SocialistAction 1983–88

The paper of the Socialist League, formerly the International Marxist Group, 1983–88

Witch Hunt News

· Socialist Action No. 129, 31 January 1986 · p. 9 of the scan · 431 words

The scan: 129-jan-31-1986-SA-UK.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
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page 9 of the scan

Democratic Exactly the same problem will arise if we see a hung parliament in terms of the next general election. The issue will come up: are we going to be answerable to our local Labour Parties, who will instruct us to against any coalition arrangements, or are we going to sit quietly by as the Jast Parliamentary Labour Party did in the House of Commons when we had a Lib-Lab pact in the dying days of the Callaghan government.

If there wasn't a hung council in Devon, it the Labour weren't supporting a Liberal ministration, you wouldn't have expulsions. They need to purge the Labour Party of those people who are opposed to coalition politics.

Equally, when you look what's happening in Birmingham, it's not that councillors have brought the council into disrepule Dy television and attacking Party. On that basis half the shadow cabinet would have been from the Labour Party during the period between the election of Mrs Oul.

vote At the end councillors adthe Labour cabinet expulsions, to make it difficult for any comrade in the Labour Party, whether it's the leader of the Labour Party or a local GMC, to carry those expulsions of the day, muly disagreements with the Militant pale tions result sions, into insignificance compared with my disagreements with the principle of expulsions. If this purge is successful, the next stage will be to 'clean up' as the right wing see it - Manchester the London ПРОРОТНСКИОТВЩАІРАНОGS as we used to be in London 15 or 20 years ago: a party that threatened no one, challenged no one, offended no one, and when it was in control of council, did nothing.

I see members in this audience who suffered through that London when nothing achieved, when about were elected Walco massive and savage cuts in housing and education. That will be the enc of not standing up Chaneng g these expulsions. Whatever is required to defeat expulOil must be know that in defending that position, I will take part in that campaign with the support of my local constituency.

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