[Boss" - and as an accolade to himself…]

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Boss" - and as an accolade to himself the writer John Edwards had a little picture published alongside his name.

He deserves his little picture. He should cut it out and stick it in his album to commemorate a piece of creative writing with no equals on the day.

Take the beginning. "The old black taxi banged through the holes on the Falls Road and Ken Livingstone leaned forward in the back seat waving to his new friends. The IRA put people ON PAID ads 5p per word, £4 per column inch, Send copy to Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8, to arrive by Saturday for inclusion in the following week's paper. Ireland: annual general meeting 1983 will be on April 23. Resolutions to be in by March 19.

CRITIQUE conference: 'Marx after Stalin' . Speak ers include Hillel Ticktin, Nigel Harris, Chris Arthur Scott Meikle, Jonathan Ree, David H Ruben, Norman Geras; Roy Edgley, Simon Clarke, Bob Sutcliffe, Mike Davies, Baruch Hirson, Neil Hard ing, David Law, Paddy O'Donnell, Sandy Smith,

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the ul Concluding John series on the state of the industrial Right across the industrial front, the working class is on the defensive but its front line is still intact if under heavy fire. Industrial direct action, vital as it is, is not the only method of class struggle.

Not millions, but thousands, of workers are looking for wider solutions and turning towards the Labour Party. Whilst this can never be a substitute for the industrial struggle it has important implications for the struggle. Workers' willingness to go forward on the industrial front depends to some extent on what possibilities they can see for a real alternative to Thatcher. Moreover, it raises the questions in a stark fashion of union democracy and the creation of a new leadership.

Generalised

Even generalised militancy as we saw it in 1972-4 is in itself insufficient. Today we have to fight to get it. But we have to fight to inform it with the 'understanding that only a lasting transformation of society can guarantee and extend its achievements. More militancy is necessary but insufficient.

There are crucial political weaknesses within the working class that need to be consciously confronted, although the ..means of doing this is through fightON Wednesday 23 FebruATR the Labour Party National Executive Committee endorsed a decision of the February meeting of the NEC organisation subcommittee to reject Stan Crooke's appeal against expulsion from Queen's Part CLP (Glasgow) of October last year and to contem that expulsion. The purpose of this statement to ¿he labour movement press is to clarify the political background and motives of te expulsion.

I) Contrary to numerous reports which have appeared in the Scottish press, the expulsion was unconnected wish so-called "allegations of corruption"' in the aticle. The CLP chairperson. when setting in action the expulsion, stated its Queen's Park CLP was concerned only with those sections of the article relaticg to Queens Park CLP itself and its elected representatives, whilst the so-called "allegations of corruption" fell outwith the competence of the CLP.

21 The driving force for the expulsion was that the ing to bridge what is and what is required in struggle, not prating trom the sidelines.

Nor can this struggle somehow go. round the present leaders of the unions, it has to be based on confronting them. The issues we fight on should not merely be wage slips and asbestos but union democracy and the creation of a new leadership.

If we look at the situation purely in terms of fear and lack of confidence restraining militancy then when the upturn comes we wil get militancy again. We shall, at best, repeat the experience of 1974. At worst, and most probably, Thatcher will exploit the ideological weakness of trade unionism to impose a lasting defeat on the working class. The crucial test is not in the upturn, the crucial test is now.

And it is a massive test. We mentioned earlier the greater organisational strength compared with 1920. To that we could add a weaker political position. Then, of course, we had the Russian revolution, dn B generalised national liberation struggle in Ireland and a small cadre of experienced militants rooted in industry immensely influential relative to their descendants today. The betrayals of Labourism and Stalinism were yet to be experienced. Or take another obvious distinction we tend to forget today: "Workers Weekly" (This statement has slightly abridged].

article, which dealt with the history and lessons of the Gorbals Anti-Dampness Campaign (GADC) of the late seventies, had provided an accurate outline of the role played by the Labour Party right wing and then MP Frank McElhone in opposition to the work of the GADC, e.g.

a) attempting through the Labour Party to set up an. "alternative" 'antidampness campaign" to undermine the support of the GADC, b) attempting on two separate occasions to shut could compete with Fieet Street with at least the same technology and no four television channels, with cable TV coming over the hill, pumping out capitalist ideas. There is a long, long haul ahead.

If we accept that we need a movement of militants in the unions to organise a fightback and stop the retreat, a movement which will attempt, on the basis of strong roots in the workplace, to fight for the organisation and generalisation of action against the Tories in the context of fighting for socialist policies in the unions and Labour Party and the creation of a new , leadership, what do we do?

We have to first of all accept that such a new minority movement, essential as it is, cannot be declared overnight. The SWP sponsored Rank and File groups have now been dissolved having in most cases degenerated into fronts for the Cliff group crippled by its politics. The Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions has not since the early '70s been a movement for even limited controlled action. There is no way forward based on these conceptions.

The NHS dispute provides a good example of how to proceed. Health Workers for the Full Claim were able to group together a caucus of the militant minority who did sustained work throughout down two local information centres which were operang bases for the GADO c) attempting to undermine the credibility of the campaign.

3) Such behaviour on the part of the Right was exemplary of its general record in its years in control of the CLP e.g.:

a) Regional Councillor Tom Murphy and Frank McElhone MP were delegated as CLP representatives to a campaign of 1981 against the closure of two nursery schools in the Gorbals; their delegation was then used as an excuse to withdraw the delegates' credentials of two left-wingers who had been delegated by one of the branches in the CLP. Having blocked any active involvement by the CLP in the campaign, Murphy and McElhone then proceeded to fail to attend a single meeting of the nursery campaign.

b) at the time of his death Murphy and McElhonè were involved in attempting to undermine Health Service Committee We need to develop permanent caucuses in all the unions based on fighting the Tories, building workplace organisation and transforming the union, realising any real attainments of the latter depends on the former: ' In some cases as with the Socialist Teachers Alliance in the NUT such groupings can constitute a pole for the left. In most cases it will mean working within the Broad Left on the model of the socialist caucus within the CPSA.

