How we campaigned

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Brick Lane: the SCLV's first publication called for Labour to mobilise on the streets to help the Asian community fight The SCLV was, in a small way, a breakthrough for the left. Perhaps for the first time since the early days of the Communist Party, the Marxist left found a way to relate actively to what is after all one of the high oints of political activity as it exists today, a general From time to time various revolutionary groups had stood independent candidates - but always ended up with a pretty dismal balance-sheet. Apart from that the Marxist left could do little but debate the precise slogans to add to our call to vote Labour.

don't think those debates were futile. Clarifying our ideas was a precondition for doing anything serious. But we had to recognise that for most people, even most labour movement off the NF Nazis activists, the precise form of times LPYSs, used the SCLV the wince or grimace or leaflets alongside their congritting of the teeth with stituency's official material. which we accompanied the call to vote Labour made Four constituencies sponvery little difference. sored the SCLV - Brent With the SCLV we tried East, Hackney North, Hornto go beyond commentary, sey and Norwood. Five canto reach out and organise didates did: Ted Knight the left, to get as many (Hornsey), Ken Livingstone Labour candidates and local (Hampstead), Jane Chapman Labour Parties as possible to (Dover and Deal), Peter campaign independently Tebbutt (Falmouth), and from and in opposition to Ernie Roberts (Hackney the Labour Government's North). Joan Maynard, record. Arthur Scargill and Emlyn The SCLV produced its Williams sent messages of own election material - leaf- support. lets on union rights, racism, The extent of support jobs, housing, Ireland, and from these constituencies women's rights, a poster; and and candidates varied, of a broadsheet. We got con- course. Hackney North took stituency Labour Parties and many thousand leaflets, Labour candidates to spon- while Ted Knight in Hornsey sor the campaign and use took only a few hundred and this material as official elec- was markedly evasive when tion literature. red-baited by Tory opponent Where that wasn't Hugh Rossi for his sponsorpossible SCLV groups ship of the SCLV. Norwood individual supporters, some- took no leaflets officially, but adopted a local manifesto based largely on the SCLV material. ,. From the SCLV we also launched Socialist Organiser.

After a trial number in September 1978 it appeared monthly from January 1979, with extra 'election specials in the weeks before the May Through this paper. through establishing local groups, and through& campaign activity of many sorts, we tried to link up the elec tion effort with an ongoing political fight.

The first issue of SocialKen Livingstone Organiser, for example, carried a front-page call from Patrick Kodikara of the Hackney and Tower Hamlets Defence Campaign to mobilise for the defence of Brick Lane's Asian community against a National Front march on September 24, 1978. (Much of the left, unfortunately decided that the Anti Nazi League concert in South London that day was more important).

We also held a special SCLV meeting round Brick Lane, where some 70 or 80 local Asians came to hear Patrick Kodikara and speaker from the Virk Brothers Defence Committee. The last issue of Socialist Organiser before the election led on the killifig of Blair Peach, calling for the disbanding of the SPG and support for black self-defence.

The SCLV did more than create a left voice in the election campaign. It established a regroupment of the Labour 'far left' which made many other things possible.

After the general election, for example, the SCLV was central to organising a labour movement "Troops Out Now' contingent on 12 August 1978 'British withdrawal from Ireland' demonstration. And most important, the SCLV was the essenlever for organising the Rank and File Mobilising Committee • for Labour Democracy - an unprecedented united front of the Labour Left - in 1980.

Without the initial regroupment round the SCLV, the RFMC would never have been possible.

The SCLV was initiated came out of two discussions we had been having among ourselves.

Since mid-1977 we had been trying to correct what we saw as a sectarian bent in our work, especially in the Labour Party. In strikes and economic s ruggles, we would operate by basing ourselves on the existing struggle and mapping out ways to go forward to victory; but in political struggles, especially in the Labour Party, we tended to "intervene' like people parachuting in from outside with propagandist commentary.

In the trade unions, we worked by developing rank and tie groups, allances, left caucuses; but in the Labour Party mostly we related to the rest of the left only by ideological debate.

We identified this as a problem. But we couldn't immediately see an answer.

Then we started discussing what our reaction should be to the possibility - which then seemed real - of the IMG and SWP cooperating to put up a substantial slate of revolutionary candidates in the general election. We concluded that the primary importance of fighting for socialist policies within the established labour movement made support for such slate impossible. But the discussion brought home to us sharply the untenability of just plodding through the election with nothing but propaganda in our newspaper to distinguish us from the Callaghan leadership.

We should try to organise a distinctive left campaign witnin the official Labour VIGRATION ACTS election effort, we decided.

At first we had no notion that this campaign would attract more than a few people apart from ourselves. We knocked out a brief platform and distributed leaflets at the Easter 1978 Labour Party Young Socialists conterence.

We were pleasantly surprised. The Chartist group immediately agreed to come in on the campaign, and proved crucial to its success.

Not only did they do valuable work themselves. they brought in leading figures of the London Labour left like Ted Knight, Ken . Livingstone, Keith Veness and Jeremy Corbyn.

With them we formally launched the SCLV from a conference of 200 activists in July 1978. It wasn't huge - but it was the biggest 'unofficial' Labour left conference since the Clay Cross support rally of 1974. We had discovered for ourselves a way out of our sectarian trap, and for many individual left activists in the Labour Party a way of uniting with other similar activists.

Vehement

Quite a few Workers' Action supporters had doubts about the project. Some had vehement objections, saying that the appeal for the SCLV conference. drafted jointly by WA and hort partically Was far too was tar tor sont рописану We replied that the platform was not meant to be a scientific statement of the Marxist programme though indeed such state-

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