of the executive of Women's Action abour Left Liaison. (Middle) Picket of *gainst strip-searches. (Bottom) Mare air of the Labour Party Black Section al the working class is simply utopian. It won't work.
This also helps define distinguishing features of the LLL and the organisations within it. None of the campaigns in the LLL are content to remain simply in the constituenparties. The most aigns in the LLL are the Campaign t abour Party Democracy (CLPD), tł Women's Action Committee (WAC), the Labour Party Black Section and a number of Labour's most important anti-imperialist campaigns — such as the Labour Committee on Ireland and Labour CND. campaigns, Left support.
Labour Party Black Section, The vanguard of their willi of Ireland.
their SCIOUS unions.
WAC naturally trade unionists who are women -two thirds who are men. tion seeks organisation throughout movement it also uses this to fight against trade unionists wno are wnite. ther two unions, UCATT, ACTT, this year.
unions with success. Labour tire labour movement.
palens in tional But and its social base.
HOL many other social forces.
one of the knit tionally powerful camsocialism.
power of the 'minorities'.
Other anti-imperialist workers, with the partial exception of the Central America Labour Group, tionally do not yet see the need to participate in Liaison although hopefully that will change as it acquires Organisations such as WAC and the For the Labour Committee on Ireland, are not fighting for narrow sectional national interests of British white male workers.
SUDDUlL all ing members in the labour movement, black members of the labour movement movement and those active on the issue The same principle applies for campigns such as Labour CND or the Labour Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Rights. But all these campaigns are marked not only by their orientation in- ment. to the organisations of the CLPs but by support in the seeks to have its crucial base among the one third of - but 11 also seeks to change the positions of the The Black Sec. spread black selfthe - including the unions and to have its base in the black community and among black workers. But something racism among the ninety per cent of tremely A serious fight in the unions has a powerful base among the forty per cent tie bet of union members who are women or politics. black. But it also involves a fundamental fight among the positions of the sixty per cent who are white and male.
The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy has among the strongest trade union links or any campaign In the party. The Women's Action Committee has been progressively winning trade union support — gaining a furNUR to support its demands this year and only narrowly losing even in John Golding's NCU. The Labour Party Black Section won the first major union, the NUM, to support it in 1984. It won the vote of the NUR and NUPE last year, and it has received its first supporting amendment from a union, The Labour Committee on Ireland has been intensifying its work in the part of CND, has traditional links with the unions. A key part of the power of the campaigns in the LLL is therefore that they are organising across the enThis gives a ker strength to these campaigns and the LLL as a whole. It also means the camthe LLL are progressively touching the key centres of organisapower in the Labour Party. organisations, alliances, involved in the LLL show the way that Labour must expand its entire traditional understanding of politics just based on trade union solidarity of the traditional type. The miners strike allied a key union, and other unions supporting it, with women ibside and outside the working class, miah the ber social forces. in short it and with enormously expanded the alliances of the labour movement. That is exactly he strategic concept of the LLL Labour's traditiona working class base with an enormous of its social alliances nainternationally, this in a coherent strategy for It is this strategy which creates the LLL'S policy.
ridiculous to claim, as do the Labour right, that this represents an orientation women, white male the black community, those fighting for freedom and socialism nainternationally, people are not a minority. They con stitute a majority of society. Out of these Labour can create a real alliance for socialism in Britain which is a majority in society. The strategy the LIL is putting forward is to create a potentially hegemonic force in society.
This is why the overt break of the LLL with anything remotely resembling the politics of Militant or the MornStar was decisive. Because politics of these currents cut the labour off the decisive alliances which could make it a majority in society — and a left which cannot explain how Labour will ever win a majority in society for socialism is a left which cannot lead the labour moveThe LLL does have a strategy for how to win a majority for the labour movement and for socialism — to te Labour's traditional working class base massive series social alliances, and link that to the key antimperialist struggle that taking olace in the worl . It is by putting forward that strategy the LLL 'breaks the mould' of the previous framework of It is because it understands that Left Liaison represents potentially powerful, that the Labour leadership and press have been giving such attention. The represents a new type of force in British that represents örganised conscious way the nucleus of the type of alliances the miners created British capital, the leadership, never lost a moments sleep over the type of politics represented by the Morning Star or Militant. But the type of politics represented by the LLL, on the contrary, is something the serious indeed.
It is also for this reason that many ohstacles will be out in the wav of the type of politics that the LLL represents. For success by the LLL, and Campaign Forum, wing of the British labour movement. exe When it reported the creation of the LLL the New Statesman reported as LLL purely token, and deeply significant the fact that Labour Left Liaison had proposed as its joint chairs representatives of the Labour Party Black Section and the Women's Action CommitIt wa. sion. But it was not in any way token.
The decision to propose that WAC and the Black Section take the chair of a labour movement organisation, the very LLL, symbolised, and determined, its Vladimir Derer, secretary of CLPD and secretary of Labour Left Liaison ing class. ty, and the key would reshape the entire left national a deeply significant deciLabour left.
CLOSURES
entire orientation. It meant embarking on a strategic line whose absolute core was to tie together the white male work women, the black communianti-imperialist campaigns in the party and to tie these together in the organised labour movement. Proposing to make WAC and the Black Section joint chairs meant that the entry ticket to that left was support for the demands of the Women's Action Committee, and the Labour Party Black Section — as well as crucial interdemands including British withdrawal from Ireland. That is a sea change in the entire orientation of the And it is aiso why Labour Left Liaison is making such a huge impact in the press and Labour party. It genuineis an historical land mark in politics of the left witng of the British labour movement.
Socialist Action 26 Sep 1986
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