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Tony Benn, who died last week, was in his political prime when he was interviewed by Eric Hobsbawm on the state of the nation under Thatcher� and sounded a heartfelt rallying cry to rescue his beloved Labour party

, the former editor of Marxism Today. writes: In October 1980 Marxism Today carried what was to become a famous interview with Tony Benn by leading historian Eric Hobsbawm. Benn was at the peak of his power in the Labour party and Hobsbawm had written an influential on the state of the left entitled "The Forward March of Labour Halted?". The interview, published on the eve of the Labour conference, attracted enormous interest and was widely cited. Here is an edited extract.

Eric Hobsbawm Well, first, it's a great pleasure, of course, to have you here. I would just like to say that I don't see this meeting of ours either as a confrontation or as an equal dialogue. I see my function rather as that of drawing you out, possibly pinning you down, chiefly because your reactions to the questions we are about to discuss are of considerable public interest, in view of your position in politics.

I would like to begin by saying that those of us who have been around a long time tend to have a sense of deja vu. We are back again in a period of a major crisis of world capitalism, combined with a very dangerous international situation, and this is, of course, the general setting within which the specific and very grave problems of Great Britain, the British economy and British politics are being played out. The first thing I'd like to ask you is how do you see this present world capitalist crisis and the present international situation? How would you compare it with the last time round?

Tony Benn By way of introduction, may I explain that I am not a Marxist, academic or historian, but a practising politician trying to understand what is happening. I too am struck by the similarities between the situation now and the situation in the 1930s, in that, as far as this country is concerned, we are locked into a virtual collapse of our industry which has proceeded more rapidly than people expected and which has been coming for some time. It is a decline beginning at a lower level of activity than we had in the 1930s.

It looks at the moment as if the government, far from trying to revive the British economy, is using this crisis in order to secure certain very clear political objectives. Namely, if possible the destruction of trade union power in the land by three processes: by stimulating unemployment to frighten working people away from trade unionism; by legislation through the Employment bill to make effective trade unionism very difficult, if not impossible; and by the utilisation of the media in a very sustained campaign to persuade the British public that the trade union movement is responsible for our problems and has got to be weakened if we are to recover from them. It would also be true to say that in this slump we have a government that no longer has a patriotic element in its capitalism and actually sees a future for the people they represent in the success of international capitalism, even at the expense of the United Kingdom becoming the sort of Northern Ireland of the Common Market.

On the other hand, the trade union movement is much stronger than it was in the 1930s in terms of numbers. Also, a lot of people are clearer in their own mind about what is happening. The option of war as a solution to the problem of the slump has been rendered absurd, though not impossible, because of the development of nuclear weapons, and I think these factors make the situation slightly different.

I must just add one other point. If you look at the defeat of the Labour government in May 1979, the more I think about it, the more I think it was a surrender rather than a defeat. For 20 years non-political trade unionism had been preached and it's turned out to be a cul-de-sac, and non-socialist Labourism had been preached, and it's also turned out to be a cul-de-sac. One could argue that Mrs Thatcher and the Conservative party won last year with very little opposition to the ideas that she preached. Much of the ground had been conceded before the election. But the crisis bears very strong resemblances to what happened in the 1930s. Indeed, what we are witnessing is an attempt to use this crisis to put the clock back to a much earlier period.

EH You said that the trade union movement today is stronger than it was, say, in the 1930s. That may be so. But would you say that on the whole the socialist movement, the democratic movement, the people's movement, have shown themselves to be strong enough to mount an effective challenge, both to the crisis itself, and to the forces such as Thatcherism, which it has brought out?

TB If you mean "have we yet succeeded in building a winning coalition of people who understand what is happening and recognise the role of trade unionism and socialism in preventing the disaster from overwhelming us?", no, clearly we have not. If you mean "is there a residual strength and a potential strength in the instruments of democracy, the instruments of trade unionism and the ideas of socialism, capable of being mobilised and developed to prevent this from reaching its ultimate form of repression?", I think the answer must be yes. Otherwise I would be wholly pessimistic about the prospects.

