Labour's 'left' SHASTRI DIES - what next?

A reply to Michael Fool (In "Tribune' of January 7, Michael Foot launches attack on Richard Gott, Radical Alliance candidate in the the file biratestion, undee title Left'. Next week he promises a sequel: 'How the left can win the argument'. The Newsletter begins the reply this week...)

TILSON'S failure to deally i socalst Don cies against the Tories brought the Labour government into office with only a tiny majority. His immediate subservience to big business as on old age pensions and the rapid rise in the cost of living brought the reverse of the Leyton by-election.

Before leaving for Lagos, he attacked the working class openly and Viciously in his speech on wages and restrictive practices'.

Wilson sold out so completely that he has provided the government required by British (and American) capitalism for their present needs of imperialist war and attacks on the workers at home.

Some people in the Labour Party are slowly and painfully drawing conclusions.

Richard Gott and his friends in the Radical Alliance are some of these: their main concern is the Vietnam war, which rightly incenses them.

Readers of The Newsletter know that we do ot conside ectoral intervention bv isolate groups the answer Wilson's betrayal.

But we do say that such opposition is pant of an inevitable revolt among middle-class as well as working-class ex-supporters of Wilson and the Labour Party.

ONLY CONCERN Michael Foot's only concern is to attack Richard Gott and his supporters, and to find ways of continuing to exist with the comfortable reputation of being the foremost spokesman of the "left' wing. This he calls 'working out the strategy of the Labour left'.

In fact, Foot has put himself out in front as the main defender of Wilson's government against any effective opposition.

That is the role of Foot and the "Tribune'-type left of this movement.

It is the working class—victorious in gaining 8 per cent increase in wages last year-which provides the only basis for this opposition.

The Young Socialists and the Socialist Labour League have based themselves on the struggles MP, by Cliff Slaughter of the working class, concentrating now on the anti-trade union legislation. Foot and his friends turn their faces resolutely away. They cannot see beyond the doors of Westminster.

Only a few younger and fresher recruits to the constituencies, together with trade unionists, who only now are forced to recognise the inseparable link of industrial and political issues, are raising their voices within the Labour Party, and many of them will rally around Young Socialist and Socialist Labour League policies.

Foot replies to a question from Gott's supporters which ran as follows:

'What "Tribune" has to explain is how, other than by electoral pressure, Mr. Wilson can be induced to reverse his policies: he has proved remarkably resistant to other pressures up to now.' Poot prefers to continue inside parliament, providing the lobby fodder to keep Wilson there, taking pro-American decisions on Vietnam and waiting for the case to 'grow stronger every month'.

He separates Vietnam from the whole policy of. Wilson. The government's attacks on the Saturday, January 15, 1966 K brutally clear to every ship- erokt very long it wıll D yard worker that what is happening at Fairfield's in Glasgow vitally affects them.

Because of the treachery of the right-wing union leaders, the way is now open for the abandonment of trade union rights apertaining to conditions of work, thus leading to a regime of vicious speed-up and exploitation.

All this should be elementary for those who claim to be Marxists.

However, this does not apply to the Communist Party.

In its weekly review 'Comment' (January 8, 1966), it supports, with certain reservations what is going on at Fairfield's.

The firm, it says, 'must be given a chance to re-organise. ... It is equally obvious that there must be a change in some practices' What 'practices' the article is careful not to say.

'Is it proposed,' the author naively asks, 'to change existing practices for higher earnings?' Well, well, of course, there

FAMINE

CONTINUES WHOEVER takes over Premiership of Indian from Bahadur Shastri, who died in Tashkent this week, will inherit the biggest problem facing the country ... famine.

And, like Shastri, and Nehru before him, the new 'leader' will be as incapable of solving the problem - especially if the economy maintains its frontier army facing to China, if not again to Kashmir.

Like Shastri, his successor will maintain the country's standing with its own ruling class, imperialism and the Soviet bureaucracy.

Only a socialist revolution can solve this country's economic problem and famine, which is forecast to hit a crisis spot in March along with industrial unrest. The Communist Party and will be a certain slight increase in earnings if the rate of exploitation is doubled or trebled.

Everyone who has followed the history of labour relations inside Ford knows this. Under a system of intense rationalization and speed-up the workers may get a little more, but they work twice as hard as they did previously for it.

As a consequence, their lives are shortened in order to provide more profit for the bosses.

In line with their turn towards right-wing Labour, the Communist Party leadership is prepared to urge its industrial supporters to accept the principle behind the re-organisation of Fairfield's.

Instead of warning and leading the working class in an all-out struggle against monopolisation and speed-up, the Party gives the all-clear to the right wing and the employers in the Clydeside, where so many industrial workers still support it.

This is an abdication of leadership under conditions where the workers of Fairfield's were forced • Pavitt told lobbyists: With a majority of two, voting against legislation is out of the question. He would wait until trade union MPs discussed the question before making up his mind. Besides he was in favour of the present prices and incomes policy.

NO ASSURANCE Atkinson said his whole record in the AEU showed he was opposed to anti-union legislation, but he refused to give any assurance about voting against it in parliament.

I will meet with other leftwing MPs as a block and discuss with them. A decision will be reached, and I will abide by that decision, he said, adding that the lobbyists should have faith in the people in parliament.

He said he could not understand why Young Socialists campaigned so hard on this issue.

But as it was pointed out at meetings after the lobbies, it is the youth who are uniting with older members in the labour movement to pose a real alternative leadership to the Wilson government—and all its 'left' supporters-in a struggle against anti-union legislation.

They will even gain support from the Labour Party rank and file as the Poplar lobby showed-_ Party worker and two coun cillors gave support and donation to the January 26 lobby.

Lobbyists were told that Mikardo had raised the legislation question at a private meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party 10 days before Christmas-so no MP can say he knows nothing about it! to give way by the threat of unemployment.

Having been sold out by the Labour government, the working class as a whole is being left with little choice but to struggle more and more against the intervention the capitalist state in shipbuilding and the proposed anti-trade union legislation.

But for this, the labour movement needs a new Marxist-communist leadership.

The Communist Party is betraying precisely at the time when such leadership becomes essential. whereas the Socialist Labour League and The Newsletter do everything in their power to build up the alternative leadership to the right wing.

We were the first to warn the working class about what is taking place at Fairfield's, and about the proposed anti-trade union legislation.

We intend to continue at all costs with this course, because we firmly believe that given correct leadership, the working class can defeat the employers and their state machine.

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Never Nadod e coun he as every conservative political corargument.

But it is not an argument!

The question is not to argue, Foot thinks the • Labour Party, will go on for ever. ford cas tand of reor talists are tackling he tackled by the working clas.

ton The srn ge o ti a er returns to the sare castlation no the eat is.

ment over the last decade at least.

(To be continued)