Steering committee warning Glasgow left must campaign in Queens

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Labour candidate Helen McElhone is a longstanding member of CND. Will she campaign boldly on the issue of the Bomb? success) asked the SNP hone defeated her main not to stand in the by- rival, Gorbals Regional election so as not to split Councillor Jimmy Wray the Nationalist vote, and by only a hair's breath. DECEMBER 2 is the date set for the by election in the Queen's Park constituency (Glasgow), caused by the sudden death of the sitting Labour MP, Frank McElhone. Six parties are in the running for the vacant seat.

Rank outsiders in this solid Labour seat are the Tories. Their candidate, Jackson Carlaw, says, stand full square behind Mrs. Thatcher's policies' claiming that, 'now there is evidence that the policies the government embarked upon have every chance of succeeding.' With any luck the Tories should lose their deposit. Communist Party candi- With luck the date. will suffer the same fate. Gorbals used to be the home of strong Communist Party (CP) branch. But it's a long time since the Spanish Civil War. The CP candidate is John Kaye, a grovelling sycophant of the STUC bureaucracy.

Workers should cast not & single vote for this motley array of political bankrupts, who have sold more workers down the river than Glasgow District Council has built damp houses.

Competing with . the Tories and the CP for the bottom of the poll position is the Scottish Republican Socialist Party, a fusion of the Scottish Republican Socialist Clubs, Siol nan Gaidheal (extreme cultural nationalists expelled from the SNP), and splinters from the 79 Group (the recently expelled leftish group in the SNP).

The SRSP has (without tahnirnnt: tn standi an WULLIN as not to split the anti-Tory vote:

Competitors for the runners up position in the by-election are the Liberal/ SDP Alliance and the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP).

Unfortunately, : the biggest problem in the Labour by-election campaign is the fact that Helen McElhone, the late MP's marital partner, won the nomination.

At each stage of the selection process, McElPerK Marchfor holutura.

NUCLEAR OGETHER WE CAN ST THE BOMB Wrav is far from alone in feeling bitter at the outcome of the selection process. A number of the constituency members have made no secret of their aversion to the idea of doing any election work because of the person who is standing for Labour.

Though wrong, the attitude is however easily understandable. Little, if anything, of what MeElhone said during the selection process could inspire enthusiasm amongst party activists.

Though a long-standing member of CND, McElhone joined a trade union only a few weeks ago (after her husband's death, but before the beginning of the selection process). She is against unemployment (who isn't?) and even more so against abortion.

On the witch-hunt her position is ambiguous, not to say contradictory. She against wholesale expulsion of Militant, but for expelling some of them at least.

Members of the constituency describe her answers to questiops posed during the selection process as 'blank and evasive' But to react to this by abstaining from the election campaign is play into the hands of the Right.

Instead of cutting itself off from the by-election campaign, the left shouid throw itself into it and make it a campaign which, apart from winning votes, recruits. community activists to the Party and mobilises support for campaigns both local leg the plethora of campaigns in the Gorbals about inadequate housing) and national feg unemployment, CND).

The local CLP needs to be transformed into a body which supports and allies itself with the local community against the attacks of both the Tory government and the 'Labour' Vichy administration in the City Chambers.

The by-election campaign offers a possibility of starting to achieve such a transformation. If the constituency activists fail to take the opportunity, then they will have only themselves to blame.

Ronnie We will continue to fight for the principle that every constituency party should have the right to pick a parliamentary candidate of its own chuice. Bermondsey must have the right to choose Peter Tatchell if it wishes: and if he is chosen, the. NEC should endorse him.

The threat of