supporters ALL THE dominate every ference this reflected at the union APEX's annual conference last week.
'The union. wing, endorsed its usual brand of 'socialcontract policies'. The union president and shadow minister Dennis Howell also bemoaned Shirley Williams' defection to the Social Democrats rather than attacking her politics.
Socialist Challenge industrial workers' conference debates, which will union conwere white collar dominated by the right disciplinary 'You should have stayed and fought with us, Shirley, to help us get the party back on the right lines,' he complained.
Stage-managed debate undemocratic procedures saw off close challenges to the union leaders from CND supporters and those seeking a real fight over hours, overtime and jobs.
But it was over the Benn/Healey elec tion for deputy Labour leader that the union leaders' reactionary politics were fully revealed. Over • 150 delegates visitors to the conference heard Tony Benn address a Campaign for Labour Party Democracy fringe meeting, despite threats APEX delegates who invited. Benn. The con.
Bolshevik committees be raised to 80 per cent. months later he declared that 'now must wish for the new Parorganisations to have one Social Democratic intellectual to several hundred Social Democratic workers'.
Through this campaign the situation of the BolShevik.
By 1907 a third members were industrial workers.
A similar problem faced the Trotskyists in the United States in the early 1930s. Trotsky commented: "The party has only a minority of genuine fac tory workers. This is an inevitable beginning every revolutionary socialference against benn and increasingly left in the union.
and Party.
didn't vote for tion for the left to organise. ist party. The non-proletarian elements represent a bellese that we can be pro yeast and ud of the good quality these elements But the danger is in the next period we can receive too much 'yeast' ' for the needs of the party?
He therefore proposed for the whole party 'the task is naturally not te DICYCl the influx of intellectual by artificial means.. but to orientate in practice the whole party towards factories. strikes and the unions.
In Britain today we are . living through literal i rebellions epitomised by thr: uprising of black youth Brixton. The economic and social crisis went on to vote for Healey Over the next few days Howell and general secretary Roy Grantham became demagogic and paranoid the growing challenge from the They were helped by Michael Foot's address to the conference, which was little more than an attack on Benn and the democratic changes inside the Labour His speech destroyed many left illus ions in his leadership, and was praised by Howell as 'a great speech by a man we . It was indeed an inspirahas shaken the faith of large numbers of worker. in the old capitalist way. of doing things In the industrial unions there is a ferment of enscussion this crisis and its political right inside the t fight Labour Party. These are the factors which pose the opporinity of making substantial gains in the fight for socialist policies in the industrial workplaces.
But it is not simply a question of the numbers of workers, but of work the unions central to political work. It is in this spirit that are building the Socialist Challenge in dustrial workers conference.
Socialist Challenge 7 May 1981