Labour's Special Conference PASTING OVER THE CRACKS

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Packed meeting of delegates in favour of party democracy Callaghan with General Secretary Hayward The banners and pamphlets at the Labour Party Special Conference said "Peace, Jobs and Fredom": but they might just as well have read "Business as Usual"

As everyone was at pains to point out, there were no new policies on offer; there was no new leadership on offer; there was not even much new in the way of rhetoric and arm-waving techniques.

Instead there was the time-honoured mixture of Callaghan and Healey, with the backing of a rotund and prosperous looking Joe Gormley, thumping the drum for wage controls-while Eric Heffer, Joan Lestor and Tony Benn were wheeled out as decoys to lure in left wing elements that might otherwise lose patience with the Party and its policies and begin to look elsewhere.

With the exception of the crypto-Tory loony right wing of the Social Democratic Alliance - "Oppose the extremist NEC statement!"-and one floor speaker who bridled at the idea of renationalising hived-off industries without compensation-no right wingers bothered to attack the innocuous and largely vacuous phrases of the NEC statement.

AUEW, spokesman Gerry Russel proudly announced the unanimous support of his union's right wing led National Committee for the documenta support that was universally echoed by leaders of other unions.

far And while numerous speakers-ranging from David Basnett to Militant' supporters got up to say that the document "did not go far enough" there was not one that argued a thorough socialist critique of a statement that offers Labour activists neither a • shred of concrete policy for today's struggles against the Tories nor so much as a whiff of a socialist policy for a returned Labour A few glimmers of light however did percolate through the rolling clouds of rhetoric.

Bring down Tories

Lambeth Council leader Ted Knight attacked the document's failure to call for action to bring the Tory government down before the end of its term, and went on to stress that:

"I'm not interested in returning another Labour government of the same ilk as the last one...

"It was not just "some differences" but major differences we had with the last Labour government. They paved the way for the Tories."

A South Wales delegate pointed to the absence of "socialism" from the slogan "Peace, Jobs and Freedom" and argued that:

"When we talk about manifestoes, it we go on the same as last time there's no way I'll go tramping the streets of Monmouth trying to win support".

He singled out Moss Evans in attacking:

"our own trade unions doing a deal with the steel employers and selling us out-making politics a dirty word."

"Are we in business to uphold the capitalist system? Not bloody likely!"

But one Labour leader who makes no secret of being in business to uphold capitalism is David Owen. He incurred howls of anger as he argued the leadership's real line on nuclear weapons-to build them (at enormous expense) while going through the motions of "arms limitation" talks.

Others were more discreet. Clive Jenkins, dressed like a merchant banker and parading his usual battery of economic facts and figures, argued that by antagonising industrialists ana even bankers, the 1 hatcher government was « self-am busning" and would fall sooner rather than later from its own contradictions.

Second Such a perspective was learly beguiling for union leaders determined to avoid action to bring down the GMWU leader David Basnett -wearing what appeared to be a second-hand suit which he (and several other people) had slept in-went even further into cowardly contortions. with his scheme to employ teams of solicitors and barristers for "Employment Bill evasion" along the lines of the bosses' practice of tax evasion!

But there was real anger from some speakers, reflecting the tensions within the party's rank. and file under the Tory A woman delegate from Edinburgh complained that:

"People are looking to the Labour Party for leadershipand they are not getting it.

"They don't believe that Thatcher has to stay there for five years-and I don't believe she has to stay there for five years.

"24 local authorities have said they will not implement cuts. The NEC should support them-and the PLP! Labour councils are not elected to carry out Tory policies.

«We learned how to fight the cuts under a Labour government, but by God we needed the experience".

Three delegates drew strong applause when they forcefully complained about the Labour leadership's craven support for the "bipartisan" imperialist policy of military repression in Ireland, and contrasted the NEC statement's silence on this with its ready condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Other delegates won vocal support when they attacked the NATO alliance and Labour's links to US imperialism: and the conference seethed with hostility • to the Common Market.

Is right wingers prudently at on their hands and alower the steam-letting exercise to run its course, platform 'lefts' Heffer and Benn diplomatically wound up morning and afternoon sessions in suitably tubthumping style.

Heffer, endorsing the NEC statement as "a first class socialist document" , most clearly spelled out the intended message of the conference:

"I'm not critical of what happened in the past: that's gone. I'm interested in what will happen in the future."

In the meantime, if Heffer and the NEC have their way, present struggles against Tory cuts and closures will be left to their own devices while the Thatcher government is treated to the occasional protest March 9-style demonstration and even a few May 14-style one-day stoppages.

Similarly Benn, in his rapturously received wind-up speech, stressed and restressed the central message that the NEC statement, while offering only the same old policies, did ofies the basis for "unity" of the "Peace, Jobs, Freedom" indeed does mean business as usual in the Labour Party: Peace for Callaghan in the final few months before he retires and makes way for his chosen right wing successor; Jobs for David Owen, Neil Kinnock and the clique of opportunists and time servers in the Labour and TUC leadership; and Freedom for the Party leaders to continue to flout the demands, the adopted policies and the interests of its rank and file members.