Warrington warning to socialists

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AT Warrington Roy Jenkins had everything going for him. A former Home Secretary, exceedingly famous, nourished on the respect and sympathy of the entire press, he was facing a massively discredited Tory government, with a moronic right-wing Tory prole to compete for Tory votes in Warrington. He was a joint leader of a recent split in the Labour Party standing in a natural Labour constituency. His Labour opponent Doug Hoyle was branded as a 'Bennite extremist' and wriggled like a fish on a hook over the issue, thereby probably impressing the voters as shifty and unreliable. Opportunities like that to achieve famous defeats don't come very often!

Jenkins got 422% of the vote to Labour's 48½ % and the Tories' 7%. (Labour was down from 61.3% in the election and the Tories from 29%).

Hoyle has reported to the Labour Shadow Cabinet that in the campaign, •'Tony Benn was the issue. Once that was raised the door was closed on you' Labour had the disadvantage of being branded as standing for radical change but not campaigning for it. Labour could therefore not counter the press and the SDP. Hoyle fought the election in the obvious belief that he only needed to brand Jenkins as being pro-EEC to win. He was investments in the banking operations of the crook Michele Sindona, for a period a financial consultant to the Vatican. Another reason seems to be the mysterious operations of the Vatican bank, 'The Institute of Religious Works' run by Massimo Spada, who is also under investigation.

OBVIOUSLY the Church of England is suffering from financial strain, despite being the biggest property owner in the country. It has banned the sale of souvenir Bibles from St Paul's on the grounds that they don't bring in enough profit.

Tourists visiting the Cathedral, we are told, "can choose from Royal Wedding souvenir tea cloths, mugs, plates, scarves, pendants, sweet dishes, note-books and other items" ... just not Bibles (though Prince Charles confirms that they make 'compelling reading').

So keen are the 'profitseekers of St Paul's to use their shelf space to best advantage, that they have even refused to put up a sign in the building telling people where theyscan buy a Bible. wrong nearly wrong.

It is estimated that for every vote Jenkins took from Labour he took two from the Töries. So the SDP, Labour's long-time closet Tories look like a far more serious threat to the Tories than to Labour. Thatcher thinks so. Coming on top of the youth rebellion, Warrington has pushed the Thatcherites into announcing the cheap labour youth jobs scheme: the government's proposals look remarkably like what pale pink Tory Jenkins proposed during the campaign.

Fairground

Despite the :fairground barkers' gasps of amazement over the Jenkins vote, though remarkable, it is not so singular as they pretend it is. Under the unpopular Heath government, in 1972 and 1973, when Labour was, as now, still discredited by its record in office, the Liberals got massive protest votes.

They got 53.6% at Sutton and Cheam, 38.6% at Chester-Le-Street and 36.5% at Manchester Exchange. Yet they lost all these seats in the first 1974 election (though they did get about six million votes).

According to computer prediction if the Wartington results were repeated throughout the country in a General Election, then Labour would win 113 seats, the Tories 1 and the SDP over 500. But, by their nature, contrived or freak events aren't easy to repeat wholesale.

The Liberal-SDP block's able victory in Croydon with Shirley Williams as candidate probably says more about where they are at than the Warrington vote does. Incumbent Liberal candidate Bill Pitt has refused to be 'reselected'to make way for Shirley Williams. Running away from the advance of demof democracy in the Liberal Wriggles Yet the SDP vote may not collapse in the General Election - OT, collapse sufficiently. The press will continue to brand Labour as 'extremist' • If it wriggles and sauirms like Hoyle dic Instead of picking up the brand and using it as a proud banner to rally support for a positive working class alternative to Thatcher, the Social Democrats may get enough votes to rule out a majority Labour government after the next election. Tony Benn said six months ago that that was what they were out to achieve.

To stop this happening and to reach the electorate across the din of the Tory press, we need to build a mass Labour Party menbership, enthusiastic for socialism and organisec to rouse the working class.

There is no room for coraplacency. The left mus mobilise and fight back i.

the meaning of Warring= may yet prove to be tha there will be no maje...

Labour government * ...

Thatcher falis.

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inability to sustain its band- wagon by going for a prob-

ocracy in the labour move-f ment, she has falled foul