Socialist Action No. 140, 16 May 1986
The scan: 140-may-16-1986-SA-UK.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive)
Uncorrected machine reading of the whole issue. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from the scan and has not been corrected or cut into articles. Each page gives the headlines first, then the columns in order, so one article runs on into the next. Expect misread words. Use it to find things; quote from the scan.
Page 1 scan of this page
LABOUR MUST BAN ALL NUCLEAR POWER
THIS WEEK the Labour leadership has thrown away a rare opportunity - that of taking a step • that is clearly in the interests of every single person in Britain and across the world, and which at the same time, would be an enormously popular step electorally. That was to pledge that the next Labour government would put an end to the use of all nuclear power in this country. Instead Labour shadow cabinet, almost certainly the national executive, is going to pledge the opposite, that is to maintain Britain's deadly nuclear power stations.
Labour Party policy on nuclear power, adopted at last conference, clear. The resolution, carried by 3.9 million votes, called for: 'a halt to the nuclear power programme and phasing out of all existing plants.' A
SociAist
ACTION
number of major trade unions, including the TGWU, NUM, NUPE FBU, SOGAT and USDAW, helped to ensure that vote was carried with more than a 60 percent majority.
The Socialist Environment Resources Association (SERA) have already used the policy as an opportunity to mount ampaign with Friends of the Eart and Greenpeace geared Labour's conference policy and aimthe at the labour movement.
Labour leadership, and
used that same policy as the bedrock of its response disaster, explaining that if a Labour government were to be elected to implement such a policy there could be no chance of a repeat accident in this country.
Such a policy is vital to the health and survival of the human race - and it is immediately seen as such by the majority of people in Britain. Furthermore, it is a policy which has clear
job conserving implications.
Every nuclear
displaces 7000 mining-related jobs. Nuclear power is also gobling up the research funds that and jobs in other industries. Research on safe renewable sources of energy, for example, has been cut to £14 million, an excellent joint while nuclear power research is runn-
Wing at almost 20 times that amount, a
around over €250 million. A grotesque £240
million was spent on one neutron slow The breeder reactor prototype alone. too, could have But instead of seizing this oppor-
tunity, the Labour shadow cabinet is Chernobyl moving to overturn the conference
policy. When spokesperson Stan Orme reiterated that policy in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear power melt-down, environment spokesperson John Cunningham was quick to contradict him. Kinnock immediately jumped in to back up Cunningham. government, they said, would maintain nuclear power.
reactor built
handedly announced
could provide
Dounreay,
prepared
That statement
tions. Alla Labour energy
The
A LaDOu Sellafield expansion.
put
ISSUE
On the TV AM programme of 4 May, the Labour Party leader high-
that Labour would go ahead with the nuclear conference reprocessing plants at Sellafield and
and maintain existing nuclear power stations. Last Tuesday the Guardian leaked the contents of a proposed statement to parliament and the NEC by Cunningham. It was
shadow cabinet meeting presided over by Kinnock thou do according to are ment
statement simply calls for a public enquiry on Dounreay and an 'economic reappraisal' on the new
But there is an alternative being
forward within the Labour
No. 140 16 May 1986 30p
WOMENS
CONFERENCE
SPECIAL
leadership. Tony Benn and Eric Heffer have presented a paper to the na
tional executive, based on last year's
alter-
Sellated and the bandon o
Winning that position for Labou
is vital to winning the next genera
election. Even more important, it is
vital to the survival of us all.
Page 2 scan of this page
Electoral disaster for
Socialist Action 16 May 1986
Action SoCiAlist
Bringing it all
together
LAST WEEK'S local government results showed a strengthening of the position of the Labour Party. But these changes in Labour's fortunes are taking place within the context of big events -reaction to the US bombing of Libya and to
which are revealing an important clarification within the left wing of the labour move-
What is happening is that a common agenda is beginning to be hammered out, an agenda that goes beyond the constitutional reforms achieved at the beginning of this decade, and beyond the unity which was created around support for
The key elements of that agenda for the left
developments will come together at the Labour Party women's conference this weekend.
The first is the development of the demand for the withdrawal of all US bases from Britain. From being a fringe issue this has now been passed by both the Scottich TUC and ASTMS conferences. With the Campaign Group, CND and others campaigning on this within the party, for the first time the whole issue of the bases is going to be raised at this year's conference with a serious minority supporting it. This is a real step forward for the left.
The second issue, tied to this, hostility to the war drive against Nicaragua and other countries threatened by the United States
laboration with the apartheid regime in South Africa. The demonstrations against the attack on Libya represented a real step forward for CND. nuclear war and the siting of cruise missiles in Britain, but also opposition to Reagan and Thatcher s attacks on semicolonial countries.
months of struggle in South Africa have raised consciousness and action on this to a quite new
The liberation of Britain's oldest and closest colony, Ireland, is also beginning to get a small fraction of the attention it deserves. This year's National Union of Students conference for the first time committed a mass organisation in Britain to British withdrawal from Ireland.
Put these development and others together
against nuclear weapons and you get a mighty
sections of the labour movement.
The other area of advance, also linked to this, is the dramatic rise of women's and black self-
It is noticable that Kinnock has so far had no success at all in rolling back this tide and main-
Advisory Committee -a bantustan aimed to head off Black Sections -is already in deep trouble and significant votes in favour of black self-organisation in the unions are being racked up at the summer union con-
It remains to be seen how far a similar exercise aimed to head off women's demands within the party put forward to this year's Labour Party
Finally, the new element which has been introduced is the massive opposition to nuclear power. This already had a majority at last year's conference. It is likely to get close to the two-thirds majority it needs to go into the manifesto
left which is pushing this forward against the Kinnock leadership.
There are of course no grounds for easy optimism in the party. The witch-hunt is still going on. There is as yet no economic policy which is both a real solution to the crisis and generally accepted on the left — although some gains such as support for a national minimum wage are being
through a severe defeat at Wapping. debacie as regards organising left slates for this
But what is clear is that while six months ago the left was very isolated and on the defensive, today it is moving out of that isolation and taking the initiative in a series of key areas. A certain
It would be foolish to be over optimistic. But, for the first time in a while, the left is begining to
hostility to British and US coland sentiment amongst important
the Tories
LAST THURSDAY's local government and by elections were the biggest electoral defeat suffered by the Thatcher government since 1981 'gang of four' broke from the Labour Party to form the SDP. Opposition to the Thatcher government was shown everywhere. Alliance continued to play its appointed role of trying to head off a majority Labour government. JOHN ROSS looks at the election results and their political impact.
The single most striking feature of the election results for Labour, and the most important LUC future, was the consolidation of its support in the big cities and the driving back there of DOLE the Alliance challenge and the Tory vote. Equally Alliance smashed into the Tory vote in the rural areas
this being shown particular v dramatically the two parliamentary by-elections.
Taken overall the Tories lost 705 seats in the local government elections
disastrous result.
Labour gained 484 seats and the Alliance 270. Labour gained control of 17 local councils. Detail
If the results are looked at in detail they show that the situation in local government is now becoming almost catastrophic for the Conservative Party. The Tories now control only half as many local councils as Labour 91 for Labour and 46 for the Tories
Of the 36 Metropolitan districts Tories now only control 1
Solhull West Midlands. In terms of
government the Tories are rapidly becomIng a secondary, • even fringe, party
This process has gone even further in certain areas ol the country, where the Tories are already literally fringe party in local politics. In Scotland the Conservatives received only 16 per cent of the vote compared to 44 per cent for Labour and 18 per cent for the Scottish National Party (SNP).
In Liverpool the Tories received only 13 per cent of the vote. In the North West of England only a
Macclesfield. is controlled by the Tories. Advance
If Labour advanced strongly in the big cities, however drasticaily into the Tory the Alliance cut
vote in the suburbs and the rural areas and here Labour did not advance to une same degree. Ine mos dramatic expression of the Arance availe or course was in the two Parliamentary by-elections.
In West Derbyshire the Tory vote fell from 56 per cent in the general election to 40 and they held the seat by less than 100 votes from the Alliance. In Ryedale the Tory vote fell from 59 per cent to 41 per cent, and a 16,000 Tory majority the general election was turned into an Alliance majority of 5,000.
But the Alliance also advanced strongly in the prosperous suburbs in the
- when the
But the SDP/Liberal Richmond, Sutton. In
council. Alliance advances came in Sussex,
years. With Liberal
nearing
the local government
the support the was the elec-
calculations the same pattern -
the
cent.
an overall on Thursday's results despite false claim that
elections
course for hung
This still more as the
it, and of the bourgeoisie set for itself
TWO party
editor, of Financial Joseph.
Biffin
inner city industrial
This of
North,
the local government results
election. the three
from the
Tower Labour
right candidates
the has U W
the were
Lambeth
left was
scals Ul 53 to 54.
vilification carried out
Derek and the city
an ex-
In Bernie Grant his ma-
the loca
where were disqualified,
The
Gains and losses of seats in local government elections 1983-86
1983 1984 Tories + 128 - 131 Labour +37 + 46 Alliance +143
Party control of local councils in Britain
Labour control No overall majority Conservative control Alliance control
Source: Calculated from Financial Times 10 May 1986
noted its
that while voters were
strongly between
: Hatton and his fellow Militants
will give the advocates controlla
ing
strikes was also clear. Labour did
London
areas.
The SDP education spokesperson Ms Anne Sofer lost her ILEA seat in Hampstead and Highgate. Bubbles Polyer, leader of the All London Parents Action Group which had backed the teachers their strikes won an ILEA
she surch grate nd dis-
surcharged qualified COULI T cillors, was elected to IL EA. Disaster
The elections were of course universally regarded in the press as a disaster for the Tory Party. But as regards the political im-
the Financial trees he results noted: y after the results noted: the government has in the end got many of the big things right coming to terms with Europe and the conquest of inflation or daring to tackle the Irish question it has made a lamentable
of SUIC of tilt smaller ones. It spent an
of allulll parliamentary time on the relatively business of the abolition of the metropolitan (large scale urban) authorities and the Greater London Council.
Pressure
'During the Westland affair, which led to the resignation of two cabinel ministers, the government
It then backed down from its nans to dispose of Bi
the Americans because • pressure roul owi backbenchers
The conclusion of this analysis would of course
consider the possibility a government which maintained the "big things' of Thatcherism but
News
1985 1986 1983-86
- 55 - 705 - 763
- 32 + 484 + 535 + 129 + 270 + 652
Source: Calculated from Financial Times 10 May 1986,
Prior to After Change 1986 1986 elections elections
+ 17 53 +11 75
+3
allowed some adjustment of the 'small things'. This is of course the perspective outlined by the SDP and
• votes and the recovery of Labour, there has therefore been increasing discussion in the press recently of the desirability
coalition as an alternative to the Tories after the next electior cannot recover her vote editorial entitled 'The unTory majority' on 1 Mar-
'Labour is not a mass party and never will be agail. ...if Mr Kinnock is as keen on power as he says, he should be telling his party that the days of splendid
Peter Kellner, the
'This week, the fifth SDP tribal than
significance
Left -
of warConservative the are clear.
tion. the represen-
sections the labour
Alliance.
The bigvote for
tion will the biggest That-
all for coalition,
blow to the
an equally
successes gain-
Haringe and Lambeth
Page 3 scan of this page
'Atom Jack' Cunningham must go!
A Chernobyl in Britain?
• News
EVEN AMONG an
biscuit. He was the person who
headed the front bench attack on
against rate-capping.
atomic power lobby in the Labour Party
been openly defying conference policy to do so.
The policy on nuclear
wower vasseu v (LaDOlI
Party conference last year,
for the first time,
WaN
crystal clear. une-
quivocably called for
halt to the nuclear power
programme and a phasing
out of all existing plants'.
That position received
over 60 per cent of the vote
only five per cent short
of the two thirds majority
needed for automatic in-
clusion in the party's pro-
gramme.
But Cunningham im-
mediately and openly went
defy conference
VUl
policy — using his job as
Environment
spokesperson
The December 1985 issue Fuels paper, Nuclear
BNFL News following THE GOVERNMENT in now mobilising all its propoganda to convince people that British nuclear power is safe, that a Chernobyl could never happen here. Linked to that the government is playing down the reality of Chernobyl itself. PAUL ATKIN looks at the real impact of Chernobyl and why it could, and probably will, happen here. LORD Marshall of the CEGB remarked that Chernobvi's effect on health would be no worse than smoking an extra tuo cigarettes vear. Peter Walker. Minister Energy; hastened 10 Tassues three hundred and seven!!
more radiation and stones than
These statements trom the men in charge of Britain's energy programme are almost on a par with Reagan's famous 'most pollution comes from trees for complacent
wilful disregard for and the facts.
