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ERNIE ROBERTS MP explains how wr can help build a mass Labour Party, a This is not a new idea. It has been tested on small During the 1939-45 war, the Party organisation collapsed in many areas, partly due to wartime collaboration between political parties. There was no organised collection of subscriptions, and very little official activity by the membership within the CLPs.

Such was the situation in Coventry, an engineering centre of the I raised the question of creating a 'factory branch' of the Labour Party in the factory where I worked (Daimler Browns Lane). The Midland Regiönal Council of the Party agreed to approach the NEC with the proposition, and eventually a Factory Branch came into I found it easy, as a Shop Steward, to make individual members of the Party in the factory, and I was able to collect their Party subscriptions at the same time as I collected their trade-union subs. Many of the new individual members were of course also contracted-in members of the Party, through paying the political levy to the Engineers Within a few weeks, there were about 100 individual members in this one factory. We held meetings in one of the coaches which brought the workers to the factory, and this was parked in the firm's It held 36 seated and about 12 standing, which was adequate for an average lunchtime meeting. We met once a week, and held discussions on a wide variety of political and trade-union issues, including the kind of Britain we wanted after the War.

We paid the membership subs into the Coventry Labour Party. We had no direct representation there, but we sometimes worked out This factory branch continued for about a year, until I was sacked by Daimler as a Toolroom Shop Steward, and shortly afterward the In my opinion, this was a valuable experiment in the building of the Party, and I am convinced that the same idea could succeed again, although on a regularised basis, with more formal links between the workplace branch and the local Party.

Such branches would be successful for the same reason that an onsite trade union branch is often more successful than an off-site one - people are at work anyway, available for meetings at, say, lunchtime or at the end of a shift, and they are less likely to be seduced away from political activities by television, family commitments, etc. than if they first go home and then have to set out for a meeting... Such workplace branches would take the policies of the Party onto the shop floor. They would activate many more workers to take part in local and national politics... Thus every workplace could be made Billy: I think the National Executive Committee should be developing some sort of beginner's guide to workplace branches.

John: Why do you think they're not doing it?

Billy: It's obvious, isn't it? They see the Labour Party in terms of winning elections. They don't see it in terms of building a fight back against the Tories - I mean a real fight back, not just resolutions.

In the workplace branch we try to encourage everybody to turn up, but the right wing won't...

Lol: It's the same in our place. They're lost. They just wouldn't have a leg to stand on if they came in and argued on politics. They're all right arguing the union but in a political argument they'd be shot down - and it's in front of the membership, as well, not in front of the other stewards, which they can handle.

Billy: We do have one right-winger in particular who is quite articulate. He has turned up once or twice. But I think the main reason why the right-wingers don't turn up is their political perspective - the way they see things.

For example, when we had the vote fot the leadership, we said it should be a [union] branch ballot of the membership, like in NUPE. One right-winger said: What do you want argument and discussion for? You can tell what the candidates think by the telly. That sums it up.

There are eight or ten workplace branches in Liverpool now...

John: You had a meeting last Saturday, and there's going to be a conference end ~October...

Billy: I think it's going to be October 29. We're hoping to get big-name speakers. A leaflet is going to go out to all the workplace branches, and also to shop stewards' committees and so on. Jöhn: Perhaps the conference could sponsor a pamphlet which would be a beginner's guide to workplace branches.

Billy: Yes.

John: What do you think are the possibilities of the workplace branches making connections nationally? There are two ways to do it, and I think both can be done. If the Labour Party leadership compares workplace branches to Labour Party Young Socialist branches and women's sections, then the obvious logical conclusion is that both youth and women have got their own conferences, so why can't you have a national conference of workplace branches?

Secondly, within a union, to organise the Left. In workplace branches you have a form of organisation which is recognised by the union. The union wants to set them up. Then you could have meetings of the workplace branches in unions like the UCW...

Billy: I think the right wing is a bit ambivalent towards workplace branches. On the one hand, they think it's good that there are more people in the Labour Party, but on the other hand they know that the Left will be there again...

In the union, I think one of was a success. the things we should be doing as a Broad Left is a drive to set up workplace branches.

war effort. car park. branch folded up.

shop steward The inaugural meeting was held on July 1, in the house of one of the members, just by the factory. 16 were there, half of them new members. The meeting was simply to set up the branch, but they decided to leave the choice of delegate to a CLP until Christmas and there had been the chance for more to join. We have been recruiting two or three new members each week since then.

Two meetings have been held since the inaugural meeting, in a Scout hut near the plant, at 3.30pm at the end of the Friday shift. The meetings have lasted only about three-quarters of an hour, which give us time only for short business items and one political discussion.

urkplace branche nd recounts ho it was done during World War 2. being on an experimental basis. resolutions and sent them to the local Party. into a socialist fortress, a socialist school...

Excerpted from Socialist Organiser no.21 BOUR PARTY CONFERENCE MEETIN

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