Devon Labour Briefing no. 20

ST, epee,

COULPORT :

RECLAIMING OUR RIGHTS

Fran Jenkin (Exeter CLP)

On October 4th, thirty one people from Exeter set off at midnight on the eleven hour coach to Coulport in Scotland. Coulport - the Royal Heavy Armamnents Depot which services the ever-expanding Faslane submarine fleet. It stores and services both conventional and nuclear weapons while the submarines are docked for repairs and refits. In particular the national demonstration was planned as a mass trespass, on a nearby 3,008 acre peninsula, to reclaim the hills which have been fenced off by the Ministry of Defence and been bulldozed for bunkers, in the largest military developement ever undertaken in the United Kingdom. The 3,008 acres are now either a “protected area" or "military land" for the siting of several hundred Trident war-heads for the Trident submarines to be based in Loch Long. 7@@ million pounds has been set aside for work on the developement. The MOD has already reclaimed leases to foresters and farmers who once worked the land and introduced new bye-laws of the kind we are now accustomed at Greenham and Molesworth,

All too obvious issues are raised by this encroachment, escalating expenditure, loss of civil liberties, disregard for land conservation and local people's livelihoods. Certainly the Labour Party’s present commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament goes a long way towards reassuring the two and a half thousand or so protesters of October 4th and all the supporters of CND that when in power some such erosions could not take place, as long as it can, with our help, hold the line against whatever sinister fuges “our

Com’ BACK PAGE.

LABOUR— TAKE THE POWER!

NOVEMBER 1986 10p

EDITORIAL

Millions of people in Britain are yearning to get rid of Thatcher’s government. At home and abroad Thatcher has represented right-wing reaction hitting the living standards of workers, youth, women, the elderly, black people and the unemployed - huge swathes of the population who have been made to pay the price fox the crisis of British capitalism.

A big majority of these people probably see a Labour government as the only way to end the nightmare of the Thatcher years. It would be impossible to miss seeing that this popular sentiment has meant a huge pressure on the left to subordinate everything to getting Neil Kinnock into Downing St. Briefing supporters have refused to bend to this pressure. To subordinate our support for working class struggles and socialist policies to uncritical support for the leadership. While we shall fight tooth and nail for the election of a Labour government, we remain extremely sceptical of what a Kinnock government will bring. Briefing would like nothing better than to campaign for a Labour victory in the expectation that it would result ina radical Labour government. But self

deception is no better than fooling other people.

The sad truth is that since Kinnocks election as Party leader in 1983 the left has been pushed back, and Party policy shifted decisively to the right. A Kinnock-Hattersley government is likely to be anything but radical.

The next Labour government will be judged above all by what it does about unemployment. Creating millions of jobs will require vast amounts of investment.

Such a level of investment is inconceivable without full control over banks and finance houses. It is a simple case of only socialist policies beginning to tackle the problem. But far from proposing such a program Shadow Cabinet Spokespeople like Roy Hattersley and John Smith have talked only about “a National Investment Bank into which financiers will be ’encouraged’ through ’incentives’ to invest". The real truth is that, apart from some increase in public expenditure, there are no real plans by the Party leadership to mount a serious attack on unemployment because such a project

requires radical anti-capitalist measures.

Equally, since 1983, Party policy ona wide range of issues has been pushed toa the right - on Union laws, on NATO, on renationalisation and expansion of public ownership and on many other issues - Party policy has been degutted of its radical content.

The consequence is that if Labour wins the next election we shall almost certainly see a pro-capitalist

‘Wilson-Callaghan’ type of government. Socialists would be utterly foolish to forget the 1964 and 1974 Labour governments and to believe that Kinnock represents something fundamentally new. Why then do we fight for a Labour

‘Government?

First and foremost a failure by Labour to win the next General Election would in all likelihood create a mood of desparation and despair in the working class, especially if the Tories were reelected. While the Tories seem a lame-duck government today with a future electoral mandate they would attempt new draconian attacks on working class rights and living standards. A carnival of reaction could ensue, including further

moves to the right in the Labour movement. On the other hand, whatever the policies of the Party leadership the defeat of the Tories and the return of Labour could create much better conditions for a renewal of working class

struggle and for the advancement of the left.

