannonin 196l; might perhaps be supported, but were NATO and for unilateral disarmament. haps the main paper of that tendency, the Grantites were the official section of not centrally important. They would A vote of no confidence in Hugh together with Internat ional Socialism the Pablo-Mandel "Fourth redefine themselvesduring the Vietnam Gaitskell was carried by 189 to I13. journal. Labour Worker (it became International"until I965. War: but if someonehad proved then to Roger Protz, the editor of the official YS Socialist Worker in 1967), which they The Grantites and the had a Tony Cliff that he would support lran in paper, New Advance,circulated a person- also published, was narrowly syndicalist Healyites position lran-Iraq rvar, and then laud the rev- al statementagainst the bureaucratic by comparison. on Stalinismof "critical sup- the port" and political olutionary significanceof lraq's conquest running of the paper. All the successiveeditors of Young "make a revolution"; the Cliffites consideredthe Stalinist states of Kuwait, he would probably have The witch-hunt of Keep lzli continued. Guard were Cliffites. One of them, Gus

13 14 t W hangedhimself! 'more rockets for the Cuban workers"'. '60s). Keep Left explained the drive to war in This meant surrenderof the rights of the tive of industrial work, in the mid politically,and not up to it personallyor the traditional terms of Leninism: Cuban peopleto control their own island Capitalism was stable,and would remain morally either. Drunk with limited suc- Imperialism produced war. They consid- to the power of imperialism, if imperial- so for many years.This view is now cess,they turned themselvesinto a ered support for the colonial strugglesof ism upped the stakesenough. It was a sometimespresented in mythology as the destructivesect and then into something decisiveimportance. Moreover, states good explicit expressionof the crasspaci- Young Guard coalition being realistic, as worse. But that was still a while in the like the Soviet Union and China were. fism in which the Cliff tendencydabbled against Keep lzft, whtch foolishJy tended future, after the SLL had won the major- they said, not capitalist, but degenerated at this period. to consider a major crisis of capitalismas ity in theYS. and deformed workers' states.Socialists Paradoxically,the pacifist/CND period more or less always imminent (or in Throughout 1961the YS continued to should take sides with them against preparedthe way for its own inversion progress). ln fact, Young Guard werc no grow, but slowly. At the Blackpool imperialism. and for the overthrow of one of the dog- more realistic in their assessmentthan Labow Party conference,the right wing Obviously tlae Young Guard tendency rnas on which the Cliffites founded their Keep l*ft. reversedthe policy on unilateral nuclear was best suited to coexist with the CND tendency.When the Vietnam War flared Believingthat capitalism was indefinite- disarmament, overthrowing the pro-uni- and Committee of 100 which, led by up with the giant American war power ly expanding and stable,they were bitter- lateral resolution of the 1960Brighton Bertrand Russell, organised mass trying to pulverise the Vietnamese,there ly disappointed after 1964 that the conference. sit-down protests against nuclear wasa great revulsionin CND circles,and Labour government did not deliver The experienceof an important left vic- 'For weapons.They could recruit from that nuny swung behind the slogans the reforms to the working class. tory then, which the left (like Michael milieu and from those generally "social- NLF'. The Cli{fites did too, effortlessly, The Young Guard tesdency did have Foot and Frank Cousius)did nothing to ist" but not committed to building a in 1965. more of the character of a real youth consolidate,and thus lost, was a decisive fighting organisationhere and now. In principle it is impossibleto separate movement than Keep le/r, becauseof its one for the Healy tendency.Not to emu- The defenceof the Soviet Union was a Vietnam from Korea, opposition to sup- looseness,lack of a driving purpose and late the 'fake left' - Foot and the major issuein the YS. The Cliffites, paci- port for which led to Cliffs separation lack of discipline. Tribune-ites- but to fight the battle fists and Tribunites said to the from the "orthodox Trotskyists" in 1950. Keep l*ft youth were driven; andessen- againstthe right wing tbrough to the end, Trotskfsts: You have no right to oppose And Vietnam,Iike Cuba in. 1962,could tially they were a hard faction, led by a becametheir driving goal in the youth British capitalism'sH-bomb unlessyou haveled to nuclearwar. highly disciplined and centralised(indeed movement. opposeRussia's. The Grant tendency Finally, Young Gaard disagreedwith bureaucratic) organisation, vigorously Theybegan to talk and act as ifall that agreed with Keep lzft on the question, Keep Left on the need to fight the warring with the Labow Party leadership was necessaryto defeat the right was the but threw their weight behind the Cliff bureaucracyin head-onconllict. and the general softer left while at the will to do it - as if the relationshipof grolp. YoungGuardcarried the Cliffline On the contrary, John Palmer, a leader same time striving to build the organisa- forces between the Marxists on one side while the Grant group kept their mouths of the Cliff tendency,put it like this in tion in the raw youth. and the right and soft left on the other, shut. 1963:"The onus is on the YS to find a The assessmentsof immediate reality could be magically transformed by In the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, relationship with our Party which will made by the Healyite SLL were often shouting the right slogans and when PresidentKennedy was threatening radically reducethose frictions and clash- wrong. Yet their wgency about building "demands". In practice,they ignored to drop H-bombs on Cuba if the USSR eswhich are leaving sucha bitter heritage an organisationwas not wrong; on that, such questions,and denouncedthose did not remove rockets whfuh the Cuban in the ranks of young peoplejoining the they were entirely right. The 1960swould who said they were impatient as "faint- government wanled in Cuba, (there had YS. One thing must be nade clear above soon produce a resonatingseries of hearts","sell-outs", "fake lefts", "scabs" been an American-backed invasion l8 all. T\ere is no future for the YS outside major class struggles,which would reach and "right wingfinks". months earlierat the "Bay of Pigs"),the the Labour Party; our only hope is to a tremendouslevel in the '70s. A serious. At the secondYS conference.in 1962. 'Say Newslettercame out with headlines: find a relationship even more close to it democratic, realistic and responsible there were 356 delegatesftom 772 regl* No to Yankee War', 'Hands off Cuba!', than at present,but one which will al1ow Marxist organisation could have shaped tered branches.It reiteratedunilateral- 'Defendthe USSR'. us essentialfreedom as a youth move- those strugglesand ensured more stable ism, opposedthe Tory imrnigration con- Young Gtard shouted: "Our demand is ment". rvorking-classgains from the seriesof trol Bill then being pushed through 'All hands off Cuba"'. But without the Which is quite a tall order given the victories we won. Parliament, and demanded that Britain 'hands', Russians' (servingthe USSR's right wing policies of the Labour leaders, The Marxist organisation,working in withdraw all troops from overseasand interests),the USA would have squashed then soon to be in government carrying the trade unions and Labour Party, quit all military alliances. the Cuban revolution! out vicious attacks on the working class. conld al least have become tens, perhaps Only three Keep Left supporters were ln Young Guard, a certain Paul Foot A tall order - if what is meant is a fighG hundreds, of thousands strong. The SLL electedto the National Committee. with explained the Cliffite pacifist view during ing socialistyouth movement. The point was geared to such developments,the one supporter of YoungGuard.Butthere the controversy that followed with Dave is that Young Guard had a rather cosy others were not. The tragedy for the YS was a left, unilateralistmajority, which Ablitt of the Nottingham group (the view of the future. youth and for the rank and file members was maybe what spurred Transport Grantites were, as usual, silent) as fol- The Clilfites did not believemuch could of the SLL was that the SLL leaders, Houseto act. 'all lows: "Better hands off Cuba' than be done (until they developeda perspec- who had an unbreakable strangleholdon The right wing got a resolution tbrough the organisation, were not up to the job conference condemning Keep Left and 15 16