USSK
The immediate impact of Chernobyl on the USSR is deadly. Two people killed outright, one hundred rushed to emergency treatment in Moscow, six more already dead, eighteen in a serious condition. estimated that ten to one hundred people will die in the next few weeks, with hetween one thousand and ten thousand extra cancer cases in the next ten years.
Beyond the USSR, Swed-
scientists estimate an exac cances Western Europe over the next 40 vears.
These initial figures are also underestimate. levels or radioactivity me- based on ine asurea in sweden hundreds of miles from Chernobyl. They assume immediate evacuation of the arca around ine plant. Il Is now clear that the 30,000 people or c nernobyi losel were not moved out until a week after the explosion.
Over 50,000 people have had to be moved from the immediate of plant. ·250,000 kids: have
unpopular and right wing Labour front bench John Cunningham takes the
single handedly the struggle Now he is heading the pro-
- and has
statement by Cunningham: 'The Labour Par. ty has supported the development civil nuclear power for decades. One conterence decision won't change this and I don't expect it be inmanitesto.: cluded the next
In the 18 April issue of Cunningham returned to the attack replying paper's call for the 'phasing out' one power
Cunningham strongly argued support nuclear power. He said it now supolied 18 per cent of
electric power. He stated:
'In Britain alone, the civil
nuclear power industry employs directly and in-
directly some 150,000 people on 1y major sites all been moved out of Kiev, 60 miles away:
The land surrounding the plant up kilometers away is reckoned to be contaminated for decades. To bring it back into radiation free production would require the removal of the top tour inches of soil. Land up to 600 kilometers away will be dangerous for a year.
Prices
An immediate knock on effect has been a sharp
prices world stock markets as Ukranian supplies are put
doubr. Although most of the radioactive material released has been lodine 131, which desperses relatively quickly, Caesium has a half life of 30 years and binds with bitumen and other building materials.
The impact of the disaster has continued to spread outside the Soviet Union. Poland registered 500 times normal levels of radiation million
were fed lodine tablets to try to avert thyroid cancer. Levels
In Britain and France, radiation levels normal were registered. Otto Huber, of the Swiss radioactivity monitoring Commission surprise at such high levels
trom just one accident such a long way away
Yevgeny Velikov, writing in last Friday's Pravda stated: 'we are facing problems no one has seen before.' The phrase 'no one ex-
pected it' should go down as the nuclear industry's ebitanh Chernobyl. Accidents. like. this are simply no "supposed to
around the countly. provides about 15 per cent of all engineering apprenticeships. The industry is rany amonseu.
The real reason for Cunningham's varucular vehement personal defence of
power well know. lucical He is the MP for Sellafield. Cunningham argued
'protect said:
as an example the COSurE Sellafield in my consultency. where 11,000 workers are directly affected. allu many again indirectly.'
Cunningham's position is a disgrace. First the the health of the entire community takes precedence over the alleged threat to the jobs
one constituency let
June threet one right wing MP. What Cunningham should be arguing planned happen. The industry 'calculates' the against it as one accident CYCL / 10.000 vears of reac tor life. But Chernobyl survived for just ten years, not 10,000.
Accidents of the type that finally culminated in Chernobyl alc tact not unusual. In 1967 a near melt down at the enricc Fermi I plant in the US led
the OlIC nucical
make the cucuccis famous remark, 'We nearly lost Detroit' Between 1969 and 1979 there no less than 169 accidents that could have led to melt
Ine Water Reactor (PWR) stations in the USA. ed smit.
designer and said last WECK that he expected accidents
Chernobyl LaKE place every five years. Fire
In Britain, there have been 300 nuclear 'incidents' that we know
Windscale/Sellafield alone since 1950. The 1957 Windscale reactor fire led to 30 deaths amongst 260 extra cancer cases.
reason whatever to believe 'British' nuclear technology is any safer than 'Russian'. Peter Walker tried reassure everyone that even it there was an explosion and fire at British
all DuCItal Dowci Ulalll, would be well because they are all surrounded by a big concrete box. But even at that level he forgot the 26 Magnox reactors don't have containment vessels. Threat
The Hartlepool reactor, for instance, has no containment vessel des pite the stated view of the
stanations spectorate that vulnerable to ture trom the nearby Petro chemical plant.
The Nuclear Installation Inspectorate estimates
density Brian would
density Britain would
creation of replace the jobs Sellafield to processing plant
But in fact clearing up the incredible Sellefield would itself
thousands workers for many years. With even the smallest bit of planning there is necessity whatever for fall in employment even in Cunningham's constituency although that is not the main point.
real pomt Is Ellal the nuclear power industry
and threat everybody including Sellafield.
Labour conference policy must be full reaffirmed and strengthened. Labour must be committed to the elimination of all nuclear power during the lifetime of one parliament. And a first step to restoring any credibility of the Labour party this question is the dismissal of 'atom Jack' Cunningham from his position on the Labour STOl DELCH mean a casualty rate form a serious nuclear accident at ten times the rate for the USA. • lavior of the Political Ecology Research
estimates that Chernobyl type disaster in Britain would lead to between 10,000 and 180,000 deaths.
Nor is there any reason to believe that evacuation and safety measures would proceed significantly more smoothly in Britain than in ine soviet union. Despite protestations Walker. openess LOTTE anu suggestions that we should
take day Sellafield, how long would It take for a major disaster to melt through the concrete foundations of thẹ industry's secrecy? What stage would a disaster have
reach before fear for public safety outweighed the combination of confidence in their ability to
and fear for the future OT their industry, that must coexist in every nuclear technicians head? Just imagine a Chernobyl at Hartlepool, the reactors near Bristol. How quickly would it be possible to evacuate the populations of those cities? What would the human and economic costs be?
Effect
List simply
All this look at what is known, so far, of the effects of catastrophic the nuclear industry. The day lo day biems of this 'safe, clean from of energy', as Peter Walker puts it, are no more
On 24 January this year, the Sellafield reprocessing plant dumped alf a ton of uranium in the Irish Sea. The inability Io sarev disoose ot waste is well known. • The effect on Nuclear Power workers health is becoming known
for instance, the British Medical Journal revealed last year that UK Atomic Energy Authority employees have a death rate from prostrate cancer tha "5 eight times *the national
John Cunningham average.
The best wav to assess the effect of Chernobyl on radiation levels across the whole country is that
THERE are 350 nuclear
power plants
countries:
France: 47 plants built,
20
65 per cent of electricity
supplied from nuclear
Commitment to
power.
nuclear power such
that at the high point of
Chernobyl radioactivity
across France no higures
were being released to the
public.
USSR: Up to Chernobyl,
the current five year plan
brought them up to just below the 'normal' levels of radiation at Sellafield and that part of the Irish sea close to the
Atomic power
around the world
envisaged doubling nu-
• power capacity.
USA: No nuclear power
built since the stallulls Three Mile Island acci-. dent in 1978. Wall Street is said to be sceptical of the economics of large
Denmark/Portugal: No
Capacily plans to develop any.
Sweden: Plans to phase out all nuclear power over 25 years. Positive
Socialist Action 16 May 1986 plant
Don't scream Organise.
• See - 'The deadly dust' pIo.
World Atomic
Power
Reactors on order bi not yet operat
research into alternative energy sources.
Holland: Following the Swedish example result of Chernobyl.
Britain: 37 nuclear plants. Government plans to build one or two new
as Sizewell inquiry has reported. Government is very anxious not to allow Sir Frank Layfield, who is drafting the report. to take Chernobyl into account
Page 4 scan of this page
'Bantustan Committee
Keep up support for black sections
4 Socialist Action 16 May 1986
Conference Against the
Witch hunt Saturday 21 June Regents College
Inner Circle, Regents Park, London
Comrade
We invite you and/or your organisation to sponsor a national conference against the witch hunt which is developing within the Labour Party: The conference has been initiated by Hackney North & Stoke Newington CLP, Hackney South & Shoreditch CLP and Vauxhall CLP. It is proposed to hold the conference on the Zist June in London, with delegates and observers from CLPs and affiliated organisations The political basis is provided by the followne abbreviated resolution which was proposed to the Labour Party National Executive Committee by MPs Eric Heffer, Tony Benn, Dennis Skinner, Jo Richardson and Joan Maynard:-
This conference is against the.
expulsions of any members because they
read and support the views of journals.
of the left or right, within the Party.
'Within the labour movement, and
reflected in the Labour Party, there have
long been groups of different kinds,
standing for certain political positions
ana views, wno are organiseu, somellnes
with paid staff at varying levels.
'The Party, in our view, should not
return to the days of proscribed lists and
intolerance, but should accept the
demand for diversification, groups,
tendencies, strands of opinion, journals.
newspapers of one kind or another, with
widely differing views, are bound to
'Our main test today is to work ior ine
next General Election. To do that we are
convinced that internal attacks on each
other, leading to disciplinary action, can
only help our political enemies, who are
backed by an anti-labour press which is
gearea lo do all i lts power to stop
Labour getting back into government
We ask all Party members to stop any
witch hunts to get rid of the witch
hunting atmosphere that is beginning io
develop in the Party, and to concentrate
on defeating Thatcher and her
government at the next election.
Along with your sponsorship we are asking for a donation of £10 towards the expenses of conference. We would also ask for any assistance you can give in publicising this event in the labour movement.
The conference is being organised through planning meetings open to those sponsoring it.
Witch Hunt News
NEC stoppage vindicated
For news of the campaign read 'Witch Hunt
News',
E17. Make cheques payable to 'Witch Hunt News'
20p per copy including postage, fl for 10 copies
including postage.
Socialist greetings
Toni Gorton on behalf of Hackney North CLP
Please return to HN & SN CLP c/o Toni Gorton
y we.
conference against the witch hunt to be held in London in
June.
Street
Town.
Postal Code
1/We wish to be informed of all planning meetings
Name
Street
town & rostal code
Telephone
Hackney North and Stoke Newington
constituency Labour Party
Party Offices: 96a Stoke Newington High Street,
London N16
, available from 36 Melbourne Ra, London
wish to sponsor the
THE LABOUR Party Black Section has mounted a major campaign against Advisory Committee leadership following last Black Section is calling for a boycott by all party organisations and members of this committee.
campaign increasing support. Trudi de representatives from the East Midlands, has already withdrawn from the committee. Keith Vaz, the other representative from the announced his resignation from it. A resolution is going to London relations with this committee.
nationa! chairperson of the Labour Party Section, to outline the Black Section's position on the 'Black and Asian Advisory Committee. THE Black Section taken a view on the 'Black and Asian Advisory Com mittee both through loca:
Black Sections and through its National Committee and Conference.
There is no other decision
been as thoroughly debated and decided upon as this.
1985 party conTerence we were asked what our position would be on
RESOLUTIONS FOR the conference have to reach Walworth Road by 7 July. I'm always surprised when the date dawns. I was at the last conference only a few months ago, now here we go for next year's bash. over the last six months or so fighting Amir Khan's expulsion, the scab
Committee' and defending the Black Caucus and
Black Community against Militant in Liverpool.
understand that
Walworth Road is knee deep in resolutions from constituency parties and trade union branches demanding Amir's stalkilicill. The Black Section had
decided to concentrate our
fight at conterence on two
fronts. The divisive 'Black
and Asian Advisorv Com
mittee' must be killed. The
district party in Liverpool
must be educated about
the particular problems ot
the black community in
the city.
The Black and Asian
Advisory Committee is the
for ansly tonstated
fully constituted
Black Section. i ne whole
concept of this committee,
that Black people
capable of advising
policy matters
ready to participate In
policy formation,
patronising and insulting
The other major bat-
tleground in the struggle
for BaCK Sections hilst has
been Liverpool.
opposing the purge against
Militant in Liverpool by
Labour's leadership we are
still amazed by Militant's
suppor for the hard
right's fight against
Black Sections. We see our
task as educating
Liverpool party about ine
particular problems of our
community in Liverpool.
