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Some people seem to think that we've got the same kind of big business backing as the Tories (see our article on page 4) by the lack of finance arriving in our office each week.

So far this month we have received only £445.30 towards our target of £850 so there's a massive job ahead of us in the last week of the month. If you haven't sent anything in yet, how about rushing a donation to:

Socialist Press Fund, BM Box 5277 London WC1V 6XX "There's many a manoeuvre betwixt cup and lip" . This old TUC proverb appears even more true of this year's Labour Party conference than many of its predecessors.

As top union bureaucrats haggle and horsetrade with Labour leaders over slap-up meals in the next few days, a pattern of voting will emerge which will determine just how many, if any, of the democratic reforms fought for by socialists will be adopted at the Blackpool conference next week.

One thing is certain: the result in no way depends on the charade of "debate" that will be publicly televised-nor on any consultation with rank and file trade unionists, whose block votes will be bandied about by national officials.

Rather it depends on an assessment by senior trade union leaders of the implications of blocking once again the long needed and popularly supported moves to introduce mandatorý reselection of Labour MPs; to take the election of the Party leader out of the vice-like grip of the right wing PLP; and to allow the NEC as representative of the Party membership, to decide on the election manifesto.

There are signs that, in the wake of the IGWU decision to back the principle of establishpreferable to his right-hand gang-mate Dennis Healey) fear that a rapid change of leadership could place Healey in office.

But while they make their tactical decisions on these questions, tile vast proportion of delegates-whether from the relatively impotent constituency parties or from union delegations rigidly bound by mandates from above-find themselves once again excluded from the real making of decisions and policies.

Indeed this year's conference agenda offers no real evidence either of a strengthened socialist challenge to the right wing or of any organised campaign for action to bring down the Tories.

And while the Callaghan gang could be embarrassed if some motions-particularly those on Ireland, unilateral disarmanent and some calling for the disbanding of the SPG-were carried, few resolutions are equipped with enough teeth (in the form of a commitment to tangible action) to draw any blood..

It is on their ability to step up the political offensive on policy and perspective in the wake of this year's constitutional decisions. that the fighting capacity of the "left' as an opposition to the Callaghan leadership will really be tested out in the eyes of the membership.

Many of the key questions involved in such a fight will be OND SEER TGWU"

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LABOUR CONFERENCE: FIGHT MUST GO ON! WHO'S NEXT rume STOP TOX