Labour Briefing no. 108

BRIEF

24th-October 24th 1990

ritain out of the Gu

LABOUR: BREAK

Slowly but surely the British people are

being sucked into what could be a ont shooting war in the Middle East. h, Thatcher and the service chiefs of

Fi

the USA and Britain seem more than keen on the prospect.

Such a War would not be a just war on behalf of the people of Iraqi-occupied Kuwait but an imperialist war fought over oil.

Daily, hourly, the military build-up takes place. Air and ground forces, armoured units, artillery regiments are all now involved. As time goes on more and more troops, tanks and equipment will be sent.

We are now informed by Defence Secretary Tom King that some British forces will come under US control. That means that if the US government decides to take unilateral military action Britain will be involved whether the British people want it or not.

The concrete proposals for negotiations put forward by Ted Heath were rejected out of hand by Thatcher.

What is really frightening is that Labour’s Front Bench have been totally supine.

In the two-day debate in the Commons, Gerald Kaufman and Martin O'Neill gave more or less unqualified support to Thatcher. On Question Time , Roy Hattersley repudiated Heath’s proposals, which were simply an attempt to find a way out of the crisis without war.

it is now clear that whatever the government does, it will be backed by Labour’s Front Bench.

LABOUR - TAKE THE POWER!

% bad a a

It seems as if every time British troops are involved Labour's leaders can only manage a knee-jerk jingoist reaction.

Hugh Gaitskell backed the Tories over Suez until the labour movement pulled hint back from the precipice.

Over the Falkiands, Michael Foot’s chauvinistic speech in the House helped push the government into sending the Task Force.

Now the same serious error is being made once again.

By ERIC HEFFER MP

The government has no-need to look over its shoulder to see what the opposition is doing or wonder what the press and media will say.

They may bleat about the need for the UN to agree before further action is taken

but in essence they have already assured. the government that if a shooting war takes place they will support it.

The one hope left is Labour Party Conference. The delegates must tell the leadership to change course before it is too late. Our leaders must stop snivelling at the government's heels and assert their independence.

This is a critical moment for Labour. If a war Starts god only knows where it will end.

Opposition to a war, demands for negotiating a way out and for giving Saddam a face-saving formula to avoid wholesale bloodshed — this does not

INSIDE:

¥xKinnock’s Conference? vLabour and the Unions «Gulf crisis YxBehind the Benn Diaries Y%xCOSATU wxConference greetings vxFascism in France

amount to support for the brutal dictatorship in Iraq.

It was not Labour's left which sold arms to Saddam, organised arms trade fairs in Baghdad, and turned a blind eye to the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds.

Labour as a whole, at Party Conference, urged no sale of arms to either Iraq or Iran during the nine year war. It was the Western capitalist powers who cashed in and made immense profits out of that tragic conflict. It was the USA which kept the genocide of the Kurds off the UN agenda.

The time has come for the labour movement as a whole to reassert its anti-imperialist, anti-war traditions. Labour's Conference can give the lead.

Saddam Hussein is a murderous dictator and should be brought down by the Arab peoples. We as socialists must work for a free, democratic, and peaceful Iraq.

To do that we must oppose without equivocation an imperialist war.

Labour Briefing No. 108 September 24th-October 24th Page 2

Letters

Eating their

words

Dear Briefing

‘The reports in No. 107 of the Briefing Readers’ Meeting held in July did not bring out two points which most struck me—as an interested observer!

The first was the paucity of the arguments advanced by those who wish to make a priority of the so-called Socialist Movement, as opposed to the Labour Party and Briefing itself.

The second was the appetite of some of these comrades for eating their own words.

Phil Hearse is a classic example. Both at the Readers’ Meeting and in Briefing of June 6th Phil made it clear that in his view the work of socialists should not be reduced to the struggle in and for the Labour: Party; indeed, he argued that this was by no means a “militant” socialist’s main work.

But on digging into my collection of first editions, I found Phil Hearse and John Lister putting a very different case in Socialist Outlook No.1 (May/June, 1987).

There they vehemently

argued that to turn to forces outside the Labour Party “at the expense of continuing essential political fight inside the unions and the Labour Party would be a tremendous mistake...The left’s voluntary desertion from the fight would be an enormous turnaround in British politics and a blow against the working class, which still shows no willingness to break in any numbers from the Labour Party”.

Phil and John were absolutely right!

The fight in the Party and unions is a long, hard and unremitting one. It’s much easier and more comfortable to opt out and turn to the invigorating hot air of the so-called Socialist Movement — an ephemeral hotch-potch with no class basis which is little more than a glorified debating society.

Some of us have thought for some time that many Socialist Outlook supporters were losing interest in the struggle’in the Labour Party. But the speed of the process is just a little breath-taking!

Yours, Pete Willsman

Lewisham Briefing Supporters say:

“Socialists of the World unite!

You have nothing to lose but your Labour Party Membership!”

Authors’ Query

Dear Briefing,

We are writing a history of the Labour Party in the 80s from the perspective of rank and file members.

We would be interested in hearing from Party activists from all regions of the country about their experiences in the Party in recentyears. *

in particular, we would be interested in any details

about the effects on the Party's grass-roots of the policies and practices pursued by the Party's national leadership.

Confidentiality will be strictly respected and all correspondence will be answered.

Please write to us at 79 Inderwick Road, London, N8 OLA.

Yours sincerely, Richard Heffernan and Mike Marqusee Haringey, London

Beyond the

fragments

Dear Briefing ,

Steve Clarke's article “Building a United Campaign” (Briefing 107) attacks the SWP and RCP for * going off and organising their own demonstrations”.

The implication is that both these groups divided the forces protesting against Bush and Thatcher's war drive.

This was not the case. At the original picket of the US Embassy on the 22nd August, called by the sponsors of what became the Campaign Against War in the Gulf (CAWG), the RCP announced that an Ad Hoc Committee had called a demonstration for September 8th and invited all present to join in the organisation of it. At that point no other demonstration was

Workers Power, along with other groups, joined in the organising and considerable publicity was put out. A week later in full knowledge of the 8th demonstration, the SWP announced its own

Labour Briefing AGM

November 11 th1990 Durham Rd Community Centre Durham Rd , London N4 12 noon - 4.30pm

Resolutions welcome Vital decisions on Briefing’s future will be taken!

Verso

Marching against War in the Gulf, Sept 15th

demonstration on the 1st

Then CAWG announced a demonstration on the 15th September, to be followed closely by the Committee Against War in the Gulf which picked the same

day but a di e blame stopping the imperialists’

demonstration. The result of all this was three demonstrations on

NUPE -

Contact Briefing

Please write to Labour Briefing at PO Box 1235, London N4 2UY. You can telephone the Briefing office on 081 809 3927.

By the time most of our readers see this issue, the Briefing team will be busy burrowing for socialism inthe bowels of Blackpool. We're putting all our considerable energies, resources and not inconsiderable talents into the Labour Party Socialists daily conference bulletin. To see how see all fared under the basilisk death-stare of the bureaucracy, read the next Briefing. published on Wednesday, October 24.

Deadline for articles: Inesday October 17

Published by Labour Briefing: PO Box 457, London SW2 5UZ. (Please do not use this address for correspondence.)

three Saturdays ina row.--notdistortwhat actually Undoubtedly a single happened as Steve ——— | united demonstration Clarke's article does. The would have drawn larger conference called by forces than three separate CAWG on November 3rd ones did in total. can at least unite the While this was in the forces committed to

worst traditions of the fighting to get the — sectarianism of the British imperialist troops out and

of the RCP. We should learn the Stuart McKee lesson of this fiasco and London 4

Hackney Officers Branch

Socialist Publishers

Greetings to Conference Delegates Support union rights for solidarity action — stop their backsliding!

Keith Veness Secretary

sends greetings to Labour Party Conference

Terry Sims Chair

Labour Briefing No. 108 September 24th-October 24th Page 3

Briefing update

We say:

Labour and the Gulf

Labour must break

with the Tory war dr,

The Labour Partly was —_— escalating war of understandable, the cannot be expected ae formed to give the words and logic is faulty. to play evena S$ working class an diplomatic gestures, In opposing the genuine restraining

independent political voice.

Tragically, that independence has

could break out into full-scale war at any time. Once it does, it will be hard for

US-led intervention, socialists must go back time and again to a basic question:

tole on the Western powers.

Labour must mke aclean and

ve!

been forfeited by anyone to contain it. What are the war unequivocal break

Labour leaders time The loss of life will aims of the Western from these powers

and again, be unspeakably powers? and their war aims.

especially when it hontific. A quick glance at Failure to do so will

comes fo “foreign Environmental and the track record of amount to a historic

affairs”. economic these powers shows betrayal of the Kinnock’s support devastation will that these aims do working class, which

for the Tory war drive follow. notinclude: the has no interest

in the Gulf is the latest whatsoever in war or

in along and any other actions

shameful line of . cers ed to secure

craven performances i US, British and other

from Labour leaders - The Es Ee at Thatcher s War capitalist interests in : ;

from the First World cH la ob uleaddeedod iegd ches “we, _ the middle east. SetoL Epi mongerer

would do well fo consider the cost of a Gulf War js the current war i

War to the Falklands. : The working class de fe both sides of the However, there is fo\petrol bills. Cali and all genuinely preparations. This will ~~ House of Commons,

nother labour An increase to $65 a barrel (likely in the democratic forces serve as the basis for sickened by their

movement tradition - along and honourable one - of

event of war) would put British petrol at £3 per

gallon.

do have an interest in the removal of Saddam Hussein and

the truly mass movement which we will need if a shooting war breaks out.

war-mongering and hypocrisy

For socialists, especially those

oi anti-militarism and This is clear to development of the liberation of all , i sii anyone not blinded democracy in the peoples in the According fo volved in the dead within the Party political ambition. upholding of rifis “ss... and the unions. Hence the intemational law, or which oppress them. Public oppose the a "Indeed, there is widespread revulsion _ the deterrence of But liberation of US-British military the views of these > now an undeniable at the prospect of territorial aggression. this kind can never intervention (26% of people, organising ' undercurrent of war felt at the base of Indeed, the come at the hands Labour voters). More © nd mobilising them discontent within the labour movement. immediate aim is of US and British and more people are both inside and movement. On this However, in simply the restoration troops, multi-national ~— tuming away fromthe outside the Labour issue, Kinnock, opposing the drive to _ of the Emir to power corporations, NATO poltical Party, is the priority of Kaufman and O'Neill war, some onthe left in Kuwait. or the Security establishments on the moment. do not speak for the are looking to the UN Of ee is real cee rank and file. and to "peaceful" aims military left — not just in i | The steady sanctions as "safe" intervention are sritain but around the Tony Benn says: build-up of troops substitutes for all-out — much wider: control world - must “There is no evidence of a popular consensus and military military conflict. of the price and flow advance a new in Britain in support of US military action against hardware in the Gulf, While the of oil and the agenda for Iraq. accompanied by an sentiments are assertion of democracy and President Bush must be made aware that he permanent social change in the _| will not be able to count on the whole-hearted = gs imperialist middle east. consent of the British people if he goes to war Labour Briefi ng dominance This agenda must | on his own, and then drags this country in with Kaelin our address the him. oe ee political) in the entire. long-standin. We must be urging a negotiated settlement La bou r Pa rty —— a otievances ine to all the outstanding problems in Lh! in H e sanctions Palestinians and which the Arab world must have the decisive Conference Fringe cusrontly pe Kurds, of the voice” i imposed on Iraq are oppressed masses in Meeti ng meant to serve these ete and the

Sunday Sept 30th

aims - as well as providing a convenient trip-wire

countryside, and of the millions of migrant workers whose labour

Tony Benn, speaking at a recent Labour Party Socialists meeting in Birmingham.

