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• They could launch a full-scale McCarthyite witch-hunt against' any socialist element that stirs within the Party. Some are plainly looking to this option, despite its evident disadvantages..

The results of this would be unpredictable: in some areas Party organisation would be reduced to a flimsy shell of time-worn careerists and rightwingers, incapable of mobilising the electoral support on which the PLP rests. In other areas the witch-hunters themselves could be defeated, and the position of Labour militants could be consolidated.

Or, in line with the idea floated by bloated Eurocrat Roy Jenkins and given a cautious welcome by shadow and Co. endorsed the expulsion of Trotskyists of the Healy group, and the Young Socialists majority.

But for the fake lefts of the Tribune group, the opportunist search by the Militant for a group of MPs to support their positions within the party offers an alluring prospect of a 'left' cover.

Benn, Hefter and others, along with the left-talking NUPE leader Alan Fisher have repeatedly used the Militant in efforts to repolish their tarnished image as radical 'socialists' The political crisis of the Labour bureaucracy offers a vital chance for socialists to struggle for a principled programme within the party. But a precondition for such a struggle is the fight by all Labour Labour's rank and file means that the 'lefts' feel obliged to take a number of stands against the right wing-creating the impression of an ongoing struggle, and unwittingly improving the conditions in which Marxists can fight for a clear programme and perspective.

Why are the lefts-apparently so eager to respond to the mass movement of the working class-so reluctant to mount a political challenge to Callaghan? The answer is that they know full well that they have no real alternative policies to put forward.

Themselves reformists, tied to the illusory notion of legislating socialism piecemeal through parliament, they can offer workers only more STRIME Low pay strikes in 1979

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Wore STAI Mass rally in Cardiff on day of action called during steel strike: WSL fought to turn Welsh Sparse attendance on Stalinist demonstration, February 1979. TIC general strike call into action to bring down the Tory government PHOTO: Laurence Sparham. IFL been conspicuous only by its absence, and Broad Lett darling Bob Wright-supposedly the lett wing alternative to Duffy for President-has failed not only to campaign against the sellout but even to appear at rallies called to support Robinson.

Small wonder in this overall picture of collapse arid betrayal that the CP has once again been forced to record a further decline in membership and a continuing crisis for the Morning Star in the midst of a period of working class offerisive.

The strident nationalism of its campaign for import controls and the empty rhetoric and bureaucratic repression of the LCDTU conferences and the Student Left alliance with the Liberal Party are unlikely to provide the basis for any revival of the CP's fortunes in the next period-particularly/ if the AUEW bureaucracy do in fact succeed in striking a major blow at BL trade unionists by completing the betrayal of Indeed, so agonising is the crisis facing the Stalinists. particularly in the wake of the Afghan invasion,, and on the question of Irelar id-that the CP now obviously stands in fear of losing support not only in a leftward direction trowards centrist and revolutionary politics; but also towards the hardline Kremlin mouth pieces of the New Communist Party.

The NCP, however. has yet to develop far beyond the res. tricted number's that it took from the CP-vvith little in the way of policy or perspective to offer militan t workers. scope they will come to represent the class strength of the working class, through which it can and must challenge the power of the capitalist class and . the bourgeois state machinery.

As soon as such a development becomes a possibility, it will be essential to combine demands on the Labour leaders with the fight to make them responsible to the councils of action, and to call for a government based not on the rigmarole of parliamentary democracy, but on the tangible power and living demands of the organised working class.

Insofar as any 'left' is prepared to take up some or all of these demands and fight in the interests of the working class, we otter him or her critical But at the same time we stress that the fight for these demands as a whole requires the revolutionary mobilisation of the working class-a task from which 'left' reformists shy away, and which requires the building of a mass revolutionary party.

And we contrast to the class collaboration, confusion and betrayal of simply another Labour government under a Callaghan or a Benn the call for a workers' government, a government responsive to the needs and demands of the workers' movement, answerable to its organisations, and committed to the struggle for workers' independent interests.

If we resolutely and successfully press the fight for a revolutionary party we are convinced bureaucracy from the rank and file. Other union leaders' responses showed the same.

ISTC leader Bill Sirs, forced to admit that the steel unions are engaged in a political fight with the Tory government, warned of a possible "holowould be a "very frightening" caust". A general strike, he said possibility, if BSC went ahead with its closure plans.

And right wing railwaymen's leader Sidney Weigheli told the Financial Times that "he was coming under great pressure from his members to fight the jobs, зато о 3000 South associated threat to railway Wales, at risk. But trade union action confined to South Wales would not be enough to stop BSC's plans," he added. "It's a 1926 situation."

It is not unusual for even right wing trade union leaders on occasion to call and direct massive strike action in pursuit of a pay demand. What has scared Weighell, Sirs and the TUC bureaucracy is the idea that this pay battle could grow into a national battle on jobs, producing a full-scale showdown with the Tories which union officials would find hard to wriggle out of or control.

The central role of BSC's sackings plan in fuelling steelworkers' militancy was shown clearly by the militant response workers at the doomed Corby and Shotton plants to the -Immigrant workers, confronted by new Tory racist legislation;

-the unemployed-condemned by Tory recessionary policies to a lifetime on the scrapheap or, at best, to a job on rock bottom wages.

There is not a worker in Britain without good cause to rally behind a determined General Strike to bring down this government.

But, of couse, it is not possible to look to such a development to a a General Strike at any time. The right conditions have to be present.

And a defeat for the steel workers, for instance, could create a setback for the struggle, in which the General Strike demand would. become /quite inappropriate.

The General Strike is for us in a sense a strategic objective, to be prepared for in our agitational work, and to be brought to the forefront as a demand only when it offers an opportunity to materially advance the struggles of the working class to a new level.

We reject formal and propagandist calls that simply call for a general strike without regard to the fight to develop such a strike from workers' actual struggles. It is of course a general truth that the Tories' policies will only be defeated through the mobilisation of a General Strike to bring down the government.

But as Marxists fighting to mobilise the working class in revolutionary action, we must direct our main efforts not at empty repetition of abstract truths but at developing the independent struggles and forms of organisation of the proletariat-in particular councils of action.

In this we must develop a conscious political leadership in conflict with the various elements of the reformist and Stalinist bureaucracy, and create the material conditions to accomplish our strategic aims.

The adoption of the General Strike demand as our central focus in the course of the steel strike in January 1980 does not therefore, commit the WSL in any way to retaining it as an immediate demand from now on, regardless of events.

While we of course continue to struggle for the perspective of the full-scale mobilisation of the working class in a General Strike action, and the struggle within such a movement assert the political independence of the proletariat in the form of LE councils of action and the fight to construct the revolutionary party, the outcome of the steel strike will decide whether the General Strike call remains at the forefront or becomes a less prominent component of our agitational work.

The most dangerous development would be one in which WSL members and branches effectively cast aside the vital agitational struggle for transitional and democratic demands, substituting: instead an SLL/ WRP-style fetish around the General Strike demand and a package of maximum demands.

Our general orientation in relation to the government will therefore remain that of •Prepare to bring down the Tories' The next period of strugglewhatever the outcome of the steel strike-will require a flexibility in tactics, and a readiness to maintain consistent agitational work in combination with specific demands related to the requirements of a particular turn. in the class struggle.

The WS has, in our view, developed . a cadre . that is capable of consciously grasping this need and carrying out the necessary fight.

PHOTO: Mark Rusher, IFL

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