So far the expected left-right free-for-all at the Labour Party Conference has not seen the light of day - on all the key questions the Conference's image has been one of "comradely" unity and unanimity.
This was true of no debate more than that over the controversial nationalisation question. The Conference called for the 'carly nationalisation of important parts of the British economy? This was a compromise formula worked out between the Party's National Executive Committee (NBC) and Wilson, with the backing of Jack Jones of the Transport & General Workers, The NEC scheme would have been a direct if only partial and inadequate - blow against the interests of big industrial capital. But the Wilson proposals are quite compatible with the staunch defence of capitalist interests for which the last Labour government was noted The nationalisation of land and drug firm strikes - Wilson lays it on the line: the Labour Party conference at only the grossest form of capitalist profiteering — it leaves the core of capitalise big business" untouched. The spiralling world prices of raw materials must have convinced many capitalists that the nationalisation of mineral resouroes is a necessary step to relieve some of the pressure - especially on fuels, through the take over of North Sca gas and oil, The ports are chronically inefficient, and the aircraft and shipbuilding Industry teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. It is true that the Labour Party has turned to the left - the programme mapped out in Wilson's speech contains one of the most extensive plans for nationalisation in Labour's history. But this turn is being carried out totally under the control of those who headed the last Labour Government: arch reactionaries like Healey and Callaghan are part of the not-so-new "left-wing" team, But the Wilson team have had to pay a price for tightening their grip on the Party - they have had to turn about and shout in a leftward direction. The policies mapped out in the Wilson speech are not in themselves anticapitalist, hut merely by raising the questions of nationalisation they will set off a debate that will go beyond the control of the Labour Jeadership. In the debate which is just beginning, hundreds of thousands of trade union militants, and millions of ordinary workers can be won, not to the lukewarm proposals of Wilson, but to real, massive nationalisation. The task of revolutionaries is to carry through this process and ensure that the working class does not sit quietly on their hands, waiting for a Labour Government to work its way down the list to their company. The objective effect of Labour's turn, despite the Conference votes, will be to create wide spread expectations among the mass of workers that the next Labour Government will carry out sweeping, anti-capitalist measures. If Wilson & Co. fail to meet these expectations, we will see a revolt against the Government which will make the 1969 struggle against In Place of Strife" look like a storm in a tea cup. One interesting sidelight to this whole affair has been the behaviour of the trade union "lefts', The central struggle within the working class particularly Jack Jones, who emerged as the saviours of Wilson and the party leadership. It is clear that these bureaucrats are in a difficult situation. Big confrontations between the Government and important sections of the working class are in the offing. An all-our industrial strupple around any one of these claims would throw the Tory Government and the ruling class into chaos and open up the biggest political crisis in Britain since the 1930s. This is not at all a prospect that Jones, Scanlon and co. relish, so they are intent on channelling the energies of the working class movement into electoral activities for the return of a Labour Government, They are thus concerned that the Labour Party should be able to rally the support of trade union militants, but at the same time be in a position to win a 'normal' election (le, without a massive strike upsurge and vast working class mobilisation). So they seek to push the Pirty leftward on things like foreign policy and social services. But they are not prepared to risk any kind of break with the Wilson leadership which might give the impression that the Party was divided and expose it to attacks from the capitalist press that might reduce its clectoral appeal.
movement over the coming months will be the fight against Wilson and his bureaucratic allies on the question of whether or not to fight Phase 3 and on Labour's conception of carrying through nationalisations on the basis of the capitalist state.