Benn Gives Blessing to Callaghan

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The moment that was supposed to mark the end of Italy's latest government crisis, has dramatically become the occasion for a new political upheaval.

Aldo Moro was being escorted by his bodyguards to the parliament to join the Communist and Socialist Parties in voting confidence in Guilio Andreotti's new administration when he was kidnapped and his bodyguards shot dead.

Responsibility for this cunningly executed coup has been claimed, like many other recent dramatic terrorist attacks, by the "Red Brigades".

Moro is not just any Italian ex-prime minister.

Architect

striking blow against "imperialist capitalism" and in favour of the socialist Some of their captured alleged members have said that the group's strategy is to provoke a fascist coup in order to provoke the workers movement to break from the reformism of the Communist Socialist Press totally condemns this dangerous perspective which we assume The CP leadership is now being consulted by the state authorities about how to deal with the crisis following Moro's capture.

While the CP members of parliament rushed to vote their support for Andreotti's new anti-working class austerity programme, the party organised a joint demonstration in favour of "democracy" with the Christian Democrats.

It was with pride and not With production in British industry still below the levels of the Tory three-day week, and almost daily announcements of factory closures and redundancies in every part of the country, the impact of the Lib-Lab government's anti-socialist policies is being widely felt.

On Merseyside alone closures and sackings by Meccano, British Leyland, Birds Eye, GEC, Lucas CP leader Be linguer (left) Aerospace, l Lucas Industries, Booth Concrete, Courtaulds and Cammell Laird have put over 7,000 jobs under the axe in an area where 11.3% of the workforce is already unemployed.

Still militant

The quick succession of announced Liverpool cutbacks seems as much designed to discipline, demoralise and weaken a still militant section of the working class as to rationalise capitalist industry in the area.

But these redundancies are just a part of the all-round attack on manning levels being waged by employers in every industryfrom the railways to the shipyards from car components to food manufacture.

This is the price being paid by the working class for fulfilment of the Callaghan government's plan to restore the profitability of private industry through stepping up the exploitation of the working class.

And while individual left' Labour MPs, particularly from Merseyside, have raised isolated whimpers in protest against aspects of this conscious policy, they have continued to troop loyally into the Parliamentary lobbies to vote support for the reactionary Lib-Lab alliance that is implementing the attacks.

Early election

Now, with talk of an early election being bandied about in the Tory press, this "left-wing" grovelling to Callaghan will no doubt intensify.

The first signs have already appeared. Moth eaten "left" coalition minister Tony Benn declared to a rally of supposedly left-wing 'Tribune' supporters last Friday that he and his co-thinkers would work all-out for the return of a Labour government under Callaghan.

"Let no one suppose that the policy debates inside the party, which will continue through the drafting of the manifesto and into the next Parliament, indicate any hesitation in working flat-out for electoral victory under jim Callaghan"

By explicitly rejecting any intention of replacing Callaghan, Benn is merely stating openly the position tacitly held by the whole Labour 'left'.

joke His talk of a "debate" on the manifesto is no more than a sick joke, since Benn knew when he