Reds Under Bedwas

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alternative THIS FRIDAY the GC of Neil Kinnock's constituency Labour Party, Bedwellty, will discuss a motion from Bedwas and Tre¡homas ward to expel 10 ward members.

The motion calls for the expulsion of all members of a local party caucus called 'Bedwas and Trethomas Campaign for Labour Action', and all those who were involved in circulating by hand a letter to ward members inviting them to a discussion meeting on Ireland, held last July.

The Campaign was set up in June to "fight for ADVERTISEMENT fuller democracy and to fight for socialist action in the area"

At the July meeting, where John Bloxam from Socialist Organiser was a speaker, a group of right wing councillors turned up and moved that the meeting be 'adjourned'. Defeated, they walked out and the meeting was heid. Now they want their revenge.

The charge against the Campaign is that the ten 'held a meeting without permission of Bedwas and Trethomas Labour Party"!

In fact the main cause of friction is cuts: the councillCAPITALIST CRISIS * * GOALIST ALTERA: IS САРІТ4L15* CRIGIO + AN.SOMALIST ALTER: 10 CAPITAL!"

SUHANIST AUT TERNA ors have acted as quislings for Thatcher, while the Left wants to fight the Toryimposed cuts.

Two Tribunites in the ward voted against the motion. It seems like that the GC will throw it out.

What is significant is that the witch-hunting atmosphere allows the right wing scourges of left-wing 'intolerance' to crawl out of the woodwork with all the pretensions of Stalinist satraps - and about the same view of the political rights of the membership of the Party.

IT'S BY no means fanciful to draw a parallel between what is happening to the Left in the Labour Party and to Solidarity in Poland.

Of course, the events are on such different scales that any comparison almost invites ridicule.

In Britain, a reformist workers' party totters under the weight of internal contradictions as the Left demands a radical programme and the Right demands an end to flirtations with socialist policies.

'In Poland, it is the vast majority of the working class which has moved into action, threatening in practice almost every aspect of Stalinist rule. Again, Solidarity is pulled from the left and from the right towards revolution and towards compromise.

But both states - Britain and Poland - rest their Kinnock ly Patrick Spilling defence on a historical revolution.

It has taken some time for the Labour Party right wing and its dwindling band of accomplices in Fleet Street to place a precise limit on permissible politics.

The test, however, is now established by the Tatchell case. Foolish radicalism ends and revolution begins at the point of extra-parliamentary action.

Even a passing acquaintance with English history would suggest there was something distinctly extraparliamentary about the way Cromwell broke the power of the monarchy and established the rule of the bourgeoisie through Parliament, and the way the vote was later won for the working class.

When the Times Telegraph praise Parliamentarism, they do not

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