The Battle for B

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BRIEFEN NOT THE I Bermondsey activists help lobby NEC against witch-hunt HANDS OFF HORNSEYE ANDREW WIARD (REPORT) NEL MUST FIGHT THE SOCIA THE Bermondsey by-election will become a focus of national attention as the Tory press intervenes in an effort to secure the defeat of Peter Tatchel and strengthen the position of Labour's right wing.

But for the working class of this solid Labour constituency, it will be local issues that are likely to predominate. The closure of the docks and virtually all industry means that Bermondsey, like so many inner city areas, faces large scale unemployment with little prospect of new jobs being created.

The ratio of flats to houses is higher than in any other part of the country and cuts in the rate support grant make it difficult for Southwark Council to maintain properties or build new houses.

Half the constituency is now under the control of the London Docklands Development Corporation which continues to increase the amount of land under its control.

The LDDC is responsible directly to Environment Minister Tom King and elected councillors have no say in how the area under LDDC control is developed.

The riverside will be developed as offices, luxury homes and leisure facilities for the rich while the local communities are left to suffer poverty; unemployment and bad housing.

The appalling record of the right wing Labour Council, led for the last 14 years by John O'Grady, and finally replaced by a left Labour Council last Spring, means that as in the Peckham by-election last November, it will be the record of Southwark Council that is put on trial in this by election.

O'Grady

O'Grady is standing as an "Independent Labour" candidate, backed by the former Labour MP for Bermondsey and now Vice-Chair of the LDDC, Bob Mellish.

They will hope to repeat their success of last Spring when 3 "Independent Labour" candidates -right wing Labour councillors who had failed to be reselected - stood in the Riverside ward in Bermondsey and defeated the official Labour candidates. Local Labour Party members me They argue that they represent the views of decent, honest Labour voters in the area and that the left-wing Bermondsey CLP is an unrepresentative minority.

O 'Grady, the only one of the 16 candidates likely to challenge Tatchell with any chance at all of seriously undermining the Labour vote, will certainly receive the support of the Tory national media and local press. The media will no

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Ian Swindale reports