[HOW the T&GWU will cast its 14¼ million…]

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HOW the T&GWU will cast its 14¼ million votes in the deputy leadership election will not be finally decided until the delegation meets on September 27 - the start of Labour Party conference.

But the Executive will meet on the 21st and make a recommendation. The delegation is unlikely to go against the Executive.

It is expected that the Executive will recommend a vote for Silkin in the first ballot. The second ballot is not clear.

How the recommendation will compare with the results of the "consultation' with the Regions is anybody's guess.

No details of these 'consultations' are being published, but they seem very unlikely to show a majority for Silkin.

But in some regions the consultations haven't got as far as branch meetings. They have only gone to the District Committees or tothe branch secretaries, with no time for a branch meeting to be consulted. Region Five circulated Silkin's election material, but not Healey's or Benn's.

In Region 6, branches have been consulted, but branches never known to speak before, particularly in South Manchester, are recording votes for Healey. There is no doubt that some full-timers have been working all-out to get in votes for Healey.

The most democratic way of making the decision on the TGWU's vote would have been to vote on it at the Biennial Delegate Conference. But it was clear to the leadership of the Union that that would have meant a vote for Benn - so no vote was taken. • All the machinations of the TGWU's leadership show that they know that if the rank and file had anything to do with it, then the T&G delegation would vote for Benn on the first ballot.

The Executive meeting that will take the decision on how to recommend the delegation to vote is on Monday September 21st. A lobby of this EC meeting is being organised. Come and support it - at 8.30am, Transport House, Smith Square, London SW1 (nearest tube, Westminster.) "WHAT IS the Blackpool TUC all about if the people who voted for policies this week are not interested in whether or not these policies are carried out?"

These telling words from Tony Benn in last week's Blackpool debate with Healey and Silkin sum up the essential reason why he should be suppor ed.

Benn alone of the three condidates stands for the ection and accountability ot leadership in the labour maement.

Benn alone has taken up the fight for democratic control and broken down the unspoken division between Labour Party politics and the trade unions. In fighting for party democracy he has broken up the old cosy 'unity' between the tame "left' and the right wing, and has been willing to trample on the toes of the trade union bureaucracy.

Aspirations

Benn's decision to stand against Healey, and his appeal over the heads of the union leaders to the rank and file membership of the whole labour movement, has fundamentally changed the conditions in which socialists argue against the right wing.

The platform of policies on which he stands is not a perfect platform. But it reflects the present aspirations of wide layers of the workers' movement.

In the Blackpool debate he stressed that the election contest was about:

•.. getting rid of Mrs Thatcher; restoring full employment; restoring • the rights of trade unions; advancing the rights of women; and it is about. getting a freedom of information act; leaving the Common Market; having a non-nuclear defence policy, and getting rid of American nuclear bases."

He went on to declare himself firmly opposed to CENTRE PAGES:

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The Bomb, wage control, the issues at stake Now organise the Left! At the last rest und GoT the mol unir unir agel rath of t Blackpool and Wembley, disastrous policies of the Labour government: "We cannot go back to '9, to the policies of wage raint which not only lermined the Labour vernment but undermined role of the trade union vement, because trade on officials - like the old ons in Poland - were nts of Government policy ter than representatives the membership." in was the standard-bearer of e In stark contrast to this, Healey nailed his colours firmly to the mast of the policies which brought the 1979 Election defeat.

Bluntly he argued that it is not the right wing but Benn and the left who have betrayed the working class!:

«Those who • have betrayed the working class of Britain are those who have forced us for two whole years to fight one another when we should have been fighting the Tories and who through ideological narcissism are helping to keep in power the most brutal government in living memory, a government which has committed itself to destroy our trade union movement."

Healey's stubborn defence of the anti-socialist policies of previous Labour governments was combined rocratic reform with a firm commitment NATO and the EEC:

"We cannot hope to avoid the disasters which now threaten the whole human race simply by ignoring them or by retreating into a neurotic isolationism which treats every international organisation set up to tackle them simply as characters in a cavalcade of monsters...

As the unanimous favourite candidate of the Tory press. Healey was of course duty bound to discount the power and influence of the media and attempt to turn the tables and portray Benn and the left as "elitists"

But with Healey making no bones of his opposition to key Labour Party and TUr Congress policies - unilateral disarmament. rejection of wage controls, rena2303 NO: 32 ...

tionalisation without compensation, and withdrawal from the EEC - it was left to John Silkin to make the most dishonest presentation of the evening.

Sensing the predominantly left-wing politics of the 1,000-strong audience, he put forward a carefullycouched radical-sounding statement which skilfully concealed his opposition to the democratic reforms fought for by Benn.

His opposition to the Wembley decision was smuggled into a passage welcoming the wider franchise in leadership elections as the way forward... but stressing that the "ground rules" would have to be set out in the future!

Silkin declared himself against "authoritarianism" but then revealed that by this he actually means accountability. Deliberately confusing the Chartists' call for secret polling for all in General Elections with the left's struggle to make leaders accountable to the membership for their actions, he proclaimed:

"The Chartists demanded secret ballots to end intimidation: no recorded votes for them!"

As a candidate who only emerged late on as the stalking horse of a few bashful right wingers in the PLP and trade union bureaucracy, Silkin felt obliged to defend the existing leadership against the criticism of the left:

"Some claim that the Party is becoming dominated by bureaucratic trade unions and lacking vigorous leadership.

"But the best leaders are not always the dominant, extrovert personalities, the folk heroes."

Sometimes, he implied, a stoogy nonentity, a take left "conciliator" like himself is an ideal choice .offering occasional flurries of left rhetoric combined with consistent accomodation to the right wing in the unions and the Labour Clear The debate spelled out the choices facing workers. The three candidates offer either:

*A defender of wage controls, NATO and the IMF, and a staunch opponent of unilateral disarmament, party democracy and accountability.

*A slippery and evasive opponent of party democracy and accountability, who proclaims his support for unilateralism but hedges on the issue of a new social contract "call it what you will"

*Or the leading advocate of party democracy and accountability, committed to implement Conference policies, openly criticising the discredited policies of 1979 and even now proclaiming that there is no solution through simply trying to reform capitalism.

We think that the choice is clear for all to see.

We need to drive forward the democratisation of the Labour Party and the unions as part of the fight for a new leadership committed to the struggle for socialism.

That's why we say 'Vote Benn'!

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