Rank want retreat

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ABDU

-PAND FOR & FRIRER BETTER BRITAIN DEBATES like that on nuclear disarmament show that the rank and file' wants to stick with policies that will really benefit people. I just hope that the new leadership actually will carry out what conference and the party members want.

It remains to be seen. If they do, they will get full support. If they don't then I hope that the rank and file will put the politics before the personalities.

I don't think we should be demoralised. The whole rank and file could have come off so much worse. There could have been a headlong retreat. There is an element of panic and that worries me, but it's not gone too deep. If it had, then I think we would have had the TGWU motion on disarmament remitted, the one • person, one vote pseudo-democracy might have been carried.

There hasn't really been that.

There's been a desire to have a "good presentation, but a good presentation of what people actually wanted before June 9, on . June 9 and still want.

So I don't think we should be demoralised, just determined.

The shift to the right in the unions in the 1950s was on the basis that the system could provide. That was the right triumphant, the right feeling it could say that our demand for a changed economy or a changed society was no longer relevant or necessary.

It is not at all the same background now. The basis for the lurch to the right that they will try to engineer in the unions is the collapse of the system, not that it can provide and therefore we are not necessary, but that we can't accomplish it, because as far as the unions are concerned, loss of membership, the atmosphere of fear being created by the Tories.

I think it's an extremely dangerous situation and undoubtedly some of the trade union leaders and some of their members, want to distance themselves from the Labour Party. That is because of the fact that though we've got the most political trade unions in the world, it is in name more than in political education or agitation.

We've all had experience of trying to raise political issues in the unions and being told that this is a trade union, keep politics out of it. By conniving at that many of our leaders have paved the way for the formal as well as the informal depoliticisation of our trade unions.

we have got to point out that this just makes what we want even more necessary. You get nothing by lying down except walked over. A lot of young people never had to learn that really thoroughly, but the movement has to learn how to fight and how to conquer fear and my belief is that action conquéis fear.

I don't think the rank and file of the Party want retreat. They want the policies put across better and we should be on the offensive against anyone who interprets that as retreat. It would be a mistake to portray this conference as a right wing conference.

There have been some very good resolutions at conference which give us a lot to build on. We've got an NEC which is better, the constituencies didn't show any retreat in the elections to the Constituency Section of the NEC.

There has been a mood of realism, though. The people who. say it's no good having the right policies if you haven't got power are right, but it's no good having power if you turn then on the people. You need both. I want power, but the rank and file know that power is no use unless you use it properly?

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It really is dangerous because there is real cause for feat, but