_ wr.w asking for an investigationinto allega- This was hypocrisy, of course,and just Despite Young Guard's statements in Keep Left was a decisive turning point tions that some of its supportershad a little obscenein the face of the tri- defence of the rights of Keep lzft, their for Keep l*ft and the YS. It succeeded violenceagainst opponents.David umphant Gaitskellite faction. Though it acceptanceby Transport House as the spectacularlyin maintaining the forces of used 'good', 'nice'lefrwingers, Todd, who made the allegations,later rnight have been necessarytactical bow- after they had KeepIzft and evenin building up the YS retracted them and said that the whole ing to superiorforces, in fact it was also a rnade big efforts to presentthemselves as in defianceof the witch-hunters and businesshad been a plot hatched by very pointed differentiation and separa- such, seened to many YSers the decisive bureaucrats.But it irnplied a YS separat- Gaitskellite MP, George Brown. tion from Keep Left,lvhish fstrght with- thing in characterisingthem. This ed from the Labour Party, and in the In fact violent clashesdid occur in out hypocrisy for the right of factions, reduced the credibility of Young Guards next two years, step by step, the logic London and Glasgow on May Day, and was moreover, the faction being tar- subsequent criticisms of Keep Left - spelleditself out. when Young Socialistsrushed the plat- gettedby the right wing just then. many of which gained point as the Keep Keep Left put forward policies for the forms: those involved were YoungGuard But it was not only just hypocrisy! They Zel leadership made serious errors, and YS that more and more implied casting (IS), not Keep l*ft. meant it about the Labour Party. The spun offinto the outer spaceofultraleft off the links with the Labour Party and In May 1962,following the conference Grantiteshad a long, long-term entry unrealism and sectarianism.In their own having the YS act as an open outright vote and the May Day clashes,Keep lzft project. The Cliffites - today's quasi- way, they helped Gerry Healy lead the revolutionary party. This in turn meant (which claimed a circulation of 10,500) syndicalistsectarians - were explicitly youth offinto the wilderness. that, to maintain the organisation's was proscribed. An investigationwas anti-Leninist and recruiting libertarian- momentum, all sorts of pretexts for agi- started into Young Guard (which claimed minded youth on that basis.They had an 1962-63:Keep Left steers tation and action had to be sought or 3,M0). Keep Left editor Roger hotz was evenlonger one, more vague and even invented. It pushed the forces of Keep expelledby St PancrasNorth Labour indeterminate. towardsbuilding its ownYS Left more and more into a self-sustained Party. In June, four members of the The subsequenteditorial ln Young mental ghetto and encouragedunrealism National Committee were suspended:Liz Guard explained that at their meeting Though banned by the Labour Party, in assessingthe state of the labour move- Thompson, Mike Ginsbergand Dave with the NEC representatives,they "laid Keep Left continued publication. This, as ment. Ultimately it led the SLL into Davis (KL) were eventually expelled, great stresson the democratic organisa- we shall see,had massiveimplications. counterposingits own small "party", and while Malcolm Tallantire (YG) was rein- tion of the paper and deniedbeing a fac^ In July 1962 the first issle of Keep lzft a small segmentof youth whoseradicali- stated.The remaining sevenNC mem- tion within the YS, pointing to the large since proscription appeared,announcing sation went quite a way ahead of the bers were told to either accept the NEC disparities in the view between IG sup- that the paper would continue despitethe working classand evenof the militants of 'unlike action or have the YS disbanded. porters". Read: the Trotskyists'. ban. Keep Zel supporters made tremen- the working class,who were looking Keep Left was banned. Young Guard In fact, Keep Left too had a general dous efforts to maintain circulation: it hopefully towards a Labour government was not. In July 1962 the NEC inter- meetingopen to its supporters,though was sold in "safe" YSs and by people after a dozenyears o[Toryism in power, viewed YG representatives(among them operatingunder tight control. When all is who travelled out of their own areas to to the actual development of the real Keith Dickinson of the Grant tendency) said and done, what Young Guard said sell where they were unknown to poten- labour movement. and threatenedto ban thepaper unless: about the differencesbetween the two tial witch-burners. When there was a very big radicalisa- . IG's'tone'improved, factionswas true. In the following six to nine months big tion of youth in the late 1960s,the SLL YG included in its aims a statement of The Cliffites would remain an open, advances were made in building YS cut itself o/from that that, mistaking its unconditional support for the return democratic organisation until the special branches, as Keep Left trtrned to a big own wishesfor reality and going over of a Labour government (this was conferenceof December 1971.which campaign around youth unemployment, into a style of politics reminiscentof Keep Left policy) and a declaration barred factions which had basic differ- which reacheda freak level at the end of third period(ultraJefr) Sralinism. that the YS was part of the Labour enceswith the group around Tony Cliff. 1962.(So did generalunemployment, Ultimately this was to lead to the more Party, They had a right to point this out, if it becauseof an exceptionally cold winter). or lesscomplete self-destruction of the IG was made open to a//YS oPinion, was to their political advantage.To do it In those campaigns,and despitethe ban, entire cadre of the old Trotskyist move- IG ceased to have speakers at readers' at the moment Keep Left was being the basis was laid for Keep Left to ment, for the secondtime in 15 years, meetings, as that gave the impression bannedwas to repudiateall left solidarity become the majority at the 1963 confer- and to Trotskyism not being capable of that IG was a faction. against the right wing and to greatly ence. Operating with a paper the selling capitalising on the great opportunities The National Editorial Board of Young embitter the already very bad relations of which merited expulsion from the for the growth of a revolutionary party '60s Guard, meeting in September, accepted within the YS Left. Labour Party increasedthe tension,the that emergedin the late and early - - '70s. these conditions, stating, "We have After this relations between Keep ltft rancour and the justified feelingsof always rejected the arguments of those and YouttgGuard were extremely poi- persecution of the Keep l-eft yotth. Keep Left's policy in the YS only who say that we should be building a fac- sonedand rancorous.It did not require They were at the mercy of Gerry reflected the political crisis of the tion within the YS. The YS, in its federa- malicious invention to put the story in Healy's bureaucratically enforced fan- Trotsklst movement. We can only deal tions etc., has all the nec€ssary organisa- circulation that IGhad done a deal with tasiesand delusionsof