Unity- for what?

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AFTER the Callaghan government was defeated four years ago the Labour Party set about sorting itself out.

Constituency activists were determined to ensure that 'never again would there be a Wilson/Callaghan type Labour government - the sort of Labour government which in office ignored the labour movement What have we achieved? Have we ensured that the next Labour No, we have not! Despite the changes in the constitution to make re-selection of MPs mandatory and the electoral college for the leaderNow Kinnock and his supporters say the renewal process in the Labour Party must end. 'Unity against the Tories' is their catchcry..They want the Party activists to abandon the project of making the Labour Party fit and able to come to grips with capitalism.

The size of the Constituency Labour Party vote (91.5%) for Kinnock - widely and deservedly loathed two years ago - and for Hattérsley (51%) against Meacher is proof that a mood of fear and uncertainty exists at CLP level which creates a desperate willingness to settle for anything that promises to put up any show of opposition to the Tory juggernaut. This mood replaces the 1979 slogan 'Never again' with a Kinnock said on Panorama last Monday, 3rd: "The prerequisite for restoring Britain is a strong and united Labour Party"

No, the prerequisite for restoring Britain and for looking after the interests of the working class is that the Labour Party is united around socialist policies - that it is a party under the control of the rank and That is not what we have now. We must fight until we get it.

It will be disastrous if the serious Left loses its nerve now - as Ken Livingstone did, for example, in the Brieting meeting on Sunday, sayInC. "The Left could easily isolate itself... Neil Kinnock has both strengths and weaknesses... he is willing to learn..."

We need to keep the goal of the last few years in mind. A new Wilson/Callaghan style Labour government would not regenerate Labour was in office for most of the last 20 years - from 1964 to 1970, and from 1974 to 1979. Britain continued to decline, and the decline even accelerated. Labour, the party of the health service and the welfare state, became, in office during the mid- 70s, a party of counterreform, making cuts. It undermined its own credibility with the Reformism proved bankrupt - because the buoyant, expanding capitalism on which it rested is bankrupt. It will be as bankrupt under Wilson, Callagan, and monetarist Chancellor Healey paved the way for Thatcher. A Kinnockite Labour government would be another turn of the wheel on the same spindle. At best it would mark time..

We need to go forward. The prerequisite for this is not only a united and strong Labour Party, but a socialist Labour Party determined to confront the ruling class, to mobilise the working class, and to fight for a democratic working-class socialism. We should not play and 'outs' with the Tories in. Parliament - we must go out to defeat the Kinnock will try to shift the Party to the right. He will try to repair the ragged and dirtied fabric of the 'faking culture' in which the Labour Party wrapped itself for so long - Left talk to mollify the Party ranks, as a cover for pragmatic accommodation to the powers that be.

: Kinnock is well qualified to do this. But what we need is not left talk and hollow phrases, but the sort of seriousness in the working class interest. that Thatcher and the Tory Party display in the ruling class Blather and blatherskates will get the labour movement nothing but more Wilsonism, more Toryism, and perhaps something worse than either. When Kinnock in his role of 'responsible' and 'realistic' parliamentarian says a new Labour government will not even restore the Tory cuts, then the Left should have no room for the delusion that the Kinnock/Hattersley leadership is an advance on Wilson or Callaghan. In the present conditions of British capitalism they might even Imagine this 'dream ticket' in government in late '80s Britain, and it will still seem a 'dream' only to those whose hopes for the future and for the labour movement have been brutally scaled down by the experIn his final speech as Leader to conference delegates, Michael Foot urged delegates to keep in mind that Labour must offer the hope of Those who merely hope for socialism do not deserve it. They will certainly play no part in winning it. We must fight for socialism. And to fight for socialism means also fighting against the enemies of socialism in the labour movement - against the soft Left as well as the Right. It means resisting the threat of an inner moral and political collapse of the After the collapse of the Italian factory occupations in 1920, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci wrote some lines which serious leftists in the British labour movement should keep in mind now:

'The emancipation of the proletariat is not a labour of small acant and little men; only he who can keep his heart strong and his and a starD as a sword when the general disillusionment is at its worst an se zarted as a fighter for the working class or called a ELSALVADOR: government won't be like the last one?

ship, in real terms we have achieved little. new one, 'Back to the pre-1979 Labour Party'.

file, out of government and in it. •ritaill.

working class.

