A Battle Lost: a Te Jobs

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The pressure for unity for the coming general election was used by the Labour Establishment LABOUR PARTIES AGAINST THE Conference of delegates from CLPs, LP branches, affiliated trade union branches, Saturday October 30, 10am to 5pm, at County Hall, London SEI. Credentials for delegates from CLPs (two each) and others (1 each), £1 from 107 Neville Road, London N16 OSU. Cheques payable to Hackney North and Stoke Newington Sponsors include: Hackney North, Bermondsey, Hornsey, Wood Green, Chipping Barnet, Peckham, Vauxhall, Brent South, Islington North, and Islington counter-revoTHE LEFT lost a vitally important battle at the Blackpool Labour Party conference. We have not yet lost the. war for a democratic and socialist labour movement capable of posing a working class alternative to Tory rule.

So far it is only half a counter-revolution - the formal part, easily achieved by the block votes.

The right-wing and soft left MPs, and the trade union bureaucrats who gave them the victory, have yet to show that they can make it stick. The situation now parallels the situation after the formal victory of the left on re-selection two years ago: then as now, what comes of it has to be decided in battles that still lie ahead.

The Constituency Labour Parties voted against the witch-hunt, and it is the CLPs who will actually have to carry out any purge. Therefore a united Left, a relentless and unyielding Left determined to resist the witch-bunt, can still hanatn minimico tho ramage to the fabric of the Left, and resume the offensive.

But we must not delude ourselves about the extent and importance of what the block around Foot achieved at the Blackpool conference. Unless the Left rallies and resists the witch-hunt, it may yet prove to be a historic setback for socialism - and for the hopes of a political and organisational renewal of the labour movement in the period ahead.

On the Monday the conference voted by 5,173,000 to 1,656,000 to set up the register; and on the Tuesday conference voted in an NEC with a right wing majority over the combined forces of the serious left and the soft 'left'.

Heights The Right have more or less firm control of the commanding heights of the Party organisation, and they can inflict serious damage on the Left and on the Labour Party.

Already there is a probability that Tony Benn will ho ramnuor ae rhair of tha VC ICILUTCU aD LIAL VI ULIC Home Policy sub-committee and Eric Heffer as chair of the Organisation Subcommittee. The alternative to Heffer would be John Golding - a stone-age right-winger.

Add Golding as chair of the Organisation Subcommittee to Weighell's antics with the block vote, and some old stagers in the PLP could be forgiven for thinking themselves safely back in the old days when the Right and the trade union barons ran an iron pro-capitalist regime in the meetine Right's triumph coming general election This is not the 1950s. Capitalism, and British society, is rotting and collapsing all around us. The pressure of the crisis will push workers to the Left, and strengthen the Left -if the Left organises adequately.

What use will now be made of the register?

Though the Militant editorial board has offered to talk to the NEC about the changes in its functioning that the NEC would require to allow it to stay in the Party, it is inconceivable that anything Militant could do will render it acceptable to the NEC.

Slander

After all the slander and vituperation from the Right and Foot against Militant, they must now act against it - or in the looming election campaign be branded out of their own mouths as associates or even prisoners of 'revolutionaries' A majority of this NEC will go at it with a will. There is more to it, though.

As the editorial in the Guardian (28th) put it: 'What Mr Foot achieved yesterday was more than a victory over Mr Ted Grant and friends. It was an assertion of authority, too, over those left wing groups congregated around Mr Benn which have called so much of the tune in the party over the past two years and which stood shoulder to shoulder with Militant yesterday...

There is a bigger and broader target than Militant. Ted Grant's political head stuck on a spike outside Walworth Road (Labour Party headquarters) will serve to intimidate the less heroic comrades of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, Labour Coordinating Committee, etc. That, to a big extent, is the point of the exercise.

Foot and Party secretary Mortimer probably want to limit expulsions to the Militant editorial board, or at most to the EB, the nine parliamentary candidates said to support Militant, and perhaps the full-time Militant sellers. The Right will want a full-scale purge. And the Foot tendency may find themselves at the mercy of the right wing mainritu on tha NFO. whnee victory they have helped secure.

