AFTER A period of flailing and floundering around after the end of the miners strike, It is clear that the left wing of the Labour Party, and the labour movement, is beginning to get its act together. this is, on the one side, the sensible tactics being pursued by Campaign group of MPs, the black section, Scargill, and others, and on the other side a shift to the right by Kinnock that is now so extreme it is beginning to peel off certain sections of his support.
The immediate situation after the end of the miners' strike was dominated, in the left wing of the labour movement, identified with the left shifting to the right under the guise of 'loyalty to the leader', 'influencing Kinnock' etc.
Meacher, Blunkett, finish up sharply to the right of their previous positied but that what it required to be left. positions. But it was not so much that that is to defend the interests of the working class, itself radically changea.
Ken Livingstone for openly explained, against Marxism Today for instance, that the GLC, the high point in popular terms of the previous wave of the left, was a ge nuinely reformist struggle carried out in an extremely favourable situation.
The material base for the policies of the GLC was its huge rates income. It was a totally different situation to the literal destruction of their communities and futures which confronted the miners, or the savagery that had been inflicted on Liverpool by the combination of the policies of Thatcher ministration of the city. It was not possible to de fend the miners, or Liverpool, 'by the methods of previous methods were totally inadequate to The most important development which took lace was that of Scargill, Benn, Skinner, thi lack section and others moving far to the left o their previous positions - as has now been seen on the miners, NATO, economic policy, black Liverpool, the witch-hunt, and Ireland.
But the emergence for the first time since the 1920s of a real class struggle left, a left which definitely chose 'which side it was on' as Ton Benn put it, had one immediate, dangerous ef fect. This was that this left was initially isolatec against the combined onslaught of Thatcher and This was why it was so important for the left to reject the ultra-left proposal made to it from some sections of the labour movement that the way forward was to run a candidate against Kin nock for leader of the party. Instead the left had to drive a series of wedges into Kinnock's base on specific issues which corresponded to the inLabour Party conferences on the issue of amnesty. The black section did it well in the defence of the black communities. The Campaign group ol MPs now has an opening to achieve it on opposiThere are other openings coming up. The alliance which figures like Bea Campbell were calling for between women and Kinnock inside the Labour Party is falling down against the reality of Kinnock's real policies on women — as the criticisms Ann Pettifor has been forced to make of Kinnock show. On the issue of Ireland another section of Kinnock's base is almost certainly going to differentiate from him - and Ken Livingstone has made his reappearance supporting a definitely progressive cause by coming out openly against the Anglo-Irish accora. witch-hunt, while the Kinnockite left has com pletely gone along with the enquiry on Liverpool, we will see what happens when Kinnock starts moving for the expulsion of Hatton, Kinnock is taking the party further to the right but some openings are developing.
The two are connected. Because what is realy happening is that the nature of Neil Kinnoc! leadership of the Labour dearer and clearer.
The occassion for the leadership of the by sections previously Livingstone did example, has always and those of the previous Liberal adSawyer or Livingstone went to the Party is becoming