VFS Is Lagging behind the Working Class

RESUMABLY the final aim of the Victory for ‘group is Immediately, however, they want to. initiate a discussion in the Labour: movement that will put some teeth into the next election campaign instead of gearing everything to the largely imaginery ‘floating vote’ which castrated the decisions of the Brighton conference.

Last week’s statement of aims stresses the ‘tapid extension of the social ownership’ of the banks, land and factories. No nonsense about share-buying.

But having said this, the statement proceeds piecemeal, instead of from the recognition that the workers’ enemy is the capitalist system, defended to the last by the capitalist class. , A a _ ‘CLEAN’ SFOCKBROKING? From this viewpoint it is alittle comical to talk. about ‘eliminating the gambling functions of the City’. What does this mean? That the City will retain some ‘positive functions’? ‘Clean’ stockbroking, like the clean bomb?

Similarly, it is a little in the air to talk about effective control to make the private sector of the economy work in the national. interest, without raising the question of who. will direct this. power.

The section on the nationalized industries begins to approach this problem. of workers’ control—‘an effective system of workers’ and consumers’ participation in management’—yet its. first demand is for i accountability to Parliament’ of the nationalized industries.

This won’t do any more. We are entering a period . . in which questions of socialist principle are raised by the daily experience of thé workers.

Thus the miners are under attack, not from a section of the employers, but from the system which uses coal and the railways as cheap service industries, then tells the railwaymen they are well paid and turns down. ‘flat the miners?claim::

Cie These sections will need a programme of. struggle Cunvin’s Column TAKE BESSIE AT HER WORD T RANSPORT: HOUSE is.reported to be most indignant bebecause a recent Tory leaflet says the Labour Party wants to see old age pensioners evicted under the Rent Act so that it can use. these incidents for propaganda purposes.

There is one sure way in which the Labour Party can give the lie to. the Tories.

Let the party officially issue the same advice to all who are threatened with eviction in October. that Bessie Braddock gave to her constituents: ‘Sit tight! Refuse to move until acceptable alternative accommodation is made available.’

This advice means that every local Labour Party, together , with the trade unions and the Co-operative organizations in the area, should organize action squads that will help the old people and others to resist eviction. against the capitalist class as a whole, against the capitalist system.

VFS wili win wide support only if it is linked to the industrial fight. It must get away from the domination of the parliamentarians and the bureaucrats who failed to defeat the steel bosses in 1950 and repudiated socialism at Brighton.

Britain’s. problems are not to be solved within these shores alone, and the document recognizes this. However, even without. considering the complete omission of any reference to the colonial struggle, it- must be said that again the class emphasis is lacking.

The first demand, for unilateral suspension of H-bomb tests and manufacture, will: bring wide support. But it must be shown in its connexion with the fight for socialism itself.’

“Jt is not.enough to call on the next Labour Government to take this step. We must press for the Labour Party to initiate a great. campaign here and to encourage links with the movement in, other countries.

Only this entry of the international working class will have. decisive effects for peace.

Tv UNIFIED STRATEGY NEEDED. The growing threat of mass unemployment, the deliberate attacks of the bosses on the workers’ organizations and standards, require-a unified strategy of struggle, and in this context the anti-bomb~ slogan. will be in no. danger of becoming a pacifist delusion:

It will raise questions like the nationalization of the armaments industries, and the planning of. the nation’s production for prosperity rather than war.

In my opinion VFS in this statement lags behind the real movement: of class forces. Instead of more or less radical amendments to present Labour policy, let the discussion start from the urgent need to bridge the gap between the militant needs-of struggle in .the immediate future and the creaking machine of parlia- _ -mentarism and trade union bureaucracy. ° There -is a. clue to the soaring cost of living in the justpublished Army Appropriations Account.

Tucked away in three lines of this document is the ‘information that British imperialism’s Suez adventure cost £52,476,000—for a war which lasted only forty hours. That works. out at £1,000,000 an hour. The working class of this country and of Egypt are still paying.

F ULL marks to the special correspondent of the Manchester