An attempt at a wide-ranging purge is therefore a real possibility - a right wing reign of terror to cow and beat down the entire Left.

The one way to stop them in their tracks is for the CLPs who opposed the register to make it plain right now that every single expulsion will be resisted as far as necessary, for as long as necessary, and by every means necessary.

Any other attitude, any spirit of resignation before the might of the block vote, will encourage and evoke a large-scale purge. If the NEC can get a thorough purge of Militant supporters and others on the cheap, then they will go for it.

From this angle, Militant's own current posture of trying for a tacit deal with Foot for a limited purge is worst possible.

It is perfectly reasonable that Militant should explore the possibilities of a principled accommodation with the NEC. If the register were a mere formality, it would indeed be another name for something the Left has long advocated: the right of Marxist groups and newspapers to affiliate to the Labour Party. In fact, of course, the register is a mechanism of purge and witch-hunt, and in the first place against Militant.

But Militant representatives have said that they will accept expulsions (under protest) and avoid pitting the CLPs against the executive: Militant will not advocate out-and-out defiance by CLPs of instructions to expel.

Likewise, representatives of CLPs where Militant is strong have indicated that they will not resist to the bitter end if the NEC instructs them to find replacements for parliamentary candidates said to support Militant.

AnIs would not de a wist, nor a very serious, policy even if Foot had control of the NEC. It is likely to be suicidal with this right wing NEC. It is the opposite of how to mobilise the broad left for the fightback.

The policies of Foot, Kinnock, Lestor, etc have already opened the way to control of the NEC by the hard Right. Even a squelchy-soft left like Doug Hoyle, who blamed the serious left and Tony Benn personally for his neardefeat in the Warrington by election, was unacceptable to the dominant right wing, and was kicked off the NEC.

Facts like these are already forcing even many who might have been willing to go along with Foot, or not to make too much fuss, to think seriously of where the backlash against the Left is taking the Labour Party. Even the LCC, which seemed keen to register, has recoiled, and for the moment is refusing and calling on CLPs to refuse to recognise expulsions.

That the NEC majority is now to the right.of Foot, Kinnock, etc., has already shown up the absurdity of relying on a liberal and tolerant interpretation of a system of registration that can equally well be applied with vicious intolerance.

The last thing needed for the development and education of this layer of the Party is for Militant to go quietly into the night. It will be educated and polarised to the left by an attitude which refuses to accept that the Labour Party is the property of the Right, and fights every inch of the way.

If Militant plays dead, it may end up dead for real.

And a fight back can win victories.

The Right and the trade union barons whose little caucus meetings in posh hotels dispose of many more votes than those of the entire rank and file of the CLPs want to win the next election. Therefore they have a keen self-interest in not gutting the Labour Party on the eve of that There is every reason to believe that a firm attitude by the serious left and WITCH-HUNT South Labour Parties. a determination to resist expulsions will succeed in limiting, perhaps minimising, the scale of the purge.

It is quite likely that the youth movement will be the main casualty of Blackpool. It is widely known to be dominated by Militant supporters; and the YS national structures could be broken up with little cost to the electoral prospects of the Party.

Contrast

In 1955 the national structures were abolished and the local branches transformed into local youth sections with no regional or national links. The same could be done now by a simple decision of an NEC that want to be seen to be doing something against Militant but also wants to avoid full-scale conflict with the CLPs.

But the YS, too, can be defended if the left is sufficiently combative.

Dennis Skinner and many other speakers at the anti witch hunt fringe meetings in Blackpool illustrated the danger of a purge of the hard left by saying: "After Militant it will be the turn of Socialist Logically it will. That too will depend on whether the Left fights back and paralyses the drive for a wholewomen's sections, YSs, etc.

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

As a new general begins to loom neal the Right won 'half

lution' in the John O'Mahony reports.