How Labour's was born

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CLP moves But within a short space of resolution Labour Party memtime every supposed "left" bers can gauge the real position opponent of Callaghan had of 'left' talking MPs and conferbuckled down under this ulti- ence delegates-who must matum and effectively accepted wherever possible be mandated his wholesale abandonment of to vote in favour of it.

"The No. material on Labour's 1979 elecsion" new book What Went Wrong?, While conceding that there edited by Ken Coates, published has been a long standing "diver- by Spokesman Books, papergence of views" between the back £2.95.

How did the Labour Party wind up saddled with its extreme right wing election manifesto?

If the party's head of research, Geoff Bish, is to be believed it was the outcome not of the complete absence of socialist leadership but of a poor organisational set-up.

The draft of the manifesto was produced by Callaghan's clique at 10 Downing. Street, and not revealed to Labour Party officials until two days after the government fell in Parliament last March, The draft, admits Bish, was "appalling":

"Not only did it ignore entire chapters of party policy: it overturned and ignored many of the agreements which had been laboriously hammered out within the NEC-Cabinet working groups."

(Labour Weekly, 31 August)

Buckled down party policy:

10 draft became, in effect, the basis for discusPHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Labour Party and Labour in government, Bish draws not a political but an utterly bankrupt organisational conclusion.

"The real lesson is that the NEC and the parliamentary leadership must learn to work together-to jointly determine policy and strategy, whether in or out of office."

On the contrary, the real lesson is that, whatever the organisational machinery, unless an alternative leadership shows itself ready and able to stand and fight for the removal of the right wing Callaghan-Healey clique, then Callaghan's anti-working class politics will inevitably rule the roost in the A resolution to this year's Party conference from Thanet East CLP offers a first step towards such a right, declaring no confidence in Callaghan and for his resignation as Party leader.

By their attitude to this *Bish's article and other tion fiasco are contained in a Callaghan Oxford City Labour Party has taken an important initiative in the fight against James Corrie's reactionary anti-abortion bill.

An emergency resolution from the CLP to the Labour Party Conference:

"demands that all Labour Party MPs act upon the 1977 conference policy supporting free abortion on request and the 1979 Labour Women's Conference calling on the labour movement to oppose ally restriction on the 1967 Abortion Act, and mandates them to vote against the Corrie Bill on its Third Reading."

Other CLPs should mandate delegates to the conference to support this important resolution, and take up the fight for the removal of those MPs and delegates that tacitly or openly assist the passage of Corrie's mediaeval attack on women's rights.

At the same time union branches and Labour Parties must mobilise maximum delegations on the TUC's national demonstration against the Corrie Bill on Sunday October 28.

Assemble Speakers Corner 11.30 a.m. March at 12.30 to Trafalgar Square for rally

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againsi Corrie Bi

THE BILL