betore it started. Coming a week after the miners nad forced a U-turn the Tories, and after 70,000 plus had demonStrated Glasgow, took no account of these developments.
The tone was set by the opening remarks of Ken Turner, president of Newcastle Trades Counrespona lo ine lones altacks, that the working class nau lost contacle and that the labour movement was to rebuild 'where it counts, at the grass roots'.
He believed trades councils had a vital role to play In this process. The general line of the groups and so on. was the way to build an alternative to the labour bureaucracy.
A great deal of time was devoted to the use of resource 'cross-fertilisation of ideas and 'mutual learning situations'.
Speaking at the end policies hinged on "the disengagement from the problems of capitalism' and 'an alternative common sense to that of austerity.
rOr the planners of conference the question was not which government was in still of Labour government could be in gate drew the analogy of •ot people who had had a very rough ride in a battered old Mini, and. as a consequence, built a very fine KOlIs Royce. nately they had neglected to put an engine in.
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COOKSON (Socialist Challenge GM