The fight for Black
Sections has now been go-
the last hoee years the
last years the
regional: Party
conferences and the na-
Cole cHec have
received many resolutions
Black Sec-
tions. This has allowed the
campaigners to accelerate
the 'Black and Asian established by the party
The
has been gaining Hainey, one of the
East Midlands, has
Regional Executive to end all
Socialist Action asked MARC WADSWORTH,
Black
the Black and Asian Acvisory Committee. We said
. wouldn't be right for us to give a posi= tion without thoroughly consulting the membership on something which was a ciear concession — whether it be a good concession or a bad conces-
from the party brought about the Black Section struggle. For
annual Labour Party
The Back Sects has spent much of its time
'Black and Asian Advisory
the struggle
won. Black parliamentary candidates, six
By Paul Sharma,
National Committee, Labour Party Black
Section
of whom are in safe
Labour seats have been
selected including
Diane Abbott, the first
Black woman chosen for a
safe seat.
Thererasbeen a 10 pee
cent increase
number of Black local
councillors.
The first Asian major,
Mr Ajeeb, was elected in
Bradford.
The largest and most
powerful trade union
the country, the TGWU
of
appomica a supporte
black caucuses Bill Mor-
rIS,
although it must be said
that he does not as vet suD.
po recognise orack See-
Black recognist
tions: Deputy general
secretary Morris becomes
Rlack nerson to
hold a trade union post of
such seniority
• Un the policy front
Black Sections have made
contributions on
Azania — the name Black
freedom fighters give lo
their home, South Atrica
We asked why the Labour
leadership thought simple
rhetonc condemning ap-
artheid was enough. The tr-
ade union movement could
force an end to trade with
the apartheid regime. The
Nana lea oi ocack
could boycott all ships fer-
rying goods to and from
we demanded
Growing opposition to
have decision hon we should relate to it would have been toial!! wrong We had to consult the full membership and analyse precisely what it
We discovered that it 1s a body set up much like
which happened with 'governor generals' committees the Viceroy's advisory com. mittee. Appointees
onto committee. They were not elected by black people. They are not accountabie to anyone else except the party's white bosses.
Once we saw tnis, we discussed all the way through the black section! movement. The view WC came to was that we should
this committee because it's committed to a destruction ot paign and the gains that have been made.
It's a too down solu tion. It's not accountable,
that rheioric was pu: into
The Black Sections campaign has received backing from nearly all the groups on the left of the party Labour COOT dinating Committee, Socialist Action, Labour
Briefing, CLPD, Labour Committee on Ireland, Labour Campaign for Les bian and Gay Rights and others. i weive liberals may mv tear 1s that 'white now be getting bored with
Black Sections. Many will
be suftering trom support
fatigue. To these com-
whose support has
been vital in the past, 1 say
stick with us. Stick with us
until we win. White com-
rades may have got bored
- they may be waiting for
fashions to change Black
people have no choice. We
to continue the
lave Lu
struggle for equality
this moment in time
measure of equality in the
Labour Party is judged by
the success of Black sec-
tions
I have no hesitation in
demanding unwavering
support from
rades, , Black and White.
Please circulate the
resolutions the Black Sec-
tion is putting forward in
your constituency and at-
tempt to get as much sup.
port as possible.
it's not democratic. On that basis, not on the basis of sour grapes, but on the basis of its very fundamentally flawed structure, this
be justified
exolalll the sort of people on !! -Gwyneth Dunwoody, Roy Hattersley. How can you support people who have records which are far from anti-racist being on a committee talking about race - a weld usual ting this undemocratic structure?
We also see that the litie Black and Asian' divisive, when black section nas clearly united Afro-Caribbean and
Here instead you have a committee mitted separating 'Black' and 'Asian
Our Asian members: particularly were the most
forceful in identifying this Paul Sharma from Lady. wood moved an amend meni, Maday Patil from Southhall spoke pas-
Black Sections
model resolutions
THE LABOUR Party
Black Section has
adopted the following
model resolutions for
presentation to this
year's party confer-
ence.
1. This Conference wel-
comes the increased
representation of Black
people at all levels within
the Labour Party
the last year. Conference
believes that this progress
has been greatest in con-
with Black
stituencies
Sections.
Despite this Black
people are still under-
represented at every level
of the Party.
Conference notes with regret the failure of the Black & Asian Advisory Committee, recommended by the National Executive Committee and established by Conference last year.
Conference instructs the National Sexecutive Committee to implement the recommendation of Working Party OWIl which reported strongly in favour of establishing Black Sections at every level of the Party on the same lines the Women's Sections and Youth Sections.
2. Conference notes the failure of the Liverpool District Labour Party, and the Liverpool City Council, to resolve its dispute with the black community over the issue of positive action against racism.
News
sionately about the committee being divisive at ou! annual conference.
So for these reasons we're implacably opposed to the Advisory Committee. It is no substitute for a thorough going network of Black Section rep.
all levels resenlaliul . al of the movement, having
own structure the same as other sections o! the movement with an an nual conicienci and bringing pressure to bea: on the NEC for places elected by our conference
This will
COHELICO whither away like all the advisory committees tha have existed in the past on race precisely because they were cynical black vote gathering committee comprising stooge grace and favour appointments. They commitment to fighting for anti-racist socialis! policies and were not ac countable to black people - that's why they keeled over and died
The black community have been settled in Liverpool for many centuries. Despite this, black citizens not only face racism but also suffer the brunt of mass unemployment and poor housing. Conference urges Labour Party to help eradicate this racism
inherent in British society.
Conference calls
upon Labour Party
members in Liverpool to
accept the right of black
people to organise in
Sections and to
Black
send Black Section del-
egates Constituency General Committet's and
also to the District Party
when re-established.
Labour
The Party
Black Section urges Con
stituenci Parties and
trade unions adopt
one of the above resolu
tions as their Conference
Resolution for Annual
Conference 86.
Please vary the wor-
ding slightly of
resolution you adopt, as
resolutions received
Conference Ar-
rangements Committee
with the same wording
from a number of dif-
ferent constituencies still •only count as one resolu-
tion. A small change in
wording CLP/Trade Union
ensure your resolution is
counted in its own right.
For further informa
tion contact Labour Par-
ty Black Section Secret-
Makanji,
01-889 7734
Page 5 scan of this page
CONFERENCE
THE SHADOW elections for women's places on the Labour Party national executive committee are probably the most important aspect of this year's national Labour women's conference. WAC is concentrating on having the five women's places on the party national executive elected by women. We are asking no more than what already happens with other sections of the NEC.
By Anni Marjoram, WAC Secretary
Al women's conterence
Bute, Labour Party women will be showing that they simply won't take 'no' for
from the NEC, the party leadership,
conference, anybody else.
These shadow elections have been organised by the National Labour Women's Committee (NLWC) in the face of fierce opposition
WAC's slate for the
shadow elections
TWENTY-THREE
conference.
Committee (WAC) is supporting: Diane 1
Morrell, and Clare Short.
WUMENS
The shadow elections
from Walworth Road.
That committee deserves our thanks they've done.
WAC is also conçentrating this year on the demand that policy advances researched by the women's rights group and pioneered local authority women's committees are included in the party's manifesto for the next general election. We Well programme for women writwomen have been nominated for the five places in the shadow elections to the NEC women's places which will take place at national Labour women's The Labour Women's Action bott, Joan Maynard, Mandy Moore, Frances
ten into that document and campaign around women as part of the general election campaign of the party.
This is what some of the WAC resolutions to women's conference 111struct the NEC to do. But real poncy advances • Call l be made and held unless women have status and power within the party.
We saw a recent example of what can happen to party policy after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant melt-down. Last year party conference clearly opposed nuclear power. But vou'd never recognise
strong position of conterence in the tortuous statements from the Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, or the shadow
environment spokesperson on unmena
We've got to keep fighting, and that is why the shadow elections are so important.
Labour Party regions, including my OWIl South West, women are now elected to the regional executive committee from regional women's ference. That is a definite gain. It is that which we will be taking forward to annual conference.
believe that the women who are going to be elected in the shadow elections national women's conterence will be the ones who have a record of working for women and who will be accountable
wollicl That's how it should be.
Women directly elec ting women to the NEC will be a gain for the party as a whole. It will be a gain
terms of policy Decause ference consistently
. itset to be HOTC radical and more in touch
NICHOLL
with policy should be on all important questions. And it will be a gain in of party democracy.
IPPEM There are distinct signs
that the democracy 1 OT the party are under threat. Making women accountable to women would be a great blow to that.
class
tract of
the form of economism,
line.
AS far as I'm concerned the . relationship between feminism and class politics is very close. As a socialist I'm concerned with
Ine politics which advances ihe interests of the mass of
and that's COD. viously working class
There's danger of assuming that if you take a position that's correct as a feminist position it must be obviously correct from a working class position as well. Feminists need to be careful to look at the way feminism and class politics interact. of.racial politics.
To illustrate: in Hackney North Labour Party there were three deselections of black candidates
the local elections. Two appealed successfully. The ground was partially that of sexual harassNUCLEA
Try as I would, I could not get the party to realise that there was something odd about a purge on sexual harassment which only got black men in its net and white men • went unscathed. They couldn't see man became a ser harassment is wrong isn't necessarily right for white women to go after must black men. it it an plies to black men it should apply white men.
When similar charges white councillor he got it were DHOUSE against - because wale women a the local government com mittee detended him. It's black med or sporter are that I support those right to sexually harass. but | suspect the reason that the LGC is willing to bring those charges and make them stick is because they're black
That is a classic case All Labour women were thinking of was sexual politics, without looking at wider issues of class or racial politics.
We all learned a lot from Bea Campbell, but part of the problem with her position is that she exaggerates the gains that
FIFTY per cent of the
SOGAT joint chapels are women. They have come forward and played a strong role on the Wapping picket line and also in the operations room at Caxton House.
By Carol Hall, Deputy Mother of Chapel The Times
The strike has made women more aware. Many have said to me: •I didn't realise what it was like until I saw it with my own eyes.
It isn't quite the same as the NUM because there are women in the membership of the union itselt and they work through the
structures. But
what we find is that since
Sex, race and
THE LATEST issue of New Socialist carries an ex-
La debate on feminism and class politics which will appear in full in the summer issue of Feminist Review. In it Bea Campbell agrues that: 'The defeat of feminist objectives within the working class movement has produced conservatism in
chauvinism and managerialism of both right and left.' DIANE AB. BOTT discussed the question of sex, race and class with CAROL TURNER, taking issue with Campbell
feminism made in the '70s, which is why she talks of defeat now. Her arguDiane Abbott ments are distorted by her involvement in events inside the Communist Party.
She is reading events in the Labour Party prove points in her own party.
She says, for instance,
that defeat feminism has produced conservatism, economism, chauvinism, and managerialism That's clearly not the case. These characteristics working class -movement nave their TOOL perialism. The British class Hovelicall is, classically, conservative aud chauvinistic and that has to do with Britain's history of imperialism. The thing about the British tradition is that it is pre-Marxist. There are all sorts of traditions in the British labour movement which are non-class conscious, that are actually quite elitist.
As much as anything else the British labour movement has its origins in the notion of guildism, or organising skilled craftsmen as onposed to the rest It is that concentration on skilled elite the working class which pete rac sC valisil chauvinism, and managerialism today I think feminism has made progress : within the trade unions not much as we would like but there is certainly no
Women and Wapping
the miners' strike and the role women played, we are treated differently. For example, most of the requests for speakers are for women.
Tory legislation has annihilated this dispute.
Anything you do is illegal.
Those laws must be repealed.
Murdoch can do whatever he wants with the run strengun or lue govern ment behind him, and the can what they did a few Saturday nights ago get free. It should be illegal to sack 5,500 people.
Saturday 3 May, when the violent and unprovoked was deliberate in timidation. They have been developing these tactics for weeks. The police are doing it to frighten people away from
Socialist Action 16 May 1986 5 kind of inevitable cer There's go: :3 " tural changes
Bea Campie. that: I nere are 5* lities in the recens.r of the Labour leaders. that make ll better anything we have seen our nietime anyway She says that the last сОПterence showed that the 'non-Trotskyist left ha allowed itself to be hijacked' with disastrous results Bea often talks about the GLC as if Ken Livingstone single• handedly generate changes in the GLC and transformed County Hall. The thing that ver! naughty is that she tends to seperate off Ken Livingstone from the Trotskyist left which she regards as bad. What she doesn't understand is that the people who worked to take the GLC for the left in '82 were the very people she castigates.
