'We have enormous support

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Freedo

"No more Mr Nice Guy Steel tells Liberals: 'Prepare for government' Ken Cameron® THE register is a witchhunt, and, with a rightwing NEC, it's a disaster for all the Left. The promises we had from Michael Foot that the register was about defending the constitution were not reassuring. The statements at the Solidarity meeting on Sunday night make their intentions very clear.

Bob Wright Asst. gen. sec. AUEW IT'S TOTALLY unnecessary, and the Party will live to regret it. There has to be a campaign to reverse the decision. Inevitably there will be a conflict. Parties will refuse to expel. If the right wing get their teeth, they will use every device to attack the Left, and it won't only be Mil itant. It's going to be a real diversion from the real challenges that face the Arthur Scargill I am personally against all witch-hunts, bans, and proscriptions. The decision on Monday represents a retrograde step. We should not be pessimistic. We expected the right wing to • lie down and fade away. We were living in dreamland.

I am an optimist. They recognise that they have lost the battle on policies, and now we have to ensure they lose the battle on bans and proscriptions. This is just the start.

Tony Mulhearn PPC Liverpool Toxteth IT WAS a diabolical vote. The rank and file will resist ferociously any attempt by the right-wing NEC to expel socialists from the Labour Party, and will resist any attempt to expel candidates chosen by CLPs. Obviously after the NEC results the right wing are more confident about their ability to impose expulsions. The rank and file will have to be vigilant.

SINCE LAST year's ringing exhortation by Liberal leader David Steel to his squads of well and less well intentioned middle class followers to go back and "prepare for government"

there have been some changes made.

Diehard Liberal loyalists - almost all of them substantially to the left of their new SDP allies - have been press-ganged and frog-marched into a division of seats which both Steel and SDP leader Jenkins have sternly told them must be accepted.

And with the possibility of an autumn '83 general election heaving up over the horizon, the woolly radicalism of the Young Liberals has been pushed firmly into the background.

No longer can the Liberals permit themselves to remain the 'silly party' of British politics, the party of sandals, wispy beards and good causes. Even with the Alliance opinion poll ratings falling alarmingly, lan Harrison Fulham CLP delegate I THINK they'd like to suppress the Left without mass expulsions. They'd like to suppress the only policies that are truly socialist, as opposed to those of the PLP leadership. The Right want to win a general election, but are scared of mass working class action demanding they implement socialist policies. They therefore impose organisational norms on the Left. The right wing know that the best way the Left can organise against them is through well-organised, disciplined groups. Foot actually admitted this in his attack on Militant.

Ted Grant FIGHT, fight and fight again. There's no way they can succeed.

Dave Nellist PPC Coventry South East PRIOR and Tebbit are putting an Employment Law through Parliament designed to prevent solidarity action by the working class. Last Wednesday millions of workers showed how little regard they had for that piece of paper. The law has gone through Labour's parliament, only because of three general: secretaries defying conference or EC decisions (TGWU, GMWU, USDAW), and opposed by 90 to 95% of CLP delegates. Just like Tebbit, Labour's right wing will tind that what's written on paper is not necessarily possible to put through in practice.

Emlyn Williams.

South Wales NUM IT'S A retrograde step. It bloody stinks. Coupled with the NEC election results, it's time the left wing took the gloves off and started fighting. the Liberals busily 'preparing for government' are now wary of policies which they may be called upon to implement or to press for in a coalition government of the future.

Populist displays of antiToryism and shows of concern for the poor and needy however remain part of the n arketing of the Liberals as the party of nice nonsucialist midale class people.

NHS Perhaps the best example of this was the conference's antics over the health service pay dispute.

David Steel condemned the TUC's September 22 Day of Action as 'inappropriate and illegal", , but denounced the Tories' meanness and personally escorted into the hall six non-union nurses from the local RCN...

Cyril Smith from the rostrum began by castigating the unions for calling strike action over NHS pay - but went on to assert that people had the right to strike in support of health workers, and offered the well-heeled delegates heart rending tales of his mother buying spectacles in Woolworths (presumably some time before he made his fortune as a businessman).

The performance was. capped off with calls for fresh negotiations on pay - or binding arbitration.

From the SDP, Dr David Owen has called for a system of binding arbitration on NHS pay to be introduced at once. This would of course entail intensified pressure for efficiency audits and cost reduction, he admitted. The only alternative was the growth of private medicine.

Indeed, on this as on so many other issues the SDP sets out more crudely and bluntly the reactionary politics also advocated by the Liberals.

On trade for instance, there are plainly some differences of opinion within the Liberal Party over the question of the closed shop - while the SDP's stance is one of quite unreserved union-bashing.

On nuclear weapons, while both SDP and Liberals argue against the Trident system (on the 'cost' grounds also cited by Labour's right wing), only the Liberals have come out with a conference policy against the siting of US Cruise missiles in Britain.