EH To what extent have the weaknesses and failures of the labour movement aided erosion of support, this gradual decline of support, and indeed the failure, even after a year of the present government, for the movement, and I would say for the people as a whole, to recover the confidence in Labour that it should have? To what extent would you make the record of the various Labour governments between 1964 and 1979 responsible for this?

TB You know that I served in every Labour government from 1964 to 1979, and take my full share of responsibility for that. But it would be very foolish to deny that what occurred did so as a result of the upper direction of the Labour party over this whole period. That's why I mentioned the concept of surrender. Ideologically and tactically there have been over the last 30 years three waves of revisionism in the Labour party.

The first was the Gaitskellite wave where he argued, in broad agreement with Macmillan, that you could rely upon full employment and it could sustain the welfare state without socialism. Every worker could have a Mini in the garage, a television set in his living room and a package holiday in Majorca. Political trade unionism was no longer needed, and socialism was old hat. This revisionism was presented as Labour's response to Macmillan's 1959 victory.

The second wave of revisionism occurred during the 1960s when Harold Wilson came to the conclusion that the trade unions were an embarrassment to the Labour government because the Labour government was hoping to rise above its past as a product of trade unionism and present itself to the country as the natural party of government, strong enough to govern the country even when opposed by the trade unions.

The third wave of revisionism, which is the one that is now being vigorously resisted, is a revisionism based upon a coalition at the very top of some of the parliamentary and trade union leadership to control the rank and file of the movement as reflected at Conference. This third wave of revisionism is the most comprehensive of all because it is a revisionism designed to consolidate, within the structures of the labour movement, an acceptance of the ideas of incorporation that were really defeated in May 1979. If that revisionism is accepted then we are finished. But it cannot, and will not, be accepted.

EH Mass support and mass dynamism is at the moment lacking in the Labour party. How can we get it back again?

TB We must be very clear that we are not interested in a narrow, sectarian, purist party all taking one view. You may have noticed that now the left is beginning to get a majority on the national executive, we are deliberately limiting the grounds for expulsion. I think that what the left is now saying is that we want a very broad church. The condition for the broad church, however, is groups within the party don't put up candidates against Labour candidates.

EH When you say broad church, do you mean a broad church of different tendencies within the Labour party?

TB Yes. I think we must be a broad church. We have got a lot of different groups in the Labour party. For example, on the right we have got the "exitists", who have gone, we've got the "departurists", who are packing to go, we've got the "ultimatumists", who will go if certain things happen, we have got the "confrontationists", who have stayed to fight it out. But all these are in a minority. The solid core of the party is socialist. I think it's important to remain broad because all the groups have got something to contribute to our work. But more than that, I want to broaden the party out much further. I want to extend affiliations. Why, if we are trying to get the NUT to affiliate, shouldn't you try to get the Indian Workers' Association to affiliate? Why, if you are trying to get Nalgo to affiliate, shouldn't you seek to persuade the women's movement to affiliate? I would like to see affiliations now open on a very broad basis, including the peace movement, the ecological movement and so on. In that way we will broaden the party.

We must however be careful to see that the Labour party, at this stage in development, doesn't so excite middle-class radicals that they come in and swamp our basic working-class support. That is why it is so important to build up factory branches, to expand basic political education. The Labour Party Commission of Enquiry has done a very good job on organisation, finance and political education.

We must also win the battle of party democracy. If the trade union movement is to be induced to take a new and deeper interest in socialism, which is a precondition for mass support and social change, trade union members must be able to be sure that the policies that go through party conference will actually be in the manifesto and will be implemented by accountable parliamentary leaders.

If we get all those elements right: a broad party; an effective organisation to allow the trade unions to play a more active part in the party; and a capacity to translate policy into action by using a parliamentary leadership that remains accountable, then I think we have a chance of success. I can't put it higher than that. But at least the party is now beginning to understand where it went wrong and what it must do to put it right. If we succeed we shall be able to answer the credibility question that we get when we go canvassing. You knock at the door and they say, "Well we agree with you about all this, but how do we know that you are going to do it next time?"

Until we can answer that question confidently we won't get the third dimension of mass support from people, especially from the working class, who are neither active trade unionists nor active Labour party people but who really want to know whether it's going to be exactly the same next time as it was last time. We must be able to answer that question credibly to get the electoral majority necessary to breath life into the policies that we have been talking about.

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