THE DEATH agony of the Tribune group of MP's is going to be a drawn out affair. By 39 votes to 27 they decided to support the Labour Party NEC's new register of groups. The official parliamentary left have scored an own goal.
Commenting on the reasons for their decision, Mr Buchan MP for Renfrew East and chair of the group said, 'We are opposed to expulsions and witch-hunts, but we know [illegible] the right wing has never required a register when it wanted a witch-hunt ahead.'
But surely the real function of the register is not hard even for Mr Buchan to grasp. Perhaps this is why after the meeting he suggested that the outcome indicated concern within the group about the need to defend Labour's consitution. The offensive against Labour's constitution can be put at Militant's door who have threatened the Labour Party more than Harold Wilson's referendum on the EEC, Barbara Castle's In Place of Strife, Callaghan's secret missile programme or Healey's pay norms.
The beauty of the register, as the Guardian of August 19 reports, 'is that members of Militant can put themselves outside its requirements without the need for disciplinary action against them.' Thus we can skip the trial and get on with the execution.
The Tribune group's decision strengthens Foot. Last weekend, the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staff's executive voted by a 2 to 1 majority in favour of the register. The ASTMS conference in 1981 supported Tony Benn, but the ASTMS executive in general and Clive Jenkins in particular opposed Benn's decision to contest the deputy leader's position last year after having voted for the democratic election of the leader. The deputy leadership contest turned then into an organised challenge to the bureaucrats who lord it over most of the unions.
Overcome by this whiff of democracy Jenkins has been busily putting together a new coalition which aims to take over the job of guarding the bureaucratic birthright in the Labour Party, but without the discredit associated with Grantham, Boyd, Duffy and Chapple.
Basnett. And the first test of the new bloc is the register at this year's Labour Party Conference, and the subsequent removal of Militant
The faded bunch of radicals in the Tribune group, who only want a little witch-hunt feel they have some friends in the unions. And so 39 of them added yet another stain to the tatty pink banner of Labour's official left.
No wonder Tribune itself pronounced them dead.