'lefts' Rush to Praise 'militant

Scan page 5

Transport House's tame cat has just had kittens. The weekly Marxist paper for Labour and youth" and amiably tolerated by Labour's right wing leadership has just gone to 16-pages.

First to congratulate the Militant group on their new offspring were 'left' MPs Eric Heffer, Arthur Latham and Syd Bidwell.

These gentlemen have long been noted for their capacity PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report Heffer to combine "left wing" oratory on selected occasions with loyal Parliamentary support for the Lib-Lab coalition and diehard opposition to any fight to oust the Callaghan-Healey leadership.

It is more than fitting that the Militant, which, like the Tribunite 'lefts', continues to describe the Callaghan-Steel coalition as "the Labour government' , should feel it an asset to win the endorsement of such spineless individuals.

The lead article of Militant's first 16-page edition calls on 'the Labour government» • to "sweep aside" the capitalists and "free industry from their parasitic grip with a socialist plan of production"

Yet Militant knows as well as anyone else that without a decisive break from the Liberals and the ousting of the viciously anti-socialist Labour: leaders no such course of action is feasible. •They make no call for such a policy.

Such accomodation to the Labour bureaucracy remains the hallmark of Militant Unless the question of a break in the coalition and independent working class action is raised, all their front page "demands"-for a £15 rise, a £60 minimum wage tied to the cost of living, opening the books of the supermarkets and nationalisation of the 200 top monopolies-serve merely as a left cover for support to the coalition policies of Callaghan and Healey.

No coincidence But Militant's accomodation to the reformist bureaucracy goes müch further than capitulation to the Labour leaders themselves and grovelling to their 'left' . accomplices.

It also prevents an independent mobilisation against the union bureaucracy that keeps the Lib-Lab coalition in office.

It is no coincidence therefore that in an expanded 16page paper, and in the week of the Cowley TGWU witchhunt, Militant has not a word of support to the 10 victimised militants or opposition to the McCarthyite tactics the TGWU bureaucracy.

This is not because some rank and file supporters of the Militant do not feel strongly on the question.

In the Midlands in particular they have expressed eagerness and already taken steps to campaign against the witch-hunt.

But the Militant leadership are clearly reluctant to give national prominence to a struggle that could jeopardise their cosy relations with the top echelons of the Labour and TGWU bureaucracy.

Far from acting as "a really powerful weapon to arm the working class", the 16-page Militant has already established itself as a dead weight retarding the political development of workers and youth.

While militant workers might be highly sceptical of the 'socialist' credentials of coalitionist Energy Minister Wedgewood Benn, there is one man who is not.

David Steel, Liberal Party leader, speaking in Yorkshire over the weekend said that the Liberals would be prepared to block any legislation introduced by Benn if he refused to "'accept the spirit of cooperation" that lay behind the Lib-Lab pact.

Benn, of course, has no intention of doing any such thing. He is quite content to tow the line of the coalition government, making the odd 'left' noise when necessary to head off any move towards independent mobilisation by the working class.

Scan page 6

Page 6 SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday Mars 197c In the colourful myths which the bourgeoisie hands down as history, Mohandas Gandhi is a man respected and revered. He figures as a Whitfield nine were killed, 1,200 wounded.

General Dyer proclaimed that he had aimed for "a moral effect from a military point of view, not only on work for the common good.

«This is hardly to be expected of them all of a sudden, and until they have bettered their own condition so as to enable them to keep body and soul together in a decent manner.

"The greatest political contribution, therefore, that labourers can make is to

----- pull-quotes -----

paper 'Militant' —laugh- ingly described as "the

Left for Benn