creating the most unified agenda for its left since the late 1970s and the unity achieved around miners O'NEILL reports.
IT is not enough for the Tory party to lose the next election. he Labour Party has to win it. In a three party electoral system the two are not the same thing.
To be successful Labour has to expresent acHe Tories and drive back the Alliance. To achieve that Labour has to deliver real better life, for represents and who are its supporters.
But this is exactly what Labour has failed to do. Each episode in the Tories recent problems was not used to drive forward Labour's positions, and adopt policies would solve the problems revealed, but to hold back that advance.
The Westland affair produced no Labour campaign for the removal of Thatcher and was a wasted opportunity. The air raid on Libya from US bases in Britain provoked no Labour camaign for the removal of all US bases.
he Chernobyl disaster saw ingham and Kinnock way out of line with public opinion, and Labour conference resolutions, in refusing to call for scrapping nuclear power altogether.
The result is that Labour has been drifting to the right and to a potential disaster. Labour's vote, and position in opinion polls, has been at around 37-38 per cent — marginally less than the vote needed to win an absolute manonty at a general election. his means most probably that Labour would not win a majority at a general election would right wing policies, demoralise its supporters, Condose debacle of the type of 1974-79.
Everyone knows, also, what is the alternative being canvassed by some forces inside the party to this course.
Scale mars alisallul REDMOND government.
Kinnock fight for such a majority crisis or une ject. would LIONE potential ing communities, munities.
these has attacked. . But has not these demands. strong social forces.
Cunntional' secure remove the democratic party, win a narrow wese cerraras crushed, by Kinnock.
ty. it is on these the Labour left, must base itself. This process would lead to an even of Labour, well as any radical policies, and would lead to a still greater demoralisation.
The alternative, obviously, is to go out to build an alternative socialist majority to any deal with the Alliance or to the narrow base of a right wing Labour and Hattersley will not because it would involve leading the Labour Party on the basis of precisely the radical policies which they most violently realso mean basing Labour's advance on the social forces most committed to fighting the Tories — those fighting in the unions, the minthe black Cull the cities, the anti-imperialist campaigns against US bases and British support for apartheid, the movement to free and unify Ireland. Among these issues are forces that do constitute the majority of society. But are exactly the issues Neil Kinnock has attempted to head off, and what Nel Kinnock been able to do however break up the forces that are fighting for They are based on too This is what is new about the situation in the left. There is increasingly developing a left which is not 'opposiwhich does not start off by what it is against in the party, but which knows what it is positively fighting for.
liberation, eradicate racism, to defend the mining communities. to reunity reand and British, to defend Nicaragua, to end apartheid, to secure the withdrawal of US bases, to create a to end unemployment, are among the most important of The organisations supporting these demands have not been bought off, or They are fighting for a majority in the party and in socieforces. and these demands, that the Labour Party, and the 1983 general election dovetailed with this explosion of black youth to create the basis for the Labour Party Black Section - the most developed national black organisation in British • On 9 April 1981 Bobby Sands, on hunger strike in the H blocks, was elected member of parliament for Fermanagh and South Tyrone with 30,492 votes. On 5 May 1981 Bobby Sands MP starved to death. He was followed by nine other martyrs. Over 100,000 people marched at Bobby Sands funeral -equivalent of a march of two The hunger strike transformed the Irish national liberation struggle. courage of the hunger strikers created a 32 county struggle. In the Labour Party against Labour Party's support for Thatcher against the hunger strikers resulted in the development of the Labour Committee on Ireland and the opening of a dialogue with Sinn Fein.
In Ireland the hunger strike propelled Gerry Adams supporters into the leadership of Sinn Fein.
• In May 1981 Labour won the GLC election and Ken Livingstone became Hauzul aull. the GLC'S dialogue with SinnFein and a wave of struggle by left Labour local authorities against Tory attacks on jobs, services, and democracy. A swilling out of corlocal Labour mafias was deepened. The GLC itself was the most popular exercise in local government ever staged by the Labour Party -