Mass demonstration in fav THE LIVERPOOL Labour Co-ordinating Committee has submitted its evidence to the Committee of Enquiry into Liverpool Labour Party.
This long-awaited LCC's evidence, not 'evidence' is a disgrace to about unes pontica.
mistakes. It has been launthe abour movement. It Is the purest most hypocritical witch-hunting attack. There are plenty of ched because the political issues to take up council has built more with the Militant leader- houses in two vears inan ship of Liverpool council. because it has created hero rest In some cases, such as une appointment of Sam Bond thousand more TODS anc of the because it has held down black community, the Liverpool rents and rates politics of this leadership accord with have disastrously divided decithe Liverpool working The LCC's hypocrisy has to be clearly grasped.
But the enquiry inte Liverpool, just It is the main component of black Kinnock sections What stitution larger Wol ulall comprise Derek Hatton Liverpool: the evidence EXCLUSIVE its left DUL its And Neil 1ill the LCC's much constituency sympathisers supporters what it that hardly DLP and the country large critics of DLP the example, Here, the of majority SULICIICICS Coventry local ficials!
them.
LCC?
The been ords tion. take place the excused have to the among workers.
politics, fact.
debate to the Many of the delegates not the second They did not DLP Cases clo Black has very manual or not simply a academic : of argument and discussion that goes on in a DLP among workers who support a council which is prepared to do battle with the Tories on their behalf, (terms Cases COTI physical sexual harassment must be with Taken case by case in the labour movement. But what Is extraordinary given the hea with which the debate conducted, that the massed guns of the LCC can only come up WILl three cases of 'intimidation' of which two are unsupported The allegation, that non-Militant porters were were excluded rom council panels, looks even flimsier it vou realise that out of 49 councillors facing surcharge, no less of Militant! again, we have lo ask wny the LCC have only looked at Liverpool. In Coventry the right recently excluded thirteen left wingers from the JOCa panel, on dubious excuses such their 'inexperience' One of them, George Linfield, nominated three years running, is actually sitting coun cillor.
The real issue is this: do DLPs, Local Govern. ment Committees local parties have the right to ensure that they have councillors who will carry out LCd's charge comes very policy? The close indeed to attacking the party for exercising its democratic right to select, deselect and reselect to ensure it has an accountable council.
The fourth charge, corruption, is polentally the most serious. But the they don't anywhere else in the coun try.
They claim the Militant promote. own sun. porters the council worktorce to increase lIs influence. Now, of course. if any group or current of opinion monopolise positions ty, excluding all others in a sectarian manner, then it should be fought using the normal democratic methods of the labour moveBut, excuse us, this is Corrupnot corolon tion is not promoting your views but lining yUu. pockets, which conspicuously SUDOUILCIS do not do, unlike many of their opponents. Indeed, you can t nelp reelng Wal the LCC is peeved because the Militant are doing exactly what the LCC would like to do in their place.
The Militant is sectrue. But seclasall tarianism is not corrupMoreover, Kinnock and the ICC are a million miles more sectarian. They don't just want to exclude their opponents from the council, nor evel minor positions of fluence. They want to kick them out of the Labour The LCC has now come full circle Three years ago it said it would support the leader but oppose expulsions. Faced vith a choice between irreconcilable nese wo demands, has now drawn its conclusions. FOOT-COLD we tramp. Hyde Park to Kilburn Square. Oxford Trades Council ban- captured by fascists. Bottles hurled into the women's contingent. The London — the fourteenth anniversary. Each year it seems a new far left group to add to One year I remember, we shivered and imagined all the different permutations for the names of There was Socialist-workers-actionchallenge-fight-power-vanguard-press. thought of Workers Hammer. Not a very fitting commemeration of fourteen demonstrators shot down in cold blood by the British army.
In Derry, it is said, each person can remember where they were on the day of the fatal demonstration. Where they were when the news came out. How they felt when the newspaper editors thought army press and informal briefings more reliable than several thousand eye witnesses. More reliable in some cases than their journalists on the spot. No room here for the intrepid reporter. whitewash Widgery report, which tried to clear the army of responsibility, was packaged for public consumption and cynically used to reintorce the And fourteen years later, with the banana skin factor' in operation, and the watchful eye of the press poised to reveal lying in high places, drivers of motor cars might still be riddled with bullets and the news confined to a couple of paragraphs in the This year, the demonstration was bigger than last. Two thousand people marched. The Revolutionary Communist Party out to 'change the face of British politics' declares 'we have the pro gramme to build a real alternative working class section of the march, and fully nationally mobilised. They chanted We hate Kin-nock, we hate Kin-nock, we are the Kinley, we are the Paisley monicker could be added to the programme.
We march two months after the Anglo Irish Accord. For the RCP, it is easy to understand: another in a long list of ...
Labour left, noticable by its absence on this cold Blunkett who banned last year's Bloody Sunday march in Sheffield sponsored this year's in Lon don. He is undecided on the Accord. Whilst Jimmy Knapp of the NUR and Labour's Northern Ireland spokesperson Peter Archer are making their support for the Accord contingent upon a 'real improvement' of the situation for northern nationalists, Neil Kinnock visits Derry and tells the RUC he backs the use of 'every force' against the Scuttling back to the dung pile of bipartisanLabour's leaders carry the stench of the killers. Yet violent words will not end the violence.
Marching through Maida Vale the slogans of "savage crimes of British imperialism' raising only the giggles of a bemused proleteriat pausing from 'Big Match Live' to see the spectacle on the streets If a majority of British people annually inform Gallop pollsters they wish to see Britain out of why then is the movement getting wel through, greeted only by the writing on the wall sprayed freshly for the occasion by Red Action?
The RCP used to have a slogan Bring the Irish 'Irish war inside the Labour Party.' For the RCP. the Labour leaders always betray. But apart from HOIC more Bloody Sunday demos there are no remedies.
Only mass action in Britain can help get the troops out of Ireland. That will not be built unless the means are found to break up the blanket com placency and inaction of the labour and trade union leaderships. It is no good seeking refuge in a 'constructive' opposition and ignoring the issue of thev represent an attack on wi Irish democratic cause and reverse the direction of Labour policy. Abstention shows either ignorance But equally fighting to oppose the Accords and turn policy gains in defence of democratic rights into action does not mean a retreat to the futility of the left ghetto and empty gestures. Organisations like the Labour Committee on Ireland which have made ground in the last period, will be under increasing pressure from the right to reach a compromise with the Accord. It is not an occasion to contemplate retreat.
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even unders-. Perhaps this in they