Labour's backlash

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Socialist Press has given much attention to how to fight the public service cuts which the Tory government are attempting to enforce.

Quite rightly the effects of any rent and rates increases on working class living standards has been given equal weighting as the need to maintain services.

However in Scotland much more needs to be done in winning the argument on whether to fight the Tory government measures.

Charles Cramp, the freelance photographer hired by the Daily Mail last summer to provide photographs of members and supporters of the WSL for the Mail's series of witch-hunting articles, has been found guilty of bringing the NUJ into disrepute.

Cramp refused to identify himself as a press photographer when challenged to do so by Alan Thornett. And when Thornett then grabbed his camera to remove the film, Cramp responded by threatening him with a gun!

After inquiries by both the Oxford Branch and the union's National Executive, Cramp was last weekend found guilty by 10 votes to 5 and censured for his actions.

The right wing backlash was seen at the Annual General Meeting of Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth Burghs Constituency Labour Party.

The retiring chairman, John Wyles, was not seeking reelection. The left candidate to replace John Wyles was his fellow Stirling District councillor, Michael Connarty.

The right wing packed the meeting and put forward Tom Simpson, who has had a chequered career of public scanin the Scottish labour movement.

Despite this he won the vote for chairperson and the right wing went on to throw out all left candidates from posts within the executive.

The Stirling-based left, stretched by the campaign to maintain local authority services and building the unemployment campaign had not mobilised for the AGM.

With Regional Councillors facing reselection meetings this coming year for the 1982 Scottish Regional Council elections, the right wing organised.

An unofficial meeting was held in the TGWU District Offices and a typed list of right candidates drawn up. Their organisation proved effective in the short term.

The lessons for the left are that action against the cuts, action against unemployment, public mobilisations, public debate are all very well.

However the fight within the structures and organisations of the Labour Party and the trade unions must go on.

To ignore this part of the fight is to hand back to the right wing all the public platforms and policy-making bodies without even a fight.