The defeats which the working class has suffered during seven years of Thatcher rule have created a ‘keep your heads down’ mood among many workers which is siezed upon and encouraged by the Trades-Union bureaucrats to isolate militant workers in struggle. Once there was a Labour Government the whole atmosphere would be changed. Working class expectations would soar and people would expect something to be done about unemployment, anti-union laws, poverty and privatisation.

It is not at all certain that a Kinnock government would would be able easily to defuse working class struggle in the way that Wilson did after 1974 with the *social contract’. <A Labour victory at the polls would put the Kinnock-Hattersley leadership to the test of practice, enabling the left to push forward demands for class struggle and socialist policies. Take for the example the sacked and jailed miners: with a Labour Government the Campaign for Justice would be put on a new footing, with the left demanding the implementation of Labour Conference policies.

The left could also step up the fight for the implementation of a full anti-nuclear program; for jobs not profits; for womens right, for justice for black people - a host of anti-capitalist policies. In government it is very hard, over any length of time, to talk left and act right - it is much easier to do it in

opposition. Labour in government either means Significant steps forward in the interests of the workers or (as we believe much more likely) disappointing the hopes and aspirations of millions.

For the left in such a situation there is both an opportunity and a big danger. The opportunity consists in showing thousands of workers what Kinnockite policies mean in practice, and why there is no

alternative to mobilising the working class behind socialist policies to go forward. The danger is that mass

disappointment could result in the growth

of right and extreme-right wing political forces.

The only answer to that, the sole basis for any progress, is the organisation of a militant left-wing in the Labour movement, in both the Trades Unions and the Labour Party, prepared to lead the fight against right wing betrayals and mobilise a fight-back.

In reality millions of workers will continue to put their hopes in a Labour victory and to a greater or lesser extent in the present leadership of the Labour Party. Our task, to paraphrase a great socialist thinker, is to share the struggle for that victory but not the illusions in what it will bring. On that basis we shall create the best framework

for a renewal of the left of the Labour Movement.

Students

The last seven years have seen ferocious attacks by the Tory government on education and student living standards.

The student grant has been slashed by over 28% and the National Union of Students has estimated that 47% of

students do not receive the full grant. At the same time the Fowler review of

social security is denying thousands of students the benefits to which they were previously entitled. Students in Halls of Residence will no longer receive Housing Benefit which used to ammount to ‘5@ per term. Simultan®ously rents , the cost of books’ and other student costs have rocketed. If the Tories go ahead with their plans to remove students entirely from the welfare benefits system, as outlined in Fowler's White Paper this summer, it would mean a reduction in income of ‘1@@@ per year per student with only ‘36 in compensation. But most ominously of all the question of student loans is back on the agenda after the Committee of Vice Chancellors and

Principals recently proposed a system of joint grants and loan funding.

Any new student coming to Exeter University from an ordinary working class background will be surprised to find no mass action against the Tories poverty plans. In fact you will suffer severe culture shock. Exeter University’s reputation as a bastion of privilege has not been overstressed with 42% of the 1985 intake coming from private schools. This is compared with an average of 20% at all other universities. The social mix

-is necessary

basically reé inequalitites within the education system. fhe Tories are committed to funding private education via tax relief while cutting back on public education. Thus thousands of working class students are denied the opporunity of higher education.

problem

JOIN THE LABOUR CLUB For these reasons it for all students at Exeter University who regard themselves as socialist or as radicals to join the Labour Group. The Labour Group exists as a forum for debate and action for all those who feel oppressed whether because of their class, sex or race. Of course it

is important to support other progressive movements such as Anti-Aparheid but as socialists we in the Labour Group realise that the interests of all these movements lie in the socialist transformation of society and that these oppressions are rooted in the class nature of capitalism.

At a university like Exeter it is even more necessary that all socialists and radicals unite in the Labour group. Only then can the Labour Group make effective gain in the Guild of Students and turn it

into a campaigning socialist union.

THE EXETER LABOUR MOVEMENT Rather than become disillusioned by the reactionary nature of the university and sink into apathy and the student life cycle socialists should become active in Exeter Labour Party. Students can provide much needed intelectual analysis while at the same time learning about the experiences of ordinary working people in Exeter. As students involved in the Exeter Party we do not seek to speak down to ordinary hard working members but to debate poliicies and ideas with them in a comradely manner. All students’ should join their ward party and participate in meetings. Most students will find themselves in Pennsylvania/St. Davids ward which meets on the third Thursday of every month at 26 Clifton Hill. As individual members of the Party students have as much right to a say as anyone else and can be crucial in pushing the

party towards adopting socialist policies.

