Tony Benn on socialist policies; Ken Livingstone on left unity; support the miners; the Liberals — 'Owenism without Owen' THIS YEAR's Labour Party conference is almost certain to take the Party in exactly the wrong direction.
What is needed is drawing up plans of four years of resistance to the Thatcher government.
This is not just what is needed to defend working people and their families, it is also what is required for Labour the next election.
In four years time it won't be how slick is Labour's television broadcasts, or whether its leaflets are printed in colour or not, that will determine whether Labour wins. It will be how far the trade unions have advanced, how far local government has been defended, how far the struggle internationally has advanced.
Labour lost the last election when the miners strike was defeated - and Neil Kinnock helped sign Labour's death warrant for the election when he failed to support the strike. If the miners had won Thatcher would have lost the election. Because the TUC let the miners be defeated Labour went down to defeat. If Labour loses the fights outside parliament then it will lose the next election as well.
Top of the list at Labour Party conference should therefore be how Labour defends the unions and Labour councils under attack — starting by supporting the miners overtime ban. Second should be support for the liberation strug gle in South Africa. The conference should discuss defending women and the black communities. Support for peace in Central America, and a ringing condemnation of Reagan's policies of supporting the contras, should be a next item on the agenda. The discussion should continue on how to get Britain out of Ireland. A central feature of domestic policy should be to use the chaos in the SDP to appeal to voters who misguidedly voted for it at the last election to return to Labour.
But what will we, in fact, get from the party leadership? First and foremost an attack on hard won democratic rights in the party under the Labour conference special: guise of 'one member one vote - a move to break any accountability of MPs to their local Labour Parties and to allow Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch to play a decisive role in Labour Party selection procedures Second, there will be no mention of those fights actually taking place against the Tories. Arthur scargill and ine miners will be wreated as al embarassing irrelevance at best, and at worst as a threat, to Labour's attempt to rebuild its support. ' Any council attempting to defend services would be condemned as looney left".
Third instead of discrediting, ridiculing and weakening the Alliance the right wing — led by Eric Hammond, Gavin Laird and members of the Fabian Society - will be seeking to rescue that anti-Labour outfit by voting for proportional representation and discussing in the corridors Lib-Lab pacts.
We could go on. But the issue is not what to denounce but what to do about it.
Here there is no doubt. The most crucial issue
Socialist Action ACTiON SOCiAlist 25 Sept 1987 THE TIMES political editor, Robin Oakley, spelt out the significance of last week's Liberal Party conference in Harrogate perfectly: about freedom, justice, 'Amid the cliches respect for the individual