NO ON 26 MARCH the Labour Party NEC will launch its serious witch hunt for thirty years. The Kinnock leadership of the party, elected on proud boasts of modernising the party and providing democratic leadership, will be attacking inner on a scale which Wilson and Callaghan never even attempted Neil Kinnock in fact is going right back to the days of Gaitskell by reintroducing the proschiocu organisations. No one reading the 'majority report' to the NEC can have any doubt that the sole accusation against those who are threatened with disciplinary action is that they port the Militant newspaper.
We are in reality now mougal connor retroduced mn unc party. Militant cannot be sold at party meetings unlike the Sun, most News of the World, Daily Mirror, or Many other paper that openly attacks the labour movement or firmly supports the right wing on every issue! All the attacks on the 'organisation' and fund raising of Militant are a fake. Everyone knows that various right wing organisations, and right wing journals read within the party, nave been tinanced bv capitalist organisation from the CIA downwards. And une key lishing capitalist papers is advertising - withholding advertising from the left wing papers has for this entire century been one of the ways used by firms to kill the left wing press.
But whereas it is OK to be financsup- ed by the CIA, or to run a journal financed by capitalist advertising, it is having unacceptable to run a paper financed by ordinary party members! What a scale of values! Times, Kinnock and the right wing for this purge? None. There has been endless talk of 'Labour's missing millions' and how the left looses the party votes. But what is the truth?
ty years, when Labour has been loos ing votes hand over fist, the party has been led continuously by the right -and is again under Kinnock. To blame every those who never had power, and to excuse those who held it continuous.
I0 DuD- ly, is the oldest trick in the book. It is on a par with those who blame the problems of the British economy on its workers, who have never held power, and not on those who own the entire thing and have run it in their own interests.
tion? In 1974 after two miners strikes and when Labour had its most left And what political authority has wing practical When The record is that for the last thirWhen did Labour last win an elecprogramme was Labour HOOVEN popular and ahead in the opinion polls? In 1979-81 when the constitutiona reforms within the party were going through and the Bennite left within the party was at its peak.
Left wing policies did not bother the voters then. It was the offensive of the right wing after 1981, including the SDP split, which plunged Labour into unpopularity - just as it was the right wing policies of 1974-79 that took Labour from electoral victory to the catastrophe of 1979.
The record is that the Kinnock leadership has been a total failure even in the most simple electoral terms. After rapidly recovering to 35 per cent after the electoral defeat of and 35 per cent is still an historically abysmally low level has made progress whatever. All the shift in votes has been between the Alliance and the Tories. None has gone to Labour Kinnock's attacks on the Tories, as i now openly discussed, are a tota failure. His performance UTC Westland was a disaster Having failed to take the parts forward Kinnock is now turning to at tack those who have attempted to de fend the interests of the working clas labour movement. The witch hunt is a total sideshow put on for th benefit of a Tory press that would sti not call for a vote for Labour i everyone to the left of Dennis Healey were expelled.
What is needed is unity against th Tories. Not this charade on the NEC The entire party must rally to support those who are being threatened in Liverpool, and who next week will be dragged before the worst kangaror court ever seen in the history of the Laboar Party.
ACTION Socialist Action 21 March 1986
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