[SOCIALIST Challenge's editorial of January 28 concludes: 'The…]

Scan page 3

SOCIALIST Challenge's editorial of January 28 concludes: 'The left must immediately begin to explore the basis on which a united Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory centring on unilateralism can be formed. This is the next step forward; this is the basis for unity.

It's always good to win new converts. But the call for unity would ring more true if Socialist Challenge had taken the trouble to approach the real Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory, instead of making a broadcast appeal for a new one as if we didn't exist.

And the appeal would come across better if it were accompanied by some signs of candid political accounting.

In 1978-9 Socialist Challenge said they supported the SCLV. In fact they did nothing for it. The two Socialist Challenge representatives elected to the SCLV committee at its founding conference just kept a 'watching brief' During the election period, the only mention of SCLV in the columns of Socialist Challenge was a cursory attack on it - without explanation - for allegedly neglecting the 'mass struggle' . Socialist Challenge instead focussed on their 12 'Socialist Unity' candidates - who ended up not with 'mass' votes, but poor scores.

After the election Socialist Challenge commented: 'We realised that many of the people who agreed with our programme would still vote Labour. That did not matter to us. Shop stewards in places like Birmingham and Manchester'... time after time told our canvassers, 'Yes, I agree with what you are calling for but I must vote Labour and keep out the Tories' It seems that the folly of standing candidates without a firm basis of support only to have to say afterwards that it 'didn't matter' whether people voted for them or not is now clear to Socialist Challenge. Good: but it would be better to have the issue discussed openly. A Marxist tendency is, after all, supposed to be the 'memory of the class', not a factional opportunity-grabbing machine, switching and turning to pick up good ideas with no regard for consistency ments are irreplaceable -but a summary of immediate class struggle responses adequate to rally the left against the Tories and Callaghanism.

And in the 1979 election campaign the SCLV was at least as sharp and clear on socialist policies as groups like the SWP and IMG -without the problem of sectarian self-counterposition to the mass labour movement.

• The success of that pioneer effort, and the development of the left since. should make it possible to do something similar on = much bigger scale for 1983's or 1984's election.

Scan page 4

Socialist Organiser no.118 February 3 1983 Page 4 e23 Black sea SOVIET UNION TURKEY