Benn tour to boost mines incentive uDIC

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Labour's Record Slammed trast vividly the state of affairs in Russia with the vicious attacks against workers being carried out by the Lib-Lab coalition government administering capitalism in Britain.

Embarassment

Kitson's remarks could only be an embarassment to "lefts' like Eric Heffer who have doggedly supported the Lib-Lab deal and the policies that flow from it.

It was Heffer who made a point of raising discussion on Kitson's speech at Labour's Committee meeting last week.

Heffer's position was parallelled by Labour's crypto-Tory extreme right wing.

Recent deserter Reg Prentice called at once on Callaghan to act against Kitson. And Prentice's cronies and admirers in the Manifesto Group as well as Neville Sandelson MP rushed to denounce Kitson's mild statement.

'Drift to the left"

Tory defence spokesman Sir Ian Gilmour even claimed laughably that Kitson's speech had been a stark demonstration of the Labour Party's "drift to the left"

Socialist Press would of course criticise Kitson's speech. He clearly made no call for the independent struggles of the Soviet working class to overthrow the Kremlin bureaucracy in political revolution.

This is a reflection of Kitson's position as a top bureaucrat. His. Broad Left accomodation to the Stalinism of the Communist Party of Great Britain and his hostility to the political independence of the British working class make him incapable of putting a principled position on the Soviet Union.

Defended

But he must be critically 1-E--1-1 tha Energy Secretary, Tony Benn, emerged black faced from Parkside Colliery last week to tell the world outside that a head on clash between the miners and the government is out of the question.

"Anyone who thinks this is a re-run of 1973-4 with Mr Heath has completely misunderstood what is going on" he said.

Since the government has no intention of getting within a 100 miles of the miners £135 claim, Benn has pounced on the complete failure of Scargill to push for a strike vote and has again backed the twice rejected productivity deals.

Exposed

Benn's 'left' reputation has already been exposed time and again but his alliance with the right wing leadership of the NUM takes him to new depths.

Before the baliot this "silent revolutionary had urged the miners to vote for the speed-up and abandonment of their wage claim.

His 'no confrontation' speech came after he had been told that the NUM executive had decided to investigate productivity deals for areas that had voted in favour.

Benn is not just openly and arriveir rammaionino in If the right wing had won that ballot they would have enchained the left with their majority.

Now they have lost they seek to back right wingers who wish to opt out.

If it were not for the press and Tory MPs continuing to apply left and Marxist labels to Benn his role would be exposed for what it is-a cover for the policies oi Healey and Callaghan.

Like the 'nice and nasty' role is to soften up the miners for the open assaults of Callaghan, Healey and Daly.

No amount of soot on his face or subterranean expeditions can disguise it.

—ousing A meeting called by Islington Federation of Tenants Associations on 8 November laid bare the inability of even the most well-intentioned Labour councils to solve the housing problem.

Margaret Watson, housing chairman, gave a glowing account of Islington's housing programme; its capital budget of £58 million is by far the largest in London.

But her fine words fell flat against the storm of criticism which followed from tenants and building workers.

She admitted to being unable to control the cowboy tactics of private building firms and the subcontracting system.

£4 million is already scheduled for repairing defects on new estates. And new conversions lie empty ior dune Benn speaking to left admirers legal department battles for the making good of major faults.

Speaker after speaker clamoured for a massive build up of the Direct Labour Force as the only solution-to ensure good standards of building, to provide proper apprenticeship training and secure employment conditions and to create jots it: the unemployed.

Ms Watson boasted of the Council's record in winning large grants from central government to maintain the housing programme.

In fact its capitulation to Healey's cuts has meant that the demolition of 3,600 flats on inter-war estates has been postponed for 5-10 years. Then redevelopment was previously declared an "absolute priority' The Communist dominated Tenants F ederaDos joined enthusiastic ally in

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Connally addressing meeting of Dublin strikers reland CRISIS PART 3: The emergence of the labour movement The formation of a labour party in England was in Lenin's view an enormously important step.

Organising the English proletariat seperately from other classes represented, as he put it, 'a half way house to a genuine proletarian political party' In Ireland, however, the struggle to create a labour party took place in the very period . that the Irish nation w35 being created.

As a result two classesthe bourgeoisie and the proletariat-found themselves entering the stage of history at the same time.

Middle class

Fi was be spokesmen =::= fiass never 220: •= stress to working sis aidences that as far as Ls= canonal aspirations are Daze their interests were daccica In 1909 the leader Lish Parliamentary Trade Union Conwill in the furure as on the Ireland ... the function of a From history however, the Irish working class had examples that pointed in a rather different direction.

Urban workers, mainly protestant, had been prominent in agitation in the late eighteenth century to restore Parliamentary independence to Ireland.

Anti-union Yet, once this was achieved, the middle class used their militia the "Volunteers to disperse assemblies of workers protesting against poor working conditions, and the new Parliament was to pass the first anti-union combination laws.

The defeat of the rising of the United Irishmen saw the subordination of Ireland to England by an Act of Union in 1801.

The crait workers of Dublin. partly concerned with protection. supported the campaign of Daniel O° Connell for legislative independence. But in retur ic: their sappot O'Connell attacked trade 13025 Parnell urges peasants to withold rent union itself in causing the economic decline of Dublin.

James Connolly rightly said of O'Connell that he was 'the most unscrupulous and bitter enemy of trade unionism that Ireland has yet produced'.

A later nationalist leader, Parnell, took a similar position when he said 'What is trade unionism but the landlordism of labour. I would not tolerate if I were at the head of a Government such bodies as trade unions' Chartism made little advance in Ireland ever though one of its leaders.

Feargus O'Connor: came from Cork. O'Connell was hostile to the movement because like his successors in the nationals. movement Isaac Butt and Parnell he preferred to try to seek accomodation with the Eng.

lish ruling class for a settlement.

Politics shunned

No settlement was forthcoming however and with the fature to secure repeal oi the unios there was a shunning ci LE This meant that when the Dublin United Trades Association was founded in 1863 it limited its objectives to "co-operate for the protection of trade and the promotion and encouragement of local manufacture'.

Its successor was the Dublin Trades Council which preoccupied itself entireis with the protection ci skille: workers.

The Irish Trades Congress explicity == :aL:3 politica matters iro :TS annual conferences fr om its formation in 1894.

Gas workers

With the craft unions trying to ignore politics the initiative for a nationally based independent party for the working class fell to the Dublin branch of the National Union of Gasworkers and General Labourers who in 189] invited all trade unions in the country to an organising convention.

The craft unions stayed away and the attemp: came to nothing.

Three successful labour body was formed based on the Irish branches of English-based amalgamated skilled unions.

Only Belfast refused to participate in this movement, which was inspired by a feeling that Irish affairs were receiving insufficient attention by the parent body in England.

I= Belfast developments we:: moving in a different Section. In 1892 Ireland's inst local labour party was formed and affiliated to the ILP the next year.

ILP branches were also formed in Dublin and Waterford in 1894.

A local government act of 1898 eased restrictions on candidates, and labourDundalk, Waterford and Castlebar.

This development considerably alarmed the nationalists who had no desire to see the emergence of independent working class candidates.

'Labour and nationality must march together, insisted John Redmond, who feared that independent workers' parties might disrupt the Home Rule movement.

In fact these workers candidates elected to local councils achieved little. Man especially in Dublin, w5= bought off by the very it.

poration they had set ez m clean up.

Not accountable Ne Par: :

actions 10.= 1372 ::

: 229.=

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policemen who work in pairs on reluctant prisoners, Benn's

sponsored ones achieved successes in Dublin, Limerick,