Glasgow victim? asg

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Left victory ON Wednesday October 13 the Executive Committee of Queen's Park Constituency Labour Party, Glasgow, voted to recommend the expulsion of SO supporter Stan Crooke to the meeting of the CLP General Committee at the end of the month.

Constitutionally, what Stan Crooke is being expelled from is rather unclear. Given that the CLP is not affiliated to the Labour Party nationally (being nearly £2,000 in debt), LAST week saw a major defeat for the right wing in Nottingham Labour Party when Len Maynard and Ben Allsop the leader and deputy leader of the Labour Group on Nottingham City Council failed to get on the shortlist of candidates for the city council elections in Radford Ward - the ward: they represent at the moment.

Both are hardened right wingers and Maynard played a very shabby role in the case of Lou Broady, a black worker found to have been a victim of racial discrimination at the hands of Nottingham City Council.

Two of the shortlist of four are Socialist Organiser neither Stan Crooke nor the people moving to expel him are technically speaking members of the Labour Party to begin with.

The basis put forward for the recommended expulsion is an article which appeared in issue 99 of SO, which dealt with the history of the Gorbals Anti-Dampness Campaign, the present Stop the Sale Campaign, and criticisms of the local Labour Party and the local elected representatives.

supporters, standing on platform of resistance to cuts and of no rate rises.

Needless to say William Whitlock, MP for North Nottingham and a fanatical witch-hunter, has reacted with hysterical outbursts about the Militant Tendency having engineered a takeover in Radford, although Militant did little more than turn up and vote.

With some North Nottingham Labourites eager for a witch-hunt, and Whitlock cheering them on, and with the question of resistance to cuts looming, there promises to be a long and bitter struggle ahead to preserve working class living standards.

Charges were laid that the 'allegations' were unfounded and that the article had been written with the intention of "bringing the Labour Party into disrepute" • Chick McCafferty went one step further by claiming that it had been written for the purpose of driving a wedge between the Labour Party and the current Stop the Sale Campaign.

In reality, Stan Crooke, like the Stop the Sale Campaign, has worked continually - if unsuccessfully -to try to draw the local Labour Party into joint campaigning work. McCafferty himself has been among those blocking that joint work.

The right wing are likely to have little problem in getting the expulsion endorsed by the GC at the end of October, thereby gaining for Queen's Park the dubious merit of being the first CLP to expel a left-winger since the introduction of the register.

The SO supporter is not being expelled for bringing the Labour Party into disrepute. It is the controlling right wing in the CLP who do that. Nor is he being expelled for making unfounded allegations. He is being expelled for telling the truth.