I don't believe I should have attacked Callaghan

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and Ruth's husband - are consumed by egotism. Every emotion seems to derive from or become a tributary to selfpity. Their egotism further expresses itself in claims on the time of 'their" women and a Jealous protection of their own time and space.

'Friends and Husbands" is one of the best films I have seen in ages. It is easily accessible in Hanna Schygulla as Olga tions:

Increasingly German feminist directors are being accepted as among the best film makers in Germany. While the work of some of the famous male directors, the late Fassbinder and Wenders for example, becomes more and more self-consciously formal, the work of directors like von Trotta is accessible and warmly direct. committees meeting that describe themselves as the Left?' ', I dare say the answer is no - not in the way the Rank and File Mobilising Committee met.

But if you say, 'Is there a shared commitment and a shared understanding, going over a very wide range of people on the Left?' , the answer is yes., so it you look at it from that point of view, I would have thought that the Left was in good shape.

MT: What about the implications in the election campaign itself? The manifesto contained most of the conference policies, but the leading spokespeople presented by the Labour Party were almost all from the centre or the Right of the Party, rather than from the wing that had been most associated with those policies.

TB: Yes, that's right. two things.

First of all, the extent to which the Right was able to org anise last year to change the composition of the Executive: But even more, the fact that we have not resolved the relationship between the Parliamentary Labour Party and the rest of the Labour The composite coming back at this conference, which calls for the constitution of the Party to absorb and shape the standing orders of the PLP, is of critical importance. Until that question is resolved, we'll still be in the same You have to be clear that on eve of poll, every body is together, because you have a common interest in an agreed programme and in the replacement of the government.

JB: Do you think it would be unfair to say that the Left kept its head down during the election? So that the argument was almost going by default?

TB: I think what you're saying is that the right wing of the Party dominated the Shadow Cabinet and the National Executive which was a product both of the nature of the old Parliamentary Party and of the conference last year, when Sid Weighell and others secured the Executive that they wanted.

In the circumstances of an elow Cabinet, does decide who plays the prime role.

But I don't think it would have been right to have attacked colleagues during the clection. l think all you could do is put So some people have been arguing that the policy needs to be changed - in different ways -some, that the same policy needs to be argued differently. What's your view?

TB: There were a lot of problems. One is that it was not thought that our leadership supported the policy.

And indeed the Alternative Economic Strategy boiled down in the end to a presentation of 'borrow, reflate, and the system will spring back to life' - which was not credible.

The fuller Alternative Economic Strategy - which did not include wage restraint - had been explicitly rejected when it was put to the Cabinet in 1976.

A lot of people said: when you were in power, you had a chance to do it. You didn't - on the grounds that it would undermine the fight against inflation and lead to a siege economy. That's just what Mrs Thatcher says would happen if you did it now. Therefore, not only do we doubt that you are able to do it, campaigning, and so on.

If we look ahead at the next possible moment when a Labour government might be formed, we have to assess what sort of policies we might need to deal with a much worse situation than we had in June 1983. That suggests that we shall have to be much more radical than last time.

We've also got to present the European argument in an international socialist context, and not get tangled up with the Enoch Powell view that it's all a matter of Britain's national interest vis-a-vis the Common Market. • The idea that because we were beaten on June 9 the British people will always want the arms race, always want unemployment, always want us to be tied into the Treaty of Rome, always want to let market forces wreak their wrath upon us, is totally unrealistic.

I think one of the things we may have won is the credit for having stuck to a position which had a certain socialist critique and logic and courage about it, even though it was not accepted at the time.

JB: You said that the first task of the labour movement now is to protect its own people. What policies do you think need to be developed to enable that to he done?

TB: It has to be done in the first instance by the people who are under attack. You can't have the Labour Party National Executive

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You need ten members to start a branch in any workplace. The definition of 'workplace' is left open in the rules: separate branches can be established in separate sections of a large The Labour Party membership of workplace recruits has to be processed through their ward branches. But the workplace branch can send one delegate to the Labour Party GC in each constituency where it has at least ten members living.

calling a national strike of mineworkers. It's got to go through the NUM: if they do decide to take strong measures, we've got to support them.

Fi think there is a slightly dangerous idea that if only there was what is called a bold socialist leadership, and there was a call given from Walworth Road on the fourth. Wednesday of every month, then the streets would be full of people demonstrating.

It's got to come from underneath, and then you've got to defend it. The ASLEF drivers last year were brutally betrayed. The health workers had real difficul ties in the end.

MT: What about the idea of the labour movement "disengaging' from collaboration with the Tories?

