A truce in the fight fo democracy?

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ALTHOUGH the Labour partly cover themselves in their foreword by saying, 'We don't necessarily collectively agree with every point made" , they still have a lot to answer for. The pamphlet begins promisingly enough with an introduction which recognises the need for •an extra-parliamentary power base for the implementation of socialist policies" • The section on the history of the Labour Party, though very disjointed, should be useful material for Labour Party members.

It nails quite firmly the idea that the Labour Party is or has ever been a socialist party, with the author preferring the 'Labourism' to 'Socterm ialism' when referring to the early Labour Party.

Pete Rowlands manages to chart quite well the widening gulf. between the party and the unions, and the TUC's role in emasculating Trades Councils, but more space should have been given to the General Strike.

The only reference is:

•The establishment of the TUC General Council in 1921 was aimed at streng. thening the coordination of trade union forces, and it to some extent succeeded in forcing the Tory retreat on "Red Friday' in 1925 and the coordination of action in the General Strike" - thus giving the impression that the General Council had nothing to do with the sell-out of the General Strike.

From chapter three onwards the pamphlet really takes a nosedive. We are told about the "rise of a new, leftish, more aggressive trade union leadership (Jack Jones, Hugh Scanion, Lawrence Daly)" and no more issaid about them. We are not told about Jones' role as the main architect of the Social Con Trick, or Scanlon's "lapse of memory" at the Labour Party conference which wrecked the moves towards Labour Party democracy for at least another year. And we are not told that Daly is now one of the main bulwarks of the right wing in the trade unions.

The heyday of the Liaison Committee for the SUll Defence of Trade Unions (LCDTU) is correctly said to have been from 'In Place of Strife' through to the fall of the Heath government, taking in. the mobilisation of the working class against the Industrial Relations Act and the jailing of the Pentonville Five dockers. Pete Rowlands then claims that the decline of the LCDTU was due to workers' "widespread acceptance of the Social Contract"

This may in part be true, but the real reason for the decline of the LCDTU, and of its parent organisation, the Communist Party, is their politics and organisation.

They relied on nudging and coaxing left-talking trade union officials.

One CP full-time official who was very proLCDTU in the early "70s is now reaping the beneJack Jones OUT blaths Dontnaville Five labovel? like ine i eno ..... fits of treating his members in that way. Pat Farrelly is now personnel manager in Lansing Bagnalls Basingstoke factory, where he has presided over the victimisation of myself and others, plus 600 (so far) redundancies among his ex'troops' Farrelly is still a member of the CP, he still no doubt supports the LCDTU.

A section is sub-headed 'Economism' , and argues that 'the militancy of the early '70s led to the Social Contract", , and "that of the Winter of Discontent to the Tory victory of 1979"

Chronologically this may be true, but tor a socialist to imply that these setbacks for the working class were caused by militancy is absolutely ridiculous.

What led to the Social Con-trick was the Labour Government's desire to run the capitalist system in a more efficient way than the Tories. What led to the Tory victory was not, as Rowlands implies, Labour supporters going over to the Tories because of trade union militancy, but Labour policies which were indistinguishable

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Socialist. Qrganiser 6 August 1981 Page 7 £16 for a 42 hour week The misery of childminders Under MANDY WILLIAMS reviews the newi pamphlet Con the conditions of the tens of thousands of registered and unregistered childminders in Britain.