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labour movement to break the Lib-Lab coalition and remove the Caliaghan-Healey Labour leadership.

He was the only speaker to protest at the invitation to BBC televising cameras that had been extended by the publicity-hungry SWP organisers.

Conspicuous by their absence however were the conference's most eager publicists on the lett, the İnternational Marxist Group, whose paper, Socialist Challenge had been trumpeting praise for the conference and calling for support for weeks beforehand.

In the end four IMG members were spotted in the 400-strong audience which itself was considerably smaller than the last conference.

The drop in numbers was matched by a certain loss of control by the SWP-run Rank and File committee.

In two shock votes on policy amendments, the platform was first defeated and then scraped through by a whisker.

As a result the longstanding SWP demand of a flat £15 across-the-board pay rise was scrapped, and the call for *wage increases at least large enough to restore 197475 living standards" was adopted.

Narrowly defeated

And the call for work-sharing on full pay as the policy to combat sackings and unemployment was only narrowly defeated.

A further amendment. calling for cost of living clauses in all pay settlements and "automatic increases in social spending to compensate for inflation" received only. S0 votes, after the platform had first distorted the amendment, and then made it plain they saw it as an issue of confidence.

The conference's emphasis away from political questions and towards pure trade union militancy was reflected in the smaller number that voted for a break in the Lib-Lab coalition.

And there was nothing to suggest that this latest Rank and File conference would do any more than its predecessors to assist the course of the struggle against the trade union bureaucracy.

Only the construction of a new political leadership on a programme to regain and defend living standards can fulfill the tasks now confronting the working class. has voted to be closed to t nen -and this year. was no exception.

Excluding men from the Womens' Conference can only detract further from the fight to make womens' issues an integral part of NUS policy.

Women alone can never challenge the material roots of their oppression -that struggle can only be undertaken by the whole labour and student movement with a principled leadership which, unlike the present NUS leadership, recognises the importance of womens' rights.

NUS conference delegates in December should support an amendment to delete the demand for autonomy of the Womens' Conference from this Women in Society" motion.

But it is vital that the substantive motion is passed so that an effective campaign for womens rights can be built throughout IUS.