English
1981
ISBN: 0710006276
PDF
pages: 251

The last year of the decade has, since the war, marked low points for the British left. In 1949, 1969 and 1979, one saw tired and compromised Labour governments trying, without success, to hang on to power; 1959 saw a massive electoral victory by the Conserva-tives.
The cycle of hope followed by disillusion has now swung around three times in thirty-five years and cannot be said to be diminish-ing. In 1949, there was at least some record of solid achievement in health care and social welfare. In 1969, a backdrop of a re-juvenated socialist movement could give promise of new ideas and fresh social forces entering British politics. In 1979, the most conservative of all post-war governments allowed many of the ob-jectives even of social democracy, such as full employment and ex-tending social services, to dribble away before going down before an onslaught based on an open appeal to individual greed.
This failure was all the more marked because of the election in 1974 of a Labour Party which had, in principle, a clearer strategic programme for advancing socialism than any previous Labour govern-ment. This should not be taken as a major compliment, since previous Labour administrations had almost no preconceived strategy. However, the policy of coupling overall economic planning to the development of genuine areas of working-class power via the use of compulsory planning agreements, the National Enterprise Board, and a range of increased trade union rights, whatever its defects, did at least begin to approach the central problem of British socialism; how to prise power away from an entrenched and complex system of capitalist control in the context of a highly developed framework of political democracy.

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