THIS YEAR's Labour Chair, Sam McCluskie, caught the mood of the conference in his opening address, and succinctly summed up Ticket' project. The return of the Tories, he said, was our fault'. rad resulted in defeat. "traitor" have been used in this party. That must end at this conference. new leadership and policies'.
- The essence of this line of argument was, of that the Bennite left was responsible for the defeat But counterpoint McCluskie stated: "We didn't lose the dection because of our we didn't campaign for them' — an obVIES SWIDG wing.
McCluskie's ward oy kithock in hrs vard by in his speech later in the day an end to internal bickerthe 'existing policies. But the message as an important twist.
Under the guise of keeping. the eft rhetoric, a real change of being prepared.
Upon arriving in Brighton delegates found that a new statement of party policy has been prepared by the NEC Campaigning for Fairer •Disingenously matin is that *our programme static', NEC have prepared a real shift on the crucial issues of the Common Market and defence.
On the EEC, , under the rubric of 'A socialist voice in Europe the NEC states that 'At the end of (the BeTT parlia. ment) Britain will have been a member of the EEC for 15 years — and this will be erade, the ray our way our ссопоту and our political relations overseas (-). In other words. barring catastrophe we should stay In.
On defence, instead of milateralism, the COCUcit, pledges include Polans in arms negotiathe 'Dream Three years of internal bickering 'Words like "sell out" and We must unite around the tions, calls tor a multilateral freeze and a change in NATO strategy to 'No first use' of nuclear weapons.
The shift on defence strategy was underlined at mcclug the NEC where the TGWU resolution re-attirming the party's unilateralist stance only carried was votes to 11, with Kinnock abstaining.
Michael Meacher - voted for Kinnock not Heffer in leadership election speech to the conference on Sunday afternoon aptly summed up the present situation in the SO far as the ¡caaersno was concernea. There is no way it could be called a right wing speech &. that - indeed it was brimming with left wing rhetoric. The need to attack unemployment the danger of nuclear war were central themes, as was the obligatory quote from Nye •Bevan.
DUL the Cole of the speech was that the kind of election defeat suffered by last must never allowed again. The internal fighting has to stop and the left has to keep quiet.
The election Kinnock embodies the hopes of many people on the left There is no of tne barty way, given the left shift of the past three years, that an open right winger could have won the leadership. But to unify the Kinnock and his Labour Co-ordinating Committee team preparing political shift to the right - they gave notice of that Photo: JOHN HARRIS through the document Campaigning for a Fairer If Kinnock really wants unity, then the left has two preconditions. The first is there are no furthe witch hunts, second that there are no turther retreats on ропсу. Neither of these preconditions seem likely to be met.
OVER 300 people attended a Labour Briefing meeting at the Brighton conelection victory. of the contributions to the discussion. ference to discuss the lessons of Kinnock's We reproduce below two Socialist Action 7Octot:"%