Labour "left' fight foi democracy-but what policiest

Scan page 5

Fringe meeting of Campaign for Labour Party Democracy at May Special Conference From Daily Torygraph correspondent While the bulk of the press comment on this year's Labour Party conference has focussed on the struggle of the left to democratise the Party constitution, little attention has been focussed on the resol-dinan Inhlad for riconccinn Clearly Callaghan is devoting Secret documents which have just come into our hands show that the wave of strikes against the Thatcher government last year reached unprecedented levels.

„The Thatcher Politburo is now preparing for a further round of shattering blows to the economy, which threaten to strip away the official line of support for capitalism.

The • major strikes came in the steel works where thousands of people were being thrown out of work.

At the same time as the government jacked up prices by more than TINe steel workers were being told to take a 2% wage increase.

The resulting strikes brought major • clashes between the heroic workers and the savage British police who attacked their picket lines, despite the state's much vaunted right to strike'.

Although the strike was based on economic demands, and led by people compromised through and through with the privileges of the ruling elite, it did take some concrete political forms.

In Yorkshire,, an area Northern Britain famous for his energies single mindedly to derailing the democratic reforms -with the aid of reactionary union bureaucrats who share Callaghan's fear and loathing of the rank and file membership.

But their hands have been freed in-this task by the painfully evident political weakness of the left wing opposition.

Thara are of raurse no less than 130 resolutions condemnmilitancy, steel workers were openly declaring for bringing down the government.

Badges were worn by many of the strikers declaring for a Socialist Republic of Yorkshire.

Despite every effort of the government and police to crush the strike-which the government provoked through its monetarist stand-the heroic freedom fighters stood firm for 16 weeks.

Compromise

Just as the strike threatened to spread into the auto works a move which could have generalised the struggle against the government, a compromise was cobbled together which the leadership of the strike accepted.

Nevertheless the government is aware that the workers are still bitter and angry and well organised and it fears that this winter could see its claims to be managing the economy reduced to tatters.

Already in this 'haven' of capitalist rule, unemployment is approaching the 2 million mark and inflation is still at 17% despite the severest slump in post war history.

Despite century official unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from NATO and various pacifist demandsthough none calls for such demands to be linked to a fight for the removal of the Tories.

But while this extension of the politics of the Peace, Jobs and Freedom' resolution adopted at May's Special Conference seems likely to be carried, there is little to point the way in Britain anti-communism the latent desire of mankind for a socialist society keeps breaking through the official ideological wall built by the state.

The ruling class has just enacted legislation severely limiting the right to strike and picket and trying to limit the right of one worker to help and support another.

This legislation is expected to meet savage resistance this winter from the workers.

Already two strikes have challenged the limitations on the pickets. At an engineering factory near Reading, Adwest, and a government office in Brixton, London, several arrests have been made.

In both strikes sacked workers are seeking reinstatement.

In free' England sackings of union militants are frequent and are accompanied by blacklists, and state interference to stop them getting welfare benefits.

If there is one problem which the workers of this small but significant country face it is that the leaders of their trade unions and the Labour Party are determined not to rock the boat, on whose survival they depend for their privileges.

The foreign' press will be watching developments with interest. ought to be adopted by "the next Labour government"

Calls for socialist policies of nationalisation by such …a Labour government place their entire focus on the implementation of such a policy through parliament-offering no insight as to how the resistance of the ruling class to such an attack on its power and wealth should be overcome, or precisely what role should be played in the process by the mass of the labour movement.

In other words the entire package of policies presented shows the yawning gulf between social democracy's eternal promises of "socialism'-at some point in the indefinite futureand its practical offer of minimal, if any, reforms within capitalism in the present period.

As Trotsky points out, the leaders of social democracy no need for a bridge between real advance in the political consciousness of such Party militants it must begin to be linked up with a fight for a different type of programmeone that connects today's vital struggles to halt the Tory offensive and bring down the Thatcher government to the struggle for the nationalisation of banks and basic industries without compensation and the establishment of a planned socialist economy.

We cannot of course expect 'left' Parliamentarians like Tony Benn or even Constituency Parties in their resolutions to be aware of the need for such a But we might have expected that the Trotskyist forces active within the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory should have begun to raise these issues.

Yet while the Rank and File Mobilising Committee for Callaghan Labour Democracy gains rapidly in support-reflecting the shift to the left in the ranks of the labour movement-the SCLV contribution to the Committee's bulletin simply echoes the routine organisational calls for party democracy and fails to criticise the political shortcomings of the leading 'lefts'.

For the Labour Party to be reduced to debating simply the possible policy of the "next" Labour government, while shirking the fight to mobilise mass action to bring down the Tories, is-no matter how 'left' the motions adopted-tacitly to accept five years of Thatcher.

It is crucial that the fight against the right wing is linked at each step to the struggle for a clear alternative, socialist programme, in opposition not only to the Callaghan Gang, but also to the nationalist, class-collaborationist mish-mash put forward by Benn and other leading 'lefts'.

In the weeks up to the Labour Conference, Socialist Press will examine in detail the 'left' resolutions on key questions, and the policies we argue should take their place.

----- pull-quotes -----

PRESS GANG