Foot: same ola ine

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Over 50,000 workers and youth demonstrated their hatred of the Tory government in the Labour Party's demonstration through the streets of Glasgow last Saturday.

They marched from Blythswood Square to Queens Park, where the vast crowd heard Eric Heffer declare that the aim must be to overthrow capitalism, and Michael Foot tell them to "rise like lions"-to vote Labour at the next election!

Foot has always insisted that the purpose of the Labour Party's agitation on unemploymarches Liverpool and Glasgow-is not to mobilise action to bring the Tories down but to "bring Mrs Thatcher to her senses."

At a crowded public meeting in Paisley the night before the march, he had spelled out his political positions more clearly.

Under questioning, he expressed his opposition to the expulsion of the Gang of Three and their supporters from the And he admitted he was also opposed to campaigning for a General Strike to bring down the Tory government.

Foot's style of rhetoric and leadership are very different from those of Callaghan. Last Friday for instance he addressed a mass meeting of 600 workers at the threatened Talbot plant at Linwood, calling for an iron combination" of the industrial and political wings of the labour movement to "defeat the Tories"

But he made it quite clear that he sees Thatcher remaining in office until the end of her term-offering Talbot workers only hopes of "victories" over the government in the months and years to come"!

Behind the facade of armwaving, oratorical flourishes and populist gestures designed to secure his base of support, Foot is putting forward simply the same wretched politics of Callaghan before him.

Mass action to defend jobs at Linwood and topple the Tories will come-like last week's miners' strike-only despite Foot and his shadow cabinet co-thinkers. The task is to conștruct a political leadership that is capable of mobilising and advancing such action in the next period.

Foot Published by Folrose Ltd for 1 Registered as a newspaper at t