We propose, first, certain specific work, which we are qualified to do, in co-operation with trade unions and other organizations of the Labour movement, and with some of the major campaigns. Research and publication, in direct relation to particular struggles, and a more continuing educational activity, are now urgently needed. We believe, as we have indicated, that the Left must develop its own Socialist National Plan, moving from an increasing solidity of defence to detailed developments and proposals. Our own resources, at the present stage, are limited, but there is a potential for rapid growth if the channels of this co-operation can be established.
It is in activity, and not by some central or sudden organizational decision, that a new Left will come into being. In this transitional period, what is done will be more important than what it is called. We call our own manifesto ‘May Day’, because that is where we can all start.
On some issues, notably in the peace movement, the Left in the sixties has shown the will and the capacity to work together. But the form of this unity, as on the Aldermaston marches, carries an important lesson. Many groups and individuals worked together, but in their own right and in their own identity. This is especially the mood of the new young Left of the sixties. Association and co-operation have to be open and equal. Nobody, faced with these actual people, can narrow his eyes and calculate; count recruits and a rank-and-file. Or rather, anybody can do this, but he will get nowhere; the mood to co-operate is not in that style. And in this the young of the sixties are joined by many of their predecessors: willing, in the right cause, to give their energy, but not to be used, recruited, hardened or matured by any political calculator. There will be maturing and hardening, as already in demonstrations and other co-operative work. But we shall all be moving, all deciding: the institutions we want prefigured in the institutions we create to fight for them; or we shall not be there at all.
This in itself rules out, and for good reasons, any simple idea of a centralizing new Left. But of course it does not rule out, indeed it indicates, particular and contemporary forms of co-operation and unity. It is already necessary to improve the exchange of information, between different groups on the Left, and between different countries: not only on dates and meetings, though these are important; but on plans of future activities, on research and discussion in progress, on the lessons of particular types of activity. We think such an information service might be begun almost immediately. It will also be necessary, in our view, to begin work on a directory of Left and radical organizations: both as a way of mapping the ground and to put people in touch with each other. Such a directory would need, in practice, to be organized both by localities and by interests.
These functions extend to the situation of the Left press. The Morning Star and Tribune are now both in danger; the Sunday Citizen is dead. There are immediate problems here, in that the surviving papers represent particular viewpoints with which we may only in part agree. But we believe this will be an early test of the seriousness of the Left: to save these papers, from what would be their suppression by capitalism, and to go on from that to co-operate in circulating and publicizing the many other Left papers and magazines - the Voice papers, Peace News, International Socialism, New Left Review and others - which are now an active socialist and radical culture. It would of course be economically easier if these papers were closer to each other, or even in some cases merged. But our original principle operates here: it is very important that groups retain their own identity, while they feel it to be necessary; even that groups should see their own papers as in argument and contention with others on the Left, in the necessary process of discussion and dispute; but still, recognizing an effective community against a system which suppresses or reduces them, that they should help each other, in practical and immediate ways, so that the socialist and radical culture stays active and can extend.
It is natural, given the emphasis of the Manifesto on the crucial need to connect and communicate, that we should consider first these connecting functions. An information service, a directory and an extending press would operate first, mainly, on a national and international level. Yet similar co-operation is no less necessary, and is indeed often easier, in our actual communities.
We have had some experience, since our original Manifesto, of the formation of local groups of new kinds. In the most successful cases, groups have been formed which contain, for the first time for very many years, members of all the different areas of the socialist, working-class and radical movements. Simply to get in one room, and agreeing to meet again, Labour councillors and party members, C.N.D. activists, trade union officials and members, Communist party members, and representatives of the many groupings on the independent Left is a real achievement. It has been done, and is still happening. At best there are tensions, and some necessary disagreements. At worst, there have been attempts to steer the group to some more specific affiliation, and it has then in some cases broken up. We are collecting and analysing these different experiences, so that we can go on working and trying.
Where such a local group has been successful, it has very soon liberated energies, begun new educational and campaigning work, and, crucially, contributed to an understanding of a new situation in which most of us are moving and are prepared to move. Such a group, ideally, should be autonomous. It should not require of its members that they give up their existing affiliations and identities. This is possible in towns and in educational institutions where political activity is already strong. But there have been other cases, when a group has formed directly in response to the Manifesto, with no prior or binding affiliations elsewhere. We welcome this, and try to keep in touch through an organizer and a bulletin. But it follows from our whole analysis and approach that we do not want to set up the kind of centralizing organization which would demand any premature decision of loyalties. We are interested in promoting a connecting process, in what we see as a transitional period, in response to the Manifesto as an argument. Where it is the only means of organization, we accept that responsibility, but where it is a connecting process, between existing organizations, to which members still give their loyalties, we are also satisfied. We have in fact been overwhelmed by letters and requests for speakers; we are re-organizing to cope with them. But while we do all that necessary organizational work, we wish to continue to make clear that what we are offering to the Left is connected discussion and connected activity around an analysis of the crisis; to start there, and to see where we go. We are not, that is to say, trying to make any kind of take-over bid; the situation is too serious and too complicated for that.
