The traditional backbone of Labour Party policy has always been social policy. Partly this flows from the social-democratic criticisms of the capitalist system, which see the problem with that system not in terms of the rule of one class over another, but as a series of undesirable Injustices. The building blocks of socialism, in. this view, are not those steps which challenge the power of the ruling class, but those measunes which give direct relief to the suffering produced by the system.
This view of capitalism is of considerable use to social-democracy, because it allows them to go to the masses at election time with an appealing programme that seems to offer some social policy is one of the few areas in which the Labour Party has been eager to rocall its record.
Moreover, it is quite clear that the decay of capitalist society is producing huge social problems: housing shortages, inadequate medical services, growth of slums, continuing poverty etc. All this should offer the Labour Party great opportunities to make electoral hay.
THE SCEPTICAL Undoubtedly the social policy planks will feature prominently in the Manifesto which Labour will produce for the next election. But the programme has to deal with an audience of trade union militants and party supporters who will justifiably be more sceptical. They may well be aware that the free health service" was they are equnily likely to recall, for example, that it war also a Labour government that began the dismantling of this social-democratic Frankenstein when it began to consume an increasing volume of state revenue.
It will not be so casy to convince these people that the Labour Party is once again the party of "social reform. They will do a little simple arithmetic and see that the proposals for higher pensions, better aid to the disabled, nursery education, and new council houses alone will cost an additional 2000 million a year. They will wonder about the result of adding in public transport subsidies, reduced health service charges, subsidised council rents, better rent rebates and improvement grants, and more grants for local authority expenditure. Growing scepticism will make them abandon this exercise before calculating the cost of such items as the purchase of building land and priThe present programme cannot start with questions of social policy. It must first try to prove that a future Labour government could In fact find the cash to carry out such projects. For this reason it has been necessary to assign pride of place to economic policies, because all other plans will stand or fall on the ability to succeed in this sphere.
Red Weekly 22 June 1973 Page 4