[Press exposes the role of one of the…]
Socialist Press1980 1980-07-30Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 4 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 4
Press exposes the role of one of the leaders of this conspiracy -the Daily Mail.
From a grim faced building in Carmelte street, London, strategically placed for a view of the other side of the street, a a Mail network of ruthless, highly trained plotters are sent out daily to spy on militant workers, revolutionaries and Labour Party members.
The Daily Mail has registered as a newspaper with the Post Office and duped the publicly: subsidised postal service into allowing it to send out copies 'newspaper rate'.
In fact, despite the veneer of cartoon characters, crosswords and 'stars' , the Mail is the centre of an international network of subversion of working class organisations.
This week we spoke to hundreds of 'supporters' of the Daily Mail.
Although some have been taking the Mail for years and repeating its poison in bars and at cocktail parties and rugby club stag nights, not one of them would admit to being a member.
"I just support its policies" said 46-year-old accountant 'Hatchett' Jones from Buddleigh Saiterton, Devon. He denied that the Mail's policy on the family was designed to oppress women and brainwash children.
As he lectured us for half an hour on his freshly washed doorstep on the joys of family sobi his chrome could be hord where they were locked in, and his wife was peeling potatoes in the kitchen-as a punishment for having expressed an opinion.
The Mail's front organisations range from the 'Ideal Home Exhibition' (where instruments for women's oppression are bought and sold freely) to show jumping (where members of the Royal Family' and
Scan page 5
MANIFESTO "Britain needs a new Government. A Government determined to get the economy moving and get inflation under control: a Government able to rebuild our industry and create the jobs we need to restore full employment".
With these grand words the Labour Party's left-wing led National Executive begin their Draft Manifesto-which has been stridently attacked by right wingers ranging from Tory Norman St. John Stevas to crypto-Tory Dr. David Owen.
Confusion
Yet these very words also sum up the confusion that besets the left wing of the Labour Party as they seek a parliamentary answer to the galloping crisis of capitalism.
How is it possible by a few adjustments to "get the economy moving" when the capitalist system on a world scale is plunging headlong into recession, and when it is precisely its inability to produce an adequate rate of profit which has brought British industry to the brink of collapse?
How can the Labour Partywhich refuses to question the 'right' of the employing class to protect its profits at the expense of workers jobs and living standards-hope to rearrange the existing chaotic system to "create the jobs we need to restore full employment"
How, without the nationalisation of the major corporations, the capitalist banks and trusts DRAFT 60p and the establishment of a planned, socialist economy none of which is proposed in he new Draft) can the dreamers ›n Labour's NEC hope to Tebuild our [!] industry"?
The Draft Manifesto skips nimbly between these contrafictions, offering workers the illusion of a gradual, parliamentary evolution towards-well, not socialism (the word barely appears in the draft), but a 'fairer' kind of capitalism:
"We are seeking nothing less than a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of people and their families"
In reality of course the Labourites are seeking nothing more than a few piecemeal reforms within a system whose anarchy and decay has for the last decade brought a barrage of mounting attacks on the working class at the hands of capitalist governments run by Tory and Labour alike.
"Pick up pieces"
The Draft points out that the first task of a re-elected Labour government would be "to pick up the pieces" and "salvage what is left of British [capitalist] industry".
The National Enterprise Board would ride again, once more pouring thousands of millions of pounds drawn from taxes on the working and middle classes into the coffers of ailing capitalist corporations -or as the Draft puts it:
"a huge injection of state Imance . a tough new planning framework and a significant extension of public enterprise".
The Labourite bid to resuscitate floundering employers would run alongside nationalist import controls aimed at penalising foreign competitors:
"we are determined not to allow manufactured imports to continue to destroy our [!] but British employers who are closing factories and sacking workers: yet these employers face a future not of nationalisation but of generous Labour cash transfusions:
"Labour's aim is to double the level of manufacturing investment within our first Parliament' The government's cash handouts to the employers will take various forms-ranging from "a significant public stake» in such companies as pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, micro-electronics, construction and building materials; powers to buy up individual companies; and "very considerable" resources to be furnished through the NEB.
Pension funds and life assurance schemes would also be diverted into "industrial investment"
Yet what form would such investment take, if not undertaken within the context of a socialist planned economy?
"Investment" at present in capitalist corporations means precisely the introduction of new equipment and technology that speed up production and axe jobs by the tens of thousands: without a plan for work sharing on full pay to preserve full employment, such investment can only mean still further workers on the dole.
Yet private employers will only invest in order to increase the exploitation of their workforce as a basis for increasing their rate of profit: creating full employment plays no part in their calculations.
The Labourite dream of vast sums in investment mopping up unemployment bears no relation to the workings of capitalismas the doubling of unemployment under the Wilson/Callaghan government painfully confirmed.
True, the NEC's new Draft Manifesto does talk occasionally about-well, not nationalisation as such but "extending public ownership"
Among candidates for this tentative process are . parts of banking and insurance, North Sea oil, the power plant industry, the building materials industry, road haulage, commercial ports and cargo handling.
In this respect therefore the new Draft can be seen as a certain shift to the left by an NEC under pressure from the working class.
But not even this piecemeal and inadequate programme is ever likely to see the light of day so long as the right wing Callaghan/Healey leadership are allowed to rule the roost within Callaghan the Party dictate the terms of the allu determin the line of any future Labour government.
The production of radical-sounding it wrongheaded resolutions and Draft Manifestoes by the NEC "lefts' is thus meaning less unless linked to launching a struggle within the Party for the remova canaran Healey and the abandonment of their policies of class collaboration in Britain and internationally That the 'lefts' have fight is indicated by the Draft's specific pledge to world imperialism that:
"The next Labour Government will maintain its The Draft calls not for the unlalera disarmamen British imperialism but for the utopia of "multilateral mutual disarmament" even pledge to reduce defence spendsimply bring the defence budget "into line with carried our And while notionally supporting "the rights of all peoples nations to self determination", the Draft makes no break from the British imperialist repression in Ireland or pledge to withdraw troops.
As a statement of confusion, diversionary policies . and class collaboration in Britain and on a the Draft is usefu evidence of the inability of the Labour "left' offer serious socialist alternative the Callaghan leadership Only insofar as it reflects the, forward movement of Labour's rank and file otters al opportunity for a discussion and debate itself olices wit Drane ¿evresent a sito lorward debate, the most advanced inte course of such a workers will come to see th of attemotin …то reoT the bankrupt capitalist system through Parliamentary tinker ing, and recognise the necessity for a revolutionary leadership in the workers' movement.
----- pull-quotes -----
LABOUR 1980
industries and jobs". It is of course not imports,