I a 'socialist' Campaign Thai Accepts Callaghan!

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Labour Party conference: the problem is leadership Socialist Press has received a letter dated 31-7-78 from the 'Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory' (SCLV), signed on behalf of the Steering Committee by Geoff Bender.

We do not have sufficient space to reprint the fourpage long letter. We are sure that the Workers Action and Chartist newspapers can reprint it if they feel it necessary since they support the SCLV.

We can, however, give a summary of the letter and some quotations from it.

Socialist Press 109 carried a report of a SCLV conference which is stated to contain 'factual misrepresentation'. The letter objects to the claim that the conference excluded discussion on programme.

It lists several demands of the SCLV as evidence of a programme-including opposition to wage control, the call for free abortion and gay rights, for the removal of troops from Ireland, support for black Dear Comrade Bender, The 'factual misrepresentation' of which you accuse Socialis: Press comes from neither ignorance, nor malice as you suggest, but from the difference between our revolutionary, and your petty bourgeois approach to the fight for socialist policies in the labour movement.

The questions of programme, leadership and the actual class struggle which you raise are not separate questions for us, but intimately related. They lie at the basis of our opposition to your campaign. -We do not regard the 'credentials' of your spokesmen (which anyway fail to impress us) as a substitute for the discussion of actual struggles.

Silence

Nor do we regard a few demands on a leaflet as evidence of a fight for a socialist programme, or an ability to bemoan the 'failures' of the 'Labour Left' as capacity to build a new leadership.

We continue to believe that the silence of the speakers at your conference on the question of Labour's 'left' leaders is of far greater importance than all these things: self-defence and 'many other progressive policies'.

The accusation that the SCLV is "soft' on the Labour left' leaders is angrily denied and an SCLV leaflet is quoted to support this, which says: The Labour Left has simply failed to offer an alternative to the right-wing leadership of the Labour Party'.

Various conference speakers, including prospective Labour Parliamentary candidates Ken Livingstone and Ted Knight, are listed, with the claim that these people represent real struggles.

(A reply to the Socialist Press report's claim that the SCLV conference passed without reference to 'actual struggles within the trade union and labour movement'.)

The letter states that the SCLV 'intends to be in the forefront in the coming -months in organising support for struggles' on various issues, and implies that, by continuously Callaghan Let us examine your 'programme. Its significance is not what it saysbut what it leaves out.

Of course the omission of this or that demand could be 'oversight'. But this cannot be the case with your campaign, which advances some very 'left' demands-indeed some borrowed from Trotsky's Transitional Programmebut says nothing on the question of working class leadership.

Your silence on this point reveals your chatter about socialism do be mere phrases.

Since 1975. Socialist pran has faced the questior of leaders: •: ÷: the breakneck rate :: *…÷ Labour bureaucracy to the right in order to attack the working class. focussing demands on 'left Labour leaders to act, Socialist Press and its supporters engage in "calls on others to act for us'.

Finally the Socialist Press report is falsely criticised for referring to " membérs of the I CL (International Communist League) and the IMG (International Marxist Group) at the conference.

It is pointed out that all who attended were Labour Party members, and that neither of these organisations were involved in organising it.

Despite these criticisms, the letter nevertheless invites Socialist Press supporters and WSL members to support the SCLV.

The SCLV thus regards Socialist Press as distorting its position. In turn, Socialist Press regards the SCLV as a small-time centrist circus that offers no way forward for Labour Party members. Below we print an open reply to the SCLV in order to make our position clear.

PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Facing collapse in the form of the 1977 toolmakers strike against wage control, Callaghan and the Cabinet rushed into a coalition arrangement with the Liberals (to which you attach no importance) in order to find a new base of support for anti-working class policies.

Guarded

Thousands of striking firemen shouting 'Callaghan out! Rees out!' showed that workers in struggle understand that there is no advance without removing Callaghan's clique of traitors.

But Callaghan is guarded Labour leaders preder him in or:: PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Socialist Press fights to expose this treachery. It calls for the political mobilisation of the working class to drive out Callaghan/ It demands that the 'left' talkers replace words with action in order to expose their refusal to fight. But the SCLV declines to comment on such matters.

In fact, the Chartist thinks the task is to "debate' with Callaghan!

This is of course the position of all wings of the trade union bureaucracy.

Debate

You write as follows: "(Socialist Press) mocks at the idea that som^ SCLV supporters put of conducting a debate with Callaghan over policies and telis us that the 'right wing leaders must be removed' "How this is to be done short of winning the movement to our policies is not stated. A campaign of selective assassinations perhaps?

'In fact the only way forward... the article outlines is the call on the Labour lefts to 'kick out Healey and Callaghan' and the truly heroic struggle of the comrade who lost by only one vote a resolution calling on her MP to call on the PLP to pass a resolution of no confidence in the Labour leaders.

"Healey and Callaghan are doubtless quaking in their boots at this terrible threat to their jobs and power."

Clearly the hope here is that vulgar humour can smokescreen the most vulgar politics.

Socialist Press is not short of examples of the fight against Labour's coalitionists.

article alonD noi 55:255 Your bluster and rhetorical questions only cover the fact that you would never risk upsetting your "left' friends by raising unpleasant questions of leadership.

Indeed, you appear to have developed your political cowardice into a theory. You state that 'the job of removing the right is that of conference and their own CLPs"

This excuses you from demanding - anything too strenuous from Labour lefts' and from people ir the Labour Party who are happy to engage in endless debates about the 'best' methods of 'reselection' of MPs.

the traitors by all possible means.

It is the SCLV's centrism on these programmatic questions that makes the support of Socialist Press impossible.

Capitulations

Nor is it possible for us to take SCLV at face valuewe look at the forces behind It, particularly here the Workers Action and Chartist tendencies.

While Socialist Press remains willing to support cooperation on specific practical actions that aid the class struggle, it cannot give any credibility to these tendencies.

Workers Action (which attempts some very 'left' criticisms of Socialist Press) has committed shameless capitulations in the past and will do so in the future.

It did not balk at calling for support for Benn as new Labour leader when he stood on a thoroughly anti-working-class platform in the backroom parliamentary swindle of a leadership election following Wilson's resignation.

I=: =05:0= 5D-:2 =:: Lenin's characterisation of the Labour Party as a 'bourgeois workers' party' and maintains that the Labour Party thoroughly capitalist anyway.

Similarly with Chartist. What this organ expects from the SCLV can only be guessed at, since it believes that the British working class has been defeated since the time of the EEC referendum, that the leadership of the working class only reflects the general "backwardness' , 'chauvinism' etc. of the class, itself, and that all socialists can do is make 'propaganda' against the "bad ideas' of the right wing.

The pitifully poor pr duction of the monthl paper itself is adequat testimony to the complet despair of this grouping.

It is for these reasor that we believe your can paign poses no threat to th Labour bureaucracy.

The support accorded b sundry 'left' leaders is th standing proof of this. Thi Arthur Scargill-who hi consistently evaded a figt against the NUM right wir at every crucial moment can send. a message ( support is enough said.

We would only be inte ested to know wheth Scargill intends to translat his 'support' into a fight t remove Roy Mason-tł butcher of the Six Counti -from his NUM-sponsore seat in Barnsley.

In short, our opinion unchanged.

Your aim of "maintair ing, deepening and exter *ding the unity of tr working class for th coming general election" i as we noted in our origin article, that of a groupir which "will act as litt more than the 'left' recru ting sergeants of Callaghan and is indistinguishab from the tame cat' fak 'Marxists' of the Militant group.

Yours fraternally, Socialist Press Eiteral Board

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