Benn Lies _ow

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ALL THE KING'S IDDANDAMME TO DEAK DIACE Y call on supporters of the Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement to fight within the Labour Party for a recall Labour Party conference to press home these demands.

The report to the Conference and an amendment to the main resolution by the organising committee went on to condemn Scanlon and the AUEW executive for their role in attacking the BLMC toolroom workers' strike.

It also condemned the sellout of the unotficial leaders wh recommended a return to work.

Unlike all the other "protest' conferences, the lessons of this srike were : brought out at this conference under conditions where every union official and Stalinist hanger-on is trying to brush it under the carpet.

NO INCREASE Above all, the Birmingham Conference drove home the central role of wage control in the TIM HORSES AND ALL THE KING'S MEN strengthening every action against the Social Contract. As one BLMC shop steward from Cowley told the Conference: " "We must be willing ourselves to lead struggles to break Stage Two"

OBSTACLES

And in discussing the obstacles confronting such struggles, contributions returned time and again to the role of the trade union officials, whose line was aptly summed up by a delegate from the London Hotels GMWU as "Pay your dues and shut your mouth"

The fight for democracy in the labour movement is not for some abstract principle but to enable the membership to remove the existing right wing leadership and replace it with leaders prepared to struggle in defence of jobs and wages.

In driving home this point, in organising interventions into Energy Secretary and much-vaunted left' winger Tony Benn was one of only four cabinet ministers to vote against Callaghan's coalition pact with the Liberals last week.

But anyone who saw this vote as a first step in a fight against the policy must already be disillusioned.

Indeed Benn has taken his "cabinet responsibility" to Callaghan so seriously that he is not only remaining at his post to implement the joint LiberalLabour policies in the coming months, but has even refused to put his name to a petition by left wing Labour NEC members to call a special meeting to discuss the coalition deal.

Benn is not the only NEC member reluctant to reveal his position.

But the taint of coalition brands not only those who vote for it, but also those who serve in it.

The days in which Benn can credibly pose as a 'left' winger within the Cabinet must now be numbered.

In our call for removing the collaborators who are now working with the Liberals we must clearly include Benn.

And we must demand that the ten i lefts' who did sign that petition for an NEC meeting immediately take up a national campaign in the Labour Party and throughout the trade union movement for the removal and expulsion of the coalitionists, and the adoption of a programme of socialist policies.

Many other speakers gave accounts of the constant harassment of black youths, and of the vicious charges and fines imposed on them particularly by means of 'conspiracy' and 'sus' charges both of which the police can use to pick up literally whom' they Like.

The political nature of the trial was constantly stressed and the dangers posed not only for black youth, but for the workers' movement as a whole.

But proposals for action mainly failed to go beyond SWPtype proposals for demonstrations and street events.

It was a WSL speaker who, in addition to such • actions, called Gandhi's prisoners - the vote for Janata was INDIA ... Continued from Front of the new coalition is deeply reactionary.

Desai himself is pro-American. He split with Gandhi as a protest against the nationalisation of banks. That is typical of his consistently reactionary position.

The largest group among the Janata MPs, on whom he relies for support, belong to the Jana Sang The Jana Sang is Hindu revivalist party,; with semi-fascist history, thougt recently it has tried to throw off this image and cultivate a more "respectable" face.

The Janata coalition also incorporates the reformist Socialist Party led by George Fernandez who was released from jail only last week.

Fernandez is a former 2101 against dictatorship.

union leader, given in the past to leftist rhetoric, and a leader of the railway strike, brutally crushed in 1974.

Both Congress and the Janata Party during the election accused each other of being right wing. Both of them were right!

Nonetheless, it will be hard in the immediate future for the new government to avoid fulfilling at least some of its promises to restore democratic rights.

"The problem will come, however, as the working masses of India begin to make use of these rights to fight for a better way of life.

It is then inevitable that they will come into unresolvable conflict with their new right-wing rulers.

That ict will come soon.