[WHAT is going on in the Labour Party?…]

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WHAT is going on in the Labour Party? What is the battle about? The right want to make all the decisions in Parliament. The left want decisions to be taken at the Party Conference and the Labour Government to carry them out.

Over the last two years, the left have made a lot of ground. We have succeeded in getting the leader elected by the Party and not just by MPs. The right have been losing the political arguments so the only weapon they have left is the party machine, its full time employees and unelected advisory committees.

Now they are using that power base to drive the left wing, at least the serious left, out of the party. They say that the left, particularly, the "Militant tendency" are a "party within a party"

But the Labour Party was set up as a federation between the trade unions and socialist organisations to represent the views of the trade unions and working class people in Parliament and outside it.

At first all the 'tendencies' , the different points of view, in the workers' movement had a voice in the party, and democratic decisions were taken.

But as Labour grew in the 1920s, leaders soon got a taste for the privileged life in Parliament. They knew if they were to keep those privileges they would have to work with the bosses to control the working class. They knew that in a democratic movement they would not be able to enjoy the power, so they began to tighten up to keep out the left. a lanethe loft In the early 1920s, the CP formed as a new left wing, after the Russian Revolution. The Communists wanted to affiliate to the Labour Party so all the working class parties could be united. But they wanted to keep their own caucus to decide together what they wanted to argue for in the party.

The leaders of the Labour Party began a witchhunt against them and got the Party conference in 1928 to refuse to allow CP members, some of whom had been in the Labour Party for years, to stay in.

But despite the witch-hunt, tendencies of revolutionary socialists still survive in the Party. And the "mainstream left" has organised itself too - because anyone can see that "ideas" without the organisation to carry them out are useless.

It's always been in the youth of the Labour Party that left wing ideas have flourished most and where organised groups have been strongest.

In the 1930s the pro-Stalin Communist Party took over the Labour Party youth wing and it was disbanded. In the early 1960s a new YS was set up and many left wing groups joined and eventually the largest, Keep Left, was expelled and the YS virtually closed down. But the Left kept coming back. In 1971 Militant won control and the party leaders left it alone, but now the right wing are becoming worried and are starting to attack. They have decided to witch-hunt the Militant. and with them the right wing could