Union block votes confirm witch hunt

Scan page 4

THE NEC [National Executive Committee] results are the best thing we've had so far, I think, but they're not as good as we could have had.

We've obviously got to fight very hard to retain the policies of unilateral nuclear disarmament and coming out of the Common Market, and to make the economic policy more One thing I do agree with Kinnock about is that we've got to turn the Party into a campaigning party. But we can't separate campaigning from the policy. We've got to bring the two together.

And we cạn't go out and campaign successfully while expulsions are going on. There won't be unity in the Party while we keep expelling people.

FRAN FAULKNER, Coventry South East CLP delegate THE VOTE against the only motion opposing the sale of council houses, and the vote to remit one in favour of sales, are part of the trend in the Labour Party to go for what seems to be popular.

The leadership don't seem to gee council housing as part of the welfare state which is being privatised - though attacks on housing are even more drastic than the attacks on the NHS.

Selling council houses affects [council] Direct Labour Organisations [DLOs], who are now being forced to make profits. That profit is being used to hold down the rents.

In Coventry the council had decided to freeze the rents. But it's paid for by scraping back money from the accounts which should be used for housing repairs.

Council house sales aren't seen as privatisation until it is IN a chilled atmosphere the NEC held their "trial" of the Militant Editorial Board.

Mechanically the appeals were processed and then, despite a brave attempt from Alex Lyon to get a debate, chair Sam McCluskie rammed through a vote.

When the show of hands for the reinstatement of Peter Taaffe looked uncomfortably close, McCluskie shouted Card Vote, and then the big block votes of the unions moved to force through expulsions.

The atmosphere of resentment and suspicion of the únion leaders using hundreds of thousands of block votes to decide on issues that the CLPs will have to pay the price for increased as the roll call of shame felled the hopes of the Militant 5 and the hopes of the left, and the hopes of turning outwards to fight the Tories free of witch-hunts disappeared.

Jim Mortimer's sophisticated defence of the five expulsions added nothing to the case. He relied heavily on emphasising the legality of the process, mixing this with pseudorationalisations of how Marxism is only now acceptable if it is THE DEBATE on the witchhunt was held in closed session on Monday afternoon.

A solid formation of almost all the major unions confirmed the witch-hunt on all fronts.

The expulsion of the Militant editorial board was confirmed. The ban on Militant paper sales was confirmed. A resolution calling for no more expulsions was voted down.

This is how two delegates saw the debate. tame, ineffective and locked away in the pages of the Morning Star!

But Mortimer never once explained where the expulsions were going to take the Party. And everyone who is serious about Labour, and its chance of being the political voice of a working class fighting the Tories knew that he had not answered that question.

As Colin Johnston asked the conference, how did the Labour Party gain from expelling Nye Bevan? No answer came from those whose hands grip their block votes and little else; and despair from those in the CLPs who know they have to fight the Tories at the grassroots, and pay Leader Neil Kinnock Roy Hattersley Eric Heffer Peter Shore Deputy leader Roy Hattersley Michael Meacher Denzil Davies Gwynneth Dunwoody The unions have 40% and MPs 30%. the price for the action agreed at secret meetings of the St. Ermin's group.

Russell Tuck in a speech more designed to stir puddings than conferences struggled to convince the CLPs (the core of the opposition to this, dirty manoeuvre) that there was no witchhunt, because there were no witches involved and anyway Militant were not being expelled for their ideas.

The true Hyde of Mortimer's Dr. Jekyll was exposed by Jack 72.6% 27.2% 88.1% 11.8% waight in Straw. With his eye firmly on a future shadow cabinet seat, as one of Neil Kinnock's "bright young men", , he openly blurted out what all the right-wing in the Party want.

not the only ones"

A catchword at Conference this week has been "unity", but the actions of the NEC and trade union magnates will only open up more divisions within the CLPS MPs Total 91.5% 49.3% 71.27% 26.1% 19.29% 14.3% 6.30% 10.3% 3.14% 51.0% 55.7% 67.27% 47.8% 29.4% 27.89% 10.9% 3.53% 1.32% the electoral collegos, the CLPs 30%, censors Reg Race spoke at a fringe meeting with Ken Loach on 'Questions of Leadership' KEN Loach's films, which were commissioned by Chan. nel Four, have been prevented from being shown because of the activities of right-wing Labour Party supporters.

There are no legal problems about showing Ken Loach's films, it is simply that prominent rightwingers in the Labour Party - like Frank Chappie of the EETPU - believed that it would be disadvantageous for them to be shown walking : out of interviews in these films.

Ken Loach's films discussed questions of leadership; and they identified problems which exist in the trade union movement.

It is perfectly plain to any reasonable socialist that sometimes trade union leaders and the TUC are willing to undermine industrial disputes.

This certainly happened during the ASLEF dispute in 1982, and, in a less extreme form, in the National Health Service workers' dispute in the same year.

These problems of the leadership being willing to opt for'a quiet life certainly are more powerfully expressed when Labour is in government.

The Callaghan government, in 1978/9, ensured that the 5 per cent pay policy that had been voted down by the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party conference was implemented rigorously. It was none öther than

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

"Militant does not belong in the Labour Party" and "they are