NEVER MIND the class struggle: this year's Labour conference will be domibour's links with the unions. and the attempt by John Smith to force through so-called 'one person, one vote.
Labour leaders have chosen to respond to the Tory offensive with this destructive proposal, after a year of utter failure to capitalise on the Tories' crisis.
Significantly it is not just Arthur Scarpill and the Trade Union left who have appreciated the threat of the modernisers. Even John Edmonds has highlighted how Labour's poor perattempts to weaken the trade union and Labour link.
Non-debate
In the year since Labour carried out its non-debate on 'what went wrong at the last election. the Tories have been through their biggest crisis since they came to power in 1979.
This crisis combined the struggle of the miners and the deep-going Tory rift over Europe, has still far It seems light years away now, but at various points in the last year there has been a real possibility that Major's government would fall. The pits crisis alone opened that opportunity.
If Labour had thrown itself into a massive campsion for the abandoning any commitment to miners, if it had joined with the sharply increase taxes on the I Ut in backing mass indusinal wealthy makes such a position action to defend the miners, if absolutely inevitable. Labour had backed that cam- The cynically-named "Compaten through parliamentary mission on social Jusucess al wrecking tactics, there would fig-leaf for backing 1930s-style marc ocena massive response means-testing and abandoning from millions of working peo- universal social benefits, a corple. Heseltine's final Houdini nerstone of the welfare state. act to win back the Tory rebels David blunker nas made it would have been much more clear that Labour will not redifficult. verse the Tories' market NHS But far from Labour capital- reforms. And Tony Blair wants ising on this and other crises, the to outflank the Tories by being Tories have been allowed to hang on and at the same time carry through some of their big- Labour's dire performance gest anti-working class attacks has even roused Hain, Gould since 1979. New and other Tribune Group MPs laws, the new Asylum Act - into some modest attempts at about which Labour did nothing rethinking Labour's direction.
the snowballing destruction abour's retreats are naving of the NHS, further privatisa- a devastating effect on the structions, the Child Support Act - tures and activism of the party. the list goes on and on. Much of the basic infrastructure of wards and constituencies, fiParalysed Buses are co moon lies in tatters.
In the face of all this the Labour leadership remains nara- Labour s mass base has beer demoralised. Where was the Lalysed. Worse, the 'modernisers" have shifted Labour policy even Dour cadetsmip when the miners needed them? Where is the further right, capitulating all Labour leadership when hospialong the line to the Tories' reactionary economic and social tal workers strike? Where are Labour council leaderships Once again Labour leaders when ruthless anti-working class cuts are proposed? merely hope that Tory unpopularity on its own will deliver Disillusionment with the LaAbour leadership doesn't autoclectoral suocess matically win people to the left.
Gordon Brown has made it The vast mass of workers look for an alternative at the spocific promises whatever belevel of practical mass politics. fore coming to power; indeed.
Never mind the class struggle: Smith The whole of the working class suffers because of the lack of a left alternative at the level of mass politics.
The regeneration of the left of the labour movement depends on a reawakening of mass working class militancy which is channelled into a fight in the Labour movement.
Class struggle
Without that class struggle component, left opposition in the Labour Party and Trade Unions is futile.
Any abandonment of the rearguard fight by the Labour left will only make the task of the new realists, in the unions as well as the party, easier. The fight in the Labour Party is part and parcel of the class struggle, not something apart from it.
This year's round of trade union conferences have show a general, if modest, reawakening of combativity following the resistance of the miners, and the importance of the retention of a political expression through the TU link to rank and file trade UTCHESS Socialist Outlook supporters will continue to build the so cialist Campaign Group Network as the best way O1 organising a left which fights the "modernisers' at every turn and which links up with those in the trade unions who have shown a willingness to fight such as around the attacks on public services.
The network has cyclopco positively but if it is to flourish it must ensure that the struugles of trade unionists and capaigns such as Workers Aid for Bosnia are centre stage in its activities. tre of the world political system through a monopoly on world-wide policing".
To subdue Somalia will need far more than the 4,600 troops the US has there. Socialists have a simpler solution - get the troops out now!
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