The TGWU and the Boilermakers Union in the North East have both called for an enquiry by the labour movement into the web of corruption associated with Poulson, Andrew Cunningham and T. Dan Smith.
This call retlects deep local doubts in the North East about the Royal Commission on corruption which has been announced by the Labour The Royal Commission will have only the most limited powers of spin out over months, and even years. charges At the end of all this it will be unable to do more than make recommendations.
But the most serious objection to leaving it to a Royal Commission Is that corruption of leading figutes in the labour movement must be the concern of the working class itsell. For that reason the move by the TGWU and the Boilermakers is very welcome.
MORTAL THREAT
So far the reaction of the Labour and trade union leadership to the evidence of flagrant corruption has only served to aggravate this mortal threat to the integrity of the labour movement. Andrew Cunningham, Jong-time associate of Pouison, was allowed to serve out his time on the mittee long after his connections were public knowledge. Not only have Cunningham's activities passed without censure, but the former Deputy Leader, Lord George Brown, appeared at his trial to give him a glowing character reference.
The entire hierarchy of the Labour Party has defended the business connection between the present Deputy Leader, Edward Short, and T. Dan Smith, despite the evidence that Short consistently ased his influence. Investigation and its deliberations will to defend Smith from corruption The one man in the North East who fought this cancerous growth, the MP for Blyth, Eddie Milne, was first blocked by every means availThis stance of the Labour leadership proves fuel for Labour's ParTamentary opponenEs and TacO capitalist backers. Even more scriously it strikes at the very root of Labour as a party materially independent of the capitalist class, It can only further encourage the corrupt exploitation by Labour representatives of positions to which they have been elected or appointed.
It is revealing that the Labour leaders, always so eager to lead n witch-hunt against militants, are so Labour Party National Executive Com accommodating to Poulson's sorry retinue in the labour movement. And it is worthy of note that these social-democratic mis-leaders, who have no belief in the capacity of the working class to create 1ts own solutions to the economic and social crisis, are prepared to swallow whole the 'miracles promised by phony "tycoons" like T.Dan Smith.
Right wing social democracy is totally opposed to independent working class action, and is thus often at a loss to discover a way to get this done. Maverick capitalists or technocrats like Robert Maxwell or T. Dan Smith are thus the pertect complement to a copper bottomed A workers enquiry into these questions should lay the basis for able and then expelled fromthe Party, accomplices of Cunningham and Smith. It should also propose meas that defence of the workers' movement against the insidious menace of corruption should on no account be left to the agericies of bourgeois law and order. Such bodies have no interest in a vigorous and independent working class movement, but are only too eager to extend their hold over the organised workers" movement.
Outer London.
by the NALGO lendership.
burcaucrut like Andrew Cunningham. The NECagreed to increase selective strike expelling from the movement all the ures to make Labour representatives really accountable to their supporters. Hackney branches have not yet neen Above all it must be made clear