Women's demand

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It happened to the rank and file? fight for democracy in the Several members of the outgoing EC, including leading officers, have said plainly that if they lose at the AGM they "will continue CLPD's work in a new organisation". This is propused to happen three days after another National Executive Committee meeting at which the right wing will be trying to get their witch-hunt on the road again, as well as endorsing an enquiry on rejigging the NEC to perpetuate their domination.

In the coming year or so, the fight for democracy in the Labour Party will either advance by electing a Labour government pledged to more radical policies than ever before, and tied by accountability to the rank and file: or it will suffer big setbacks, with many socialists purged from the Party and a , 'busiTrade union Broad Lefts conference:

County Hall, time for CLPD to split!

The would-be splitters say that the existing campaign is no longer viable. With the recent right wing victories in the Labour Party CLPD's future can only be secured under their control. 'The confrontationists" would only wreck CLPD and the Trotskyists, of course, are in the middle of this "very motley" alliance. They must go.

The truth seems to be rather that the defeats for the left - however temporary - have massively increased the pressure to retreat and splinter and for some of the witch-hunting techniques of the right to be taken up by sections of Ignore To ignore areas of agreement and to blow up disagreements is incompatible with an objective assessment of the last year, or of LAST Saturday night (22nd) BBC2 showed a drama/documentary designed to delight anyone who believes that the essence of politics is clever manoeuvres in back rooms.

The subject - the fight for Labour Party democracy * deserved better. issues make it necessary but because they have allowed the pressure of defeat to outweigh objective assessment.

The consultative ballot on whether CLPD should register produced an almost evenly split vote, destroying the myth that those arguing against registration were an unrepresentative London-based minority of confrontationists.

And everybody who has debated the issue of registration in CLPD agrees that it is a tactical question. The experience In : Labour Against the Witch-hunt, for example, is that comrades with differing views on registration can work together against the witch-hunt.

We have even been able to work with Militant, the whole story round that is rather like describing a strike by concentrating on the negotiating sessions.

We see Jock McPherson Quinn arguing with a rightwing AUEW official, and the USDAW executive fumbling its way towards the winning 40-30-30 unjustified.

which holds a similar position to the present CLPD EC on' registration and on whether CLPs should defy the NEC and refuse to expel socialists.

Such common work, of course, presupposes democracy inside the campaign (one of the major problems with Militant has been their usual insistence on controlling everything they do). In CLPD, until very recently, comrades might argue about what AGMs decided or even hide behind "ambiguities' ', but nobody disputed that the AGM was sovereign.

Now some other arguments have been advanced - new to the CLPD, but well-known in the debates on mandatory re-selection and used by the PLP. grinning on the Labour Party conference platform as voting results are announced: but nothing of the RFMC meetings round the country where he spoke to thousands of activists.

We see arguments at RFMC committee meetings: but not the local work bulletin, three of the EC majority argue that: "What is at stake is almost a decade of organising towards highly desirable reforms"

They identify the mass movement for Labour democracy too closely with their own tactical contribution. Whatever happens on Saturday the organising is not going to end.

- But if the CLPD splits that fight will be substantially weakened at a crucial time. The split is neither inevitable nor necessary.

There is no proper reason why we shouldn't work together in one campaign, with the existing level of differences, whoever wins majorities on the different issues at the AGM.

The only people to gain from a split would be the right wing. The AGM should make that clear to all comrades in the CLPD. Victory (the sponsor of Socialist Organiser) initiated the RFMC — and that's the only mention of the SCLV, which, alongside the CLPD, was the major activist support of the RFMC.

Again, from the film's account of the tactical debates about the electoral college, you would never guess that the SCLV was prominent in formulating and pushing the version of the 40-30-30 scheme around which the RFMC was "with some difficulty united.

Why did the movement develop? The film did nothing to trace the warp and weft of the interaction between industrial and political struggles - from the mass struggles against the Tories in 1972-4, through the frustrations of Ann Pettifor of the CLPD Women's Action Committee told us about the plans for activity that WAC will be reporting on at the AGM AT PRESENT the rules of the Labour Party women's organisation are ones decided not by women themselves, but by Labour Party officers. It has no standing orders for its own conference:

So WAC will be campaigning for a rules conference of the women's organisation to:

• draw up rules and a constitution, and decide standing orders for the Labour women's conference and the National Labour Women's Committee;

• determine a basis 1974-7, to the open industrial revolt against the Labour government from 1977, to the Labour and TUC votes against pay curbs in 1978 followed by the 'winter of discontent, and to the resolve of thousands of activists after May 1979 to make sure the next Labour government would not be like Wilson's and Callaghan's.

Dextrous

From the film, it's all as if the movement could have been called into existence at any time, given sufficiently dextrous tactics.

Perhaps a similar view motivates three • of the 'stars' of this film, who are now threatening to split the CLPD unless it endorses their tactical judgements on the register. But the affiliation of women in trade unions to the women's organisation, and a politícal levy from those women to the organisation.

WAC will also be campaigning for endorsement of the three demands carried by last year's Labour women's conference: for women's conference to elect the women's places on the Labour Party NEC; for it to have the right to put resoluțions directly onto the Labour Party conference agenda; and for mandatory inclusion of at least one woman in each parliamentary selection shortlist.

WAC is demanding that the Labour women's conference should elect its own executive, and opposing the current plans for rejigging the NEC. struggle for self-transformation of the labour movement is something much broader and deeper than tacticians' schemes.

MARTIN THOMAS Benn: shown on the conference rostrum, but not on rou

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Organising Committee