Eec Elections -by Order

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to participate.

The Walsall North Party, which had taken the correct decision not to participate in the selection of would-be European careerists, has been instructed to invite affiliated bodies and party organisations to submit nominations.

This followed anguished protests from the Birchills/ Leamore ward, the Midland area NUM and others that the Walsall abstention was depriving them of the right to engage in the selection process.

The NEC instruction-which Callaghan will apply to any constituency that takes a principled stand and decides to boycott these farcical elections to a completely spurious and reactionary Assembly-marks a further step along the road to a commitment to a full-scale Labour campaign in the elections.

No decision So far there has been no decision as to where the cash is to come from to finance such a campaign, which will be hugely expensive if. they are to achieve any credibility whatsoever.

The overwhelming apathy or outright hostility of the electorate at present means that the elections are unlikely to reach the level of participation of council elections.

Since the NEC is now clearly shifting towards an all-out campaign, it will be interesting to see the reaction of left' MP lan Mikardo.

Last November, in a letter to General Secretary Ron Hayward Mikardo threatened to withhold financial contributions to party funds if the NEC proceeded with rumoured plans to spend £100,000 on the EEC elections.

Will Mikardo adhere to and fight for this boycott position? Or will he join the bulk of the Tribune Group and the queue of PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Mikardo pro-Market careerists in the swing to full participation in the No one who recalis Mikardo's nationalist 'import controls' policy • and countless previous ignominious capitulations to the Callaghan-Healey leadership will expect to find in him a new ally in the necessary fight for a boycott of the Assembly elections, the break up of the EEC, and a Socialist United States of Europe. plant-has acted to defend the profitability of Leyland.

But now an article by editor Tony Chater in the December 15 issue of the Communist Party daily Morning Star actually argues how progressive it is to take the employers' profitability into account in claims.

He proclaims that such a line helps "open the way for socialism"!

Trade unions, he says, should be doing more than just dealing with wages and hours. He goes on to say:

"In fact, in formulating wage demands during free collective bargaining, the unions already take into account a whole range of factors. They do not pluck their wage demands out of thin air.

«They consider, for example, the cost of living, profitability, productivity, and comparability with workers in similar iobs."

It is true, of course, that many union leaders do act in this way. But rather than propose a change, and a turn to considering only the independent interests of the workforce, Chater goes on:

"What I am talking about is a radical extension of this process in the context of active, critical mass support for a government opening the way to socialism"

So for Chater, also, the cost of living is no more than a "factor"-alongside "profitability".

This shows just how far along the reformist path the CP has travelled. The article shows how the Stalinists see "socialism" being brought about not in revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of an entrenched and stubborn capitalist class, but through "mass support" for a Parliamentary Labour government legislating progressively more radical reforms.

"Obviously there must be a close relationship between a Labour government and the trade union movement in the process of moving from here to socialism"

The Labour Party is of course dedicated to the achievement of reforms within the capitalist system. This is why Callaghan attacks the working class in order to boost capitalist profits.

exposure of this class collaboration and the building of a mass, revolutionary party.

Chater's article indicates once again to those who doubt it that the Communist Party stands as a counter-revolutionary obstacle to such a struggle PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report

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The only way forward to socialism is through the