Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today, Woman Worker, Class Fighter and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

Labour NEC votes to reinstate Ted Heslin KINNOCK CALLS FOR PURGE OF SOCIALISTS

Socialist Press no. 201, 4 June 1980 · scan p. 12 · about 1,516 words

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closing at $594.90, well below our target of £750.

Every penny of that £750 is accounted for in terms of our spending so a shortfall of over £150 in a single month can only be a grave cause for It's quite a challenge and to meet the help of our readers and supporters.

So, send us a financial donation to our funds and help us ensure that the political work of the WSL is not hampered by a shortage of money 'ublished by Folrose Ltd for the Workers Socialist League, BM Box 5277, London WC1V 6XX. Printed by Anvil Printers, London legistered as a newspaper at the Post Office. Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the Workers Socialist League The Labour Party's National Executive has voted to uphold the appeal against expulsion lodged by Socialist Press supporter Ted Heslin.

Heslin was expelled by the Oxford CLP in January 1979 for selling copies of Socialist Press.

No secret The right wingers who have pressed the expulsion have never made any secret of the fact that this was an attempt to crush Heslin's outspoken political fight for the removal of the Callaghan-Healey leadership and their supporters, and for a programme of socialist policies to meet the crisis.

But it has become increasingly cicar that it is not only the right wing who tect uneasy at such policies being taken up within the Party.

And last week Heslin and others who lobbied the NEC meeting heard leading Tribunite "left' and shadow cabinet member Neil Kinnock spell out his reasons for wanting Heslin expelled.

Kinnock-one of the few NEC members to declare where he stands on the issue-revealed that he had always voted in favour of Heslin's expulsion.

In his view it was not sufficient simply to expel members of organisations who stood candidates against the Labour at £1970.45. However, Monthly Fund was not concern.

We cannot allow this longer. We really must every month.

Our address is:

Socialist Press Fund, BM Box London WCIV 6XX Kinnock Party in elections: the net had to be thrown wider. ' The constitution should be altered to spel! out who qualifies for membership and who does not.

Then expulsions could be carried out on purely political grounds-starting with Socialist Press supporters, but maybe even including Militant supporters as well!

Heffer Kinnock claimed that Eric Heffer shared his view that Socialist Press supporters should be expelled.

Needless to say Kinnock's readiness to draw lines which would exclude principled socialon the Special Fund with so good, with the fund ists from the Labour Party does not extend to a readiness to fight for the removal of Callaghan-Healey, nor to fight for the expulsion of the cryptoTory right wing.

Indeed the NEC vote to uphold Heslin's appeal was accompanied by the upholding SE The verdict of death by misadventure on Blair Peach, who was murdered by the police, should come as no surprise.

The inquest was intended from the start to be a vindication of the police and a condemnation of the anti-fascists who took to the streets of Southall against the National Front.

It was presided over by the West London Coroner, Dr. John Burton, who used his lengthy summing up to give the state's view of why police violence is justified. • As reported in Socialist Press last week, he said that nobody left on the streets of Southall that day could be regarded as innocent and that so long police had a reasonable belief' that anyone he hit could have been a rioter, then they were cleared from all responsibility for death or injury.

When the question is employers' rights, or the rights of the forces of the state, all bourgeois courts are committed in advance.

of an appeal lodged by Roger Fox and Stephen Haseler of the reactionary Social Democratic Alliance-an organisation of crypto-Tories which urged its supporters not to vote for left wing Labour candidates in the last election, and has threatened to stand its own candidates in the next.

This twin reprieve was the outcome of a recommendation from the NEC's organisation sub-committee. Only Judith Hart opposed this attempt to equate the right wing with socialists, calling for the subcommittee report to be referred and Pon expelled. Her proposal sm c wanica nasert was defeated 13-5.

But the issue is far from resolved.

Kensington GMC has already informed the NEC that they have no intention of taking Haseler and Fox back into membership.

And the Hornsey GMC is in the throes of expelling SDA secretary Douglas Eden-and seem likely to take a similar stand should his appeal be similarly upheld.

It is for this reason that Socialist Press and the Workers Socialist League called from the beginning for a workers' inquiry into the death of Blair Peach.

We do not place any illusions or faith in the courts of the ruling class when what is in question is the machinery for upholding class rule.

That is not to say that the decision to press for an inquest with a jury was wrong. The inquest produced statements from the police that would never have been made to a workers' inquiry. (The police, of course, boycotted the inquiry called by the Southall Defence Campaign).

The inquest has shown beyond doubt that the police murdered Blair Peach, regardless of the verdict.

What was wrong was to imbue the inquest itself with any degree of credibility, and to fail to warn in advance that the inquest was an arm of the state and would defend it.

And a public inquiry would only repeat the inquest! In the unlikely event of one being conceded it would be used by But it is less clear what position will be taken by the Oxford GC in the Heslin case.

Although the GC voted 4328 retrospectively to endorse the witch-hunting antics of chairman Bill Conboy-who wrote an unconstitutional letter on Heslin to the NEC-it is doubtful if all 43 right wingers would wish to defy an NEC instruction and thereby risk disaffiliation.

Meanwhile as Kinnock has stated and as the unity of 'left' and right at the weekend's Special Conference showed, Labour activists fighting for socialist policies must now combat not only the right wing leadership but an increasingly embarassed and bankrupt body of Tribunite 'lefts', who regard Trotskyists as a major threat to their carefully cultivated public image.

*Kick out the Callaghan/ Healey leadership!

*Kick out Labour's cryptoTories!

*Reinstate Ted Heslin!

*Fight for socialist policies! the state (as were the public inquiries into the murder of Kevin Gately and the Grunwick dispute) to defend the forces of the state and attack the left.

We call for the establishment of a workers' inquiry in order to counter-pose the labour movement to the state, and show the limits of 'left' Labourites and Stalinists in the labour movement.

It mears placing demands on the likes of Jack Dromey, who is now conspicuous by his silence on the murder.

It means fighting for the inquiry results to be taken into the organisations of the working class and demanding that the unions, the Labour Party and the TUC themselves reach a verdict that the police murdered Blair Peach.

It means translating the demand for the disbanding of the SPG away from its liberal content of condemning. one group of police "out of control". into a demand for the disbanding of the whole police force and into an attack on the state itself.

Students and workers involved in the recent armed uprising in Kwangju against the South Korean military dictatorship have been given until Saturday to surrender -or face court-martial if they are caught.

Some 200 or so are thought to have taken refuge in the countryside as the massive armed forces of General Chon Too-Hwan moved in to recapture the rebel city in which up to 200,000 armed workers and students had previously driven out police and army units.

In the neighbouring country areas the fugitives are likely to find sympathetic villagers: and in other towns including Chongju and the poit of Mokpo demonstrations have continued in defiance of Chon's martial law clampdown-clear evidence that matters are far from resolved in Korea.

The country's vast and savagely exploited working class spurred on by unemployment and spiralling inflation, has been awakened in the recent struggles: and Chon's heavy-handed imposition of undisguised military rule is more likely to entrench than eliminate political opposition.

But an unacknowledged prop for General Chon will remain the North Korean Stalinist regime, which throughout the recent struggles refused to give any assistance to the workers fighting the • puppet government in the South.

As ever, the Stalinist bureaucracy of Kim Il Sung fears above all the revolutionary movement of Korean workers. It prefers to sit back and watch the brute repression of the South Korean military machine at work across the 38th parallel.

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Since our urgent appe: have had a good response the total now nudging up

ND il for money last week we

towards the £2,000 mark the news on the May

situation to continue any raise the full fund target

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 201, 4 June 1980

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