On Turkish Left

Scan page 5

THE military main imperialiot backers t drop ite take steps tomerdo reador wingers sing come semblance. a Two waves of arrests last The West German gor week saw the seizure of ernment has reacted ag 35 alleged members of the ainst General Evren's mov Turkish Communist Party, to outlaw political partie and 72 alleged members of in Turkey, and is appar the left wing Dev-Yol ently unhappy at Evren' The Dev-Yol members least two more years. uncover the imperialist deals and links with South Africa;

4) For füll blacking action against all military and related supplies to the apartheid regime;

S) For the nationalisation under workers' controt of all companies and banks involved in South Africa.

In the fight for effective: class solidarity action the leadership of the AAM_aho stands as an obstacle. Their politics of class collaboration leads them to line up with the labour bureaucracy, against moves to mobilise independent workers action.

Strangled

At the AGM, the Stalinists and reformists in the AAM leadership managed to sabotage even a debate of the crucial Oxford Trades Council resolution-it was remitted to the AAM's bureaucratic National Committee, where it will no doubt be quietly strangled.

While union bureaucrats and AAM leaders continue to manoeuvie, the struggle of workers at Telephone Manufacturers and Johnson Tiles continues, and the need for solidarity action grows.

Messages of support for strikers at Telephone Manufacturers and Johnson Tiles:

MAWU and BCAWU, 1 Central Court, 125 Gale Street, Durban. South Africa. For the WilsonRowntre: strikers: SAAWL. PO Box 7092. East London. South 41rica.

other oppor organisation.

- claimed by the junta to constitute the whole of the leadership of the organisation face sweeping charges including the killing of a policeman and four political opponents, and running businesses as a front for their political work.

In the meantime one of the main 'liberal' bourgeois politicians, RPP leader.

Bulent Ecevit, was -last week sentenced to four months in jail for criticising the junta.

This was after General Evren's regime - balanced uneasily in the stance of impartial 'arbiter' between forces of right and left in Turkey - had come under renewed pressure from its democracy plans to retain power for ‹ Stability But their pressure f reforms plainly tak second place to their or cern for the preservation capitalist stability Turkey.

It is only the Turk workers' movement backed by solidarity f the international mor class - which can pu end to the repression of left and establish a = ers' and peasants' gor ment which alone can g antee democratic rigt Turkey.

* Contact: Turkey Sl ity Campeig: B3 5965. Londo #CI I

Scan page 6

THE right-wing are now preparing for the biggest witch-hunt in the Labour Party for years.

The lever they are using to force the issue is the selection in Bradford North of Pat Wall to replace the sitting MP, Ben Ford. Pat Wall, in addition to being President of Bradford Trades Council, is, of course, a prominent supporter of 'Militant' Sixty MPs from the extreme right-wing Parl iamentary faction, the so-called 'Manifesto Group' have issued a statement demanding that the National Executive refuses to endorse Pat Wall's candidacy and launches a witchhunt against supporters of 'Militant' They are demanding that the NEC expels 'Militant' by invoking Clause II(3) of the Party constitution which says that organisations 'having their own Programme, Principles and Policy for distinctive and separate propaganda. shall be ineligible for affil¡ation to the Party". Under Clause II) 4) (b), members of such organisations are ineligible for membership of the Labour Party.

But you could be forgiven for thinking that this was a better description of the NATO-backed 'Labour Committee for Transatlantir Understanding', of which Duffy, Boyd, Sirs and Co. ate leading members; of the Tri-Lateral Commission in which the likes of Healey and Owen consort with leading world capitalists like David Rockefeller in what bears an uncanny resemblance to that fabled beast the 'International Capitalist Conspiracy' (See "The Global Manipulators' by Robert Eringer, Pentacle Books).

Capitalist Crisis and Socialist Alternative' , a detailed study of the breakdown of the boom, by Bob Sutcliffe.

50p plus postage from PO Box: 135, London N10DD. Peter Shore Before Pat Wall's success, the right were looking to undermine mandatory re-selection by persuading the NEC not to endorse the candidacy of Bob Wareing (not a Militant supporter) who defeated sitting MP Eric Ogden in Liverpool West Derby. Unfortunately for them, Ogden joined the SDP before the NEC heard his appeal. Before he left, however, he actually asked Michael Foot to back him as an 'independent candidate'!

Ben Ford, wno Pat Wall defeated, appears to be a similar character. He told his local party that he would refuse to be a Labour candidate if the Party's manifesto included commitvertisement CAPITALIST RIsT; + I81 dona SOHANIST ALTERNA: I/ CAPITAGIST CRISIS * AN: SOTANIST ALTERA: 1/3 CAPIT4:3:

SOCIABIST ALTERS: ments to unilateral disarmament and withdrawal from the EEC.

Given Party policy on these issues, his constituency had no option but to select someone else. Yet Michael Foot still wrote a letter to the constituency in support of Ford!

Sinister

But the selection of Pat Wall is just the pretext the right are using for the general campaign they are now Rachel Lever continues the debate about where the Labour Left is now by looking at some of the resolutions submitted to the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy AGM, and the decisions taken by the CLPD Executive on which to recommend.

CLPD, and the warnings of its secretary Vladimir Derer on the pressures for conformity and 'unity' in the Party after Brighton, featured prominently in the press last week. An article by Patrick Wintour in the New Statesman quoted Vladimir, and the Guardian picked it up and told the world that CLPD was giving up the fight for Labour democracy.

But a glance through the resolutions submitted for the AGM on December 12 shows that this interpretation is far from true.

