'Sean MacBride is the conference an anuof the conference is called In ASTMS a number SUPPORT FOR black people's right to self-organise Black Sections for discussion in Bourenmouth at the end of April.
Ken Gill is chair of the TUC race relations advisory subcommittee and of the equal opportunity COULICC LU which it reports. So far he has studiously refused to take a position on the issue of Black Sections.
least some of the Morning Star wing of the WHOS Broad Left backing the South Wales resolution, which was passed by the all-white, preponderantly male meeting of the South Wales A crude resolution from the Cardiff branch of was amended by Swansea.
The Swansea version nas now gone lorward le the annual conference. But He co Dou resolutious is the same.
Cardiff's references to Black Section, such as one which 'rejects the idea that that been self-appointed can represent the interests of the movement in its anti-racist struggle, have been amendhowever, remains the same. Ken Gill The assumption is that black peopie are from the working class and that their fighting for their particular interests divisive This is a familiar argument supporters within the Labour Party.
It is an argument which Roy Hattersley and the rest the right wing feel perfectly at home with. It is also one wilch Has leu lit LPYS representative on the tee, Linda Douglas, to sit on the scab Black and Asian Advisory Committee set up to deflect the struggle for black self-organisation and within the parthe South Wales resolution argues that the creation of Black Sections leads to 'segregation' within the parIts assertion that con terence clain that the Labour Party is a racist organisation' deliberately ignores the institutional racism that exists across sociely macg the Labour Party. Its posimembers struggling to make their voice heard in ine way uncy across 'the real debate on how to fight inequality and racism in Britain', is totally unacceptable.
The backward politics which this resolution represents stand in ironic contrast to another resolution submitted to TASS TASS in South Wales are resisting moves to abolish their regional struc ture integial branches into English region of the union The issues raised by the South Wales resolution on black self-organisation have already been firmly dealt with inside the Labour Party by Black Section and its supporters. must taken up inside TASS with equal force.
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Socialist Action 6 Feb 1987 IT IS vital for Labour's future, and for its prospects at the election, to much as it failed women or the black community. In socialist parties built mass youth movements. But scarcely more than a rump. Today both Labour's main youth organisaTHE ULTRA left in the Labour Party is declining in influence while simultaneously becoming fragmented. The National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS) will not engage in dialogue with far left factions which merely seek to give renewed credibility to an emphasis upon internal conflict and crude attacks on the leadership.
To waste precious time on inner-left debates is to distract ourselves from our main aims of winning the support of young people for Labour and of developing the radical policy commitments which Labour already has; for example, the pledge to introduce a £35 a week minimum allowance for all in 16-19 furLner education the one proposal which could do more than anything else to increase working class access to higher Similar changes to what is happening on the left nationally are being mirrored, to an extent, within the left of the student movement. Militant are caught in a nosedive of decline and don't seem to know, or even want to know. The Socialist Organiser front — SSiN — were finally exposed for their opportunism at NUS winter conference and greater clarity in political debate should further succeed in exposing the crudity of their aims.
Groups like SSiN pretend to be more sophisticated than Militant's approach which sees, for example, the women's as simply irrelevant and divisive. In fact, SSiN are little different and see women's demands as optional extras, welcome but dispensible additions to the 'real' class struggle. In the final analysis and in their refusal to support women students electing a NUS women's officer, the commitment of SSiN to feminism is exposed as superficial.
The emergence of Campaign Student, however, is significant in that there now exists a more formal representation of LLL within NOLS and I welcome this opportunity to enter into comradely debate with people who believe they are serious about left advance in the student movement. Campaign Student appears, at least temporarily, to recognise the dire need for a respite in head-banging. The response of the democratič left in NOLS to Campaign Student should not be negative but should not spend an excessive amount of time considering the nature of a possible relationship with what could easily become an incestuous process of inner-party bridge-building and bridge-burning.
Reject I reject Polly Vittorini's claim (Socialist Action, 9 January) that the 'Democratic Left' only exists in order to keep Trotskyists out of the NOLS leadership. Democratic socialists lead NOLS primarily because we believe fundamentally in the ability of NOLS and the NUS to develop the ideas and build support for the politics of democratic socialism, not because of a fear as to what SSiN or Militant might do if they Labour's largest youth section.
Labour students have led the NUS there other countries was has been a firm and clear shift to the left. The NUS is now a mass campaigning more union cically identified by number of students with the Labour Party. Hardly a result of what Polly reters to as 'crisis leadership'.
I would support an approach to Campaign Student which sectarian but firm. I reject Polly's inference that it's not possible to support WAC or Black Sections if not affiliated to LLL. NOLS will continue to support the demands - and work with - WAC Black Sections, the Labour Committee on Ireland, and groups like the LCLGR in a constructive and supportive way. NOLS does not, however, view these groups as in any way our property to be peddled as a sign of "leftness'. I hope Campaign Student teels the same.
Furthermore, Polly and Campaign Student continue to talk of Kinnock as the major obstacle to be overcome and of Kinnock's 'anti-working class leadership' (Socialist Action, NOLS should be both cautious and entirely realistic about the potential of a Labour government under the currentleadership, it is irresponsible and naive in the extreme to see Neil Kinnock as the main enemy facing the left. The left has got to cease defining its politics simply on the grounds of its relationship to the party leadership.
