"THERE IS A tidal change AS MAY DAY iS that is held in check by two celebrated there things. One is fear: poople are new signs of are frightened because if you step out of line and lose your hope - in the job, you lose your house and miners' struggle, you're homeless. in the rail strikes, Socond, there is no clear lead being given. People are being in struggles like cold, don't rock the boat, keep those at Timex your head down, if we te modcrate we'll slither into power. and Burnsalls. The Labour Party has lost TONY BENN spoke four clections under right-wing icadership. and has been perto Dave Osler suaoco arter caen acrcal about the present move closer to the centre. That situation, the has created a sense of hopeless.
ness and powerlessness. In the Labour Party and depths of a slump, people are his proposal for a normally leaflul, and tear stimulates the right wing rather new International than the left. of working people. I think what will happen -I'm anticipating a bit - is that MAY this anger, which is really strong, will break through from undemical. une miners call paign since October has been the most effective campaign I've scen, certainly since the Industrial Relations Act in the carly 1970s.
The miners weren't just arguing about pits, they were arguing about the health service, about wages councils, about low pay, about unemployment. They took on board every issue and won very wide support.
The significant thing to remember, and why I'm optimis tic. is that events create institutions. The events now taking place contain within them two powerful forces. One is the fame of anger at injustice, and the other is the flame of hope for a better world.
Not all the fire extinguishers in Fleet Stroet, or Broedcasting Housc, or even Walworth Road, can extinguish wose lanies They will continue to flicker and bum and they will reflect thamselves through the labour and trade union movement. But probably, as is always the casc, it's when there's hope on the horizon that these flames burn On the Labour Pauty, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the whole project is being wound up. just at the moment when everything it said is needed. That is a strange phenomenon. What will have to happen is that the local parties will have to organise themselves more. "The dead hand of Walworth Road has got to be lifted"
I think we can move back to some sort of federal party of the kind we had before 1918, where local parties, with affiliations from local trade untons and with a broad base, agreed to affiliate nationally.
The dead hand of Walworth Road has got to be lifted. I think unal is the way i! will move As for the idea of a new left wing party, well it's first stricture would be to destroy the Labour Party.
How could you destroy. or try to destroy (no: that you could) the instrument fashioned for the purposes which are still nceded? You coulin' de that.
Left critics of Labour, the people who say set up left parties, say you'll always be botrayed, there is no alternative. But if you say that you are actu ally indicting pessimism, and there's no way in which you can build hope.
Non-aligned
On an international level 1 have boon campaigning for a new International - a Fifth In. ternational. This would be a reformulation of the role of the non-aligned countrics, which lost their way when the cold war ended.
A Fifth International, which brought progressive poople together from the third world -and I would expect them to take a lead - with progressive people in America and Westem curope. and Russia and castern Euros. could be quite a powerful force in breathing some life into the United Nations reform moveBickel
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.41. May 1, 1993. Page 9