I have a great deal of respect for Bea. She is one of the most creative and perceptive thinkers about feminism that we have on the left.
But just as it was mistake to imagine that gender and race are entire-
reducible to class, other words and black people 'had to wait until after the revolution' it is also a mistake to completely separate the feminist project and black people's aspirations from any notion . of class politics. . Everybody woulc be weakened by this.
In practice women and black people have proved the highly radicalising and class conscious forces within the labour ment. We only. have to look at the policies of the women's conference Ireland for instance, or the position that the black section has _taken on /issues such as south Atrica and Libya to see that.
The only people who have anything to gain by effecting splitting off of feminist aspirations and black aspirations from working CaSs as bil allulis the enemies of the working class - black and white, malé and female. I believe very strongly consciousness raising and the right of black people and women to organise auton.
, but ultimately we are talking • about one struggle
Wapping, to show they are in control.
They want to drive us on our knees to a settle ment. But we are not after compensation there is no compensation for being driven out of a job, not can you build labour
newsie Ol
of a defeat for the labou
Our chapel unanimously passed a motion op posing what Murdoch is now offering. It isn't what we came out for. We want our jobs back
feel the dispute should be escalated. While we are being attacked by these thugs. our fellow
workers are printing otb
Fleet Street papers full o
lies about what is happe
ing. They should come ou
with us and the
labour movement
support us
Page 6 scan of this page
6 Socialist Action 16 May 1986
WOMENS
CONFERENCE
NEW SOCIALIST is hosting a debate at Labour Women's Conference on the issue of 'sex versus class'. It follows up a round-table discussion between Bea Campbell, Michele Barratt, Angela Weir, Elizabeth Wilson and Anne Phillips which appears in the current issue of the magazine.
Bea Campbell's comments in New Socialist rather graphically reveal that her concern is not women's liberation. Scargill and the miners strike are attacked as one of the best examples of of the best examples of 'conservative class consciousness', and the chief enemy to be fought. despite the fact that the NUM supports the demands of both WAC and the Black Section. Neil Kinnock on the other hand Campbell describes as 'better than anything we have seen in our lifetimes' - despite the fact that be supports neither the demands of women or of black people.
JUDE WOODWARD looks at the real issues which confront this year's Women's Conference
• and at Kinnock's attempt to limit the advance of women within the party.
THE RELATIONSHIP of women
society has gone through veritable revolution since World War II, with the massive entry of women into the workforce. number of married women in paid work has doubled since 1945, and for the first time the majority of women aged between 16 and 60 are in paid work. If we add into this the amber of women seeking paid work, but currently unemployed, 66 per cent of women of working ge in or seeking paid work - and
hese official figures understate the situation.
In the period of the 'post-war boom', capital - IO workforce in order to take advantage of a favourable economic situation. However with the overwnelming tha jority of white men already in employment, British capitalism had to open up. paid whole new SCCLOS society. It met the demand for an expanded workforce by bringing women into paid work, and by organising the immigration of black workers from the
imperial colonies, cooccally Caribbean, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The change in the composition of the working class that resulted remarkable. Alongside the increase in the number of women workers. black population rose from 75,000 to over 2 million between 1945 and 1983.
It is these structural changes in the composition of the working class that are impelling the movements of women and black people inside the labour movement - and which have found their most organised political expression inside the Labour Party in the
Women's Action Committee and the Black Section. movements are driven forward by fun-
The
damental and irreversible forces in society that they cannot be ignored or brushed aside .. Kinnock has to combine suppression of democracy with or even some real limited costlicle. concessions to attempt to maintain the bureaucratic grip on the party.
It is fundamental to the success of the Kinnock leadership's project in the ot Labour Party that it finds some means
of incorporating, accommodating and dividing the women's movements in the party. A whole series of initiatives taken over the last period the of time are testimony to this.
The establishment of the Black and Asian Advisory Committee is a clear attempt to destroy the black section replacing the self-organisation of black the people with a series of appointees of the
party leadership.
Bill Morris as the general secretary of the TGWU was a similar response to make a partial concession resisting organisation of black whole.
There are also a series of initiatives aimed specifigally at derailing women's struggle for democracy.
These by the LCC, undoubtedly
nock's backing,
Joan Ruddock into their slate for the NEC is aimed at drawing a substantial element behind their project of removing Benn Skinner or Heffer representatives of the left — from the NEC this year
see an important NUPE with a resolution that proposes to install a bloc vote of the trade union
and black bureaucracy at women's conference, to
destroy that dependence. The resolution dresses this proposal up with calls for other constitutional reforms presented as aiming build the by Similar proposals for increasing trade union bureaucratic control of the youth section came torward in relation to the The appointment of LPYS at the Scottish Labour Party first black deputy conference last year.
the aim is to destroy the independence
an e self- of the most radical conference of the people as a Labour Party. By these means the trade
union bureaucracy would seek to have not onlv total control over annual party conterence, conference and Ine
with Kin- ference. to adopt. Kinnockite
among women in the party
some of the headed
At women's conference this year we
intervention by
testify conference's Ical
women's conference. they can be
repressed.
changes
In the case of women's organisation From
but also over the youth women's
The establishment of the Black and
Party Asian Advisory Committee is simply a different means to achieve the same end in relation to black people. Here we have the absurdity of a committee Gwyneth Dunwoody, and composed Hattersley exclusively of appointees, claiming to party. be more representative of black people . than the Black Sections which black people themselves have set up.
All these manoeuvres by Kinnock Liberals.
that the development of the women's and black movements in the party are based on such fundamental forces in British society that they will simply go on driving forward unless
diverted, divided, or bought off. They cannot simply be
The impact of the massive social
since World War not confined to the labour movement world,
the Ouisci the SDP/Liberal Alliance had a conscious policy of appealing to the 'new' women voters. They understood that the image of women as mothers, carers and shoppers no longer sufficiently corresponded to the lives of a majority of women. Less than one in eight women now corresponds to the classical stereotype of a of rule. woman of working age who solely stays
and Ki
at home looking after the house and children. Women are also. workers students and professionals, so the Alliance promoted women like Shirley Williams, Polly Toynbee and so on -the new 'feminist' professionals
Even the Tories have been forced to understand that if they want to retain any substantial basis of support among women they have to break out of the Tory lady, jumble sale, tea and sandwiches image. The recent launch of the 'High Flyers' club, unofficially linked to the Tory Party, is evidence of this. 'High Flyers' promotes the 100 or so richest and most successful business and professional women, attempting to build up a new constituency of support among women on the basis that women can make it through the system.
All parties are being forced to shift in response to the huge advances made by women. The aim of Kinnock is to try i to keep these changes to a minimum.
The movement the Labour Women's Action Committee, and the responses to it, have to be understood in this overall context. The Labour Party as it was founded at the turn of the century by non-socialist trade unions, and with the constitution it adopted in 1918, failed to take up the key demands of women. Despite the massive struggle of women for the vote, the labour
was not up to taking on board this demand, or of incorporating. the concept of an independent, self-organised women's movement into its constitution. Nor was up to understanding the need to support Irish independence, or the overthrow of British colonial and imperial rule world wide. Labour was an imperialist party the trade unions were still massively in fluenced by the most white male, skilled and relatively privileged, sections of the working class. Women were scarce-
The labour movement of the turn of the century, when the modern Labour
constitution was created, sisted of a combination of the craft unions — the old skilled male working class — and the new mass unions, composed of unskilled male manual workers. The craft unions had not even created an independent working class
Whereas most orner curopean countries had mass Socialist. Parties by the end of the 19th century, in Britain the craft unions had supported the
The development of the mass unskilled unions, and the foundation of the Labour Party, constituted an enormous cap orward in lne power anc consciousness of the British working class. But it was still not a sufficient leap forward to bring the labour move. ment up to the level of challenging the British imperialist ruling class was oppressing and exploiting half the
bleeding Ireland, establishing the rule of racism in South Africa, exploiting women's labour in the home. and denying women all political rights. None of these policies of British imperialism was systematically challenged
the labour Labour Party. On the contrary Labour participated in this imperialist system
The changes in the composition of
Page 7 scan of this page
OMEN nock's "new model" Labour Party
the British working class which are impelling forward women and black people, are however today accompanied by the decline and rotting of British imperialism. Black people, coming large part countries which have seen at first hand the havoc wreaked by British colonial exploitation, never did think that their interests might be best served by backing. up and supporting geransm. I is clear mrom lne poncy adopted by successive Women's Conferences on Ireland, nuclear weapons, on the Malvinas War, that women too are in the vanguard of understanding that their not lie in bolstering British imperialism, and its policies.
But unfortunately the overwhelming majority of the forces of the labour movement still collude and combine with the British ruling class in supporfing its aggressive abroad. superexploitation of women and black people at home. Labour's consciousness has been that the more protits that British capital can make abroad, then the higher workers wages can be at home. And if it is best for profits for women to be kept home, or on lower wages, wilcre unev snouo de diso. of women and black people was powerfully reinforced by British imperialism. Until after World War Il the labour movement could largely get away with that policy. The working class itself was largely white, and male. changes since World War Il are putting an end to all this. Women are not conveniently at home minding the kids, they are in the unions and in the labour
Black people somewhere else, on the other side of the world, but here, in the trade unions and in the labour movement. And British imperialism is not delivering the goods callyway.
The Labour Party and the labour movement as they were established • the turn of the century, both politically and organisationally, are totally out of date and out of line with the needs of reality. The self-serving 'I'm all right Jack' policy of a British white male abour movement. which was built into the very foundation of the movement has got to go. This is what LWAC. and the Black Section are about.
LWAC and the Black Section will find that their allies are among every other section of the working class that has an interest in overthrowing this backward, chauvinistic, pro-imperialist
policy of the movements of
from in Ireland.
British im-
with them.
Labour among the miners. parently contradictory
interests do imperialist policy
the
Scargill discovered
Women Against
then that's the black communities, Oppression ing class internationally.
people at its stands with lese
But the
the black section.
this lesson. "aristocracy of labour', lines at Wapping, when you
there to help you fight back
entire labour movement.
labour ana olner militant labour movement
whole character of the
labour movement.
Women and black people, for example, have interests in common with those fighting to win the labour movement to fight against British imperialism's role
There will be allies among these sections of the working class that are getting pushed to the bottom of the heap by Thatcher's policies — and the collusion of the labour movement leadership miners,
That's why women and black people find that they have allies
This appears apwith the fact that the NUM, as a union, is both exceedingly white and exceedingly male. ward But the attempt by Thatcher to smash level. up the mining communities by closing pits, and the spectacle of the inactivity of the maiority of the trade union and Labour Party leaders faced with that, drove the NUM into a collision cours not just with the ruling class, but with
whole status quo in the labour
that the real allies of the miners were the women in
Pit Closures and across the country, black people and
, and the worklabour movement that has women and black
vanguard, and which fighting against British imperialism, would give a thousand times more support to the NUM than it received from Willis and Kinnock. This is the reason why the NUM supports the demands of LWAC and
The NUM is simply the first to learn Even sections of the on the picket have found that are being forced to your knees it's women, black people, and the most oppressed and exploited, who are
- and this despite the fact the policies of the print unions on both women and black people have been among the worst in the
In fact it is the prospect of just such an alliance developing between women
sections of the that is putting the leaders of the TUC and the Labour rarty into a lalner about what to do Because what if at stake in that is not just that space is made for a few women at the top, but involves a change in the
labour move.
ment that would leave the existing bureaucracy behind. The key goal and project of the Kinnock leadership is precisely to prevent such an alliance developing and driving its way through the labour movement.
The combined force of women and black people would be bad enough for the present • set up. add in the
and the Irish people, populations of Liverpool and Lambeth and everyone else in struggle and what is beginning to come together is an unstoppable combination which could lead the entire labour movement for-
onio a qualitatively
The tactics of the party leadership in dealing with this are straightforward ane honored the first instance there is the classic combination of the carrot and the big stick -is so clearly the content of the NUPE resolution to women's conference that it is almost shocking. The carrot is the promise of some vague constitational reform to give women's conference more say in the election of the NEC, the big stick is that women won't control the women's conference anymore due to the introduction of the trade union bloc vote which will be created outside of women in the unions having any mechanism to control how it is used.
The other time-honoured tactic is 'divide and rule' or more precisely buying off a small minority in order to derail the struggle of the rest. It is this which is involved in the proposal of the LCC to field Joan Ruddock in the constituency section of the NEC elections.