8pm for mpiltery action. produces wealth for New Clifton Hotel teady. Therefore they Wins Sova ed u | j Blackpool cNefaeachaa’ Cott A Hull Campaign posing the demand for a P Norare such wor Opposition to war Against War in Ay oe withdrawal of British and US

Labour and the Gulf Crisis with Tony Benn

aims or any action in pursuit of them tendered any more acceptable by a UN seal of approval.

in the Gulf will grow as the real nature of the conflict there becomes more apparent. For the left,

has been set up following a meeting of 25 people called by the local Trades Council.

in Hull.

troops.

After a full debate, the meeting agreed, with only one against, to set up a local campaign based on the twin slogans of “No war in the

With the collapse it must be a focal Debate aS Bek Jeremy Corbyn of Stalinist power on _pointin its battle “8 Se A enti NO0S the world stage and =~ ‘against the Labour mong those attendi The meeting also heard CARI the apparent leadership, both at Werestoth: EBOGLs ROWS a aay Piporanaobe eer readiness of Labour Party left groups, end Aras WING 14 force tha diapiia int Women for Socialism seat Sar OLG

US-Britain out now!

Gorbachev to give US imperialism the green light in the Third World, the Security Council

conference and after. There is an urgent need to build a united, democratic campaign against

The meeting featured lively discussion, with some speches supporting the political leadership of Saddam Hussein and others op-

North Sea between OILC and the oil companies.

Further information from: Hull CAWG, c/o PO Box 102, Hull or Tel: 0482 470158.

} Secielay CAWG - i the start forces

Labour Briefing No. 108 September 24th-October 24th Page 4

Briefing update

Campaigning

against Guif

The 7000 strong demonstration against war in the Gulf was an important step forward in building a strong, broad anti-war movement.

Briefing supporters should now go all out to build local campaigns against the war-drive, using the next demonstration on November 3rd, and the planned Conference Against the War as focusses.

We need to try to draw broader sections of the labour movement into the campaign - there were far too few CLPs and trade union branches on the march. Comrades should try to get delegates - as well as individuals - to go down for the weekend for both the demo and the conference.

by Patrick Baker,

around the Socialist Movement, and particularly Women for

din Oo r he left and the peace movement to unite against Bush and Thatcher's sabre-rattling. WIS called the first picket of the US embassy

at the end of August, which drew more than two hundred people, as well as a broad range of sponsors from the left and the peace movement, ata few days notice.

Urgent

Following that initiative, participating groups and individuals agreed to form a Campaign Against War in the Gulf (CAWG). Ata packed meeting it was agreed that further action was an urgent necessity.

It was agreed that the CAWG should be based on 2 demands - 'No War in the Gulf!’ and "US and British Troops Out!'; we also agreed that all meetings should be open.

Rapid moves were made to organise a national demonstration. Yet the task of uniting the left behind such a project proved more complex than one might hope. No one was surprised that the RCP immediately moved to call their own demonstration; but a similar response from the SWP was disappointing.

But this was not the end of the manoeuvring - we

then heard that forces

Green Party and supporters of Socialist Action had also organised a committee against the war threat.

WE SAY: “End the Ban!”

The NEC’s ban on Socialis! Organiser is a flagrant attack on the rights of freedom of speech and association in the Labour Party.

Labour Briefing has opposed, and will continue to oppose, all witch-hunts. For any sodialist with a serious commitment to the Labour Party there is no alternative.

The methods used by Walworth Road in their atlack on Sociaist Organiser — confidential MI5-style dossiers, hear-say

evidence, and

jation of every norm of

natural justice and due process — should set off the alarm bells in every civil libertarian’s

head.

These methods must be exposed and

expunged from the Party.

Without the freedom fo write for, sell, and read any newspaper of their choice, Labour Party members will be hopelessly hamstrung in the fight against the Tories.

Kinnock and the careerists in Walworth Rd

fear open sociali

debate. They loath the

challenge of radical ideas. Let’s not make it easy for them. All of us must stand up and be counted forSocialist

Organiser.

Stop Press Thirty Constituency Labour Parties have

passed the “End the Ban” Emergency

Resolution to Labour Party Conference. Will the

leadership allow a full debate?

See next Briefing for details.

Marching against Gulf War, Sept 15th

Our initial hopes that this could be united with CAWG proved unfounded, however. Discussions revealed that this committee was not based on rank and file participation; and was not agreed on the demand for the withdrawal of US and British troops.

~— CAWG decided that it ~

would affiliate to the Committee and work together with it as closely as possible, while continuing to organise ‘open letter is soon to be launched with the aim of pushing towards a united, democratic campaign.

Nonetheless, CAWG's initiatives, as well as pressure from the base of CND, clearly pushed sections of CND into taking action - and so should be seen as a success.

CAWG organised a contingent on the September 15th

Gulf crisis hits the West

PHOTO: Tim Nolan

demonstration around the demand "US & British Troops Out of the Gulf!", as well as a public meeting with Jeremy Corbyn MP.

Future initiatives planned include a picket of the US embassy on September 29th, as well as a Conference Against the War, provisionally planned for November 4th.

A number of local campaigns against the war threat have been formed around the country

Scotland.

More information, as well as leaflets, posters and sponsorship forms for CAWG are available through the Briefing office. Where groups have not yet been established, Briefing supporters should take the initiative to launch a campaign, and argue for affiliation to both CAWG and the Committee to Stop the War.

Campaign Against War in the Gulf

Labour Party Conference Fringe Meeting

Monday, October 1 6pm-8pm with :Tony Benn Dawn Primarolo Jeremy Corbyn

Harry Barnes Women for Socialism

Seminar Room Strerton Hotel Princess Parade 206-214 The Promenade Blackpool

Spanish

workers made to pay

The Spanish government has called for a new agreement with the unions for changes in economic policies to “soften the conse-

quences of the Persian.

Kevin Flack Lewisham East CLP

The government's plans, which include wage restraints, have been rejected by the two major trade unions, Union General

de Trabajadores and

Comissiones Obreras. The UGT has declared its intention to use all possible means to oppose the “Socialist” government’s fresh attempt to extract more sacrifices from the workers. The unions are

now demanding the implementation of agreements negotiated with the government after the December 1988 General Strike.

Angel Campos of the Comissiones Obreras told El Pais that “the changes proposed by the government will bring about a fall in living standards and an increase in unemployment” and that it “confirms what we have been fearing for a long time, that he (Gonzales) ‘was trying to bring about major economic changes”.

According to Campos the Gulf conflict (to which

~-Spain has sent three naval vessels) “is being used as & pretext to justify some harsh measures for 1991”.

In Barcelona, a demonstration against the military intervention in the Gulf drew over 7000 people.

no

consensus

The government originally issued a soft two-line whip to their members, but when they heard that left Labour MPs would push for a vote, this was upgraded to

The Labour leadership stuck with a oneline whip which simply said that the attendance of members was

“expected”. Consult

No attempt was made to consult Labour MP’s beforehand by calling a PLP meeting.

‘The Labour Front Bench

merely stated that it was against a vote and would back the Government if one was called.

In the end, only 56% of Labour MP’s turned up and voted with the whip to support the Tories. If you discount the Front Bench “payroll” vote, the figure falls to a mere 41% of Labour MPs going through the division lobbies to back Thatcher's war drive.

Although it is impossible to identify how many MPs were simply absent and how many were conciously abstaining, the figures make it clear that Kinnock and Kaufman have yet to win wide backing in the Party for their war posture.

New Yorkers move against Gulf War.

Any naive assumptions that the US publicis 100%

behind George Bush’s

war-drive were dashed

last week when 7,000 people turned out for a meeting to organise an anti-war demonstration.

The meeting, called by a number of peace organisations, was advertised solely by word of mouth and photo-copied leaflets passed hand-to

hand.

The organisers are now planning a major anti-war march in New York on October 20th.

Labour Briefing No. 108 September 24th-October 24th Page 5

Throughout the wave of carnage sweeping parts of South Africa, COSATU members have been amazed at the gulf between what they are experiencing in the townships and hostels and the picture which has_ been portrayed in the media.

Our efforts to report the reality of what has been going on have been swamped by a tide of prejudice, propaganda and misinformation. It is hard to know where to begin to unravel this web of unreality.

‘Ask the “average white South African” and you will be told that blacks are engaged in a mindless orgy of violence, tribe against tribe, ANC against Inkatha, with the unfortunate police caught in the middle of the conflict.

The situation may be bewildering for many people, but it is painfully straightforward for our members and for those of us who have desperately been attempting to stave

m™ P

Many of our members believe that the media have not only failed to explain the conflict, but that they have actually fuelled it.

Overwhelming evidence that the violence has been

actively orchestrated by a

One year after the election of the current Polish government and eight months after the introduction of an economic “stabilisation programme” agreed with the IMF, the Polish economy is reaching a critical point.

In the first six months of 1990 industrial output fell by 28.7% compared

to the same period in 1989.

Real incomes fell 31%. Unemployment rose to 624,000 or 4% of the workforce. This is expected to double by the end of the year.

The recession has caused a drastic decline in inflation; prices rose by only 3.4% between May and June, as compared with 78.6% between December and January.

Ithas also led to. an unprecedented hard

COSATU Statement

eer ee eS aeeeoete al relatively small group ot vigilantes in the hostels, together with elements of the security forces, has been largely ignored.

Vigorous investigative reporting could have revealed: the connections between elements in the police and the vigilantes; the co-ordinated and premeditated nature of the attacks; how they have been planned and orchestrated; who is funding and arming the vigilantes.

A number of myths are being perpetuated about the violence.

Myth No. 1: The violence is the result of a spontaneous eruption of conflict between ANC and Inkatha supporters, and between hostel dwellers and township residents.

The violence has been far from spontaneous. We have extensive evidence to demonstrate that it has been systematic, planned and orchestrated. The violence has not been “organic”, or the result of tensions building up in the hostels. or the com-

our members in the hostels have reported a clear pattern of events. Individuals known to be leading members of Inkatha travelled to hostels and began to whip up a war psychosis, particularly but not exclusively

Andrew Kilmister

currency foreign trade surplus of 2.1 billion in the first haltof the year.

The government has managed to implement this austerity programme with only limited opposition, even from the. Solidarity Congress in April. There is now considerable public apathy, demonstrated in the low turnout of 42% in May's local government elections.

However, the programme has major weaknesses which may open up opportunities for Polish socialists.

The central problem faced by the Polish government is that despite the rhetoric, its programme is not really one of “marketisation” at all.

It is a straightforward set of austerity measures: incomes policy, cuts in

amongst Zulu-speaking inmates. Hostel dwellers were told that they must arm themselves and prepare for war because they were going to be attacked.

At the same time Inkatha held hostel meetings in which attacks were planned on township residents and on other hostels which were perceived to be ANC strongholds.

