Official Secrets

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of 1973 is not revealed-but the clear suggestion is that a dramatic shift has now taken place which will change everything in the Büt the reality is very different. While the faces on Labour's National Executive have changed and two new 'lefts' have come on, there is no more prospect than before of any organised fight against the right wing Callaghan leadership.

The opening events of the conference itself demonstrated the huge vacuum of leadership opened up by the defeat of the government's Phase 4 pay limits.

Callaghan piled pressure onto the National Executive in their Sunday pre-conference meeting, threatening to resign if they pressed ahead with moves to oppose the 5% wage ceiling.

But not one leading Labour left'-whether on the NEC or off it-came forward to insist that Callaghan did resign.

Indeed during the pay debate oniy one speakerSkinner a young delegate from Norwood Labour Partydared to combat Callaghan's blackmail and demand a government responsive to the Labour and trade union movement.

Nor did the position of the leading 'lefts' change even after the block votes of the unions-responding to the movement of the working class on wages-had delivered resounding defeat to the wage control policy.

Far from drawing strength from this situation, 'left' wingers stood back meekly while Callaghan attempted to restore his battered authority.

• When WSL lobbyers next day demanded that left' MP Denis Skinner put forward a challenge to Callaghan, and launch a fight for his removal, all Skinner offered in reply was speculation as to whether he had managed to secure a place on the Party's NEC.

"I tried, and I think I've lost," he declared, deliberately evading any assessment of the new situation opened up by the defeat of the Phase 4 policy.

In fact he had not lost. Constituency parties clearly felt that Skinner did represent a genuine leftwing alternative to 'moderate' Jack Ashley and to veteran 'left' talker lan Mikardo, who had backed the right wing line on reselection of MPs.

261,000 votes were cast Skinner and 274,000 for But while the form of words used by the lefts' is certainly different from those of Callaghan and Healey, the only way that this 'swing to the left' can mean anything is if Skinner, Kinnock and the other self-styled socialists now launch a campaign within : the Labour: Party for • the removal of the Callaghan-Healey leadership..

The conference • has proved that these Tories within the Labour Party can be defeated. But it has also proved the reluctance of their supposed enemies to complete the job.

In demanding they put some of their 'left' talk into practice in a real fight within the Labour Party, Labour activists will be able to test out where these Tribunites really stand.

In doing so, many will come to see the necessity to construct an alternative principled revolutionary leadership in the labour movement if the right wing and fake lefts' are to be Diplomatically avoiding any reference to the Aubrey-Berry-Campbell "Secrets" trial • now restarted in London, the Labour conference took a hypocritical unanimous vote for the urgent introduction of a Freedom of Information Act.

Eric Heffer, speaking for the NEC, made a pathetic plea to Home Secretary Rees to ensure that such an Act was legislated in the next session of Partiament.

Rees, of course, has distinguished himself in the last session by brazenly rejecting Labour's manifesto pledge to repeal the Official Secrets Act and ploughing on regardless with the show trial proceedings against journalists Aubrey and Campbell 'and former soldier John Berry.

That trial now reopened, rejjer with the increased prospect of jail sentences for the defendants when i the inevitable guilty verdicts are returned.

The Labour and trade union movement must take up the ABC case where the conference dropped it-fighting for the dropping of all charges, and the immediate repeal of the Official Secrets Act.

Nobody but a simpleton would believe that Scanionwho cut his bureaucratic teeth on conference order paperswas really confused by the proceedings, or that he was in any way dismayed . when the conference chairman, Joan Lestor, refused to take the vote again.

Scanlon knew full well that the AUEW vote would have tipped the balance in favour of the proposal for automatic reselection of Labour candidates in all constituencies prior to each election. As it was, the resolution was defeated by a mere 394,000 votes.

Instead a cosmetic NEC proposal to virtually rubber stamp the candidacy of sitting MPs with a routine 'vote of confidence' was carried by a 2-1 majority.

Under the NEC's recommendation, reselection proceedings would only take place if the MP or candidate in question failed to obtain a vote of confidence.

The Labour conference's 'three year rule' now ensures that this question will remain a dead duck until into the 1980s.

At least by that time old age should have disposed of Scanion as an obstacle to reselection,

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PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report PHOTO:

PHOTO: Laurence Sparham, IFL PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report

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