Joan Ruddock is in effect female nominee of the party leadership — chosen because her politics are acceptable, and because she has shown herself useful already in the leadership of CND. From her position in the peace movement helped engineer takeover of CND by the coalitionist politics of Marxism Today
alliances already in place in the leadership of CND! The mass movement against the missiles was successfully steered behind the 'non-nuclear defence' programme as an alternative to campaigning for unilateral nuclear disarmament against cruise and Trident. Joan Ruddock fully supported that move. women at Greenham Common were the least popular people in the leadership of CND as they provided a focus for continuing the mass campaigning when CND itself was calling no actions against cruise and Trident.
Where Joan Ruddock stands on the black section, or the struggle of the women in the mining communities, on Ireland and many other questions is not clear. But these issues are of vital importance to women, because fighting for the liberation of the whole of our sex, not the election of one or two women to positions of prominence in a man's world.
In order to achieve the liberation and emancipation of the whole of the
sex it will be necessary reconstruct the whole of society on different lines • A few more female faces in
that is fundamentally
changed, and who are opposing the changes that are necessary to it, is not a policy that can enthuse and mobilise the great majority of women or meet their needs. To accomplish the liberation of women requires the achievement of virtually democratic and social demand, precise. ly because we are more than 50 per cent of humanity. and liberated if. their black sisters are op
pressed due to the colour of their skin? Or while Irish British soldiers on • while the women of the mining communities have their different livelihoods destroyed?
once, but the women who we fight to have representing us are those. women who will help, not hinder, the process which towards achieving these goals. But this
is not what Joan Ruddock represents, and therefore she cannot be a representative of women in the party. * However it has to be stated bluntly that the failure of Benn, Skinner, Hef. fer and the Campaign Group to take at all seriously the question of women and black candidates for the NEC is a blow for the left and for women. tempt to pull women behind support for Joan Ruddock, and the project of getting one of Benn, off the NEC, would be little more than a laughable joke if the Campaign Group's slate women and black people. There are obvious black and women candidates for the left to support. The failure of the Campaign Group weaken the left. As it is a certain pro. the portion of women will undoubtedly be
won to supporting Joan Ruddock on a confused basis - despite her being the party leadership's latest nominee to'try to defeat the left
the
For if Kinnock's manoeuvres can succeed in dividing women in the way he wishes, then not only will the alliance of • forces that can transform the labour movement not come into being, but this will mean that LWAC's demands cannot be won. union bureaucracies that placed him in and the leadership of the party, will never
agree to, or be persuaded to, implement The LAC's demands. They will either be
forced against their will to concede these demands, or they will succeed in controlling the women's organisation and nullifying it politically. It is the second which is their goal.
party leadership might possibly allow the women's conference to elect the women's section of the NEC is women no longer we are women's conference.
rather like the way imperialism has ‹ dealt with the demand of 'colonial' countries for national freedom they steal the wealth; then install British-owned companies to run the plantations to tories; then help finance a massive army
to police the country; then hand over control to a clique of paid lackeys; and then they call
dependence'.
every other governing
society is
How can be
women
women are fighting
their streets? Or baaos,
and per cent
All these aims cannot be achieved at
capitalist.
few individuals, The at-
Skinner or Heffer
properly represented
will undoubtedly This would be a setback for women.
people bureaucracy.
excluded.
Kinnock, and the trade
together fighting The only circumstance in which the
if controlled the would be
alternative - first
the and the tac with the
'national
socIalst ACton 10 May 1986 7
The United States of America provides a model on how to try to do this with women. Women are told they are very liberated in the States, there are female faces everywhere - at the UN
cities, running oil com panies. But women's real position in
starkly indicated by the number of women in Congress. Out of 534 members there are only 23 women, that is 4.3 per cent. The only major countries with a worse figure are Bar-
Chile, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, Turkey and the Phillipines. Bri tain is only marginally ahead with 4.7
women parliament Women, as a sex, remain fully oppress ed in the United States. A few female faces are used to disguise a society which remains thoroughly sexist and
And it is the advance of women as a sex, not the advance of a
that both feminism and socialism are about.
There are two courses open for the labour movement and for women. One is the road of Neil Kinnock's model Labour Party' This will be a party which is actually the same as it has always been, with the same policies of collusion with British imperialism One where women, black people and youth are subordinated to the trade union bureaucracy, and where the most militant sections of the working class are controlled and policed by the righ wing. The 'new' thing about it will br that a small number of women, and black people, will be chosen on grounds of their loyalty to the leadership - and to the trade union bureaucracy that put it there. They will be given prominence in the party, to help change its image. The 'model' thing about it will be that opposition is either expelled, as with the left papers, or crushed, as with the proposals to introduce mechanisms of control into the women's organisation and the YS. A few women and black
will invited into But women and black peopie, as a whole, will continue to be
The alternative road is that towards a total refounding of the Labour Party and the labour movement. Women,
Will black people, those British imperialism, the miners, and other progressive sections of the working class have to recreate the labour movement to meet today's needs. And this time on the basis of women organising themselves electing their own representatives, and having a real say at every level of the movement
- the same for black people. And this movement must exist to fight British imperialism and the British ruling class rather than being a mechanism for col laboration with it. Without that women cannot gain their demands. The two
COUSCO for the labour movement can be summed up as for women's liberation, black liberation, anti-imperialism, democracy and militant class struggle on the one hand,
only consistent alternative course being the maintenance of the status quo — albeit with a few cosmetic Kinnockite adjustments
Page 8 scan of this page
The issues facing
8
WOMENS
CONFERENCE
Strip Searches
THE verdict on the seven Irish people charged with conspiracy over the 'seaside bomb' campaign and the Brighton bombing has already been given you were to believe what you read in the newspapers.
The Daily Mirror described how the 'IRA planned to kill and maim British families by bombing seaside hotels in the height of the holiday season rce busted the biggest IRA cell ever
found a diary of death'. → tter WCIC arrested in the Sussex area ine reponca as lal as we are aware the active service unit was arrested and de. tained in its entirity. All truce were suoseyuchuly released without charge.
Prejudicial can only follow where the
all arcc lolally the information available on those arrested under the Prevention OI Terrorism Act who are being held incommunicado. more than 20 people arrested in a wave of press hysteria over the summer conspiracy only a handful de vene Drought to trai
Last July, the television news revealed the intention of the campaign when blatently racist police were shown questioning hotel owners about whether they had any Irish people working for them, any Irish
heard any Irish people discussing ponlics. The seven will not get a fair tnal.
On 6 May, more than
Emergency resolution on strip-search Conference notes that on 1 May 1986 the High Court refused to declare the persistant strip-searching or tne iwo Irish women in Brixton prison unlawful. Conference believes that this ruling is tantamount to a legal mandate to continue a practice which doctors, lawyers, civil libertarians, women's groups know to be sexual harrassment involving personal violation akin to
Conference requests the National Labour Women's Committee to press release and make our views widely and vociferously known, and to request the party leader 1o do likewise. Conference believes that this ruling makes the calling of a national labour movement. demonsetron ever more ursell. the proposal from Hornsey and Wood Green women's section for such a demonstration to coincide with the 4th anniv of the introduction of strip-searching on 15 .Vovember to be organised jointly with Irish orgs, women's groups, to have high involvement from the TUC and to be led by Labour women and Irish spokespersons and Irish women. A mobilising committee to be immediately set up to organise and mate for to demonstration
Socialist Action 16 May 1986 50 people were prevented irom demonstrating their support for the Irish
They were told DrIsulicis. by an Inspector Meadows that anyone demonstrating in the vicinity of the Old Bailey would be arrested.
Around the court, as in the trial of Maire O'Shea, the intrusive presence sniffer dogs, armed police and restrictions on those allowed to observe the proceedings give the message that really dangerous
Again as in the Maire O'Shea trial. there 15
i strong suspicean yhat the
flas alicauy been vetted.
For defendants, daily harassment prevents a normal preparation for the trial, discussions with lawyers, etc. The most barbaric treatment has been reserved for the women on trial Ella O'Dwyer and Martina Anderson. Since their arrest, both have been sublect to humiliation, constant sexual harassment through strip-searching, cell changes, denial of sleep and exercise restrictions.
Conspiracy charges themselves carry a guilt by association. The mass trial
common enough in Belfast gives added weight to the conspiracy. Already newspapers talk of the Brighton bombing trial, even though only one ot the taces any charges in relation to that.
These defendants do not face a fair trial, the on-
ly just solution would be to drop the charges
altogether.
Conference supports
THE MAIN thrust of WAC's campaign at women's conference this month will be centred around the shadow elections to the women's section of the NEC and the need to follow through these elections with action at annual conference. resolutions on the women's organisation section part of the conference agenda reflect this priority.
By Mandy Moore, WAC National Organiser
The resolution from NUPE is another matter.
It amasses together a wide range of issues of concern to the women's organisation, and proposes course of action deal with which WAC
Then
NUPE was trying to be
certainly not the way to do
The major problem with the resolution is its call for 'the NEC to under-
widespread take CUlI
US bases out
THE attack on Libya by the United States government, supported
by the Tory govern-
ment, highlights the need to strengthen Labour Party policy.
By Carol Turner,
Secretary, Labour
CND
At present Labour is only committed to removing bases something which would stave of difference to the attack on Libya. Labour CND is
circulating a model resolution to annual conference
supported by the Cam-
of Labour
paign group
MPs and Labour Action
for Peace, which calls on
the next Labour govern.
all US
bases, and Is also pro-
moting an emergency
resolution to
conference.
It has been the consis-
tent policy of women's
conference call for
unilateral nuclear disar-
Emergency resolution on US bases Conference notes with alarm the attack on Libya by the United States government and the complicity of prime minister Margaret Thatcher who sanctioned the use of bases in inis country from which this air raid wa. launched. Conference calls upon the next Labour government to remove all US bases, conventional and communications bases, from Britist
Labour women
The majority of the
sultation exercise in conjunction with the national LaDOUl women's
(NLWC) • The of issues. women's organisation does not need a consulta. tion exercise we have nau. onc. it's called the women's conference. Year after organisation has made its y cal the women's
known, and the NLWC supported these policies sending document to the NEC for men in the barry are that The
party are no
now to consult men in the Party who Have consisichl mament under a Labour government. On this, as • our Involtant us tions of policy, Labour
women nave played leading role in campaigning to change party policy.
issue
losures of all bases, too
Labour CND is confiden that women will continue to put forward the sort of radical positions will improve the party
A US Bases Out Campaign COMMICU
within the Labour Party.
by the Campaign Group of Labour MPs, LCND,
LAP, and others, to build
support for a change in
Labour policy. A London
rally is currently being
organised. LCND and
LAP are also planning a
Bases Out iringe meeung
at the coming annual con-
ference in the autumn.
• Further information
about the bases campaign
contact: Labour CND,
Stodmarsh House, Cowley
London
6HH.
, including nuclea
The NUPE resolution
ly voted us down at annual conference because they are not prepared to give up some of their power? And when the results of this consultative exercise come through and the women's organisation gets offered a few crumbs from the men's table (if that), the NLWC will be in the invidious position of having been a party to the con sultation exercise and therefore obliged to take notice of it. The women's organisation cannot comAROUND 40 women and men picketed BT's London headquarters in Newgate Street, EC1, last week to protest in the latest protest against the 'dial a pornographic phonecall service.
By Marcella Fitzgerald, London North Central Internal NCU
• Support for the regular pickets IS growing from
BT's own employees. Last week's picket included several branches of the BT unions.
The new "service, which costs per minute, allows pitiable
men to fantasise that the tape recording they hear is
Women in the NUR
The shadow elections being held at this year's national Labour women's conference are on the agenda of the 1986
NUM annual confer-
ence in June.
By Anne Henderson,
NUR Delegation
Member to National
Labour Women's Con-
ference
Delegates will be prothat the NUI
should suport the right of
women's conference
elect the women members
of the Labour Party NEC,
but there will be no women
delegates at the NUR con-
ference Women members
are working lo easure Wal
delegates know the
arguments before they ar-
at conference
Women NUR members
promise itself in this way.
Such an exercise would also mean that campaigning al annua. Conterence
the ear me in posa
sımply told support could not be given to our resolutions because of the consultation exercise and it wouldn't even. be certain that an end to the exercise would be made in 1987 for action at the '87 annual conference We cannot allow Call paigning to be stiffled in this way.
