these ideas were excellent, and have indeed been championed hy the revolutionary marxist movement in many countries for many decades. And of course many of these ideas are not put forward by the Stalinists Healy called for the nationalisation of the coonomy under workers control; for the abolition of the standing army; for a struggle for a Socialist United States of Europe; Jor.a workers" militia, and other such general socialist ideas. Such propagandil is a very pos itive feature of the WRP's campaign. It helps to strengthen the general socialist propagands of all the tendencies on the revolutionary leit However, discerning Listeners could not help noting some glaring omissions from the WRP's list of socialist doctrine.
There was no mention of soviet power, for example, although it is scarcely conceivable that the standing army could be destroyer! without the establishment of such organs of a workers state.
The National Secretary sat down without having explained how the working class movement was to throw back the capilalist attacks and open the road to the implementa tion of the general socialist ideas he had spelt out. Red Weekly has always considered that in order to approach the task of disbanding the In Newham, for example, if the ING gor elass movement roger to have a polley 1o1 defending its picker lines and dealing with the scab squada. Yet there did net seem to be any policy in the WRP manifesto for defending pickets.
When Healy was asked why be had propose no plan for defending pickels, he replied that the Manifesto spelt out very clearly how pickets were to be defended: by disbanding di standing army! (Miners' pickets please note!)
This was only the start, As the guestion period went on it became clear that the WR Icader does not feel the need for putting forward a concrete lie for intervention in the current cirse struggie. The WRP have no policy for building up a mass movenient to withdraw troops from leland, no policy for combatring rucis; no policy for dealing with the Nationa Front, How, then, does the RP leader propose to reach the situation when the workers movemer can implement the socialist propramme, if it is not through a fighting intervention in the class struggle today? This guestion was put, and. th the tull plate of the film cameras und press microphones, the National Secretary gave his answer: "In this clection", he declared, 'we are fielding only a hundful af candidates. But cap alism is finished-gone for good, and soon millions of workers will turn to our policies. In a year or two, at the next clection, the Workers Revolutionary Farly will he fielding 500 candidates. Then we will introduce legisla tion which will he supported by the working class and the middie class, and we will nip any military conspiracies in the bud.
Every thing fell into place: the WRP's policy for the working class after the clection is to turn to the WRP and build irinto a mass party so that it can do much better at the next elec tion! All the talk about heing on the verge of fascistn is a crade attempt to pull social democratic workers over to support a small group on the far left like the WRP. Meanwhile the WRP must posture as a mass party and refuse to support the candidates of another small revolutionary group, the IMG.
One otber question remained unanswered in the mind of the Ked Weekly reporter. I the Tories win would the WRP reopen the protest campaign that Workers Press nas been running reccut months against the fact that the Tory government has bad no clectoral mandate for its anti-working class policies? Before he could ask this question Healy closed the conference The Red Weekiy reporter left chewing over a remark that Vunessa Redgrave bad managed tr edge in, despite the near monologue of her leader. She had naively said that she had joine the WRP because she was fed up with protest OLIVER MACDONALD