Books
Still living in that dawn
George Gale
1968 and After: Inside the Revolution Tariq All (Blond & Briggs £5.25) Tariq Ali, to meet, is an engaging fellow, intelligent, amusing and without that rancorous bitterness and whining envy which are often displayed by those who, like him, seek a Revolution. He became President of the Oxford Union in 1965 and was a very familiar figure in the immediately succeeding years. He has never entirely dropped from view, although he attracts — or seeks, I do not know which, but presume the former while preferring the latter — less publicity these days than he used to in his salad time. He is a Trotskyist Marxist by profession, and active in the International Marxist Group since 1968. He first edited the Black Dwarf and then the Red Mole: jokey titles which more than hint at his own jauntiness, although, as I recall them, their contents seldom met the expectations raised by their names. There is something ineradicably stodgy and dreary about the writings of almost every far-Left thinker, activist, politician, academic, journalist. They pursue their arguments and policies in arid deserts of lifeless words, with the sterile passion of theologians. Tariq Ali is an exception among his fellow revolutionaries not only in his amiability but also in his literacy and in his journalistic and personal panache. He now edits Socialist Challenge, which will be recalled for its account of slush money at British Leyland. He came to England as an undergraduate in 1963, the son of a rich landowner in Lahore. England is his adopted home and he is a British subject, citizen of the United Kingdom: a fully paid-up member of our society, as it were.
What we have here is another account of the year 1968, what happened then, why it happened, why it mattered, and what has gone right and wrong since, all in the context of the Revolution that might have been. Tariq Ali seems at times to think the Revolution actually happened, and is continuing, to judge from his secondary title, Inside the Revolution. Quite what revolution he was and is inside he does not make clear; and although he is much less fooled than the generality of his kind into exaggerating the importance of what he is doing and saying in the real world around him (as opposed to the potential world they believe they are bringing about), he has not dropped out of the struggle as he sees it and he remains cheerfully optimistic about eventual victory: 'One major breach in the system of capitalist fortifications and everything could change overnight. 1968 saw the rebirth of revolutionary socialism in Europe. It helped to lay the ideological
foundations of the new structure that is required. The task remains one of construction. The central argument of this book is that the political conditions in Europe — East and West — remain favourable, despite a number of setbacks, for the development of mass revolutionary organisations which will put socialist democracy on the agenda once again.' That is how he concludes; and if `socialist democracy' (which is how he likes to put his own particular brand of neo-Trotskyist Marxism) is not at the moment 'on the agenda', then I cannot see of what 'Revolution' Tariq Ali is giving us an inside view. What he gives is an insider's view of quite a lot of revolutionary talk and one or two demonstrations, and an outsider's sketch of aspects of recent history which happen to interest him as a revolutionary. As such it is by no means without interest and value.
The trouble is, that it is also without judgement and evidence. `Revolutionary socialism was reborn in 1968,' is its opening assertion, and nowhere is what was `reborn' defined, or when its first birth was, and no evidence for any such renaissance is produced.
I am not at all sure what Tariq Ali is driving at, and I am pretty sure that he doesn't know either. Politically speaking 1968 was a sexy kind of year, with all sorts of exciting happenings. It is possible that there could have been a revolution in Paris that May — if the workers had joined the students, if the French Communist Party had led the way instead of attacking the students, if the French Prime Minister, Mr Pompidou, had been inflexible, if the supporters of the Gaullist regime had not staged a huge street demonstration in support of de Gaulle and his televised promises of reform and new elections. But these 'ifs' accumulate; and when the election was duly held de Gaulle, as Tariq Ali notes, won a record electoral majority at the polls. Nonetheless, I would not dispute Ali's description of May 1968 in Paris as constituting `a social experience which left its mark on both the rulers and the ruled. It was infectious. France in May 1968 was a political laboratory.'
It was not the only one. Czechoslovakia was another: and what that laboratory experiment showed was that Russian tanks still ruled, and that Dubcek's brave experiment was hopeless. Tariq Ali emphasises the Tet offensive of 30 January 1968 as the opening of the year's revolutions; and certainly this was the Viet Cong's first decisive show of strength. Johnson announced he would not stand for the Presidency. Martin Luther King was assassinated. There was
much violence in the United States. But, in retrospect, little is seen to have changed. Eventually the United States withdrew, defeated, from Vietnam. Portugal dismantled its empire in subsequent years and sought, and still seeks, to achieve a western democratic system. So does Spain. Chile under Allende tried and failed to establish an enduring and liberal Marxist state. As for France, it went on as before. So, too, did Italy — and although that country may now be approaching a condition ripe for revolution, its Communist party may be expected to follow the French example and uphold the 'bourgeois' institutions of the state. And in Britain there never really was any 1968, a few excitable students apart. Much of Tariq Ali's analysis of what has happened here is orthodox. He notes the increased power of the unions. He notes the similarity in ultimate policies pursued by the Wilson-Heath-Wilson-Callaghan administrations. He waxes lyrical about Scargill and the Saltley picket: but Scargill is rot the force he was, and the trade unions have shown no general disposition to bring down governments. They will lead no revolutions, but will seek their members interests and endeavour to secure a regenerated capitalist industry. He quite rightlY concludes that 'the idea that a Revolution in the West could be based on a small minority, however active and militant, is totallY absurd'; but when he asks, 'How will the mass of the working people be won over to revolutionary politics?' and having said that 'terrorism is not the answer' and that 'mere propaganda is insufficient', he falls back upon asserting, Tor the masses a break with their everyday consciousness can only come through gigantic upheavals and explosions: in their different ways Portugal, France, Chile and Czechoslovakia provide us with examples of these shake-ups in society. Do they? They show examples of excitable change, but also of failed resolutions. There is nothing to suggest that 'the mass of the working people' wants revolutionarY change; and I begin to wonder whether Tariq Ali does, when his practical proposals amount to the introduction of annual parliaments and proportional representation, the first to 'destabilise bourgeois rule,' the second being 'the Most democratic way of assessing real voting strength.' Neither of these 'reforms' or changes would frighten me. Indeed there is a great deal to be said for proportional representation as a protection against the extreme Left, the workers being conservative and not, like middle-class Marxist intellectuals, in the least bit revolutionary in their nature or aspirations. As for annual parliaments, again I can see nothing to fear in them on the ground of instability. But then I see nothing much to fear in Tariq Ali himself, not only because he is a merry fellow, but because he and his kind are without any popular support and without any understanding of what the peoPle want.
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