our supporters. After RMT leaders called off strike action against redundancies on the tube calling the decision not to go ahead 'inevitable'. That article argued that the base of support did not exist for resistance to management's threats to suspend and eventually sack strikers. This view is contested below by two of All socialists in Britain will be saddened by the death of Eric Heffer at the age of 69. Eric was one of the few 'a war about oil, a war for imperialism'. Labour Party. Once won to the Labour Party he consistently fought to keep socialists from leaving it. supporter of the Tribune group. During the '64-70 Labour olicies like the 1966 wage freeze was lukewarm. In his later later parted company. When Labour came back in '74 Eric was given a junior miniEric Heffer resigned. voice of left opposition to the government, championing the Grunwick workers in particular. Many of Eric's old Tribune colleagues moved right - but he moved left. He fought Kinnockism and new realism with inminers strike and the fight against the destruction of local Focus m Eastern Europe, always taking a keen interest in solidarity campaigns with the workers in the post-capitalist states generally ultra-left audience, were I am a revolutionary socialist. In truth, he wasn't. He was a class fighter, who like deepened and as the Tribune tradition collapsed into ankruptcy. It was entirely appropriate that he should have been treated with sneering contempt by the Kinnockites. stream and give a voice to the oppressed. Eric carried out this task with determination and resilience.
The deepening crisis in the 1980s made all Labour MPs of the working class. Because of that his contribution will be memory. Labour MPs who consistently stood out against Kinnockism and new realism. His last major political act was his Commons speech against the Gulf war, denouncing it as In the early 1950s Eric Heffer helped found the Syndicalist Workers Federation and opposed socialists participation in the He came into parliament for Liverpool Walton in 1964 as a government the Labour left was at a very low ebb, and left pariamentary opposition was very muted. While the Tribune MPs Vietnam war, their opposition to Labour's domestic ook The Class Struggle in Parliament Eric expressed puzzlement about this lack of opposition. It was of course an expression of the character of the Tribune type of Labour left, with which Eric In the early 1970s Labour adopted its programme calling for 'a fundamental shift of wealth and power to working people. sterial post under Tony Benn at the Industry Department. It was short lived. Benn's 'planning agreement' policies were too radical for premier Harold Wilson. Benn was moved to Energy and During the rest of the Wilson-Callaghan years Eric was a The 'Bennite' revolt of the early '80s reshaped the labour left. creasing bitterness as a stalwart of the Campaign group, vilified and shunned by many of his old comrades. He championed the government. In 1987 he and Benn stood for the party leadership, to rally the forces of left, despite the certainty of massive defeat.
Eric always understood that democracy and socialism were inseparable. Long before it was fashionable he was a champion of the opposition in eastern Europe, lending his support to Labour In 1969 Eric spoke with Michael Foot at a debate with the far left paper Black Dwarf. His first words, met with derision from a Tony Benn moved leftwards as the crisis of British capitalism For the militant left in the '70s and 80s it was important to have parliamentary representatives who stand out against the hoose sides. Unlike most of the 1964 intake, Eric chose the side remembered long after the grey tide of Kinnockism is a distant Advertisement