Gone were the positions defended by Cliff at the Socialist Workers' Party conference last year - — that we were in a period of big defeats for the working class; that rank and organisations had to be 'shelters from the storm'; that we were not in a period where socialists could take big and bold initiatives to unite in action with thousands of workers; that the shon stewards movement has been incorporated into the lower levels of the trade union bureaucracy.
The reason for the change is clear. It has become impossible to say we are. in a period of big defeats when the steel strike locked the country for 13 weeks. It was clearly a mistake to try and build a party front in the steel strike in opposition to building a national strike committee, particularly in a union where the militants were not under the hegemony of the Communist Party in many areas. It was difficult to justify calling for a general strike in the special Welsh issue Socialist Worker while claiming that there was no possibility of a major fightback from the working class.
The big demonstrations against the John Corre Bill; the uprising in St Paul's Bristol against police harassment; the solid response to the TUC's Day of Action from the industrial strongholds of the movement despite the violent press witch hunt allow Cliff to reconsider "It's not true that thete is no feel22 May 1980 file Wing or capacity for doing anything' of he admits.
So what does Cliff propose? A united front good but formed? Cliff's only concrete suggestion is the right to work march from South Wales to the Tory Party ConTerence. does he wilal Torn labour Tories should take. He avoids mentioning the need to build a movement for a general strike.
Nowhere does