War Stillto Wage

Scan page 9

Ted Grant lahovel and Militant are the first target CAMPAIGN FOR LABOUR PARTY Membership. £4 individuals, £2 unwaged, Write to: Victor Schonfield (Treasurer), 21 Wallingford Ave, London W10 6QA. scale purge.

While Foot and others concentrated mainly on accusations (without proof) that Militant is breaching the constitution, party secretary Jim Mortimer's indictment of Militant was heavily ideological.

Mortimer was a Morning Star style left trade union official until he went to ACAS 15 years ago. He denounced Militant for attacking trade union leaderships, for using the method of transitional demands which (he said) was designed to disrupt the movement, and for allegedly opposing 'detente' Earlier this year he argued against a reprint of a YS pamphlet reflecting Milit8int grounds ican government lof the 1930s) in Spain. Who now says that this isn't a witchhunt against ideas and policies?

According to the letter of the register regulations the Socialist Organiser Alliance is perfectly lawful. The conferences that have developed the Alliance, beginning with the SCLV conference in July 1978, have all been widely advertised for Labour Party members, and so was our recent AGM. Allegations of the SOA being a conspiratorial group are even more absurd than the lying allegations that Militant is a conspiracy.

Neverthless, being within the letter of the law is likely to be no protection from the witch-hunt for left-wingers, just as being outBide the regulations causes no bother to the right wing groups in the Party. -from the start • of the breakthrough by the left Socialist Organiser (and ileo Workers' Action) said that the alternatives openng up were these:

"'EITHER the Left will go in from a victory on demoracy... to consolidate the Labour Party as a genuinely incialist party seeking to werthrow capitalism on the tasis of the class struggle i the working class, and build up a mass membership around such policies. OR the Left will be purged and the Labour Party transformed from its present ramshackle self into a tight and intolerant party modelled on the West German, Swedish, and other Social Democracies' (WA, 22.9.79).

Does the capture of the NEC by the Right mean that the full rigour of this logic will now unfold? Michael Foot, for example, has referred to the practices of continental Socialist Parties in arguing for the register.

Revenge

Clearly the Right, scared and now out for revenge, would want that. As yet they are not strong enough to get it without wrecking the party.

If the 80% of the CLPs opposed to the witch-hunt can be mobilised and bound together, the logic can be resisted and stopped. Between now and a cauterising authoritarian regime in the British Labour Party, there would still have to be a perhaps prolonged period of civil war.

There would also have to be a more decisive shift in the unions than has actually taken place. The NUM delegation voted to support the register, despite Arthur Scargill's efforts, but it was a close vote. Scargill has argued that if the votes in the delegation were counted on the basis of members represented, the decision would have gone against the register.

The TGWU delegation's vote for the register defied a TGWU executive vote against it.

In both cases there was a big element of Michael Foot loyalism in the decision. Foot was threatening to resign unless the register went through.

And, as at last year's conference only more so, there was a strong desire for unity which the establ ishment used.

Moss Evans compared the register to the slogan 'Open Your Books' said he wanted it applied to up to a sold trade union mandate for the NEC to conduct a full-scale purge against the determined resistance of the CLPs.

We can get Blackpool in perspective if we analyse the reasons for our setback.

The Right have tremendous reserves of strength in society. Passive Labour supporters, and passive union members, can be brought into play - if only by the pollsters - to intimidate the Left and the middle-ofthe-roaders. The SDP was an attempt, with the full support of the media, to use this factor to smash the Labour Party. Their sun is now heading rapidly west. But the stayathome Right, allied to the trade union leaders, have proved a formidable enemy of the Left and of the process of renewal in the The fragmentation, disorganisation and incoherence of the Left has helped the Right. The united Left around the Rank and File Mobilising Committee lasted less than a year.

Much of the revolutionary Marxist Left - which could have played a key role - was crippled by sectarianism. The SWP, for example, stood on the sidelines, alternately jeering and attempting to lure a few individuals out of the most important battle within the mass political labour movement for three decades.

Balance

Above all, though, the balance of forces in the Labour Party is heavily against the Left.

The trade unions are 90% of the votes at Labour Party conference. Most of the Left, so far, has too narrowly confined its drive for a democratic labour movement to We failed to build in the unions, to win the rank and file of the unions, to win the organised bedrock of the working class movement.

The Labour Left was dependent for its victories on - and many leftists came to rely on - left bureaucrats like Moss Evans. Those union leaders have now decided that they want a Labour government above all else, and have swung in behind the PLP Right.

Socialist Organiser has for three years argued that the struggle for democracy was essentially an early stage in a struggle for the labour movement to reshape itself organisationally and politically so that it could respond to the crisis of British society. The turmoil in the Labour Party was the result of the proven bankruptcy of longentrenched reformism, and of an attempt by the movement to rethink its philosophy.

Unknown

We argued that the reselection of MPs and the election of a Labour prime minister primarily by the movement outside Parliament could (together with the other reforms pushed by the Left) be made to function so that a future Labour government might be under the direct influence and even control of the labour movement -roused, mobilised, and struggling in the factories and in the streets against the capitalists and against the state agencies - in a way and to a degree unknown in Britain so far.

