the right has creaty hit back against the Bennite wave of ten years ago, as Firmin suggests. Except that this is to look an things through the spectacles of 1992 In fact, when Kinnock was elected to the leadership, he had some of the most impressive lett-wing credentials of any Labour MP.
His subsequent shift to the right is a feature of Labour politics which has arisen again and again in the last ninety-odd усат Equally, it is not just that the Bennites failed to orcanise sunport on the ground until it was soo tate so stop we ler s retreat In fact, by moving to the right shemseyes, important sections of the Bennites were central in rumins the retreat into a dereat Therearea number ofreasons for ex-leftists ending up on the right of the Labour Party. But in all likelihood the bottom line is cumstances change.
Cutside of the Labour Party the left, nowadays primarily the SWP. is holding up well.1 would suggest that a balance sheet of the period since 1979 would indicate that those outside of the Labour Party have achieved far more, and are in a better position now, than those 3413:UC)
That, however, is hardly a the left as a whole could do with being much stronger than it is. The task at the moment is not to worry too much about the last thirteen years, but to look forward to the next few.
That means a period of consolidation to make sure that no more on the left decide that, on the whole, they would rather dig their gardens or pursue their careers, rather than fight the Keith Flett London N17 THEY VOTED I AM dismayed at Pete MacDonald's 'criticism' of the SWP pamphlet Killing the Fascist menace' in SO If you begin with the thesis was Thatcher's dented the speech 'swamped' which vote in 1979.
then you eliminate the Anti-Nazi League's impact on the far-right in the 1970c. It was Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech that gave the 1 a massive spurt. In France, the Front Nationale's growth was encouraged by the fact that their euryarent conservanve u ties and Edith Cresson's Socialists' echoed their racist sentiments. There was a stage when any anti-fascist presence on the streets would have sent SOUTH AFRICA - 1 am rying to work out what SO:
eadline in issue 19 (D.
Klerk's landslide victory shores up white power) might have been if white South Africans had voted an over7 whelming 'NO' in the recent i referendum. No doubt some i thing like Stunning victory , for the revolution' their sewers.
Pete states that the specifi cally anti-fascist dimension is one-sided. But you can only state this to be true if you limit our activity to massive confrontations on the streets. Admittedly, the levelof black self-activity is a lot higher now than in the 1970s. This is all to the good The old ANI set itself the limited aim of separating the hard-cases from the I'm not racist but... crowd. But there is no way that the new movement can be said to ignore inHow is it that on the same page as Pete's article, saying that the SWP ignores state racism, you havea photograph of their activists marching against the Asylum Bill? the anti-fascist struggle, there are to the fascist beast it self. Fascism poses a threat not only to black people, but also to trade unionists, women, lesbians and gay men amongst others. The task of the moment is to create a fighting unity against this threat.
Asa member of bof the local anti-racist group in my area and the re-formed ANL., I cannot say that do not care about how you shout each others heads off in London. But here we really are going places!
Apart from the criticisms, SO 19 was excellent - especially the supplement sections on women and lesbians and gay men.
John Johnson Chelmsford
SO - allies of ruling class?