This Time Let's Seize the Machine!

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LPYS under attack Young Socialist leaders evicted from Transport House byscops 1964 The history of Labour's youth is very much linked to the history of various Trotskyist currents in the Labour Party, and some now out of The reason for this is not as the right wing of the Party say, because the Trotskyists are a bunch of good man oeuvrers backed with finance from Moscow. The reason in my view, that the right wing of the Party. have nothing to offer youth faced with the oppression of capitalism. The Trotskyists, on the other hand, have always received a hearing from active sections of youth.

If you look at the Trotskyist. tendencies in the Party, you will find proof of this in the average age of our supporters.

At present the LPYS is controlled by supporters of the Militant newspaper. They took control of the YS democratically, by win. ning support for their ideas and there is nothing wrong with that. The National Left Wing Youth Movement is a tendency in the YS, we do not agree with the method and many of the policies of Militant, but we contribute at the same time to building the YS.

Prior

But this article is primarily concerned with the history of the YS prior to the Militant taking control. The right wing of the Labour Party sees the need for a youth movement. However, the arguments that they use are very different from ours. They have always had a different conception of a youth movement to ours.

Party Conference to back a resolution that you support, to remember an issue you feel strongly about or come to meeting you are space this size!

Just write to Nik Barstow, c/o 41 Ellington Street, London N7.

We have maintained that a youth movement is necessary to mobilise yout 1 to fight against their sp ecial oppression, through the labour movement, as of the overall fight. for The right wing, on the other hand, have the con ception that the youth movement should be nothing more than a glorified youth club, simply organising recreational activities, not discussing politics, with its main political role as an electoral machine to be dug up every tour years.

Relaunch

In 1959 the Labour NEC under control of the right wing, decided to relaunch the YS. The way they approached the 'relaunch' was to treat the YS as a nuisance, a necessary evil They put the Y$ firmly under the control of the Labour Party, effectively stifling any independence. They said that the YS should not discuss politics at its conference; those YS members who happened to PHOTO• be 'keenly interested in politics' they Kindly explained, could be 'actively encouraged to be active in the Party also.

But it was very ditficult for the bureaucracy to keep the youth movement tame and apolitical. Many youth were asking questions and coming to radical conclusions. At that time, as now, there was a massive disarmament movement. This movement attracted thousands of youth to the YS. The left wing of the YS did not just have a token orientation to the movement. They went out and built it, and they fought tooth and nail for the Labour Party to adopt a position of unilateral nuclear disarmament which it did to the horror of Hugh Gaitskell and other right wing leaders of the Party, at the LP conference in 1960.

In New Advance (the journal of the YS) in April 1961 there was a feature on CND on the front page.

Misha Goldman, chairperson of the YCND at the time, explained why she was marching on the Aldermaston march.

Nuclear

'Basically 1 believe. that Britain should cease prod.

uction and storage of nuclear weapons and she should leave NATO and any other alliance based on the poss;

ible use of these weapons.

The right wing did not of YS that they wished. When the YS conference took place in Easter 1961, it voted by a majority of better than two to one for nuclear disarmament and for withdrawal from NATO. It also voted, by a smaller margin, for no confidence in Hugh Gaitskell.

A key factor in the YS at the time was a tendency called Keep Left. Set up as a paper in 1950 by the Wembley League of Youth, Keep Left came under the influence of, the tendency in the Labour Party led by Gerry Healy.

(This tendency, after being expelled from the Labour Party and suffering a drastic sectarian degeneration, has today become the "Workers' Revolutionary Healy's comrades had set up the Socialist Labour Leaguc in 1959 but it was proscribed along with its paper as soon as it was sel up. They therefore had to operate as semi-outlaws in the Labour Party.

In 1958 Keep lett became i four page printed monthly, with a lot of support among Labour's youth. The NEC of the labour Party soon cottoned on to it. In November 1960 it said "l1 is not the function of a branch or branches of the YS to issue a joumal for national circulation"

Thus began the witchhunt against Keep Left.

A determined response from the supporters of Keep Left throughout the labour movement beat off that particular attack by the right wing. They immediately put on the masthead of their paper a list of 16 YS branches that supported Keep Left. This was a big step forward from the two that they had had before.

After a while they had a list of 45. They also organised a campaign throughoul the labour movement which received a lot of support, including the unanimous support of the 250 delegates on Liverpool Trades Council.

At the same time they countered the witch-hunt in the most effective way possible . they set out to build mass, working class YS branches.

The way they set out lo build these branches brought them criticism from 1hc other left groups of the time, such as Young Guard Cled by Tony Clift, now of the SWP) and Ted Grant's tendency, which is now Militant. They organised social events and sports events that would attract lots of youth and hring some of them into the YS. The theory was io ho in with working class youth, rather than spesking on behalt of them in smokefilled rooms One of the first official organisations that will come under attack from the witchhunt is likely to be the Labour Party Young Socialists.

