Will Kinnock get rid of the Bomb?

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AT THE Labour Party conference Neil Kinnock tried to get the motion firmly reasserting unilateral nuclear disarmament remitted', i.e. taken off the agenda.

He failed, and the motion carried by a big majority. •But in the same week that the conference knocked back Kinnock's move against unilateralism, it elected Kinnock leader by an even bigger majority. He got 73% of the trade union vote, and 91.5% of the constituency Labour Party voter For sure, many of the Labour and trade union activists who voted for Kinnock did so because they thought he would stick by unilateral nuclear disarmament.

When Kinnock argued at the Labour Party national executive for remitting the unilateralist motion, in the very same speech he insisted that he remained a CND supporter of long standing.

Labour's leadership still says that it is unilateralist. At the Brighton conference the national executive pushed a policy of putting Polaris into negotiations (rather than scrapping it) and 'freezing' the nuclear arsenal (rather than getting rid of it). It even had Denis Healey, an avowed opponent of unilateralism, speaking on its behalf.

But the official explanation is that these are merely tactical gambits. The basic commitment remains ..to a non-nuclear defence policy.

Chimes The CND leadership chimes in to prop up Kinnock. The executive of Labour CND (the Labour Party section of CND) has been hauled over the coals because its vice-chair, Walter Wolfgang, Kinnock: "less than 50% determined" United Nations voted unanimously to set up a commission to organise 'the elimination from international armaments of atomic weapons" • All the summits and disarmament sessions since then have had equally little effect on the arm's race.

Just imagine for a minute the situation if a Labour government set about phasing out the Bomb and US bases. It could do some minor things quite easily.

It could cancel Trident: plenty of people in the military establishment think it's not much use.

But if it tried to go further, then it would face huge resistance: from the armed forces top brass; from the military contractors; from the US and other NATO governments; and of course from the media.

If it was 50% determined, rather than 100% determined, then it would end up at best with something like what the present government in Greece has got on its election pledge to remove US bases from that country: an agreement to remove the bases after a period of several years.

In the meantime, of course, the warmongers could manoeuvre, and likely enough a Tory or Alliance government could be elected which would reverse the agreement and bring us back to square one.

There is little sign that Neil Kinnock is even 50% determined to pursue unilateral nuclear disarmament. He is more in the mould of Michael Foot, who led Labour's left wing against the Bomb for many years and then; in the 19749 Cabinet, took part in secret decisions which paved the way for Trident.

No: Neil Kinnock will not get rid of the Bomb.

So we must keep campaigning on the streets. But we should not give up on the Labour Party.

The labour movement is the major organised force that can bring concentrated social power into the fight against the Bomb. If the campaign against the Bomb cannot win via the labour movement, then it certainly cannot win via general public campaigning to persuade the Establishment.

Winning over the labour movement does not mean winning the bureaucrats. People like Denis Healey or Terry Duffy would sooner go off to the SDP or another split-off than stick with a labour movement which really will get rid of the Bomb.

But the majority of the rank and file already support unilateralism, and they can be won over to the idea that they need to organise for unilateralism and to abandon tolerance for semiunilateralists like Kinnock. The democratic changes in the Labour Party in 1979-81, despite the setbacks since then, lay the basis for that.

Neil Kinnock will not get rid of the Bomb. But the labour movement will. why 29 HANDS OFF OUR ITTEE ALTH WEALTH

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JOHN JOHN HARRIS

OANSHOPSY CORKERS AÇATH DIRE