Callaghan Ready to Split Labour Part

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Wing?

If Labour's National Executive succeeded in getting conference support for its proposal to take over the drafting of the Party's manifesto "it would be a major threat to the unity of the party", deciared Callaghan last week.

"If we have to fight, fight we will, echoed Hector Smith, right wing leader of the Blastfurnacemen's union.

"We are not prepared to finance a party that is ideologically split" , chimed in steel union leader Bill Sirs.

. Unanimity There was in other words total unanimity in last Tuesday's gathering of extreme right wing Labour and trade union leaders that any attempt by rank and file Labour Party members to determine their Party's election platform or its day-to-day policies will be met with the most tenacious bureaucratic obstruction. .. Callaghan spelled out unmistakeably his absolute refusal to be accountable to anyone: ' .

"The Parliamentary: Party cannot be put in the position of having to act upon the instruc. tions of the NEC or any other body...

But while the right wing draw their daggers for the fight -in the form of the witch-hunting "inquiry' into the Labour Party long advocated by GMWU leader Bassnett-the 'left' wing is confining itself to a timid whimper.

Party chairman Frank Allaun attacked Callaghan's attempt to downgrade the Party conference

Tahour

The PetI to the level of simply an "expression of opinion"-equivalent to the impotence of the Tory Party conference.

But he went on to declare that:

"Jim Callaghan is, I think, underestimating the depth of feeling for further democratising the Party."

Guns blazing

Callaghan, on the contrary, is correctly gauging that this is a confrontation in which his only chance is to go in with all guns blazing against a 'left' wing that has time and again collapsed when posed with a real fight against his policies.

While the lefts' prattle innocently about 'democratisCallaghan ing' the party, Callaghan is conducting an open and behind the scenes campaign to secure the union block votes against any accountability of MPs or the Party leadership.

He is utilising the press and the mass media.

He will not shrink from splitting the Party sooner than be bound by a single vote at conference. And he hopes that this together with Bassnett's, "inquiry" will lay the basis for a crackdown against the left wing.

But the 'lefts' have waged no parallel campaign for the ousting of Callaghan and , his right wing leadership: they have spelled out no socialist alternative to the Labour government's reactionary programme of unemployment, cuts and wage And while Callaghan talk vaguely about concentrating o "the main task"-opposing th Tory government-none of th 'lefts' have come forward challenge his outright oppos tion to any action to brin down the Tories.

Callaghan has observed thi closely and is calculating ..ye another humiliating collapse b the 'lefts' at this year's confel ence.

The agenda features a resoll PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report tion from Thanet East CL calling correctly for a vote of n confidence in and the resigni tion of Callaghan stating that:

'He is not competent to lea this movement to a soçialis programme and should be aske to resign."

By where they stand on thi motion it is possible to guag the fighting capacity Labour's self-styled 'lefts Labour activists should watc its fate with keen interest.

Wherever possible the should mandate conferenc delegates to vote in favour of : -and in report backs deman full details of the forces that ar prepared to declare themselve openly in practice for th removal of Callaghan and th right wing leadership.

...... PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report Allaun

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