By Glenn Sutherland, Conference delegate. THIS YEAR'S MSF Conference, held in Brighton May 7-11, was crucial for the credibility of General Secretary Roger Lyons.
He expected conference to endorse his massive consultation exercise, MSF into the 21st Century, designed to transform MSF from an independent union on the left of the TUC into an American-style business union.
In the event, Conference decisively rejected this plan and its class-collaborationist logic.
The leadership also suffered defeats on two other fundamental questions of democracy.
The decision of MSF's delegation to last year's Labour Party Conference to abstain, contrary to MSF Conference policy, on one-member-onevote for parliamentary re-selections, which had delivered OMOV to the Labour Party leadership, was roundly condemned.
This year's Conference instructed MSF NEC to campaign for a return to the block vote in Parliamentary re-selections.
An emergency motion calling for a lay-member investigation into wide-spread right wing electoral fraud in the recent NEC elections was also carried. This is the first time an emergency motion that had been ruled out of order has ever been discussed, let alone carried.
This was even more remarkable since Lyons had obtained legal advice that the terms of the motion were illegal.
Although the NEC and the General Secretary are unlikely to act on these decisions, the importance of Conference defeating the leadership cannot be over-estimated.
Lyons was successful at fractionally moving the union's formal political position to the right, by weakening MSF's commitment to campaigning for nationalisation of important sectors of the economy.
We were told that a new social phenomenon had been discovered - caring capitalists who act more in their workers' interests than for profit.
Attempts to extend the union's position against all Tory anti-union laws to support for members and others taking action outside the law was defeated, although MSF is still -just - committed to repeal of anti-union laws.
The organised left in MSF took small but significant steps forward. Network 90, a loose formation of left activists, produced a widely read daily bulletin. We also organised - jointly with London Unity Left - a very well-attended fringe meeting with Dennis Skinner and Dawn Primarolo.
Network 90 took practical steps to broaden its organised base beyond London, with a regular bulletin and local meetings. There are also plans for an open Left conference in the Relations between Left currents in the union have considerably thawed, creating the possibility of serious political discussion and debate between Unity Left - the previously Stalinist-dominated TASS broad left - and Network 90. Militant, Socialist Organiser and SWP members seemed to recognise that sectarianism has no place when the Left must unite to hammer out an alternative political programme.
Lyons has lost credibility with rank-and-file MSF activists. The task of the Left is to prepare a fight for an alternative leadership.
• For more information on Network 90 and its activities, write to :Network 90, c/o Jennie Twydell, Pembroke Street London N1 ODP
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 63, 1 June 1994, Page 7 hungry: