OUR STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALIST POLICIES GOES ON

THE decision of the Labour Party national executive to reorganize the Streatham and Norwood Labour Parties is a blow against every member of the Labour movement who wants to fight for socialist policies in the Labour Party.

But the decision of the Norwood general management committee to reject the reorganization of the local party is no less powerful a blow against the Right, and a foretaste of the new and formidable Left-wing movement that can emerge in the Labour Party.

The NEC is trying to destroy two active local Labour Parties because they have struggled consistently for socialist policies.

It has selected the Socialist Labour League as its principal target because the League has been foremost in the fight against the Right-wing policies that are shackling the Labour Party.

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NEC members and factions There are two Labour Parties. There is the Labour Party of the ward members and rank-and-file trade unionists who want to organize for sociajsm. And there is the Labour Party of Gaitskell and Bevan, who want to preserve capitalism.

Everyone knows that members of the NEC, among whom are middle-class careerists and reactionary trade union leaders, belong to various factions. Everyone knows that NEC members write for capitalist-owned newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph and the News of the World.

The Labour leaders’ real objection to the Socialist Labour League and The Newsletter is not that the League is a separate organization, but that it does its best to organize the fight for socialism within the party and challenge the grip of the Right.

The Right wing dare not allow the Left to become as well organized as the Right, and will use any methods to retain its grip.

As the problems facing the working class become more acute, so does the working class seek ways of fighting, within the Labour Party, for the socialist policies that alone can solve the workers’ problems.

Where they went wrong This has happened in the past, too. But always in the past the Right has been able to defeat the Left, in one of two ways:

(1) By forcing the Left to go outside the party and set up independent parties.

Both the Communist Party and the Independent Labour Party were correct to fight for their right to have policies and journals and organizations in the Labour Party that enabled the Left to challenge the Right.

Both were wrong when they turned their backs on the Labour Party and left the field clear for the Right. This sectarian policy helped the Right wing.

(2) By buying off the leaders of the Left with positions at the top in return for their abandonment of socialist policies.

The Socialist Labour League is determined to avoid both these traps. We have not the slightest intention of abandoning our right to be in the Labour Party. Our policy has more in common with the views and aspirations of the ordinary Labour Party member than Gaitskell’s policy has.

Labour Party’s basic aims Thus the Socialist Labour League stands for the extension of nationalization. This demand is in line with the basic aims of the Labour Party. . Morgan Phillips’s waverings in face of the employers’ attacks on the feeble proposals contained in “The Future Labour Offers YOU’ are not in line with the basic aims of the party.

The Socialist Labour League is not a breakaway organization. We want to see militant workers joining the Labour Party to carry on the struggle there for policies that will help the workers defeat the employers and their government.

The situation is favourable for a resolute struggle by the Left. The Right-wing leaders cannot consolidate their position. by putting forward a large-scale programme of reforms. .

The workers are now facing new problems—unemployment, wage cuts, the H-bomb—which the Right-wing leaders have no policies for solving.

Since “The Future Labour Offers YOU’ was published the Labour Party has lost 216 seats in the local elections.

Radical change in policy Unless there is a radical change in policy, the danger exists that the Tories will go back into power at the next election.

We are absolutely opposed to the working class repeating the experience of the hungry thirties. To prevent this the Socialist Labour League intends to continue and intensify its campaign for a socialist alternative.

There are people who say we should keep our mouths shut about these embarrassing questions until after the election. We are not going to take this advice.

Labour’s election programme will solve nothing. It is our duty to say so, and to fight for a programme in the workers’ interests, even if some of us are expelled for speaking out. .

NN A genuine Left movement can be built only on: principles, and in the struggle for principles. boos What do the present ‘Lefts’ on the NEC know about principles? They have no fundamental disagreement with the Right. They unite with the Right to proscribe the Socialist Labour League, and to destroy two local Labour Parties.

Our appeal to Left Bevan says he wants to defend nationalization. But he unites with Gaitskell to throw out of the party members of an organization which has the extension of nationalization as oneof its main aims.

We appeal to the whole of the Left to fight against this — ae alliance of Right-wing careerists and pseudo-Lefts at the top of the Labour Party.

We appeal to the Left to fight against the reorganization of local parties, and for their maintenance as Left-wing parties campaigning for socialist policies.

In some areas this will mean a fight against rump organizations set up by the Right. This is a fight against leaders who have no scruples about splitting the movement.

To give way to these leaders for the sake of ‘unity’ means abandoning the party to the Right wing.

Unlike other Left-wing movements in the Labour Party, the Left we now must build will have a Marxist leadership.

It is being born, not out of the defeat of the working class, but at a time of rising working-class militancy, when there is a real basis for challenging the Right wing’s domination.

Stay in and fight Unlike the Communist Party, the Socialist Labour League does not seek to pull the Left out of the Labour Party into a small sectarian organization. We answer the reformists’ attacks by remaining inside the party and carrying forward the fight against the reformists and for a socialist programme.

The Socialist Labour League is able to unite with the Left in the Labour Party because it has no separate interests from the Left. Around our programme can be forged the widest possible unity.

The first serious resistance to Right-wing policy is being waged. Every trade unionist and Labour Party member who joins the Socialist Labour League can. make an immense contribution in his local Labour Party towards the adoption of a fighting socialist policy.

YeS The literature secretary of the branch, Bro. Jock Leishman, sits on the Birmingham executive of the Communist Party. The branch members asked him to raise this question on the Communist Party executive and get the bookshop to sell The At the next branch meeting there was a further discussion on bans and proscriptions, and the members asked Bro. Leishman what he had done. He said:

‘I raised it on the committee and got the reply I expected. They say The Newsletter is a paper that continually runs down the Communist Party and denigrates its leaders; therefore they have no intention of putting it for sale in the bookshop.’

Arch-imperialist’s book displayed One member pointed out that the Communist Party Press attacked The Newsletter, and asked:

‘How do you explain that in the bookshop they put on display Churchill's war memoirs, a book by an archimperialist, but won't display another working-class paper?’

The members told Bro. Leishman that in effect the Communist Party leaders had banned The Newsletter as well as the Labour leaders banning it.

A motion was put to the meeting, to be sent to Birmingham Communist Party. deploring their ban on The Newsletter ‘as an attack on minorities and the freedom of the Press’ and calling on them to lift the ban immediately.

The motion was carried with one abstention, that of Bro. Leishman, who told the meeting: ‘Key Books is a business. It is not run by the Communist Party. And in any case we haven’t banned The Newsletter.