armoured landrovers, with another parked near the burial plot and a massive RUC presence.
It tooK seven hours, under constant RUC harassment to escort the coffin from the Marle home to the burial plot. All along ine roule thousanas of residents of Belfast turnlol ditt latest degrading harassment of the nationalist people of the North of Ireland.
The explosion of anger at the treatment OI the Marley family follows gruesome KUC campaign of harassment at republican funerals which has steadily built up over a period of three years Between December 1983 and 7 April this year the RUC attacked 25 funerals.
This included batoning the firing plastic bullets them, brutal police charges in order to seize the tricolours draping coffins and so on.
Most recently the funeral of Cerard ogue ir Derry City, on 23 March this vear was accompanied by a huge RUC force including 75 armoured lan drovers and two helicopters hovering overhead.
Appeals by the families of the dead republicans to the catholic hierarchy I01 support in their efforts to their dead in peace and dignity have elicited no parliament. below.
Niall Donnelly of Sinn Fein's Department, attended the conference and addressed Ine section on trade unions hell He Saturday 4th. shared the plat form at Manchester Town Hall with Bill Ethrington (president of the Durham Mechanics, National of Mineworkers), Alison Clarke Women Sean Redmond Unionists tor irish Unitv and Independence).
Donnelly praised the work the Labour Committee on Ireland has done to raise the issue of Ireland in the British Labour ment. This work must continue, , he said:
"The ultimate aim is to seek a position where the Labour Party has adopted as policy a commitment to withdraw its political and military presence from the Six Counties. THE 9 APRIL issues of An Phoblacht, the newspaper reflecting the views of Sinn Fein in Ireland, reported the annual general meeting of the Committee on Ireland (LCI), It outlined clearly Sinn Fein's support for the demand of British withdrawal from Ireland during the lifetime of one We print Sinn Fein's article complete 'Such a policy should include a time-scale which should be short as 1s practical and should certainly be such as to allow withdrawal completed within the lifetime the goverl ment.' Neill Donnelly describthe 'highly constructive', particularly regarding resolu tions to highlight job Oscanao mote the 'MacBride Principles' fair employ01l ment.
Emergency motions were adopted, COH. demning the Labour Parts sookespersor on cial Stuart Bell for his that could do a deal with the unionists in return for supand another stating JuLL that membership of the Orange Order not compatible with membership of the Labour Party. carries news, documents class movements from around the world and is indispensable reading for all socialists in-depth articles on the i uposav strike wave and the Braziliam International Viewpoint is available from most left bookshops, or by post from Other Books. International Viewpoint PO Box 50, London Ni 2XP Subscription rates 6 months, £9.50 (120FF): 1 year £18.00 (200FF)
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breaks cover! LAST WEEK was an important one for the clarification of politics. The major forces of the right: stopped beating around the bush and openly announced what they have politically preparing for years - the demand Labour should link up with the SDP-Liberal Alliance first in 'tactical voting' and then in a possible coalition government.
After four years of coyly trying to deny it, while unmistakeably stating its real positions, Marxism Today called for voting in the next general election for Alance cancidales as wel as Ladour. Marxism Today's front page message from Eric Hobsbawm was: There is only one way of defeating the Thatcher government. It is by voting for the candidate who is best placed to keep out the Hobsbawm spelt out message equally clearly: 'There is only one logical conclusion... constituency, to vote for the candidate who offers the best chance of beating the Tories, whether Labour or Alliance.' To back that up the pages of Marxism Today were opened up to Martin Kettle, a leader writer for the Guardian. His article was introduced. by the Marxism Today editor as "The Alliance is seen as untouchable by many on the left. Martin Kettle suggests that, on the contrary, it must be seen as part of the left.?
Attempting to explain why the pro-nuclear weapons, anti-trade Alliance could be considered part of the left' Kettle claimed: "The unions remain the basic divide between Labour and Aliances cultures (his is as true ot traditional Liberalism SDP). The SDP's hatred of the unions is a very big obstacle here, partly as a symbolic issue (sic) but also because the Alliance is now committed to a system of elections balloting framework of industrial law which falls little short of the recent Conservative green paper.' Kettle did not mention Owen's vitriolic campaign against the unions, and the faet that the Alliance has every, piece legislation introduced by the Thatcher government.
Policies On nuclear weapons Kettle was clear in strongly supporting current Labour front bench moves to abandon unilateral nuclear disarmament: 'Labour's policy is non-nuclear. The Alliance's is equally clearly nuclear. These contrasts are, however, becoming increasingly blurred by the Labour Party as the general election nears and its policy is perceived as unpopular.' Two days after Marxism Today appeared the New Statesman came out both with a call for tactical voting and with a front cover entitled 'The women of the SDP — decent caring and nice.' This advertised a long article on women and the SDP by Sarah Benton which was introduced as: 'Sarah Benton reports on the women of the SDP and finds them with a greater power in their party than they could have hoped for in any other.