Two motions propose a continued fight for an accountable and democratic Parliamentary Labour Party. These are along the waging against the left under their blood-curdling war-cry of "unity" . It is amazing how they manage to turn such an innocent little word into a sinister and menacing threat. If the NEC refuses to agree to their demands, the Manifesto Group "will determine their next step" they warn us.

Any setback for Labour is now being laid at the door of the Left, and is being used as further fuel to demand expulsions. Ken lines of proposals that appeared on this year's Conference agenda but which were withdrawn when it became clear they would be defeated and, under the three year rule, would be out of the running until 1985.

There will also be a further attempt to pin down the Manifesto, with an amendment to Clause 5, 'That major policies agreed by Annual Conference must be included in the election manifesto"

And there would be a major campaign to demand that •Shadow Cabinet spokesmen should stop attacking Annual Conference policies within their remit in the press or on television"

The EC is putting a motion on defence of the Wembley electoral college, 'in particular the principle of annual elections and recorded voting" which it believes will best be achieved 'if the decision about how affiliated organisations cast their vote in the election of the leader and Nigel Williamson replies to the redbaiters' offensive Weetch, the treasurer of the Manifesto Group, went on London's commercial radio station on the very day of the St. Pancras by-election denouncing Trotskyist/Marxist infiltration of the Labour Party in exactly the same terms used by the SDP in the election campaign! Meanwhile, Peter Shore wounds the Party further by making yet another speech about 'self-inflicted wounds.' The right would like to bring back the old 'proscribed list' which was abolished in 1973. The NUR attempted to get a resolution calling for this debated at conterence. They talled but the resolution must now be considered by the new NEC. If the list was reintroduced, groups like 'Socialist Organiser' would certainly feature on it.

Strangely, Sid Weighell will tolerate fascists in the NUR, but not Marxists in the Labour Party. In April 1978 he wrote in the Daily Mirror "We are not proposing to expel members trom the NUR, nor to Because me are disinided BOMASTI AIP ADIM ACMDAAM enough to become members of the National Front. No one wants a witchhunt or restrictions against the beliefs of individuals" - Two recent publications have added further fuel to the witch-hunting hysteria, •'The Far Left — An expose of the Extreme Left in deputy leader becomes part of their normal routine processes"

Warned An amendment proposed supported by the EC, warned against the election becoming 'the subject of a special and separate campaign", , but doesn't specify how such a campaign could be prevented if a candidate chose to mount one - or whether, if this did happen, CLPD would oppose the candidacy:

Other motions, proposed by John Bloxam, Ann Pettifor, and Jon Lansman, with EC support, advocated a campaign to get other elections, and conference card votes, recorded and published.

Other motions reaffirm the fight for positive discrimination for women, opposition to the shortlist of one' manoeuvre, and extension of the principles of democratic accountability to town hall Labour groups. Weighell wants to purge left Britain" by Blake Baker, and 'The Labour Party and the New Left" by David Webster (Fabian Pamphlet). Both of these publications are, in many ways, extremely funny, and I am proud to be included: not to be mentioned would be a slur on one's socialist commitment!

But they have a serious aspect in that they are part of the concerted campaign to expel those members of the left who will not acquiesce to the hypocritical Manifesto Group 'unity' which papers over their own defiance of Party policy.

How can we best prevent a return to the bad old days of the 1950's when the right ruthlessly expelled left-wingers and excluded them from Parliamentary selection lists?

Primarily by continuing our campaign for democracy and accountability in the Party. But perhaps even more importantly, the left cannot afford to be divided itself. We cannot present a credible case against intolerance and expulsions when leading groups on the left like the LCC withdraw from the Rank and File Mobilising Committee, apparently because they will not work with "Trots' '. We can only stop the right-wing purges if we are united ourselves.

NIGEL WILLIAMSON For the second year running, the AGM will debate the controversial question of changing the voting proportions at Annual Conference to give the constituency parties bigger say. Last year all the options were défeated. This year the EC is backing a motion "to. obtain a balance between constituencies and affiliated organisations which more fairly reflects the political and financial contributions of individual Labour Party members"

Will the right wing and its Fleet Street chorus tolerTHE Rank and File Mobilising Committee today took issue with the doctrine of collective responsibility in the form apparently demanded by the Shadow Cabinet.

An RFMC spokesperson said: "If Shadow Cabinet collective responsibility is to mean that 20-odd MPs are to decide the policies Labour advocates in Parliament While preventing other MPs advocating policies decided by conference, then it is a recipe for perpetuating the party inside and outside Parliament. That sort of divisive doctrine can only prevent unity around our policies. which we need to win the next election.

Reg Race, chairperson of the RFMC, said: 'We believe in collective responsibility. All members of the Shadow Cabinet must be collectively responsible for advocating party policy as decided by conference. But we do not accept that collective responsibility can ever legitimately be used to fudge or undermine party policy.

Silence

An RFMC spokesperson also criticised the inequitable manner in which collective responsibility has been used to silence some, while others have been allowed to campaign against party policy from the front benches of the House of Commons.

The spokesperson recalled the front page headline in The Times of May 7 this year "Healey Backs Tories 01 Nuclear Weapons" ate CLPD's quiet, routine campaigns on these questions? Or will they extend their definition of what constitutes a threat to Labour Party unity wider and wider?

One of the motions opposed by the EC states that 'there can be no unity as long as Labour's parliamentary representatives insist on their right to sabotage Party policy, and no 'peace' as long as the right wing organise to reverse the democratic reforms"

SL NOLHOIE

Scan page 7

Socialist Organiser, Thursday 19 November 1981 Page FOOD CHAIN

----- pull-quotes -----

iMIN 50p

SAVE ST. GŁORCĘS

for Benn's