In July alone attacks were planned and executed against residents in Sebokeng, train commuters in Soweto and Johannesburg, and Soweto residents living near the hostels and residents in Kagiso.

Vigilantes participating in these attacks were heavily armed. The majority of those participating in attacks were bussed in from hostels around the Reef.

All this: was accompanied by a vicious programme of forced recruitment in the hostels. Contrary to the impression which has been created, Inkatha has a relatively small core of active supporters in the hostels, with the pegrertion st. one or | eee Soweto.

Hostel dwellers, both Zulu and non-Zulu, were forced, sometimes at gunpoint, to attend Inkatha meetings, pay five rand for Inkatha membership, and participate in attacks.

ind

Our members were given deadlines by which they should resign from COSATU and ANC and join Inkatha, failing which they would be killed or have to leave the hostels.

This led to a number of clashes in the hostels, and in some instances, to hostel dwellers leaving the hostels rather than face the reign of terror. In the case of Kagiso and Thokoza, these hostel dwellers were then attacked in the community in which they had sought refuge.

Many hostel inmates have been dragooned into the fighting against their will. The closed nature of the hostels has made them totally vulnerable to the terror tactics of the vigilantes.

Township residents involved in the fighting have been at pains to point out that they are not fighting the vigilantes as members of ANC, COSATU or any other organisation. They have simply been protecting themselves as residents.

The attacks have been totally random. People: have not hope erked which;

port. AN! those not wearing the vigilantes’ red headbands have been targets. Myth no. 2: The violence is a tribal conflict between Zulus and Xhosas, expressing itself as a conflict between ANC and Inkatha. “Tribal conflict”, the in-

Poland

Market? What market?

subsidies, a monetary squeeze and so on.

Markets do not exist in a vacuum. They require trading arrangements, legal and contractual structures, accounting frameworks (all of which express real social relations) and trained personnel. None of this exists in Poland today.

Prices have been liberalised and the zloty made convertible but there is no functioning market mechanism, particularly in the crucial investment arena.

The Polish government pins its hopes of introducing such a market on privatisation and foreign investment.

But so far, foreign investment has been disappointing, with few large commitments. It appears that while Western companies want to invest in a market environment, they do not

want to be used to create ‘one.

Privatisation is also proceeding slowly. Only one company, a relatively small foreign trade company called Universal, has been privatised to date.

There are plans to privatise some 20 firms by the end of the year. But Poland has over 7000 significant enterprises. The government is considering various schemes for giving shares away to the population as a whole to speed the process up. But these are risky and untried, and may conflict with the self-management lobby who want the companies to be given to the workers employed in them.

The upshot is that in

‘many ways the Polish

economy is simply not within the government's control.

Labour productivity has slumped. Heavy industry retains its dominance,

terpretation which white South Africans love to love, ignores the following:

%* Residents have been attacked regardless of their tribal origins. Zuluspeaking residents have not been protected from attacks by Zulu-speaking vigilantes.

* The vigilantes have certainly tried to use tribal and clan loyalties to mobilise; however, they have also attempted to press-gang all groups onto their side, regardless of their tribal origin.

* The Star survey showed that Inkatha’s ‘support outside Natal conpee Ae hovered peers

“ethnic groups”; support for the ANC was equally high amongst all ethnic groups, including Zuluspeaking people.

What cannot be denied is that various forces have been working overtime in an attempt to create a con-

fuelling high consumer prices and environmental problems.

Finance minister Leszek Balcerowicz has bemoaned the way in which enterprises have responded to price flexibility and rising costs by raising their prices and cutting output, rather than restructuring production.

Poland also carries the burden of a $40 billion debt and is therefore vulnerable to foreign shocks. Until recently, Poland has been receiving free oil from Iraq as payment for arms sales in the Iran-Iraq war. Sanctions have meant Petrol price rises of 30%.

There is also some internal pressure.

Farmers have forced the government to grant them cheaper credits and higher guaranteed prices.

Railworkers struck in May for higher wages and, significantly, for the

Briefing update

flict which takes on a tribal form. Fake pamphlets have been issued in which attempts have been consistently made to create tribal animosities.

Some pamphlets have attempted to create the impression that the MDM is calling for attacks on Zulu people. Others have purported to come from traditional Zulu leaders claiming that Zulus are under attack from Xhosas.

This has taken place in the context of a massive campaign in the hostels to make Zulu hostel dwellers believe that they are about to be attacked doe outside

"atincked Kivoes peaking

hostel ieee or township residents, in the name of “the Zulu nation”, and as hysteria has spread among the people under attack, it has been all too easy for the conflict to take ona tribal appearance.

involvement of workers in any discussions about restructuring the industry.

So far the government has succeeded in imposing austerity policies, and has largely abandoned the old central planning apparatus. But it has not managed to institute a capitalist alternative.

Some observers, such as Thatcher's favourite, Alan Walters, believe that it will fail to do so,

Other Western academics are busy devising ever more complex privatisation schemes, frantically trying to speed up the process through a baroque array of holding companies and mutual funds.

If Polish socialists can combine defence of living standards with a positive alternative to the capitalist market, they may win a growing audience in the months ahead.

Briefing update

North Sea struggle

All-out action to beat oil companies

There is no sign of an early settlement to the current dispute in the North Sea, involving thousands of offshore workers, fighting for trade union recognition and improved health and safety.

by Keith Sinclair

The workers are coming up against the reactionary oil companies and contractors, who are not prepared to enter into serious negotiations. The employers have already sacked over 1500 workers for supporting actions called by the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee (OILC), the rank-and-file

co-ordinating body. Offshore workers have

__ now supported six

‘stoppages called by the OILC. The most recent was on August 20th, when the

Maxwell’s

As millionaire unionbusting publisher Robert Maxwell waves cheques at the Tottenham Hotspur Board of directors, real Spurs fans are left out in the cold.

In the few short months since Paul Gascoigne grabbed centre stage during the World Cup the young midfielder has provided the papers with more sensational stories than at any time since Michael Foot last took his mac to the dry cleaners.

He now has a rival for the sports headlines — unfortunately it’s for entirely the wrong reasons.

Maxwell has traduced the good name of Tottenham Hotspur in an attempt to further expand his money-making empire.

In the back door dealing between Maxwell and Irving Scholar, Spurs’ largest shareholder, the real losers will be the poor sods who pay high admission prices year after year, footing the bil] for appalling mismanagement by the rich people who set

field had been crewed-up just prior to the last strike, with 350 workers forced to sign no-strike pledges before they were allowed back to the rigs.

BP's idea was to make the Forties field “OILC-free”. They got a nasty shock when all 350 workers backed the OILC stoppage on August 20th.

North Sea catering workers, organised in the TGWU, have voted 6-1 in favour of action in support of the Continental Shelf Agreement, which the unions and the OILC want as the basis for negotiations. Unfortunately, there are signs that some of the TGWU catering shop stewards are having second thoughts.

The TGWU leadership should be pressed to ‘support the action. The result of the catering workers’ ballot nonetheless shows the possibilities for an excellent result in the major ballot now being organised by the unions. It is still not clear whether all

themselves up as football's guardians.

This season alone there has been a 30% increase in the price of a match programme. Even the Tories would be hard

Tony Cordell Secretary Hackney Council Joint Shop Stewards Committee

pressed to justify inflation

’ at that level.

The football side of Tottenham Hotspur PLC (it was floated on the stock market a few years ago) is a highly profitable business, so much so that it is used to subsidise the PLC’s _money-losing sidelines,

Spurs subsidiary Hummel UK, a sportswear company, has lost an _estimated £4,000,000. This, coupled with the high interest charges on the Club’s latest bout of Executive Box-building at White Hart Lane, has pushed the Club into financial crisis.

the exact wording of the ballot question yet available.

Both those issues are crucial to a successful outcome. The ballot must recognise that there can be no peace on the North Sea without the reinstatement of every sacked worker .

One outstanding example is Billy Kennedy, a sacked worker, who is maintaining a one-person sit-in on the Tern platform and having some success in turning back people sent by the oil companies to do the jobs of the sacked workers.

The official trade unions are compiling a register of all offshore workers for the ballot. Whilst we must organise to win the ballot, the current lull in the dispute should not be allowed to drag. There have been mounting calls from workers in the Souther sector for an all-out strike.

Reports also indicate than an increasing number of members of the Standing Committee are in

Soy

20th, the OILC Standing Committee proposed that no further action be called for one week to allow the Northern sector to be “crewed up” again.

The oil companies and the contractors are desperate for offshore labour. The hope is that the crewing up process will enable at least some OILC activists to get back offshore to influence further action.

The case fr altout

have shown the support the OILC enjoys offshore. However, a continuation of twenty-four hour stoppages will not be enough to beat the employers.

An all-out strike with occupations would put maximum pressure on the oil companies and the contractors — some of the latter have severe penalty clauses built into their contracts. The ten-day mor: on strikes

Series of one-day strikes run-up fo the TUC gave

Spurs scandal

By widening the activities of the company it was believed that additional income could be generated to subsidise the running of the football club, to pay better wages, attract bigger stars and generally gear the club up to be able to compete with the best in England and Europe.

But as so often in the past, Scholar promised but failed to deliver.

Maxwell has “now destroyed the businesslike image of the club. If there is any truth in the story that Maxwell staved off Gary Lineker’s transfer, then Spurs fans can only say thank you. But that does not give him the right to look upon one of the world’s premiere football clubs as mere “profitfodder” for his already oversized empire.

The Football League have intimated that Maxwell could be charged with bringing the game into disrepute after his TV-AM interview, but surely the handling of the would-be takeover leaves several prominent people vul-

nerable to such a charge.

Irving Scholar has not only contributed to the general dismay among football supporters, he is also surely very close to breaching Stock Exchange regulations.

Tn any case, the charge of bringing football into disrepute is laughable as no-one is more guilty of this than the Football League Management Committee itself. This is maybe the one point where virtually every football fan would actually agree with Robert Maxwell.

football follies

Maxwell’s real crime is to treat our game as if it were just another pawn to be played with, another tentacle in his mediabased octopus of an empire.

A football club should be more than just a birthday present for a rich person's son. Maxwell has no understanding whatsoever about the loyalty supporters feel for their club. Over the years he has dabbled at Oxford United , Derby County, Reading, Manchester United and Watford.

ae

mer

the Offshore Contractors Council the chance to negotiate. Their response was to sack 60 more workers. The contractors

4 and the oil companies will

have to be hit hard if the OILC is to win the dispute.

The OILC can be contacted on any of the following numbers: Newcastle 091 222 1557, Aberdeen 0224 2100118/9, Hull 0482 449822, Liverpool 051 709

285, Donations to OlLc -

It comes as a great relief that Spurs’ financial advisers have resigned because of the vote of no confidence in Spurs Chair Paul Bobroff. Maybe now the club will concentrate on the primary objectives

of a football club, aiming for the championship while still providing the excellent entertainment that has been the hallmark of Tottenham Hotspur for many years.

The long term solution to Spurs financial problems is simple: pull out of the loss making, non-football activities which contribute nothing to the club and say a heartfelt goodbye to Robert Maxwell. His money is not needed and most certainly his attitude and objectives are not needed.

Worst of all, Maxwell is, by his own admission, an Arsenal fan.

Tony Cordell writes in his personal capacity as a life-long fanatical Spurs supporter.

