WITCH | Socialist Action 1983

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DEFEND LIVERPOOL -HUNT! THE ENQUIRY into Liverpool District Labour Party is a disaster for the Labour Party. The Labour Party should be concentrating public attention on the viciously anti-working class policies of this Tory government. Instead the headlines now going to be dominated for months by this enquiry. It will run and run. Don't have any illusions.

We should be concentrating on the wonderful things that have been done by Liverpool council. We should talk about the houses it has built, the recreation centres it has built, the jobs it has created. All this is going to be lost in an attack on Militant - who were anyway always a minority on the council. The council has been carrying out the decisions of Labour This enquiry is supposed to better Labour's election chances. But that is a totally wrong. The election results in Liverpool, both locally and in Parliamentary elections, have been excellent. It is this enquiry that might make them worse.

Some people are saying that we can have the enquiry but not a witch-hunt. But that is like the position on the Falkland's war that said you could be in favour of sending the fleet but against its use. That just aided Thatcher. It is a fatal error to believe Labour win an election by being respectable for the press.

The enquiry, in fact, is just being used to start a witch-hunt. Neil Kinnock already said before it was set up whom he wanted on the enquiry. There was an attempt to exclude any representative from the CLPs.

This witch-hunt, if it is successful, will extend to other socialists in the party. We are already seeing press smears being extended to Graham Stringer and the Manchester party people who have nothing to do with Militant.

The entire party has to support the position of Eric Heffer, and other Liverpool MPs, who have come out against this enquiry. Don't imagine that the issue is going to go away. Because we are going to support our comrades. No witch-hunt in Liverpool No expulsions in Birmingham Bhopal: a chemical New trade union Hiroshima federation in South Ireland: Why Labour Africa must oppose the accord

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Socialist Action 6 December 1985