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THE DOUBLE ROLE OF THE LABOUR PARTY - REPRESENTATIVE OF THE WORKING CLASS AND PARTY OF GOVERNMENT
Since the atrophy of the Liberal Party as a party capable of commanding a Parliamentary majority and governing in the 1920s, the Labour Party has performed two different functions,.
The first was that envisioned by its founders in 1899 - representing the interests of the organised working class in Parliament. The recognition that those MPs elected by the working class and with the active support of the trade unions who functioned as Liberal MPs in the I870s-90s were not effectively representing their own class was the force behind the Labour Party’s formation. The outward signs of this are recorded by Marx and Engels among others: the working class MPs donned the dress and accents of the ruling class. They also began to think like members of the ruling class, putting the interests of the nation before those of the working class. The Labour party was not seen as a party which could govern the nation, but as an agent for redressing working class’ grievances and gaining concessions for the working class. The trade union leaders recognised that it was a very necessary agent: Parliament had granted concessions to the working class; it also attempted to contain the working class in the economic struggle.
The other participants in the Labour Party’s beginning were political organisations, the Independent Labour party (ILP), British Socialist Party (BSP) and the Fabians. Of these groups only the Fabians had any idea of the functions of a major parliamentary party, i.e. to govern. (At this time the Fabians had a strategy of permeation: attempting to get acceptance from all parties of their ideas for adapting politics and the state to be able to contain the challenge from the working class which had developed both politically and in the economic struggle. Accordingly, they permeated the machinery of all parties, though they were most successful in the Labour Party.) The ILP was socialist, though its socialism was idealist and non-Marxist. The BSP was the party of the Social Democratic Federation which was avowedly Marxist. Its politics were far from Marxist in relation to the economic struggle and also in relation to a clear conception of the function of a political party of the working class.
The atrophy of the Liberal party meant that the ruling class in Britain had to find an alternative parliamentary party if the parliamentary system was to continue to function. The decision to make the Labour party the governing party in 1924 and 1929 when it was a minority party in Parliament was made by the ruling class so that the Labour Party could develop into a governing party as gradually as possible and with a minimum of political upset. (Governing as a minority party means that no legislation is passed without the consent and connivance of the other parties. Therefore, it is possible to get used to wielding the reigns of government without being able to contemplate radical change of any kind. It was a safe initiation.) The main work of this transition was done by the Fabians in the Labour Party, renegades from the Liberals who had left the sinking ship to join Labour, and those individuals from the ILP and trade unions who had developed into bourgeois politicians. At the same time, the Left of the Labour Party emerged clearly for the first time - in reaction to the Party’s development as a governing party. The Left emerged, it did not develop. To develop it would have had to develop an alternate conception of governing, i.e. governing a working class state and not a bourgeois one - taking state power. Passionate rhetoric about socialism was probably its most characteristic feature.
Inevitably this second function - that of a party capable of governing — came into conflict with the Labour Party's initial function - representing the organised working class. In 1931 economy measures were seen by bourgeois politicians as the only way out of a deepening economic crisis. As the government party, the Labour party accepted its responsibility for making cuts in government employees' wages and in unemployment insurance. But when it came to the crunch, the majority of the Labour Cabinet members backed down and resigned from government. They could not survive as a party of the working class and be seen to hit the working class. The second function was jettisoned so that the first could survive. This in turn forced bourgeois politics to deviate from its normal parliamentary pattern of government and opposition party. Britain was governed by a coalition national government from 1931 until after World War II. The minority of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) who joined the National Government as National Labour members included some of the Party's major leaders. They advised junior MPs not to join them in the National Government as this would jeopardise their position inside the Labour Party. A sacrifice had to be made in the national interest, but it must not be too great or else the Labour Party's ability to re-adopt its second function would be more difficult.
If the Labour Party changed at all out of the 1931 "crisis" it was a change which facilitated its second function. Though Ernest Bevin, at that time a major trade union leader only, vowed that never again would the party flaunt the trade unions as it had tried to this time, the PLP continued to establish itself separately from the NEC of the Labour party and the party's Annual Conference (Bevin was seconded by Churchill into the War Cabinet as Minister of Labour and went on to become a powerful bourgeois politician in the '45 labour Government. [1]) Neither the Left nor the trade unions could challenge this development, because both recognised the necessity to have the working class represented in Parliament and neither had any conception of using parliamentary representation as a step in taking state power.
[1] In the light of the argument developed in subsequent articles in this series it can be seen that Bevin was far from being a 'bourgeois politician'. Bevin's whole perspective was to develop within the working class the movement the ability to become the ruling class. See the items on Bevin elsewhere on this site.
It is from the interaction of the Labour Party's two functions that the explanation of the homily "Labour is always more united in opposition" arises. The unity Labour derives from being in opposition is anti-Toryism. The PLP and Labour Party proper (NEC, constituency parties etc) have the same interests in being anti-Tory, while the differences between Left and Right can be acknowledged and continued openly on the ideological level alone - the reality of putting them into practice when in government need never rear its ugly head. (Tribune - voice and soul of the Labour Left, 14,4.72: "The first and most important reason that a Labour MP is returned to Westminster is to do all in his power to defeat the Conservative Government.") It should be noted, however, that constituting "HM's Opposition" also carries a responsibility for maintaining the governing party. Only when the Government and the Opposition reach working or "gentlemen’s agreements" can parliamentary business be done and the nation governed. In addition, legislation is formed not only from the fertile brains of the Cabinet but also during its passage through Parliament. Bills are affected by the pressures from the governing party's own back bench and the front and back bench of the Opposition. Thus, the Labour Party, even when in opposition, performs its second function.