Labour Briefing No. 108 September 24th-October 24th Page 7

Briefing update

Kinnock’s conference?

Farewell Party democracy?

By Dorothy Macedo, Co-Chair Labour Party Socialists

This year’s Party Conference may go down in history as the one where the leadership made the Party safe from interference by the

membership.

If the NEC proposals go through we will have an Annual Conference

which is simply a showpiece. Unwelcome resolutions will be sifted out by Policy Commissions and the amendments stage will be abolished.

In addition, there are future plans to re-organise the NEC to prevent CLPs voting for left MPs. Conference itself will be rearranged to give extra representation to MPs, MEPs, and Councillors.

This is the hidden agenda behind the smokescreen of "One Member One Vote” (OMOV) and the attacks

on the unions’ block vote.

Nearly 30 resolutions and amendments are on the agenda that oppose these moves (though some of the amendments have been ruled out of order). Demands to keep the amendments procedure for resolutions and to introduce it for NEC documents are also well ‘supported.

These are such basic tools of democratic debate that it is weird to think that in today’s Labour Party they are considered controversial.

Itis sad that so many party members have fallen

for the claim that OMOV is more democratic than our current delegate system. Many forget that all members already have a vote. Of course they must attend a meeting to do so — but this is also true in Parliament — no postal votes there!

Most of us would have no objection to postal votes for those with genuine reasons for absence, but there should be some minimum record of attendance.

The leadership's plans would leave no incentive ever to leave your armchair. GCs would have

no real power, as all important decisions will require ratification by postal ballot.

The leadership sees Party activists as a nuisance and is keen to disempower them. With all key decisions made in effect by the leadership and only ratified by postal ballot, Conference will be tumed into a cosy rally.

The tragedy is that even on the left many people can't see the urgency of fighting to keep Conference as the

sovereign party body. The fact that it has been so

Demon seed of Policy Review

tame recently is no reason to hand over without a fight what litle power the rank and file has left.

We all know Conference is far from perfect and needs reform. But we don't need the sort of reform the leadership has planned!

Constitutional matters may seem boring compared to more glamorous issues. But until we get them right, there is little point in Passing policy resolutions only to see them binned at Walworth Road.

Forward into the

1890s!

Keith Veness

Anew NEC document on Party democracy

looks set to provoke a

divisive debate at

every level of the Party - with a general election in the offing.

Why, after years of wrangling, should they now wish to re-open wounds that were finally beginning to heal?

The answer lies in a strange, deathly fear that pervades Walworth Road.

Itseems that our master strategists fear that we might actually win the next election and assume office surfing on a tidalwide of expectations.

“Kinnockio” has already told the TUC that we as trades unionists can “expect no favours” — one election pledge -we can all believe he will keep. Therefore the ground must be prepared now to weaken the grip of the unions on Party policy making.

When ambulance crews, miners, dockers, media workers, nurses, council staff and dozens of others queue up at 10 Downing Street after a Labour election victory, repeating what their New Realist

union leaders had told »

them for so many years about “waiting for a Labour government to put

things right”, what response are they likely to get?

If you are not even prepared to fight the IMF,

the Stock Exchange and the Murdoch gutter press in opposition, what chance

to office? ™

The outcry will be swift and brutal. Those union leaders still prepared to apologise for Kinnock/Hattersley/Willis, etc. will get short shrift from their members. Cabinet members will see their NEC votes plummet. Conference will be shaken by the anger of the rank and file.

But Labour’s leaders have learned some lessons from the past. They are taking action now to protect themselves from the consequences of future sell-outs.

The action comes in the form of a document to be presented to this year’s conference under the quaint title of “Democracy and Policy Making for the 1990s”. It proposes :

%* A Labour Party National Policy Forum which would “oversee” the policymaking process. The choice of verb, with its suggestions of master-slave relationships, is instructive.

* A rolling programme which could only be changed by amendment.

* Standing commissions (un-elected) to draft policy.

% A two-year policymaking cycle , i.e. cutting out one Party conference in two.

% Consideration of resolutions to be vested in the Commissions allowing un-elected “experts” to interpret (and veto) resolutions and amendments from Party members.

This sort of format will

ensure that democratic decision making and campaigning is effectively

sycophants approved by the Party leadership. Even worse, the make-

up of the NEC (which is already far from perfect) isto be balkanised by turning the CLPs’ representation over to Regional organisations.

Luckily, the authors of the document cannot come up with a formula to do this without grossly increasing the NEC’s size. It has therefore been left on the back-burner but is

likely to reappear in the future.

that it too would greatly increase the size of the NEC.

One issue that is a source of some debate within the left (and indeed within Briefing itself) is the proposal to reduce the size of the trade-union vote viz-a-viz the CLPs.

Asuggestion fora 70/30 split instead of the current 90/10 seems on the face of it reasonable, asis the idea that CLPs should vote on actual paid up member-

The thorny question of

ship rather than a notional amount. However, the sting in

. have full voting rights at

Conference.

To equate the specific issue of electing the Parliamentary leader with general Party policymaking is a nonsense. This attempt to enhance the already overblown powers of MPs should be strongly opposed.

Overall, the document is a curate’s egg. Though good in parts, it contains a number of suggestions

Ashton vs. LCC

that will fatally weaken the trades-union tie, reduce CLPs to subs-colA boost

egos If this document is

agreed without severe pruning, the NEC and Kinnock will interpretit as carte-blanche to dismantle what’s left of party democracy.

The “battle for Labour's soul” is being fought yet again. We need to ensure that the leadership is blocked until the tide changes, as it will, following the next election.

London Labour Party - scoreless at

half-time

by Morris Herbert

The plot by “Idle Jack” Cunningham and Margaret Hodge (Baroness Hodge of Barnsbury in next year’s honours list?) to sack Greater London Labour Party General Secretary Terry Ashton has hit a -in the unlikely shape of the GMB.

A ballot of Labour

Party staff (members of NULO, which has

recently become part of the GMB) resulted in a 90% vote for industrial action and a threat to disrupt Party Conference in Blackpool.

Faced with such unexpected militancy the rightwing split down the middle. Hattersley and the trade union "barons" wanted a tactical retreat. Kinnock and the yuppie wing of the LCC declared that management must manage.

A compromise was reached. Ashton was leftin post and the anger of Lon-

don CLPs and Party staff assuaged.

The whole issue has been sent to a special NEC Sub Committee which will consider imposing a Walworth Road-based

managerial team on top of the existing structure!

A major rumpus has been averted but hostilities will no doubt break out when Conference is safely over.

Haringey Labour Briefing

Axe the Poll Tax — Not Jobs and services

Labour Briefing No. 108 September 24th-October 24th Page 8

Feature: Labour and the Unions

Repeal anti-union laws

Ten years of betrayal

The biggest single success of Thatcherism has been the introduction of anti-union laws.

Carefully drafted and cleverly timed, they have been at the root of the defeats suffered by the unions in the past ten years.

In Thatcher's first term, incipient New Realism, based on a conviction that strikes were an electoral liability for Labour and that the Tories were too strong to beat led to the betrayal of a series of major strikes in steel, rail, cars and newspapers.

These defeats sapped the strength of the working class and gave the Tories the space to mount a new legal challenge to the unions.

The TUC, in public at

least, set its face against the new laws. A fund was set up to finance resistance. If necessary unions would be supported by strike action, even illegal strike action if necessary Everyone waited for the it. confrontation. It came at Warrington when the NGA was fined and ordered to end its dispute with Eddie Shah. The TUC ordered the strike to be called off. It was a major turning point. The TUC then stood back when the NUM’s funds were sequestrated during the great strike of 1984/5.

Miners

After the miners’ defeat the laws were further strengthened and enforced more rigorously. At Wapping Murdoch moved the location of his plant at the same time as sacking his printers. Their strike was then declared to be illegal secondary action. - The print union tried to keep within the law and refused to call out Fleet Street. This led to isolation and another defeat.

The seafarers’ strike started with a secret ballot, as required by law. Of the 2,300 seafarers only ONE voted against strike action. Before long, however, P&O announced

Erik Rechnitz President

the sacking of all the strikers, the employment of scab crews to replace them, the ending of all collective agreements, and the derecognition of the NUS.

The NUS rank and file responded immediately and the strike spread to the membership as a whole. Within 24 hours of Sam McCluskie’s call that no British Ferries should sail from any British Port, action had spread to 19 other ports.

Solidarity action brought Sealink’s entire fleet to a standstill. The employers then obtained a High Court injunction requiring a return to work on all their ships. It was an outright confrontation between the NUS and the courts.

McCluskie surprised everyone when he publicly stated that the union should defy the law and extend the action beyond the ferries. The NUS Executive called an all-out strike of the whole of their membership including those on deep-sea ships.

Alan Thornett

It was a momentous decision. Virtually every ship came out. Ferry crews struck at all ports and supply ships to North Sea oil rigs were hit. In several ports ships were occupied when crews were sacked for taking action.

The High Court fined the NUS £150,000 and ordered the sequestration of all its assets, including its £2,800,000 funds, the closure of all its offices (national and local), the freezing of staff wages, the suspension of its pension fund, the impounding of union cars and the cuttingoff of union phones.

McCluskie vowed to “run the union from a tent on Clapham Common”. A right-winger appeared to be leading the most important challenge to the antiunion laws since the end of the miners’ strike.

Behind the scenes, however, was the dead hand of the TUC. Willis told McCluskie that the TUC could give no support

Hackney Trades Union Council Greetings to delegates Defend free trade unions! Repeal the Tory laws!

Tony Cordell Secretary

whilst the strike was illegal. A few days later McCluskie caved in and ordered the end of the strike.

Last year the dockers faced the courts. The government abolished the National Dock Labour Scheme. A big majority vote by the dockers for an all- out strike to defend the scheme meant nothing once Ron Todd announced that the TGWU intended to keep within the law.

It took seven weeks in the courts to establish whether a strike of the Scheme ports for a new national agreement would be legal. After that was won the law still had a strangle-hold on the strike since any support from unregistered ports — crucial to the strike’s effectiveness — would be unlawful secondary action.

When the strike eventually began, months after the original vote, the confidence of the dockers was sapped and the employers were tooled up to beat the union.

The courts were also used last summer against the NUR after London Underground workers voted for an all-out strike in pursuit of their wage claim. The ballot paper was declared to be confusing, the result was dis-allowed, and no further ballot for all-out action was ever taken.

The additional laws now being pushed through Parliament by the Tories are designed to deal with the type of unofficial action which followed on the Underground. The new laws will make it lawful for employers to sack those on unofficial strike and unlawful for other workers to take any action in their defence.

In Britain today a strike without a legal challenge is the exception rather than the rule.

This makes the decision of the TUC and the Labour leadership to keep the Tory laws under a Labour government absolutely scandalous. Clearly Neil Kinnock is: preparing to use these laws against the unions in the same way they have been used under Thatcher.

Labour's leaders are uncomfortable with the Party’s long-standing links with the trades unions. The media, of course, have been hostile to the unions since they were first formed. Briefing visited Jim Mortimer, ex-General Secretary of the Labour Party and former Chair of ACAS, to see what he had to say on the subject.

Briefing : What do you make of the argument that the unions are a liability to Labour?

JM : The Labour Party exists to further the interests of people who work, of employees, and their interests are most directly represented by the trades unions.

