Eight points for Labour, by Eric Heffer

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INIS VITAL that this leadership election becomes the springboard for socialist advance, that the Labour Party picks itself off the floor and begins the long In order to do this we must have a clear plan of action. I propose eight practical steps that will revitalise our Party and re-create the trust between the Parliamentary leadership and FIRST, there must be an accountable leadership. Members of the Party must know that the leaders will carry out Party policy, and not seek to invent a policy of their own and ther oist it on the electorate. This is our biggest single task:

rebuilding the trust and confidence between equals that has been so casually squandered in the past decade.

SECOND, we must make socialism popular. If it was right to support the alternative economic strategy, unilateral disarmament, and withdrawal from the Common Market on June 8, why was it wrong to do so on June 10? If we abandon our democratically-decided policies in the wake of the election defeat, the electorate will never trust us again: at every election they will say - can we trust them to do what they say?

THIRD we must mount a blitz on the rapacious policies of tit lories. We must not be frightened to put down motions in Parliament supporting Party policy - for we have to argue our case in órder to make socialism popular. We must not be frightened to support workers in struggle: we must support the British Telecom workers in their struggle against privatisation; we must support the health workers in their action against job cuts and hospital closures; we must support workers fighting the 3% pay policy. This means identifying ourselves with workers on picket lines, this means supporting extra-Parliamentary activity, it means not being afraid of the consequenFOURTH, we must have a leadership that will expose the hypocrisy and staggering elitism of the SDP. I have no compunction in attacking the policies of the SDP, for I disagree with them root and branch. There must be no "historic compromise" with the traitors in the SDP who have allowed FIFTH, we must accept that the really critical question for the next Labour government is the question of power. We cannot allow the powerful financiers in the City of London to dictate to us as they did in 1976, when they stopped buying gilts and forced the Labour government to introduce £8 billion of public expenditure cuts. If we are to take real power, an important component of our economic strategy has to be public ownership of the major companies and institutions that SIXTH, we must remember that Labour will never win power without the support of the 52% of the population who happen to be women, without the support of the ethnic minorities, and without the support of the gay community. We must implement positive action programmes; and if I were leader of the Party I would lend my full support to the proposals made to change the internal structure of the Party to give women SEVENTH, we must rediscover our commitment to ridding Britain of poverty and low pay. There are now seven million people dependent on Supplementary Benefit and a further seven million on poverty wages. If I were leader, I would seek to implement a statutory minimum wage - which I have supported for over a decade - and major increases in social security benefits to lift the poor out of the morass of despair which Thatcherism has plunged them into.

EIGHTH, we must have real leadership and rhetoric. The electorate can tell when leaders fudge we must rediscover our socialism and fight for it.

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From Eric Heffer's speech at Central Hall, Westminster, last ROOPIS OUT NOME