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A popular movement
A Popular movement
The Peoples Front was formed the day after the result of the election was revealed. It should have been nothing more than a pipe-dream for those behind it who wanted to keep the progress they saw as having been made with a Labour victory ongoing. The hope given with the new government was feared early on to be in danger of slipping away if there weren’t those calling for it to continue.
Two small, electorally-insignificant parties were behind the Peoples Front at the outset: the Revolutionary Democratic Group (RDG) and the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). Who an earth were they? They were tiny organisations in terms of political significance who rarely contested elections and faced what everyone else would see as humiliation but they regarded as trying their best. In the past few years, they had turned to grassroots efforts in helping people in Tebbit-led Britain. The unemployed and the disaffected were shown how to get help in their situations and offered advice in troubling personal situations. Politics remained a part of each party yet they were less dramatic than other, bigger parties who attracted attention: those such as the interfering Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the insane Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP). Where there was often despair in the big cities of London and Birmingham in the main – through elsewhere too – there would be small parties like these two on the ground and working to increase their profile by helping people rather than making a show of themselves.
The Labour Party manifesto contained many ideas that the RDG and especially the RCP liked. There were other parts, naturally, which they didn’t but the benefits were seen as outweighing the negatives for now. Those people they worked with in some communities were offered much by the new government and those who formed the People’s Front wanted those promises to come to fruition. With no money and no real organisation alone, they worked together. They planned for a series of marches to remind the new government of the people who had voted for them and the expectations of them. Marches occurred in mid- & late-May. Marchers turned out, far more than the Peoples Front had planned for. They wanted what was promised to them and were vocal but peaceful in calling for that. An end to despair had been offered and they didn’t want to see it taken away.
Jealous and wanting to make an impact themselves without previously being able to, the Peoples Front was hi-jacked by the end of the month by the SWP and the WRP. They had the organisation and the bigger presence if not deeper appeal. With political events such as the – natural – delays occurring to implementing Labour policies where their effects would be felt, and seen to be felt, the Peoples Front got bigger. They had more marches, in more places across England and Wales though with little success in Scotland. There was no real violence within the marches as event stewards were present. The new steering committee for the Peoples Front was quickly SWP and WRP dominated – they quickly put aside most difference for the time being – though with token contributions elsewhere from other figures who saw the Peoples Front as being a just organisation and only calling for what was right and nothing unreasonable.
A favourable opinion was gained by many and the Peoples Front was rather popular as a movement among those who usually didn’t play an active role in politics nor had a voice that was listened to. There were the unemployed on the marches but the employed too; the young & the old & the middle-aged were there with family groups attending. It was ordinary people. The Peoples Front grew fast and with that, many of the initial ideas it had were pushed aside for a more pressing agenda than just reminding the government on its promises and stopping a betrayal but demanding the impossible too. The first founders floundered in their attempts to regain control of the agenda. Within weeks, what they had started had metamorphosed into something else. The lunatics had taken over the asylum.
The Peoples Front was dismissed as ‘a bunch of unruly Trots’ by many influential figures on the left when notice started to be taken of it. Attention was focused upon the loud activists and the professional protesters. When groups such as Stop The City and then War On Want became involved, the first a group of unruly anarchists and the second seen recently as a vanity project for its outspoken leader, joined and open demands were being made by the Peoples Front there was a lot of rejection from some.
Benn wanted nothing to do with it. He wasn’t alone. Through early June, it became a seemingly chaotic organisation with the public face of its leadership unappealing to those in Parliament and in the top tiers of politics of the Left. There were accusations levelled that such critics were jealous of the appeal that the Peoples Front had to the ordinary people; to counter this, the millions of voters who democratically elected MPs were pointed to. When the Peoples Front demanded jobs for all and an immediate redistribution of wealth – the impossible – rather than just the government keeping its promises and making Britain fairer, it was seen as out of control.
The Peoples Front would run out of steam, it was said. It had no real agenda laid out in any organised fashion, detractors continued, and those who attended the marches would soon realise they were being taken for fools and manipulated. There was no democracy in the leadership and those who were running it, those from the SWP and the WRP, really didn’t care about the people they claimed to lead only their own, selfish agendas to gain attention. What mattered was the real struggle to keep Labour to its manifesto promises and that wouldn’t be done by shouting in the street.
Those such as Benn might have dismissed the Peoples Front as Trots who were going nowhere fast, a car crash happening right now and exploiting the reasonable wishes of people being betrayed, but others saw it as an opportunity. The SWP and the WRP had taken over the Peoples Front for their own ends but they wouldn’t be alone in joining and seeking to gain serious influence over the organisation which was holding marches that were attracting a larger turn out of ordinary people each time.
