[crucial moment, a special TUC delegation went up…]

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crucial moment, a special TUC delegation went up from London to tell the councillors that they must back down. The councillors were helpless, in the end, essentially because their efforts at arousing working class industrial action had been channelled through the local trade union officials, rather than by a direct appeal to the rank and file. When the officials told them to capitulate they were stranded.

Narrow

Here again, the leftist councillors had been guilty of a sort of 'adventurism'. They had 'seized power' without serious political preparation in terms of mass agitation, and without being part of an organised socialist force which spanned both Labour Party and trade unions. They had been bewitched by 'leftist' victories within the narrow confines of Labour Party committee rooms which actually represented very little. And so they did not seize the power. The power seized them.

BASTIONS AND FORTRESSES "A Labour GLC and Inner London Education Authority will resist any cuts and demand that the Tory government provides the necessary finance to maintain and improve all council services. Understanding that the Tory government does not listen JOHN HARRIS nount successtul resistance t our policies, and having go lid bloc within the GLC Labr no alternative but to lead." politics.

Intoxicated at that stage"

stage, radical but "not in any sense revolutionary" • was as We commented in Socialist Organiser:

Pursued bj goggle-eyed Fleet Street reporters who So Stanley C. Raptis (SO 155) has seen a funny" side to the invasion of Grenada! While Grenadian left wingers are rounded up, beaten, tortured and intimidated by thousands of imperialist invaders, and US threats mount against Nicaragua and El Salvador, he sends in the epitome of a sectarian "joke" letter aimed at the tiniest handful on the British left.

The "joke" - for the many who were bemused rather than amused by the letter - consisted in a supposed analogy between the American invasion of Grenada and the Argentine invaion of the Falkland Islands n Spring 1982. Since many, ot those who — unlike "Raptis" -defended Argentina against Thatcher's task force argued that the repossession of the Falklands was an "objectively progressive" completion of Argentina's national liberation, Raptis latched on to the incredibly witty idea of suggesting that the invasion of Grenada by the USA was simply part of the 'American democratic revolution" • and • thus "obiectively progressive". This, of course, would mean that those who opposed the invasion were reactionaries; and since the opponents included Thatcher, then Raptis could make a really rib-tickling amalgam between socialist defenders of Grenada's self-determination and Thatcher. Now do you get it?

Ho! Ho! What a laugh! Yes, it should go down really well in Grenada, in Latin America, and elsewhere in the oppressed, exploited countries of the Third World. Perhaps Mr Raptis should be sent on a world tour selling copies of last week's issue and introducing himself to workers as the 'humourist"

Equated

It is hard to know what they would laugh at most. Would it be his evident equation of the imperialist USA with the imperialist-dominated Argentina? Or would it be the excess of liberalism of those of us working on Socialist Organiser who allowed such rubbish to see the light of Perhaps the most tragic element in all this is the pathetic spectacle of a grown man in Glasgow allocating precious hours of his life to writing drivel like that letter. In the words of one Radio One DJ, perhaps it is time Raptis - and those who share his classless sense of humour — got some therapy!

HARRY SLOAN