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Callaghan speaking at last Wednesday's rally in allowing Labour's chief whip combination of manoeuvres and Michael Cocks, to sit in, without • witch-hunts, the right wing are a vote, on Inquiry meetings. preparing the ground to overThere is little doubt that the turn even the limited demouncharacteristic display of cratic reforms forced through rigidity by the left-wing led this year's Party conference.

mounting militancy of the way, the right wing are certainly Party's rank and file, and grow- not placing all of their eggs in ing fears that, through a one basket.

A further humiliating setback was delivered to Labour leader Callaghan last week as the National Executive voted 13-7 to reject all proposals for changes in the make-up of the Inquiry into the Party.

Callaghan has insisted throughout that the right-wing dominated Parliamentary Labour Party should be represented in its own right on the Inquiry-thus ensuring that the left wingers nominated by the NEC and the possible left' union leaders would be outnumbered by reliable proCallaghan arm-raisers.

Uncharacteristic

But this has been consistently rejected by the NEC, which last Wednesday threw out a proposal from GMWU leader David Basnett, that the issue be discussed with the shadowy bureaucratic body known as "Trade Unions for a Labour Victory".

The NEC then rejected proposals to add first two, and then even one PLP representative to the Inquiry.

Eyen a scheme to add party chairman Lena Jeger to the Inquiry was thrown out.

The only compromise was NEC is a reflection of the But while fighting all the NF youth On the contrary, Callaghan's former Transport Minister William Rodgers has been among the first to respond with a statement echoing the recent rallying call from Eurocareerist Roy Jenkins, who appealed to extreme right wingers to break from the Labour Party.

Rodgers promised the left wing "hard liners" a fight "to the finish" , and declared his view that if the party did split, the left would not necessarily be well placed to take over.

*He gave the Labour Party a year, "not much longer" to save itself-by which he meant to undo the limited progressive steps taken in October.

But if he and the right wing mafia fail in their last-ditch efforts to defend and extend their crypto-Tory policies in the Labour Party, Rodgers is already declaring himself willing to bale out:

"I do not believe that many of us would want to be a passenger on such a gravy train to disaster" deport a seven-year old What is it that so scandalises idea. Rodgers and his fellow would-be lahnur mavement?

It is the very idea that workers should seek to "clip the wings of MPs"-in other words instruct them to carry out policies adopted by the Labour It is the unthinkable notion that a workers' Party should be able to demands that its leader toe the Party line and remove him if he refuses to do so.

It is the horrific thought of rank and file members of the Labour movement rather than tha avtrama rinht sinn loador. wing leader ship controlling the drafting of the Party's election manifesto.

What outrages Rodgers and his ilk, in short, is even the hint of workers" democracywhich in the Labour Party has never really developed even to the level of a fully worked out Yet for all the bluff and nf the l ahour Partv And while showing a certain intransigence on the composi-! tion of Callaghan's Inquiry, the NEC lefts' have shown no enthusiasm for the necessary fight to take control-by campaigning for the ousting of the Callaghan/Healey leadership.

The Labour Party has oyer the decades proved itself an admirable tool with which class traitors and bourgeois politicians like Rodgers can serve the interests of capitalism.

But the interests of the working class can be served in the long term only by the con struction of a principled, revolutionary leadership that is prepared to fight today's Labour bureaucracy-'left' andi. right alike. mated by Tory cuts.

Only a week ago 10,000 workers marched through London in opposition not only to the new immigration restrictions but to the

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While deciding "quite exceptionally" not to

Bangla Deshi girl, Ayesha Khatun, to destitution, the Tory