The detail of the NUPE resolution is also of great conceal talks about consultation on giving 'consideration to the national conference of Labour women playing a significant role in the election procedure for women's • seats on the NEC Sorry, we want to do it all.
The resolution says it wants to see consultation
British Telecom Pornline
a real woman talking only to them. The connection between the Petline and the encouragement obscene phone calls to real women probably • hasn't escaped BT management, but they also make profit by charging women f20 a week to intercept obscene phone calls.
Union members fight
outlaw this pornography has nothing to do with the campaigns against Petline which national newspapers such as the Mail and the Mirror have run. In these papers, moralism sits side-by-side with their own, page-three variety of pornography. The union campaign based on uniting the whole membership to combatting all forms
who comprise this year's delegation to national Labour women's conference will be arguing for the union to support the shadow elections and
WAC demands.
There are four resoluwonder
NUR annual conference.
This
awareness that the union
will have to take positive
steps to involve its women
members, and hopefully
also increase the number
of women in the industry.
Despite the difficulties
women NUR members are
more organised. We have
been bringing forward
issues for discussion
branch meetings and
grades conferences.
In 1982 a comprehen-
TUC Charter
Womer overwiene
ingly rejected. A year later
on the 'elections to the na.
…Laboul women's committee with a view to allowing an additional say by the national conference of Labour women in the composition of the committee. Women's con ference policy is clear. We want to see the whole committee elected at women's conference not
Nave al 'additional say'
It also lists a whole Tance complex issues proposing clear options which woul make a consultation exer-
difficult, consuming and cumbersome to say the least
WAC has asked NUPE to look again at its resolution and to withdraw it. If they are not prepared to do this will remit it tophe NLWe. then hopefuly
But if it goes to the vote at women's conference we will have to oppose it.
With friends like this, who needs enemies? discrimination and sexual disadvantage.
The Petline pickets. first taken up by Women against Violence Against Women, also being organised within BT by th
NČU' women's support
and Women
Telecom. cross-union organisation of women BI employees. should Letters of protests etc
be copied to the NCU Women's. Advisory
Greystoke House, 150 Brunswick
Road, London W5. Details about future pickets are available from Women In
Telecoms, Union Room,
Newgat
Street, London ECIA 7A. the NUR adopted the same
charter. and subsequently has agreed to look at structures similar to women's
advisory committees in the
The British Rail Board
themselves have been
criticised TOI
discrimination within the
WOrKIOIC by the Equal
Opportunities Commis-
BR, through
SOR LUll
sultation with women in
the workforce has now
issued guidelines to
for im-
hallac cal
plementing their equal op-
portunities policy.
whole range of issues are
being discussed, and we
have to ensure that the rail
unions put forward policy
proposals.
Policy statements
alone won't change things
But for the women in the
industry, gives us
something to work for
Page 9 scan of this page
South Africa swept by general strike
International
THE NATIONAL general strike which swept South Africa on May Day was the most massive action taken by history. It confirmed Winnie Mandela's message to the Soweto May Day rally when she said: 'It is the worker's power which is going to liberate this country.
By Doreen Weppler
The 'stayaway' was organised by the sixmonin oid Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) mark the 100th anniversary of May Day and the historic 1946 miners strike. Federation officials estimate that at least 90 per cent
its 650,000 members didn't turn up for work. total oi two and a half million other workers mobilised behind the demand for May Day to be a paid holiday.
Workers faced every obstacle imaginable on the day. The apartheid government sent out police and army forces equipped with whips, teargas and guns to disrupt the rallies staged around the country. espite mus show of force by the state, nearly attended COSATU rallies.
The WHO are COSATU's backbone, targetted
alongside TOT other total 270,000 45
Soweto,
the Orlando won-
faced shows of state force. In the West Rand, instance,
were
Sell or other. in the hope
But
third security
was one
army the
Workers
venue at But even in case, 2,000 regrouped nearby church and organised an tion in El Salvador.
At a London meeting 0. Mav. Emeralda Martinez and executive member of the El Salvador
Women's Federation, plained the significance of this: Until now government
which still goes.
on, has frightened people
But W thev nave naa
enough and want to ex-
DICSS themselves on the
streets.'
She said that the strug-
gle in El Salvador has
moved forward with the
setting up in February of
the National Unity of
Salvadorean Workers
(UNTS). This is a broad
+ TOO! of 100
organisations, with
300,000 members and in-
cludes the Popular
workers ever recorded in South Africar
aiternative In Pori anabel apartheid authorities banned
LUDH TU rescheduling for
Billy extending
siayaway
Baray!, pres:i ai the rally. Whether the South
kes
olidav.
achieve that lU vas led the vast majority of
take no against workers stayed
tion on day raised
The official
walll.
working
by for
instance to democratic
of people's right HOW
the
political As COSATU explained, "These mean complete of apartheid.'
Africa against
Mat Day. workers led
Mass demonstration in El Salvador
ON 1 MAY 100,000 people took to the streets of San Salvador to oppose government austerity, demand a negotiated peace with the FMLN-FDR liberation organisations and the end to US military interven-
Democratic Union which previously backed Duarte. By Celia Pugh
UNTS called demonstration 80,000 in February; followed by the 1 May call. As the working class took to the streets in San Salvador, the government has stepped up intimidation of the peasants in the countryside. This attempt to break support for the liberation and workers organisations has involved US equipped bombing of villages.
Ezmeralda reported
hardered 2n0 people, led
murdered 230 people.
people, remova
1200 people from their
ed by over a million pupils Most black schools empty from Thursday through Monday
/ as pupils heeded COSATU's call for unity between students and workers School students joined their stayaway by many university students as well. The success of the May Day action bodes well for the three-day stayaway called for this month to mark ine anniversary the Soweto uprising on 16 June
As a COSATU official summarised the meaning
SHOW of workers power in South Africa on May Day, 'This shows that workers have laken a decision to bulld South Africa into CCUCAL country. We will not rest until this goal is realised.
homes and the destruction of 450 acres of land.
Azucena of the Association of salvadorean women (AMES) explained the Duarte regime's attacks on women in El Salvador and lne lights day in Salvador mothers' day But for Duarte and the Buyill
mothers' day day for commerce. They do not meet the needs of women who are suffering
like those who see their children die in air attacks, the women locked prisons or who queue there
see their children husbands or the ones who see their families die of malnutrition.
The only peone in cl Salvador who speak for these women are organisations like AMES and the Mothers of the Disappeared. In El Salvador,
Fake union launched
WHILE COSATU
was carrying through
strike
against apartheid.
May Day was also in-
congrously chosen for
the launch of the so-
called Workers Union
of South Africa
(UWUSA).
This outfit is inspired
by Gatsha Buthelezi, the
Kwazulu Bantustan
chief. It is being pro-
jected as a tribally-based
rival to COSATU. Its
real character
'union' is evident from
the fact that its entire ex-
ecutive is drawn from
Inkatha, Buthelezi's
political organisation
hospital.
result. on these issues, but recognises nothing
and
'We know' she said 'that can't move
back against
our
countryside and for
being shed.
take this
ASTMS, Society Civil and Public Servants and to the Labour Party
which collaborates with the apartheid regime, malaced HO DISE 50,000 for the UWUSA
and trains which were taid on. Onlv three smal unions representing tewer than S00l workers were present. Buthelezi prepared for the launch with a scathing campaign
vitriol conducted against COSATU for the past six months. Not sur-
neither the bantustan police South African state forces were used against
partineants at this rally.
The aim 'UWUSA' is to break up the unity around
and aid the apartheid regime.
womens conference on 17
MaShe will echo her warn-
ing to the London meeting: "The American government • 1S not interested on peace and negotiation • Central America. They are trying
paint the Nicaraguan
governmen as terrorists.
that affects us too as we have the
'We don't see our fight in isolation. This is why AMES has contacts with women fighting across the world, like the women of Namibia and South Africa. We are preparing to oppose an invasion of Nicaragua and we hope you will support us.
• For information about AMES and solidarity with El Salvador, contact ELSSOC c/o SOGAT, 13-16 Borough Road, London SEI.
Nicaragua:
Somoza nationa! guard members. been engineered by the CIA
limited when the Nicaraguan governmen'
to invade Nicaragua.
China:
: technology year it started exporting its own personal
NASA's spaceships are gounded.
agreement with the Great Wall Industry
per cent.
Chile:
Santiago, police and army occupied the
There were over 600 arrests.
Kurdistan:
others being injured.
Belgium:
as 12 April there was a 20,000-strong
• Contact: Comite de Greve,
Sociaist Action 16 May 1986
WORLD
Six leaders of the main southern contra
group have broken with its leader Eden Pastora to join forces with the US-backed United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO). The UNO is dominated by the Honduran-based Nicaraguan Democratic Force, mainly composed of former
Pastora himself was a Sandinista of some prominence known as "Commandante Cero' who broke with the FSLN after the revolution. He kept his distance from the nationa! guard and the CIA have been trying to eliminate him as a serious contra leader since 1983. He was recently the victim of a bomb attack widely believed to have
The southern group has been roured by the Sandinistas and its capacity to recover was severly concluded a joint defence treaty with the recently elected president of Costa Rica. Now it is unde tighter US it wili probably receive major military assistance, since the USA needs a southern front
China is leaping forward in modern - even ahead of the USA. Last
computer called the Great Wall. In June it starts exporting IBM computers under license and next year it is going to launch US satilites because all
The Texas company, Teresat has signed an Corporation to launch its Palapa B and Westar VI communications satilites in China's Long March 3 rocket which goes up next year. Beijing went into the commercial launch business last October and is undercutting its European and US rivals by 15
Pinocher, facing widespread mass demonstrations and strikes, has stepped up the repression. On Tuesday 22 April police opened fire on student demonstrators when he visited Tumuco in Souther Chile. Five were wounded, and there were over 60 arrests. A week earlier in universities for four days attacking students demonstrating for a democratic university system and against the expulsion of victimised professors.
A wave of revolt against the Baathist dictatorship has swept the Kurdish termitories
of Syria and the Kurdish minority in Damarcus, the Syrian capital. On 21 march the national day
of the Kurdish people, there were widesprent
demonstrations, clashes, and arrests which sparked even wider demonstrations. In Da ascus
Kurdish workers and students marched bestle left
wing Arab activists on the presidential palace.
Police, riot troops and intelligence agents blocked
the route and a young worker was killed, eight
Eighteen thousand coal miners went on indefinite strike on 21 April in Limboatg Flanders. They struck because the Martens. government refused to give assurances about job
losses and closure. The miners are demanding no closures, no redundancies, and no job losses from natural wastage. The government wants to
introduce Thatcher-style cuts in pulic spending
which would probably mean closing the remaining
five Belgian pits. Union leaders were forced to call
the strike when two pits took unofficial action.
Solidarity committees have sprung up and as early
demonstration in support of the miners.
Winterslag, Turksa,
Zereniging, Herenstraat 16, 3600 Genk, Belgium.
Page 10 scan of this page
10
'Lr5
T1r.e Power by Fred Halstead.
THE lie that began the nudear industry was the ¿laim by the US government that Nazi Germany was going build an atomic bomb. In August 1939 Leo Silard, a German physicist and retugee from Hitler, organised a kerter US president. Roosevelt which was. signed by Albert Einstein.
through work in
uranium new Dnenomeron
powerful bombs.
the
already that Nazi Germany no pro-
ducing weapons.
physicists many
gorernment that Germany struct the was carefully the who were Borking, on project.
оп the he had been
the would
atom bomb, I would never have moved a finger.'
Enemies
W hen, by summer 1945, Germany had lost the war and it was evident Japan could both not build the bomb and was going to surrender, Silard organised Denuol
centists working on the Manhattan Project against mie of the bomb. It was es piy banned by the
.government. Einstein ennained the real role of ie L'S in a speech he gave ea 10 December 1945: 'We heiged in creating this new azapon in order to prevent che eremies mankind from achieving it ahead of als shich, given the mentality of the Nazis, would hase meant inconceivable destruction and the enslavement of the rest of the world
delivered this meapon into the hands of the American and British pople. as trustees of the
Socialist Action 16 May 1986 THE GOVERNMENT is attempting to conceal the real threat from atomic power in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster. That is no innovation at all. The muclear industry started with a lie. It has continued as the most totally, and solely, destructive industry ever developed by humanity. Getting out the facts on nuclear power is therefore one of the most important tasks for the left. JOHN ROSS looks at a book and a pamphlet that do just that — We All Live On Three Mile Islend, by Greg Adamson and What Working People should Know About the Dangers of Nuclear
whole ot as for and Ucale
of set allv
Atlantic Haliulls ¿nailti. those 'freedoms' United States and British im-
Hiroshima
But the habitants Hiroshima and WCIC obliterated,
Led by also LORUS ILS began to die. recorded fatality nuclear Daghalian who 22 August
cond General Wa.
of the SOLI Manhattan Project,
of the done.