TB: If anything it is than it was.

There is something rather pathetic about a trade union movement that is now under absolute direct attack pleading to be allowed to put its case. That's a sign of weakness.

A lot of trade union leaders used to be actually part of the mechanism of imposing Government policy. I know many of them have been dismissed from the boards of nationalised industries, and some have resigned, but there was a time when some trade union leaders were still on the boards of companies that were about to privatise.

There is much too cosy a relationship between the TUC and the Treasury, and the TUC and the Foreign Office. If the effort that goes in to trying to influence Government policy in a marginal way through the NEDC or in other ways were re-deployed to plan a strategy for Labour, it would be much better.

And nothing would frighten the Government more than disengagement. Just as with the House of Lords, every Labour peer that is appointed strengthens the House of Lords and gives it legitimacy, so every trade union representative tied up in Government business in any way gives Iepitimacy to Government policy.

JB: On another policy issue, Ireland, you had an article in the Guardian yesterday proposing withdrawal of troops. How do you see the relation between that - which I think you're absolutely right on - and a united Ireland?

You seemed to be arguing that at least for the foreseeable future Ireland would remain divided, and while British troops might come out, United Nations forces going in would maintain the existing relationships in the North.

TB: I don't think you could bring about reunification by force, let alone by British force.

I argued that withdrawal is necessary; I tried to show how it could be done, because a lot of people think it couldn't be done; I cited the 1948 Palestine Act, which was a simple Act declaring that His Majesty's jurisdiction in Palestine would end from certain date; I then linked that with talks between the Irish government and the British government and the authorities there about human rights, financial aid, an amnesty for people involved in offences connected with the emergency• You would have a UN force in to maintain order during the transitional period. I think one of the most powerful reasons why people in Britain have been reluctant to favour the Troops Out idea is that they fear there would be bloodshed on a huge scale.

Going back to August 1969, when we sent the troops in because the B-Specials were running amok and doing great damage to the Catholic community, there was discussion at that time by the Irish Government in support of some United Nations initiative. It was not very welcome to the British government for a variety of reasons.

But I think that the measures I have proposed would open up a completely new era both in the North and in the relations between the North and the South. When the Northern Loyalist leaders realise that they cannot use British troops to enforce their will on their own minority, they are going to have to come to terms with them.

I think that the nationalists in the North, having achieved the objective at least of withdrawal by Britain, would be less inclined to engage in contlict which might lead to a counter-blast. I think also that the labour movement in the North, which is the key to the whole thing, realising that British troops were not a permanent part of the scenario there, would have to get together to prevent things going wrong. And then the obstacles to some form of association between North and South would begin to melt away.

But the one thing I'm absolutely clear about is that there is no future at all for present policy. The idea that if only we thought about it more carefully and were a bit wiser we could find a formula that would ease the tensions, is a complete illusion. And I think most people in Britain see that.

'Of course there are interests -the defence interest and others -which have found it quite convenient to leave the situation as it is. Maybe they don't want to release a strong labour movement with socialist ideas, which I think would inevitably emerge into that situation, because then it would threaten their own source of economic power. After all, it is not a sectarian or a religious argument at all, it's about very fundamental things.

MT: I want to track back to the beginning, when you mentioned the leadership election. Who will you be voting for as leader of the TB: I haven't got a vote, that's the short answer. I'm not a Member of Parliament, the Transport and General Workers Union of which I am a member decided at its conference, and the local Labour Party of which I am a member has, I think, already nominated.

There will obviously be an opportunity to express a view. But my interest in it is as it was in 19ol, not to see it in terms of Who is the best person, but to relate it to the policies, and above all to the nature of the leadership. We put our confidence far too often in individuals - Ramsey Macdonald George Brown, Roy Jenkins, Ray Gunter... - and the idea that this is somehow a central and supreme question, as distinct from the nature of the leadership, and above all the relationship between the Parliamentary Party and the Party in the country, is a mistake.

I'm hoping that some of the issues will emerge, and I think to some extent they are beginning to emerge.

But I've always believed that elections are very healing exereises. They clarify; people make a choice and create a structure.of consent. Whoever the Party chooses as leader, we should rally round in the way that we should have rallied round Peter Tatchell when he was first nominated for The discussion about policy must be free to go on, whoever is the leader of the Labour Party at any particular moment.

JB: But you've said that one of the major arguments in 1981 was that we needed a leadership prepared to fight for the conference policies.

You've talked elsewhere about the need for a collective leadership, and used the analogy of a wheel with different spokes. That seems to accept that you would have very diverse political views in the leadership - that you could have a leadership that didn't agree with the policies, but because it was coming from a different direction it would be strengthening the Party.

