Southampton Labour Briefing no. 3

Thatcher's visit to the Falklands, coupled with the announcement that there will be an April budget, shows that it is now vitually certain that we wiil be faces with a general election this year. This election will not be an ordinary one, but will determine the course of British society for a decade or more.

With mass unemployment, falling living standards, decaying welfare services and falling production it might be expected that the Labour Party is poised to win with an over-whelming majority, elected on its most radical programme for decades. But it is the Tories, who are putting into practice their most radical solutions, who are the most popular at the moment, and are confident of winning the election. All socialists in the Labour Party must ask themselves why this is.

Dennis Healey and the rest of the right in the Party (and their friends in the media) tell us that the party is unpopular because Michael Foot is too ‘left’ and because he has refused to deal with the left in the Party. All would be well if the extrem-

ists were expelled, and Labour returned to its 'traditional' policies. This argument is a smokescreen, to mask the SDP fellow-travellers' opposition

to the policy gains of the left, which have given us a programme with the potential of gaining mass support. Dennis Healey wants to return to the discredited

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policies of the past, the policies of a Labour government which

obeys the wishes of the Pentagon and the City, rather than Party Conference and the TUC.

Labour can win only if it can present a clear socialist alternative to the Tories and the SDP. The two central planks of such a policy must be unilateral nuclear disarmament, and a programme to fight unemployment. Labour must clearly be seen as the Party that will get rid of Cruise, Trident, US bases and all nuclear weapons from Britain. We must, witn CND and the TUC, build a mass campaign against the missiles, which will strengthen a future Labour govern~ ment in ites fight to get rid o: nuclear weapons. Unemployment can only be ended by a policy which takes control of the economy out of the hands of the capitalist class and runs it in the interest of the working class.

In order to prevent Labour enetering the election on a socialist programme, Healey and the right have launched the witch-hunt. Any expulsions, nowever, are a threat to the whole of the Party, and are not just aimed at Militant or any other one tendency. Southampton Labour Party must maintain its policy of opposing expulsions and witech-hunts, and support the constituency parties that are under threat from the NEC.

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The policies wl Dy is Healey were tried by the las + Labour government, and they resulted in Thatcher's victory. We must

resist any attempt to return to those failed policies, and instead enter the coming election with a clear socialist altern-

We must

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de: tae hard-won poil? cles of recent years against right wing, who are prepared the election than come on such policies. We

allow them to succeed

the to lose te power cannot

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ative to Thatcher. southampton southampton Labour Briefing is a Peed ee produced by "fees

Labour Party who nolicie OL ‘socialis WS i ‘ eee aay) _S

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is a weexly newspaper wWuich aims to provide a serious and systematic analysis of the Major polit-

ical, industrial and social

issues in Britain and internationally. It campaigns for the return

2 Labour government tirmly committed to carrying out the radical socialist policies adopted by the Labour Party and the

TU over the last few years.

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Labour Briefing

We are also active in jJocal

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