Luard Backs Heath's Plan

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election, led off with a blustering statement warning Thatcher that if she proceeded to attack working people, they would adamantly resist.

Nationalisation? "It's a cold word. I think some things should be run by the state-gas, electricity, etcbut not everything."

This pre-election confession by supposed 'left' MP Audrey Wise prior to her defeat in Coventry spelled out the abject confusion of Labour's Tribune Group.

Having been ritualistically asked by the tame-cat "Marxists" of the Militant Group what her attitude was to nationalising the 250 monopolies under workers' control, Wise waffled on with increasing embarassment:

"I prefer "common ownership", but the whole thing's very complicated-it needs a lot of discussion.

"The multi-nationals are too Labour Party would not have gone into the election so bereft of socialist policies.

Tribune Group vice-chairman Martin Flannery also big. They need to be broker down to a more manageable size."

Making a bad answer even worse, Wise blundered on:

agree with workers' control, but there has to be consumer control as well"

This however was only one instance of Wise's avoidance of a fight for socialist policies. When challenged on her consistent refusal to vote against Callaghan's wage-cutting pay limits, she produced a long rigmarole of excuses.

The most spectacular evasion was when she claimed that she went along with wage controls last July because if the government had been defeated and an election called, the Tories would have been able to pose as defenders of free collective In other words, to forestall Tribunite pals intend to do anything now to remove Callaghan as party leader.

The Parliamentary Labour Party meeting to reelect the PHOTO: Chris Davies. Report Wise this possible Tory ruse, Wise herself cleverly acted as an opponent of free collective bargaining-a position she maintained in votes on government economic policy even after the 5% pay limit was thrown out by last year's Labour Party conferAllaun leader is regarded as a mere formality tor Callaghan, the doorman for Thatcher. ence.

In analysing the roots of Labour's defeats, Coventry workers should look not merely to the open betrayals of the right wing leaders but to the confusion and opportunism of Wise and her fellow lefts' who gave Callaghan and Healey | a blank cheque for their attacks! on the working class.

Asian workers turned out in their thousands to vote for Sydney Bidwell in Southall.

Against the trend At his last meeting before the electic Evan Luard; who is non the ex-MP for showed what little alternative he presented to the Tories.

He argued for a permanent incomes policy and said it should be "the same as Heath's", though without legal backing.

He admitted that the Labour government had carried out cuts but argued, as one of the other speakers said "it is better. to have cuts under Labour than under the Tories"

The meeting was well attended by about people in London, his vote increased by 4,000.

The turnout was a direct result of the recent police brutality and the growing realisation of the working class in the area that they have to participate in political life in Britain.

They turned, of course, to the Labour Party as the main workers' organisation and rejected the parachute intervention of "Socialist Unity" candidate Tariq Ali who got a miserable 477 votes.

Bidwell himself however acted as a block on this politicisation.

His pathetic performance, both in fighting for the rights of his constituents, and in the pre-election meetings, might well have discouraged even the most class conscious voters from putting their cross in his box.

He is infamous for his authorship of the Select Committee Report, which called for tighter immigration controls and discussed the possibility of passes for immigrants.

When challenged at the eveof-poll meeting to' justify his involvement he simply claimed that the five Tories on the Committee "weren't all Thatcherites" and some of them were quite moderate!

He said that he had argued with his wife about it and anyway he knew more about racism than anybody else in the room (with the exception of Vishnu Sharma, secretary of the IWA Southall).

Bidwell declared that everyone should read his book on the subject before attacking him, and then resorted to vulgar personal attacks on his questioners, calling one a "thickhead", and saying sarcastically to another "you're such a clever boy, you don't need help with learning English"

Another accused and every mention of Laboúr being elected was applauded.

Critics

There was great initial hostility towards outspuken left wing critics. But it soon became clear afterwards that this hostility was because the workers in the meeting were against Labour being elected.

In reality many of the audience, were hostile to Callaghan and Healey and to Luard's policies, It is important that this hostility is now turned into the struggle to remove Labour's right wing leaders whose betrayals have brought Thatcher to power.

coming "from the petty-bourgeois end of the constituency"!

The rest of his contribution rambled through his working class youth, his local connec tions, and his Trotskyist past.

To a questioner from Socialist Unity about Troops Out he revealed his adherence to the Stalinist position of "troops to the barracks"

The Socialist . Unity campaign however. offered neither an adequate programme for struggle nor a direction into the Labour movement to remove fakers and traitors like Bidwell.

Indeed while Bidwell was facing opponents at his eve of poll meeting and discrediting himself in front of Asian workers, Tariq Ali's campaign was juddering to a halt down the road in a . tiny meeting populated almost exclusively by IMG members and an assortment • of sectarians and abstentionists.

Workers of Southall were right to vote Labour on 3 May.

Now the election is over, Asian workers must take up the struggle in the Labour Party to clear out such racists as Bidwell, and join the practical fight to construct a new, revolutionary leadership.