Defend the LPYS
Class Fighter1982 1982-10-01Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 3 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 3
One of the most likely victims of the right wing backlash at Blackpool is the YS. Militant supporters are known to control the YS. In the past right wing controlled NECs have often disbanded Labour youth movements' they didn't like.
They could now move to break up the national structure of the YS - its regional committees and national conferences, etc. - and reduce the branches to 'youth sections' of the CLPs. That's what they did in 1955 when they decided to strangle the youth movement.
(The present LPYS was started in 1960 after Lab.... tor are% our's defeat in the October 1959 general election).
Militant's stodgy conception of a youth movement as a propaganda group rather than a fighting mass movement of working class youth will make it easier for the NEC to isolate and victimise Labour's left wing youth movement.
We must defend the YS. Raise the matter in your local Labour Party - get your party to commit itself against any interference with the youth movement. Above all, turn the YS outwards and build it into a powerful mass movement of working class youth: that's the best way to defend the YS. conference there are hundreds of 'em wearing "Gay 16 OK" badges -even miners. I suppose Scargill will have a team there next year?
That Tatchell chap cornered a friend from the Mail and told him that he's never been to the "Gay Olympics" • San Francisco, or ever been in Militant. Good answer about "freedom of the press", I thought, but they should at least have got one bit right!
Once safely in the hall it got back on the tracks.
DAY READ the Mail over breakfast, and a stiff drink. Great stuff! "New-wave, leather clad, Classfighter, pro-IRA, trotskyites" That's the way to deal with the whippersnappers!