Conterence focus of CP resistance

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rnout to organise against thé witch-hunt Militant cannot defeat witch-hunt single-handed conference IT IS still not clear whether the Labour Party NEC will discuss general secretary Jim Mortimer's final proposals on how to purge Mil¡tant's 'inner group' at their meeting in October, or delay until November.

Either way, a large conference of Constituency Labour Parties and other Labour organisations on October 30 will give a big jolt to their witch-hunting plans:

Little will concentrate the minds of the right wing better than a large delegate conference agreeing to campaign against all expulsions or disaffiliations.

23 CLPs. have already, prior to most October CLP meetings, agreed to send delegates to the Conference. This initial response suggests solid support. In addition, there was unanimous support for the conference at the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy Executive, and CLPD will be sending a speaker.

Trade union branches, Labour Party wards, women's sections, and YSs will also be sending delegates. But the CLP delegates will have centre place in the conference, because the CLPs will have to make the crucial decisions to refuse to expel left-wingers and face NEC attempts to disband them.

They will be asked to vote separately on the key resolution presented by the Steering Committee:

'This CLP resolves to: • Fight to reverse the deçision to establish the NEC's register of non-affiliated groups of members operating within the Party, • Neither to expel nor to JOHN HARRIS recognise the expulsion of any Labour Party member or group of members or the disaffiliation of any CLP or constituéncy organisation in connection with the operation of the NEC's register' The trade union delegates will be asked to vote separately on a special resolution for them:

"This.. resolves to: • Fight to reverse the deci sion to establish the NEC's register of non-affiliated groups of members operating within the Party, • Not recognise the expulsion of any LP member or group of members or the disaffiliation of any CLP or constituent organisation in connection with the operation of the NEC's register, • Give full support to any CLP resisting expulsions, and maintain affiliations to ' disbanded' CLPs and boy. cott attempts to substitute 'new' CLPs set up by the NEC'.

There will be additional proposals about organising nationally and locally after the Conference, and a national Steering Committee will be elected. The right to submit amendments, TON NEFGN and the main voting, will be restricted to those delegates whose organisations can deliver the action (CLPs and trade unions).

• The first job will be to defend Militant supporters, and it is because they are now in the firing line that Militant have been asked to send a speaker to the ..Conference. In fact they appear to have partly changed their attitude to it.

On September 11 they voted against supporting the Conference. They are now arguing that CLPs should be sending delegates, but the change has scarcely been 180° Apparently Militant will argue that the conference should elect two delegates onto the steering committee elected from the September 11 conference, and then dissolve into the one 'united' campaign. But it is fantasy to believe that Milnot afford to ignore the vast groundswell of support in the middle classes for CND: yet as the party of loyalty to NATO, it cannot offer any real commitment to disarmament - and stands several yards to the right of its Liberal Party allies on the issue.

David Owen offered a virtuoso • attempt at straddling this problem, by proposing a vast increase in "conventional" death machines in exchange for nukes.

"You cannot advocate a non-nuclear policy and then go passing resolutions involving slashing cuts in conventional weapons, It doesn't add up.

We have to be prepared to dig deeper into our pockets to provide the resources for a real conventional defence force."

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This vision of columns of 'new tanks, jets and bombs, he suggested, was the kind of vision to "catch the imaginin Militant's project.

The October 30 conference should certainly decide on organising, as far as possible, a joint campaign. The two steering committees from the two conferences should be closely linked. But genuine joint activity seems far from Militant's thinking.

principle it is a possible tactical response, to do it now will certainly "seriousAnd their hints about confuse the campaign. to defend them.

onbury East ward in Isling- 2903). ton Central CLP - not a specially left-wing ward, in ation of those people in the peace movement troubled by the world they see"

And if all that failed, and the SDP decided instead to allow the siting of Cruise missiles in Britain, they would demand a revolutionary, radical and mouldbreaking form of "participation"

"The British people have the right to feel that it is their government's finger on the safety catch. Not the trigger, but the safety catch Volvos Delegates, uncertain. whether to welcome • and accommodate to CND, or' whether to fend off its "siren sounds of unilateralism" were relieved at Owen's speech, which offered something for everyone present and got a two-minute standing ovation.

Despite repeated angry claims that the SDP is not in fact simply a party of the Volvo-driving middle classes, and includes union officials expulsions"

It is Ted Grant's and Peter Taaffe's ward. In this case their ward seems to have more idea about the effective way to defend them than they do themselves.

The October 30 conference has to organise such feeling. Delegates should Peckham: Committee Northfield: Committee rooms, 30 Hillwood Road, as well as headmasters and accountants, every aspect of the conference underlined its petty bourgeois character. A survey suggested that 11% of the delegates were unemployed: one of these proved to be an. unemployed antique dealer!

Speech after speech confessed that the SDP has failed to convince working class people, particuarly blacks, that it has anything to offer. And the conference showed that it remains less a party than an organised fan club for the repeated hectoring and wooden speeches from the 'Gang of Four' who remain the only reliable spokespeople for the SDP's brand of evasive, utopian or reactionary politics.

Such a party can hope and predict continued success only on the basis of the dire economic and social crisis unleashed by Thatcher and the confusion and bankruptcy of the policies peddled by the bureaucratic leaders of the trade union and Labour movement.

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WITCH-HUNT South Labour Parties.