LPYS AND NOLS All students joining the Labour Party are entitled to participate in the Young Socialists, the official Youth Wing of the Party. This will link them with other sections of oppressed youth in Exeter: in the FE College, on YTS or unemployed. Unfortunately the LPYS has been attacked over the past year

becasue of its Marxist policies. These have been led by the right wing leadership of the National Organisation of Labour Students, who have failed to use their dominant position in the NUS to launch a campaign for students to vote Labour. The LPYS on the other hand, which is running the demand for a general election now to kick out the Tories and return a socialist Labour government, is being persecuted in the on-going

witch-hunt within the Labour Party. Students can help to build the YS among the Youth of Exeter, to build the Labour Group which is affiliated to NOLS and so change its careerist and bureaucratic leadership. The best way of doing this is by joining the coach to the LPYS demo in 7 London on Saturday October 18th. (Details from the Labour Club)

automatically follows the liberation of, women and men from the burden of sexism.’ A continuing conscious effort must be made to change attitudes, especially our own, and therefore practices, if policies are to be transforming and effective. Real justice for women, as for any other oppressed group, heralds justice for all.

David Oatley (Exeter University Labour Group Executive, personal capacity, and *"Militant’ supporter)

Women

Fran Jenkin (Exeter CLP)

Letter

Dear Fellow Socialists,

The Exeter Women’s centre has now been open for 16 months. Until May this year it was kept open by voluntary helpers but since May there have been 7 M.S.C. Community Programme part-time workers, three of whom operate the Rape Crisis Line. There were, of course, doubts about

At this time cof crisis for working people, facing fundamental and irreversible change in the method and means of production resulting in mass unemploymentthat has exceeded that of the Thirties, much is being made of the

: Jarrow March, now reachin its 58th | having the M.S.C. workers, particularly anniversary. Nostaleia and for the strong reason that, by doing SO, sentimentality prevails as history a a Bla eae would re ee appeagr to be repeating itself at this

SPLOT baALIOn Of wollen Who ane already interval of half a century. The J the largest section of the lowest paid y —

March was ‘respectable’, welcomed by the church and even by some Tories who were not of the ’hard—nosed’breed, while of

much greéter importance were a series of "HUNGER MARCHES’ organised by the

Unemployed Workers Movement.

and most easily dispensible of the employed. However we believed that (1) the Centre could not be maintained at all in any useful way without paid workers, for fund raising had become almost our sole preoccupation (2) we should put into practice a support system for the workers as a daily example of how women can and want to work collectively, and (3) we would ensure. that the programme for the

Now the unemployed get State hand-outs of just sufficient amounts which will keep them docile, now it is paid through the

k : : =~ post by the DHSS giro cheques. Then, in workers year would give them positive the 1934s the unemployed cpngregated and opportunities of experience which, queued - in the wind, rain and_ snow,

Summer and Winter alike - to draw their meagre ’dole’ in cash and in person at the Labour Exchanges. Quite degrading, of course, but there and then in the ’dole’ queugsof the Thirties unemployed people congregated, made contact with one another and organised. The trade unions and the Labour Party looked askance at this ‘Union’ of the unemployed with a contribution of one (old) penny a week and inevitably the driving force was provided by Marxists and Anarchists. No wonder these ‘Hunger Marchers’ who marched on the capital from Scotland, the North of England and Wales were harassed by the police along every mile of their route, baton-charged in every town and their leadrs arrested on trumped up *PublicOrder’ charges and incarcerated. The cost of protest was high in terms of personal suffering but many brave men - MARCHING BEHIND THE RED FLAG - were prepared to suffer, as they were prepared not only to suffer but to die in the

International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.

otherwise, they could not possibly have.

The workers are still hard pressed for the pittance they earn and we may not be as successful as we had hoped in our aims. But, nevertheless, the Centre is offering practical realities to women in a safe, confidential space; for example pregnancy testing, welfare advice, activities for one-parent families and the critical, much needed, counselling of rape victims.

The womens’ movement is often, justifiably, criticised for being exclusive to the articulate, white middleclass but the practical activities being increasingly offered by the Centre are @ down-to-earth, class and race free and

answer the everyday needs of women.

