THE LABOUR Party discovered on Monday evening that it has another open scab in its ranks. The problem is that this particular scab is the leader of the Labour There should be no illusions as to the enormity of what Neil Kinnock has done by refusing to speak at the five national rallies of the NUM.
The miners today are under the most vicious attack launched against any trade union, and any section of the working class, since 1926.
The union's funds have been seized. The government is literally trying to force the miners, the women in the mining children into submission through brutal hardship.
Police thugs are operating in the mining areas. £1,400 bribes are offered to scabs to return to work.
defeated in this strike it would shape, drastically for the worse, the future of the labour movement for the next years.
In that situation the NUM, rightly, has turned for support to the organisations of the entire working class. The miners had the right, and the duty, to demand that the elected leaders of the working class movement, Norman Willis and Neil Kinnock, pledged themselves totally and utterly to their support. That is what the TUC and Labour Party conference voted.
By refusing to speak on its platforms Neil Kinnock calculatedly stabbed the NUM in the back. But his action was only a qualitative stepping up of the policy he has been pursuing for months Since Labour Party conference Kinnock and Hattersley have been systematically installing the right wing as chairpersons of the key committees of the NEC. Those removed naturally included all the strongest supporters of the miners strike - because it has been the left which has been organising the real mass support for the In the Parliamentary Labour ParHeffer was purged from the Shadow Cabinet Benn elected. Liverpool council, alackeu Dy leadership, even before the miners In short there is a pattern. Neil Kinnock is systematically using his position, and supporters, to disrupt and disorganise the struggle of the working class, the working movement, and those most determinedly fighting for the interests of the working class.
Previously Kinnock appealed for unity of the party. That would have been excellent if it meant unity for the struggle. But by refusing to speak on the NUM's platforms Neil Kinnock is decisively breaking the unity in struggle of the labour movement.
In any case there is a higher law than party unity. That is the fight to defend the interests of the working class and of the working class movement.
Until now, in the interests of party "unity, many on the Labour left have preferred not to reopen the leadership question. But it would be better today for an open determined left to fight than to allow Kinnock to go unchallenged in his scabbing.
The left wing of the NEC should publically and openly dissociate itself from Kinnock's action on the miners strike. The NEC, or its left wing, should demand Kinnock's resignation. The left should decide on its candidate to challenge Kinnock for the leadersms.
Every CLP and labour movement body in the country should openly come out against Kinnock's action and demand he resigns.
It would be genuinely better to have the fight openly now than to be led to disaster in three years time by a scab who used his position disorganise the struggle of the working class. The left needs to organise not only independently of but consciously against Kinnock.
Neil Kinnock by his action on the miners has broken any claim to be leader of the working class movement.
As Kay Sutcliffe, one of thi leaders of the Kent miners wives put it, "Kinnock was elected as a leader of the working class through the Labour Party. If he's not prepared to stand up for the working class he shouldn't be a leader of the working class.' He must go.
Socialist Action. 9 November 1984