LCC faces danger

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first Act LABOUR'S Brighton conference convinced many activists that it was time for a new initiative to organise the Left.

Tony Benn's deputy leadership attracted tens of thousands to meetings across the country, newly aroused and newly hopeful about the struggle of the Left in the Labour Party. For once they saw the Left fighting as if it meant business.

Do we let them sink back into disillusion, or do we organise them to start to put their new hopes into practice?

Politics

The deputy leadership campaign brought politics into the unions on a big scale. The Left needs to organise to follow that up.

But as the pressure of the defeats on the NEC elections and the Manifesto makes itself felt, a lot of the Labour Left is pulling back.

The majority of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy executive has come out against a new Left initiative and for lowprofile' tactics. (See Vladimir Derer's columns last week and this week: Socialist Organiser has also invited comrades representing the CLPD minority viewpoint to contribute next week).

The CLPD is in favour of continuing the Rank and File Mobilising Committee, the nearest the Labour Left has come so far to an activist alliance. But the Labour Coordinating Committee, another important Labour Left campaign, has already announced that it is pulling out of the RFMC.

The Guardian this week reports that a new LCC executive statement "rules out 'action replay' of this year's contest for the deputy leadership and suggests that no decision should be taken on whether to challenge Mr Denis Healey again until the spring...

"The underlying assumption is clearly that if Mr Benn is elected to the Shadow Cabinet and offered a post which the Left would regard as commensurate with his established power in the party he might decide not to fight Mi Healey again...

And instead of a fight against Healey the LCC executive reportedly proposes to turn to activity "outside in the workplace and in the community" and to reformulating' the Alternative Economic Strategy.

The LCC office was not available to give comment or information this week, but the Guardian's correspondent, Julia Langdon, is usually well informed.

'Reformulating' the AES is (in my view) a fruitless task - what the LCC should be doing is junking the whole baggage of Keynesian tinkering. But the idyllic perspective of reconciliation and unity has problems besides that.

Labour is solidly committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament. Denis Healey says he will not serve in any Labour government committed to scrapping the Bomb. So if we want to get rid of the Bomb, we have to get rid of Healey too:

What basis for reconciliation can there be? Clearly Michael Foot and others are trying to water down Labour's commitment to mere "unilateral initiatives'.

Many of the most controversial reselection battles will Aävertisement -A revoht onary Marxist critique Workers Action 5p 5p plus postage from PO Box 135, London N1 ODD THERE is a danger that the Labour Coordinating Committee annual conference in Scotland on November 8th may develop the incipient anti-Trotskyist alliance burgeoning between Stalinist trade union bureaucrats and their opposite numbers in CLPs.

The LCC was established in 1978 'to link up left Labour activists in the Party and the Unions"

"If we are to be successful in transforming the Labour Party into an instrument of fundamental social change" , its blurb says, 'then the left needs to organise throughout the movement"

This is an admirable and be fought over coming months. 'Unity' and reconciliation' will be the catchcries used by sitting MPs to try to force through shortlists of one and keep their seats.

On many another issue, too, the scene is set for efforts to water down or gut the radical policies and democratic reforms decided by recent Labour conferences - all in the name of unity, no doubt, and all in the name of winning the hext election. But such unity just means that the rank and file gets swindled.

the Labour Left really has woken up and started fighting for real, as the deputy leadership election seemed to show, then we must organise to stop this correct objective but is already degenerating in the hands of the bureaucrats and Stalinists into a calculated exclusion of the revolutionary left.

And it is in fact only the revolutionary left inside the Labour Party thát can begin to transform this objective into a living, reality, away from the dead formalism that is already beginning to pervade the LCC. • SO supporters should therefore make a priority of joining and becoming active in the LCC.

Further information from the LCC, 9 Poland Stree, London W1.

Jonathan Hammond The one thing gained from the 1974-9 Labour government was some bitter lessons, which have inspired some momentous rank and file assaults on Labour conservatism. Are we willing to let all that fade away now, in a sad but graceful return to 'business as usual'?

In • the constituencies, there is still a strong body of activists who want to take forward the fight. But they want and expect leadership - and what they are getting from the mainstream Labour Left groups is the opposite.

The last Socialist Organiser secretariat meeting decided to propose to our next Delegate Meeting, on November Ist, a project for a broad Labour Left conference in the new year, to be organised jointly with as many local Labour Lefts and national groupings as possible.

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