Poor turn-out f WRP protest

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LABOUR AGAINST THE Join LABOUR AGAINST THE WITCHHUN' Membership open to Constituency Labour Parties, trade union organisations, Labour Fee. CLPs and unions £10, wards £5, individuals and other organisations £3. Write toLAW, 11 Wilderton Road, London N16.

WITCH-H Party affiliates, and individuals. A meeting last Saturday, 16th, in support of the Tower House residents, was well supported. Strikers from Arlington House were also there.

At the meeting it was revealed that the Labour Greater London Council has shares in Rowtons! AFTER A full month of campaigning against the BBC and socialist Organiser (!) 'witch-hunt' against them, the WRP managed to get two or three hundred people to a protest meeting on Monday 18th. Many came to hear the 'star studded' platform - Ken Livingstone, Fed Knight, Jack Collins, and Peter Tatchell, as well as WRP leaders.

A number of SO supporters attempted to enter the meeting -among them Scan Matgamna, who been the target of much of the venom in Newsline over the last month. They were refused admission, though the meeting was advertised as public. One who got in was recognised and thrown out.

But most people took a leaflet containing Sean Matgamna's open letter to Gerry Healy and Vanessa Redgrave (above).

Alex Mitchell told the meeting that 'the workers of Britain have more in common with the government of Libya than with the BBC". He said the WRP challenged Tory MP John Biggs Davidson to support the BBC's allegations outside Parliament so they could sue him. He did not pause to say why they were not suing the BBC or (on this issue) SO.

Mitchell said that the 'witchhunt' "showed the grip of Zionism in the labour movement -Poale Zion had sprung a thousand heads in its efforts to turn the labour movement against the Palestinians and their ally the WRP"

Livingstone and Knight complained that their Labour Herald was being persecuted and witch-hunted too.

Michael Banda compared Socialist Organiser to a bunch of political hyenas feeding on the entrails of other revisionist movements' Livingstone - who finds SO hateful for being less than 100% uncritical of himself - applauded such speakers. Alex Mitchell had a second go: holding up a green briefcase with the emblem of Libya on it, he said he had just come back from Libya, and that was all he had brought back. He opened it dramatically to reveal Colonel Gaddafi's 'Green Book" - whose ideas the WRP used to call fascism. He had been to a Lib. yan conference to study and interpret it.

Finally a resolution was passed condemning the state and the BBC and... calling on SO support. ers to denounce the paper and foice the Editorial Board to 're. tract.

SO supporter Gaius Vincent managed to stay unrecognised in the meeting under the watchful eyes of the numerous stewards by clapping all the speakers. He rose to speak and managed to ask Knight, Livingstone and Tatchell what they were doing on such a platform and why SO people had been kept out of the meeting where such a resolution was to be moved. Then he was shouted down amid uproar and surround. ed by stewards.

The meeting answered none of the questions that need answering. In its own way it showed yet again the need for answers. If they can only get a couple of hundred people - the same sort of numbers that almost any outfit could get by fielding such a well. known platform of speakers -how do they manage to put out Newsline daily? Where does their opulence come from?

Help defend freedom of political comment in the labour movement press against the WRP's use of its money and of the capitalist legal system. A labour inquiry, not the courts!

Donations towards our defence costs to: Labour Minvament Prace Nefence I Fund Treasurer, Jonathan Hammond, c/o 214 Sickert Court, London N1 25Y.

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