Much of the important work, on and around the Manifesto, will go on in local groups, of the kinds described, and in special-interest groups, which we intend to actively promote. The intellectual organization, to produce the Manifesto, was of course improvised; but in bringing together working groups, from economists to teachers, it made an interesting and significant advance. We shall build on this, and are now looking into the form of a permanent organization of this kind.
Immediate work and continuing work. Given the scale of the crisis, some of these crucial informing and connecting processes seem limited, though it is in these ways, always, that a serious movement is conceived. As we move into longer perspectives, which of course begin today and where we are, we see certain crucial tasks. There are the many specific campaigns we shall have in any case to work in: as allies, in an active presence, against imperialism, in the peace movement, in industrial disputes and wages struggles, in defence of the trade unions, in rent cases, in community developments. At most points, there, we shall be working with thousands of others, and are glad to do so. In some cases, especially in community work, we are joining with others in initiating particular projects. But in most of this active campaigning we join with, indeed now belong to, an already structured Left. We intend to take our share of the ordinary duties, but what, specifically, we bring to these movements is a developed analysis: of course for discussion, for amendment, for further development.
We believe it is possible, though we would not make the claim arrogantly, that the Manifesto analysis, which is more important than any separate Manifesto group, could act as a catalyst, in this difficult transition, to build a new Left. We do not come to this cut-and-dried; but we come with urgency, with conviction, and with a determination hardened in the very exploration of the system we confront. This, in our view, is an absolute commitment, for, faced by that system, we are bound to withdraw our allegiance from it and from all its instruments. We resume our own initiatives, by a sense of absolute need. The major division in contemporary British politics is between acceptance and rejection of the new capitalism and imperialism: its priorities, its methods, its versions of man and of the future. The most urgent political need in Britain is to make this basic line evident, and to begin the long process of unambiguous struggle and argument at this decisive point. We intend, therefore, to draw this political line, at any time, where it actually is, rather than where it might be thought convenient for elections or traditional descriptions. What we constitute, by this Manifesto, is just this kind of conscious presence and opposition: intellectual, in this first instance, but also wherever that may lead.
We reject, therefore, consensus politics, but that necessary hardening must go along with a new flexibility, where the real opposition is already formed and forming. We look forward to making certain specific connexions, in campaigns and in publications. We want to ask members of the major single-issue campaigns and of the existing organizations of the Labour movement to discuss with us and others the bearings of their own urgent work on the whole analysis we have offered, and its corresponding bearings on them. We want to make this specific, wherever possible: as between the problem of poverty and the demand for a minimum wage, which are deeply connected issues but which are dealt with, now, in quite different kinds of organization; as on technological change, areas of high unemployment and declining industries, and the many consequent problems of community movement and community redevelopment, which are now being discussed in separate groups and contexts; as on relations between the United States and Europe, including the relations between Britain and Europe, bringing groups together from different countries; as on world hunger and poverty in direct relation to technical problems of aid and trade, where again the groups are now normally different; as on the relations between education and industrial training, where a class division is now built in; as on the relations between racial inequality, deprived communities and deprived countries, which are now in different dimensions; as on nuclear disarmament and the problems of armed revolution, in the Third World, where instincts, loyalties and organizations can conflict; as on artists and routinized schools, where a particular bringing together, exploring what is meant by education and personal development, could bring important results; as on low wages and high military spending, the political alliance and the techniques of the monetary system, managed politics and voluntary politics. None of this work will be easy, but we see it as an extension from print, where we have connected these issues, to people and organizations who are directly concerned with them. In the process of such work, which is of course notably worth doing for its own sake, we shall be looking, openly, for any possibility of active co-operation which might lead beyond the specific project. In the same spirit, we shall invite existing socialist and radical organizations and groupings to join in this work, and to go on learning from each other and from others.
This is a serious programme, but we shall only be satisfied when a Left has been built that is at once contemporary in experience, educated in method, democratic in organization, and strong in action. We have not tried to predict the immediate future. In certain ways, the middle ground of politics is being broken down, as the whole crisis deepens. But we are assuming that this middle ground has a considerable capacity to reconstitute itself, under new names and forms. And we are sufficiently close to British experience to know how tenaciously, and how understandably, a sharpening of conflict is avoided, or goes on being blurred. But we have tried to take the measure of a world crisis, and of Britain inextricably caught up in it, and we believe that no conflict is now too sharp, and that political decision has never been more serious.
We want then to connect with what is still strong in Britain: a democratic practice, a determined humanity, an active critical intelligence. We want to connect with these forces in our country, which are our own sources and resources, so that we can co-operate in deep social changes and in new relationships with the rest of the world. The years immediately ahead will be confusing and testing, but we believe that by making a position clear now, we can play an effective part in a necessary realignment and redirection of British politics. What we are seeking to define is an active socialism of the immediately coming generation: an emerging political process rather than the formalities of a process that is already, as democratic practice, beginning to break up and disappear. We are looking to the political structure of the rest of the century, rather than to the forms which now embody the past and confuse recognition of the present.
This manifesto is a challenge and it asks for a response. There are thousands who share our intentions and our values, and who can connect with and contribute to our analysis and our future work.
Those who stand in our situation: we invite your active support.