"Left' after Blackpool

cards into boxes, blithely giving big majorities to policies which ensured that this conference was certainly NOT the same in its political meaning as those held in past years.

By the Thursday and Friday, a growing number of delegates were freely dropping phrases like hypocritical', 'hopeless', 'mealy-mouthed'.

Unprepared

Some, who had remained sober at the beginning of the week got very deliberately drunk in reaction against the votes on immigration and Vietnam.

All of this reflected the complete unpreparedness of the opposition to Wilson and Brown at the conference, and the bankruptcy of the old left' policies.

Many "left-wing' idealists came away with doubts even about staying in the Labour Party.

Others depressed themselves with the thought of the hopelessness of removing the 'block vote' of the big unions, which had gone formidably to the right on all issues.

If the issues are seen clearly in the light of a Marxist analysis, instead of through a mist of gloomy impressions or ideals, then it will, in fact, be possible to see a way forward.

First of all, the delegates from Constituency Labour Parties did not vote overwhelmingly to the left. When the platform won support for its racialist measures to restrict immigration, they were opposed by the Transport and General Workers' Union, and a number of small unions, so that even on this issue, one-third of the constituency votes were cast for the White Paper, i.e., they can be said to be to the right of the Liberal Party!

There is not the slightest doubt that the failure of the constituency parties to oppose and This is one of the great lessons that will have to be learned in Britain: the conservative reformism and hostility to Marxism of the Labour Party answers the needs of rightward-moving Party members; the only way to defeat this is to fight for Marxism, for revolutionary politics.

Any idea of 'broad left-wing resistance movements' independent of this fight for Marxism will end up in the marsh, and the right will emerge strengthened. Right dominated This is why the right wing, Wilson, Brown, Callaghan, Gunter and Stewart, were able to dominate the conference so completely. They had taken on to the platform with them, as voluntary hostages, all the darlings of the traditional 'left'.

The situation in which Robert Mellish made his remarks in support of the White Paper summed up this relationship. While the 'Tribune'-ites and leftwingers' in the Constituency delegations were booing themselves hoarse as he came out with his speech 'Go down to capitalist policies, which lay behind the atmosphere at Blackpool, where so many 'left' delegates expressed an admiring despair at the extent to which the right wing controlled and stage-managed the conference.

The Standing Orders' Committee and the platform easily managed the delegates whom they wanted to speak.

Those delegates were wrong who interpreted this as a sign of the great strength of the right. What happened was this: last year, Wilson and company took oflice at a time of great economic crisis; it was in the interests of world capitalism to settle these difficulties because a collapse of the pound threatened them internationally.

'Lefts' recruited But the assistance was given on the understanding that anti-working-class policies would be carried out. The Tories were happy to leave the job to a Labour government.

To make his task easier, Wilson recruited a number of 'left-wingers' to his Cabinet.

Meanwhile, the 'left' ', including the Communist Party, and even some who call themselves Marxists and Trotskyists of the milder sort, assured us that the government had its good sides, was even a 'left' government, and must be conditionally supported.

Dilemma

This 'loyalty to Labour' has now placed them all on the horns of a terrible dilemma. Michael Foot and other speakers at the "Tribune' meeting at Blackpool expressed this:

above all, they said, the Labour government must not be endangered; and nothing to endanger government.

No opposition He, too, is safe if he goes only this far, because the Tories will not oppose Wilson on this either.

John Mendelson, who moved the opposition motion on Vietnam, refused to commit himself on his vote in the Commons, but on the Sunday before conference, he did say, according to "The Times', that 'if he thought the government were running counter to basic George Brown: McLeod's description of his Plan is 'wide of the mark'.

and essential principles, there might be nothing for it but to see that they continued no longer in office'.

The 41 MPs who have declared their opposition to the Immigration White Paper, all those who oppose the U.S. war in Vietnam, all those who insist on steel nationalization, and all those who movement will be built, and its success will eventually be assured by the building of an alternative leadership, but these MPs can act in such a way as to give a powerful impetus to the movement.

If they make it unequivocally plain that they will refuse support to the government unless it abandons capitalist policies, they will give great strength to the opposition in the trade unions.

This will mean the removal of the Wilson-Brown leadership.

All the pleas of loyalty have become a formula for avoiding this necessity. The movement must insist that those who claim to be left-wingers take their stand: with Wilson and his capitalist policies, or against him. All those who refuse to decide are conniving at another 1931.

Confidence

After the conference, Desmond Donnelly hailed it as a very good conference. From his point of view, he is right, and can claim that the platform Is Britain Going? preferring the explanation that Wilson only did what could be expected of him in any case.

Quite so, Labour didn't need to be bought in 1964.

As the same paper, reliable guide to ruling class opinion, had commented on the eve of the conference, the Labour leadership has arrived at the end of its time as a supposedly 'socialist' party.

'Doctrinal' echoes Echoes of this 'doctrine' would appear at the conference, and we would have to see if Alice Bacon and her septuagenarian friend—part of the right wing Cousins: Name omitted by Mellish in Immigration debate.

more freely celebrated • at a Lord Mayor's banquet in the City of London than at a Labour conference. Solidarity with the international banking community is not part of the socialist scheme of things'.

Wide of mark As for George Brown's 'plan', they say:

'Mr. McLeod's description of the plan as a "socialist manifesto" could not have been more wide of the mark.' This clarity of the issues, and the inevitability of big class struggles in industry, which will receive a political character from the very beginning because of the intended government legislation, open the door to the building of a real socialist alternative leadership around the Young Socialists and the Socialist Labour 'It will be built in the context of a growing mass movement against the Labour government and its policies. This is the challenge to the 'left' in the Labour Party and the trade unions.

Their old loyalties and alternatives will not do; they will now be testea in • une nre class se teste, industrial and clas Industra political. which dominated the conference.