LAST TUESDAY the Tories issued the most election manifesto put forward by any major party this century. It promised:
• to end council breaking up existing estates and, in practice, prevent councils building new homes; • to break up the state education system by allowing the best schools to uclare UD from the local system and become private; • to consondate exisung grammar schools;
benefit for those under 18; • to sell off the remaining nationalised industries reactionary Lax Dy: these end government. • to housing by majority voted in favour;
'eliminate for ever' this country.
unemployment by the Labour leadership. ticular electricity and water; • to replace rates on propertv bi a regressive and reactionary poll in the seventeenth century;
and other means to any effective powers of local introduce a scabs charter which will allow people to refuse to participate in a strike even if the • throughout its 77 pages to put forward a programme that would socialism in This manifesto sets the agenda for what this election is about. lt is not about the manifesto produced - which is more right wing than even the worst expectation of many party members. It policies of an Alliance whose sole real demand is that Thatcherism ceases to put forward so brazenly its brutality -and whose leaders have declared, in advance, their form a coalition even with Thatcher.
What this election is about is a government which is setting out to demolish every progressive gain the labour movement has made and which has, in this manifesto, announced this more openly than ever before.
The task of the labour movement in the next three weeks is simSDP-Liberal Labour government.
willingness to would do. It means then in even doorsten portunity then buy the manifesto and read it. ple. It is to stop that government, and its policies, in the only way that can be achieved on 1l June -by voting Labour and electing a That doesn't mean letting up the fight against Neil Kinnock, his policies, and what he has done. It doesn't mean having any illusions about what a Labour government simple thing. Getting out every Labour vote on 11 June. Between now and struggle, on every every persuading people ma on polling day they have the opto turn oul the mosi reactionary government this century. If you don't understand why
Socialist Action 22 May 1987 ACTiON SOCiAlist