September Groves
site. generously get out of the
Grove's
spent Craleı
X-rays.
Since nuclear hydrogen atoll. The blast was equivalen! million
the hit not onli
boat Fukuryu Patterson described the erent in his book Nuclear Power.
Symptoms
'Br erening imo of the cren were vomiting. and overcome by dizziness. 3 March others vere suffering vith aching eyes and it-e. Debris Silida!
skins..The fishing hoat turned and made for its home port of Yaizu. It arrived a fortnight lalel.
Win all hands suflering trom raclanon
and the boal still conannaca with radioac. tivity: Six months later some of the crew were stil in hospital. On 23 September 1954 the radio operator, Aiticki Kuboyana, died'
In the United States between 1951 and 1958 the
military set atomic explosions above ground in Nevada. The radioactive debris fell on Utah, Arizona and Nevada. Children born in southern Utah during those seven days died from leukemia iwo and a halt
frequently tilics than the average.
Testing
In December 1953, with eight years of nuclear
already place, US president lakeil ISCHIOWCI annuliccu a new phase of the atomic age. He called for 'atoms for peace' concerted drive public - opinion that nuclear power was sate.
In reality from the very beginning the nuclear power programme was integrally connected to pro-
alonlu weapons.
The first atomic power station WORO Calder Hall in Britain had its direct role producBritish nudlear ing for Ine
nuciear weapons programme. The British 'Magnox' Teacor working loday, which closely resemble that Chernobyl in their basic
HOW
principle, were designed to help provide nuclear material for British bombs.
The claim continually made throughout the last thirty years, and of course still repeated loday, is that
power is sate. But Bucical the problem is that there is
no level of nuclear radiaton wnicn docs nol produce increases in cancer and other heaith risks Every single claim that "sate' levels of radioactiviiy has been achieved has therefore been followed by further deaths.
A typical example was the case of excavated debrs ou analıliling known as lailings. Uranjum mining bęgap in
the United States in the late 1930s, as the military
nuclear Ducatictl.
safe
one 300,000
the over 700 Grand Col-
Junction have
whole. day,
nouncements OT "safety"
the power programme.
acsalic asser-
were thinkable!
partial Britain large
state of Washington
The deadly dust
MANY
MORE
ACIDENTS
centre of the US atomic power and weapons development industry in April 1973 100,000 litres of radioactive water leaked into the carth.
In the United States in 1975 a fire started in the Brown's, Alabama nuclear plant. It raged through the reactor's wiring system ihreatening to destroy all control over safety devices.
Soviet nuclear power, Chernobyl. betore was no safer than that in Britain the United States. In the southern Urals in either 1957 or 1958, the date is secret, a catastrophie nuclear accident occurred. Radioactive contimination was spread over an area of 1000 square kilometres:'
PennDOWCI sylvania
nuclear before Chernobly. The plant
radiation, worth
ively weak the
ed over
of people die as
ades
produced by the nuclear
- ала
this.
United States Energy least had
followed when the AEC attempted to persuade Tamplin 10 suppress his findings. He refused. Tamplin resigned and later wroie that the , nuclear electricity industry had been developing under a sel of totally false illusions of satet! and economy. Not only was there a total lack of appreciation of the hazards of radiation for man, but there was a total absence of candour concerning the hazard of serious accidents:
'Lack of candour' was actually the least of the melods used by sup porters of atomic power. Far more drastic methods were resorted 1o by the atomic power industry lo suppress the real record. The most notorious incident was the murder of Karen Silkwood on 13 November 1974, to prevent her passing documents on the safety record of the Kerr-McGee nuclear plant
Cimarron, Oklahoma, to the New York Times. In 1978 company officials admitted conspiring with the police to remove the records from Silkwood's crashed car.
Getting out the truth on nuclear power is one of the most urgent tasks for the left: This book and pamphiet were written betore Chernobyl. But they will let you understand what it is about.
We all live on Three Mile Island: the case against nuclear power, Greg
,Pathfinder Press AoRtusOD £3.95; What Working people should know aboul the dangers of nuclear power. Fred Halstead, Patntinder Press, 80p plus 18p p&p Both from: Other Books. P KOY SH LOndORNI 2XP:
Political
victimisations
EXCLUSION
are fairly
cluded, or they
to their class.
It revealed that
our fundamental political rights. How
did BT
outlawed?
undisclosed information sickness, or unsatisfactory wage a national campaign.
Correctly, the
.tintiisation for their political beliets. 1•) L S104
FROM jobs and outright dismissal for union or political views or ac-
commonplace events in British industry. Most personnel managers are familiar with the different ways of vetting their employees backgrounds for any signs of militancy or 'unhealthy' independence. Many employers maintain lists of persons to be ex-
can approach a range of organisations who compile them as a service
Socialists and union activists regard the sack as an occupational hazard. But unlike most industrial hazards it has the fewest laws against it, and victimisation is never the reason cited for dismissal Small wonder therefore that few cases ever make the headlines or become big battles. The burden of
But when two women were sacked recently at une cal rotoau oncena me unon ses. ped in with a campaign backed by evidence of victimisation. Both women had been union representatives in their previous jobs, and they both work. ed for the same employer British Telecom. BT had already been exposed for its political vetting of employees by the Observer newspaper in October
In the course of the union's campaign the Daily Mail was forced to admit that a 'secret memo from
LWU. stewares, had fomented industrial disruption'. The Mail, which has led the attack on the women and
1/1107 branch which is defending them, has tried to portray such collusion between
Stripped of all its rhetoric, the target of their hostilifv is anvone who presents an alternatıve
because they cannot openly call upon all workers to renounce their right to hold views dif ferent from the bosses they have to create an offence and frame-up an enemy. In this instance it happens to be Socialist Action, but it could just as easily be the
Their campaign of outright lies and assertions is designed to prevent workers from fighting back for fear of being permanently victimised. It also aims to cut off any support from any potential
So what is the offence? The women are charged with being disripters, wreckers and 'parachutists' into industry. Their motives are questioned and held up for condemnation. Yet there is not a single piece of evidence given for any of the charges.
BT bosses have divulged information which has no relevance to whether the women can do the job they applied for. And despite both women having excellent work and sick records, and having proved temselves capable of the work they dismissed. They have been sacked for holding socialist ideas which are perfectly legal to hold, and for activities which again are quite legal and legitimate — namely, to represent their co-workers in a union. The activities of BT managers and the collusion of Ford bosses is a clear breach of civil and political rights. Both sets of employers are claiming the right to vet pople's ideas, and to deny them employment on that basis alone. In short, they hold that proven socialists and union activists
The issues in these cases are of safeguarding
obtain the information on the women? How much
provide to Ford? „ PUSSe Should BT be alloed to vet all its employees, and deny them access to their political records? Is it ac ceptable that companies can compile lists of left-wingers and union militants? Should organisations who provide these lists to companies be
British management of course are not prepared to admit that these are their real aims in the exclusion lists they compile, or the victimisations they conduct. Their chosen weapon is bad timekeeping
on application forms. probation. And to cover their true purposes they bring in the tame jurnalist to create a red-scare or a witch-hunt.
Individual cases of victimisation are difficult 10 fight. But these are not two isolated instances. They are part of a vast vetting operation conducted by BT. Its effects are, and will be, to permanently exclude from employment all BT employees who have been active trade unionists or whose political views are suspect in the opinion of their bosses The BT vetting operation is national in scope. The response by the labour movement must also be to
National Communications Union has already called upon the National Council for Civil Liberties, and the TUC to take up the fight. Out aims should be to expose the extent of vietimisation, to challenge its legality, and where the laws prove ineffective to frame new legislation which guarantees the right of workers to be active trade unionists free from exclusion lists and vic-
Page 11 scan of this page
Wapping: a deliberate
News
I MARCHED in with the marchers in the early evening of Saturday 3 May. There were two marches, both of them pertectly peaceful children. They converged outside the Wapping plant at about 9.30pm. I positioned myself right opposite the plant where I was able to see the massed ranks of mounted police. They were clearly riot police, with short-shields and long-shields.
Support the NUM
solidarity fund
AT its delegate meeting this coming weekend in Sheffield, the national Justice for Mineworkers campaign will be launching •a further drive for funds for victimised miners.
leaflet being prepared for circulation throughout the labour
with an appeal from President Arthur Scargill, calling minancial suppori lo NUM's national solidarity …ne o Descoocuub.
'One of the biggest commitments of the Justice Campaign, said Anne Suddick of Durham Women Against Pit
build financial support for the solidarity fund. News that the fund In a THE AGREEMENT reached in the Burnham committee on 9 May represents a major blow to the effort of teachers to win back the 34 per cent lost over the last 10 years. Although it is portrayed as an interim settlement, the Labour-dominated employers, like the Tory government, are insisting that any further increase this year will only be granted in return for teachers accepting far worsened conditions of employment.
•Hailed by the broad alliance leadership of the
National Union of Teachers as a victory, the
settlement plays right inte
hands the employers. Whilst many teachers wil welcome the money - £519 or 5.5 per cent - the sacrifices they are being asked to make in relurn are totally unaccep• table.
By Bernard Regan, NUT Executive (personal capacity)
Under the terms of the agreement the NUT
leadershin gave a commit-
ment to restore 'peace and
in the schools. In
particular this will hit the
'no-cover' action.
Most secondary school
teachers have been refus-
ing to cover any teacher
absences in schools, a tac-
tic which has exposed the
massive understaffing in
education. As a result hun
dreds of thousands of
pupils have been
lome. In primary school
teachers have
ing for the first day of
On Monday 12 May
the NUT executive agreed
police attack
WIll families and altogether healthy state means that we will be making every effort, inside the union and out, LO increase the support for our victimised colleagues'.
• Further information about victimisied NUM memoers and what you
An urgent appeal from the National Union of Mineworkers to miners support groups throughout the UK:
victimised by the ule because they
by the many gavell
since the end of the 1984/85 strike.
Teachers fight betrayed
that teachers should cover after the first day of
This will create a doseuce. split between primary and secondary school teachers, and leave many teachers to face disciplinary action by local authority employers.
After 15 months of nocover action the overwhelming majority of teachers are determined not to return to cover. Ter-
will receive because ey
will receive because their move, the executive cancelled a briefing conference planned for this
ARE
Dan Jones, Tower Hamlets Trades Council
lan Mikardo MP, Bow & Poplar
DATE: Wed., 2,1st MAY 1986 :VENUE
At a certain point there
was signal for the mounted police to move out. They came out of the plant into the crowd which was gathered there. From then on, there were continual forays by the mounted police, shortcan do to heop, contact:
St James Vicar Lane, Sheffield, SI (phone: 700388. More information on the Justice campaign, contact: Durham Mechanics Offices, 26 The Avenue, Durham DHI There are 502 NUM members who are still locked
National Coal Board fought to save their pits, jobs and communities. They still need the magnificent help
miners' support group. throughout the United Kingdom both during and
Saturday and has refused to hold a special salaries conterence to discuss ine settlement.
The deal is a betrayal of teachers. Behind the Neil Kinnock and Scenes Giles Radice, Labour spokesperson, were instrumental in getting the deal agreed. Every trade unionist needs to look at what is happening to teachers to see exactly what kind of wages policies a future Labour government is likely to introduce.
The fight is by means ovell however.
Socialist Teachers Alliance steps will organise a fightback conference that will aim to defend the no-cover action and prenare the ground for renewing the wages fight LaNC place from September.
YOUR WAGES
BEING CUT?
PUBLIC MEETING ON THE
GOVT'S WAGES BILL
John Prescott MP and Clare Short MP, Shadow:
Kamal rushi tangloyment warker, Federation of
Brady Centre, 192-6 Hanbury St. London E1 TIME: 7.30 p.m.
shield and long-shiuld police.
When we tried to begin the public meeting, the riot police came out and completely surrounded the alca. thus in a way imprisoning some thousands of people who gathered around the platform.