To continue and expand the service and support we need the help of more women in the Centre, but as important for long term effectiveness we need from the i Labour Party a detailed, concrete Fcommitment of policy, which will not just Abe resolutions of good intent but (1) Awill be in the form of hard cash and (2) by example in the public, personal and sexual politics of all its members. It is not good enough to enshrine fine words A believing that from socialism

Now the Red Flag has been struck for the last time by the New Softer Image Labour Party which is no longer a vehicle for

Socialism and within whose ranks no good

Socialist can now be comfortable, let alone happy.

AS ge agony,

THE PEOPLE’S FLAG IS PALEST PINK IT ISN’T SCARLET AS YOU MIGHT THINK

NO MORE THE SCARLET BANNER FLY

THOUGH FOR ITS’ SAKE BRAVE MEN HAVE DIED

But local racism is not simply a matter of individual action, there are the far more worrying aspects of institutionalised and organised racism.

THE COWARDS HAVE FLINCHED, NOW TRAITORS SNEER

"DON’T FLY YOUR BLOODY RED FLAG HERE!"

Watch out for Labour’s new soft (and silly) public image, remember power not principles is all that matters. The

words Bernard Shaw put into the mouth of the dustman could well now be uttered in

truth by Our Neil - “Principles, can’t afford ’em."

Racism

Earlier this year a black beaten by

man

was badly a group of Okehampton youths.

He had been staying in a local hotel, which had organised a disco. The man, being alone, had asked a local girl to dance. This enraged some of the men present, who took him outside, told him - as a black man - not to touch white women, and attacked him.

This story, reminiscent of the deep American South, is but one of many examples of racism in the South West. In

Exeter black people have been subjected

to racist phone calls, bricks have been thrown through their windows, black children abused in the schools, black students abused and told to ‘go back

home’. Even where there is no immediate

threat of racist attack the overwhelming experience is that of being made to feel Fother’ and unwanted. Many black people

talk of the unnerving experience of being stared at wherever they go, as if they are strange beasts. The sight of black

and white couples almost invariably attracts stares and insults if not worse.

The point is that racism is a problem for all of us, and would retain its importance even if no black people lived in Devon. It is a cancer that not only leads to murderous attacks on black victims, but disorts and disfigures the way we understand our world. But if we are to confront racism locally it must be acknowledged, brought into the open and attacked. After all how can we oppose racism until we know how and. where it is happening? Given the legacy of denial and

deliberate ignorance there is a vital need, in Exeter, to expose the scale of individual, institutional and organised

racism. It is the combating all three. Around the country Labour Councils are giving their active support to anti-racist action. In Exeter, our Council can no longer deny an ever growing problem. It must join the anti-racist movement and the concrete way it can do so is by employing an Officer to investigate the realities of racism in our city.

precondition of

On the institutional level the reaction ranges from denying the problem to colluding with it. For instance racial abuse.at school is often treated as a routine question of children being nasty to each other, thus denying the wider implications. In this way not only does the child suffer racism itself, but they also have their own sense of reality

undermined in the way teachers deny their experience.

Organised racism is a growing problem in the area. The National Front and other fascist groups are active in Devon. They have targeted the Torbay area and have regularly leafleted schools there. Recently they have tried to organise in

Exeter. Here too there is. evidence of leaflets distributed to school students. Fascist stickers have recently been plastered over the city and there are rumours that the NF intend to stand a candidate at the next general election. Already advertisments appeared in the

local press inviting pecple to help form an Exeter branch.

In the face of all this there remains a smug attitude that racism is not a problem in Exeter. We are referred to our famed local tolerance - a tolerance I remenber as a small child in Tiverton when the parents of my playmates were told not to let them associate with me because I was Jewish. As a clincher we are informed that racism can’t be a problem because there are so few black people in the area. But why, one might

ask are there so few?

Conference

The 1986 Party Conference was held in the shadow of a general election. Most people believed it to be the last conference before we go to the polls, and wished to use the time in Blackpool as part of the public build-up to those polls. Neil Kinnock only half-jokingly spoke of the

week as ’one day, conference; five days, election rally’.

