'83 March on against Tories!

Scan page 2

UIS '83

WITH THE election set for June 9, the climax of the People's March — Sunday June 5 — will come just four days before polling That's a great opportunity for Labour - hundreds of thousands in the streets of the capital, publicising and protesting against the Only Labour could conceivably implement the policies needed to restore employment — expanded public services, a shorter working week, nationalisations. The Tories do not even pretend to have any programme for jobs other than waiting for the automatic mechanisms of the profit economy to bring a revival.

Yet People's Marchers have been banned from shouting 'Tories Out!' Ironically, in the front line of imposing this "no politics' line is a party supposedly to the left of Labour - the Communist There may also be moves to scale down People's March activ.

Labour and trade union activists in the People's March town committees should block any such moves - and fight against the ridiculous and hypocritical 'no politics' rule. Dave Flanagan of the Sheffield Centre Against Unemployment, spoke to SO.

Do you think the march is proving to be as useful as it was planned to be?

No.

Why not?

Firstly, there has very little democracy. In Sheffield, people were invited onto the steering committee. There were no delegates as such from interested groups.

It was totally stitched up by the Communist Party and Paul Hudson, a local CP leading light.

The wide base seems to have been used as an excuse to ignore the politics, for example when certain slogans were banned. How do you feel about the non party political stance of the march?

It's a load of crap. Look at the 1981 march. In Tory areas it had no support. The Tories see it as party political.

Why should anti-Tory politics be covered up just to gain acceptance from one or two churches etc? Just about everybody on the march knows that the Tories can not provide full employ nient, and that we need to change the gov. ernment or the system.

I'd say we need a government committed to socialist policies, and obviously we need to defeat the Tories before anything can be done.

How could the march have been organised belter?

Firstly, it could have been officially announced earlier. Then invitations should have gone out and public meetings should have been organised to elect the committee.

Instead there was a secret meeting in T&G House, in a small room. A number of people including myself were kicked out at first because we had not been invited. They said: This is an invitationonly meeting. How can we organTuries' demolition-squad economics. ities because of the election campaign.

YORKSHIRE/Humberside marchers have protested against the Morning Star's claim to be "the paper of the People's March". But the senior marshal banned any vote on the resolution.

A proposal that the Star be asked to withdraw its self-description was put to a marchers' meeting on May 8. The marshal prohibited a vote:

* because it would mean any resolution could be put forward, it was against TUC guidelines, * the People's March as such has no authority to put forward resolutions, * anyway, decisions for the People's March are taken by the marshals, not the marchers.

But there was a debate. It was pointed out that the Morning Star was the paper of the Communist Party, and that three quarters of the marchers did not wish to identify themselves with the CP.

The Morning Star has supportweek 2 • Official jobless figure: 3.2 million, two million more than May 1979. • Real jobless figure - including those on government schem es and those not claiming benefit: five million. • Since 1979 — manufacturing employment has fallen 22%. • For every 100,000 who lose their jobs — deaths increase by 5,000, mental hospital admissions by 6,000, and prison intake by 1,900. • The National Institute for Eco. nomic and Social Research reckons that if present policies continue, the official dole queue figure will stand at 3.75 million after another five years.

ed the march, but it does not always tell the truth about it. On May 5, for example, it talked of 'disquiet over outside attempts to involve them in ultra-leftist chants' There has never been any outside attempt to involve marchers in 'ultra-léftist' chants, and, besides, the slogans objected to were such as Tories out!' and We demand the TUC/Withdraws support from the MSC