As an example, of the difference between socialists and the soft left, I was told that, following my address to Burslem Central, at the selection meeting, Jean Edwards had commented that it had ended my “political career”. This is the way these soft lefts view politics, not as an element of class struggle, but simply as a career! In the years that followed, all of these soft lefts, almost without exception, moved further and further to the right, as they found themselves being pulled along a ratchet to try to accommodate, ever more right-wing views, simply to try to win votes. Like Orwell's description of the pigs sitting around the table, at the end of Animal Farm, they had become indistinguishable from those they initially opposed.
And, that rightward drift was not confined just to the soft left Councillors, but was manifest in the broader soft left too. This was a period of constant battles over cuts, and so on, so that there was always an issue over which principles were being tested. One crucial area was in relation to hospital cuts and closures. Around the country, hospital workers began occupying threatened hospitals. The National Labour Briefing Network supported these occupations, as did all the revolutionary groups. When the issue arose in Stoke, the Left put motions to a meeting of the local Briefing group, in line with this national stance. The soft left voted down all of the proposals for an intervention into local hospital campaigns. It was clear that the North Staffs Labour Briefing group had nothing in common with the national network.
In a short piece I wrote for the National Labour Briefing Supplement, in December 1984, I noted that at its first meeting, when the issue arose in the context of the witch-hunt, the local group had voted to register in the Labour Party's register of unaffiliated organisations. “Indeed, in the last but one edition of NSLB, there was an article by arch witch-hunter John Golding!” NSLB was disaffiliated from the national network, and a new local group consisting of those who had been distributing the National Supplement was established in its place. But, already, the tide had turned, and the betrayal of the soft left had played no small part in it. By early 1985, it was clear that the failure of Kinnock's Labour Party, and of the TUC to mobilise in defence of the miners, and their outright opposition to the struggles of Labour Councils, which could have been linked to the strike, was gifting victory to Thatcher in the decisive industrial struggle of the period.
There are direct parallels with Starmer today. In many ways, Starmer is worse than Kinnock. Both have become Leader following a heavy electoral defeat. But, Kinnock was, from the start, a reformist, a parliamentarian, whose focus never extended beyond the need to win votes. Starmer is a former Trotskyist. In reality, many of those that claim to be Marxists have little more than a passing acquaintance with the actual theory of Marxism, and the writings of Marx and other classical Marxists. Most are people who were emotionally attracted to the ideas of Socialism, and found their way to left-wing groups, which then provided them with their “education”. That education usually consists of the particular group feeding to these members its own version of the gospel, rather than the individual members conducting their own independent, and extensive reading and education. However, even a casual acquaintance with Marxism means that Starmer must be aware of what he is doing, in a way that Kinnock never could.
Moreover, whilst Kinnock attacked the NGA and miners for violence on picket lines, attacked the NUM for not holding a ballot prior to the strike, and also criticised Labour Councils for defying the Tories cuts by breaking the law, just as he was later to attack them for breaking the law over the Poll Tax, on none of these occasions did he actually openly support the Tories, and their anti working-class laws. Kinnock continued to oppose them, if only by the passive, and completely ineffectual parliamentary means that he insisted were the only legitimate means of resistance. By comparison, Starmer, since becoming Leader, has stood shoulder to shoulder with Boris Johnson, who is leading the most reactionary government seen in Britain in recent history. Starmer has voted with the Tories on issue after issue, be it in relation to Brexit, on the restrictions on civil liberties via lock downs, on imposing harsher, more racist immigration controls, and in protecting British war criminals. The height of that betrayal came with Starmer's backing of Johnson's reactionary Brexit deal.
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