What is more, this won’t be just any general election. If Thatcher were to win again it would mean some 13 years solid

Tory rule. It would mean that some of the wilder schemes of Thatcher’s advisers -

the death of the NHS, ending tenants

rights, privatisation of the railways,

selling off of some Universities - could

become reality. In this context it is

hardly suprising that there is a mood

akin to desperation; we literally cannot

afford more Thatcher years, we will do

anything to get rid of her.

The problem with such desperation is that it tends to breed short-sightedness. This

conference was obsessed with the election of 1983, and even then only learnt half a lesson from that experience. What is blindingly obvious about the 1983 campaign is the damage caused when Party spokespeople openly contradict each other

in public; when Benn talks unilateralism, Healey talks multilateralism, and Foot meanders from

one to the other. The electorate can hardly trust our policies when we don’t seem to know what those policies are. In response ’Unity’ was the keynote of the 1986 Conference. If we are to win we have to appear a united Party pursuing our objectives with a single voice.

Yet, if our policies are to be taken seriously it is not sufficient to be consistent in terms of presentation;

policy itself must also be consistent and adequate to the problems it seeks to

solve. Unity alone is not enough, one must also examine the basis on which the Party is united. It is here that the 1986 conference failed to learn the lessons of

the past. For unity was acheived in a mechanical way, not by resolving differnces in debate, but by sticking

together positions which are mutually exclusive. The order of the week was to avoid controversy, to keep quiet about differences, to minimise debate. Larry Whitty, the Party manager, even referred to those debates that did occur as ‘hiccups’ in the otherwise smooth running of the conference.

Take, for example, the question of nuclear weapons policy. On the one hand the right, even those who clearly espouse multi-lateralism, were prepared to drop their opposition to a ‘nuclear-free’

defence policy. At the same time Neil Kinnock took care to stress his adherence to the NATO Alliance and to retaining American bases in Britain. But the problem is that one can’t have it both ways. To quote from the Socialist Society ‘NATO is nothing if not nuclear, it was born as an alliance committed to the use of nuclear weapons and it will die as one’ Similarly one cannot separate a single US base in Britain from the nuclear issue. For instance the communications facilities, explicitely quoted by Kinnock, are part of the early-warning and guidance systems which control American nuclear strategy. One cannot unite by trying to forge ‘non-nuclear’ and "pro-NATO’ together. It

won’t- convince and it won’t work in practice. :

The same contradictions run through a whole range of policies. We are committed to phase out nuclear power over decades. But if nuclear power poses such a threat to our existence how come we live with it for so long? And who can believe in a

policy relegated to such a distant future? We have replaced nationalisation with a committment to ’social ownership’ ; more cooperatives, worker ownership and municipal development schemes. But what is the point in dealing with the minnows

fail to address the power of the

when we giants, the multi-nationals, which control all our lives to some degree?

This brings us to the central question,

and the biggest problem - that of economic policy.

Elsewhere in this issue Phil Hearse shows both the urgency of a massive program of investment and the inadequacy of Party policies to produce it. The conference underlined the strength of his analysis.

Economic policy was no more than a restatement of anaemic plans for a National Investment Bank and tax incentives on the repatriation of

capital. When challenged that capitalists will not voluntarily forgo the higher yates of profit to be had overseas, but must be forced to do so, Hattersley gave avery revealing answer. He said that exchange controls were all very well, but if one threatens policies that harm capitalist interests they would simply

remove their money before the election. In other words, we cannot challenge the

power of capitalists, we can only seek to cajole them.

This is the biggest contradiction of them all. For nearly 8 years now we have seen extreme misery as a capitalist class, with the aid of a capitalist government, seeks to increase its profits at the

expense of everybody else. Now we are told that we can reverse all these ravages without confronting these self-same capitalists, indeed with their beevolent aid. Of course that is a

nonsense. We won’t be able to pursue unilateralism, to scrap nuclear power

stations. to rebuild the NHS and our education system, let alone tackle mass unemployment without offending

capitalists. As Ian Mikardo put it to Roy Hattersley ‘you can’t make a socialist omelette without breaking a few capitalist eggs’.

It is here that the lessons of the past are most relevant. The lesson of the 1974-9 Labour government which, through remaining tied to international capital in the form of the IMF, was forced to carry through policies of cut-backs and wage restraint which laid the basis for monetarist policies. Indeed Lt is incredible that both Hattersley and Kinnock could raise the need for an incomes policy at this conference when Labour’s last experience of such policy was the so-called ’winter of discontent’ of 1978-9. It was precisely this attempt to curtail working class demands which led to mass disillusion with Labour and opened the door to Thatcher.

