LAST WEEK'S Tribune marked an important turn for that paper one whose potential significance was well clarified by the publicity it received in the press or the last five years Tribune has been to the forefront of what the press chose to call the 'Bennite' left in the Labour Party. Under the editorship of Chris Muliin Tribune became the chief open supporter of Tony Benn in the Labour Party faced a vicious legal attack headed by John Silkin in the same period. But last week's Tribune embarked on a new course although whether it can be carried through time will tell.
The front page editorial of Tribune went out of its way to attack those who made 'irresponsible' calls for a general strike. The target of this attack was not the Marxist left in the Labour Party but Tony Benn, Dennis Skinner, and others associated with active support for the miners who have raised this issue.
Tribune's article also went on to attack making obeying the law a dividing line for those engaged in the fight against rate capping -though there were any way to fight the cuts within the law.
Tribune's article in fact echoed almost exactty a similar piece written in the New Statesman before Christmas by Peter Hain of the Labour Coordinating Committee. This proposed that Michael Mencher. David Blunkett, Tom Sawyer should offer Neil Kinnock an alternative 'centre/left' bloc on Labour's NEC to the centre/right bloc that Kinnock has been pursuing. Michael Meacher, David Blunkett, Tom Sawyer are exactly those who are reported by the press to be behind Tribune's new initiative.
Naturally Tribune made some suggestions for this proposed new bloc: The first was that Neil Kinnock should abandon the drive to push one vote through the Salty vit reselection. The second was that the proposed new witch hunt against Militant and others in the party should be stopped.
David Blunkett attempted to implement this nevi policy by deleting any reference to vestigating Militant in the terms of reference for the new committee to draw up the statement or Kinnock's version of 'democratic socialism'. Kinnock's supporters made it clear however that there is going to be no drawing back on 'one person one vote or on the witch hunt.
What in fact Tribune proposes is a second Bishops Stortford. A situation where the left agrees not to fight back and the right wing mounts its attack - including in the election campaign itself. That road led to the disaster of June 1983 itself — a vote that would have beer Benn.
In fact Tribune, not to mention Hain, completely fails to outline Kinnock's real position.
Veil Kinnock's politics are those of the centre right bloc - that is what makes them distinctive. The 'dream ticket' of Kinnock/Hattersley is just the continuation of the old ticket of Foot/ Healey that Kinnock ensured remained in place during the 1981 deputy leadership campaign.
More important however is Tribune's whole concept of Division is of course to be avoided where possible. Those who artificially create divisions are idiots. But the precondition for unity is that Labour supports those who are in struggle and those who built it.
Furthermore Kinnock's road is not even a path to winning the next election but an attack such hopes. Winning the next depends not on "image', tricks and manoeuvres but Labour's supporters winning the real fights which confront them. Winning the miners' strike, winning the struggle to defend local government, winning the fight on nuclear weapons. A 'unity' with Neil Kinnock that means sabotaging those struggles is the unity of the graveyard. Also the best way for Labour to lose the election.
Tribune's new course is not a way of advance for the left. It is simply an invitation for more 4.
people to become puppets of Kinnock in the way This record prior to the last prepared him for his present role as the 'human face of Denis Healey'. 1984 BEGAN WITH the majority of the TUC much less consistent than
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far higher if Neil Kinnock had not delivered the deputy leadership to Denis Healey against Tony