THE CAMPAIGN Group of Labour MPs has played a significant role over the past eighteen months.
They have utilised their representatives to address the press, disrupt hallowed parliamentary procedure, they parliamentary bills on withdrawal from Ireland and amnesty for sacked and jailed miners, and they have used their positions as MPs to speak at an enormous number of meetings in support of those people, engaged in mass extra parliamentary struggle.
Precisely because it Labour leadership should be doing, and is not, the Campaign Group has become, alongside Arthur Scargill, the target of a growing series of attacks from Neil Kinnock's entourage within the Labour Party. Tribune in particular has acted as the mouthpiece for attacks on the Gring and leading members of it like Tony Benn.
Tribune devoted the front page of its 18 Oc tober issue to a letter of resignation from the group by Derek Fatchett which accuses the group of vanguardism and aucnonanansu.
Tribune's argument, summarised in the same issue's editorial is that been stronger and the prospects of a radical, Left-wing Labour government have never been greater', so that those, like the Campaign Group who do not agree with Kinnock are rocking the boat' and jeopardising the chances of achieving Fatchett Barron fisagreements with 'vanguardism' Nation of the Miners' Amnesty Bill and the circulation itersley's economic 'refers to such things as the 'vicious personal attacks on Michael reversed his vote and so tipped the balance on NEC amnesty resolution to Labour Party conference.
Tribune develops its follows: 'Yet what than view that the betrays, that principle and power are inevitably in collision and that the only way to keep the Left alive is to fight a constant series of running battes and skirmishes against the ship.
First of all let's dispose of the view, falsely attributed to the Campaign ship always betrays. This is manifestly absurd -Nuth example of the ridership of the months of bitter class struggle and since the leadership' does not always betray.
It is not Benn and the Campaign Group who have been gratuitously picking fights with Kinnock, the reverse is true. Kinnock did fail to support the miners, and any government led by him vill attack the working class in a way that would make socialists.
Kinnock is abandoning Labour Party policies in order to prepare for such a government. Kinock did use the platform of the Labour Party conference to join the Tory Party, the SDP, the Liberals and Fleet Street in venemous attacks on the leadership of the NUM and of Liverpool City Council.
It is Kinnock who has also added his voice to what has been one of the most brutal campaigns ever to destroy a labour movement leader and his supporters. The campaign to destroy Arthur Scargill is of such dimensions that those supporting it are prepared to take all the risks of trying to smash the NUM itself in order to carry it out.
It is impossible to believe that Tribune is so naive as to fail to see that Norman Tebbit and Fleet Street's praise ference speech nothing to do with the promise of a 'radical and left-wing Labour government.
On the contrary ynical course of trying to split and destroy the only voice in Parliament which supports people actually fightiernment. The Campaien Group Thatcher government. threatens to continue doing so whether the attacks come from a Tory, Labour government. That is why it is a butt of at tack by both the bourgeois press and Tribune.
have pumped out policies SUCA illustrates what the and Kevin Barron ... the Left has never itemise their Campaign Group: refers to such actions as the discussion of an alternative to statements; 'authoriMeacher' after he against the NUM's case against Benn as could be more pessimistic leadership always party leaderGroup that the leaderleadership has shown througout twelve Wilson and Callaghan look like raving Neil Kinnock's conwas precisely because it had Tribune is endorsing a The Campaign coalition, of even a ITAM