TB: I didn't mean that. When I said collective leadership, I meant a leadership along lines decided by conference.

But l'Il tell you one reason why I'm reluctant to get drawn in the way you would like me to be. Suppose Mr X, or Mr Y - or Ms X, or Ms Y - is elected having issued a manifesto contrary to Labour Party policy. Are we then to be told that because they were elected, the Party has decided that it want to follow that contrary policy?

That's not acceptable. We've got to get the Parliamentary Party and the leadership generally to begin to define their role in quite a different way.

As a Labour MP I was a fulltime official of the labour movement. I had my right, and claimed my right, to speak my own mind, but the decision-making body of the Labour Party is the Labour conference. If you lose at conference, you can go on saying, 'I think the policy should be different' ', but you can't, as leader or as MP, campaign for something else as if it were the policy of the It's important that whoever wins is committed to that. I don't think enough statements have been made for us to be sure on that count.

JB: I think you're right about the importance of conference sovereignty, but that didn't stop comrades in 1981 arguing for the candidate that. best represented conference policies.

TB: When you come to it you have to make a decision. As in many cases you may choose the person ciosest to yoursel, even though there is not a total identity of view:

MT: Would you like to sum up what you see as the tasks now for Labour Party activists?

TB: To analyse why we lost, and to see that the defeat was a product of a series of major concessions over a generation.

To protect people; to build a mass party; to establish the workplace branches; to build an alliance - because the Labour Party is an alliance, not one settled in a smoke-filled room with David Steel, but with a whole range of groups, women's movement, peace movement, ethnic communities, ecology movement, local community groups... aghan's 1979 manifesto. Radical Iberais ought to be socialists, be ause if they pursue their radical ism seriously they are going to come bang up against the British Establishment.

socialist, because that's what it's about, and there will be a whole range of socialist schools of thought - of which Socialist Org aniser is one, but not by any means the only one. • factory or office complex.

And, finally, you has .:: give people hope. While Ca= are so frightened of the Resis landing tomorrow if it weres::.:

Mr Heseltine and the Tsider:.:: frightened that unemplssre.: will make it impossible 1s: *ato campaign for decent we: :: conditions - while fear domes: - people will no: has := courage to look ahead Our job is to rebuild. Ari =though it is a frightening :1e: lots of people, it is alo a ten = that could be the mos: ..**: and constructive in the hi.: :: the labour movement.

JB: You were saying that if the Left organises it will marginalise itself...

TB: It's got to be ists... doesn't marginalise itselt.

JB: But one of the lessons ci raient years is that when the Left doesn't organise, it gives the Ript t the chance to counter-attack.

TB: In 1981 there was aórs :: operation for the deput ste: ship campaign. When the: ends: the ad hoc alliance began ::::3 down into its compone?: =:

We've always got 0 is unity on an ad hoc basis.

But we've got to be is.. a time when left policies == = the ascendant in the TUC i = the Labour Party: tha: * 1e* doesn't marginalise itse!:.

And one of the patter: -the Labour Part! *3:* =: = moment is that it ba: de:::: lot of time - anili-i: =2: inevitable - io it ire:# LE There is now 3 10002*:: committed activists I: 11 == "24 of the activists 0 me -wards and Joaract JB: You seem to have a very of D mistic view of developments the Labour Party. Don't you think there's a danger of compla. cency? A section of the Party wants to re-establish it on the old basis.

We have to put socialism back on the agenda. A tew years Lab- TB: Yes, they'd like to. But I our, Liberal and Tory were all don't see any prospect for doing monetarist. Why can't we have that, in the CLPs or in the trade Tory, Labour, and Liberal all socialist? "Macmillan was a sort of And the way you deal with socialist in his early days. 'The the development of new policy was well to the left of Jim Callthat you break out ahead - not just by standing by old policy.

If we concentrate on that, we're more likely to make progress than if we're all armed to fend off the dangers of the past.

Ine Labour Party ought to be Next issue • A response to Tony Benn's recent article on Ireland, published in The Guardian.

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Organiser no. 141, 21/28 1983, Page July Agem-d-a *Organise the left to beat back the Tories' attacks!

No to attacks on union rights; defend the picket line; no state interference in our unions! No to any

----- pull-quotes -----

ection campaign, the official lead- ership: both Executive and Shad-

spaüulist Organise no. 141, July 21/281483 Pere i: Build workpace Laboar branches!

" There is much too cosy a relation between TUC an‹ Tories"

this is to break out ahead. It's by Middle Way', published in 1938,