Fighting ward faces suspension move

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A WARD Labour Party in Coventry has been threatened with suspension by right wing councillors. The 'crime? committed by Upper Stoke Labour Party was to carry through a successful housing campaign in the Stoke Heath Council Estate during the last local elections in May.

The Upper Stoke Labour Party rouna a consaerable amount of dissatisfaction among tenants with the increase in rents and yet the lack of repairs and maintenol ance to their houses.

Most of the houses in th Stoke Heath area were buil during the First World Wai The Ward Party produced questionnaire which they go all tenants to sign. The ›y Dave Spencer took photographs of the worst cases. They compiled a report, published it and got coverage in the local press.

The three local Labour councillors, Richard Morris, Bob Holland and Dave Edwards took the issue to ihe local Labour Council, blamed their spinelessness in not fighting the cuts and so on.

The results were on the one hand that many of the repairs have now been done but on the other hand that (West Midlands the Upper Stoke comrades have been accused by right wing councillors the North East CLP of "bringing the Labour Party into disrepute"

At first this was seen as an aberration on the part of the pompous Councillor Albert Rose, chief whip of the Labour Group, and treated as something of a joke.

But last Wednesday's North East CLP Executive endorsed Councillor Rose's call for the suspension of the whole Ward.

Note that this meeting took place immediately after the Labour Party Conference - so much for unity!

Clearly the right wing councillors who run the District Party in cahoots with the local bureaucracy of the TGWU and AUEW see the new right wing NEC as a means of disciplining any moves at all from the left. At the time of the debates on the register, many of them were calling for the proscription Milit- whole ant.

But what they mean by Militant is the whole of the left - they fmake no distinctions between Militant and Socialist Organiser or take note of non-alignment -they want to maintain the power to quietly carry through the cuts and to dispense patronage.

The response of must of course be to support Upper Stoke Ward Party. Their ›y Stan Crooke campaign is a model of how a Ward should act. They actually achieved practical results for the tenants at the same time as recruiting members.

They now have to go back and recruit more people on the basis of a fight against the right wing politics of the Labour Council. Other Wards in Coventry should start similar housing campaigns and recruitment drives. The battle must be on to make the Labour: Party a mass party retlecting the lives, interests and aspirations of working people, not those of a privileged layer intent on selling us out again.

The pub which dominates the Stoke Heath area, the Barrass Hotel, is known locally as "the Bolsh" • The name refers to the politics of the World War I regulars and the many meetings that took place there. The spirit obviously lingers on.

pport THE Croxteth Community Action Committee this week received further support fo! its campaign to keep oper the last remaining public facility on this Liverpoo housing estate - its compre hensive school.

On Thursday, the Liver pool Division of the Nationa Union of Teachers passed :

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