Tories Help Broad Ft Against Left

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Newly elected Stalinist NUS leaders: Sue Slipman (President)

Penny Cooper (Treasurer) applauded by ex-President Charles students -in over Through their ever-closer alliance with the Federation of Conservative Students the Broad Left succeeded in maintaining their bureaucratic control of NUS at the Blackpool Easter Conference.

The Communist Party-dominated electoral machine used Tory support to help them defeat all opposition calling for a militant campaign on grants and cuts.

And they went on to carry an unprincipled and defeatist formula on the present campaign against tuition fee increases.

The only significant setback to the bureaucracy was the narrow failure of their joint move with the Tories In recrind the Ininn's 1 VLAVO position of no platform for fascists.

For the second consecutive conference this craven capitulation to the right wing was defeated by Students at Birmingham Polytechnic voted to occupy the administration of the Art and Design block on Tuesday 22 March as part of their "Freeze the Fees Campaign"

The students' basic demands are that-on a national level-the DES circular 1/77 (which advocates increased tuition fees and quota restrictions on overseas students) be withdrawn and-on a local level -that the LEA's and college authorities refuse to implement the proposals of the circular. the revolt of large sections of Broad Left supporters-despite the CP's last-ditch • attempts to bring their membership behind the Broad Left policy.

Nevertheless the Broad Leftsupported by second choice votes transferred from the Tories-were able to win the majority of positions on the new Executive including the election of Stalinist Sue Slipman as President.

TWO GROUPS Opposition to the Broad Left at Conference came from two groups posing as principled socialist alternatives-the SWP's NOISS and the IMG-orchestrated Socialist Students Alliance (SSA). • Both stood a slate of candidates in the elections and both had the support of around 110 of the 760 delegates.

The policies they put forward Apart from merely voicing opposition to the cuts they should be demanding a sliding scale of public expenditure to maintain all jobs and services and a sliding scale of grants-demands which would link them to the other struggles of the working class.

Their occupations must be linked to a systematic campaign for working class support. This is the only way in which the struggle against these cuts can be won. however able-the positions NOISS's etc. rejected this no short cuts.

were barely distinguishSSA put forward no which went beyond calls for 'more militancy"

NEW FACTOR The intervention of the SSA was a new factor at conference. Consisting of a newly formed combination of 'credible' left bureaucrats, professional centrists and some genuinely confused students looking for an alternative, the 'catch all the militants' platform of the group is designed to substitute for the building of a genuine revolutionary alternative.

The SSA pushed careerist exNational Treasurer Hugh Lanning as its Presidential candidate.

Even the Broad Left were able to expose his opportunist manoeuvrings two years ago in breaking from NOISS in order to further his own electoral ambitions.

Yet the IMG argued that Lanning was a 'credible' candidate. Indeed he was-to those whose perspectives are limited to winning AMAZING CONTORTIONS The IMG/SSA have already been forced into amazing contortions in order to explain the "political' basis of the alliance. A quote from one, of their leaflets refers to their:

... programme of left unity reflecting the central lines of divide between the far left, the Broad Left and the right wing in this Union How's that for a catch-all! -Not a programme based on the objective requirements of students and workers but a programme to "unite" already existing political forces-the classical starting point of all bureaucratic electoral machines.

The man who "had a go and helped capture Major Thomas Montague Hickman was asked on television what his reaction was to the suspended sentence passed on the Major. He said he was "disgusted"

Considering that he had had a sawn off shotgun stuck into his stomach with the threat of being blown apart, one can understand his feelings.

The feelings of the bank manager who was continuously beaten over the head with the same shotgun by the Major, and who was threatened with what he was told was a bomb, would also interesting.

HABIT

Hickman had also successfully robbed a bank of £17,500 two years earlier. It is clearly something of a habit. But Judge Mervyn Griffith-Jones, rebuffing any idea that Hickman was given special treatment because he had, like the Judge, gone to Eton and was an ex-Guards officer, assured the press that:

*I should have acted precisely the same way whoever and whatever the defendant might be. He would have got the same treatment" mentally ill man and went on:

"I took this view because the evidence showed that what he did was wholly out of keeping with his known character, his normal behaviour and his military record"

While it would be unmannerly to suggest that Judge Griffith-Jones was influenced by the Major's impeccable bourgeois credentials in his astonishingly lenient two year suspended sentence, we would advise any reader who sees a bank employee clubbed with a shotgun to check on whạt school the assailant went to, and what his military recora is, betore rushing to assist!

This blatant case has exposed sharply the real nature of the law. Compare the 1 Major's treatment with that meted out to Shrewsbury pickets Des Warren and Ricky Tomlinson.

"CONSPIRACY"

Neither of these men went to Eton. Neither served in the Guards. Therefore they had no "character" to act "out of"

As a result they were given savage sentences of 3 years and 2 years respectively for 'conspiracy'on the basis that they organised a mass picket in which it was alleged damage was done and scabs "intimidated"

No shotguns were used. Nobody was beaten over the head. No evidence was brought that either man himself did any damage. Nobody was interested in their past record of behaviour. They were simply sentenced and jailed.

Now we hear that Labour MP Walter Johnson has put forward a policy to deal with those he terms as "soccer hooligans"

Johnson calls for them to be sent to a special tough-disciple army unt, to avoid overcrowding in jails.

Of course his proposal reveals only his hostility to the frustrations building up in working class youth betrayed by the Callaghan government.

But if he really wants to empty the jails why does he not advocate that every convicted criminal be sentenced first of all to a spell and Eton and service in the Guards?

That way nobody would ever go to jail!

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