[Weekly paper of the Workers Socialist League *…]

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Weekly paper of the Workers Socialist League * No. 219 * 15 October 1980 * 20p Behind the bloodcurdling battle-cries of the blue-suited bloodsuckers in Brighton last week lay a morbid fear of the growing bitterness and hostility that 18 months of Tory policies have incited within the working class.

Indications of that anger and militancy could be seen not only in the massive 6,000strong protest demonstration outside the final day of the Tory conference, forcing the delegates into seige conditions, but also in the defeats that had been inflicted on Labour's right wing leaders the previous week in Blackpool.

Looming answer

Again and again tory leaders were forced to look nervously over their shoulder at the looming anger of the organised labour movement. Thatcher herself admitted that:

"Because of what happened at that [Blackpool] Conference, there has been, behind all our deliberations this week, a heightened awareness that now, more than ever, our Conservative Government must succeed. We just must, because now there is even more at stake than some had realised."

And her concluding remarks pointed out that:

*We close our conference in the aftermath of that sinister utopia unveiled at Blackpool: let Labour's Orwellian nightmare of the Left be the spur for us to dedicate with a new urgency our every ounce of energy and moral strength to rebuild the fortunes of this free nation".

The threat posed by Thatcher before the assembled sections of aristocrats, millionaires, managers, businessmen large and small and motley middle class reactionaries is a stark one: it's either us, or a downhill slide towards socialism.

And, despite the acute limitations of the processes of change now underway in the Labour Party, there is a germ of truth in what Thatcher is suggesting.

Emerging in the working class is a growing political current that is crying out for action to defeat the Tory spending cuts; for action to restore trade union rights; and for action to halt the wild rush towards Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union,.

Rising layer

None of these problems can be resolved while the Tories remain in power-but this new, rising layer does not see itself as confined to the Parliamentary niceties of the Labour Party's right wing and its established Tribunite left'.

On the contrary, it made itself most vocally felt at the Labour Party conference when it gave a deafening ovation to the call issued by Lambeth council leader Ted Knight for general strike action to stop the cuts.

Rank and file

It was conspicuous that it was amongst constituency delegations-most closely linked to the rank and file of the labour movement-that this new militant political current found most support. The more bureaucratised trade union delegations continued in the main to provide the staple block vote support for the right wing une lace is tal not one union leader has called for mass industrial action to defeat the Tory cuts at local or national level; not one official struggle has been conducted against factory closures or redundancies; and no union leader (with the exception of Arthur Scargill) has unequivocally declared himself prepared to mobilise action to defy Prior's new anti-union laws.

The continued existence of the Thatcher government rests on this absolute refusal of the union leaders to build upon,