Labour Conference victory: NOW KICK OUT THE RIGHT WING!

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large, but to the specific political party on whose platIorm they run or oice, anu aftern on whose efforts their votes depend.

This challenge to the notion that MPs should be free agents, able to behave as they wish once elected (and thus be drawn, through the apparatus of Parliament and the state machine, into the very structures of capitalist rule) throws into question all the traditional norms ot British Parliamentary democracy under which capitalism has cloaked its rule for centuries.

"Sad week"

Not for nothing has Norman St. John Stevas, Tory Leader of the House of Commons condemned the Labour Conference as "a sad week for Parliament and for Britain"

But the implications of these blows at bourgeois democracy on much further when taken in conjunction with the decision to take the election of the Labour leader out of the exclusive grip of the Parliamentary Labour Before the very eyes of the capitalist class there emerges the grim spéctre of a Labour leader elected by and therefore in the longer term being made answerable to the broader labour movement.

For employers who for generations have relaxed in the knowledge that successive Labour leaders have, the Owen: laying down terms moment tney took ollice, 11 . 1. contemptuously brushed aside left wing Party conference decisions and manifesto pledges, this change has come as an unpleasant jolt.

Instead of providing

reliable second option to direct Tory rule, the Labour farty now threatens to fall into the clutches of the very workers it has fraudulently claimed to represont for three quarters of a century.

Worse, the very furore whipped up by the Tory press in their efforts to pressurise union bureaucrats into casting their block votes against the reforms has now focussed workers' attention on the Labour Party.

Already the declaration by Neville Sandelson, crypto-Tory Labour MP for Hayes and Harington, that ne ww vote 1. *11 with the Tories on defence policy has been met by a confident threat from a leading CLP activist that Sandelson would be "booted out" if he did!

Indeod thora may not he ton much breathing space for Labour's right wing gang of MPs before they feel the impact of last week's changes. Only the frantic manoeuvres of union bureducrats succeeded in staving off until January an immediate change in the method of election of the Party leader.

The right wing will attempt to use this period in order to regroup, and to work behind tha ananao te nantar tha maido scenes to to greater democracy and accountability within the Party.

David Owen, of 'Gang of Three notoriety. is already arrogantly laying down the conditions under which he would accept a broader election of the Party leader.

But there is no such tenacity from the left. The Party's NEC, on which the left wing has strengthened its majority, far from pressing its conference advantage, is making still greater concessions to the demands of the right wing.

The latest proposal, aired by "left' Party chairman Alex Kitson, would offer a staggering 40% jof votes on the party leadership to the reactionary PLP-and a mere 30% each to unions and to the constituency parties.

Nor is it only on the constitutional issues that the NEC is pulling back from the clear stand demanded by last week's conference.

An emergency. motion inctrintino the NFO tn instructing LILL "coordinate a united fight of Labour councils and trades unions on a firm no cuts position" and demanding that "the labour movement must be prepared to use its full strength, including industrial action, to defend the most needy in our society and the interests of every working class family" was enthusiastically and overwhelmingly carried.

Class action

Yet the NEC, selected extreme right winger John Golding to reply to the motion: and Golding, in response to a direct question irom Koy Hattersley, insisted that the NEC was supporting only a campaign "within the law"

To boos and a slow handclap Golding lamely explained that the Party should not wait for the next election-but get out now and canvass for Labour votes!

Despite this hesitancy from the NEC, it is unmistakeably clear that Labour activists want a clear call for united class action to defend the Tory cuts, closures and attacks on trade union rights, and bring • down the inatene governel.

It is equally clear that only in such conditions of mass action could the Party's rank and file hope to see the retiring Callaghan replaced by anyone other than a new stooge from the nresent roht wing leaderATT1 HAVONILL ляБаль ship clique.

Call to action

The task is therefore to press home the advantage secured at last week's conference: the Lambeth call to action against the cuts must be taken up by public sector workers, the broader trade union movement, and Labour councils.

Strikes and occupations must run alongside a refusal to implement any cuts or rate and rent increases.

Steps must be taken towards ousting right wing Labour MPs: and trade unionists must fight to mandate their delegations at the January Special Conference to vote against any surrender of control to the Parliamentary Labour Party in the leadership Fest There is no doubt that this Labour Party conference has reinforced the belief of large sections of workers that they can move towards socialism by the reelection of a Labour government, indis one neaaed by leaamg let wug ladi spokesman Tony Benn.

Socialist Press does not share this belief. But the next period offers the best conditions to put such leaders to the test: by their willingness or refusal to fight for extranarliamentary action to VIALALJ defeat the Tories; by their willingness or refusal to preas home the gains of the Blackpool conference and drive out the right wing leadership, workers can quickly assess the real chatacter of those who now put themselves forward as opponents of the Callaghan gang.

Full support We offer our full support to every step forward taken by the lefts in the fight for united class action to bring down Thatcher; at the same time we fight consistently against the limited policies of the Labour left, to win support for the kind of programme that is vital to defend the interests of the working class in the next period.

In this way we seek to win the mox principled sections of trade unionists and Labour 'activists to the fight for a new, revolutionary, leadership in the labour movement.

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