No to the Register! Press Home the Fight

Scan page 16

allowed that attempt to be Foot likes to inveigh made. will invariahlv identif rward from the victories on democracy, the right wull push us back by O'Mahony THE LABOUR Party s committee of inquiry into Militant has published its report and recommendations. This Wednesday, 23rd, the NEC of the Labour Party will discuss it. It is expected that a bloc of the right and the soft left will carry it by a small majority.

The main recommendation is that the Labour Partv should "establish a register of non-affiliated groups of members to be recognised and allowed to operate within the Party"

"All such groups must apply to and be acceptable by the NEC for registration. The decision of the NEC on eligibility for registration shall be final"

In practice this would mean a register not only of 'groups' but also of newspapers and other publications. For unless there is 'private' wealth available, you cannot produce and circulate a labour movement newspaper without an organised group of active supporters.

These proposals, if they were implemented consistently, would mean a big shift towards an authoritarian regime in the Labour Party.

The register would create à regime in the Party far more strict, and with immensely greater powers of regulation in the hands of the leadership, than what existed under the old system of banning and proscribing named organisations, which existed until 1973.

Under that system an unofficial grouping or newspaper was "tolerated' unless and until it was banned. It needed a positive decision to repress them.

Under the proposed new system it would be the other way round: no socialist grouping or newspaper will be tolerated unless it is positively approved, after being vetted, assayed, and assessed Unless the Left fights to go for by the Party bureaucracy acting for the Parliamentary leadership.

Such a system could be implemented as a savagely repressive regime, as tolerant liberal one.

The Party leadership will be lavish with promises and commitments to a liberal regime. Some of them -Foof for example - may sincerely intend to have such a regime.

The choice will rest with the Party machine and the Parliamentary and trade union leaders whose wishes they will serve. At each moment they will interpret it in the way that serves their own interests.

Throughout the country the choice to harass members, interfere with the circulation of 'unlicensed' newspapers, and try to suppress them locally - the choice to attempt to expel from the Labour Party people associated with 'unstamped' papers - will rest with local bureaucrats and often with right wing cliques and caucuses.

The latter do not, as a rule, have ideas and unofficial newspapers to push, and ru j'un therefore will not need register.

The soft left and the literate right are fond of quoting against the Marxists such maxims as Lord Acton's famous: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" • Why do they now think that any Party leadership is to be trusted with the centralised bureaucratic power to systematically root out at will any unofficial groups and publications it chooses to regard as heretical, alien, or inconvenient?

Michael Foot, and the retiring general secretary Ron Hayward, may perhaps now intend that such powers should be used sparingly. What if Dennis Hcaley becomes leader, or if some Peter Shore or other does?

At stake here is * The right of the rank and file to think and publish idcas and commentaries other than those of the official Party caders.

* The right of like-minded groups of people in the vast membership of the Labour Party to got together lo work out socialist policies, ideas, proposals, and initiatives to pul to the rest of the Party as alternatives to the official policy and philosophy.

* The right of others as well as the PLP to organise where necessary to propagate and fight for such ideas and proposals, and lo counterpose them as an effective organised force lo the official machinery of the labour movement.

In short, of stake is the right of effective that is. organised dissent. Groups like the PIP have their organisations and cucuses, their full-time' secrefaries and assistants, access lo the bourgeois media, ele. ele. The rank and file worker does not. The Marvist rank and file especially does no!

Withon the right 10 effective dissent, there can be no effective democracy.

The Labour Party IS politically a broad party because it is the party of the broad labour movement, which has 11 million organised trade unionists, 7 million of whom are affiliated to the Labour Party. There are many different opinions in that movement - a hundred schools of thought contending. Membership is not selfselected on a precise political basis.

Workers join and vote for what they sce as a class Then if they want 10 participate in its policy-making processes, they face a top heavy structure crowned by Parliamentarians who have traditionally been a law unto themselves, and are now fighting with some success to go on as before.

Power at conference, where, nominally, decisions are made, is held by trade union bosses - unclected or elected once or twice in a working lifetime.

The policy of the party can be worked out in one of two ways.

By the free play or ideus, proposals, projects and initiatives. Or by decree from the top, from the PEP and union executives.

If it is lo be a free play ol ideas, that presupposes and demands freedom to organise and make propaganda.

The traditional way in the Labour Party has been the bureaucratic, top-down way. Since 1979 the pace has been set from the rank and file in revolf against Labour's record in government.

The commitfee of inquiry's proposals are the blade of the confer-attack by i thoroughly determined establishment. Thcy want 10 crush the revolt now and insure themselves against the rank and file for the future. the result of the attempt at political and organisational self-renewal which the labour movement. has been making for the last three years will be the destruction of the relative openness of the Labour Party which llowed that rade.

for the decisive test of . chether or not an organisat›n is democratic is this: oes the party possess the nternal mechanisms and the otential to develop and put orward a radically different olicy and leadership in ompetition with those estblished and in control? If it oes not, then it is not emocratic.

At best. adjustment omes through 'palace oups and parliamentary lique fights, and the ramk nd file are deprived of initative and real control.

The possibility of intern1 self-renewal in turn epends on whether or not n opposition, at the various tages of its possible developent, has the treedom to unction within normal arty discipline and rules vithout being aborted or ushed out of the party.

If you look at the history if the so-called Communist arties, and of various iseudo-Marxist and pseudorotskyst groups - against vhich the "super-democrat' Foot likes to inveigh will invariably identif qualitative organisatio generation at the where this pos became choked off.

It is the first st such a change in the l Party that long-time long-time democrat, a proclaimed libertarian ael Foot is now helf organise.

How does it happe:

Foot finds himseli ing this role because part of a political cr revolution in the Party. The post'79 and file revolt shook may have destroyed basis on which Labou 'tolerance' had rest‹ decades: real power the hands of the PL it didn't matter wha were in the air and wl olutions were pass: conference.

The determined by the rank and file privileges of the PI changed all that. The l and increasingly the •Continued page