Saturday 12 February, County Hall.
Accountability of the Block Delegates from Details from: JOHN Golding, in Manchester last weekend.
of the left in Manchester, under the hammer.
GRAHAM Manchester.
The immediate context of the NEC enquiry into the Manchester City Labour Party is a very sharp divide between left and right. The COLOS the City while the right controls the Council Labour Group Before the all-out local election in May 1982 we explained, as a City Party, prepared to carr out the Manifesto would not b eligible for the panel.
As a result we dropped the bstants candida right's candidates, although most were later reinstated by their Constituencies. This time around a smaller number of coun cillors were aropoca and there have been no appeals trom their constituencies. This means they have exhausted the rules of the Labour Party as a means to get back on This for we NEC t them is for the come in and use their rules which basically say that thev can do anvining bet ween conferences reinstate them.
Despite me reasons put forward by the NEC the Labour right's Judge Jeffries, was holding his witchunting Tribunal This time it was the Manchester City Labour Party, the bastion that was coming STRINGER, chair of the City explains why Golding's eye has been turned to our view, this enquiry is a smokescreen to get a small of councillors BaCk on the panel.
The other aspect of it i that the City has developed its policy over the last few years And now has a high campaigning The right. wing NEC is taking portunity to attack the ty Party as an organisa The NEC's cover for this attack on the City Labour Party is a number of allegations of malad ministration. But they have failed to bring for ward any evidence for their claims. such allegation rests on the City Party rules that we should have no more than 40 per cent of trade union delegates. At present we are up to bonted this cent. out to the VEC two years ago, as have mechanism LODBIE dIYULIC ITUI filiating. Nor would want to.
At the time the NE said: Your rules are contradictory and you can't be expected to make them self-consistent. We have records of them saying that. The original rules were agreed with the NEC at the time of the Party reorganisation in the early The other allegations hold even less water. It is all part of their smokescreen. And it won't work anyway. Really all attempts to attack the City Party in an administrative way are a dead end They would still leave the left in the dominant position in the constituencies.
The NEC, and it shares this the Mancheste Labour Group, is out of phase with the membership. We have to make the constituencies and campaign in that way. That can bring the wit chunt to a halt.
is greater organisation o the left. We tend to forget that the right is permanently organised on national even left is very much less organised.
The City Labour Party organising a conferen • 26 March to this end. is for District and Constituency Parties to discuss what experiences we share and what methods we can adopt to develop the fight for the kind of things we have been fighting for over ST CASU years, essence the accountability of representatives
says Pat Hickey
----- pull-quotes -----
Labour Party and one of the left-wing minority in the ruling Labour Group on the City Council,