Inquire into LP's Coalition supporters

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looking baine missor Last Monday's principled action by outfitters at Swan Hunter shipyard has unleashed a storm of abuse.

Their refusal to succumb to employers' blackmail and to call off their overtime ban even under threat of redunA mass meeting at the Swan Hunter yard the Labour Party Conference, has now been backed by the ubiquitous John Chalmers of the Boilermakers Union, by UCATT, the Post Office Engineers' Union and by the TGWU.

Rightly suspicious

It has been opposed by 'lefts' on the Party's NEC who are rightly suspicious of the intentions behind such an inquiry.

Particularly alarming is the way the GMWU resolution laments the fact that:

"We must recognise that the Labour Party is no longer a mass party in terms of membership. We must attempt to reverse the downward trend in Party membership and Party activism".

Yet it is plain for all to see that the most moribund and deserted Labour Party branches are those controlled by the right wing who reflect the political outlook of Basnett and his fellow And it is certain that the union officials who have now swung behind his inquiry call For journalists on the 'Daily Mirror' the TUC decision to ditch the firemen publicly must have had a special meaning.

They returned to normal work on the same evening that the Finance and General Purposes Committee of the TUC issued its stirring statement that the firemen could get lost.

was reported saying:

"The government is not likely to be deflected from its present course of action."

He was echoing a similar statement that the TUC Printing Industries Committee had issued over the Mirror pay dispute.

The PIC 'negotiated' , if that is the word, a return to normal work for Mirror journalists who had taken action over a claim for a rise of £3,000 a year.

The journalists, have no intention of broadening the base of the Party by turning it towards the kind of socialist policies explicitly rejected by the Callaghan leadership and excluded by the Lib-Lab coalition deal.

Far more likely is that beneath a cover of concern for the fate of the Labour Party at local level, Basnett, Jones and Co. have a plan to increase their hold over constituency parties.

Waning membership

Basnett has never been seen to show the slightest interest in the "internal democracy" of the GMWU. Yet his motion calls "as a matter of urgency" for:

"An inquiry into the structure, organisation, finances and internal democracy of the Labour Party at all levels and relations with affiliated organisations and other Party interests"

Union bureaucrats know that with the waning membership and financial standing of the Labour Party, they are going to be the ones called on to cough up the bulk of the Basnett at the TUC ately enough, learned of the TUC plan in a letter from management.

It said that in return for going back with no money and a promise of more talks the journalists would agree that negotiations:

"Will be so arranged that full production will continue at all times, and that the relevant and normally accepted deadlines will be kept".

The TUC formula also said: "The constraints of pay policy guidelines are also a factor" in the talks.

In other words they can talk without being able to take action and so long as they settle for 10% and productivity deals.

Whether this had some affect on Fleet Street journalists is not clear.

Normal work in Fleet Street generally means the normal run of witchhunts against any group of workers who take action. estim over keep build Hated £5 million needed the next two years to the party afloat and its new headquarters.

Piper

They are setting out to ensure that the bureaucrats who pay the piper with their members' money call the tune on policy from the top (which they already control) to the bottom most ranks.

The only inquiry that ought to be conducted in every constituency is. to demand that the local MP or candidate declare where he or she stands on the Lib-Lab coalition and the wage-cutting policies of the Callaghan Those that support them should be removed at once. Those that claim to oppose them must be put to the test, and forced to declare openly that they will vote consistently against the Lib-Lab coalition in parliament, and that they will launch a campaign throughout the labour and trade union movement to remove the Callaghan -Healey leadership.

An "inquiry" along these lines would create the conditions for a renewed struggle for socialist policies within the Labour Party and clear aside some of the dead wood right wingers and fake lefts' that have politically alienated thousands of Labour Party activists.

A REFRESHING BREAK from bourgeois legality was promised by the Oxford City Labour Party in the programme for its dismal 'Xmas Bazaar': "Also many stills operated by the party branches, gifts, raffles and many side shows" (sic). Our eager correspondent however failed to find any trace of booch on sale.

In any event it would be difficult to argue for once with the assessment that Fleet Street headline writers made of the TUC blow against the firemen.

The Daily Telegraph said: "TUC spurns firemen in pay battle"; The Times: "TUC leaves firemen to fight alone"

The Daily Matt, which had been published in reduced form after action over pay by their own journalists said: "Firemen told: You are on your own".

The Mirror itself relegated the story to an inside page and headlined simply "TUC snub for firemen".

It was probably the weakest assessment of the historic betrayal by any of the Fleet Street papers.

Perhaps it was too dangerous to hold up a mirror to its own NUJ members. What is there to see is a horrible sight-the TUC without its mask.