Kinnock: laughing all the way to the bank? IF THERE is one image of Neil Kinnock that I will remember it is his speech at the 1985 conference, denouncing the 'obscenity of a Labour council, Derek Hatton's Liverpool, sending round redundancy notices by taxi.
Of course the redundancy notices were a tactical ploy by Liverpool's rate-capped council, never meant to be imple mented. But Kinnockite councillors nationwide have since then been busy making real cuts and redundancies, destroying jobs and services.
The second image of Kinnock which sticks in my mind is him standing frozen, embarrassed and wishing he were somewhere else, on the one occasion that he actually turned up to a miners' picket line.
There is no doubt that Kinnock started out asa left winger of the traditional Tribunite type. He trod the well-worn path of the bright young leftist seeking 'career and personal advance.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s something happened not in Labour's traditional gameplan. A very ditterent type of left emerged, • associated with Fighting to bring the labour control and implement across me boara aarcal poncies, they shook the Labour and union bureaucracy to its core.
After Michael Foot's 1983 debacie, panic set in. Cometh the hour, cometh the man' Bully Destiny arrived in the form and Hattersley, charged with smashing left and modernising Labour.
Destiny (and the union bosses) had chosen well. Kinnock revealed himself to be a ruthless, cynical bully. Miners, council workers, printers, dockers - indeed the whole of the organised labour move- paid the price.
But Kinnock was more than just a right-wing thug. He was also profoundly empty of vision, diple. Labour policy fashioned in his image became little more Track-laying - left to against privatisation. could be a focus for orner groups of workers facing a similar threat miners, civil servants, Parcel Force, NHS workers.
At a local broad-based campaigns must be built on the theme of defending the public sector.
At the end of the day however protests, even if they involve mass mobilisations, will not prevent the measure going Industrial action Knapp said at the AGM: "if all else fails we must consider than an advertising slogan capitulating at every turn to The great turning point of yous pontes was of course the miners' strike. Upon its defeat tory; and paralysed Kinnockism delivered them another in 1992.
And it was during the miners' strike that Kinnock's betrayal of the labour movement was most toul. in time honoured fashion the Labour raaers prepared their own defeat by undermin# workers Stupie Kinnock departs washed-up and humiliated, but with the prospect of a social democratic and big fees trom memoirs. His utter failure sigplete inability of right-wing social democracy to save an answer to capitalism's crisis, or to defend the most basic interests of the working class.
One of the most stupid sayings ever is that the working class gets the leadership it deserves. British any more than they deserve John Smith. king will be privatised industrial action. ( paign must prepare the mempership for such the beginning. A political battie is therefore needed in RMT against a purely parliamentary focus.
Building a broad based camthe interests the workforce with those of scr vice users is important in exposing the disastrous conse quences of the break-up of the defense of jobs, conditions and the service to the public will force the Tories to retreat.