of the oppressed.
The current disciplinary threat to the Black Sections the national ccutive committee or the clear enough evidence of the in.
Kinnock. united response is crucial. Blame In the days following the Hewitt letter blaming the Greenwich bv-election defeat on the party's lesbian and gav mehts mass panic swept through the Labour establishment. All over the party, anything remotely connected with the rights of lesbians and gay men was being quietly erased from the records: meetings were cancelled, exwas the beginning of a hysterical backlash even at grass fools level in some constituency parties.
But the resistance was also organised rapidly. The Labour Campaign for LesDian Gay Rights mobilised its supporters to remind the party of the dance cemence or panic. These facts were: that lesbian and gay rights were the policy of the party, overTHE FIGHTBACK has begun to stop the Labour leadership ditching its conference commitment to lesbian and gay rights. It is being recognised that preventing a betrayal of lesbians and gay men, as they confront massive social and state repression, is not merely a question of the interests of one section of the community. It is also the front line for all those who have fought for the Labour Party to represent the interests whelmingly carried at conference and endorsed by the whole national executive, including Neil Kinnock! That everywnere the party has campaigned honestly, it has done and that retreat will not prevent the opposition parties using the issue to attack abour On the contrary, it will only encollare them. then Labour will be routed.
LCLGR (personal capacity)
Crucially, though, it is the clear understanding built through the dance made verween esbians and gay men, the Black Section. rights campaigners other socialists that we have a common interest, and that an attack on one section will only be the taster for an assault on the others, that has enabled us to organise a powerful response.
RHOULD Labour left Liaison, emergency resoluLOTS ale velig organised for the annual general LONGON Labour Party and lesbian gay activists mobilising in large numbers in order to make a big impact on the conterence. But precisely order challenge the accusation problem, national response is required.
Resolutions have already Decl despatched Birmingham Bristol to Walworth Rd and the left everywhere must ensure it does the same Press statements statements signed by MPs parliamentary canDe ssued m order to break the growing attempt to keep lesbian and gay rights out of the public eye and reassure our communities that the actions of the leader do not reflect the views of the party as a whole.
Above all, the labour public support of lesbian and gay struggles with its banners and contingents: the 'Stop the Backlash' demonstration in Haringer is the next woollully.
LCLGR has campaigned for many years to place the agenda of the labour the agenda movement. With the firm support of the left, and the alliances DUTI wild Black Section and Womens HO Commutee we nave no intention of allowing allyulle again. frame-up. ting their 'confessions.
received inducements during the trials. a racist frame-up THE LIFE sentences dished out to Winston Silcott, Engin Raghip and Mark Braithwaite in the Broadwater Farm trials were a travesty of justice. They were the state's revenge against a Black community which defended itself against police harassment. Their outcome was a racist The only 'evidence' against the three were their own 'confessions' — in the case of Winston Silcott's, an unsigned one. Irregularities dominated the trials Justice Hodgson, the trial judge, not only acquitted three other juvenile defendants but also strongly rebuked the police for unlawful behaviour in extracThe only police witness admitted to the court that his evidence had been 'dotted with lies'. He had - including money and jobs — from the police. A black judge from the United States who observed the trial said that in her opinion the verdict was a miscarriage of justice, which 'cannot be said to be supported by evidence presented The trial was the occasion for a carnival of "racism. One police officer was quoted by the Guardian of 20 March as admitting openly to being anti-