Sell Out

Scan page 7

Cuts struggle - puts Labour's left on the spot SAYS BL - militancy on the shop floor ment.

One can't help feeling that Vladimir Derer sees as one of the disadvantages of that campaign what I would count one of its strengths, the widening of the debate to far greater numbers of people both in the CLPs and more especially in the unions and the intrusions of raucous working class politics into the previously cosy, undisturbed world of committees and professional constitutional whizz kids.

Why else his almost obsessive uncomplimentary references to "extraparliamentary politics" and "circuses and jamborees"?

This is reminiscent of the line of the "Left" traitors during the Benn* campaign: "I don't disagree with Benn or most of his Derer's comments about the "trade unions": "Among the trade unions a halt to democratic reforms was called already last year when there was overwhelming support for the reimposition of the three year rule." (SO 51).

"Overwhelming support" among whom? Certainly not the membership. Not even the union conferences. When Vladimir says "trade unions" he can see no further than the general secretaries and their apparatus.

In fact, I think, one of the gains-though a negative one-of the Deputy Leadership campaign was to show up the unreliability of the "Left" allies in the trade union bureaucracy and the need for a thorough-going democratisation of that wing of the labour movement.

If Vladimir Derer's assessment of the conference and the Deputy Leadership elections is disastrously one-sided, then his views on the way forward from now are even more blinkered.

The pressures are real. The devastating effects of this government; mass unemployment and slashing of the public sector, combined with a total failure from the official movement, trade unions and Labour Party, to respond adequately, create an atmosphere of demoralisation and defeat.

The threat of the SDP is felt quite acutely by the Oidinary members. The immediate response is to close ranks, try and create unity-any sort of unity-in order to gain the overriding objective of winning the next election.

Bringing up the record of the leaders of the labour movement is seen as nitpicking, an unnecessary luxury we cannot afford when faced with this horrendous government.

How you react to that pressure • is the clincher. Vladimir's answer is to go with the stream, to buckle under that pressure.

But that is not a solution