The police rushed out with their truncheons and chased people along the SLICCL
At about this stage, ir the early part of the even. ing, one of the marchers who had come all the way down from Glasgow had a heart attack, and he had to make an appeal over. the loud speaker to allow an ambulance to come to pick him up. The police however continued to oc cupy that road and would not allow the ambulance in for quite a substantial period.
COMMIE PICKET
PIGS
I ROTTEN OTHE
YOU DIRY marked an important step forward for the union.
Delegates overturned
hed as last years lat h
resolution in see port be Party
support sacked and the 198s Tue congers. miners.
ASTMS had voted NUM favour of the resolution. At the Labour
Party Conic cice •howeve Kinnock had applied pressure to the union and it had reversed its decision. The 1986 conference overruled NEC, supported the miners
and affiliated to the Justice for Mineworkers campaign.
On Libya the conference passed
esolution condemning th
JS attack and callir for the withdrawal of all US bases from Britain. The resolution stated: 'This annual conference utterly abhors the act perpetrated by the US government against Libyan people.
The meeting itself was almost drowned out, although trom the vantage • of the platform it was possible to see the ponce tactics, as they poured around the
SUCCES prisoning those who were
platform neares SURe and indeed coming right up to willi a lew the platform so that at one stage police would mount the plattorm and clear those who were there speak.
was reported, that the police had broken the lights of some of the television camera units. Certainly an ITN camera unit got into the bus and was able
take close photograph of one of the most badly-wounded men with blood pouring out of his head and down his neck.
YOURS 100. - PARASITE! SCUMBAG!
DISOGAT
PICKE FEARLESS CROSS EDITOR
Left successes at ASTMS conference
THE ASTMS conference, meeting in Bournemouth this week took a series of key policy decision which
This conference furthermore condemns the prime permitting the use of bases in Britain by the US air force in order to take part in this act of aggression.
'This conference calls on the next Labour government end the agreement which allows foreign armed forces to be baseen used
On Ireland the conference voted to open a discussion in the union
passed included, 'this annual
notes the Come Cice Labour Party's
ment to the reunification of Ireland,' encouraged,
'divisions and branches to obtain information about the situation in Ireland, decided to oTonole oocH discussion on Irish issues throughout the association and in the union journals,
'organise day and
Socialist Action 16 May 1986
Tony Benn eyewitness account
_There was a BBC2 interview well after midnight with myself and Bob
SOGAT ullespe Tron which I know is available IRN had a woman reporter who did at least three interviews with me
In addition there were
Press Association reporters and Sunday Mirror Te Doriel So know that that intormanon was galncica ana Il Is against that that we can CICCK
appearat we witnessed was
an absolutely systematic and, judgement, wholly unjustified police attack upon 10,000 people who had come for meeting outside the plant over the May Day weekend. This must have been planned by the police deliberately, no doubt the instructions • OT the
FEARLESS
EDITOR weekend schools at national and divisional
This resolution was
against the opposition the NEC and the No 10, Ireland, division which sought to insert an amendment which stated that 'while recognising that this is hardly a priority issue fo
ASTMS members there is no reason why the issue of Ireland should not
and called be discussed for this discussion specifically to include the views of No 10 division.
No 10 division always MPs,
11 Home Secretary, so that anybody who opposes this government and its policy will! face an attempt to blacken them, and then en. title the police to attack them. hope whole labour movement rallies round Journalst and printer throughout the should seriously consider now taking im-
of the Warpinsprint
Nappin print vorkers. The TUC and th Labour Party at national level parliament should make this a central issue. If we do not stop this now there absolutely limit which the police will not go to crush dissent in Bri tain against the policies of the government that create unemployment and deprive us of the services we used
IN ONLY SLAG!
DOING MY JOB!
NG
Scüm PAGI
UR SCAB FOC
votes under the pressure of
Brose in the norm o
the north Ireland.
An extremely success. ful fringe meeting was helc on Ireland with Bernadette MICAlISKeY and Maire O'Shea who is an ASTMS member The meeting was attended by
conference voted to end the election of the union's uniT's representative
by postal ballot. From next year the union's represen Will be elected a conference.
Stop the expulsions Reinstate Khan and Scally Wednesday 21 May, 7.30pm
Digbeth Civic Hall Speakers include Diane Abbott and Ken Livingstone Meeting supported by: Campaign Group of Labour Black Section, LCI, Birmingham Trade Council, Birmingham and West Midlands LCC Birmingham Labour Briefing.
Page 12 scan of this page
Printers reject court deal
Fantastic responsein
aid of weekly paper
THERE has been an immediate response to our emergency appeal last week to defend the weekly Socialist Action. Because our financial position dictated missing some issues of the paper, it was announced last week that we would not be publishing the issue on 30 May. This was the week of the National Communications Union national conference in the first week of June. Socialist Action readers plan to be very active there, So they have decided to raise a fund to ensure publication that week.
Their aim is to raise a minimum of £400 by a series of measures:
London readers contributing the major
By Brian Grogan
of their London weighting award due for payment this month
By readers wille dIC delegates to the NCU conference or to the Labour women's conference forgoing ment and donating their expenses • By all Socialist Action supporters who work for British Telecoms to be asked to make a £5 or £10
the sort of response we hoped would be forthcoming. This is the way to save the other threatened issues. If this response is kept up need not miss single issue.
In addition, readers in North London have sent in £200 and those in North
£30. And another £60 has been
Individual contributions
Contributions from areas
Supporters in the NUR, AUEW,NCU
Public meeting
Total
SUBSCRIBE
SOCiAlist
ACTION
WAPPING
IN DANGER
received from various other donations.
This brings the current total to £13,062 counting towards our £15,000 target Whit. We also readers Southall organised a very successful jumble sale. More about this next week. What are you doing?
Here is the area by area breakdown:
A bereceu £50 Birmingham £100 Bristol £10 Cardiff/Cynon £275 noventy covenly £40 Glasgow £125 Huddersfield £70 • Leeds LCCUS £91 Leicester Liverpool Manchester £333 Newport £176 £205 S Yorks £683 Swindon Swansea E London £1808 Nlondon NW London £539 SE London £325 SW London £149 OW London £191
£6126 £6134 £527 £75 £13,062
Free Book Offer!
Take out a years inland subscription and we
will send you free one of these books
Justit: Ine Miners suuke
by the Campaign Group of Labour NEr:
On Afto American History b falcolm )
OR The Struggle is on Mandela Nelson Man
THE WAPPING dispute over the fight to re-instate the 5,500 printers sacked by Rupert Murdoch's News International is at a very dangerous turning point. The tactics employed by the national leadership of the print union SOGAT which has relied exclusively on a consumer boycott of the News International titles, have clearly failed. reorienting their tactics for a real fight, the leadership is preparing to sell out.
now to meet Rupert Murdoch to agree some face-
recognition.
But the striking printers are
moves lying down.
COGAT's London district council registered its
'disgust and contemp?' at the purging of the unions contempt of court.
The London clerical
tion of no confidence in
Matonal And, best news of all, there is to be a mass meeting ot
Central Hall, Westminster, to boost the Wapping picket and the involvement of the ranks in Wapping and to extend THE purging of the contempt is a blow to the 16 weeks of bitter struggle we ve been through.
The Brenda Dean leadership Wolle to
think, though, that this action would kill us off. The reverse has happened.
it has made the Lon-
don leadership and the
sacked
Dalleis resolved to win the dispute
and secure the rights of all
trade unionists. We Will
not be a plaything in the
hands of the leadership.
Dean argued the need
lo purge te contempi sup-
posedly to retrieve union
funds and theretore be in a
stronger position to pro-
the dispute. his
SCCULC
was rubbish.
The Coscule of the
union is its membership
and not finances especially
the salaries of the officials.
AS the showed,
money and promises can
always be secured from
other unions and the rest
of the labour movement.
Al une concor oran-
ches have rejected the
NEC SLCOS towards the • court. Dean was left in no
doubt about the member-
Unfortunately instead of
The purging of the unions contempt of court is the first step. They are
saving formula which capitulates on reinstatement of the sacked printers and forgoes direct union
their picketing to •the wholesalers depots.
By Brian Grogan
The main effect of the purging of the contempt is to lift the boycott of News International titles by wholesalers which had been particularly effective in London. However, the central London branch which covers SOGAT's members London Wholesalers. pledged that it will continue the boycott action in detiance of the court and the leacersnp.
Sressed ite Feche and
dressed FOC's and deputy FOC's who were on the lobby of the NEC
Danny Sergeant, presi-
By Jim Mason SOGAT, Deputy FOC Sun Clerical
dent of SOGAT, created uproar when he insisted that the decision was
for discussion The NEC Was to be quite prepared to wheeland-deal above our heads.
We are now determined in London to take control of the dispute. This is
it's been Ine brace wuelc shown the real trade unionists are. Carrying a SOGAT card doesn't make you a trade unionist. You need also to fight for
of the union. alllls
We now intend to take
message directly Outl them. If they don't listen
they will have to face the same appeals and demonstrations as we have regularly seen at Wapping
Dean's sell out moves have spurred to get
organised The especially 'are coming to tbe fore. We
Meanwhile. moves are underfoot to end • mass
.of the Wapping plant. This remarkable ac-
mobilised ton ha! several thousands
for •alllud weeks. Whilst it has so far
stop transport union-staffed TNT lorries from convoving the papers out of the plant, it continues to offer a pontica focus for mass protest.
weeks, the picketing has been taken over by the rank and file leadership and is becom-
effective. 1112 now a real question that Murdoch's lorries could be stopped:
This is why the police rioted on 3 May. The aim was to intimidate the thousands of Sup DUlCIS that had been mobilised that day and to lay the basis for court action to limit the size of the Hishincour Already, High Judge in releasing SOGAT's fund after the purge of contempt suggested that timidation the
outsiuc want a real union to inherit. rank and group has been established which will help force more militant action from the union. And there is to be a mass meeting of London strikers on 19 May.
We will not be inTinoaled by police violence. But they are intent on provocallol
1 was witness to the police letting off the two smoke cannisters which
for the was ine police riots on 3 May. The Special Patrol Group wa: so out of control that it was not only attacking the demonstrators. not only preventing the ambulances from getting jured, but attacking other •policemen presumably order to the police casualty figures. 1 hey even went so far as to attack the ITN cameramen and lights. So what was
the TV was the seen on police film.
if this had happened in Poland this would be front
So much for page news our 'free press'
I hope that the further unprovoked police attack . on our peacelul picket last weekend will convince.
Wapping plant could represent a breach of the court order.
In the miners' strike,
instructed the the courts South Wales area to limit its pickets of the pits to six on the grounds 'that a dai ly congregation of 50 to 70
hurling abuse unreasonable harassment of working miners
The SOGAT leader ship's reaction has been to Move lu colaboralt Will the police in controlling the picket. Despite this, the police launched yet another vicious and unprovoked attack on demonstrators last Saturday.
Now is not the time to retreal. now is ine hme lo take the gloves off and end ine pnonty wal
first step in this is the planned mass meeting which can bring the striking printers more fully into the dispute as we saw in the miners strike. This is the best way reach oul lo other members of the Dean appeasement only: encourages Inen aggressor. The much vaunted 'agreement' between Dean the untipolice
wanted 1o let the convoy out. Inen. thev tore un the agreement and sent out unel and riot shields.
Our aim is to step up the action. We will be out
especially in Lon don. bran ches are the backbone of
Then, the membership needs to be organised fan out into the rest of the labour movement trans forming the paper support that exists into action. renewed appeal needs to go lo the miners and women against pit closures.
• Tahure or tne Ha tional leadership to make any appeai liccu. to be remedied by the Lon-
distric contintice Other key allies, especially the as vet unapproacnec black community needs to be mobilised.
Finally, the London leadership would go a long way stymie Brenda Dean's sell-out plans if it made clear that it would
the dispute Contauc through its own resources even if the national union tried to throw in the towel But this means turning to the ranks.
• Eyewitness report Wapping, Tony Benn, pll.
S al all ille wholesalers. We went for the EETPU scabs
lobbying their conWe are pushing terence for the transport union TNT drivers to be disciplined.
We can win. We just need the power and energ of the ranks to be unleash
before Dean can do her dirty business. But we will do our bit.
← Socialist Action No. 139, 2 May 1986Socialist Action No. 141, 23 May 1986 →