SINCE THE election unity on the left has become a popular, That can only be understood in terms of the three currents which today exist in the Labour movement -against the Thatcher government.
Neil Kinnock intends to take the Labour Party far to the right of anything which most people imgoined when he was elected party leader. more, he is committed to a bloc with a right wing This year's TUC congress and Labour Party conference have defined politically, and industrially, more clearly than ever before. At the TUC it voted for no-strike deals. At the Labour Party conference it will vote for proportional representation - that is, in practice, for a coalition with the Liberals.
The Kinnockite majority of the party is verbally against such policies of the new realist right. But it is totally paralysed from fighting against them, among bloc with this right in running the party. Thus Ron Todd argued against no-strike deals at the TUC which put off the whole matter. unions, and soft left, reject a coalition with the Liberals but adopt policies which, as Tony Benn has rightly put it, "ideological coalitionism'. Or put more precisely which make labour's distinguishable from the Alliance. A precondition for a serious fight against the right's policies is breaking off the bloc with it in running the party.
That leaves the position of the 'hard left'. This will, as its main task, be waging the fight against the Tory government. But the hard left is also a minority inside the labour movement. It cannot lead it in its own right at present. The demand must be that the soft left joins with the hard left in the fight against the Thatcher government — not in order to 'expose' the soft left but in order to actually wage the struggle against Thatcher. That, inevitably, means the soft left breaking off its bloc with the right — not as an end in itself but because the right has not the slightest intention of fighting against Thatcher.
That is what the slogan 'unity on the left' means concretely today. That is why it is a correct slogan. It serves the interests of both the labour movement and the left the two must be the same.
decisive, slogan.
and how they interrelate in the fight Kven that right wing both other reasons, precisely because it is in a — and then accepted an 'investigation' The Kinnockite amount in practice to policies increasinov in. provided an inkling of what a new merged party with the Social Democrats will be like: it will Owenite party without Dr Owen ...
Oakley went on: he week CalliC Richard of advisors, argued that It is Owen's the of recent years.
'A been apSteel a few around him were to be makers sail the what kind partsocial the Democrats likely been the HarLiberal (Simon)
val ly cancroft, Paddy Ashdown, ( the They see wider They talk not get mixed with the in their bones The centre of gravity LICW DalLy of That, Owen's legacy.' not Owen who has produced this 'shift' in the Liberal be an Owen was simply the occasion which allowed the real nature of the ineras to come our The Liberal Party was 1960s by consciously taking a more left wing tactical line on a series of issus than the Labour Party. It stressed democratic rights. social reform, loca government and interna tional issues against the wing bureaucratic leadership of the Labour Issues Steel A00 -tion law Peter of the played a the against The Liberals as a tactic within a which reThe kes It formanifesto no matter what conDefence of democratic most defence democratic WELC allal" chy. Liberal ally bull the leader:
therefore 1C V was. in just much in 'right wing' as will be the But ore. cosmetic change of some signiticance Steel intends to rty. influence tne Late the of real Steel made that road cleal Harrogate Naturally there was no talk of a pact with Labour - at present Steel is concerned win UMCI many waverers from the Owenite camp of the SDP as possible. But what Steel did specifically rule out was an agreement. with Thatcher.
there is possibility whatever of the Liberals winning a majori tv. and as the not to become non-Thatcherit that only leaves Labour as a potential coalition ner. What Steel is doing by crushing the so called Liberal 'radicals', is making sure that the merged an absolutely reliable prop to ensure that all interests of capital are safeguarded in a coalition will Labour What is humorous is that his operation is being regarded by some, notably the Communist Party, as a British politics into a 'Cen tre-right' 'centre-left' (the Liberals). Both fragments of the securing the same goals with owenism with other chi. other There is no other ference between them.
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Capital investment mality of services and apple pie, the Liberal assembly in Harrogate has