Labour tells it like it isn't

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position.

Time and again rank and file would return Dobbs, the Dunne brothers, Carl Scoglund and others to their leadership posts with thumping majorities.

As the war approached Local 544 presented a particularly difficult problem for Tobin. The union newspaper, North West. Organiser had been pushing a consistant anti-war line and their sentiments enjoyed widespread support in the Minneapolis Labour Movement.

Tobin was committed to Roosevelt's pro-war line. This meant he had to move againt Local 544. ? organisers. From the left: Louis Miller, and Walter K. i on bail when the picture was Once Tobin decided to events moved with extreme rapidity. In May 1941 the IBT President invoked a rule preventing communists from holding union membership.

Despite its record of struggle and widespread support Local 544 was in a difticult position.

the Labour Party's now tamous party political 1--1--- dhar broadcast on ine National Front was SO hot it might melt the screen.

So they censored offending passages.

The programme was allowed to say that the NF was 'in the tradition of Adolph Hitler" but not that "every speech they make implies they would crush all opposition"

Telling points

BBC and ITV hierarchies also removed passages which listed John Tyndall's criminal record-convictions for carrying a loaded pistol, insulting words, assaulting police and breach of the peace.

A law designed to protect individuals from constantly having past crimes dragged up in public was used by the TV stations to protect Tyndall, from what the senior executives would consider the most telling points against himthat is not his fascism, but the fact he had been in front of bourgeois courts.

Nevertheless was the most-perhaps the only dramatic party political broadcast in memory.

The sound and tury against the NF was not the usual tame and tedious house style of the Labour Party.

The Front, it said, was out to "completely smash democracy". Pictures of Webster and Tyndall melted into those of Mussolini and Hitler.

The growth of the Front was even linked to the housing and economic problems Tyndall the inner cities.

But the predominant theme was that racialism was a wicked idea which came from the past and which was not British Though the programme represented an unexpected change of tactic from the Labour leadership, it inevitably left behind an accusing and unanswered question:

who is to blame fnr the National Front gaining ground in the last two years?

Material conditions

The answer is clear-the same Labour ministers who have spoken so proudly of the broadcast.

Through their policies of wage cutting and spending cuts they have systematically provided the material conditions in which fascism can grow.

This is both because of the failure of the labour leadership to offer policies in the interests of the workers; and because they fail to counter with socialist policies the search by the capitalists for a mass base should they require a fascist solution to the crisis.

Same source

Despite its daring use of films of Hitler and Mussolini the Labour Party broadcast did not, therefore, dare to draw the deeper historical parallel-that it was the criminal betrayals by workers' reformist and Stalinist leaders which allowed fascism and Nazism to rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s.

It is impossible to welcome these stirring noises against the NF without pointing out that they came from the same source as the policies which allow fascism and racialism to grow and which is itself promoting army strikebreaking and the new anti-picket police Special Patrol Group'.

• Unwitting help A consistent fight against racialism and fascism includes a fight against all the anti-working class policies of the Lib-Lab coalition government and of the union leaders and implies the building of a new leadership of the working class.

At least this broadcast may have unwittingly helped to open up more discussion within the Labour Party about what such a real fight against racialism would entail.

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protit not for need, is firstly in no sense workers' control and secondly, can serve only as a method of incorporating workers in their •Own oppression.

In the debate carried out in the pages of The Miner Arthur Scargill shows himself to be aware of some of these points:

*Participation will only perpetuate capitalism. : The NUM should not be misled into supporting the theory of workers' control within our existing society'.

He discusses the functioning of the Consultative Committees in collieries.

He points out:

'its main function has in fact, been as a vehicle for "pushing" the decisions and views of senior management in the coal mining industry.

Collaborated

Scargill gives examples of how such a Consultative Committee collaborated in the 'sacking of a miner for absenteeism:.

"This has the effect of weakening the union and des'the system, otherwise workers' control cannot be obtained'.

- Scargill's view of the transformation from capitalism to socialism is one in which capitalism continues to exist until all of a sudden one fine day, the working class seize power with a bang.

Unaware

He is absolutely unaware of the process of struggle by which this must come about.

The working class can and must begin to extend and strengthen its power within the capitalist state in order to furnish itself with the organisational strength and independence necessary for the struggle for power.

By blurring over the real distinction between workers' control and participation in management, Scargill also manages talsely to identify workers' control and workers' management-which possible only after nationalisation, and which for its development does presuppose the establishment of planned economy under socialism: for direct management nationalized industry w the hour for that eventua strikes'.

The Transitional trogram L. Trot.

We do not of cou expect Arthur Scargill, # his confused and eclectic vi of 'Marxism' to be aware or to uphold Trotsk Transitional Programme.

But it is significant that failing to draw a clear line the issue of participation workers' control, Scar; ends up in effect, sim] advocating a maximum p gramme of complete natic alisation, is to be achier how it 1s. td achiev Ammunition He is unable as a result provide any link between t day-to-day • fight for refor within capitalism carried o by the unions, and struggle for a socialist societ By leaving this gap he giv ammunition to NUM rig wingers like Derbyshire ar secretary Peter Heathfiel who lyingly argues: