Three thousand say: 'defend unilateralism' | Socialist Action 1983

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: headline found by type size in the OCR geometry (split_tabloid.py); 1-3 of 7; machine-segmented newspaper page; uncorrected Vision OCR.

page 3 of the scan

tion re-affirming after a vote of 14-11:

Only after this decide to support the resolution. THREE THOUSAND people took part in the eve of conference demonstration organised by Brighton CND and Labour CND.

Tony Benn told the demonstrators that some people might wonder why a CND demonstration was needed at the conference of a unilateralist parly. unt alswer, de sall, was given Dy me meeting of the NEC where support for the TGWU resoluwas only In fact, at the meeting, Neil Kinnock made vigorous efforts to get the resolution remitted.

year's Labour chairperson Sam McCluskie had insisted on a vote did the meeting The problem is that the GWU resolution is in blatant contradiction to the watered down statement on defence in the Campaigning for a Fairer Britain document, which promises not unilateral disarmament but 'putting Polaris into negotiations'. Kinnock is continuing his efforts to get the TGWU resolution remitted.

Benn argued that we should not be dismayed by the arrival of cruise missiles. "Their presence will be the launching pad for our next campaign' he said.

Helen John, a founder of the Greenham Peace camp explained the court Greenham women are bringing government. She called for a final effort to stop disobedience' she argued.

Gavin Strang, secretary of the parliamentary Labour CND, argued strongly against any junking of the party's unilateralism, particularly in relation to Polaris. If we put Polaris into negotiations, he said, we have to allow for the possibility of failure. We should junk Polaris without preconditions.

case which the against the US 'We have no alternative to civil vote for Heffer. Absent comrades Notable among the left-wing who failed to vote for Eric Heffer in the leadership election were Michael Meacher, Tony Banks and Stuart Holland. As we comment in 'the Meacher tactic' article on the fac. ing page, the failure of the left to link the Meacher and Heffer candidacies led to a splitting of left wing vote and put authority in Kinnock's hands to carve up Meacher. These three comrades owe an explanation to the movement of why they failed to

page 4 of the scan

Socialist Action 7 October 1983 Colditz or Alcatraz! THE NATIONAL Abortion Campaign conference, meeting in London last weekend, ended in a split in the movement. with the task of resolving a long-running debate on whether NAC should retain its character as a campaign prioritising abortion or reproductive rights campaign.

ANN POTTER, a member of the outgoing steering committee of NAC and its Trade Union Liaison Committee, explains what happened. The annual conference was faced dissolve into PERU