This is not the first time that the Young Socialists have .The model was taken from Wigan YS, who organised 300 youth regularly at "socials in the local Labour Club. About 50 of them got active in the YS politically, the rest of them were card carrying members and got involved in demonstrations that the YS organised. This method became known as "Wiganisation"

Liz Thompson, organiser of Wigan YS and later to be expelled from the YS National Committee put it like this: "They" , (the people who objected to the turn and resigned) "declared they wanted 'classical' evenings and more "high level' discussion. They believed that young people who could appreciate classical music would be more serious and altogether nicer types than those attracted to rock and roll"

Rock and roll

But the youth attracted to rock and roll boosted the membership of the YS and did a lot to fight off the attack by the right wing.

In May 1962 Kcep Left was proscribed by Transport House and its editor, Roger Protz, (now a keen campaigner for real ale) was expelled from St. Pancras North Labour Party. He was followed closely by three Kcep Lett supporters on the YS National Committee come under attack from the right wing of the party. Mick Liggins, secretary of the National Left Wing Youth Movement and a member of Oxford LPYS, reports.

including Liz Thompson (who had apparently done so much to destroy the Labour Party - by building it one must presume!).

Throughout 1962 Keep Left supporters battled on, selling the paper though this was now an expellable offence.

In 1963 they took the leadership of the YS again with seven out of 11 NC members supporting Keep Left. Supporters of Keep Left succeeded in defying the witch-hunt by the right wing and building the YS, But it wasn't to last for long. Of the NC elected in 1963, only two members were left by the end of the year. eep Leit supporter vere witch-hunted of , and a rally, with 1,200 youth outside the old Labour Party headquarters in Smith Square, succeeded in pressuring two Young Guard supporters to resign in sympathy.

In fighting this witchhunt now we can learn from the tactics used then. Keep Left supporters often organised lobbies of the party committees. Sometimes they were successful, and certainly they went a long way to involve the membership in the fight against the witchhunt. Both the LPYS and the Party as a whole should be involved in this type of initiative now One mistake the Keep Left supporters did make was to take the right wing to court over the expulsion of Roger Protz. The WRP now are taking Socialist Organiser to court, and today are flagrant and shameless in breaching the principle of keeping the police and the bourgeois courts out of the affairs of the labour movement.

In 1964, the right wing started to close down the YS branches. Keep'Left were defiant. They said editorial of September 1964, "We will fight on irrespective of the actions of the bureaucracy and the right wing. As far as we are concerned, they can go to hell, with a well-placed boot from us in the rear to help them on their way"

The witch-hunt was now so vicious that the right wing ever called the police to exclude Keep Lett support crs trom meetings and used violence.

From 1964 onwards the Keep Left tendency seemed on course for breaking from une Labour Party. They floated the idea of an independent youth movement in their paper. We may say, of course, tuat it was wrong to break completely from the Party on eve of the election of the first Labour government for 13 years. But we must make it clear that the responsibility for the break up of Keep Left in the YS. was that of the ight wing and the bureauстасу, who hounded them out of the party.

Today we must learn from that experience in our fight to defend the YS.

At that time all the tendencies in the YS were not united against the witchhunt. Ted Grant, now leader of Militant, abstained on the expulsion of members of the Socialist Labour League. S. Mani, business manager of Militant, voted to expel Keep Left supporters from Wandsworth Central YS. We must learn now that all the tendencies in the YS have to be unequivocally in defence of all socialists in the YS.

The YS now must wage a militant fight against the witch-hunt, injecting an offensive as well as a defensive element. It's no good saying that we might register if we are defeated. Talk like that will only please the right wing bureaucrats in Walworth Road and the right wing MPs in Parliament.

The register, if introduced, will neutralise the left. Once Militant is neutralised, then it will be the turn of the rest of the left. This will pave the way for the disbanding of the LPYS.

The YS must mobilise its forces against the witchhunt. That means also doubling the building of the YS. In the winter of 1962 unemployment was high because of the particularly bad winter. Keep Left organised a very big unemployment campaign.

Mass unemployment today presents the YS with the same opportunity. The October 16 demonstration must be a "boot up the rear' for the bureaucracy. We can achieve this by ensuring a big turn-out of YOPs youth and a turnout from the whole labour movement who are all affected by • Tebbit's anti-union laws.

Consolidate

One thing that struck me time and time again in researching for this article was the total failure of the left to ever consolidate their victories. When the left won at the YS conference in 1962 the Editorial in New Advance discredited them -an editorial supervised by Transport House. Today, when we have won victories in the fight for democracy in the Party as a whole, the right wing has turned to expulsions. Why?

Not because they have won the political arguments.

Party. That means that they can purge the left between conferences and they can do what they like in government.

The left has to learn that victories are not victories until they are consolidated.

If we come out of this still breathing, we have to seize that machine and put it under the control of the mass of Labour Party members. We have to put Labour governments under the control of the workers' movement that has propped them up passively for too long.

