Candidates and campaigners discuss What went wrong?

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and that is a matter I think that possibly a more left wing NEC could correct.

There was hardly, as far as l could see, anybody on the Left that was at those press conferences and able to put across the message on a national level. That resulted in fudging and mudging and a division about policies that some of the right don't agree In my own constituency, and Ray Davies, Labour candidate for Cardiff Central What I think we've got to do is to fight against the betrayal by the We conducted a campaign on leadership, not afford ourselves the luxury of bouts of despair and tears. We've got to flex our muscles and go out and build a new leadership, which was the only weak point in the campaign.

Democracy didn't finish when Perhaps where the Left has the election results were announced. We've got to go out and organise in the trade union movement, in particular, for the fight back over the next five years.

I had over 120 active young people in my campaign. There is Certainly we ought to have a no humiliation or defeat in that sort of campaign. Those are the people who are going to go out and win. It was a tremendous campaign - but there was nothing they could do to get over what the leadership was doing.

The Left have really got to persuade people in the Parliamentary Labour Party to put their names forward for the leadership election - Jo Richardson, Joan Maynard, pee Kinnock and the Right or Kinnock and the Left, and it's got to be the Left, fighting on the policies, not personalities. It's only us on the Left who can put the arguments forward strongly.

Campaign meets Valerie Veness, Balham Food & candidate for Hornsey Book Co-op, and Wood Green.

We're quite pleased with our result, because it was one of the few swings to Labour. SECIAL The Labour Party, at a constituency level, at its grass roots, has never been healthier. That showed in the campaign, where the party was recruiting members and had lots of people out working.

But at a national level, in the national leadership, it is hopeless.

They were uscless in the way that the campaign was conducted.

The didn't believe in hall of the SOUTHANE much. and you had the Tory =_- - "alk alicing in its manifesto. It wasn't that the Tories won the election, it was the Labour Party that lost it.

There was a lot of anti-Thatcher feeling in the country, but it wasn't being translated into pro-Labour feeling.

Obviously now the struggle goes on. There isn't really anyone in Parliament who is going to lead the Left, and it's a question of getting someone in there who is.

I should imagine the Party leadership is going to be between Hattersley and Kinnock, and it so we haven't got any choice but to support Kinnock.

It's an awful situation facing Labour councils, especially if Thatcher brings in rate capping. And I don't know how much more they'll take away in rate support grant. So you're either faced with massive cuts, or you have to fight back. The question is how you fight back.

It's quite clear now that it's no good disappearing into the Town Hall and having nine hundred committee meetings. You've got to get out onto the ground, explain the issues.

The strategy to fight back has yet to be decided. But it's got to be outside the Town Hall.

Tony Benn, Labour candidate for Bristol East The fact is that our policies, if you take them as policies, were acceptable to people. The public opinion polls they didn't publish showed that there was enormous support for the policies.

It was an election where the media had a very clear objective of making Thatcher prime minister and Roy Jenkins, as it were, leader of the opposition, and hammering the Labour Party.

It was a very bad defeat. On the other hand we did get enormous support from our own people. If I take my own experience in Bristol, people came from all over the country and worked. One old lady of 73 came down from Cumberland and stayed for a fortnight. There was an Indian family who drove down every day from London and canvassed among the Asian community. Welsh steelworkers and miners came over, and there was a terrific campaign and tremendous commitment.

And that is very, very significant for the future. I think there is no doubt that all the work done in the Labour Party over the last ten years, or certainly over the last four, had produced a degree of commitment which I had never before seen in my life as candidate. That is something which is very precous and bodes well for the future. Pat Barry Turner, Labour councillor, Bradford Pat Wall and Militant supporters locally are laying the blame for Pat Wall's defeat on Ben Ford, the former Labour MP, who stood as an independent and got 4000 votes. I think this is wrong.

The blame lies with the Labour Party leadership. For a long period it was unclear wheth-er or not Pat Wall. was endorsed by the NEC as the Labour candidate, even after two selection meetings. This uncertainty allowed the local press to build up some momentum behind Ben Ford.

If the NEC had accepted the democratic selection of Pat Wall after the first selection meeting, this wouldn't have happened. Ian Williams, a member of the National Union of Railwaymen executive In Liverpool we won five out of six seats with a slate of what would clearly pass in most of the country as far left candidates, and far left policies.

But between the press and the government and the SDP, a lot of people are abandoning any form of class loyalty. From Liverpool, or Scotland, the election looks very much like the affluent south east declaring war on the industrial areas, and the people with jobs declaring war on the people who haven't got jobs. Where we've failed, in the labour movement, is to develop a sense of class consciousness.

And the behaviour of the Labour leadership over the last few years has really been designed to rnake that worse. They don't believe in class war. Most of the Labour leadership, ideologically, are far closer to the SDP than they are to us.

The labour movement should start fighting the next election now, and in a way that we've never done before. We should be coordinating local campaigns and national campaigns. In many areas now we're going to have local Labour councils in confrontation with the government. We're going to have whole industries - coal, steel, railways - in some form of confrontation with the government. If the normal pattern is followed, these will each be fought and lost separately .

We should be coordinating them. The labour movement will have to turn itself into more of a versatile, fighting organisation than just an electoral machine.

On the Labour Party leadership - I think Eric Heffer is running, and he has got a lot more impressive credentials than the others. Neil Kinnock's actions over the last year have caused a lot of mistrusț.

Road, London N19 for details and transport. Bring sleeping bags and ten1

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Socialist Organiser no.136 June 16 1983 Page S '83 Peoples march for jobs TGHRU

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