grandeur. briefly with that crisishere. The SLL had tions which we can utilise for the spread- Transport House as the price of toler- In retrospectit can be seenthat the beenthe British representativeof the ten- ing of socialist ideas". ance, or for it to be widely believed. decisionto defy the ban and continue dency led by JamesP Cannon, the 17 1a r,--- founder of American Trotskyism. drawn out factional strugglesin the Labour Party headquarterswas situated) cial Labour Party document, Signposts '60s '40s. In the early the SLL was in the Trotskyist movement of the At the as the rump YS NC was meeting. Under for the Sixties. Conferencepassed a course of breaking with Cannon, who, end of the '40s,most of the cadresdesert- this presswe, four of the remaining eight Young Guard resolution from Hackney with remarkable perception,diagnosed ed the rnovement,leaving the Healy fac' members resigned (three of them were against all H-bombs and all military as early as mid-1961 that the SLL was off tion, which had fought a five year strug- Young Guard supporters). They had alliances. This was voting for Young on an "Oehlerite (i.e. sectarian)binge". gle for an orientation to the Labour showed no signs of resigning before the Guard policy, while giving control to Disappointed by the reversalwhich Party, in control. It was a period of mas- rally! Two others walked out, without those who denounced such policies as Gaitskell inflicted on the Labour left and sivedefeat for the Trotskfsts throughout resigning.Of the 1962NC three had now treasonto the "workers' state"and polit- the Tribunite Left's failure to fight seri- the world, which took its toll everywhere. been expelled,four had resigned,and two ical scabbery! ously, the SLL began more and more to It threw the British Trotskfsts back to a had walked out of the meeting, leaving The new YS NC immediately launched counterposeitself artificially to the sectarianand authoritarian form of an NC of two. a big official YS campaign on youth labour movement, expressingitself more orga.nisationof the sort often to be found Outside the Scarborough YS confer- unemployment. The Tory government and more in a formalistic leftism and a in the workers' movement in period of encein Easter 1963there was a fairly big was heavily discreditedby now, and tot- destructiveorganisational sectarianism. immaturity, weaknessor defeat. Keep l*ft demonstration. The YS regis- tering towards defeatin 1964. The discovery that a YS rnovement In the early 1960s,the influx of raw tered a small advance:there were 365 del- Harold Wilson, a former Labour left could be maintained and built against young people freed the Healy leadership egates present, and 769 registered had succeededGaitskell as Labow leader Transport House after the proscription from the limited restraintsimposed by branches. early in 1963 and the Tribunite left was of Keep Icft led them to forget how lim- the relatively educated and experienced The drift of the Healy tendencyis illus- conciliated. The Labour Party regime ited were the forces involved in the YS, cadre of the earlier period, those who trated by the fact that at the beginning of would now swing slowly towards internal compared to the task for Marxists of had been formed politically in the battle 1963Roger Protz took out a writ in the toleranceand liberalism. The rule of the transforming the laboru movement. The against sectarianism.The dictatorial High Court seeking to have made null stone-ageright wingers, of the Gaitskell SLL's break with its internationalmen- Healy regime, vigorously assertingits and void the NEC decision making any- sect- the future SDPersof l98l - was tors gave free play to the SLL leaders' prerogativesat every point, linking its one associated with Keep Left ineliglble over. It would be 25 yearsbefore a pwg- characteristicwisMul thinking and ten- subjectivismand wishful thinking with for Labour Party membership!He also ing intolerant regime like the Gaitskell dency to mistake their own desiresand the politically healthy impatience of the sought a High Court declaration restor- regimereturned to the Labour Party. assertionsfor reality. Respondingto youth, and at the same time building its ing him to membership of St Pancras The YS NC organisedanother big rally both the impatience of the ex-CPerswith organisation with considerableability, North Labour Party. Psychologically, and lobby of Parliamentfor I I February Labour Party work, and the patienceand locked itself more and more away from this would be rationalised by Keep l*ft 1964. But the YS was not exactly thriv- - experienceof Cannon, Healy had added reality and from any considerationabout supporters then and by Militant $p- ing. The Brighton conference,at Easter the experienceof a valuableinnovation reality it did not want to face: everything porters in the early 1980swhen Militanl 1964,had 347 delegatesclaiming to rep- to the arsenal of the movement,by form- in the structure of the organisation was attempted to rely on the courts to save resent 25,000 members organisedin 722 ing an open organisationwithout aban- designedto do this as completely as the them from the right wing of the Labour branches(this would include "social" ele- '60s doning entryism. In the early he cut leadershipshould want to. There could Party - as using the right wing's friends ments in Keep Left branches). It was loosefrom Cannon. be no feedback from the membership in the bourgeoislaw courts against them. small enoughafter four years. Healy's make-believeand irresponsibili- other than what the leadershipwanted to But it was a breach of the principle of Again conferencerejected support for ty was to dominate the YS, especiallyin take into account. keeping the bourgeois state out of the Signpostsfor the SLrties,opposed immi- 1963-64. As time went by, Gerry Healy would affairs of the labour movement. Any pol- gration controls, and calledfor nationali- More than any mistakesin assessment want to take lessand lessinto account icy for maintaining an integration of rev- sation of the basicindustries under work- and analysis,more even than their politi excepthis own fantasiesand appetites, olutionaries in the labour movement ers' control. Again a Keep l*ft majority cal subjectivism, it was the bureaucratic locking himself into an infantile solip- which depends on the help of the law of 7 out of ll was returned for the - nature of the SLL which led them and a sism, and the organisation first into courts is fantastic as Militant found National Committee. section ol the YS to destruction.A grotesquesectarianism towards the out in the 1980s. Chairman John Robertson announced '70s, democraticorganisation allows the cor- labour movementand then, in the But somethingof decisiveimportance at conferencethat he would shortly be rection of mistakes,reassessment, the into lucrative mercenarypolitical odd job now occurred: Keep Left won a majority expelled for he had been caught removal of leading people who persist in work for Libya, Iraq and some of the on the NC. Keep Left supporters took red-handed selling Keep Left in a rural costly errors or pernicious practices.The sheikhs. seven of the ll NC sezts. Young Guard area of Scotland...Brighton was to be SLL had a savagelyrepressive internal took one. It was the openingof a new the last official YS conference for 18 regime which excluded all but a very 1963-64:The YS phase of YS history, though much confu- months. By the time of the next confer- small group of the top leaders,or maybe sion reigned. Political confusion was ence,the YS had split and the Labour all but one person, from effective underKeep Left leadership manifested still. The conferencewhich Party had reorganisedits remaining policy-naking and initiatives. This situa- In January 1963,a 1200 strong rally for gave the Healyites the leadership of the youth with a nervconstjtutioD and evena tion had been generatedby the long jobs assembledin Smith Square (where YS came closeto voting through the offi- new name.