What do the events at Blackpool mean for this perspective?

Most likely a Labour government put in by the next election would be a continuation of the last one. Tony Benn has commented that Blackpool is "a big swing to the Right, but we have got the policies" . Not so, and there's the problem.

Even on policies with a two-thirds majority - unilateral nuclear disarmament, for example - the Labour manifesto is in the hands of Foot and the Shadow Cabinet.

The possibility of using the new mechanisms in the Labour Party to put the government under a degree of labour movement control is not foreclosed, however. It will depend on the level of working class mob¡lisation, struggle, and conlict with the Labour government.

The struggle to reshape the labour movement is certain to go on. The Labour Party leadership has no answers to the crisis of capitalism. The Labour government that Foot would run with the collaboration of the trade union leaders would at best offer palliatives. Inevitably Foot-Healey government will disappoint, anger, and perhaps outrage the labour movement. Therefore the underlying drives of the movement will continue and be reinforced by the experience of a Labour government under Foot.

Even if the broad Labour Left subsides in the months or a year between now and the general election, it will be forced either by Labour victory or by defeat to return to the problem of re-making the labour movement so that we have a socialist working class answer to the crisis of capitalism.

There is no sign of an exodus of discouraged leftists from the Party. They will remain active: and even if there is a lul now. sooner or later they wil return to the struggle before long. And many will, for example, now be readier to listen to what Socialist Organiser has been saying about the irreplaceability of a struggle for democratic and militant policies in the trade Some moods of defeatism or impatience are sure to develop among less experienced sections of the Labour Left. But we should resist anyone who proposes to make the right wing's job easier by deserting the struggle in the mass working class political movement.

The gleeful sectarians of the SWP are writing open letters to entice Labour Party socialists to desert the struggle in the Labour Party - which, like all serious enterprises, brings disappointments and setbacks as well as the triumphs we have experienced in the last three years — and opt instead for the quiet life in the blue lagoon of SWP propagandism.

Their jubilation at the setback for the Left is extremely short-sighted, not to say stupid. On the outcome of the struggle in the Labour Party over the last three years depended the possibility of the working class having any governmental alternative to demolition-squad Toryism. On the fighting broad left in the Labour Party - which is still in its political programme a reformist left -still depends this possibility. So will resistance to a new right wing Labour government.

There is no way in which it makes sense to counterpose the trade union struggle, or industrial resistance to the Tories now or to a new right wing Labour government, against that Left.

On the contrary: the Labour Party Left overlaps with the trade union Left and can be a tremendous force for also transforming the unions, as it learns the lessons of our present setback.

Siren

The siren voices which call to Labour Party militants from the 'left' , urging them to do what the right wing wants them to do -get out of the Labour Party - are in fact telling us to give up, to get out of the political fight in the mass political working class movement.

The call: "The right wing is entrenched; you can't beat the block vote; let's build the revolutionary party', is also logically a call to get out of the unions.

V HARRIS DEMOCRACY £4.50 couples. It is by our failure in the unions that we suffered the reversal at Blackpool. The cry, go out to build the party' , is a proposa that the Left should throw in the towel, but with a good consoling ed on it Slogan embroiderThat's what the sectarian Left has repeatedly done -thus contributing, indirectly, to the right wing's victory at Blackpool.

We should:

• Stand by Militant. It was scandalous that Militant speakers were not invited to the Tribune rally or to the Benn/Scargill meeting at Blackpool.

• Оррове the register. The register is now a noose for Militant's neck. would be wrong for those who might now slip through it to do so - and thus help the Right strangle Militant.

• Oppose every attempt at expulsions. Local parties refuse to expel socialists.

• Organise the Left to coordinate resistance to the witch-hunt. Create the broadest possible left unity to stop the right wing NEC gutting the Party and handing the next election to the Tories. Recreate the Rank and File Mobilising Committee.

Very belatedly the serious left in the PLP has formed a group separate from the old careeristridden Tribune group. They should have done it long ago. They could even now play a decisive role in mobilising against the register. Will they?

Tony Benn has clearly decided to bide his time until after the election. But if we do not organise the left in self-defence now, then we close and limit options for struggle after the election.

• Turn the Labour Party outwards. Build a mass Labour Party. Build Labour Party factory branches. Bring presently passive reformist workers into the struggle in their own political movement, so they can learn in the struggle.

• Defend the YS! And -as one of the best ways to do that - turn the YS outwards to ordinary working class youth. Start to build it into a mass working class youth movement.

• The Left must be the mnst antive and dotarminar VOL ALUIYC QUU VEICI campaigners in the period up to the election to kick out the Tories and return a Labour government. We must demand that the labour movement organises and mobilises itself in a militant campaign to defeat the Tories. All collaboration with the Tory government must be broken off. And the left must prepare to have its num dictinnina unina mrith in WILDLINE YUILE WAKUL the official Labour election campaign, as the SCLV did in 1979.

Scan page 10

Socialist Organiser, Thursday 7 October 1982 Page 10 ackpool' What they thin at they think BI ARELESS REDON HIT BLACKPOOL 1980

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

the hight, too, shameful muddle, but it doesn't add