The media whips up prejudice against the trades unions but it is Labour's job to fight that prejudice. To the extent to which you accomodate to it, you strengthen it.

In the long run this is self-defeating.

The task of Labour is to

show that trades unions help raise and defend the

living standards of millions of people in this country. They have also defended and advanced democracy itself, which is not just a matter of voting but a question of the power to regulate the conditions of your own employment.

Briefing : What about industrial disputes, which are said to "damage" the Party? JM : Industrial disputes do not necessarily harm

Interview: Jim

“Labour neec the unions”

Labour; it depends on how the Labour leadership reacts to them. If the leadership keeps quiet and gives free rein to a hostile press, they only help build the climate of opposition to the dispute.

But if the Labour Party makes clear why workers are in dispute and what they're trying to achieve, the situation becomes entirely different.

There is no need to identify yourself in detail with every dispute but a political party of labour should not leave the electorate in any doubt about where its sympathies lie.

Briefing : What do you make of the Labour leadership's

new proposals on

trade union legislation?

JM : | strongly disagree with the policy in "Looking to the Future”.

There are fundamental rights which must belong to trades unions in any democracy. These include the right to withdraw your labour; the strike weapon is workers’ ultimate weapon and cannot be denied to them.

They also include the right to seek and give solidarity in disputes, a

Lea Bridge branch (Hackney North CLP) sends greetings to Conference

Western Imperialism Out of the Gulf!

Labour Party Socialists

sends greetings to Socialists at party Conference

Read the Daily Bulletin

offices all week at the Boardroom, 7 South King Street

basic right which has now been surrendered by Labour. It represents the highest ideals of the labour movement and of human endeavour. It says: “lam my brother's and sister's keeper. | do not pass by when someone else is attacked.” Solidarity has written ‘some of the finest pages in human history. It is awful that Labour is backtracking on this.

Briefing : What about ballots and union elections?

JM : Itis the right of trade union members to determine the rules of their own organisations, not the state.

Of course the struggle for democracy is never-ending and some

trades unions are not as democratic as we would wish. But that is a matter for their members.

We should remember that the trades unions are a damn sight more democratic than other mass membership institutions in our society, like the Automobile Associaiton, Building Societies, or indeed the Tory Party itself.

In fact, the trades unions are more democratic than any other

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tae a cpanel wis ON or en By a Ale, ref

Feature: Labour and the Unions

Labour — link to the working class

is

organisations of comparable size. Unfortunately, the Labour Party never makes these points.

For example, the argument that trades unions want to place themselves “above the law” is easily exposed. The fact is that under the common law, all trades unionism is illegal because all trades unionism implies at least potentially some form of “restraint of trade”

Hence the need for what are called trade union “immunities” if there is to be any trades unionism at all. Labour should be saying this clearly and in public. Briefing : What about Labour’s new commitment to dual rights at

JM : Positive individual rights at work cannot be counterposed to collective tights. If you want to

employers use intimidation to prevent individuals pursuing their lawful individual rights.

Briefing : It's been Said that the Labour leadership want to keep the Tory anti-union laws because they intend to use them under the next Labour government.

JM : Ihave no sympathy whatsoever for any argument that under a Labour government anti-union laws should be used against trades unionists.

Itis hypocrisy for supporters of Solidarity in Poland even to contemplate such a thing. After all, the workers there held strikes without ballots, occupations of factories and extensive solidarity action, all of which would be illegal under current British law.

Differences between a Labour government and the unions should be resolved through negotiatons, through economic policy.

Briefing : What about trade union influence on Party policy?

JM : Historically, especially at moments of crisis, the trades unions have brought Labour back to the reality of the interests of working people.

The best example is 1931. The unions were certainly not under any left leadership at the time but

they refused to go along when the Labour government wanted to cut unemployment pay.

Trades union should have a strong influence on Party policy not because they are infallible but because ultimately they are accountable to the demands of working people.

Ona practical level, trades unions do relate more closely to what workers are saying, for example on wages, hours of work, industrial injuries, safety.

Any attempt to cut Labour off from this trade union input would be foolish.

Unions

Briefing : What about the block vote?

JM : At present the block vote is too predominant at conference, It's worth remembering that it was TGWU, and Alex

the balance towards the CLPs for many years

Before the War, individual and affiliated subscriptions were the same. Now individual members pay much more. Therefore we should reduce the proportion of the block vote.

However, unions do have the right to determine their own policies by their own democratic means. Union members have the right to influence their union's policy through democratic, representative conferences which come to collective decisions.

If unions wants to split their block votes at conference, that should be up to them.

Of course, there's no system without problems.

Demcracy requires the presentation and discussion.of all the various options, not just a single vote cast in isolation.

Smears Briefing : What’s your view of the recent attacks on Arthur Scargill?

JM : During the strike the NUM leaders had no choice but to protect the miners’ money from sequestrators.

The most important thing for everyone to remember is that Arthur Scargill fought vigorously and combatively for the miners. | was pleased and proud to identify myself with the miners and the. NUM throughout the strike and to maintain that

identification today.

Keep the block

vote

Hostility to Labour's trade union link and its expression through the block vote is a perennial issue for the media.

The media wants British politics to be Americanised with the Labour and Tory parties playing Democrats and Republicans.

Their problem is that Labour remains a class party based on working class organisations. No wonder they were so enthusiastic over the creation of the SDP.

Hostility to the block vote found its expression at last year’s conference when John Edmonds of the GMB said:-

“This Conference must sound the death knell of the block vote. Let us say it clearly. The block vote must go.

Bryn Griffiths Tottenham CLP

The trade unions should

eS must surrender control.’

For Edmonds, removing the bigck vote will make the Labour party more acceptable to the City, the banks, big business and the media.

The Labour Co-ordinating Committee feels the same way. In its bulletin last year it said that the block vote

‘is simply not an appropriate democratic instrument in a political party aspiring to power in the late 20th century.

It opens the party up to ridicule and alienates

individual members”. The real reason why the

block vote causes so much controversy is its potential to act as a channel through which working class hostility to a future Labour government could be expressed in the heart of the Party itself.

For the rich and powerful this threat means that however “safe” labour's leadership and policies, the party itself can never be fully trusted.

The Labour Party's trade union link and its expression through the block vote also makes Labour qualitatively different from the Social Democratic parties on the continent.

This difference also makes Labour Party membership a major strategic question for socialists, rather than merely a short term tactical option.

Whilst the block vote contains a potential threat to the power of Labour and trade union

Sid Weighell’s train brought down to size

officialdom the reality of its use today is quite different. Mainly, it functions as a means of disciplining the Party's rank and file.

Many a conference debate has been stitched up behind closed doors by a cabal of Labour and trade union leaders.

The bureaucratic manipulation of the block vote leads some to reject it in principle.

In a paper to the Labour Party Socialist's first conference Reg Race proposed that we:-

“deal with the block vote by abolishing it”.

Link

Reg proposes that we replace national trade union affiliation by creating national “industrial” organisations, made up of party members in particular industries, eg coal, power, insurance, agriculture.

These would have representation at conference and an erititlement to submit resolutions, but no substantial block vote.

The Race proposals might be interesting as part of a blue-print for a new socialist party. But we do not start with a clean sheet.

We have a Labour Party which has come to be what it is through eighty

plus years of existence.

Today's political reality is that the block vote is under attack from Labour's right-wing, aided as usual by the Tory media.

To oppose the block vote in principle simply gives succour to those who want to weaken any democratic link between the Party and the unions.

ity

Accounta

Nor would abolition of the block vote strengthen the hand of the CLPs.

Trade union leaders would be left to wield their influence through their chequebooks and in private meetings away from the public forum of Party Conference.

The abolition of the block vote would actually bureaucratise further the trade union-Labour Party link and rid it of any vestiges of accountability.

The potential of the block vote was amply illustrated by the case of the NUR's Sid Weighell at the 1982 Labour Party Conference.

Weighell was a key trade union right-winger seeking to undermine the then relatively left-wing NEC.

To achieve this he wheeled and dealed behind the scenes, finally deciding to shift the NUR’s vote in the Trade Union division of the NEC from Eric Clarke, an NUM

candidate, to Tom Breakell of the EEPTU.

Unfortunately for Weighell his machinations were discovered.

Weighell’s manoeuvre was in direct contravention to the NUR Conference mandate.

He felt compelled to resign; the NUR Executive Committee accepted his resignation and the NUR Conference rejected resolutions calling on him to reconsider.

In other issues of Labour Briefing | have put the case for democratising the block vote and giving a greater share to the Constituency Labour Parties.

In this issue | have focused on the need to defend the block vote itself.

Itis important that we constantly review how the Labour-trade union link can be democratised and thus strengthened, but this debate must take place in the context of defending its existence.

Preserve

After ten years of Thatcherism we still have a unitary trade union movement and a Labour Party with mass trade union affiliation.

The Tories and the media hate this — which is one good reason to preserve it.

Labour Briefing No. 108 September 24th-October 24th Page 10

Activists’ Briefing

Labour Party Socialists AGM “Twin-tracking” to victory

The LPS AGMin grass-roots organisation of

Sheffield on October the Labour left. Its 27th will be LPS’s first campaigning initiatives on opportunity to assess the Gulf War, the Poll Tax

and trade union laws have marked it out from the more inward looking

the effectiveness of its input into this year’s Party Conference.

The meeting will also debate and decide on LPS’s campaigning priorities and political policies in the run up to the general election.

LPS has taken some important steps towards building a national

Labour Party Socialists has taken what has come to be known as a “twin-track” approach.

It has linked up with the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy in the internal party battle against Kinnock's latest orgy of rule-changing and

Labour Party Socialists Annual

General Meeting * Policy for the 90’s * Party Democracy * Fighting the Witch-hunt * Campaigning Priorities

* Election of new National Committee

Sheffield university October 27th 9.30 — 6.00pm

Registration £4/£2 in advance (£4.50/£2.50 on the day) Write to: PO Box 118 Chesterfield Derbyshire,

$44 5UD. (Please state creche requirements). ONLY PAID UP SUPPORTERS CAN VOTE

Islington Labour Party Socialists

Public meeting

Tony Benn MP Dawn Primarolo MP Jeremy Corbyn MP Plus local speakers Chair: Councillor Maureen Leigh (Mayor of Islington)

Stop the Tories War Drive Fight the Poll Tax

and Cuts

Monday 15th October 1990 7.45 pm Red Rose Centre 129 Seven Sisters Rd, N7 (nr Finsbury Park tube)

traditions of the Labour left.

has issued a leaflet about this year's NEC elections. Itis committed to defending mandatory reselection and has initiated a major debate on Party democracy.

Bryn Griffiths LPS National Steering Committee

The LPS joint campaign with the Socialist Movement Trade Union Committee to get Labour to repeal the Tory trade union laws illustrates what the “twin-track” approach means in practice. LPS. and the SMTUC have:

-organised to get a number of model resolutions on the conference agenda;

-organised a major fringe meeting and a lobby by trades unionists of delegates to conference;

circulated a statement (Labour: Unshackle the Unions) to trades unionists and party members;

approached trades unionists on the receiving end of the anti-union laws to ask them to support our campaign.

This “twin-track” approach is not new. In fact, Labour Briefing has tried to pursue it over a number of years.

