["IF, SAY, 60-80 Labour MPs were prepared to…]

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"IF, SAY, 60-80 Labour MPs were prepared to break away and form their autonomous parliamentary grouping they could change British politics.

"Such a group could announce they were not prepared to accept an election manifesto imposed by an unrepresentative national executive committee of the present Labour Party ... and present themselves to the electors under some label designed to appeal to traditional Labour supporters, by implication labelling their official Labour Party opponents as left-wing extremists ..It might eventually prise away a substantial chunk of the trade union edifice...

That's what the editors of the bosses' magazine, The Economist- thinking Tories, contemptuous of Thatcher's dogmas, and strong admirers of Healey -advise right wing Labour MPs to do if Tony Benn wins the deputy leadership.

Split Whether the MPs will do that, or try some other splitting tactic, or join the SDP, we don't know. But one thing is certain: the Healey 'faction will not carry out Labour policies on the ship positions, they will use those positions to thwart and combat Labour policy.

The power of the Healey faction should not be underestimated. They have the press, they have the dead weight of bureaucracy, and they • have à thousand positions of influence.

To defeat them, and then to win a majority for left wing policies and implement them against all the entrenched power of Toryism, we need an active mass membership in the Labour Party:

Broad The Labour Left must organise itself , оп а • broad and democratic basis, to build a mass campaigning party and win a leadership accountable to that party.

Anywhere in the country now, Tony Benn can draw enthusiastic audiences of hundreds of labour movement people. Those hundreds must be organised, so that they are not just audiences but activist forces.

Socialist Organiser is trying to organise the Left, both in our local Socialist Organiser groups and by taking the initiative for broader Mobilising Committees and Labour Lefts.

But what's most needed now is a call from Tony Benn himself, as the leader of the Left, for a national conference to organise left-wing movement in the Labour Party and the DENIS Healey's 5% pay limit of winter 1979-80, imposed in defiance of TUC and Labour Party conference decisions, pitted the Labour government against angry workers fighting for decent wages, and helped let the Tories in.

And Healey's previous incomes policies forced a 14% cut in average real take-home pay between 1975 and That's why Labour and no more race C told the TUC conferences have said: no more incomes policies.

deputy leadership debate at the TUC that incomes policy "could be made to work The tale they tell is that a new incomes policy could be different - tied to price controls, dividend controls, and economic planning.

But price controls are always a sham (short of a war economy). Dividend controls just mean the money is stashed away to give the shareholders more gains later. And economic planning will be a farce like the last Labour government's planning agreement with Chrysler unless the major industries and banks are taken into common ownership.

Some say incomes policy will help the lower paid. But the best thing to help the lower-paid would be a decent legal minimum wage - the last thing these right wingers support!

All value is created by labour. But wages reflect only the value of labour power, i.e. the amount necessary to maintain the working class at a minimal standard of living. In return TOT limited wages, the

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Bomb, the EEC, or incomes policy. If they hold leader-