19 20 The Labour 1964-65: the 1964conference in a violent harangue hostilities. The National Committee eagerto help them on their way. Partygoes for a purge, by John Robertson in which he said issued a YS manifesto, "Forward with As YoungGuard put it in September: Young Guard were nothing but Leftgoes for a split "scabs" the Young Socialists",with a foreword there was now a sulphurous smell of Keep and that those who were not 100% with by Dave Ashby, who had been removed witch-hunting in the air. According to Keep Left were 1000/oagainst them. "Get as YS chairman by simply being told that later SLL-WRP myth, what happened In 1964,for the secondyear running out of our way or we'll go over your bod- he was no longer on the books of the next is that the Labour Party leaders Keep Left had the majority on the YS ies", he warned, and repeatedthe warn- Labour Patty in Leeds. At a meeting of expelledthe YS, which refusedto be NC. But the Labour Party bureaucracy ing. Scuffles between YG and KI sup- the YS NC in August this manifesto was snuffedout, choosingindependence stood in the way of developingthe YS on portersfollowed. passed, 7 for (all Keep Left) and one instead.In fact there wereexpulsions and left politics, and the imminent General Roger Protz, Keep Left's editor, abstention (Roger Rosewell, a supporter purges,there were closures,sometimes Election spurred on the bureaucracy to resignedafter that meeting. Earlier (in of YoungGuard;he later becameIS/SWP the police were called to remove recalci- settle with Keep Left. 1962),the main organiser of Keep Left's industrial organiser, and is now a trant YSers,but therewas no suppression They began to pick off the leadersof YS faction, Gavin Kennedy, had left the witch-hunter). of the YS as such. The leaders of the Keep Left John Robertson was duly tendency. Now a left buffer began to September'sKeep l*ft carried a stirring Keep Left tendencydecided on an organ- expelled.Dave Ashby, his replacementas form between Keep Left and Young and defiant clarion call by John ised break with the Labour Party in the chairman of the YS, quickly followed. Guard and Transport House, as Keep Robertson which expressedthe "go it face of the witch-hunting and limited And now Keep l*ft gave increasingsigns Lcft genercteda left wing opposition to alone" perspective of KI. "The time to expulsions,and thereafterthey set out, of being willing for a break with the its coursetowards split, independentof fight is now", he insisted."At Brilhton by being awkward and provocative in Labour Party. the extremelyfactional and factionally at Easter we passeda policy for a real local Laboru Parties and elsewhere,to At the time of the Easter 1964YS con- motivated Grant and Cliff tendencies fight and an end to the shadow-boxingof have as many people as possibleexpelled ference there were already whispers (though IS eventually absorbed most of Wilson and his cronies... and branchesclosed down. The bureau- about plans for a "Young Marxist it). "Conference decided policies and elect- cracy did not needmuch provocation! Alliance" which could throw off the Outside the YS a movement of engi- ed an NC to carry them out. 7 out of I I Finally, tte Keep Left NC majority Labow Party shacklesand go on to build neering apprenticesbegan to be built, are faithful to conference policies. announcedthat it was calling a confer- a real rnassyouth movement. Initially and Keep Left saw the possibility of the 'Forward with the YS' expressesthose ence of the YS independentof the Keep Left denied such a perspective. YS fusing with this movement.Also in policies, and those who call themselves bureaucracyfor February 27-28 1965, Events, however, had their logic. the summer of 1964 gangs of youths, YS must standby the manifesto. and invited everyYS memberto attend. Transport House attackedrelentlessly: rivals in dressand lifestyles,the "Mods" "We will unite with anyone who is pre- To stop the split a rather feeble "Save an election was looming and the YS with (early Beatlesstyle) and old-fashioned pared to fight for the policies of the man- the YS campaign" was started, capable its militant and distinct policies could not "Rockers" rioted and fought each other ifesto. of attracting only 200 to a meeting in be allowed to "embarrass" the leadersof in variousplaces. Keep Left hailed this as "At Brighton we told the bureaucrats London in October 1964, despitehaving the Labour Party. Keep Left was more the "revolt of the youth", a revolt unfor- we would not tolerate witch-hunts and the support of Tribune, the ex-Keep and more isolated,and more and more tunately in advanceof the capacity of the expulsions.We meant exactly that. Lefters such as Kennedy and Protz, the hard core looked for salvation to YS to give it leadership...But with an "We will not tolerate them. We will Young Guard, Militant (which published youth. recruiting raw effort theywould catchup... fight on irrespectiveof the actions of the its first issuein October 1964)and the The parallel witln Militant in Scotland The attractionsof an independentYS (forerunner 's bureaucracyand the right wing. As far as "Nottingham Group" of at the height of the poll tax campaign is under Keeplef exclusivecontrol could we are concerned,they can go to hell, Socialist Outlook and Socialist Action). striking. only be enhancedby such events,and the with a well-placedboot frorn us in the The Labour Party leaderscontributed to "Social" brancheshad originallybeen a leadershipof the Healy tendencymade rear to help them on their way. "saving the YS" by issuing a circular valuable 'Fight technique for starting to draw good use of them. Keep Left organiseda "Forward to the September27 telling people not to attend the meeting. working class youth to a political YS. lobby of the Labow Party NEC in June the Tories' demonstration. They were entirely for the secessionof Increasingly,under pressureof the against the expulsion of John Robertson "For a Labour government with social- KeepLeft! witch-hunt, they becamea substitute for and the closingdown of StreathamYS. ist policies". and an alternative to any politics other Tlne Keep kft NC majority organised a The style of this piece of raving unreal- than the current, often arbitrarily select- "Fight the Tories" campaignculminating ism suggeststhat Gerry Healy wrote it. It 1965:A revolutionaryyouth ed, "campaign" (fight the Tories, defend in a demonstration on 27 September inverts the real relationship of forcesin movementl John Robertson) or the current demon- which numbered 1,500people: critics the world outside Gerry Healy's head. stration. The turnover of youth, always a pointed to the rawnessof most partici- The tragedy now was that the leadership Was there not a caseto be made for the feature of Keep l*ft, increaseddramati- pants. of the Young Socialistswas in the hands policy of taking the youth outside the cally. In the late summer of 1964branches of of people capable of hypnotising them- Labour Party straitjacketand continuing The hysterical atmosphereinside the the YS began to be shut down. Keep l*ft selveswith senselessbombast like this. to build? left burst out at the Keep l*ft meeting at did not retreat: instead,it steppedup the The Labour Party leaderswere all too It must dependon an assessmentof the

21 22