However the Liberals have shown their respect for SDP traditions by ignoring this policy. Defence spokesman Lord Mayhew got up to defy calls for his resignation, pointing out that he has argued for all those aspects of policy he agrees with:

'I challenge the questioner to find a single member of the Liberal Party who supports a larger proportion of Liberal policy than I do. If there is such a person he must be a freak" NUPE secretary Lesley THE DISTRICT Health Authority have decided to make panic cuts partly because they are overspent and partly to finance the pay offer to the health workers as the Tories have told them to.

They decided temporarily close the hospital and wards in other hospitals. The vote at the meeting was six to four, with one Labour member voting in favour of closure, and one abstaining.

In response to this we called a meeting where I proposed a work-in. We decided to carry on because we weren't prepared to have their decision imposed on us by faceless bureaucrats, and because as health workers we are committed to improving the health service, not running it down.

• PUBLIC meeting to launch a public investigation into the proposed merger of the British Steel Corporation (BSC) River Don works, Firth Brown, and River Don Stampings, was held on Friday 24th at Sheffield City Hall.

The attendance was pretty poor. Bad " weather and a bus strike were part of the reason, but so was lack of campaigning.

The campaign committee's decision is however a massive step forward. A clear call for occupation of the We can no doubt expect that the Liberals, learning the art of 'preparing for government' from their SDP mates, will similarly give the elbow to embarrassing policies from their conference - including a Charter for Youth, which calls for the age of majority to be lowered to 16.

As one ex-headmaster delegate pointed out, there is little for the Liberals in such a concession.

'Boys and girls of 16 are very rarely Liberals".

If the right to vote was extended on that basis, few areas of the country would have the franchise today!

Of course a lot of 'boys and girls' of 16 are unemployed, and many of them are harassed by the police. They are scarcely likely to be enchanted by the Liberals' recruitment of former Chief Constable John Alderson, or by their unconvincing and complex schemas for the ending of unemployment.

But older people Fisher spoke to We have got enormous local support because we are a local hospital. We take in old and handicapped people, so their relatives can have a rest. Small hospitals are nicer to be in because people get to know each other.

And we've had all sorts of support from the labour movement. The strike support committee set up to help with the pay claim is totally behind us, and has done a lot of good work with publicity stalls and the like.

A lot of money has come in from trade union branches. The NUT has given £150. There are plans to set up a union-based support committee in alliance with the existing support committee, which is predominantly Labour Party. This should give us a broader base of support, three plants against job loss came from all sections of the platform.

On the platform were River Don convenor Cliff Wright, Firth Brown convenor Reg Walker, Euro-MP Dick Caborn, Sheffield city council leader David Blunkett, and in the chair Labour councillor Bill Michie.

Despite the poor attendance, the meeting was a boost to the fight for jobs while also showing a willingness to discuss the political issues. It must be the start of a real fightback.

DAVE AYRTON more gullible, and at a time of furious and unrelenting media onslaught against the Labour Party and against anything remotely resembling a socialist policy, it is far from certain that the chameleon politics of the Liberal/SDP alliance will remain in the electoral doldrums.

Some Liberal delegates may even have believed their leader's lofty announcement that:

"Just 88 we have brought Liberals and Social At Wood Green and Southgate hospital in Haringey, North Lond workers are occupying closure both in terms of financia commitment and for pick. eting.

I hope that this will make people realise that it's not simply a struggle for ou jobs and wages, but to de fend the NHS. We hope that it won't be a one-way struggle, but we in our tur will be able to help othe strikers.

The support of the staff is very solid. We have fou consultants who support us as well as the GPs, and we have two doctors on the occupation committee. The doctors are pledged tc come in the DHA raid us The nurses and domestics are the mainstay of the occupation.

The District Health Auth. ority claimed that we are under-used: but it was thes who closed one of ou wards for five months ir November 1979, and they have never reopened it, be cause they won't spend the money to employ four nurs es to run the ward.

The figures they: pul forward about the saving: they would make were totally misleading. WE need to see the books. They have talked about this over spend - how do we know We don't know how muct money goes out to the drus companies and the like.

Pressure has been put or the District Health Author ity to reconvene anothe meeting and reconsider their decision. If they don" change their minds, we wil carry on the occupation treating patients and deal ing with our normal tasks and resist any attempt tr run us down or remove patients or equipment. Democrats together in common cause, we must now bring people anc Government together in t new alliance"

But the common career ist interest that has wedder the liberals and the SDI can not extend to the work ing class: there are no enough quangos, constit uencies, and Volvos to g round. Beneath the 'M Nice Guy' image, the Lib erals, too, are a party o capitalist exploitation ans class war.

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Socialist organiser, Thursday 30 September 1982, Page 4