YOUR
VALIXI London anti-cuts rally. anti-working class policies the Tories are pursuing. PEACE that: "The Party is far too committed to parliamentarianism, ment outside capable of exerting sufficient power to make social change feasible"
change from the past where 'left' opposition "i a renewed the anti-Tory struggles - that will offer the party a real chance of growth in the years ahead.
MASS PARTY One of the main concerns before many on the left in the party is: how can we 'revivify' it, how can we once again turn it into a mass party? Considering the decline in party membership over the years, such a question is not unimportant.
ever, is not an organisational question. It is deeply linked with the ability of the left to identify working people are forced into to defend their rights and living standards against the Tories. It is only by being seen as a party fighting for the interests of working people that it can draw back Into Is tanks tnose tousands who 'drifted' out under the Wilson/Callaghan leadership. Moreover, it is only by drawing in these forces that a real base can be laid for removing the Jim Callaghans and Shirley Williams once and for all.
PAPER STRATEGY (Alternative Economic Strategy) supported by most of the NEC, is nothing more than a diversion. Calls for 'import controls' or for 'greater state subsidies are not only incapable of defending the interests of working people. Worse still, they have no value to the real struggles workers and their allies are involved in today. What use are pledges of what a future Labour government will do tor people struggling now to defend their jobs, keep the local logic of Tory immigration laws?
party - the test to see whether it can really win the confidence of the thirties?
DEMOCRACY TALTHAMSTU fire.
so avoiding creating a mass moveHain's comments mark a welcome was consiqered a matter of pious-resolution passing and not participation in the living by what it says and does now. Will it support the Lambeth conference against the cuts and support those councils refusing to implement Tory measures? Will it initiate and lead a mass campaign against the Tory policies which are leading to the worst jobless situation since These are the questions that the left-wing of the party must address themselves to. A programme is not a blue-print, divorced from the living struggle, worked out on paper. It should be based on the real demands thrown up in struggle Dy workers and their allies in de. fence of their interests: 'For the 35-hour week', 'For a Sliding Scale of Wages', 'No Cuts - Build a Public Works Programme' etc. The struggle for a fighting Labour Party also involves a struggle for a democratic Labour Party. Already, unael mass pressure, le unaemocratic mechanisms of Labour's right-wing have come under heavy Such an offensive has to be deepened in the period ahead to enAction Friday 24th October. 8pm. Conway Hall Anne Williams (NUT)
sure that the PLP as a whole will become accountable to conference. As part of this, the left should unite against any attempt by the right-wing - backed up by their allies in the Tory press - to launch witch-hunts in the party and revamp the bans and proscriptions measures. All tendencies should have the democratic right to put their point of view in a free debate.
CLASS STRUGGLE There can be no doubt that the present swing left in the party reflects the aspirations of millions of workers who want a leadership reflecting their interests against the Tories.
There is every opportunity, in the period ahead, for the party to reflect and take up those policies, making Labour a tool of working people organised around a clear class-struggle programme.
This is the surest way of ensuring that, when a Labour govern. ment is re-elected to office, it will be committed to representing the interests of the class that built itthe working class.