Effi-' situation. For all the bluster, Keep l*ft wasunbalanced and hysterical. eventuallyjoined IS). from similar beginningsin 1960and in was a very small force: so was the entire The parallel with Mililant now is strik- youth-centred 1500appren- YS. It was ludicrous to pretend that YS ing here too, Whatever "good" reasons The same conc€rnmeant 1951.In September1964, that shrill denunciation (occasionallyjus- tices part a one-daystrike. A conferencedecisions could be counter- can be cited for what Militanl is doing, took in tified. often not) the CP in industries committee was elected.Keep Left, the posed to the official policies of the the peoplewho ran the ridiculous Walton of such as the ports, for the propagandist Communist League,Mililanl, aDd Labour Party without a complete break. by-electioncampaign, and, among other Young enlightenment of youth on the "essen- others were represented.Bending to the This break could only lead to the things, thereby allowed the right wing to tial" nature of Stalinism, replaced untutored militancy of angry apprentices, hiving-off of a small youth group with remove Dave Nellist and Terry Fields responsibleconcern with unity in the it set the date for a strike. The Keep l*ft someideas to make propagandafor. Was from parliament, are politically unbal- class struggle.In the dock strike of 196?, minority on the committee opposed this that desirable then, was it responsible anc€dand irrational. for instance,the SLL pursueda vicious action as premature. Almost certainly revolutionarypolitics in the situation? The SLL developed ludicrous theories propaganda war against the Communist this judgement was correct. Did they The SLL reprinted articles by Trotsky about the possibilityof a short cut to a Party, some of whose rnemberswere acceptthe decision of the strike commit- dealing with the situation in France in rruss revolutionary organisation via "the fighting the port reorganisationin tee majority? Not the "majority of the 1935.The French SocialistParty bureau- youth", as if it were possible artificially alliance with revolutionaries, with YS"! They now consideredthemselves cracy had started to move against the and at will to separatea generation of Workers' Fight, for example. This the anointed leaders,by right, of the revolutionary leadersof the Socialist youth from the generalexperience of the replacementof the real strugglewith youth - of all youth. They broke away youth. Trotsky arguedfor a bold orienta- classand the labour movement. was part the committee and denounced the tion to building an independentparty: In reality they went marching out with newspapercommentaries of the from processof losing touch with reality and YCLers and Militant for deliberately the situation was fast becoming revolu- a few thousandmainly raw youth, organ- with the real working class and the real betraying the apprentices.Then they tionary, war and fascism threatened, ised by a few hundred revolutionaries, labour movement. announceda date (9 March 1965)on their leaderswanted to "make docile can- foolishly proclaiming that they had which they would call their own appren- non lodder of the youth" for French defeated the Labour bureaucracy. They tices' strikel On 2 November they toured imperialism and to beat down opposition went chasingtheir will-of-the-wisp on the 1964-65:From engineeringfactories with leaflets telling to the SP's alliance with the bourgeois eve of one of the most important experi- apprenticesnot to strike. In Manchester Radicals in the Popular Front. ences of the working class with splitti ng to strike-breakint they even physically attacked But for the Healy tendency to hive reformism in government,removing their The 1964turn was a twn away from the ("counter-revolutionary") YCLers' trying themselvesoff in 1964,on the eve of a sectionof the revolutionaryyouth from tabour movement and frorn the work of to bring apprenticesout. Labour government, after they had been the strugglein the political labour move- transforming it, and it was to prove irre- The strike was a failure. It is difficult to working in the Labour Party for 16 ment. versible for the Healy tendency. assesswhat degreeor responsibilityfor years! was political nonsense.The One consequenceof this was that after Impatience with the ternpo of develop- this rested with the sectarian strike "brave" talk was toytown politics, rightly 1966,when the Labour Government ment in the working classmovement and breakers.When the date came in March seenby Wilson and Co. as aiding them. secureda majority in the March election what the YS-decreedstrike, nothing at all And the leaders of Keep l*ft had a big (thus losing its excuses)and then weDt on wishful thinking about could be for done outside the labour movement with a happened. They vaguely announced a element of choice - a free choice on a witch-hunting binge against striking small section of youth (and a good print- new date in May, which was eventually whether to take all their forces out. seamenand introduced a statutory wage ing press!)led the Healy tendencyto abandoned.Keep l*ft blusteredand jus- A policy of setting up an independent freeze in July, the sincere reformist what became- for all their bluster - a tified itself. revolutionary YS might logically not activistssimply beganto drop away from sectarian-abstentionistsurrender to the Though the actual strike-breakerswere have prevented a section of the youth the Labow Party. Had the earlier sectari- dorninant reformist bureaucracyin the politically immature lads, the sectarian from also being individual rnembersof an bloodlettingin the YS not occurred, labour movement. ultraJeftism here was not of the sort that the Labour Party. In 1965the SLL lead- probably they could have been organised That the break with the Labour Party was widely seenafter 1968 - anarchic, ers occasionallytalked of things like this to give the Wilson governmenta difficult was the product of a qualitative political schematic,youthful ardour, impatience, for the future. passage. degenerationand ofhysteria was demon- unrealism and lack of tempering. But if the SLL leadershad beencapable Servicingthe YS as an independent strated to anyone still capableof learning Essentiallywhat happenedwas that the of such a balancedpolicy and strategy organisationdemanded more aDd more (or still needing to learn) by the eventsof SLL leadersattempted to submit sections then they would neverhave allowed of the efforts and attention of the entire 1964,when the seceding"rev- of struggling youth to their own bureau- themselvesto be pushed into a break SLL cadre,a few hundred strong. By November in strikebreak- cratic ukase - and ordered their youth with the Labour Party on the eve of the 1965,for example,building worker mili- olutionary" YS engaged with typical bureaucratic bru- formation of the first Labour govern- tants in Manchester were being ing! to behave mainly in tality when they were "disobeyed". ment in 13 years,an event which would harangued and browbeaten into accept- Apprentice engineers, Manchesterand Liverpool, had begun to Trotsky once pointed to the bureau- (and did) allow millions of workers to ing that their industrial work was unim- organise an unofficial movement around cratic commandismat the heart of the learn about political reformism from portant comparedwith organising"revo- wagesand conditions. A big unofficial ultra-leftism of the Stalinists'"Third experience.The point is that the break lutionary" youth clubs. (Some of them national apprentices'strike had come Period" (1928-34),which separatedit 23 24 tTT:, 1

