Sept. 11 conference TURN NUMBERS INTO ACTION!

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mass DHSS arrests STRANGELY, it was the one speaker who was at the 'Fight the Tories, not the Socialists' conference who was there NOT to talk about the witch-hunt who spelled out most clearly what it was all about. • A member of the Air India strike committee was at the conference to explain their strike and the issues behind it:

'We are not so afraid of the dole queue as to sell our rights to organise as workers. The future of the labour movement is in the balance right now. We can't look out at the dole queues and say fight some other time. We know there is no other time". "anthontima"

Substitute the word 'witch-hunt' for "dole queue' in her speech, and the lessons of today's class struggle for today's fight in the Labour Party are clear. The Air India speaker herself put it more directly when she appealed for Party members' support: "Sitting in a hall passing resolutions for a day isn't annuch — we need enlidarity every day" TT W Whether the September 11 conference has lived up to the task of building the day to day fight against the witch hunt, before the Labour Party conference and beyond, remains to be seen. But with over 2,000 Labour Party and trade union delegates, it certainly was a show of the strength that can be mobilised.

Speaker after speaker at are being processed -roughly one case every fifteen minutes - with automatic custodial prison contancao heino annlien CHUCILCO even in the case of first offenders, and the absence of the usual social welfare reports.

The solicitors appearing for the defendants seem to have inadequate opportunity in some cases to prepare proper defences. We conslaer tnat tnese aerena- • J AL-d AL--ants are not being tried as individuals but are being made public scapegoats.

TXT ~ ananiana thent consider. that the sentences are incompatible with the Lord Chief Justice's guidance in R v. Upton (1980) that 'Nonviolent petty offenders ahnuld not. he alinwed tn take up valuable space in prison'. The cost of trials and especially the cost of keeping these defendants in prison for periods ranging upwards from 30 days to 6 months far outweighs the sums of money involved in the cases. 6. The negligence of the Department of Health and Social Security.

We consider that large part of the responsibility for the situation disJOHN HARRIS SO supporter Nik Barstow al no so the conference hammered away at the theme that the witch-hunt is a diversion from the fight against the Tories, and that Militant supporters, in contrast to the red-baiting disrupters, are actively building the 'Dear Tony' Tony Milhaorn nrnonan. 1uny mumtarl, piuspertive Parliamentary candidate for Toxteth and a prominent Militant supporter, read out two notes of thanks he had received from Michael Foot after taking him on a guided tour of the Toxteth area after the riots. These 'Dear Tony' letters, praising the work of the local party, contrasted oddly with being described by Foot in all the papers as a 'pestilential nuisance' closed in the police operation lies with the DHSS who ignored over a period of seven years repeated informatinn ahnut thaca practices from the director of the Oxford Simon Hostel and from CHAR, together with their repeated requests that administrative procedures be tightened up to prevent the possibility of these practices. These requests were ignored for years while the practices --_L'1- AL . -grew - indeed the DHSS continued throughout this period to refer claimants to tha Indrino branno idaati fied by the director of Simon Hostel, and were doing so up until the day before the police operation. We demand a full public investigation thia negligent official inaction which allowed this practice to grow. 7. General Comment.

Finally we are extremely concerned at the following more general aspects which arise out of the cases:

The inadequate level of Social Security benefits for single homeless people. £18.50 a week is completely inadequate to keep body and soul together. One defendant of 56 es for the Brent East/Islington But on the issue of how actually to fight the witch-hunt, hardly a word was said. The statement to the conference was a surprisingly good one, pledging opposition to the register before and after Party conference, but it was scarcely referred to.

Indeed, Militant editor Peter Taaffe, in a speech arhinh roraivar a atannino WILLI IELEIVEU a SUalUmE ovation from half of those present, seemed to dismiss any need at all to discuss what to do. As far as he was concerned, 'The ideas of Marxism are back on the agenda" , and "For every One i Militant supporter expelled, another ten will take their place, because the ideas of Marxism will always remain in the Indeed, the main argument seemed to be whether with no previous convictions who was sentenced to 45 days imprisonment explained that after leaving tha lndaina hands whoro ha was Bona Fide staying he still claimed the higher rate because he needed to buy a pair of shoes and some underclothing. £18.50 a week consigns people to a slow deterioration and dehumanising degradation.

Ine inadequate mL -housing provision for single people. Some of the lodging houses concerned louth amendments at Wembler ten (Taaffe) or a hundred (Derek Hatton) would take the place of each one expelled. For Ted Grant, too, there was no problem. •The working class and labour movement will become Militant...

Brent East Constituency Labour Party and delegates from Islington South CLP took a more sober view. Wo nut an amandmant tr the statement calling for support for CLPs who refused to carry out expulsions. The Conference organisers recommended acceptance of this, and it was unanimously carried. This marks a shift - at least on paper - on an issue on which Militant has been extremely equivocal, often arguing against refusal to expel in the CLPs.

We also argued for the recreation of a body like