The New Statesman also qualitatively deepened its coverage of the campaign TOr 'tactical voting'. It carried a list of 225 seats which were described as 'constituencies vulnerable to tactical voting'. The New Statesman also carried an article by Robin Cook MP advocating the introduction of the Alternative vote system in elections — that is an electoral system where voters number parties in order of preference.
The article urging votes for Alliance candidates in over 70 constituencies was simply entitled "Tactical voting, a tactic whose time has come. not signed indicating editorial apWhile it won't announce it yet Vival. there is no doubt that the New Statesman will call for tactical voting in the general as indeed it did in 1983.
The Guardian, on the same day the New Statesman appeared, quivocable in advocating the same line. Its editorial on 16 April simply stated: 'Tactical voting now appears not just as one way of defeating the Conservatives at the coming election way."
The most important statement of all however was from Gavin Laird, general secretary of the AEU. On 13 April, during the AEU national committee, Laird appeared on television to argue that Socialist Action 24 April 1987 British been the It is, in every Alliance in a hung parliament.
agreement.
agreements with the Alliance as it is of the now being to of what is going on.
montics. it was the development tions for the labour movement.
Labour governments.
the years inan 44 per cent.
jority, never less than labourism' there of attracting the every general election 1974, the heads of wonici.
The article was among women voters.
male buttressed by a single movement.
Was unemachine for delivering votes • Dil as uic oliv sections of the but least everyone.
LAST WEEK the Labour right, and its ideological advisers, decided to kick away the camouflage and come out with their real political orientation — one that so far they had only dared to present by suggestion and hints. In what was obLabour should consider a deal with the Alliance following the general election. He said, 'We want a Labour government' but that if this was not achieved crisis then a deal should be done with the 'If it means we have to trim our sails to ensure we don't have certain molcies. Di ed all means we should go ahead' to get an In short politics previousiy only hinted at - those of tactical voting and spelt out openly mainstream right wing Labour thinking. It is absolutely crucial that the left, which has consistently underestimated this question, realises the significance The creation of the SDP, and the formation of the SDP-Liberal Alliance, was not a short term shift in British Llust Britisd bourgeois sales. politics since the disintegration of the Liberal Party in World War I. As such it was going to have enormous implicathe historic perspective of the British labour movement was conceived as the steady advance towards the creation ot matonty These would legislate social reforms or, in more left time wing versions, achieve socialism itself. This perspective seemed realisable in 1945-1979 wieu secured as much as 49 per cent of the vote and never, until 1974, secured less That high vote, approaching a mathe Labour Was secured by unity around Labour of at taking in both its most privileged and least paid sections. From 1945 to 1966 57 per cent of the manual working class, and in 1966 as high as 69 per cent, voted Labour.
Even in this period of the 'zenith of was still weakness in Labour's support. Labour failed to put forward policies capable support of women.
Whereas Labour deteated. or ecualled. the Tories in the vote among men in 1983.
1945 Tories appealed over the male manual workers unity The Conservatives secured 16 years of office between 1951 and 1974 exclusively on the basis of their support The The bloc of the great majority of the working around Labour, with the perspective of a reformist majority Labour government, was united The entire 0I0C while reformist to the core, was at least this period a relatively efficient The material basis of this entire development was the ability of British imperialism to make concessions to all working naturally far larger concessions to the better paid than the most oppressed, This unity was first weakened and viously a concerted move Marxism Today the New Statesman, and the Guardian all carried statements and editorials officially endorsing tactical voting and proclaiming the SDP-Liberal Alliance to be part of 'the left'. Much more significantly then smashed by first the economic problems of British imperialism from crisis t-09 19309h en Wards cute onwards. governments of 1964-70 and 1974-79, above all through their incomes policies and also their cuts, turnround labourism's own base. literally millions of the best paid and skilled workers, above all Worken deserted Labour. support among the manual class fell from 69 per cent in 1966 to 42 per cent in 1983.
It was this division in the working class Thatcher set out in every way exacerbate. She deepened income differentials. She consciously strengthened the economic position of the bes paid sections of the working class through subsidised council house sales and promoting tax subsidised share Realities Thatcher has • allowed wages of a far more rapidly than the rate of inflation - while creating a growing pool of unemployed, of temporary, and of part workers. This the reflection of the economy of 'core' and "periphery' which Thatcher's policies were aimed to promote in individual industries.
Thatcher's government has conTimes this week accurately called the I'm all right folk'. ine alm was lo deepen the divisions in the movement.
The overall beneficiary of that process was capital. But in party terms, paradoxically, the gainer was not the Tory party. So deep is the anti-Tory tradition in the working class that not even Thatcher's policy of bribes, made possible by North Sea Oil, has been able to win any serious section of the working class to support for the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party's vote, already lov in historical terms at 44 per cent in 1979, fell by 700,000 in 1983. Since then few opinion polls have seen the Tories even regain their level of The real beneficiaries of Thatcher's successful drive to split the of labourism has been Analice prehension to believe that the Alliance it 1s a complete miscomhas its base in the 'petty-bourgeoisie .
mass base of the Alliance is millions of votes by workers simply white collar workers, although it has widescale support there, but also among manual workers. the Alliance has major support among the most skilled and best paid sections the working class — in particular in the most prosperous areas, the South and South East of Britain.
