[DESPITE roads like glaciers and British Rail's intransigence…]

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DESPITE roads like glaciers and British Rail's intransigence, CLPD supporters all over Britain converged on six centres during January.

The aim was to deepen support for CLPD's ongoing campaigns and improve our effective organisation at regional level.

Attendances were obviously not what they might have been in a strike-free June, but there was generally a very useful coming together of trade union and constituency activists, involving without discrimination both veterans and newcomers, bureaucrats and rank and file.

The campaigns to democratise the PLP and abolish 'shortlists of one' proved uncontroversial, though it was recognised that an enormous amount of work has still to be done if even such non-contentious issues as these are actually to secure a Party Conference majority in eight months' time.

The search for Party unity against witch hunts also evoked general solidarity, although not everyone has yet been as publicIy vocal in defence of Miliiant and Hornsey as they have been (apart from some uf those with power) in defence of Bermondsey.

CLPD's campaign to Lilli Luczak, a Canadian woman threatened with deportation tosupport I AM a 28 year old secretar. a Canadian citizen, who Has lived in London for more than right years. I have a six:: old daughter, Jessica, * ? was born in this couns * and although I have bien irying very hard to so here permanently as a Francis Prideaux reports on the CLPD's recent regional conferences support the Hammersmith North amendment on Local Government Democracy ran into predictable criticism that it doesn't go far enough, but there was a general realisation that it should be supported as a significant step forward. More welcome still, a number of comrades at the London meeting volunteered to give this somewhat neglected subject more attention.

CLPD's proposals for positive discrimination ran into considerable criticism at both Birmingham and York, not least from a member of the Labour Party's current Women's Advisory Committee. The proposals were variously criticised, both on the grounds that they went too far and also on the grounds that they didn't go far enough.

There is clearly a massive job to be done if anything is to be won at this year's Conference, but the tide is slowly turning in the face of sustained pressure from those most affected. Even greater pressure will no doubt be needed if, as demanded at the Liverpool and Edinburgh meetings, positive discrimination is single woman in my own right, the Home Office have refused. Now, it seems my time is up and 1 must go.

Although I have no legal grounds to remain here, 1 do have compassionate reasons, namely that without a home, family, friends, a job and without any money, Jessica and I would have no chance of living a normal life. Everything I have is here. But the Home Office seem very willing to throw out a British subject, that is Jessica, for the sake of some bureaucratic principle' or alternatively, a separation of a mother from her child is also in order.

The thing that sickens me most, is that the Home Office were willing to oblige me with an extension while I was living with Jessie's father, but not when i was doubly hard for my little girl's happiness, but in the eyes of the authorities my value as a person is diminished because I am no longer also to be won for black people.

CLPD's proposal to take 'at least 25' companies into public ownership also met criticism on the grounds that it didn't go far enough; but most people took the view that it was actually winnable in 1982 and therefore emphatically worth working or.

The need for public ownership to be accompanied by democratically accountable management was strongly stressed on more than one occasion.

The view was strongly put at the London meeting that the CLPD Executive was not working hard enough to build left unity with other RFMC organisations or applying sufficient pressure on Tony Benn and Norman Atkinson to stand again for the positions of Deputy Leader and Treasurer.

The meetings all provided useful feedback and, above all, a chance to plan practical organisation for living with a man. A man against whom I was forced to take out a non-molestation order. The fact that 1 never married him, was for me personally, a saving grace.

Outcast

Immigration Control is holding my passport and l am just 'hanging on' now waiting for a decision from the Minister of State. It is nerve-wracking and humiliating and 1 might as well have been a criminal, gone into hiding, or told the Home Office a lot of lies. i would be treated in the same way. They have not even allowed me an extension of leave while my case is pending. Why, may I ask would I have left the country and come back in, (1 went to Germany for one week last December), had I wanted to stay here wilfully? It just doesn't make sense.

I do feel that 1 am not just another immigration case. Mine may not be a big ocracy Norman Atkinson this year's round of trade union and Regional Party conference.

A powerful imprint on the agenda of at least one such conference followed the Cardiff meeting in particular. Similar initiatives must be made. and sustained on every other front also. Otherwise we'll lose. (Offers of help and donations, please, to CLPD, 10 Park I Drive, London NW11 7SH). enough story to open a Parliamentary enquiry into the immigration laws of this country (as the recent rape cases are doing for the rape laws), but l've come this far and I'm not going to stop now. Had I not gone to the press in the first place, the deportation order I'm now being threatened with would have come through, and Jessica and I would have been physically removed from this country.

I don't know what will become of us if we are sent back to Canada. The best the Canadian authorities could do for us is to place Jessie in a foster home. To be destitute in a country like Canada means you are a social outcast because it reminds people of what they hate and fear most.

Decent

I desperately need public support and in particular from women who know what it's like 1o be up against a chauvinistic society

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gether with her six year old daughter Jessica, appeals for

on my own. As a single parent, 1 have to work