Tory-bashing 'lefts' Keep Heat Off Callaghan

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Tony Benn, Audrey Wise, Brian Mathers and Moss Evans spoke at a Labour Party election rally in Coventry last Monday. • Although they sat on the platform, local MPs George Park and William Wilson did not speak.

Perhaps it was felt advisable to keep Wilson-a co-signatory of the infamous Commons Select Committee report on Race Relations-off the speakers Chairing the meeting Mathers-Midlands Regional Secretary of the TGWUmade the usual anti-Tory comments and looked forward "to North Sea Oil directing us down the road to a new technological age"

Differences

Despite four years of wage control the only references made to this by Evans were oblique.

«We've had our differènces but they're differences between friends"

This assertion obviously referred to his and other bureaucrats' cringing subservience to the Callaghan/ Healey wage-cutters and not to the internal workings of the TGWU-where officials have pursued vicious vendettas against opponents of wage control in both the 5/293 and the 5/35 branches.

Evans went to town on the Tories, attacking their plans to reduce the top rate of tax from 83% to 60% and to increase indirect taxation.

He listed the firms who contribute to Tory Party funds.

One of the firms on his list was United Biscuits-the bosses responsible for the legal action on so-called 'secondary picketing' during the lorry drivers' strike.

Of course as someone who has fallen in with every move by the Labour leadership to restrict picketing, Evans was unable to focus on this aspect of basic trade unionism so central to the plans the Tories have to curb the unions.

Ignored

And in the week following the NGA court decision on blacking this historic attack was i completely ignored.

Indeed as with wages the real issues were constantly avoided by Evans and the rest of the speakers.

One revealing aside was made by Evans when midway through his anti-Tory rhetoric.

Ridiculing Tory complaints about lack of toilet paper during the lorry drivers' strike, he said:

"I remember takıng the News of the World into the backyard-of course different now". He can say that again!

Audrey Wise revelled in her left reputation, her self-styled role as "shop steward" of her constituents and her 24 public reportback meetings since the last general election.

"The Tories say I won't win because I'm too leftwing. If that means I'm on. the side of working people at the Stoke Plant in then I plead guilty"

She did not mention that no discussion on her record or political positions was allowed at the pre-election GMC meeting.

She posed as a lett but friendly critic of the government:

"I see it as my job to improve the Labour government-to make it responsive to working people"

The bulk of her speech was routine anti-Toryism and a defence of the government's measures to prop up failing capitalist concerns while the redundancies are carried out over a longer period.

"Ordinary working people need a government responsive to their wishes" she said-totally ignoring wage control, the battles against it and her previously stated opposition to it:

Workers were also told that they can read "the truth" in Labour Weekly!

Benn's speech lived up to the occasion-so much so that he received generous if slightly grudging applause from the syndicalist Socialist Workers Party.

The SWP is vying for the role of best anti-Tories under the lame slogans "Labour isn't working-the Tories never will. Rely on the rank and file"

Don't apologise for being left wing said Benn.

"Wealth and the power of trade unions is what this election is all about"

How did Benn avoid dealing with any of the background to this election: the four years of cuts, unemployment and wage control?

Benn Simple! He talked about another election-the 1945 Labour Party landslide.

"In 1945 we had a full-blooded programme, we did what we said we'd do and we never lost a by-election.

"It was a programme we could be united on-that's the sort of thing we have to aim at now"

Benn boldly castigated the owners of wealth:

«The Duke of Westminster left £2,000 million and in the same newspaper I read about the greedy ambulancemen"

But he offered not one word of explanation of how he had sat in the Labour cabinet which denied increases to the ambulancemen!

Wealth The concentration on landed wealth (the Duke of Argyle was also attacked) is of course no accident.

It prepares the way for the ludicrous diversion in Labour's mI Manifesto-the wealth tax.

While millions are poured into the pockets of shareholders in manufacturing industry, the 'leftism' of the Labour Party leadership is protected by vague talk of eventually taxing the personally rich.

But it is on their policy of state aid to ailing capitalist enterprises that the Labour traitors place their biggest hopes of gaining anti-Tory votes.

Despite the fact that thousands of jobs have been lost in firms such as Alfred Herbert, Rolls Royce, Chrysler and British Leyland, the Labour leadership have to a certain extent successfully argued that, left to the Tories, there would be no jobs at all in these firms.

Cosmetic

Revolutionaries must show that these cosmetic, stop-gap 'solutions" only pave the way for more decisive attacks on jobs as the economic crisis sharpens and divert workers away from the only genuine solution to unemployment, cuts and inflation-a socialist planned economy.

The other central theme to Benn's speech was democracy-"bankers never have public conferences like the TUC does".

There was also a sideswipe at Benn's erstwhile cabinet colleague Roy Jenkins and the undemocratic EEC.

No mention Of course, the lack of any real democracy a little closer home-like at the Labour Party conferencedid not get a mention.

And Benn's answer to all this lack of democracy and power vented in the hands of the wealthy was characteristic.

In his view the answer does not lie in him taking up any fight for socialist policies as a member of the Instead it is up to everyone else, to the mobilisation of the trade unions for a change in parliament.

And, of course, Benn wants a big Labour majority on May 3.

NOW ' DUT!

20p p&p. Still 50p plus WSL, 31; Dartı TROTSKYISMTODAY Despite all the rhetoric workers were not given any inkling of how the trade unions should mobilise to force a change.

While the Labour Party audience cheered enthusiastically the Communist Party beamed.

During Wise's speech prominent local Stalinist Eddie McClusky could be observed creeping obsequiously onto the platform with glasses and a jug of water for the bureaucrats and left reformists.

Servility

Later described by the local YCL secretary as 'an important contribution to left unity' this grovelling act symbolised graphically the prostration and servility of the Stalinists before the misleaders of the working class.

In all, the meeting, at which no questions or discussion was allowed, was a good example of the way 'left' reformism helps to keep the heat off the right wing.

THEORE TICAL

JOUANAL OF THE WORKERS SOCIAL IST LEAGUE Jarue y 1979 nouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR.

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SOCIALIST PRESS, W'ednesdar 18 Apri, 1979