FOR ALMOST a year now the miners' strike has dominated the whole labour movement. In the Labour Party we have seen an increasing differentiation between the majority of party activists -prepared to stand alongside the miners in solidarity committees, on picket lines, and on demonstrations — and Neil Kinnock and his supporters whose emphasis on constitutionalism has led them deeper and deeper into the camp of the right.
During this struggle the leadership of Arthur Scargill has shown the left a real alternative to the parliamentary cretinism of Neil Kinnock and his ilk:
, alternative which is, in the words of Scargill himself: 'a leadership that's prepared to stand up and fight.
This divide has found its way into Labour's parliamentary benches in the form of those Campaign Group MPs who are increasingly speaking out in sapport of the miners, against the "conventions of the House' and against the wishes of the Labour leadership.
This kind of action is Scargillism in parliament. The Campaign Group represents in embryo the sort of party leadership the left has fought for.
The Labour left must consolidate these lessons of the miners' strike, and plan a strategy to carry though trace lessons in a consistent and thorough-going way, into all areas of struggle.
The white, middle-class, male, 'conservative' hold over the PLP has begun to be broken. Target Labour Government conference is an opportunity to begin this debate.
THURSDAY before last saw the Campaign Group members who'd been supGOAL DOLE COAL NOT _DOLE NO PIT LIVERPE ok thc sponsoring and organising a series of