Fund Labour Nec Reject Phony Election

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Unfortunately we have to report that the £1500 Special Fund is still arriving too slowly.

A further £56.25 was sent in this week bringing our total to date to £340.25. Yet we are asking for the first £1,000 to be raised by November 15. This will mean an enormous effort over the next two weeks if we are to achieve that target.

We are asking readers and supporters to send us one day's pay to help us raise this fund. As the end of the month approaches we are anticipating monthly paid readers and supporters getting out their cheque books to send us their donation. Please don't let us down.

Send your donation to Socialist Press Fund BM Box 5277 London WC1V 6XX Who is John Silkin? The question is echoing throughout the organisations of the labour movement - as workers struggle to understand why the press should have chosen to build up Silkin and Peter Shore as 'left' candidates for leadership of the PLP.

Even Silkin's own Party GMC appears to have • been startled to discover their MP portrayed as a left winger.

But then, in the nevernever land of the Parliamentary Labour Party (where socialist policies are as common as three pound notes and just as valuable!) it doesn't take much to appear as a left winger.

No credibility The problem facing Silkin, Foot and Shore-but also facing likely winner Denis Healey-is that even if they win the farcical elections within the cloistered ranks of the PLP, they will 'carry no credibility whatever Silkin with the Party's rank and file.

Not one of the four candidates can command sufficient constituency support to get elected to the Party's National Executive.

Indeed both Tony Bennwho consistently tops the poll in the constituency nominations to the NEC-and the NEC itself have now come out openly in opposition to the PLP holding any elections for a new leader until the constitutional changes agreed in principle in Blackpool have been implemented.

The NEC correctly votedwith only five votes against-to call on the PLP to call off its pathetic "election"

Ignored

it seems virtually certain that their request will be ignored.

But this will only further intensify the crisis that is now wracking the Labour Party, underlining the necessity to oust not only the right wing leading clique but all of those Labour MPs who refuse to make themselves answerable to the labour movement.

GMCs must demand that their MPs boycott the PLP elections, and fight for constitutional changes in January that strip Labour MPs of their priviledged position in the choice of the Party leader.

Only in this way can the way be cleared for the implementation of the kind of socialist policies that can solve the problems faced by the working class.