Just as we cannot afford 5 more years of Thatcher, we cannot afford a re-run of the Wilson-Callaghan years. Yet, equally, we must realise that we are in the run-up to a general election which will be fought on the policies decided at Blackpool. Our task is to put nothing in the way of victory, certainly not to put our efforts into public attacks on policy. Rather we must campaign on the

positive aspects of what commitment to non-nuclear restoring public services, racism and sexism, to regenerating the economy. We must raise the expectation and confidence of people to demand what is rightfully theirs. In that way, the day after election victory when a Labour

we have; the defence, to to opposing

Government is faced with crucial decisions - to tackle the City or to abandon the pledges on jobs, to reject

NATO or to renege on non-nuclear defence, to attack capital or attack the rest of

us - Kinnock’s hand will be forced by the pressure of mass action.

Steve Reicher (Exeter CLP)

Clap-—trap

“I. WOULD DIE FOR MY COUNTRY" - what clap-trap to issue from the mouth of the leader of a (supposedly) Socialist Party. It is an appeal to cheap nationalistic sentiment and this so-called patriotism’

and ’love of country’ is of itself a main contributor to conflict and emnity, a cause of division between working-class people of whatever country - many of whom have nothing but their lives to lose.

“I would die for my country" indeed! What Neil Kinnock means is that he is prepared to require hundreds of thousands of others to take the risk of doing so. Doesn’t he realise that there is a member of the proletariat at both ends of every

gun - guns which the next Labour Government is now pledged to provide a-plenty.

While millions in the third world starve to death, while the call - and need - is for “jobs, not bombs’, for ‘bread, not bombs’ and for an end to the insane and immoral arms race, Neil Kinnock promises NOT to reduce Britain's expenditure on arms, not to devote the savings from the cancellation of Trident programme to welfare and education and the health Sérvice. Instead he promises to buy more "conventional weapons’; more planes, more ships, more tanks, more troops to operate them - the prospect of conscription for military service then looms. Is that one of the measures that Labour will take to reduce the dole queues?

How the Arms

Salespeople must have Government holds no terrors for them, their future profits are assured if Kinnock is allowed to get away with what he proposes. Indeed the proportion of spending on the production and development of arms. and munitions has considerably increased in recent years; in monetary terms it has more than doubled from seven and a half billion pounds in 1978-9 to over eighteen billion pounds in 1985-6. Much of the money is useless even in its own terms, like the nine hundred million pounds spent to-date

manafacturers and chuckled! A Labour

The pressures from

developing the NIMROD early warning System - which still doesn’t work. All this expenditure delivers massive profits to the companies engaged in manufacture; profits at far higher rates than can be attained in civilian production which have to depend on ‘supply and demand’ factors. The *demand’ for military equipment is constant and assured - increasing even.

When these matters are raised, the cry goes up to protect ’jobs’ in the arms and nuclear industries. But it is well established that, pound for pound, money spent on schools, hospitals, new housing and roads, for the regeneration of our industries will generate far more jobs than that spent in the military sector.

*I would die for my country’ is therefore a cover for a militarism that kills working class youth while enrichening the arms manufacturers. It is also the most rank hypocrisy. As Kinnock knows full well, his is an idle boast that he will never be called upon to meet. Kings, Emperors, Presidents and Prime Ministers do not fight each other in battle (the more’s the pity), they send their minions to kill and be killed in their name.

It is all so reminiscent of Lord Kitchener. "Your King and Country needs you’. But ‘my country’ is ‘their country’. Those who call on me to die are | the tiny minority who lay claim to ownership of vast tracts of land and who

possess the bulk of its wealth. They ask me to die to maintain their domination and my subjection. Such a country is not worth dying for - no capitalist country is worth a single drop. of workers life-blood. Too many have died already.

No doubt I shall, as over the Falklands | fracas, be labelled as a 'peacemonger’ by party officials. I remain unabashed and unashamed. I totally reject war as a solution of any international problem. It never has been a solution, it never can be. ‘War is so old-fashioned’.

Chris Churchward

Hysteria

Following this years Labour Party Conference, many people now beleive that the Left has been pushed into obscurity.