In the Briefing pamphlet Labour — Take the Power (1985) we called it “organising at the crossroads”. By this we meant organising at the crossroads of the movement's industrial and political wings, of the labour movement and the women's movement, the struggles inside and outside the Party.

Labour Briefing 's most successful attempt at “organising at the crossroads” was the Mineworkers’ Defence Commitee.

This was initiated at the 1984 Labour Party Conference by Labour Briefing and won support from groups in and out of the Labour Party, including Broad Lefts, Greenham Women for a Miners’ Victory, national unions, Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, Socialist Worker, Militant and the Campaign Group of MPs.

In December 1984 it held a national conference with over 2,000 miners’ supporters attending.

Crucial to the success of the MDC was the way in which Labour Briefing and the Committee itself were

determined to thrust the miners’ battle to the

forefront of Labour Party and trade union concerns. The political authority of the miners’ strike allowed the Labour left to halt temporarily Kinnock’s attempts to shift the Party rightwards.

Any attempt to weaken the link between the struggle for power within the Party and the struggle against the Tories and employers outside it only undermines both of them.

By no means does this approach represent any downgrading of Labour Party work. On the contrary, its purpose is to strengthen our forces and revitalise the left in the Party.

Our aim is not to abandon the Party’s structures but to transform them into campaigning bodies.

Briefing Readers:Action Checklist for

LPS AGM.

* Draw up a list of local activists who should be asked to attend the AGM and write to them all individually with details of LPs.

* Organise a recruitment drive; only paid up supporters will be able to vote although any Party member paying the registration fee can attend.

% Get a speaker from the LPS National Committee for your local LPS/left group/branch/CLP.

%* Urge comrades from your area to stand for the regional places on the National Steering Committee.

* Book transport North London LPS supporters are organising a coach

——————$

LPS activists are rooted in their local Labour Party branches and see no contradiction between that and their work building Poll Tax campaigns, trade union solidarity, fights around a woman's right to choose, and popular opposition to the Gulf War.

For LPS, the general election will be a crucial test. Of course, LPS will be calling and working for a Labour vote in every constituency. On this question, we must make public our independence from the Socialist Movement which may feel unable to be as boldly committed to Labour because of the diverse political makeup of the

ka

should join the Labour

Socialist Movement

Organising Committee. Party and work to

LPS must not only back transform it. The precise Labour in the canvassing details of sucha campaign rooms and on the need to be debated at the doorsteps; it must also AGM. But LPS will have to build some kind of a take some steps in this — “socialist campaign for a direction if it is to preserve Labour victory”. its cutting edge during the

LPS should argue difficult general election publicly that socialists period.

Socialist Movement diary

%* Monday 1st October, Labour Party Conference Blackpool — Labour: Unshackle The Unions. Joint Labour Party Socialists / Socialist Movement Trade Union Committee meeting with Dennis Skinner MP, Ronnie Macdonald, Betty Heathfield, Carolyn Sikorski and Pergamon striker.

* Wednesday 3rd October, Labour Party Conference Blackpool — Labour Party Socialists: Policies for the 1990's with Tony Benn MP.

%* Thursday 4th October, Labour Party Conference Blackpool —Labour Party Socialist Conference round-up.

* Monday 15th October, London, London School of Economics - Convention for Democracy meeting: Animal Rights. (contact 071-703-6838).

%* Saturday 27th October, Chesterfield —- Labour Party Socialists AGM.

%* November 17/18th, Manchester — The Fourth Socialist Conference: Socialism, Democracy and Freedom — The international Debate.

%* January 13/14th 1991, London — Convention for Democracy.

%* January 19/20th 1991, London — Women for Socialism Conference: anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggles.

The following is to be the basis ofa statement to be run as a full page advert in the national press in the Autumn. Please consider adding your signature, ina personal capacity if preferred, and/or that of your organisation. Minimum donation £5 per organisation needed to cover the cost.

“We the undersigned believe that all trade unionists should defend the National Union of Mineworkers’ leaders, Arthur Scargill and Peter Heathfield, against the renewed attempts to smear them in the press.

The recent Lightman inquiry has proved conclusively that all allegations of personal financial misconduct by

its.

Lambeth Council’s Equal Opportunities Policy (EOP) has been much publicised but little implemented.

Now its rather doubtful reputation is suffering further damage as a result of cuts arising from Poll Tax and Poll ‘Tax capping.

Over the summer the Council leadership caved in to Kinnock’s “dented shield” strategy. This entails making “kinder” cuts than the Tories would,

Labour Briefing No. 108 September 24th-October 24th Page 11

Defend Scargill, Defend the NUM

No to media smears!

Scargill and Heathfield are false.

We further believe that the renewed attacks in the press led by the Daily Mirror are part of a crude

attempt to break the tradition of fighting trade unionism represented by the NUM and its leadership.

This is why the Mirror's smear campaign has been enthusiastically supported by the enemies of the trade union movement. Regretfully, this attack has been joined by the leading figures in both the TUC and the Labour Party.

We call on all trade unionists to pass resolutions of support and send them to both their own national union leaders and to NUM. headquarters in Sheffield.”

I/We would like to support the above statement appearing in the national press. Please add our/my name to the list of supporters. Please state “in personal capacity” if preferred.

Name/Organisatio: Position. ‘Address.

tat

Make cheques payable ‘Defend Scargill Defend the NUM’ and send to: Willie Lee, clo NUPE Manual Office, 219 Mare St. London E8.

Lambeth Council

make

ee

doing so only at the last minute, and then only with much wringing of hands.

The reality is that Lambeth is now making severe cuts in services, although their effects will be felt unevenly. Owing to the high level of vacancies across the Council, most of these cuts can be made without deleting filled posts (ie. without threatening existing staff with redeployment).

Workers in the Environmental Health Directorate staged a one-day strike on

seu

mockery of equal ops

August 29th. Normally moderate NALGO members in the Town Planning Directorate have also been taking industrial action

by Roger Trendell Lambeth NALGO

In both cases management have targetted job cuts exclusively at black workers, who will also bear the brunt of job losses at the Brixton Recreation Centre.

COHSE and NUPE fighting for our health service

Defend real community

care

Save Hayes Cottage

Hospital

Join the resistance — occupy and win!

Anger at these attacks has been intensified by allegations, that Council leader Joan Twelves asked Environmental Health Directorate strikers whether they would prefer her to“cut the jobs of white workers”.

Racist

NALGO Black Workers Group has condemned the Council’s redeployment scheme as racist and sexist. Unfortunately, NALGO and the other

“We can't afford to stand by and let people both inside and outside the movement destroy the belief that action can make gains. This is what the attack on Scargill is all about. and that’s why it must be

stopped.”

Tony Kearns, UCW Executive

Activists’ Briefing

“Arthur Scargill gave brilliant leadership to the men and their families when the full apparatus of the state was used against them. The trade union and Labour Party leadership and every trade unionist and Labour Party member should be rallying around him at a time when the British establishment is trying to destroy him.” Tony Benn MP

Camden Trades Council

The first Claudia Jones Memorial Lecture

given by ARTHUR SCARGILL New Realism: The politics of Collaboration

Wednesday October 17th; 7.30pm Conway Hall, Red Lion Square. London

unions are co-operating with the scheme, although some shop stewards committees are continuing the fight to get jobs reinstated.

However, the NALGO Executive has agreed to follow the lead of the Black Workers Group in withdrawing co-operation from the Council’s EOP in protest at the hypocrisy of cuts targeted at black and women workers.

The cuts are also hitting the conditions of service of Council staff.

In response to a

clampdown on workers with childcare responsibilities, NALGO members in the Housing Directorate have called a demonstration for Council workers and their children outside the Town Hall in Brixton at noon on October Srd.

This action is also likely to win backing from the NALGO Women’s Group, which is investigating a Council-wide attack on maternity and paternity rights.

Islington North CLP’s representatives call on all at conference to vote to make black representation a reality

Jeremy Corbyn MP

Eddie Niles Conference Delegate

this year!

Keith Veness

Agent

Sylvia Gilbert

Conference Delegate

Activists’ Briefing

Time off for women

Hillingdon puts the

boot

Hillingdon’s new one-seat majority Tory Council has set about out-doing Westminster and the Pickles experiment in Bradford.

by Michael Walker

In recent weeks they have announced: the closure of four schools; the scrapping of school meals in secondary schools; the sacking of 172 school meals staff; the sacking of 50 home helpers/carers; the closure of two old peoples homes

The vast majority of these cuts and closures are targetted on the strong

Ti

working class areas'in the

South of the Borough. Major cuts are also

being made in care for the

elderly by the local District

Health Authority who favour “opting out” by all

three major local hospitals.

Hayes Cottage, a small hospital for the elderly, is threatened with privatisation. The staff have mounted a very good political campaign, including a one-day occupation in June.

The fightback has been slow to start but is gaining momentum. The various anti-cuts campaigns are growing. Hopefully these will link up to threaten not only Council policy but the increasingly vulnerable position of the racist local MP, Terry Dicks.

Construction Safety Campaign

Building.

site

safety slammed

The Construction Safety Campaign (CSC) picketted an employers’ conference on September 20th to highlight the 150 preventable deaths on building sites each year.

According to the Health & Safety Executive, the construction industry has been responsible for the death of 1,248 workers since 1980.

An Official HSE report pointed out that 517 of 739 deaths during 1981-5 could have been prevented. In 70% of cases, positive management action could

have saved these lives. The CSC is campaigning for an automatic police investigation for manslaughter against

senior directors whenever .

there is serious negligence involved in a site death.

The average fine for breaking health and safety laws:in 1988-9 was a pathetic £608. For Bovis, McAlpine; Taylor Woodrow and the rest, this sort of fine is mere loose change — and far easier ‘on the pocket than the investment required to prevent accidents and save lives.

Contact the CSC: Tony O'Brien 071-732-3711.

British and US Imperialism out of the Gulf!

High Cross Branch Tottenham CLP

Count women’s work now

In. 1985 the Wages for Housework Campaign won a UN decision that governments should count women’s unwaged work in the home, on the land and in the community, in every country’s GNP.

Every year since then the week of 24th October has been used to co-ordinate the Time Off for Women campaign - international actions by grassroots women, pressing governments to implement the UN decision.

The theme of TIME OFF 90 (TO90) is “Count Women’s Work — Legislation Now!”.

T090 will highlight the effect on women’s waged work when housework skills, from caring to cook-

ing, are not valued or are §

taken for granted or invisible in job descriptions and wage evaluations.

‘Counting women’s contribution to every economy establishes women’s entitlement to benefits and services and to equal pay.

TO90 opens with a fringe meeting at Labour Party Conference 2nd Oct, 6pm, at St. John’s Assembly Rooms, Church Street, Blackpool.

Everyone is welcome at the Women’s Speakout in the Grand Committee Room, House of Commons, 7 pm Wednesday 24th October. Contact Wages for Housework Campaign, King’s Cross Women’s Centre, 71 Tonbridge St, London WC1H 9DZ; tel 071-837-7509

Dealing with the Euro-Nazis French anti-fascists

A delegation from FASTI, the main immigrant organisation in France, and CNAF, the main French anti-fascist group, recently visited Britain for a highly successful speaking tour.

The tour was organised,by the Campaign Against Fascism in France, a British group which supports the struggle against Jean Marie Le Pen and the French National Front (FN).

