THE CAMPAIGN To Defend Clause IV has developed spontaneous momentum amongst grassroots activists across the labour movement.
This was confirmed at the campaign's national steering committee meeting held on January 28th in Manchester Town Hall.
Many trade unionists were amongst the 60 people present.
John Nicholson introduced the meeting with a report which showed the growing number of commitments and resolutions backing the Defend Clause IV Campaign.
Blair has been forced to launch his own campaign, himself heading the bandwagon in the constituencies, while Prescott sets to work on the unREPORTS to the Clause IV ion bureaucrats.
Over half the Party's MEPs, the Socialist Campaign Group of left MPs and many others from the so-called soft left, supporters of Tribune, CLPD, and the political centre have come in behind the campaign to detend the Clause.
Abusive
The growing anxiety in the Blair camp is illustrated by the abusive tone of Peter Mandelson and other right wing ideologues. Blair was forced to apologise for a press statement made by Mandelson which referred to their opponents as 'muddled and infantile'.
Blair's hopes lie in a combination of media backing, bureaucratic mis-leadership, manipulation of delegations to the Special Conference and individual balloting (OMOV) of members.
Even if he succeeds in carrying the day for the right wing offensive against socialist policies and values, and this is by no means a forgone conclusion, his will be a Pyrrhic victory.
The right wing will not only have angered the great majority of grass roots activists in the party and the unions, it will have significantly revived and rebuilt the links amongst the left in the movement.
The revival of the left was a theme of Lord Monkswell's speech on behalf of the Campaign Group at the Steering Committee meeting.
He stressed that we we have already changed the terms of the debate. It's not about loyalty or confidence in the leader, he said, but about Labour's principles.
A series of reports from the campaign in the trade unions was briefly introduced. Comrades were reminded that we won on Clause IV at the last meeting, but were both reLabour conference, and that the groundswell of support for the present campaign showed that the Labour Party was not dead for the left.
We can expect a serious increase in constituency support at the special conference, but crucially we must hold on in the The meeting concluded with a discussion on the special conference. It was generally agreed that it was no longer possible to get this conference, deliberately timed to pre-empt most of the union conferences, called off.
Therefore, we must raise demands to make it as repre sentative and democratic as possible.
The left are not afraid of a genuinely open and democratic debate, unlike Blair and the right wing, who plan to have only one item on the agenda -the leadership's (still unpublished) redraft of Clause IV, and one vote, for or against the reGrand