On November 16th - at the mass anti-cuts rally in Central London -Jim Callaghan was almost booed off the platform. He was booed simply because thousands of trade unionists realise that he has no intention of fighting the cuts or any of the other anti-working class policies Thatcher is pursuing.
This groundswell among the union rank-and-file has already begun to perculate into the Labour Party where activists increasingly feel the need to challenge the rightwing policies which lost Labour the last election and which restrict the Tory fight to Parliamentary "shadow-boxing'.
This was shown most clearly at the last Labour Party conference where Callaghan - • despite vigorous backing from the Tory press -came in for stringent criticism. Significant was the fact that, unable to rely on the block votes of the unions, shifting left under Thatcher's attacks, decisive victories were chalked up against him on the question of party democracy.
DIO Callaghan right-wing. Gaining support from a number of Constituency Labour Parties and trade union branches, the LCC has held a number of regional conferences to open up a debate on those policies which should constitute an opposition platform. LIMITED?
There can be no doubt - as many on the left have spelled out - that the formation of the LCC is a clear response to the growing anti-Tory feeling building up among Labour rank-and-file and their frustration with the rightwing Callaghan leadership.
There can equally be no doubt that many of its leaders - who refused to oppose Callaghan's policies when in office LCC as channelling this frustration into paths useful to them in the inter-parliamentary feuds that are now opening up. Figures now opposing the Tory cut-backs kept very quiet when Jim Callaghan rammed through similar measures in 1976!
1UT WITH (UTC IN wint HEALTH WILL to defence of abortion rights. • see the growth in the years ahead.
MASS PARTY?
out of the LCC meetings -75,000 issues as diverse as the steel strike That certain strands inside the LCC are aware of this can be seen most clearly from Peter Hain's comments at the Manchester LCC meeting in December when he said: "The party is far too committed to parliamentarianism, so avoiding creating a mass movement outside capable of exerting sufficient power to make social change feasible ...".
Hain's comments mark a welcome change from the past where left-wing opposition in the Labour Party was considered a matter of pious resolution-passing and not participation in the living struggles. It is this attitude - which sees the need of Labour activists identifying with and helping to build the anti-cuts struggle, the fight against racist and anti-abortion laws - which will offer the LCC a real potential for One of the main concerns to come particularly the Manchester conTEr debate. ference last month - was how to "revivify" the Labour Party, how to party". Considering the decline in Labour Party membership over the Building the Labour Party, however, is not an organisational question. It is deeply linked with coming years, to identify with and promote those campaigns working people are forced into to defend It is only by being seen as a comradely way party fighting in the interests of working people that it will draw back into its ranks those thousands Wilson/Callaghan leadership. Moreover, it is only by drawing in these launched to remove the Callaghan leadership. The only way to ensure a removal of the right-wing is by movement. the left gaining a widening base - policies. It also involves a serious fight for democracy to ensure that there can be a free and frank exchange of views within the party on the way forward.
The LCC already has a good record on this question, many of its supporters helping the fight at the last Labour Party conference to loosen the right wing's undemocratic grip over the party and forcing through re-selection of MPs and the right of the NEC to determine election manitesto.
Such gains have to be maintained and extended against right-wing pressure so that the Parliamentary Labour Party as a whole becomes accountable to the conference. As part of this offensive, the LCC should stand forcibly against any attempts by the right wing -backed up, of course, by their allies in the Tory press - to launch witch-hunts in the party and to revamp the bans and proscriptions measures. All tendencies should have the right to put their point of view in a free and democratic In order to struggle for the democratisation of the party, the LCC must itself be vigorously democratic. While it has shown itself open to different ideas at conferences held to date, at the Manchester meeting it decided that elections to the Executive of the LCC would be by postal ballot and that the Executive would have the right to exclude anyone it wished without right of appeal. Such positions run counter to its otherwise open nature and could - if extended - mar its ability to become a broad, open tendency drawing in wide support.
STEP FORWARD The LCC was born out of the mass discontent of the labour movement with the right-wing policies of the Labour leaders. As such, it can become a major step forward which socialists should support and help build. No doubt there will be differences on the way forward but these could be discussed out in a It, as a broad current, it can begin to link up with the struggles underway - and maintain a scrupulous democracy which allows a genuine exchange of views -- then it could become a serious challenge to the Labour right-wing and a major step forward in the fight for socialist policies in the labour
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