Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today, Woman Worker, Class Fighter and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

No call to break pact

Socialist Press no. 71, 12 October 1977 · scan p. 4 · about 439 words

Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 4 →

Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.

Scan page 4

League lobbyers fought to draw out the real position of the Tribunite "left' MPs, no Militant group.

Indeed the front page of their 16-page 'Conference Special' paper was turned over to the diversionary call for 'Socialist Policies Now!' Such a demand, unless firmiy linked to the central call for the breaking of the Lib-Lab coalition, is completely spurious. And nowhere the 16-pages did Militant make this call.

As the WSL leaflet stressed, the main decisions of the Labour Party conference had already been pre-empted by the Liberal Conference vote to continue the deal with Callaghan only so long as no socialist policies were introduced.

But for Militant the call for "socialist policies" has always been no more than window dressing to camouflage cringing, opportunist relations with cringing, opportunist elements within the Labour Party.

This was clear from the obsequious way in which Militant sellers greeted Heffer and the other "lefts' , and from their failure to challenge the platform on anything other than import controls.

And it is borne out by the 7 October issue of Militant which astoundingly headlines not the collapse of "left' opposition at the Labour Conference, but some of the left rhetoric of a handful of delegates.

"The Marxist Paper for Labour and Youth" has again proved its real role as a cl leerleader for the fake lefts and the right wing.

imports:

It is not socialist to be opposed to import controls, he claimed.

'What we need is workers control, not import controls', retorted a heckler.

Thomas, rattled, went on to attack Trotsky as 'out of date. 'He supported all kinds of fiscal policies, he claimed.

'He was an internationalist and a socialist not a British chauvinist' responded another heckler.

FACE HIDDEN

In the closing moments of the meeting Orme in his hands, was hiding his face stung into action not only by continual shouts but also by the speech by Selly Oak MP Tom Litterick, who condemned the government's "shameful support for British imperialism in Ireland."

Litterick had made a long contribution attacking careerist elements in the government-interrupted by shouts of "Ask Stan Orme!"

Orme finally got to his feet and denounced what he called "fascism" on the part of "both the Provisional IRA and the Protestant extremists"-to roars of hostility.

He blundered on, attempting to change personal credit fortice pay into child benefits:

After the shouts abated on this it was left to Jo Richardson MP to sum up the views of the platform on the topic:

"The pubs have been open for 47 minutes" • she said.

----- pull-quotes -----

support was forthcoming from the self-styled 'Marxists' of the

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 71, 12 October 1977

Something wrong on this page? Tell us →