SVTPy

Ps %

SisM

The first meeting was in the House of Commons. MPs heard first hand accounts of the horrendous catalogue of racist violence in France where there have been hundred racist murders in the last six years.

The cases of Serge Lopez (leader of the FN in Beziers who carried out a

bomb attack on the home of an immigrant family), Alain Barthes (FN correspondent in Perpignan who shot Amar ben Mohamed) and the blowing up of the Annecy Cafe by Jean Pierre Chatelaine (FN security Officer in Savoy) were amongst the many examples cited.

The FN strategy is to pose as a populist anti-immigration and ‘law and order” party, keeping their Nazi character well hidden. This strategy has brought them spectacular success in the polls. They took over 60% of the vote in the Dreux by-election.

Le Pen’s true views were revealed on a record he produced of songs of the Waffen SS: “Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Party came to power through legal elections. They owed their ascent to a mass movement which was popular and democratic”.

During the Second World War some of Le Pen's closest a’sociates volunteered to fight for Nazi Germany and joined the XXXiIII SS Division Charlemagne. They were not just collaborators but men who fully agreed with and actively supported Hitler.

Senior FN leader and MEP Bernard Antony has written: “The modern world is once again facing the Jewish problem. Jews are at the centre of contemporary debate. Marx and Rothschild can be said to represent two sides of the same coin”.

The FN has roots in the Nazi terrorist group Ordre Nouveau one of whose former leaders was Francois Duprat, a man who openly declared his

sympathy for Hitler.

During their visit the FASTI-CNAF delegation met with the Newham Monitoring Project, the National Union of Students, Refugee Forum, the Caribbean Times, and addressed meetings and rallies in London, Birmingham and Leicester.

The Campaign Against Fascism in France can be contacted at PO Box 273, Forest Gate, London E7. Tel: 071 486 5353.

Women for Socialism sends sisterly greetings to

conference delegates

No to War in The Gulf!

Labour Briefing No. 198 September 24th-October 24th’ Page 13

Ac!

ists’ Briefing

Families launch new campaign

The Tottenham Three innocentmen who were ly been formed by the families and supporters of Mark Braithwaite, Engin Raghip and Winston Silcott.

Its aim is to secure the release of the three

Blakelock in the Broad-

water Farm uprisings.

The release of the Guildford Four and the recent breakthrough in the case of the Birmingham Six together with mounting demands from more than 50 MPs, two retired Appeal Court

Families

The families intend to work closely with the community-based Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign

Free the Tottenham Three

Judges and three inde-

on the government to reopen the case

Contact

Contact: The Tottenham Three Families Campaign, 247a West Green Road, London, N15 5ED

Demo Against immigration Laws

without correct documentation are

Manchester Against racist immigration

Immigration Controls aws. being fined and Viet- (MAGIC) has been ‘Attack namese boat people are formed by anumber of aes being forcibly

anti-deportation campaigns to organise a national fightback against Britain’s

repatriated. By not allowing 6 million people in Hong Kong to settle in Britain, the government appears to be preparing for 1992 when common immigration laws will create a “Fortress Europe”, excluding people from Asia and Africa and

The government has stepped up its attacks on refugees. Airlines flying passengers

Socialist Movement Sends greetings to Party Conference delegates

No to War in the Gulf Stop the Witch-hunt

Fight the Anti-union laws

Come to the Socialist Movement International Conference 17/18 November, Manchester

denying 15 million black non-EC citizens currently living in Europe the right to free movement.

MAGIC has called a national demonstration for Saturday November 3rd at 1.00pm,in Alexandra Park, Manchester, followed by a rally at 4.00pm in Albert Square.

inquiries have all

tuary:

Nobby Ciarke

Father of Brighton Socialism.

Lifelong socialist Nobby Clarke, often called the father of Brighton’ Labour

Party, has died aged 82.

He was taken ill at a GC meeting on September 17th and died shortly afterwards,

Nobby was a councillor for over 40 years. He held numerous party posts throughout his life and was Brighton Labour Party’s Honorary President and Vice-Chair at the time of his death.

by Jean Calder, Brighton councillor

A railway worker, he had been a long-serving official of the NUR.

Nobby Clarke was agent in 1964 and 1966 when Labour won Kemp Town constituency, the only times Labour has ever

won a parliamentary seat in Sussex.

Nobby was as fierce in his opposition to curruption and careerism in Party representatives as he was loyal to the Party.

In recent years Nobby became critical of the Party's rightward drift.

When six Labour councillors were expelled earlier this year from Brighton’s Labour Group, due to their opposition to the Poll Tax, Nobby led their defence. One of his

“ last acts was to send an

open letter to all Brighton Labour Party members, calling on the Labour Group to readmit the six.

Loss

Nobby’s death is a sad loss—to the left, and to the Party as a whole. He was and will remain an. inspiration to all socialists. The funeral will be held at St Joseph’s Church, Elm Grove, Brighton at 12.15pm on October 10th.

Ln ava eT

Briefing back pages

Interview: Ruth Winstone

Behind the Benn diaries

Ruth Winstone is the editor of the Benn diaries, the latest volume of which has just been published by Century Hutchinson. Briefing interviewed Ruth about her work on the diaries in Tony Benn’s office in Holland Park, London. Tony was working in the office at the time and couldn't

resist chipping in.

Briefing: How did your work on the diaries start?

RW: Chris Mullin originally referred me to Tony in 1985, when Tony first needed help typing up his tapes, before he had decided to publish anything. Century Hutchinson expressed an interest in publishing and after some thought Tony decided to proceed. It soon became apparent that the typing pouldn’t be done by one person part-time and from April 1986 I took charge of the whole project, employing parttime typists and putting everything on to disc for

editing. I'm employed by .

Tony and paid éntirely out of the advance provided by the publisher, though we also had some short-term assistance from the Rowntree Trust.

Briefing: How are the diaries produced?

RW: Tony has dictated daily into his recorder since 1968. We’ve been typing up the tapes and putting them on disc word for word over the last five years and have now nearly caught up to the present. We run the discs off onto typed copy and bind it, so there is one completely unedited version of the diary ifanyone needs to examine it.

The first volume contained half of the unedited diary; the second volume contained a third; the third volume contained a fifth, and the most recent one contains only an eighth.

Tm: puzzled sometimes

why there’s so much more as we've gone on. Partly, I suppose ministerial seniority gave Tony a wider view of things. Partly it must be just increasing confidence in dictating onto tape. Briefing: How do you decide which years should be covered in each volume?

RW: We look for a period which makes some historical sense. Castle and Crossman both took the 64-70 period of Labour government as a single unit because their focus was entirely on their experiences in Cabinet. We felt it was important to combine a period of office with a period of opposition. We wanted to show the continuity of the debates within the Labour Party, not just decisions made in and by governments.

Briefing: What guidelines do you use

RW: I try to eliminate repetition. If an issue comes up for discussion, say, at several Cabinet or

NEC meetings I try to find the main meeting at which a decision was made and take out the other references. I look for the essence of the argument and try to present it as clearly as possible.

Briefing: How do you choose which particular themes to highHac! in each volume?

ott intuition, , hindsight, and Tony’s guidance. If the Falklands war hadn’t broken out in 1982, earlier references to the Falklands, particularly Cabinet discussions, would not have been of as much interest. Kinnock’s utterances are obviously of greater interest now because he’s become the party leader. My own political interests and my discussions with Tony also help shape the books.

Both Tony and I believe that what’s politically important now should be a guide for us.

The book isn’t just about. cabinet government. It’s a diary of someone who is many things: a Constituency MP, a minister, a member of the NEC, etc.

Embarassing Very little is left out be-

cause it’s embarassing or incriminating. In fact the main reason for

plete diaries for a period in the 60s because of research he was doing on European space developments. He was fascinated by a highly technical 16page discussion which we had left out. of the published diaries.

Briefing: What are the main themes of the new, volume (19771980)?

RW: The way in which Callaghan conducted his Cabinet and Tony’s own relationship with Callaghan, which is I think both touching and amusing. The emergence of Neil Kinnock. Nuclear power and nuclear weapons, both issues which took on greater importance retrospectively. The rift with the trade union movement. Labour’s complete aimlessness in office, apparently drifting from one crisis to another. To some extent it’s a portrait of a government which had lost its way.

There’s also, on the other side of the coin, the growth of the movement for Labour Party democracy, which really becomes evident after the election defeat in 79. Briefing: What about the style of the book?

RW: Dialogue is important. I try to make it read naturaliy. It’s quite a tribute to Tony that noone has ever read the diaries and come back and said. “I didn't say that” or accuse us of misquoting. Roy Jenkins said they were the best and most accurate diaries he’d ever read.

I double check all the

But very few are necessary.

Continuity is important. Given that Tam removing so much from the original transcriptions, a fair amount of work is involved preserving the feeling of a day-to-

day diary. Where possible, I try to keep references to daily life and family news

in. Briefing: What about libel?

RW: The publishers’ lawyers read the manuscript and give us advice. Often what the lawyers think is libelous is

Tony Benn: You're bound to let off steam in a

diary, but there’s toomuch

wit Brieifng: What about future volumes?

RW: The next volume will take us up to the Chesterfield by-election in 1984 and will chronicle the resignation of Callaghan, the leadership of Michael Foot, the SDP split, the Deputy Leadership cam-

Benn marching against the Gulf War

rat

farewell to politics, area direct interventionin the present day.

and think that if the movement knew what was being said there it would repudiate us at once. It still makes me angry

today.

paign, the Falklands, Bishops Stortford, the swing to the right in the Party, the 1983 manifesto and the general election, Michael Cocks and the boundary changes in Bristol, and the election of Neil Kinnock as leader of the Party.

for publication. But on my 60th birthday I decided that if people could see my experiences they would understand why and how I had formed my opinions

I used to sit in cabinet

PERISCOPE

Send snippets and info to: Greg Bassett, Periscope Colum, Labout Briefing,

PO Box 1235, London N4 2UY.

Briefing tops league table

Excerpt from testimony by the Economic League Director to the House Employment Committee hearings on recruitment practices, June 1990:

“As far as general information is concerned, I get the sort of question, ‘What’s happening in so-and-so0?’, "How is the *35-hour campaign of the confed going?’, ‘What are the Militant Tendency saying about this?’, ‘Why are Labour Briefing

honest

saying that Mr Kinnock has declared war on them in his latest policy statement? What does this mean? Who are these people behind this organisation? What elements are there in Labour Briefing? ', ‘What was the truth about the Trafalgar Square riot in terms of influence?’ It is that sort of thing, where wes give an i, opinion based on.jthe facts that we have, and people then use that in their own organisation, their own newspaper, and so on.”

P.S. The League told the House Committee

shat if people write in it will be happy to provide them with

any details about them which it holds in its files. Briefing readers should drop the League a line

Budding

Maxwells

target

Scargill Seargill baiting is profitable business.

PR Week reports that an anonymous PR

Agency has been retained specifically to continue the media blitz against the NUM leader.

PR Week doesn’t

state if the agency inquestion is one of the many which employ LCC hacks (such as Vice-Chair Mike Craven) but does admit that "taking out a con=' tract to kill someone by adverse PR is? more elegant than a gun ..- a whole new PR “specialisation opens up before us". You have been warned.