I l from "naive" ultraleftism: the attempted Britain of raising the call "Build the end of a definite period for the YS. In the the new constitution, thus preservingthe early '60s extensionoutwards to the generallabour Revolutionary Party!" as a central slo- it had been politically centre YS as somethingof a political youth stage, with movement and even to the working class gan. (It had, I believe,been used in a more or less clear field for movement, development as a youth as a whole of the bureaucraticinternal France by the Frank-Bleibtreu faction in socialist organi- At a private sessionthe delegates,by a sation. The 1964-65split regime in Stalin's Comintern. (Becauseof 1946-8,and by the Lambertists in marked a defeat very large majority, rejectedthe new con- for socialist youth, - its bureaucratic inner structure, it was 1952-58).Today, it is commonplacein a defeat centrally the stitution on all points. responsibility of the also - like the Healyites - capable of Britain. The people who mocked the Labour bureaucracy, The platform had to respond to the but which negating itself to the right, "effortless- Healyitesfor it, and called it "toytown happened also becausethe determinationof delegatesto deal with ly"). In the apprentices'strike the Bolshevism", in the mid '60s - the leadersof the old Trotskyist movement politics either by closing down their con- bureaucratic and commandist leadership Young GtardtlS-SWP group - picked it failed the revolutionary youth. A mass ferenceor by bending. It bent, for the of the SLL attempted to extendthe meth- up in the '70s, and now they, too, use YS had not been built. The character of most part. On the secondday the plat- ods of their internal life to a sectionof "Build the Revolutionary Party!" as the the Wilson government, especially after form successfullyblocked resolutions the movement. It was a qualitative step answer to most current political prob- 1966,made the YS far from attractive to being taken on Vietnam, Rhodesia, and in a self-cutting-off processwhich led to lems. militant and socialist youth in the late anti-union laws (which the government '60s. great - the deepisolation of the SLL. It signalled In the 1960sit did the Healyitesno The youth mobilisation after was threatening) but the LPYS had 1967 was pass a further loss of awarenessof reality for good! The youth were organisedalways to tleerump LPYS by survived. (while the Keep the closed-inleaders of the SLL. on the perspectiveof imminent revolu- Left fS hid from it). The Malvern conferenceregistered 605 Prospectsof real development did not YS branches tionary crisis, and sent on one campaign in existence,117 less than open again until after 1970,and by then the 1964conference. Since in nurny after another. Certainly by the nid-'60s areas KeepLeft after the 1965split the LPYS had other problems. Now rump branches survived (probably earlier) the SLL leadershipwas despite severe Militant was in control. losses In February 1965the Morecambeconfer- using this as a cynical technique.The fact in the split, and a number of dead brancheswould ence called by the Keep Left YS NC that the perspectivesof the SLL were still be on the books, it judge majority was attended by 1,000people. It always quickly falsified led to a rapid How Milrtont would be misleadingto the effects declareditself to be the YS from then on, turnover in membership. Many of the of the split only from the absolutefall in wit}: Keep l*ft as its official paper: effec- cadresdropped away in the mid-'60s, tainedcontrol of the YS the number of branches. Actual numbers tively it becamethe youth wing of the Ashby and Robertson for example. of individual membersare difficult to get SLL which now went off on an Robertson,who ate state-capitalist After the Keep Left breakaway in hold of. In 1970,the olficial report said "Oehlerite binge" to end all Oehlerite "scabs" for breakfast in 1964, was February 1965,many thought it possible that the averagemembership of YS binges, and whose central sloganbecame knocking around with Leeds IS in that the YS would be scrappedentirely. brancheswas 12;in 1972it wassaid to be "Join the SLL, build the revolutionary 1968-9,and later went to the CP. The NEC reorganisedit instead. 18,in 1973,8. An averageof 12 in 1965 (perhaps party". For them, the party became an The Healy regime destroyedreal politi- The Blackpool conference of the on the high side) would give a Labour Party, meeting in October 1965, entity separatefrom history, from soci- cal life. From about 1956systematic figure of about 7,500left out of a claimed acceptedproposals from Labour's NEC 25,000at the ety, and even from politics (their politics lying about political opponentsand their Easter 1964conference to change the constitution of the LPYS (which was also probably an inflated fig- were wildly unstable), when the needsof positions becamea prominent featwe of so that: ure, in terms of real its onanisticdevelopment required it. It the SLL. Surviving cadres suddenly had membership). . YS NC members would be appointed The (the was concernedessentially only with its to acceptthe line that Ernest Mandel and Cliff tendency future SWP) own growth and survival, by almost any Michel Pablo had supported the Russian by the regional Labour Parties, not began to focus more and more on work meansand on any conditions,and irre- invasion of Hungary in 1966- some- electedby conference; directedto industrial militants. . spective of its relationship to the labour thing none of them had ever heard about There should be no discussionof poli- By 1967-68Young Guard had drifted (without movement and the working class;irre- until a decadeafter it allegedlyhappened! tics, no generalpolitical resolutionsfor out of the YS the ISiSWP ever spective too of what damage techniques Nevertheless,many of them - all those conference,only motions dealing with formally decidingto leave). such as systematicllng would do to that who "survived" this period - swallowed specialyouth problems; The YS now was left to Wilsonites. . movement. it. Then when the great mass movement Delegatesto YS conferencewould Tribunites and to the Militant. par- To "maintain" his party - and his own againstthe Vietnam war eruptedin 1967, have to be ratified by their local In 1967there were 532 registeredYS ties. princely bureaucraticlifestyle - Healy and a vast new ultraleft youth radicali- branches,but only 216 delegatesat con- The first conferenceunder the new con- ference.In 1969,there were 386 branch- would in the 1970s,after much political sation started,the sectarianSLL, Iinding stitution was set for November 1965.at es, dead brancheshaving been removed ngzaggsng,sell it as a spying agency(on "its" territory encroachedupon, could Malvern. 234 branchessent delegates from the lists: since there were Arab dissidentsand Jews)to various only denouncedI, isolating itself from the only 150 (there had been 347 delegatesat the last delegatesto conference,perhaps Arab governments,bourgeois or worse. post-1968radicalisation. It is a grim and the at Brighton, Easter pruning was It should be noted that it was now - tragic story, but we will not follow it YS conference, 1964). not ruthless enough. from Healyites,in the mid-'60s - that beyondthis point. In the course of the conferencethe dele- Militant becamea majority on the NC in gateswent a long way towards ripping up the elections the 1969 the notion first made its appearancein The secessionof Keep Left rnarked the regional between

25 26 f '70 and conference. In 1970, at the first Nevertheless,the Labour Party, far from Bevan, was made official Labour partv conference in which Militant had the NC opposingit, was often in support, mend- dent... They dare not lift afinger at the Youth Officer, it made ljttle majority, there were only 126 delegates ingits fenceswith the unions. A trickle of differenceto present time" (Militant, Decamber the dullnessand passivity of the yS. (457 branches registered). The YS had militants and socialistsbegan to enter the 1965/January1966). Militant supporters Militant stood on the opposite pole declined and shrivelled - and Militant Labour Party. to who tried to start organisinga campaign the positive qualities of youth had come into its ov/n. The LPYS's incapacity to relate to the in socialist were quickly rebuked. Some of them and working classpolitics -- radicalisedyouth in 1967-8and after ardour, (who later founded Socialist Organiser) combativity, willingnessto take rists meant that it was lessstrong than it and produced a comprehensivecritique of The YS under Militont shake up old structures, the ..What might have been for the struggleagainst impatient Militant's theory and practice: we belief that they themselves, Between 1969and 1987,Militant had full the Tories. But the 1970swere very here and are and what we must become". (They now, can accomplish something political control of the LPYS, colluding favourable times for the YS to grow. It in the were refused the right to circulate it class struggle and for incongruously with the bureaucracyfor a did grow a bit. socialism. With insidethe Militant