[observers, the committee is preparing the first issue…]
Socialist Press1979 1979-06-13Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 4 →
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observers, the committee is preparing the first issue of a labour movement bulletin.
This will include the transcript of the vivid The general election is more than a month over and the derisory response from workers to the EEC elections has left capitalist politicians of all parties grinding their teeth.
But it is clear from the press that the capitalists still vitally need Callaghan and the rest of the Labour Party leadership.
The amount of column inches given over to red witch-hunts against Labour lefts (usually those who least deserve it) would almost suggest that the election was stil to come.
The Sunday papers gave prominence to a letter from Tory leader of the Commons St. John Stevas to his constituency chairman, in which he ranted on about Callaghan having abdicated the Labour leadership to 'Marxists' Leaving aside the fact that the man St. John Stevas seems to fear is Benn, the letter is remarkable for the way in which it spells out the concern Tories have with the internal life of the Labour Party, and with charting the progress of the Labour traitors.
Just why is clear from the speeches made by Labour Party Chairman, Frank Allaun, whc blamed the Labour leadership for the election defeat, and from Arthur Scargill who called on Callaghan to resign.
Neither has taken up any fight against the leadership of Callaghan, Healey or Mason, but both have a need to protect their left flank.
The Sunday Mirror, which blamed the oil shortage on the Tories ("Funny isn't it that French motorists are having no problem getting petrol. Nor are the Germans. Nor are the Italians. Nor even are the Spaniards") called these attacks on Callaghan 'astonishing'.
The Observer ran an account of the letter and speeches, side by side with a report on the CP headed "Reds in a new move on the unions", which turned out to be a dreary quarrel between Mick Costello, CP industrial organiser, and Dave Cook, national organiser.
When the Observer is reduced to ploughing through the CP's Marxism Today to find some signs of a threat from the Stalinists, then they are really scraping the bottom of a very empty barrel.
The Sunday Express mean -while was rushing to the c ie fence of another ex-agent inside the Labour Party Cyril Nottingham, last year's Mayor of Scunthorpe.
Nottingham, a sizable trader in the town, was so right wing that even his local Labour Party expelled him.
And showing the loyalty that Labour right wingers are always proclaiming (don't split the party) Nottingham immediately stood as an independent.
Now the Express claims that a vendetta was being run against him which had left his wife and children terrified.
This seemed mostly to consist of someone with a camera taking photographs in a private area' in:
"an attempt by his enemies to try to present trumped up charges against him of breaking health regulations"
The policies of Callaghan and Nottingham or of Benn and Scargill are all damaging to the health of any party which claims to base itself on the interests of the working class.
By championing the cancer of Callaghan against the quack faith healing of Benn, the Tory press hope to damp down inside the Labour Party those healthy antibodies which are genuinely prepared to fight for a clean out of the entire disease.