Reply to Labour Coordinating Committee Open Letter Unity: on what policies?

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Last week we received an Open Letter from Peter Hain on behalf of the Labour Coordinating Committee (reprinimportant and it has fallen off a bit lately. Let's remedy that. We welcome your open letter. As you say, dialogue within ted on page 11 of this issue). It raises important questions You are right — we must rebuild the Party's 'shattered base'. We for the left in the Labour Party and the unions. Here is our must turn outwards to campaign against the Tories and for socialist Most of your formal proposals and suggestions are sensible, indeed commonplace. They are very much common ground on the left. Therefore let us seek dialogue about those that are not.

In the first place, you fail to make your own position sufficiently clear. You say - end the witch-hunt. You also say support the existing leadership and leave them unchallenged for at least five years. But this is a leadership committed to the witch-hunt and which is continuing it.

Look at the case of Tariq Ali, ominously expelled for his ideas.

Where do you stand? You have to choose between your declared opposition to the witch-hunt and commitment to the leadership. Will you still be for the leadership even if they don't take your advice and 'stop the witch-hunt'.? And are you saying you will fight the leadership cations of what you say will line you up completely with the purgers unless they call off the witch-hunt? In which case - campaign.

You talk about the need to discuss policy. Yet you declare support You talk about Kinnock and Hattersley being chosen by the for Kinnock/Hattersley the "prerequisite" for unity. The same question Electoral College and thus having an exceptional legitimacy. arises here as above - when Kinnock/Hattersley retreat, fudge and But comrades, you had an almost identical attitude to the old estababandon Party policy are you for the leadership or for the policies? lishment. You said the same about Foot and Healey. Last April you Tories. The fight against Thatcher's Tories cannot be merely one Unity is a sweet sounding word, like Salaam or Shalom or 'Peace on appealed for 'Party unity' on the basis of "the existing policies, the more round in the Padiamentary see-saw. We must root out everything earth to men of good will" . (And usually just as empty). existing leadership, the existing membership, the existing parliamentary they specifically stand for. The Labour Party under its present leaderWhy is it that in your mouths it sounds like a threat? Why do you candidates and the existing selection procedure". So what's new? edge it with menace and imply an unspoken "or else"? Is it not that What's new is that you feel yourselves to be in power and part of To get a Labour Party that will do that we need left unity against you consider yourselves to be doing a job for the leadership, that your the new establishment. Your talk of unity is a demand on the left and the present Labour establishment. We need a left that is clearly defined. real unity slogan is Peace in Kinnock's Time and on Kinnock's terms? against the left: Its political content is the demand that the left disarm. We suggest that a serious left is defined by this platform:

You know very well what Kinnock's game is and what his scenario Your letter for unity is probably best regarded as the point of your 1) The goal of socialism - of going beyond capitalism and wage for the Party is — to recreate a situation where the Labour Party leader- slavery - as the governing principle in the labour movement and ship is free to do what it likes with Party policy. To gut and tame Choices have to be made and your choice is clear. Either it is immediately of its left wing which fights to make it the governing reselection. To recreate a 'faking culture' in the Labour Party to recon- possible to regard the present situation in the Party as satisfactory, as cile Left and Right on a basis of the left accepting right wing control in offering hope that the future of the Party under Kinnock will be differ- 2) Commitment to the working class and its struggle and to the fight exchange for occasional left words from the leadership. ent from its past under the Foots, Callaghans and Wilsons - and plainly for its emancipation from economic exploitation and oppression.

Here the question of who and what the LCC is forces itself to the Commitment to achieving working class rule in society which can oniy forefront. Commitment to unity is new for you, isn't it? The LCC was You are mistaken that that fight is necessarily disruptive of Party be democratic self-rule. Commitment to these goals in all conditions, the first group to leave the Rank and File Mobilising Committee. You unity and effectiveness against the Tories. The serious left will back including those where the state controls the means of production. refused to participate in its proposed replacement, Labour Liaison '82. But then, of course, you aren't talking about the unity of the left, for Party unity even under the existing leadership. But the left that Kinnock and Hattersley if they fight the Tories. We are for this sort of ment into an instrument of the working class, capable of promoting and 3) Commitment to the transformation of the existing labour movesocialist goals. You are talking about Party unity around the status quo. confines itself to this in the present state of the Labour Party will cease fighting for these goals, or, minimally, of making propaganda for them.

Your message is that those who don't accept the old status quo, From these three points many conclusions follow: with its new face are disruptors. This is the view of all proponents of As well as unity of the Party's ranks to fight the Tories we must * It means rejection of the treasonable talk of Labour coalition with authoritarian parties, right wing and Stalinist alike. Logically the impli- unite the left to fight to ensure that we have a real alternative to the the Alliance and a fight against the coalitionists in our own ranks.

*It means rejection of the approach of choosing the lesser evil and scaling down even our reforming goals under pressure of the ideological offensive Thatcher and Co. It means, example, rejecting *It means opposing the reimposition of the old "faking culture" as a *It means - necessarily - opposition to Stalinism and all forms of bureaucratic state socialism in the labour movement and in the Labour Party: opposition to both the Stalinist states and to the conception of socialism as state socialism, common alike to Stalinists and Fabians. *It means an uncompromising commitment to democracy in the labour movement and to a fight to expand it under capitalism and to *It means recognition that the labour movement is indivisible and, therefore, that the unions must be democratised and made into fighting *It means committment to the real struggles of the working class -on picket lines, occupations against closures, etc., etc. It means more than just the "on the knocker" campaigning you have in mina, *It means working class internationalism and a rejection of the narrow-minded insularity which is such an unfortunate feature of the British labour movement. Some of you have abandoned the idea of leaving the EEC, for shamefully opportunist reasons. Are you willing to * It means a break from the criminal record of the Labour Party on Ireland and a commitment to find a solution and get Britain out of the It means support for the fight of oppressed minorities - including We await your reply on these points. The left would be especially interested to learn what the LCC thinks of those who hint that the way Dear Comrades, values, etc. etc.

THE first meeting of Labour's new NEC last Wednesday continued where the last one left off. Tariq Ali was brought before the Committee to determine whether his ideas were acceptable; NEC members were denied the right to question him; then they expelled the person reply. and witch-hunters. break from any pretence of being of the left.

it isn't. Or else the fight must go on.

to be a left. every four months! Largely because of time this was referred back for further discussion. The earlier proposal to set up a Campaign Committee was, however, agreed at the Basnett

JOHN HARRIS

CLP section; Eric Heffer gets as Party Chair.

The other positions are made up by the Leader, Deputy Leader, Vice-Chair, Treasurer, General Secretary, six from the Shadow Cabinet/PLP, one from the EEC Labour Group and four from the TULV. ship will not do that.

principle of the labour movement. Kinnock's approach to restoring Tory cuts.

solution to the crisis in the Labour Party.

sustain and develop it under socialism.

organs of the working class.

comrades of the LCC.

fight to create European working class unity?

affairs of the Irish.

women, blacks and gay people.

forward may be a coalition with the Alliance. Yours fraternally, The Editors