Labour bureaucrats bid to reverse Blackpool gains By John Lister

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. The doors of the Labour Party leadership have been swinging back and forth in the last two weeks.

A few gunslingers have emerged, seeking a shoot-out with the party's rank and file: while in has gone one shoeshiner seeking to polish Michael Foot's plaster cast.

First out was Gang of Three' reactionary David Owen. He declared that he is standing down from the Shadow Cabinet so as to give himself greater freedom to attack the party policies adopted at this year's conference.

He was, he said, "very fond" of Mr Foot.

And he had a few kind words for Tony Benn, who, he admitted, had helped "invigorate British politics"

But as Owen opened fire in the street outside the Shadow Cabinet saloon, Dennis Healey, elected unopposed as Deputy Leader, produced a Derringer • He announced that Labour had only two years to undo the democratic reforms carried at Blackpool this year.

Taking aim

And he called for a postal ballot system for electing the party leader.

Meanwhile, from a penthouse in an adjacent office block, Sir Harold Wilson was taking • aim with a Winchester rifle. honesty praised Tory Minister James Prior, whose anti-union legislation he, as a Labour MP, is supposedly committed to fight.

And Wilson went on to make it clear that he had voted for Healey in the leadership elections. Support for Tory policies and support for Healey go hand in hand.

Late on the scene of the shoot-out has been Shirley Williams, whose welcome refusal to seek reelection as a Labour MP drew forth no less than four articles in the next 'day's Guardian.

Not alone Her statement amounts to an open declaration that she remains on the Labour NEC purely for the purposes of assisting Healey and the cryptoTories to subvert the Blackpool conference decisions.

But they are not alone in this fight. Healey for instance has been able to count on Foot's support in his campaign for leadership elections to be based on a formula for leadership elections to be based on a formula drawn up by the right wing rump of the Parliamentary This would involve each constituency in holding a secret ballot of all members, and unions formulating new arrangements to seek a mandate from political fund-paying members.

Meanwhile, according to this scheme, the PLP-representing only themselves-would continue to hold a large percenget back on course and to the things she was elected to do."

The Mail goes on to castigate the government:

#It seems that Britain is governed by mirrors. Mrs Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe repeat and repeat that they will not be deflected from their harsh but necessary course of controlling the money supply.

The Opposition shriek and shout that she, cruel and heartless woman, must be forced to relax her grip on the money supply before the country collapses.

Are the British people expected to fall for this lunatic charade?"

Now when the Daily Mail starts talking about what the British people will and will not stand or fall for then it is time to run for cover.

But the Daily Express believes it has a monopoly on such instant opinion polls.

The next day's front page of the Express was given over to an attack on its rivals under the headline "The Lady's Not for Burning"

This started:

"Tory, Tory, Hallelujah. The biggest political U-turn Britain has seen this year has come from Mrs Thatcher's fairweather friends-the Daily Mail and the Sun.

Their political credibility has disappeared down their own claptrap."

The rest of the page is a mixture of abuse and hopeful explanation which seems to suggest that Thatcher is nicely on course thank-you.

If this government is the Titanic, the Daily Express is determined to be the orchestra which played as the ship sank! tage of the votes in the resulting "electoral college"!

Such an extension of "democracy" would be simply a hollow charade to disguise the continued monopoly control exercised by the PLP over the election of the party leader.

But some trade union leaders have emerged arguing a position even more right wing than Foot and Healey.

The AUEW and GMWU are arguing for a11 "electoral college" in which at least 50% of the votes go to the PLP-thus requiring the right wing to swing only one major union to guarantee victory!

The EETPU is calling for a postal ballot of all Labour Party members-thus disenfranchising the six million workers affiliated to the Party through their unions.

Meanwhile NUPE, TGWU ASTMS and (surprisingly) USDAW are pressing for an electoral college in which the PLP gets 40% or less of the vote.

Of the 12 major unions, 2.5 million block votes seem set to go in favour of a 50% PLP vote, and only 2.2 million in favour of 40% or less.

But what of Tony Benn, who for many socialists has come to personify the fight for democracy in the Party?

Made peace

As the gunslingers take up position for a major onslaught on the Blackpool reforms, Benn has picked up his shoe-shine outfit and made peace with Foot.

There are some embarrassing claims such as:

"The Daily Express does not believe in the infalibility of Tory rule."

But later the paper declares:

"For our part we want nobody to be in any doubt where the Daily Express stands.

We stand boldly behind Mrs Thatcher. If she fails it will not just be a disaster for the ConserYor Britaity, it will be a disaster If the press cannot agree on where Thatcher stands it is a good deal clearer about just how much it owes to some of the leading figures in the labour movement.

The Daily Mail, which calls for a new stiffening of Thatcher's sinews, just wants business as usual from Terry Duffy.

Less than a week before its attack on the weak-kneed Thatcher government it ran an editorial on BL and Duffy which many Tory politicians would love to have said about them.

How is this for an assessment of a trade union leader from the biggest opponent of those unions?

"Mr Duffy is nobody's idea of a trade union Titan. He is no great speaker. Often he is flustered for a phrase. He is as flat vowelled and unlikely a hero as you could find. And yet there is something about him..

Often enough we have had cause to lambast the inert and lack-lustre figures who now personalise the TUC. But it is not all drizzle, Murray and Moss Evans. While there's Duffy there's hope."

Whatever the outcome of January's special conference, he has said, he will not challenge Foot for the Party leadership. And he has sought reelection to the Shadow Cabinet-thus declaring himself willing publicly to defend the line put forward by Foot.

Whether or not he succeeds in this-and Benn is plainly still regarded as excessively left wing by the Tribune Group who placed him only eighth on their "slate" for the Shadow Cabinet -Benn has plainly and consciously moved to defuse the struggle within the Party at a key point in the fight for democracy.

Union leaders, Tribunites and Tony Benn have been able to rally behind the one-time 'left' winger Michael Foot in a way that would have been impossible had Healey been elected Party leader.

The outcome is a growing obstacle to democracy and to socialist policies. Benn: shoe-shine boy

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Wilson, with unusual ES