Heffer Versus Heffer: Labour's Great Debate Grinds into Action

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Stop yawning! This is the great debate on the way forward for the Labour Party after the Wilson-Callaghan debacle!

Day after day now the capitalist press and the papers of the labour movement carry careful advertising statements by PHOTO: John Sturrock, Roport Heffer faded Labour lefts' desperately trying to polish up their tarnished image without actually calling for or launching any fight to remove the Callaghan leadership clique.

Every move and skilfully ambiguous statement by Tony Benn, in particular, is obligingly retailed in the press as evidence of an impending left-wing take over of the Party-while Benn in Practice makes no effort to challenge Callaghan's outright opposition to working class action against Thatcher.

Juggler

But the most bizarre public relations exercise must surely be that being carried out by Eric Heffer. Like a third-rate juggler, he is struggling to keep two rather deflated balls in the air at the same time. : For the trendy lefts' of the : Tribune Group and the •Stalinists of the Morning Star Heffer has cultivated a 'radical' image; for the staid old reformists who plough through Labour Weekly each week he has retained a more respectable face.

On June 21 the Morning Star published Heffer's Tribune Group paper on "political perspectives" which begins by unambiguously stating that:

"Right wing policies within the Labour Party have proved a ¡failure"

Yet in Labour Weekly of June 22, Heffer appears in more studied pose, weighing the merits of each side:

"There are those in the party who, looking for scapegoats (as well as trying to excuse their own policy failures) for the defeat in the General Election will blame everything on Party organisation or the Left and the NEC.

"There are others (...) who will blame the 1974-79 Labour Government's policies, particularly the 5 per cent wages policy"

Take your choice, Labour Weekly readers!

But Heffer's split personality develops more dramatically in divergent directions. His Tribune discussion article calls not only for nationalisation but also "as an essential part of it" for "democratic management, on an elected basis"

No such policy appears Labour Weekly article.

Peaceful road

Heffer's Tribune statement takes up-surprisingly-the question of whether there is a peaceful road to socialism:

... it would be nice, but completely wrong, to believe that the political establishment based on the economic power of the big capitalists, will cheerfulty allow us to carry 'through our programme without serious opposition.

"The experiences of Italy, Spain and Germany before the war, and Greece,. Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, etc. since the war should make us worry about such matters."

Learned nothing

Of course Heffer goes on to show he has learned nothing by proposing the Stalinist line of "democratising" rather than the Marxist position of disbanding the repressive machinery of the capitalist state-the police and the armed forces.

This rings remarkably hollow from the man who proposed the NEC's reactionary resolution on law and order at last year's Labour Party conference.

But it is a position far to the left of Heffer in Labour Weekly who talks of the role of Labour Parliamentarians as simply:

"to steer society in a socialist direction."

The Labour Weekly article goes further and declares that:

"There are two areas of immediate importance for the party-policy and organisation. With regard to policy, it is not new ones which are required, as we already have excellent policiès."!

What is lacking, he declares, is:

determination on the part of some leading members to fight for them"

Does he propose then a campaign to create conditions to remove these unnamed "leading members"?

Certainly not! Neither face of Heffer offers any perspective for such a fight.

As for foreign policy and Heffer's concept of 'internationalism', this is a topic reserved for the Tribune Group and the Morning Star.

Labour Weekly readers

deprived of the chance to that Heffer thinks:

"it is important for us to be in support of the colonial revolutions"

But then, since Heffer stands in practice opposed to the colonial revolution currently taking place against British imperialism only a few miles away from his Merseyside constituency, in Ireland, perhaps it is Labour Weekly readers who get the truer picture of his real positions.

Indeed five years of Labour in governmant have demon: strated repeatedly that Heffer is as spineless as any of the Tribune left': the first weeks of Tory government have shown that he is also two-faced in Opposition.

SDE: a Mandel's dance with Staliniam • The significance of the Traneitiona Programme • The U.S. SWP 40 Mea . on. Price 45p plus 15p postet tron WSL, 31, Dartmouth Park Milt London NW5 1HR. PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report

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