Labourturmoil in London
Tony Craig
Labour's manifesto for the Greater London Council election in May is blandly entitled It's Looking Good. This better describes Conservative chances of recapturing County Hall, for internal wrangling has thrown Labour into unprecedented turmoil just two months before polling day.
The smooth launching of the manifesto was scuppered in advance when eight of Labour's ninety-two candidates signed a statement effectively disowning it. They said there were 'serious discrepancies' between the manifesto and the policies approved last year at the annual conference of the party's Greater London Regional Council.
Some of these left-wing dissidents went further. Ken Livingstone, who is prospective parliamentary candidate for Hampstead, complained that the programme was 'completely devoid of any socialist principle.' To the delight of the Conservative opposition, he described his own party's election address as 'frankly garbage.' Mr Livingstone says he will fight the election on 'separate, socialist policies,' and adds: It will be interesting on 5 May to see how the electors judge the two separate sets of policies on which Labour members will be standing.'
The disarray in Labour ranks will be made even more public this weekend when the Greater London Regional Council holds a two-day conference. The subjects for discussion will include some motions highly critical of the Labour GLC's performance and seeking wholesale changes to the party's manifesto.
It is the regional council executive, and not the Labour leadership at County Hall, who are charged with preparing the election programme, and this conference has the power to instruct the executive. On the other hand, the manifesto has already been released, and John Keys, the Regional Council's general secretary, is going to great lengths to avoid answering questions on the constitutional status of the published manifesto. 'I'm not prepared to comment on that,' he told me. 'As far as we are concerned the manifesto has been issued. We can't start altering it now.'
That statement gives credence to the angry accusation levelled by Mr Livingstone that the manifesto was deliberately rushed out (the Tories have no plans to issue theirs until later this month) to pre-empt the decisions of a hostile conference. For the conference motions include much that would prove a severe embarrassment to Labour's ruling clique if conference should have the nerve to carry them.
One motion, for example, seeks to instruct the executive to fight the election on the basis of no fare increases, for an expanded public transport system in London, and calls for low fares leading to a fare-free system. It's Looking Good, on the other hand, talks of 'inevitable' fare rises caused by the policies of the (Labour) Government.
The GLC leader, Sir Reg Goodwin, is of course anxious not to fall again into the same trap Labour fell into four years ago. For Labour regained control in 1973 with a pledge to halt further fare rises .. . with a long-term aim of free fares. The performance, as we well know, belied the promise. Fares have increased by 112 per cent in the last two years, and a further 15 per cent increase in July is already in the pipeline. So this time the manifesto asserts (on what basis it is unclear) that there is evidence that most people are even more concerned about the services offered than about the level of fares.
Instead of cheap fares for all, It's Looking Good concentrates on Labour's free fares for pensioners, insisting—rather disreputably—that the wicked Tories would end this facility. Conservative sources at County Hall say that Horace Cutler, the Conservative leader, has not ruled out the possibility of suing Labour over this particular claim. Mr Cutler has even gone so far as to advertise in the London Evening News that GLC Conservatives will give pensioners, the blind, and disabled concessionary transport passes. The advertisement adds: 'The GLC Labour Party is resorting to a malicious campaign of lies—playing on the fears of elderly people—by saying we will not.' To make his position clearer still Mr Cutler has ' issued a press release stating 'quite categorically that when the Conservatives are elected in May we shall continue to pay for the provision of exactly the same concessionary travel facilities that pensioners and the disabled now enjoy.' It is too late for Labour to back-track because the manifesto's cover shows a picture of an elderly lady proudly showing off her old age pensioner's bus pass.
Of course, Mr Livingstone, who seems to have a distrust of all politicians, says: `If we could do an about-face on our fares pledge, they can do the same on free travel for pensioners.' But even he would be doubtful after all the promises now made by the Tories on this subject. The row about the pensioners' free travel has been specially bitter because there is so little of substance in the Labour manifesto, which is more a catalogue of so-called 'achievements' than a programme for the future. Hence the danger implicit in the transport motion, which would commit Labour to policies the present leadership is convinced theY could not implement. The regional executive will be opposing the motion when it ig debated on Sunday morning, and Jim DalY, the Transport Committee chairman, made it clear that the leadership would be pulling out all the stops to prevent it being carried. The signs are they will win. A card vote will be called for, which means the union block votes will decide the issue, and after the intense lobbying that has been going on, Mr Daly is confident that he can carry the day.
Transport, however, will not be the onlY debate showing that Labour is bent on selfdestruction. The Young Socialists, who have no hope of winning, but will make a lot of noise, are calling on Labour councils to refuse to pay any debt charges, and demanding that the Government annuls all local authority debts. They are also demanding that there should be no further cuts or redundancies, that programmes already cut should be restored, and that there should be no rate or rent increases. Evert a conference such as this is unlikely to agree t°, such rubbish. It would help, of course, councils reneged on their debts, but theY might find thereafter that people would be less inclined than ever to lend them allY more money. The housing motion will, however, in all probability be carried. With reservations it is being backed even by the executive itself, and, inter alia, it demands manifesto coalmitments to end all sales of council houses (a central plank of the Tory programme), t° oppose government cuts in housing spending, and to oppose equity sharing schemes. It's Looking Good is strangely silent on these points, except for an ambiguous paragraph headed 'Tenure,' which proclaims: 'The GLC pioneered several different types of new tenure opportunities to meet the demand of many people to own part or the whole of their house. Recent surveys in docklands and other inner city areas have shown that many young people setting UP home prefer to buy than to rent, and lack of suitable properties drives them out of the very areas in which it is essential to en courage them to stay if the inner city is to he revived.' So?
In the main the housing section, as thef rest of the manifesto, is a panegyric ° Labour achievements. . . seaside homes, homes for teachers, and all. Richard Balfe, chairman of the GLC•s Housing DeveloPment Committee—the senior housing bodY —maintains that it is conference that counts. He will fight, he says, on the decisions of the conference, adding hoPefully 'What this conference means is that the ordinary Labour voter has a real say ill the policies on which we are fighting this election. It makes us more democratic than the Tories.' What it may also mean is that the real advances Labour has made a County Hall in the last four years will be obscured in an orgy of self-recrimination which could hammer the final nail into its coffin.
Previous page
