Letter from Hain, vice-chair

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THANK YOU for reprinting in full the Labour So far as your response to it is concerned, nobody on the "serious left" could take exception to the broad terms of the platform for activity you suggest, as indeed you appear to take no exception to the LCC's 11-point plan for unity in action, though we would certainly dispute detailed points and particular emphases.

For the record, it is absurd to claim that the LCC is interested only in electoralist campaigning when we have been the major group on Labour's left consistently arguing for extra-parliamentary action and for mass politics, to replace the parliamentarist and resolutionar politics which still dominate the left in the Party. It is equally absurd, not to say malicious, to imply that we might favour some fantasy of a In the New Socialist of Spring 1982 I was co-author of an article warning of the dangers of coalitionism and uncompromisingly opposing it. The LCC's pamphlet, 'Re-alignment on the Right', also published in 1982, is the only serious Labour exposé of the ideological threat posed by the Alliance. We have been, in short, one of the few groups on Labour's left who have given serious attention to opposing the Alliance. It may suit the sectarian self-interest now characteristic of Socialist Organiser to pretend otherwise, but you coalition with the Alliance. cannot escape these basic facts.

. JOHN HARRIS There are no rational reasons to believe that a Kinnock Labour government will be much better than those of Wilson and Callaghan. It might even be worse.

It is true that right now a Labour government, even under Denis Healey would be a great step forward and of course all members of the Labour Party will fight to kick the Tories out and put Labour in no matter who leads it. That isn't sufficient That won't sort out our problems.

You seem to forget that Thatcherism is the product of the repeated failures of Labour in office.

We would not dispute that ir electoral terms Kinnock is an advance over Foot or Callaghan though we feel you exaggerate the political difference between mittee's 'Open Letter' (November 3).

innock and Foot. You are also ght that Kinnock would not nave ave been elected without the El lectoral College.

But the decisive measure of innock must be taken not

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Yours fraternally, PETER HAIN (vice-chair, LCC)