Militant MPs – those five who stood as Labour candidates had been elected against the wishes of the party leadership – joined the Peoples Front with a significant part of the organisation they belonged to following. They didn’t like many ideas of the movement yet embraced some others. This was a popular movement and they wanted part of it for what it was capable of becoming.
One of the leading figures within the Peoples Front was Gerry Healy, recently re-established as leader of the WRP due to internal politics. The Workers Revolutionary Party was a high-profile organisation yet with little influence before. Healy himself was divisive and had distasteful personal behaviour that was excused away by his followers. The WRP was fractionised though despite its leader with other key figures such as Michael Banda having ideas of their own.
Groups like the RDG and the RCP might have spent the past few years engaged in hard work locally, but the WRP had been thinking bigger. They hadn’t helped people with the troubles in their lives, they had instead caused people trouble. Those who had looked for hope and an end to the seeming despair of their lives – millions were unemployed and the Tebbit government gave the impression that it really didn’t care – came upon the WRP like they did others of all political shades and were often caught up in the movement and its extreme ideas. It was a party of chaos and also recent radicalisation. When Tebbit had taken action against urban rioting and also seemed to declare war on the unions – the latter which he certainly hadn’t done so –, the WRP had stood up to him… or claimed to anyway. They had held noisy protests and gained attention without doing anything. They certainly didn’t speak for the unemployed youths in the city nor striking industrial workers. Doing so would mean working hard to address those problems and create a solution: it was easier to make a fuss and be seen doing so.
The WRP had managed to financially survive for as long as it had with such demands as were caused by its many activities by help from many sources. Those included the support from certain rich backers and also what came from foreign donations. Those foreign donations being regimes in the Middle East such as Iraq but more so Libya. There was a price for the fraternal assistance when it came to the WRP monitoring opponents and exiles in Britain for those countries and the WRP was heavily-involved in identifying those. Foreign money, especially that from Libya, was put to use. A pre-Tebbit idea to run training centres for youths to teach them how to combat police activities (evade capture, block deployments even fight back: not serious violence against them) using Libyan money was put into practise when riots in first Liverpool then Leeds in mid-1982 occurred. Just a crazy idea became a reality. Industrial workers on strike had their unions, who had the Labour Party behind them, so they told the WRP where to stick their foolish Trotskyist ideas, but the WRP did manage to attract support from many urban areas. They protested at police stations after arrests were made and made a scene of doing so. There was a message of hate with the WRP though, not one of hope that others had: hate filled many who became associated with them too.
Healy liked being the leader of the WRP because it gave him publicity… and also access to young women. Those such as Banda (who had been witness to the strong police reaction to a riot in Birmingham in late 1982 and was said to have been hardened afterwards) and some others around him – new additions to the party – wanted more. The ability to defend themselves and others were sought, that being weapons. The Libyans were approached, the Iraqis too. There was a no to that. What could the WRP provide in exchange? Where they going to offer to return some of the money given to them by those regimes back to each in return for arms? The two countries weren’t going to do that. They also didn’t want the blowback of flooding Britain with guns traceable to them. It was not in their interests to do so. Those who had first floated the idea of weapons became obsessed with the idea of being armed. They created reasons to have them: to fight for the people, to smash the racists & fascists etc. They went elsewhere if their fraternal allies abroad couldn’t, wouldn’t help them. There were other far-left extremist groups out there and Banda’s WRP faction – not always doing everything with his full knowledge, what could be attributed to him anyway – approached some of them. Barter agreements were made with the anti-fascists from Red Action, those who bombed the Monday Club and been hit hard by the security services afterwards but survived to grow; the Maoist English People’s Liberation Army wanted cash, thank you. These small groups had been arming themselves too without doing anything major and they could provide weapons directly or through suppliers. There was another issue though: having weapons was one thing, knowing how to use them was another. More links were made with such other groups so training could be given. There became a tipping point where eventually the WRP armed faction was dependent upon others with far more radical agendas than their own. Their pool of potential recruits was exploited. Some dreamed of a Red Army… an impossible, stupid idea.
This all took place before the 1984 May general election and before Healy left behind his lifestyle of a cult-leader enjoying the spoils at the WRP mansion in Derbyshire and went to London to take a major role in the Peoples Front. He was never in control of his party like he would never been in control of the Peoples Front either… but he believed that he was.
The Peoples Front with its popular appeal and one cult-like but radicalised non-important political party were not seen by most as important. Other things were meanwhile going on that was seen as more important. There were defining political events occurring in June 1984 and outbreaks of extreme violence elsewhere within Britain; the former in Parliament and the latter in The Province.