It will be little short of a miracle, and a real victory for the working class, if Newham North-East Labour Party succeeds on 23 July in ditching right wing Labour MP Reg Prentice as its candidate Biggest evening sale in the world Evening News despite the existence of the Social Contract.
some food subsidies undoubtedly aided the lowest paid.
abortion, and Ireland. as the year draws to a close. "lefts' fail again received a shattering blow. tance to get going following the infamous July measures.
able.
downturn at all. incomes policy at the TUC Congress.
programme struggle against Wilson.
Iberian revolution; and many more.
policies.
struggle against Wilson's policies.
the Healey measures should be excluded.
programme and for the removal of the Wilson leadership. The Common Market referendum, the subsequent Government reshuffle, and now the Healey measures clearly constitute a decisive turning point in the history of the Labour It is true that from its first days in office the Government has defended the basic interests of capitalism, taking a series of openly reactionary actions (refusal to release the Shrewsbury pickets, use of troops in Glasgow, etc.). But equally it cannot be denied that the economic situation of the working class has been better than under the Tories, Working class living standards rose by an average 4 to 5 per cent between June and December last year, for instance, while the early freeze on rents together with In this first period of Government the Labour bureaucrats, scared by the display of working class strength which had brought about the downfall of Heath, did not dare risk any centralised confrontation. Instead they prepared the way by concentrating on what they saw as the weakest links of working class resistance - issues such as the conspiracy laws, The depth of the economic crisis would not allow the Labour Government to continue with this 'salami" tactic for any length of time, however. No major attack could be launched before the EEC referendum -membership of the Common Market was vital for the capitalist class and any action which might have jeopardised a 'Yes' vote was out of the question. But as soon as the referendum was successfully out of the way, the Government was able to unleash its offensive against the working class. The Healey measures are a first instalment, to be followed by massive cuts in public expenditure and a huge growth in unemployment The response of the 'left' Labour and trade union bureaucracy to this attack has been utterly pathetic. Once again it has been shown that no section of the labour bureaucracy can be relied upon to put up a serious fight in defence of the interests of the working class. Illusions in figures like Scargill as qualitatively different to other left social democrats have Although quite radical left noises have been heard, every single section of the left bureaucracy from Benn through the Tribunites to Seargill has capitulated when it came to the crunch. It is this open crisis of leadership which has inevitably produced a certain demoralisation and disorientation within the working class in response to the Healey measures.
Yet despite this setback it would be incorrect to compare the present situation to 1966;, when it took three years for mass working class resis.
The whole international.context - with powerful working class upsurges in Portugal, Spain, Italy and elsewhere — is now far more favourThe economic and social crisis has developed much further. Most importantly, the working class has been through the most massive strug gles since the 1920s without suffering any defeat on the scale of 1926 or 1931. All this means that the inevitable lull in mass struggles must be measured in months and not years, while on many other fronts on which the fight is being waged against the Wilson Government (campaigns on Portugal, abortion, Ireland, etc.) there is unlikely to be any serious Furthermore, flowing from these other aspects of the situation, the forces which today stand clearly opposed to Wilson and his policies are quantatively suonger than they were in 1960. Then the revolutionary. left was a few hundred people; today just the members of the Trotskyist organisations number 6-7,000, while those they influence must be coun ted in tens of thousands. In 1966 only one major union opposed Wilson's measures; today as many as three million votes may be cast against What is still lacking, though, is any co-ordination of all these forces around common demands, common objectives, and common forms of organisation. It is the lack of united action on a basic programme for the situation which is the decisive weakness holding back the left in its We believe that to achieve this will require three decisive steps: - on the question of programue, any set of demands must include the following: a sliding seale of wages, hours, and public expenditure; the nationalisation of all firms creating redundancy; opposition to any form of incomes policy; immediate withdrawal of troops from Ireland; free abortion and contraception on demand; solidarity with the — on objectives, we believe that as the first step to the construction of a revolutionary party, the task must be to replace the existing leadership of the working class at every level - trom the trade union branches to the Wilson leadership of the Labour Party - with forces clearly opposed to the Healey measures and all other aspects of Wilson's — at the level of organisation, what is required is a united front within the mass organisations of the working class of all those prepared to The touchstone for such a united front must be the Healey measures — all working class forces opposed to them have their place in such a united front despite any incorrect positions they may have on other questions; while those who support Such a united front, while having its main base in the trade unions, must pull in every working class organisation from Constituency Labour Parties through campaign organisations such as TOM and NAC up to every trade union body. Its aim must be to fight for the decisive points of the It is to the construction of such a united front, centralising all the existing campaigns and struggles of the working class, that socialists must