groDp). Militant, it was "all talk and decadeand a half. But the Milirant fS did nothing resolution- In its April 1967editorial, commenting ary activity". Previously, leftists had been at daggers remotely like what should have beenpos- on the YS conference,Militont wrote: Year after year, Militant drawn wjth the bureaucracy (Keep kft) sible for a Marxistled national youth boastedabout "...although a syndicalistinterpretation "the best YS conferenceever',. was or shared an edgy mutual contempt with organisation affiliated to a mass labour It all could be given to the last paragraph of hollow and feeble,and collapsedvery the Hornsey it (Young Guard). Militant worked out a movementwhicb was engagingin some- '80s, resolution,which used the fast in the mid when 'rank modus vivendi with the bureaucracy. times semi-revolutionary struggles Militant fell formula of and file corrmittees at victim to the defeat of the left and the Through years of responsiblework, it againstthe Tory govermnent. the point of production', both at the rightward lurch of the Labour partv. won their toleranceto put its own resolu- The YS was a propagandistextension Tribune meeting and the Militant meet_ In 1987,the YS had its structures tions, and their confidencethat nothing of Mililant, not a lighting youth move- shat- ing, supporters of this journal explained tered, and the maximum age limit for much would come of it. ment concernedwith the strugglesand that this was an incorrect course to rec- membershipreduced, breaking Milit ant's Before Militar,t took control, John the interests(social, intellectual, sexual, ommend to a YS conference.[It is of control. Militant put up no fight Ewers, an (appointed) NC member wrote cultural, as well as political) of the work- against course very important for revolutionarv this destruction of the YS, tamely in Militant (September1967): "The YS ing classyouth around it. accept- socialiststo warn the Parliament-orieni- ing it. Today, the LPYS is a small, should aim to recruit youth to its ranks The YS was a strangelybackward polit- shaky, ed Tribunites againstsyndicalism.l '70s shadow organisation. on a massbasis. It can only do this effec- ical backwater.Conferences in the "While it is obvious that all indepen- tively with a national, regionaland local rejectedresolutions in favour of gay dent action by the working class,includ- organisation, elected by and responsible rights that would have got through a Militantand the classstruggle ing the formation of rank and file com- to the YS themselves...The NC must be Young Liberal conferenc€with ease. mittees,deserves the support of every yS The Militant period of the LpyS electedby the membersthemselves, at YS ln 1974,the YS, following Militant was member,it is incorrect to hold out the shaped by the politics of Militant in 'at conferenc€,at which there should be no argumentsabout 'working classunity', ttte prospect of activity the point of pro- formative yearsofthe late 1960s. duction' restrictionon the topicsdiscussed..." failed to give support to black strikers at '60s, as an alternative to the struggle In the middle and late the role In 1968 the curbs were easedand Imperial Typewriters,Leicester, locked of for a political, socialistprogramme with- giving a political lead to the workinc regional elections were introduced for in conflict with racist white workers in the broad labour movement. Indeed, class(in so lar as one wasgiven), againJ NC members. John Ewers hailed this as (though in 1917,the YS did turn to 'its the industrial struggle of the working own' party in power, fell to the shop "half a step forward" (Militant, April attempting to organiseblack youth, in classwill inevitably spill over into the stewards' movement and then to the 1968).But once Militant got control in the very peculiar form of the British trade union branchesand the wards, TUC, who were forced into a 1969,it agreed, hand in hand with youth branch of the JamaicanPeople's head-on CLPsand TradesCouncils..." clash with the Labour Governmenr Labour Party HQ, to exploit the bureau- National Party). over "Despite the numerical weakness,', its attempted anti-union legislation,.In cratic structure whereby a National When the Anti-Nazi League mobilised Mililant continued, "this conferencecan Place of Strife' (1969). yS Committee not electedat conference youth in 1978on a bigger scalethan any- The made assistthe regenerationof the yS. If the oppositional sounds about dominated it completely. thing since the Vietnam movement or the political issuesare clarified, a clear pro- Government'spolicies, but played Until about 19'14,a sizeableTribunite CND (and working c/assyouth particu- little graurme(particularly on youth demands, role in the decisivestruggle. group still existed in the LPYS, debating larly), only the left-wing minority in the etc.) is worked out, and the yS refrain Militant's reaction to the Donovan .leftism' witt. Militant After that. it declined YS showedany interestin intervening. from indulging in the infantile Commission, which provided sharply. After 1970, Labour was out of T}l.eMilitant majority were content to the characteristicof previous years, it can Government with guidelines office and no longer a millstone around reassurethemselves that only the mass for help to invigorate the TU branchesand anti-trade union action, for example,was the CLPs. It can disseminate the YS's neck. The classstruggle intensi labour movement, armed with a socialist 'No the ideas a lead article saying to Legislation', fied until it blew Heath out of Downing programme, could finally deal with outlined at the Llandudno conferenceto but explaining that there was no point Street in 1974.This was still an industrial racismand fascism. the active layers of the movement". The organisingany campaign."The hollow- - struggle, in its methods and in its focus. Even when Militant supporter, Andy YS the entire body of an allegedly ness of the employers' threats is evi- mass youth movement - was onlv to 27 2A '-=: I " __- make abstract socialistpropaganda. of dramatic world eventsthat might have Activity in the CLPs and so on was beendesigned as an effectivectash course tion, i e. of political overthrow of the Essentiallythe Grantites believedthem- counterposedto the real class struggle of in revolutionarypolitics (all that was bourgeoisie and liquidation of its eco- selvesto exist before their proper histori- 'missing' that time, and used as an excuseto keep was an experienceshowing up nomic domination, should in no case cal time. (Their "perspective" was like the YS distant and aloof from it. Militant Mao-Stalinismand populism). And the during the preseDttransitional period the sort of view of the world, and their counterposed(propaganda for)'the youthlearned... hjnder us from advancing, when the own placein it, which the most pedantic socialistprogramme' to the classstruggle But the YS could rnake nothing of the occasion warrants, the demand for the of the Russian Marxists drew from the expropriation of severalkey branches conviction that at the point of production (or, as it was opportunities.The spontaneouslyrevolu- of the RussianRevolution A industry vital for national existenceor of could only be bourgeois, and that the to be in the following Years,in the tionaryyouth wereraw and'ultraJeft'. the most parasitic group of the bour- preordainedprotagonists in it were the streets). serioussocialist youth movement would geoisie. The difference between these bourgeoisie. The Tribune left was True, the great industrial victories were have dealt with this by immersingitself in for example on Vietnam. demands and the muddle-headed M tJitant's "bowgeoisie"!) unable to changesociety even after bring- their struggles, 'nationalisation' reformist slogan of lies Militant really did not think there was ing down Heath, becausethe Political The LPYS, shrivelledand afflicted in the following: (l) we reject labour movemenlwas in the hands of the increasinglyby Militant's passivity,could