Will Foot Founder with Healey?

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Stalinism in Cowley p.6-7 In a foolhardy and fraudulent move, Michael Foot last week attemp ted to protect Dennis Healey from the strong challenge mounted by Tony Benn and from the hostility of Labour's rank and file.

Like a panic-stricken mountaineer in a harebrained rescue bid, he lashed himself to the falling body of Dennis Healey.

But the upshot of this gamble could be that a defeat for Healey as Deputy Leader brings Foot, too, crashing from his unstable position as Party leader.

Indeed the whole "challenge" thrown down by Foot is a transparent fraud.

Could win

the one hand Foot knows full well that Benn could win against Healey, and by doing so tilt the whole political balance within the Labour Party and the trade union movement.

On the other hand he also knows that for Benn to run against Foot would be simply a propaganda exercise, conducted without the slightest prospect of victory, and thus guaranteed to leave the present right wing domination of the Party intact.

Of course on a certain level Foot's argument is valid. In challenging the record of the Shadow Cabinet, which has mounted no serious fight to implement Party Conference policies, Benn is in reality challenging not simply Healey but also Party leader Foot.

The fact that the one-time "left"-talking Foot has become little other than a tattered dummy on the knee of Healey and the right wing is plain for all to see. Any attempt to distinguish between them is pointless.

Foot's ill-judged efforts to shield Healey from Benn's attack simply confirm this view.

Sharpest form

But it is Benn's campaign for the Deputy Leadership which has brought out this link in its sharpest, most unmistakeable form. Even while proclaiming his continued support for Foot, Benn has succeeded -perhaps more than he ever wanted to succeed! -in exposing him as an agent of the right wing.

It is doubtful indeed whether Foot's last-ditch manoeuvre will shake any of the potential support for Benn.

Within the trade unions, opinion is already largely polarised between right and left wing candidates-with nonentity John Silkin's candidacy serving only to increase Healey's chances.

It is on the outcome of the manoeuvres of right wing union bureaucrats in the big unions, and not at all on the swaying of rank and file support, that the political future of both Healey and Foot now hangs.

Conferences • Healey can already count on 2 million trade union votes-nearly half of them from the AUEW. Benn on the other hand can so far reckon on only around one million votes, having secured support from ASTMS, ASLEF, SOGAT, TASS, FTAT and the Bakers Union and support from the NUPE leadership in a ballot of their members.

This is why the two big union conferences in the next few weeks are vital. It would be a major reverse for the right wing were Benn to secure the backing of the GMWU (in conference this week): but there must be a real chance of Benn's rank and file supporters overturning the union's Executive to secure support at the TGWU conference on June 22-26.

Were they to do so, Benn could then hope to win the backing of the NUM and definitively squashi red herring candidacy.

As the pro-Healey lobby (embracing the whole of Labour's right wing and the Tory press) are reinforced in their anti-Benn campaign by former and fake 'lefts' such as Foot, Neil Kinnock and TGWU deputy leader Alex Kitson, the issues at stake in this deputy leadership contest become clearer than ever.

In extending our critical support to Benn, and campaigning for CLPs, MPs and trade unions to be mandated to support his campaign we are not defending his inadequate and confused policies: we are lending our support to the struggle by Labour's rank and file to cleanse the Party's leadership of lackeys of the IME, NATO and the EEC.

In striking a blow against the Healey/Foot leadership, the election of Benn would underline the growing demand for party democracy accountability and a genuine alternative to the right wing politics of the last Labour And in the fight. to oust Healey a new leadership can and must be built in the left wing of the labour movement, equipped to offer a worked out alternative to the polities of class collab oration and piccemeal reform.