The

Terminator

Ria Attentive Guardian readers may have spotted that paper's flippant

attempt to mark the 50th anniversary of Trotsky’s murder by seeking quotes from various left groups on the significance of the occasion.

When the Guardian finally got round to xinging the ‘Labour Party, it had the misfortune to find Junior Press Officer Jo Moore on the end of the line. Moore was delighted to tell the Guardian that the Labour Party had no intention of marking the occasion in any way. Her well-aired prejudices against Trotsky and all his followers appeared in the’ next days newspaper ast]

views GF “a Labour Party Spokeswoman". Well, Party members can think what they like about Trotsky, his theories, his struggles and his various acolytes.

But surely they are all agreed that his violent death at the hands of a Stalinist agent was a bad thing. After all, we in the Labour Party believe in democratic debate not ‘murdering opponents.Or do we?

Jo Moore, selfstyled “ hammer of the Trots in Haringey” has been known

to display with pride her “icepick” necklace on

more than one occassion.

Is

criminality

hereditary? A certain Dominic Kilroy-Silk (yes, his son) has pleaded guilty toa £350,000 property fraud. An estate agent already on $27k a year, Kilroy Silk Junior carried

out “a mortgage swindle involving three building societies.

A new twist to the Abbey Habit?

(You're a sharper investor when your Dad's a class traitor?)

Joke

Q: What is the difference between a Lada and a Jehovah's witness?

A; You can shut the loor on a Jehovah's witness

Best laid plans of Panorama

A team from BBC's Panorama programme has been snooping around Liverpool.

Rumour has it Auntie intends to screen an item about continuing rows in the local Labour Party on the evening of Monday, October 1. Kinnock will make his annual address to conference the following day.

Not a few Labour activists on Merseyside expect dur Leader to use the Panorama programme

as. an excuse for another “vote-winning” attack on

Liverpool.

PHOTO: Tim Nolan

Education and the state

Challenging the State? The Socialist and Feminist Educational Experience 1900-1930, by Hilda Kean, published by Falmer Press, £9.95pb.

"My starting point" says Hilda Kean is the state itself..not any oppositional group."

Her argument, admirably supported by a phenomenal quantity of footnotes, is that while socialists, trade unionists, and feminists have opposed state education policies in various ways they have not been strategically "anti-statist".

On the contrary, these groupings either sought the expansion of state education or equal provision of that education or, while having an antistatist analysis, failed to build support for it within the working class movement.

The feminists had a radical critique of state education's sexism in relation to both women teachers and students, but their most militant campaigning was directed against the main education union, the NUT, for it’s refusal to support

Trade unionists in the

education sector were or-

1992 and Beyond , by John Palmer (HMSOE5.50)

This book is an informative th somewhat technical guide to current developments in the European Community (EC) leading up to 1992 and the _ Single European Market.

It clearly sets out the hopes, _ problems, benefits and dangers of the EC’s growing economic and political integration.

Palmer warns that by the mid-1990’s more than 80% of all the legislation which affects our lives will

ganised for better wages and conditions from a state "the majority. of teachers identified with", not for the creation of "an alternative structure to the state system under workers’ control".

Sarah Roelofs Islington North CLP

While socialists entertained no illusions concerning the class nature of state education and its function for capitalism, they isolated themselves by their propagandism and sectarianism.

This is the conundrum that bedevils socialist — and feminist — politics now, then, but (one hopes) not always\Kean stresses “the need to learn of the past political failures of the socialist movement...in order to challenge the state in education”.

Strategy

The virtue of Kean’s analysis is her definition of “challenging the state”, an understanding that “through educational legislation and social welfare reforms passed by able to

qual position of classes in

be decided by the European Community rather than the House of Commons. In effect there will be an embryonic European government.

This means that the democratisation of EC decision making is an urgent priority.

Peter Tatchell

Socialists ought to be campaigning for the transfer of-power from the unelected and secretive Council of Ministers to the open and accountable European Parliament.

Palmer also suggests that the European Com-

Alf Lomas MEP

Sends Socialist Greetings to

Briefing readers

Book review

society as equal within the state...strengthening the ideology of a neutral state....for the maintenance of the capitalist state”.

Such an understanding is crucial, but Kean aiso argues that a strategy is needed to popularise this analysis and win broader support for it in the labour movement.

Thus Kean writes of the Workers’ Socialist Federation, formed by Sylvia Pankhurst from the East London Suffrage Federation that it encouraged debate on educational matters, but was essentially a propaganda organisation, “isolated from the working class movemet”.

Sectarian

Of those organisations not isolated from the working class, the Communist Party when it adopted “an explicitly anti-statist position also adopted a sectarian approach to the main party in the labour movement (which) ensured it’s ideas (remained) isolated from the main debates within the movement”.

For its part, the main

to the state...Labour politicians argued that the state had a responsibility to ameliorate the condition of the nation”.

Interesting

One frustration is that while Kean’s language is clear and accessible, her style has a tendency not to be. It is an academic book, developed from a PhD thesis, and does not pretend to be otherwise, but its appeal is unfortunately narrowed by Kean’s critiques, in every chapter, of others who have written on the issues.

It remains an interesting and pertinent book. For socialist-feminists the chapter on “Feminist Teachers’ Views of the State” is especially interesting.

For example, Kean notes that many National Federation of Women Teachers members “had taken a conscious decision to remain single and had difficulty in understanding why individual women should wish to give up this right” while discussingthe feminists’ campaign against the sacking of married women teachers from permanent

Book review

A left Europe?

missioners should be elected by the European Parliament and not, as at present, appointed by the national governments.

He recommends the establishment ofa European Senate which would be made up of representatives from the EC’s regions and minority communities.

Interestingly, Palmer thinks that the trend towards European unification will go hand in hand with greater regional devolution. He predicts that the national governments of the EC states, faced with the twin pressures of Europeanisation and regionalism, are likely to lose power.

Palmer looks favourably at the possibility of the EC becoming a truly panEuropean organisation by opening up its membership to the EFTA and East European countries.

If this were to happen, he suggests, an enlarged EC of 20-30 nations would have sufficient economic power to pursue its own freely-chosen economic policies without fear of blackmail or subversion by multi-national corporations and international financial institutions.

Palmer would also welcome the admission to the EC of the East European and neutral countries, such as Austria, on the grounds that it would be likely to encourage a nonnuclear rethink of defence policies by the other EC nations.

Disparaties

While he believes that the creation of the Single European Market has it’s down-side, Palmer is also convinced that the trend towards EC harmonisation will show up the enormous disparities in wealth between the various countries and regions.

He suggests that the Left ought to take up the banner of “harmonisation” to argue for EC-wide action to ensure a radical redistribution of wealth and the introduction of common social welfare policies based on the highest standards prevailing in the member states.

Imaginative

Palmer raises the possibility of the creation of pan-EC Left parties which would push for transEuropean forms of economic planning and

bBo, sath aed?

Briefing back pages

note — Chapter 5’s 219th. It is a tasty trailer for Kean’s next book. The sentence “in particular the relationships (the feminists teachers) formed with each other formed a valuable source of

strength in maintaining their political commitments” is footnoted to “See Kean, Deeds not Words, (1990), especially Chapters 7 and 8, for an account of feminists’ close friendships.” I can’t wait.

Islington North Black

Section

Make sure we win the fight for black representation in the party this year

Felix Hyacinth Eddie Niles Chair Secretary

deserve serious consideration by every socialist concerned about the future of Europe.

public ownership.

These are imaginative, constructive, exciting and radical ideas which

Take the cake Poetry and prose for socialism

From the makers of the Green Socialist Video and Ken Livingstone Speaks, this 25 minute video will give inspiration to socialists everywhere and serves as an excellent focus for group discussion. Made to a highly professional standard and featuring poetry and prose excerpts from Shelley, Adrian Mitchell, Orwell, Beatrice and Sydney Webb, Brecht and Tom Mann, the programme is. a song to socialism. It is an entertaining video: for socialists of all ages and parties.

Take the Cake: Poetry and Prese for Socialism. 25 minis; colour, VHS, £15 inc p&p from: Take the Cake Productions, 26 Washington St, Brighton, East Sussex, BN2 2SR. Tel: 0273 672030.

Pt

ec

Labour Briefing No. 108 September 24th-October 24th Page 16

Leeds Labour Councillors seem resigned to their assigned roles as the “humane” collectors of the hated Tory Poll Tax.

Their — particular brand of compassion consists of hiring more finance counsellors to help people pay the Tax and a committee to “fight poverty”.

Atarecent meeting they fudged demands from the Leeds Federation of AntiPoll Tax Unions not to use bailiffs or at least to introduce a code of conduct.

Council leader Jon Trickett said the Council was already using bailiffs 7,000 times a year without. too much trouble.

Trickett treat

However, less macho voices urged caution, including former leader George Mudie. In his usual

by Leeds Labour Briefing

convoluted way Mudie argued for the code of practice despite the fact it was supported by the “posturing left”.

The main reason for his statement was that, unlike most of the Councillors in the Labour Group, Mudie had actually tried to put the case for payment at an anti-Poll Tax meet-

ing in his own ward. Only one person supported him. The rest argued for nonpayment.

According to Council figures, 55,000 people in Leeds have still not paid any Poll Tax at all. This does not include partial payers and those people who have avoided registration, which in some areas of the city runs at over 25%.

Meanwhile, people. in Leeds are wondering how the Trickett leadership obtained the Poll Tax payment records for 14 Labour Councillors who had not paid or only partially paid their bills.

‘Trickett used this infor-

the rebel Councillors by writing them individual letters warning of the dire consequences

of not

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the leader asking how this private information was obtained. So far he has

payers are open to public scrutiny the possibility of

“{ will never pay any tax which means an ordinary worker pays the same as a millionaire. I'm proud to be one of the eight million people fighting the Poll Tax.”

Clir Pat Waylett, Lewisham.

“We're opposing the Poll Tax because it’s unjust. We cannot be separated from the people who are fighting the Poll Tax and who cannot or will not pay it.”

Clirs Garth Frankland and Keith Nathan,

Leeds.

“[haven’tregistered and won't pay. The Poll Tax is a vicious attack on the working class people I was elected to represent. I have a duty to stand in solidarity with them, even if its means I am not readmitted to the Labour Group and therefore cannot stand again in May.”

Cllr Jean Calder, indefinitely suspended by Brighton Labour Group for opposing the Poll Tax.

“I have four main reasons for not paying the Poll Tax.

First, elderly people in my area living off benefits find the etra £2 or £3 a week makes a hell of a difference. These people have low incomes and their savings are being eroded as a result of the Poll Tax

Second, elderly people do not believe that everything will be alright in the end — as we are constantly being told. Young people can fight but the elderly, many of whom have worked all their lives and have never been on benefit before, are worried sick.

Third, Labour is failing to grasp the real extent of poverty. The leadership

don't seem to realise what the Poll Tax means for a family of three or more adults.

Finally, we must defeat the Poll Tax now, not just wait for a change of government.”

Cllr George Durack, Islington.

“As a Labour councillor elected to defend local working people I cannot and will not collude with the Poll Tax. Labour councils which implement the Poll Tax and penalise nonpayers are committing political suicide.”

Cllr Guy Daly, Birmingham.

Briefing goes

on and on!

Conference greetings from Birmingham Labour Briefing Supporters