Right fear oss of power

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Healey and Hattersley made it quite clear that they will oppose having unilateral disarmament in the manifesto, despite the two-thirds vote for it at conference. How do you think the left should respond?

Every constituency party and the trade unions that supported that motion should immediately put in a resolution to the National Executive of the party asking. for a clear undertaking that the conference vote will be reflected in the manifesto.

What did you think of the conference debate on the position of women in the It was valuable to this extent, that when Gwynneth Dunwoody spoke for the national executive the conference was able to see that we are up against a little bit more than simply the prejudice of men in the trade unions - we have a powerful JOHN HARRIS WHEN right-wing trade union leaders make speeches claiming that Labour will lose the next General Election unless they get rid of Militant, you know they must be getting desperate. :

What they really mean is that if they do not smash the organised left in both the unions and the party then they, along with their right wing Parliamentary friends, may lose their power over the labour movement.

It is part of a concerted attack designed to smash the left by disorganising the rank and file and so enabling union bureaucrats and Parliamentary careerists to tighten their grip on the labour movement into a stranglehold.

Their fear is not that we may lose a General | Election, but that if Labour wins, they will not be able to impose capitalist solutions to the country's problems because the organised left will not allow them to do so.

Some on the left argue that the Register is perfectly acceptable since it is only aimed at the Militant, whose manner of operation they dislike.

It is not so simple. The Register seeks to impose an organisational structure on rank and file left-wingers which makes them incapable of mobilising support against the right or even of putting forward a coherent alternative strategy to the official party line having their "own programme, principles and policy for distinctive and separate propaganda").

Working class discipline is one of the labour movement's traditional strengths. By seeking to destroy any form of disciplined organisation on the left, the right wing are trying to disarm us for the future. They do so because they fear the potential revolutionary consequences which a disciplined left-wing majority in unions and the party might have on the balance of economic and political power in Britain.

And most of all they fear that any such movement, which actually tried to take on capitalism would sweep away the sycophantic reformist traitors who constantly sell out the British workers for the sake what is "realistic" in capitalist terms.

For those who wish to see a socialist Britain there can be no compromise with the Register. It must be totally opposed.

Groups including those which claim to be revolutionary must be allowed to organise within the Party and the wider movement, to fight for their beliefs.

To surrender on this issue would simply give added strength to those whose main concern is their own power and careers and who never have been and never will be socialists.

IAN HARRISON, Councillor Vice-chair, Fulham CLE edly, the conference voted by a majority for resolutions not only calling for the recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, but also for a democratic secular state in the area.

In some ways this was the most historic decision of all. Generations of social democrats have been reared on a guilty compliance. with Zionism. Now at last its murderous logic has been recognised.

A conference providing us with a building brick such as this cannot have been all bad.

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Frances Morrell