Labour's leaders authol PHOTO: Andrew Wiard. Report

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Did «Have we got the Security Services we deserve?"

This unpromising question opens úp a Labour Party campaign launched last week with the publication of a "consultation paper" that offers a startling blend of naivety and dishonesty.

The Labour Party of course; • is a reformist party dedicated to seeking the gradual transformation from capitalism to what they imagine to be "socialism" through peaceful, Parliamentary changes.

It therefore fails completely to understand the nature of the political secret police whose "abuses" they appear to wish to, restrain.

Conscious

The "Security Services" are of course one of the most conscious wings of the state machinery whereby the minority capitalist class maintains its • exploitation and control of the maiority working class.

Merlyn Rees While in times of relativ political stability the rei content of such class rule can b conveniently masked behin flimsy drapes of Parliamentar democracy, bourgeois "justice and democratic rights, the onse of political or economic cris: inevitably exposes the eve ready presence in the baci ground of the key defenders c bourgeois rule: armed bodies c men.

. Whitelaw The police force and the armed forces, the Spetal Branch and other intelligence services are in no way "neutral" or "impartial" elements in relation to the labour movement: as upholders of the capitalist system and the capitalist class their task is precisely to confine and contain the activities of the working class, and to observe, harass and disrupt conscious forces within the working elass •that attempt to mobilise canitalist struggles.

'But the Labour document fails completely to grasp even these first principles of the working of the capitalist state.

Tha Anmimont ramnlaine that government security and intelligence services:

•.. can also exert influence on behalf of economic, industrial -and political interests of particular classes or groups"

The fact is that the state machine-far from being some neutral force suspended in space-can only reflect the interests of the class that holds state power.

Thus in the capitalist countries the "security services" invariably focus their energies on attacking the labour movement: in revolutionary Russia, however, in the wake of the 1917 October revolution, the Cheka under Dzerzinsky undertook the task of spying upon and repressing those pro-Tsarist and pro-capitalist elements that continued to agitate, for a return to the old regime of exploitation and repression.

The degeneration of the leadership of , the Bolshevik party under the massive material pressures brought about by the isolation of the Russian revolution brought about a consequent degeneration in the Soviet security services: as the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy consolidated its grip on the state machinery, so the secret police was directed not only against pro-capitalist, but also against Marxist forces-in particular supporters of Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition. "Right to function"

At no point ever in history has there been a state machine created that was in any real sense "neutral" in relation to the ruling class: nor is it feasible so long as class divisions exist, that such an impartial machine could ever exist.

But the Labour document actually begins by conceding that the British secret police have a right to function-and function secretly!

"The Security Services do have legitimate functions. We do not aim to destroy those legitimate capabilities. Or to expose their operation functions".

Consistent socialists, on the other hand, must recognise in the capitalist state machinery an enemy to whom no rights must be conceded, and which can never be brought under control through Parliamentary means or "the democratic process"

The Labour document goes on to point out that the Special Branch holds an estimated 1.3 million personal files on individuals. And it asks the ludicrous question: "To what extent should individuals have access to their own personal files?"

Disbanded

The answer that the Special Branch, along with its computers, files, bugs, tapping equipment, long-focus cameras and networks of informants and provocateurs, should : be disbanded is plainly ruled out in advance: instead Labour seeks merely to offer the pretence of

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SOÇIALIST PRESS, Wednesday February 20, Mary-Ann Todd joined the mass picket in support of the unionisation struggle at Chix sweet factory in Slough-and spoke to union leaders.