Agenda dodges all key questions

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PHOTO: Andrew Wiard. Renort Callaghan ment to take action, rather than as policies to be acted upon by the trade union movement, even these formally correct policies lack any teeth.

The number of motions on unemployment is however one gauge of unease within the Labour Party in relation to current government policies.

And the 34 motions challenging the cutbacks in the Health Service spell out even more clearly the hostility of Labour activists to their own leaders' attacks on essential services won through years of sacrifice by the workers' movement.

A whole range of formally correct demands are put forward in these motions, with the conspicuous absence of any "Our long-term objective is a socialist Britain. The real arguments on how to achieve this are only just beginning.

So writes "left' Labour minister Stan Orme, whose own vision of 'socialism' is so long term that it allowed him to act as one of Callaghan's ministers for torture in Northern Ireland, and even now permits him to remain a part of the utterly reactionary Labour Cabinet.

Indeed the yawning gulf between Orme's professed "socialist' principles and his squalid role in practice is so wide that at times his article in the current issue of Tribune smacks of outright schizophrenia.

"I nail my colours to the mast of public expendi ture," he declares, without so much as a word of explanation of why he has voted for every successive cut made by Healey.

"The Labour movement must concentrate on expanding jobs rather than reducing the Labour force," he proclaims, without bothering to examine the government strategy of jobcutting, speed-up and declaration of outright support for those sections of health workers who have carried out occupations and strikes to defend against the cuts.

There is no motion among the 34 condemning the scandalous smashing of the Housnslow hospital occupation, the continued attacks on the EGA hospital, or any of the practical actions taken by Labour minister Ennals the and Callaghan cabinet to the destroy Health Service.

In fact in this as every key topic the method of conference resolutions is to diplomatically evade the brazen, strike breaking, anti-working-class actions carried out by Labour's own leaders in government over the past four years.

There is not a single resolution calling for the withdrawal of British imperialist troops from Northern Ireland, and a lengthy motion from Hackney and Stoke Newington lamely concludes by calling for no more than support for the International Tribunal On Britain's presence in Ireland.

One motion only-a oneline submission from Oxford CLP-calls for the Conference to oppose renewal of the repressive Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Despite the storms of fiery red left' rhetoric that will inevitably occur, the Callaghan cabinet will rest easy in their rationalisation in key Nor does he offer any answer as to how the 18-month Lib-Lab coalition in any way advanced the cause of socialism.

Last year Orme's wretched record on Ireland proved an acute embarrassment to the Tribune platform at their pre-conference meeting.

His Tribune article this year is clearly a half-baked advanced attempt to ward off similar criticism. But all it does is reveal the pathetic confusion and opportunism of the Labour 'left' Orme Delegates at beds in Blackpool next weekuntroubled by any developed socialist opposition within the The task of constructing a principled leadership within the workers' movement, capable of exposing both right and 'left" wings of the Labour bureaucracy • and pointing a clear socialist road ahead is one that last year's Labour Party conference must be urgently undertaken.

A step towards this can I taken by Labour activists fighting for resolutions through CLPs demanding a Special Conference be recalled to decide the party's election manifesto and to undertake the essential task of removing the Callaghan leadership.

Those lefts' that make glowing speeches next week in Blackpool must be called upon to fight within the workers' movement to put their words into practice by driving out Callaghan.

In this way a number of pompous wind-bags can be embarrassingly punctured in the aftermath to an utterly predictable conference.