Scan page 7

Organiser, Thursday 22 July, Page to enable lower level to establish an elaborate management and district hoax of "consultation" officials to get in on the between unions and All this is plainly design- The proposal is that ed to suck in whole layers workers should be given of union officials and statutory access to "major" careerist "planners" and corporate decisions, and administrators within the the right to respond to Labour Party. And indeed such decisions with plans of proviue vi pro- LITTE FF LEADE tection through import ment and union bureaucontrols. crats could rub shoulders But we should remember and loaf about at enormous that such powers would be expense, debating how best exercised only in the frame- jointly to implement work of a capitalist econ- rationalisation and speedomy, in which attempts to up. And there are plans for "plan" any one particular regional and local boards, Subscribe. NEW! From the same old team that brought us 'Four Years of Wage Controls' 'Mass unemployment' 'Winter of Discontent' "Thatcher!' and 'Carry on Scabbing' , comes a new, sensational sequel 'Social Contract II'!

Starring Michael Foot, Len Murray and a cast of dozens, it tells the story of how a handful of top labour bureaucrats fly in the face of the needs and aspirations of their mass membership to offer a new deal to their enemies.

Appropriately enough the premiere of this new epic came in the midst of the efforts by TUC and Labour leaders to knife the ASLEF strike. :

Foot and Murray brandished copies of the script - the new TUC/ document on •Economic Planning and Industrial Democracy" It went down well with some of the more discerning critics from the Tory press.

Malcolm Rutherford of the Financial Times for instance declared. with a script "could be lived Indeed, he declares with some surprise, the Labour Party has "advanced". • Why? Because its idea of national economic assessments 'is not so very different from what the Tory Party put forwrd in 'The- Right Approach to the Economy" before the last General Election"

The main difference between the Labour/TUC plot and that outlined by the Tories and the SDP is the importance attached to the notion of central plannig.

The new document is in essence a firm declaration that in place of any socialist policy of nationalising the banks and major industries to lay a basis for a genuine planned econIf the witch-hunters get their way, what will Labour's policies look like? Harry Sloan reports.

that even the nationalised sectors operate according to the requirements of capitalist private industry.

The central driving force in determining the shape of developments • is the struggle of the capitalist firms to extract a rate of profit which they and their bankers and shareholders consider adequate.

The interests of the working class are in this way made subordinate to the interests of a tiny minority of capitalists.

Decisions which determine the lives of millions of people are made not in Parliament but in the boardrooms of vast banks and corporations.

Tacitly recognising this, the new LP/TUC document points out that 'the largest 100 companies in Britain today control more than 40% of manufacturing production and over half our exports" • But to resolve the problem they turn once again — as Labour governments did so disastrously in the 1960s and 1970s - to a mixture of Parliamentary legislation and bureaucratic structures for "consultation" between management and unions.

A new Department of Economic and Industrial for the development of the British economy will be drafted into neatly printed documents. This in turn will relate to a tripartite "National Planning Council", involving government, bosses and union bureaucrats. plans", as a souped-up version of the "planning agreements" which proved so useless and expensive under the Wilson government.

This time it is said the Department would have powers to "issue, directives". , to invest in or purchase companies, to give or withhold assistance, to control prices or not, and to manorian writhhald nin Intervention Agreements up sector must rebound upon others, and in which the level of cooperation of employers with government "economic planning" will be calculated by them purely on their ability to increase their profits.

Additional levels of bureaucracy flourish as the system works its way down. There is a call for a "'national planning enilero' at which managegravy train.

the proposal on "industrial democracy" is carefully drafted to evade the pitfall which poleaxed the Bullock Report.

Instead of the crude step of putting stooge "union reps" onto company boards - a move resented by employers and widely rejected by trade unionists - lovislation is nronosed 1ESI0I0 THE LABOUR PARTY LABOUR THE NATION AND

GENERAL

MANAGER WANTED ONE WHO CAN RUN A LARGE CONCERN IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST Fi APPLY JOHN BULL L™°. JUST THE MAN I WANT.

management.

their own within 60 days.

Management would then be obliged to go through a ritual of discussions "with a view to reaching agree. ment"

This whole approach is designed to combine blather about union "con trol' over company deci sions with steps to keep uninns at all points on the defensive, forcing them to argue always within the framework . of capitalist "viability" and an overall capitalist economy.

And indeed it is this angle which is key to grasping the central strand of the whole document - the notion of trade union "responsibility" for the planning and preservation of capitalism.

In exchange for notional increased rights to consultation and vague promises of 'new rights in the area of public expenditure, unions are supposea to "acknowledge new responsibilities to support priorities once they have been agreed."

In particular this means using the TUC once again as the policemen to contain working class resistance to Labour government economic policies, which will, as on previous occasions, dictated in the first instance by the bankers and biggest employers.

And (though this document is careful to avoid the issue) it must also mean imposing new rounds of wage control. What else can it mean when the document points out that:

•'To be comprehensive the national economic assessment will have to cover the share of the national income going to profits, to earnings from employment, to rent, social benefit, and to other incomes."

This is just the same old "cash limits" , dressed up policy of pay • norms and for the occasion in the false nose and spectacles of reformist "planning"

We can expect this new Labour Party/TUC plan to be eagerly promoted not only by the reactionary right wing who supported the last social contract, but also by wider sections of the "left" , whose vague notions of an "Alternative Economic Strategy" within revamped social contract.

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