[won't he" press speculation on the possible ending…]

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won't he" press speculation on the possible ending of the Lib-Lab coalition deal has brought the question of the nature of the deal back into the news.

Virtually alone on the left in Britain, the WSL has insisted that the Lib-Lab deal was not simply a Parliamentary device to enable the PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Censorship is not a moral question. The control of opinion and news is as much a reflection of the domination of one class as the dispensing of justice by JPs.

It was not surprising, therefore, that within hours of the BBC "Tonight' programme last Thursday, in which Official IRA and Sinn Fein spokesmen spoke face to the camera, Tory spokesman Airey Neave was demanding an inquiry.

Viewers can have been in little doubt of the BBC's attitude. The programme was designed to bolster rather than erode the image of the Irish nationalists as monsters.

The presenter remarked casually that the probable reason the Provisional IRA had refused to give an interview was because they did not have an answer to the questions!

Nevertheless Neave, as he has done on every occasion that television has appeared to question the role of the Army or the British government, accused the BBC :.propagandising the same Labour government to retain office, but embodied a new level of subordination of the Labour Party to the bourgeois Liberal Party.

From the outset we have shown that the essence of this bloc was the Liberals' determination that wage controls be maintained, and their belief that the Labour leaders in harness with the TUC were the only force capable of upholding it.

Socialist Press discarded line of incidents of censorship and attempted censorship on events in Northern Last week Socialist Worker reprinted some extracts from the minutes of the News and Current Affairs Committee of the BBC, which had first appeared in the Leveller.

The minutes are incomplete, in reported speech and in. part ambiguous. They provide little more than a fleeting glimpse into the workings of the policy-making body of the BBC news team.

But in a few short paragraphs are revealed:

-The drought in Bangladesh was dropped from news programmes after it was reported that India would react badly (because controlled the water flow of the River Ganges).

-The National Front was to be treated as "just another political party" while the IRA was not.

-Discussion was held on concealing the racial origins of murder victims if racial killings became widespread.

-Pressure was brought on reporters to show more hostility to Robert Mugabe, the the fake rhetoric peddled by Liberal leader Steel suggesting that the Liberals were interested simply in achieving certain concessions in relation to elections for the European Parliament.

Absolutely Last week's events have proved our position absolutely correct.

Amid the wreckage of Liberal hopes for EEC to Philip Agee, who being deported.

In this last case it was reported that he had visited Cuba on several occasions and should be treated with "appropriate scepticism":

The use of the courts to prevent publication is now commonplace and their use to prevent TV programmes going out has increased dramatically.

The blacking out of the programme about Tate and Lyle workers in South Africa was merely the latest in a long line-which has extended even to The Goodies.

On Sunday the News of the World exposed a meeting of the "British Conservation Society" as being a meeting of the British Movement.

The BBC's reaction was to invite its leader onto "The World This Weekend' and leave him free to present his racialism over the air.

Inside the press, radio and IV is being waged a continuous class battle for the means to control the presentation of news.

The question of whose freedom will prevail will be answered only by answering the deener auestion-which elections based on proportional representation -and of comfortable seats in that Parliament to preserve their own careers-Steel clung tenaciously to the Lib-Lab To run the risk of bringing down the government at a crucial point in its fight to impose the 10% limit on the firemen and another 14 million workers was a chance Steel was not prepared to take.

In addition to wage controls, Steel can also point to other key aspects of the Liberals' anti-working class policies being implemented by the Callaghan government.

Proposals to assist small businesses and to legislate the Devolution Bill, borrow extensively trom the Liberals' programme-as do Healey's tax cuts.

Not contemplated And the Liberals have Callaghan's assurance (if any were needed!) that no socialist policies will be contemplated.

They are consulted on every aspect of government policy in the House of Commons-far more so than the Labour Party National Executive or the Labour Conference, both of which are ignored by the Callaghan-Healey leadership.

And this gives the Liberals their first smell of governmental power for decades. Small wonder that Steel is reluctant to put all this at risk, and chance the oblitSkinner eration of his party in General Election by breaking the coalition deal.

From Callaghan's side also the coalition provides a vital prop.

The Parliamentary support at present being given by the Scottish and Welsh bourgeois nationalists is a fickle support that could at any point evaporate.

As such it is inadequate as a foothold from which to impose a further round of vicious wage controls on the working class.

It was the search for a base of support outside of and against the organised working class to impose such policies that led Callaghan last March from almost exclusive reliance on the police role of the TUC bureaucracy to sign a joint pact with the Liberals.

Important turn

This marked an important turn for the Labour leaders.

The Labour Party was built by the trade union movement at the beginning of the century after repeated harsh lessons had shown that the Liberals would not defend workers' interests.

It was a partial step on the road to an independent workers' party. But from the outset its leaders refused to develop the political independence of the working class.

It remained a working class party. in name, but saddled with a bourgeois leadership dedicated to class collaboration, who see the road to socialism as a road leading through piecemeal 'reforms' of capitalism and bourgeois Parliamentary elections.

At every crisis point Left-talker Neil Kinnock leaders have decisively taken their stand in support of the capitalist class and against efforts to remove it.

But in the Lib-lab deal the Callaghan governmentunder pressure of the forward movement of workers against wage control and against the TUC collaborators-reached out to ally itself and subordinated itself openly to Britain's second-string bourgeois party-the Liberals.

Continuing crisis

This deal reflected the weakness in front of the class strength of the working class.

But the lack of any decisive challenge to this new alignment within the Labour Party or the TUC indicates the continuing crisis of political leadership within the organised workers' movement.

Of those Labour MPs who like to be regarded as left wing' only Dennis Skinner is on record as stating he is prepared to vote against the Lib-Lab coalition -and Skinner has made no moves to launch any fight against it.

Meanwhile the 'lefts' have trooped obediently time and again into the lobbies to vote support for Liberal policies and for the wage controls that keep the Lib-Lab deal intact.

As Eric Heffer said:

"I'm in favour of sustaining the government. Therefore if I do vote for the government it will not be because I agree with the [devolution) proposals but merely to help sustain it."

But last week's flurry of activity has again spelled out the facts.

Break the The coalition hinges the 10% policy.

Any • Labour MP who claims to oppose this pay limit must therefore be forced to fight to break the Lib-Lab deal and to remove its supporters from the leadership of the Labour Any MP that takes up this fight must be supported in that fight.

Those that shy away from it must be removed.

In this struggle workers can learn the real positions of their leaders left' and right, and see the need for a new leadership in the workers' movement.

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PARTY Last week's "will he,

PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Wiard. Report