Chapple issues rallying ca

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GANG From our Foreign Correspondent Amazing what you can get used to!

There used to be this bloke called Mugabe who was evil as hell.

He was a Marxist and a terrorist-a man who had rejected the ballot box and used bullets against our kith and kin. He had a friend called Nkomo who was nearly as bad. He shot down airliners-but at least he was said to be flirting with democracy. Maybe he would stop shooting down airliners one day.

'There was this other blokea Bishop. He looked a bit like Mugabe and Nkomo (he was black, too): but for all that he was a good guy.

Being a Bishop he could see that what was needed was cooperation with the altruistic white ranchers and businessmen who had saved the poor savages from sinking into tyranny.

Being a Bishop and-underneath it all-a white guy, so to speak, he had obviously got the commanding support of the overwhelming majority of his countrymen.

He used to give them wise advice like 'be patient'. • Except for a few terrorists they loved him most and he made them feel good because the white bosses called him Prime Minister-at least to his face.

But then the British and the Americans-just to show what a good idea democracy isdecided to let the blacks have a second election.

It was difficult because the unpleasant Marxist Mugabe had obviously been brainwashing whole villages and measures had to be taken against him. , But disaster struck. The poor Bishop-despite a world epidemic of writers' cramp among the anti-Mugabe campaigners-came nowhere.

Thatcher with Muzorewa Mugabe the bad walked it.

Of course I could tell there was a touch of the statesman about Mugabe.

Hadn't I always said how little support that puppet Muzorewa had? It was obvious that Mugabe had • always commanded mass support.

His pronouncements on the stock exchange, the-police force and General Walls confirm the blossoming of a great leader.

Progress had to come. This great nation can go forward in unity thanks to us British.

Wonderful lot these guerrilla chappies. Marxist, schmarxist! I just hope they can deal with the terrorists!

In an article ironically entitled «The canker at the heart of the Labour Party" extreme right wing Electricians union leader Frank Chapple last week used the pages of Sir James Goldsmith's reactionary Now! magazine to attack the Party's NEC..

Chapple of course rose to his present position in the EETPU through the witch-hunting of the old Communist Party leadership in the wake of a ballot-rigging scandal.

Dictatorship

His union is now a model of right wing bureaucratic dietatorship widely envied by fellow TUC bureaucrats and no doubt also by Callaghan himself as he grapples to control the growing militancy of the Labour Party rank and file.

An inkling of the kind of methods utilised in the EETPU can be gained from Chapple's article. On the one hand to make a point against the 'left' he criticises the Party Treasurer Norman Atkinson for raising subscriptions from £1.20 to £3 per year: yet on the other, to further his anti-Marxist witchhunt he clairs, that "the Militant conspiracy diverts money from Labour supporters that might otherwise boost Transport House's flagging income."

In reality of course, as superloyal Labour activists, Militant Chapple supporters nave. obviously brought "considerable layers of workers and youth who might otherwise have turned to revolutionary polities, into the Labour Chapple goes on to cite the case of expelled Oxford socialist Ted Heslin. He was expelled for selling Socialist Press-though the paper is not proscribed under rule.

Lack of Subsequent right wing claims that Heslin was a member of the Workers Socialist League have foundered for lack of a scrap of evidence.

But Chapple-who has clearly been given a briefing evidence on Heslin by Oxford right wingers-brushes aside such a technicality: such evidence "might be found if looked for," he claims.

He goes on to assert-again without a scrap of proof-that:

"the WL have now instructed all of their members (.. .) to join the Labour Party (...) No doubt the extra recruitment which this latest example of entryism will provide, will be cited by Hayward as evidence that the electorate (...') are flocking to Labour's banner."

Underlying such wild assertions and allegations is the real unease felt by Chapple and Labour's right wing: as the Tory offensive gathers pace, thousands of workers in many areas are turning to the Labour Party, expecting and demanding a lead in the fight back.

Such new recruits are certainly not all Marxists: but they want a real alternative to Thatcher's policies, and can be won to the fight for socialism.

Chapple knows full well that this threatens to bring them into immediate conflict with the Callaghan-Healey leadership.

This is why Chapple is now issuing an anxious rallying call to his fellow union bureaucrats.

They must, he argues "stop pretending Trotskyism is no concern of theirs" "fight to wrest control of the party away from unrepresentative extremism" , and generally batten down the hatches before the storm of the class struggle sweeps them off the deck. programmes to cut back the least profitable sections of capitalism, through relentless speedup on the shop floor and a war on hard-won working conditions.

And while certain sections of the trade union and Labour

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Report PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report HOO.