indemnifi- much they could do in the Labour Party. partici- (2) '40s, Lib-Lab reformists. The militant workers do nothing of the sort. It did not cation; we warn the massesagainst In the their tendencyhad refusedto (unless join who defeated the Tories had no political pate in the Vietnam movement demagoguesof the People's Front who, the Labour Party; they eventually giving joined alternative to them. exc€ptthe right-wing you count a few sellersof Mililant on lip serviceto natjonalisation, gaveup and only on the basisthat Labour leaders. demonstrations).The Years of the remain in reality agentsof capital; (3) we nothing much could be done outside But those who, like Militant, had coun- upsr[ge were the years of the organisa- call upon the massesto rely only upon either. They had a strange combination (4) passivity terposed passivepropagandist politics to tional nadir of the YS. Theywere also the their own revolutionary strength; we of dull in the present,and bland question the direct action struggle,contributed in years whenMilitant gainedthe NC major- link up the of expropriation optimism about the day after tomorrow. with that of seizure of power by the Witness their own small way to that great defeat. ity. T\e Militant'Marxist' YS was born the headlines in Militant; of workers and farmers." "Rhodesia: White settlersforced to come In an active and explosivelabour move- away from the strugglesand storms Militant required centrally of its sup- to terms" Silverman, May 1966]. ment crying out for an organisation that period. [Julian porters that they accept a view of the June 1966editorial: "a Tito solution"for capable ofproviding an all-sidedintegra- future. This "perspective" would inspire Vietnam, i.e. a neutral, independent tion of the class struggle- of the politi- perspective" "The them while they made general socialist Vietnam "as predicted in Militant and cal, economic and ideologicaldimensions propaganda, integrated themselvesas then - Militant's passivepropagandist ver- The specific and distinguishing political cit- later by De Gaulle and [Robert] - of sion of 'politics' was the mirror image of idea of Militant was the view theY izens the labour movement, and wait- Kennedy". February 1967editorial: - 'pure' direct-action trade unionism. called it a "perspective" that in its ed for it to "evolve". "Imperialism trapped in Vietnam", etc, Militant's approach would cripple the future evolution, the broad labour move- The Militant saw themselvesas waiting etc,ad nauseam. grow, YS as a youth movement- it would ment, and the Labour PartY, too, would for "the perspective" to develop, This combination was the basis for the help ensurethat the great youth revolt of becomea massrevolutionary movement. malure, ripen. ln this processthe class incredible "patience" Militant prided '60s struggle be the themselves '60s. the late was too often channelled They would sometimespoint to the many could at best excusefor a on in the late passed sermonabout socialism. believed into pseudo-anarchismand petit-bour- toothless"socialist" resolutions Militant itself to be embedded to show that "The perspective"said that as the in an unfolding "deformed world revolu- geois"leftism". by trade union conferences It labour movement ripened, the "next tion". "Workers' states"were multiply- In 1967,a mass oPPositionto the the movement was well on its waY. with stage", which was inevitable and could ing fast - Syriain 1963,Burma in 1965, Vietnam war took to the streets,hun- would become effectively socialist not be bypassed(the big crime of the and subsequentlymany others, in Africa dreds of thousandsstrong. It had the time, and Militant's ProPagahda. of Healyite SLL was seento be that it tried and elsewhere. dimensionsof the CND movement which Their model of socialismwas that "nationalisa- to bypassit) was the developmentof a Militant placed a very high value then had aided the growth of the early YS - 1940s-stylebureaucratic wing" probably and powers but it was a great deal more militant. tion", summeduP in slogansabout "mass left around later on their accurate ofpre- In the course of 1967-8these rebel "nationalising" "the 200" or "250 Tribune. The Militant could only ual, dictionl youth came out solidlY for the monopolies".In YS branchesin the doing routine work and making propa- Ted Grant could be heard describing passionate Vietnameseagainst US imperialism' mid-'60s there would be ganda for this development."Premature" Marxism as "the scienceof perspective Then, in May 1968, the general strike in debatesbetween Militant and supporters struggle,conflict with the bureaucracy, and prediction".Passive propaganda and was cen- France demonstrated once more the of the future SWP about which or even attempts to go out and organise a labour movementroutinism, combin- con- power and potential of the working ciass. tral: "nationalisation" or "workers' the Labour left would be more harmful ing propagandafor "socialism" with pas- than useful. would sionatebelief picture In August, the iuvasion of trol". Dogmatically "Trotskyist", The "Perspective" be in Ted Grant's of in the its own midwife. the evolution of large parts of the world Czechoslovakiabrought home to the Mililant ignored such passages This was their big difference with the towards socialism,and of the British radical youth the nature of Russian 1938programme as this: proto-lMG, who tried to organisethis labour movement towards active com- Stalinism. It was a conc€ntratedsequen@ "The socialistprogramme of expropria- expectedLabour broad left. mitment to socialism:that was Militant. 29 30 The d6bacle timetables and scenarios and Old Moore's Almandc-typepredictions for the Militant's growth from the LPYS in the futwe. And Militant's practical conclu- 1970sand early 1980swas limited, but it sions from thesescenarios and "perspec- was enough to make it one of the bigger tives" was to settleinto waiting in the mi groups on the left. Labour Party and YS as one waits for a Labour's Militant's political ideas servedit as train to a desireddestination. But politics rationalisations rather than cutting tools. doesnot run on preJaid tracks! 1959-87 Abstract and essentiallypreposterous Militant solacedits youth, and recon- -vouth, generalpropaganda - like "Labour to ciled them to its dull routines. with the power with socialistpolicies" demanding myths of an ever-expandingworking class nothing less than the full socialistpro- revolution spreadingslowly across the gramme from gentlemenlike Wilson and globe, albeit "for now" led by the Callaghan! - was often counterposedto Stalinistsand others. the day-to-day nitty-gritty details of the It was all myth and nonsense.But the nec€ssarystruggle against these people. network o[ Labour Party YS branches Its abstract propaganda notion of the connectedto the constituency Labour socialist struggle- calling for nothing Parties gave Militant a large base for its lessthan the "nationalisation" of every- propaganda and a trelliswork - sub- Seedbed thing, while doing nothing about it - sidisedby the Labour Party! - on which could appear very radical and Marxist to to thread its own growing organisation, young people in the YS and also, para- togetherwith a stableroutine of meetings doxically, avoid conflict with the labour and national affairs. Party leadership. Its manner of growth, its links with the Militant thus turned irreplaceableideas Labour bureaucracywhile it grew, must into harmful caricatwes - for example be unique in the history of self-pro- left the idea that socialistsmust relate strate- claimed revolutionary organisations. of the gically to existingmass labour move- Made unstable since 1987,it is now jetti- ments, with the long term perspectiveof soningits past, and its long-time prophet, The origins of today's far-left groups transforming them, was rendered by and striking out into political - and Militant into absurd, precise, detailed organisational- terra incognita.

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