Role By concentrating on the party leadership, the ultra left effectively see the role of social forces outside of the party in exactly the same way as the Labour right — ¡e social forces are seen to have a passive role. Class, sex and race are effectively displaced as driving societal change. At the same time and as part of the same process, the main axis for changing the character of the Labour Party flows through the changing of leaderships ie, more left wing men on the TUC general council, the NEC, NOLS and LPYS national committees, etc. For groups like the CLPD, the manoeuvrings and demands imposed by capitalism are thus combatted by simply getting the NOLS will continue to see that the whether we can ditch Kinnock as party leader. The crucial issue is whether we are capable of breaking out of a parliamentarist tradition and a Labour chauvinism.
and thereby generate a "Third Road' strategy which will be necesary to defeat Thatcher and maintain a radical Labour government in office.
With SSIN combining tionalism with opportunism and Militant's ultra-conservatism, the democratic left of NOLS offers the only plausible alternative for a mass, politically campaigning NOLS. Campaign Student has a part to play in the political regeneration of the student movement, as Ken Livingstone has put it: "We must not allow potential which is opening before us.' controlled Let's win!!!
Since Rob Minshull, NOLS National Secretary tions, the LPYS and the National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS) are dominated by dead end politics: NOLS by the Kinnockite Democratic Left and the LPYS by What is missing is the politics of campaign lett to emerge. Last year the Labour ParThis opportunity of a polemic with the national secretary of the Nafional Organisation Students is welcome. It is also in dicative of the growing impact of Labour's campaign left — in par. ticular on those supporting the soft left Labour Co-ordinating Committee (LCC) and its student coa large thinkers, the Democratic Left.
point - that the present developments on the left of the Labour Party have an echo in the student movement. In fact non- the political crisis of the LCC has its most pronounced character in the current position of the Democratic Left at helm Students (NUS).
tion to the developments in the student movement today. The alliance with Britain's 1¼ million students is a vital one for the labour movement. That alliance can only be created by the labour movement fighting with the majority of the formation of the education system ism, and anti-gay. 9 January). While of access dards of students.
Disaster
struggles taking withdrawal from forces overturn NOLS democratic secular Zionist state in Israel of the Middle East.
Support
is not theretore of students education and similar matters.
ment of opposi- cut back in spending on living standards, prevent us seizing the within NUS.
current, -beginning to We agree with Rob Minshull on one of the National Union of Socialists should pay special attencomplete transto eliminate class privilege, racism, sexprejudice. A fundamental part of this must be the exteneducation therefore the defence of the living stanA labour movement strategy involves convincing the student movement to take the side of the working class in all the great social and political place both internationally and in British society. It includes fighting the Tories and other reactionaries, including in the labour movement, on such issues as defence of British liberation, and for defence of the black communities as well as students immediate interests. These are all central issues around which the alliance between the majority of students and the labour movement can be created. It is also the significance of the attempts to support for therefore to commit it to supporting a which against the Palestinian people and as a etc. permanent threat to the Arab peoples Kinnock.
Within this framework, the majority have to know that the labour movement will support them nothing around their grants, housing, access to The greatest blow to this alliance in recent vers was bic Laboul zvou Wilson and Callaghan. This restricted access to education, reduced attacked student ing Kinnock. unions and did this as part and parcel of what is necessary. attacks on the working class. As a result Priorities the Tories gained more support tnar ever before in the student movement.
Our point is that Rob Minshull and the Dem Left advocate a strategy of tying the leadership of NOLS and thereby of the NUS to a Labour Party leadership of NUS, which is taking the party to the right.
This has already had disastrous results action defend ty Black Section succeeded in rallydevelop against twin dead ends represented by the Democratic Left Socialist Campaign Student, like the LLL starts from what is necessary: to defend the labour movement against the That- whole cher government, to fight aparthied, to free Ireland, to fight racism and sexism However we find that when the miners take actions to defend their communities they get no support from Labour councils like Brent and Haringey attacked by the press and the Tories for fighting racism get no support. Even the workers at Wapping more than lukewarm scolding of Murdoch laced with denunciations of 'violence'. Kinnock, ported by the LCC, has opened a witch hunt in the party and started the process of trying to reverse such basic Irelanc democratic reforms as the accountability of MPs. We don't start off by opposHe starts by opposing Consistent with its policy which starts from support for Kinnock, instead of what is necessary to defend the labour movement and the membership the Democratic Left have refused to lead the type of militant campaign necessary to students' grants and fight Students in Socialist Or elections by STEVE basis of lis ROB secretar! is VITTORIN the Socialist forward for education cutbacks. NUS conference was so outraged that it rejected the the Democratic Left-dominated executives's report and plar overwhelmingly. Subordination of students living standards and education to what is acceptable to Kinnock will have catastrophic political results for the Labour Party in NUS. Similarly policies supporting women, black peo Preland have not been pushed by NOLS British withdrawal in the Labour Party so as to avoid con flict with Kinnock who opposes the demands of opposes Black Sections and opposes British withdrawal from Rob Minshull and part of the Democratic Left support NOLS affiliation to the LCC but reject affiliation to the Labour Left Liaison (LLL). Yet Labour Left Liaison is precisely body created by WAC, the Black Ser tion, CLD and others to promote cooperation on the left around these issues. The LCC has given lip service to these campaigns but not real practical support.
The difference between the LCC and the LLL, however, is that the LLL
youth organisations - a bloc led by and backed in the
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within the Labour Party will be an issue at the TASS annual conference this year. The South Wales region has submitted a resolution opposing Labour Party
build its youth organisations. One of the features of Labour's 'aristocratic' past was that it failed youth just as
politics of Labour Left Liaison. But the beginnings of this are beginning
ing the non-Militant left around Kingsley Abram's campaign for the youth place on Labour's NEC. This year they are running their youth organiser Steve Jomoa for the same position. Meanwhile in NOLS a new Campaign Student,