To a large extent this is true _ the purge of socalists has been seen to be succesful, party policy on just about

every issue has been pushed to the Right. However, there is one area of policy which represents a major victory for the Left - unilateral nuclear disarmament.

Neil Kinnock has now committed the next Labour Government to the removal of Nuclear weapons from Britain “within 12 months" of being elected. Of course, whether this policy is actually implemented or not is another question. the British and US

ruling classes, as well as the Right of the Labour Party, are massive. Already the events of this years conference have

generated a mass hysteria from these quarters.

LABOUR PARTY YOUNG SOCIALISTS

44% DEMONSRAT ION**** For a Socialist Labour Government TORIES OUT!!!!

US Defence Secretary Casper Weinberger has said that if a Labour Government came to power on a unilateralist programme the US would withdraw troops from Europe and impose economic sanctions against Britain. The Sunday Telegraph (Oct. 5th, 1986) carried a front page article in which British Service Chiefs warned that they would declare that they could “no longer guarantee the defence of the nation” if Labour was elected. The same issue also carried an article in which former Labour Defence Minister DR John Gilbert condemned Labour’s policy saying that the Russians “would only have to threaten war. We would have no option but to capitulate”.

London: Saturday 18th October 1986 CONTACT David Oatley, 13 Springfield Road.

*KKKDEBATE**K* - Between Young Socialists, Tories and Liberals. YS represented by Louise James

ipm, Tuesday 14th October 1986 Exeter College

AKKAFUTURE MEETINGS ****

All meetings 8pm Clifton Hill Labour Club

15th October. Business.

5th November. Fran Jenkin speaking on

Of course, all this hysteria should not Equal Opertunities in Education.

surprise us. The ruling class in Britain know that NATO is an anti-socialist and imperialist alliance on which they rely for there power and that any move to

break US hegemony in Europe would seriously undermine that power. They also know that it is the Left that is their real enemy. It is therefore vital that the Left keep up the pressure on Kinnock in order to ensure that he does not capitulate to this pressure.

19th November. Speaker from Exeter Safe Energy Campaign

3rd December. Speaker from Greenpeace.

For more information CONTACT: Neil Todd,

48 Portland Street, Tel. 39556 FOC CCC ICRI ACK IK

EXETER AND DISTRICT TRADES COUNCIL ****PUBLIC MEETING****

Neil Todd (Exeter CLP)

Coal, Apartied and Nuclear Power Speakers: Des Dutfield (NUM) plus COSATU, TUCND and

Women Against Pit Closures.

CONTINVED FROM FRONT PAGE.

allies" the USA might ues to challange it. However, members of the NATO alliance - self-styled upholders of democracy - will presumably continue to have the perogative to anex and desecrate our land as it already has done to the beautiful Glen Douglas, near Coulport, with its largest weapons store in Europe. So, even with unilateral nuclear disarmament the British people will not have regained

full and real democratic control over their lives and land.

8pm,. October 16th, Labour Club, Clifton Hill.

TeCetes eee teetetette rere res ++ 2222 222 2 2 2

BRITISH_SOVIET FREINDSHIP SOCIETY

*AAKPUBLIC MEETING ****

Peace Issues: The Soviet veiw to be presented by Mr. Zolotov from the Soviet Embassy, London 7.3@pm, 15th October, Music Room, Library.

The Labour Party needs to examine fearlessly and in detail it’s membership of NATO and rather than reiterate it’s pipe-dream of changing NATO from within undertaking with CND a long-term, committed campaign of educating the electorate of our vital need for complete military and civil independence. An oppertunity was missed this year with the bombing of Libya when people were particularly receptive to understanding the force of the US high-handed attitude

to Britain and our subservient role in NATO.

CONTACT David Roberts Tel. @626_68683 SOR ORRICK K ACK CCAR OK AK

~~

MARXIST SOCIETY *AKKAFUTURE MEETINGS ****

To be held at the Unversity of Exeter. COTACT: Geoff Barr. Dept. of Politics,

University of Exeter. Tel. 33365 SOOO OOO IROK OK RK IKK

DEVON LABOUR BRIEFING 19 CULVERLAND ROAD EXETER DEVON, EX4 6JJ TEL. Exeter(@392) 79531

The Labour Party is campaigning for “freedom and fairness” but ultimately we can never make claims of local and real democracy while we remain in the NATO Falliance. The people around Coulport know

this and the protesters on October 4th witnessed it.

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