'Lefts' jockey for position on NEC

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Opportunists of every colour and stripe are frantic:

ally manoeuvring to capitalise on the present disarray of the Labour Party.

The right wing Manifesto Group has moved forward with proposals to enhance the powers of the Parliamentary Labour They propose that this reactionary rump body-which already freely flouts Labour Party conference decisionsshould have the major say in the appointment of Labour ministers and Party policy while Labour is in government.

Hollow show

Meanwhile the so-called 'lefts' on the Party's National Executive, who still refuse to mount any campaign within the Party's rank and file for the removal of the CallaghanMealey leadership, last week put up a hollow show of a fight in the hopes of containing the growing opposition currents.

A motion moved by Anthony Wedgewood Benn proposing that, in line with the Party's conference policy of abolishing the House of Lords Callaghan should create no more Labour peers, was carried 14-10.

But Çallaghan was allowed arrogantly to declare that he will take no notice of the decision, and bury it in the recesses of his right wing Shadow Cabinet.

No intention Another motion calling for the waiving of the Conference's three year rule to make way for a fresh debate on the question of the election of the Party leader was also carried-but.not before Callaghan had made it clear that he had no intention of stepping down of his own accord.

In reply to Eric Heffer who suggested that a change of leadership seemed likely before the next election, Callagh-r replied that this was merely "wish ful thinking"

Certainly the abject failure of Heffer and his fellow 'lefts' to raise the slightest campaign for Callaghan's removal leaves the initiative entirely in the hands of the right wing leading clique to create the best conditions for a hand-over to a selected reactionary-whether that be Dennis Healey ór a second-string right winger like Roy Hattersley.

There is certainly little prospect of the Party conference this year deciding to change the system of electing the leader.

Instead there are already signs that Callaghan is working closely with top TUC bureaucrats to use union block votes in order to consolidate the right wing hold on the 1979 Labour conference.

This is likely to mean that although the NEC voted-again in the face of Callaghan's vigorous opposition-to reopen the question of reselection of MPs at the conference, it will again be blocked by union bureauCrats.

l'eerage Last year then AUEW President Hugh Scanlon consciously broke his union's mandate to abstain in the vote-ensuring that the call for reselection of MPs was defeated.

Scanlon-erstwhile darling of the Broad Left-was rewarded with a peerage.

This year the AUEW is dominated by forces to the right interest whatever in establishing democratic procedures within the Labour Party.

Every one of the manoeuvres and ostentatious displays of "socialist" opposition • by Labour's left' fakers spells out beyond doubt the impossibility of simply manoeuvring around the right wing leadership of the Party through nifty resolutions.

The Callaghan leadership is an integral part of the bureau. cratic apparatus that has for so long shackled the potential power of the British working class.

To fight Callaghan requires therefore. an. all-sided and serious campaign to mobilise the working class both in opposition to its reactionary leaders in the unions and in the Labour Party.

Parliament

The lefts', committed to 'Parliamentary' forms of action and the introduction of 'socialism' through piecemeal reforms of capitalism can offer no such perspective.

Benn, Heffer and Skinner, for all their 'left' rhetoric, have in reality far more in common with Callaghan's line of class collaboration than they have with the independent interests of the working class.

In demanding these fakers take up a practical fight for the removal of the Callaghan leadership, and at the same time spelling out the necessary programme of demands to mobilise workers and point to the necessity for the overthrow of capitalism, Marxists must pose the left' talk, fight to break workers from their illusions in these lefts' and point to the vital task of building a revolutionary party.

Scanlon

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even of Scanion. They have no PHOTO: Laurence Sparham, IFL