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Two episodes were crucial: the GLC coming out against London Transport workers demanding a wage rise, and the GLC voting for a budget which included the fare increases ordered by the Law Lords.

Collapse

Again, the most serious thing was perhaps not the council's capitulation to the Tories. It was the capitulation of whole sections of the Labour Left to the council. Capitulating councillors can be dealt with. A moral collapse by a big chink of the Left weakens the labour movement much more fatally.

Socialist Organiser wrote an open letter to London Labour Briefing:

"Against your own better judgement, you are now again allowing your policy to be decided for you by those who are - however reluctantly - argued that:.

'The GLC campaign has been a success. The GLC is generally seen to be under the control of the lett. „Ken Livingstone's role on the Irish issue, tor example, has been absolutely crucial."

Ken Livingstone's willingness to stead out on issues lee tre credit, and is of benefit to the left. But it is radical-liberal politics, not șocialist politics. In its heyday the Liberal Party had a fair number of radical mavericks prepared to speak out on such issues. It makes little sense to condemn such radicals bitterly for not being Marxists, or to deny the positive effects of their assaults on the establishment. It makes even less sense to accept such activities as a substitute for socialist politics.

The labour movement should not accept responsibility for running the bourgeois structures of local government on Industrial action that does not fit into this schedule can be, and sometimes is, regarded with hostility — as primitive trade-unionism disrupting the more important political fight for socialism. Left Labour councils' attitudes to their own workers — for example, the attitude of Haringey council to the recent NALGO dispute there, and the attitude of most left Labour councils to the residential care workers' dispute - illustrate this.

The logic is as follows. Until the industrial big battalions sweep away the Tory government, the Labour councils have to operate within limited resources. They should use those limited resources as best they can to the benefit of the working class. But under-fives, or old people, are more deserving claimants for these resources than reasonably well-waged council workers. Therefore, oppose the council workers. opposition to class-struggle socialism. Socialism cannot be won by building up Labour bastions within capitalism, but only by the revolutionary overthrow of the profit system. The preparation for that overthrow comes principally through the self-education of the working class in struggle, not through the enlightening efforts of leftwing municipal administrators. The self-mobilisation of the working class cannot, and must not, be subordinated to the predetermined schedules of 8 'political' elite.

Bastions

Trying to be 'bastions of power for the labour movement' within the limits granted them by the established arrangements, the GLC and other left councils have gone in heavily for local AESs, council aid to cooperatives, and decentralisation of services.

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December