Kinnock as it was under Callaghan and Wilson.

Tories and all they stand for. prove worse.

ience of Thatcherism.

Left following the setbacks and defeats.

Duali sonar, me 3923 Selador Fac Streer Losdon N1. 1-359 2270) THE National Executive Com- nal Executive Committee's document on strategy enment on atratAov. after the general election, 'Campaigning for a Fairer Britain', was approved.

It was a pity that there were not more dissenting voices.

"Labour lost in the end because... we failed to convince people that we offered an attractive, credible and workable alternative", states the document. 'We must offer a vision of a better, socialist future"

What did Labour offer in the general election campaign? To be truthful: a vision of a perhaps-not-so-bad Keynesian past. 'Tried and tested policies" was the refrain.

None of the radical elements of Labour's economic policy -nationalisation, control over investment, 35 hour week -were stressed. Instead the message was that Labour would solve the crisis... by borrowing from the banks.

But the "jobs and industry' section of 'Campaigning for a Fairer Britain' gives no hint that ..by Colin Foster by nuclear weapons to use).

The official explanation for all this is that it is a matter of immediate demands, for a period when Labour is in opposition.

But it is well-known that many in the top ranks of the Labour Party see the so-called "first steps' as an alternative to unilateral nuclear disarmament. So the rank and file must be very wary.

'Campaigning for a fairer Britain' also relegates Labour's policy of British withdrawal from the EEC to the status of an "option"

In some ways, many Socialist Organiser supporters will welcome this. We always thought withdrawal from the EEC was nationalist and backwardlooking: Labour should respond to the international integration of capitalism, not by supporting it, nor by crying "Britain out', but by promoting 'but by promoting workers' unity. workers' minit.v Still, withdrawal was Conference policy. If the policy is to be changed, it should be changed by Conference. The National Executive Committee slipped in a change of policy on the sly, while at the same time pushing any open debate on the EEC off this Conference agenda.

Also, the new NEC policy is a far cry from Europe-wide workers' unity. "Labour will fight to get the best deal for Britain... it says.

And the French socialists should fight to get the best deal for France? German socialists should fight to get the best deal for Germany? The socialists of different countries all fight each other in the name of national interests, and the multinationals rejoice?

What about fighting to get the best deal for the workers of all the EEC countries? conference.

The last five years, coming to conference has been very exciting. We have seen all the activists campaigning for Labour Party democracy. The trade union leaders have been sitting on the side lines. But now the union leaders are organised against the democratic reforms and organised against the Left.

This is a watershed conference: what happened in conference yesterday [Monday 3rd] was that those same trade union leaders had got themselves together and were absolutely determined to kill off the Militant.

But we've got to throw away the desire to wallow in á sea of despondency and prepare for the fightback. It's not the Kin-, nocks of this world who are important, it's the rank and file. And if we want real accountabil-. ity, it's into the trade unions we must go.

MANDY MOORE, CLPD Women's Action Committee and loint secretary of Socialists for a Labour Victory.

THIS IS perhaps the most downhearted conference I've ever been to.

The CLP [Constituency Labour Party] delegates are lacking in fight, and allowing policies to be watered down in a way that a couple of years ago they would never have done.

It's because of the election result, and the result of the leadership elections. "Party members as a whole have felt frightened by the election defeat and the rather spurious calls for unity have overwhelmed them. There is a fear that fighting will damage our election chances - a fear soaked up from the media and the Right of the Party.

COLIN JOHNSTON, delegate from Wallasey OURS WAS a very weak composite - no more expulsions. Effectively it accepted the expulsion of the five [Militant editorial board members].

The witch-hunt debate was taken in three composites - one about paper sales, one about the five Militant editorial board members, and then ours about no more expulsions.

They all fell because of the block vote - end of story.

Every vote was a card vote. The CLPs were 80% solid ag-