ernment. On the contrary, they are already far down the road travelled by their left' predecessors, whose actions and policies paved the The problem for Labour when it took office in 1929 was that socialism its declared objective - was seen as something which would be gradually legislated through the redistribution of the fruits of a prosperous capitalism. Unfortunately the state of capitalism in 1929 and the succeeding years was anything but prosperous.
To restore the fortunes of capitalism was thus seen as the Labour Government's first priority. Its policy was aptly expressed by Herbert Morrison, Minister for Transport, after less than a month in office: 'I want every business man and every business manager to realise that the Labour Government is not their enemy, but that every Minister in this Government wants to take him by the hand, treat him as a man and brother, and help to make his commercial or industrial enterprise more successful than it has been in the past."
Measures of capitalist rationalisation rather than socialist nationalisation thus became the keynote of Government policy. Ramsay MacDonald, elected on a promise to cure unerployment, told that well-known working class body the Oxford Union Society: I have deliberately, and will continue deliberately, to proceed on the basis of a process of rationalisation in industry, which must for weeks increase unemployment figures. I have got to do this in the interests of the country.' DAY DREAMS When the pinprick of the Government failed to have any noticeable effect in curbing the ravages of the rogue eleplant of international capitalism, the conclusion Labour drew was not to launch a campaign of measures to replace that bankrupt system with a socialist planned economy, but to rely on the hope of better things to come. In July 1930 the Chancellor, Philip Snowden, predicted economic recovery by the end of the year. Even as late as April 1931 the Daily Herald was optimistically announcing that a real revival of trade is in sight... there are definite signs of recovery'.
While awaiting this happy day the Government and its supporters saw no alternative but to keep capitalism going whatever the 'sacrifices' needed. The consequences of this policy for the working class were rapidly to become apparent. Unemployment shot up by leaps and bounds, so that by 1931 it had reached the staggering total of 2,707,000. Yet the Unemployment Insurance Bill introduced in late 1929 by the Minister for Labour, Margaret Bondfield, failed to provide for the promised increase in benefits except in some marginal by police intervention, as a result of which seven pickets were sent to jail.
Opposition to all these anti-working class policies was muted in the extreme inside the Parliamentary Labour Party. After all, they accepted the basic premise behind them - that it was necessary to revive capitalism as a prelude to any serious reforms - even while they might sometimes jib at the consequences. As a result, they reacted for the most part like a load of damp cement, as Jennie Lee of the ILP was to put it.
Of course occasional pockets of hot air would form every once in a while, to explode with a loud pop but little discernible effect. When the Unemployment Insurance Bill was published in late 1929, the left vowed to fight it 'tooth and nail' - - but only 13 of them actually voted against it on the second reading, even though it then still contained a clause.to put the onus on the claimant that he was 'genuinely seeking work' (later withdrawn under pressure from the TUC).
In the autumn of 1930 a left-wing amendment to the King's Speech criticising the Government for its failure to implement socialist reorganisation' of industry mustered just 13 votes, although the hard-line members of the Independent Labour Party and other 'lefts' supposedly accounted for more than 40 Labour MPs. Even on the second reading of the Anomalies Bill, on 15 July 1931, only 19 Labour MPs could be found to vote against the Even those who voted against the Government did so more as a gesture than anything else. The ILP, for all its talk about massive taxation and widespread nationalisation, proposed no concrete measures to mobilise the working class outside Parliament to carry through such a programme against capitalist resistance and sabotage. As J.T. Murphy commented in Preparing for Power: "The talk of higher wages and the dreams of higher social forms of organisation were not advanced to enunemployment benefits and education For three weeks a furious debate raged inside the Labour Party and the trade union bureaucracy - not for and against the cuts, but simply over how to impose them! Never has the bankruptcy of the Labour Party - lefts and all - been more clearly revealed. Trapped within the logic of capitalism, all they could discuss was how to limit its worst effects.
MEANS TEST
Thus the entire Labour Cabinet agreed to savings of £56 million - which included the introduction of a means test for the transitional benefit paid before unemployment benefit proper was paid, the raising of insurance contributions to make the employed workers pay to support the unemployed ones, and cuts in health and education. It was only when MacDonald and his supporters demanded cuts in unemployment benefit on top of all this that a section of the Cabinet refused to agree.
Less realistic than MacDonald, they failed to understand that a policy of supporting capitalism means accepting the necessary consequenWhen MacDonald marched into the National Government he was merely being consistent. As he said at the time: "There is no change of policy... only bowing to necessities."
The 'great betrayal' thus flowed from the Labour Party's historic role as the last line of defence for capitalism. Today the same process is well under way. Not a single Labour MP voted against Healey's Budget proposals in April which paved the way for increasing unemployment, slashing public expenditure cuts, and now incomes policy. The TUC has meanwhile been occupied in trying to beat the Chancellor to the draw with its own wage-cut plans.
The Labour Government is headed down the same disastrous road as in 1929-31, and once again the 'left' seem destined merely for the role of mourners at the tuneral. NATIONAL GOVERNMENT CHRIS DAVIES
O july 1975
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way for the great betrayal". RESTORE CAPITALISM
Government's attacks on the unemployed. GESTURE