If socialist caucuses at the moment will organise a minority of the minority, so too Broad Lefts will be miles away from a rank and file movement in terms of ability to influence action and in terms of programme. Nevertheless, even if in some cases they the present campaign against the privatisation of the Hutchesontown scheme in the Gorbals, again through the notion of an "alternative" Labour Party campaign which would make the real one superfluous.

clas with the nursery campaign of 1981, the present campaign against the closure of the Adelphi School in the Gorbals has been ignored by Regional Councillor Murphy, who has not even turned up to meetings of the Labour Group at which the future of the school was on the agenda, and in spite of the fact that he is a member of the Region's Education Committee.

4) Such examples illustrate the Right's lack of concern for the interests and needs of local working people. Indicative of the Right's lack of concern for the Labour Party (and of the hypocrisy of Stan Crooke's expulsion) is the fact that the CLP is not even currently a paid-up affiliate of the Labour Party, being some $2,000 represent a huddling together of militants, the huddling together can be the beginning for action and a framework in which we can fight for more developed politics.

The Broad beft which have emerged in unions such as the NUR, COHSE and USDAW are less bureaucratised, more open, more left, less geared to electoralism than the old style AUEW model. In other unions such as the TGWU there is a need to open up the Broad Left, whilst at the other extreme in APEX the hard left have the task of building it up from tiny beginnings.

The initiative of the Broad Left Organising Committee in calling a conference in February was particularly useful in relation to this project. It has behind in its affiliation fees, a sum of money which the Labour Party will soon have to write off since Queen's Park CLP will cease to exist at the time of boundary reorganisation. : 5) Events subsequent to the death of Frank McElhone have served only to underline how justified the critical line of the article of controversy was. Apart from attempting to block any new intake of membership into the CLP before this year's AGMs (by calling a GMC meeting for Christmas Eve to try to ensure that it was inquorate) the Right has also foisted upon the CLP a PPC (elected in the by-election to be MP) who:' a) had failed to attend a single meeting of her Labour Party branch for several years prior to selection.

b) had never held any position of responsibility within the Labour Party.

c) admitted at the Crosshill-Prospecthill branch selection meeting that she had joined a trade union only after the death of her put the • emphasis on the vital questions of union and Labour Party democracy and can be a useful springboard for the development and deepening of Broad Lefts in all unions.

If this should be the main focus always in the context of sustained and patient work in the workplaces we need to initiate and relate to other developments. The new Tebbit Green Paper, for example, raises concretely basic questions of union democracy such as elections, strike ballots and links with the Labour Party. We should use this to attempt to develop and broaden the Mobilising Committee in Defence of Trade Union Rights.

Conferences such as that called by Socialist Organiser and London Labour Briefing can be useful in husband, although her "biographical details" submitted to the final selection meeting of the CLP claimed that she had been a member of a union for 11 years.

-d) is completely ignorant of politics in general, and of Labour Party policy in particular, an inevitable result of her lack of involvement in the Labour and trade union movement.

6) By way of contrast to the right wing's record of sabotaging local working class campaigns and using the Party as a means for the advancement of their careerist aspirations, Stan Crooke's two-year record in the CLP has included: getting his branch affiliated to the Glasgow Cuts Campaign, Stop the Sale Campaign, Parents against Nursery Education Cuts and Turkish Solidarity Campaign; organising a branch public meeting on a "women's Right to Work"; organising leafletting of a local housing estate with NUPE leaflets during Jast year's NHS dispute; volunteering to go on a fund providing à fata for discussing • experiences developing strategy.

During the next 12 months in the context of the General Election it will be vital to raise three issues within the unions. The reversal of the TUC Generat Council decision on the People's March provides a possible focus for agitation over the issue of unemployment. We should fight to build the march, open it to rank and file control, use it to build unemployed workers' groups and crucially link the issue of the march to the struggle against redundancy actually going on against the Tories.

It is clear that nuclear disarmament and particularly the issue of the missiles will be central to the election campaign. This issue must be taken up in the unions, a task we have seriously neglected thus far. We need to raise these issues in the context of a rank and file trade union campaign posed against such groups as Trade Unions for a Labour Vietory.

A campaign of the union Rank and File for A Labour Victory would be able to link the questions of democracy in both unions and party and the witch-hunt to the manifesto and programme of a Labour government. It would constitute a preparation for a right wing Labour government attacking the unions and an education against coalitionism.

But if such initiatives are to have any real success we need to root them in what will be the life blood of the class struggle in the next period; a fight back on the industrial front, an end to the retreat in the unions. raising committee (which never actually met) set up to help pay off the CLP debt to the Labour Party; getting the two-month summer break ended so that the branch had a continuous existence throughout the year.

At the hearing of Stan Crooke's appeal by a Labour Party Scottish Council sub-committee, Murphy, one of the two CLP representatives, referred to Stan Crooke having put an average of two motions per branch meeting as a criticism of his record in the Labour 7) Stan Crooke will obviously be campaigning for reinstatement, in conjunction with Labour Party anti-witch-hunt campaigns. His expulsion was a straight left-right clash. It was carried through by the right wing in Queen's Park CLP; and supported by the right wing on the NEC organisation sub-committee, with the opposition coming from the Left.

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Socialist Organiser no. March 1983 122 1. 19

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case for reversing the NEC witch- hunters' decision