This Conference w not stop Callaghan!
Socialist Press1978 1978-09-27Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 5 →
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The stage is set for one of the most irrelevant and evasive Labour Party conferences ever held.
The agenda for the 77th Annual Conference not. only lacks any coherent socialist alternative to Callaghan's reactionary policies, but also has nothing to do with the manifesto to be put forward in the next General Election.
Two one-line motions on the Party Manifesto vainly implore the Labour leaders to implement "socialist policies" and its "1974 election manifesto"
Face of Toryism
But there is no resolution demanding that the Conference should decide the Manifesto.
And no Labour Party body has made any move to drive out the open face of Toryism within the Party's ranks-the Callaghan-Healey leadership, who are preparing to run into the next election in a convulsive series of confrontations with the working class over wages.
This in itself is a fitting measure of the hollow rhetoric of the 'left' talkers who will troop to the rostrum to sound off during the week.
Only two resolutions-one from Liverpool, Wavertree, and one in the form of an amendment from Bristol West-even take a stand opposing wage controls.
The Bristol West motion does however call on the NEC to:
"organise a campaign in the wider trade union and Labour movement against control on wages, for an improvement in working class living standards and for safeguards to protect such improvements against inflation."
While the passing of such a resolution would prove a temporary embarrassment to Callaghan, there is no likelihood that it would in the slightest degree deflect the cabinet from its rigid 5% pay limits.
Pencils licked
While most CLPs have shied away from chailenging wage controls, the topic of unemployment has brought many a fake left to lick the end of his pencil and draft a total of 14 largely innocuous resolutions, in which there is much empty talk of 'planning agreements' , 'retraining' and 'North Sea oil revenues'.
The reality of course is that Chancellor Healey has already established a working agreement with British capitalism, which involves government collaboration in mass speed-up and sáckings.
And this wilt continue Healey is booted out.
Several motions do include calls for 'work sharing without loss of pay' and for 'programmes of public works' to Healey But since they are all couched in the form of pleas to the Callaghan-Healey governід. 111.