This is why today we find the leader of what is still a skilled workers based union, the AEU, endorsing what apparently were in origin the views of an intellectual magazine produced by Eurocommunist . Unions such as the AEU, the EETPU, the NCU are precisely those among which Alliance gets support. And they Gavin Laird, general secretary of the AEU, became the first leader of a major union to officially endorse post-election Labour and the Alliance. BRIAN WHITE looks at why the theoretical journal of a Eurocommunist among those which, in a much longer term strategy, it, and the bourgeoisie hope to disengage from Labour and, This is the reality of the situation attacked were never those purely of a group of intellectuals. And 'new realism' never purely a 'trade union' strategy. manual What is involved is the coming together of a whole section of the right wing working trade union bureaucracy based on the best paid and most skilled sections of the working class, coupled with a wing of the parliamentary Labour party who are simply given a theoretical cover by a journal such asict as Marxism Today. It is capital and the Labour right that set the agenda for Marxism Today not the other way round. It merely provides the gloss to give a 'theoretical' rationalisation for what the right wing of the trade union bureaucracy would do But what must be clear is that 'tacAlliance are not going to go away. They profound phenomena whose impact in the labour movement is going to increase, not decrease.
The real strategic fight that is going national to develop in the precisely between the class forces in the labour movement and the 'new realist' right — a right irrevocably wedded to class collaboration in trade unionism and to a political perspective of accommodation with the Alliance.
Anti-Tory The majority of the labour moveis still clinging "labourist' perspective — and will continue to do so for a long time yet. what we are seeing today, and have been since 1979, is precisely the break up of labourism' product is just as logically Gavin Laird, Eric Hammond, and the drive towards coalition government as much as it 1s ANTANY Scargill, Tony Skinner, the demands of the Labour Against Black Section. whole period, unfortunately, that new previous realist right will be a much more powerthe labourism than will the campaien left. produci The arenas in which that fight will take place ground' of the labour movement - the not TGWU, GMBATU, NUPE, and thost areas and unions which form the "soft left', and 'soft right' of movement. It is the fight between the class struggle left, right, for political domination in these areas which will settle the course of the labour movement in ine period.
There should also be no doubt as to the political terrain of that fight. It is the defence and rebuilding of the labour movement. Because schema, imperialism there is, place for the old labourist labour movethe ment - although of course it will take years to arrive at that final historical verging on deal between conclusion.
ideas of "tactical politics.
tions, movement, British wider precisely deep rooted coming years is struggle of workers, support, Ine period the old defended by class But - a break up whose _Renn Dennis Womer prospect of a Pit Closures, or the Labour Indeed for break British gles will be the great 'middle labourism, the labour British and the new realist different type, no e nexi : in the new , and new conditions, of British historically, no rebuilding Party and the right wing of the trade union bureaucracy are conLa common perspective. ERIC HEFFER gives his alternative to the orientation being spelt out by the Labour right. Socialist Action's editorial view p2.
In British imperialism's schema of things there is a role for the EETPU, or for Gavin Laird, or for coalition. There is no placer for a nine million strong trade union movement, and no place for independent class / The bourgeoisie today aims to destroy, or reduce to shadow organisaas NUPE, the or the civil service unions. It seeks to break up the closed shops of the general unions. It seeks to. permanently break Labour's old dom ination of the majority of the working class. A small privileged trade union perhaps only 45 million strong, a Labour Party which can never get into office alone, that is the plan of capital. will use every historical, and every current, weakness of the labour movement to achieve it.
Ant that assault will strikereeks fe than present class struggle left. It will strike the majority of the ranks of thelabour movement those over whom the class struggle left and the new realist right are today fighting Who can best defend the labour movement - who can best defend the unions, who can secure the reduction in the hours of work necessary to reduce unemployment, who can protect the low paid, who can organise the millions part time and temporary who . rebud Labour s who can defend the black trom racist attacks, who can defend the welfare state - will be the force that will win in the struggle in the next Because, increasingly, the labour movement will only be able to be struggle methods Because the Lairds, Hammonds, Marxism Todays, and New Statesmans have literally nothing to offer the great ma jority of the labour movement.
British marxists today have a job imagied renty woeld face. They ase imagined they would face. confronted not with a 'struggle for power, or even with any short term 'struggle for power' They are faced with a long gruelling struggle to defend, and rebuild on a new basis, the labour movement. Marxism is going to become a mass current in movemell through glamorous and exciting strug international developments to propel it forward. Marxism is going to become a it, unlike can begin to defend the movement. That with internationat developments, which can be of a ver will dominate the period of the class struggle The first, most powerful, and inost frightening product of the break up of labourism is the new realist right, tactical voting, and coalitionism - forces seeking to break up the existing labour movement from the right. Its most im portant force for the future is its small marxist current. The fight between thi two, over the terrain of the defence and of the labour 'movem will decide the future of British socie
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