The problem is the whole Labour will be constantly confronted with the sates THE THATCHER government is now running into real trouble. miners' strike is undermining economic strategy. Reagan's policies in the United States have further damaged Thatcher's plans for economic growth and already destroyed Nigel Lawson's 'giveaway' budget. The Ponting affair has lifted one corner of the government's squalid suppression of truth on the Belgrano affair. The rate capping and GLC abolition fights are only just beginning.
has been calculating on destroying Arthur Scargill the forces that support him.
But the truth is that if the strike keeps gong agalisi this background the still deliver uncis call decisive blow to the credibility of the Thatcher government.
But what solutely clear is Kinnock's complete inability to ploit any opening against Thatcher. The miners, supported by the movement, would nave crushed the government.
But Kinnock sabotaged that.
The fight on rate capping could have been a key second front for the fight against the government.
But Kinnock, with John Cunningham, has done his best to head off that fight.
Now the situation has judaes is Above all the length and power of the the government's high interest rate proposals for moved near farce with Kinnock's complete failure over the Ponting trial.
Over the Ponting case the government has been clearly explosed as hiding the truth. The trial brought out into the open some of the reality of the Malvinas war jury simply ignored one of the most openly and blatantly biased summing up ever given by a judge in such a major case.
Yet Kinnock diverted the entire thing into an absurd argument - which he lost whether Thatcher personally had been involved in the deci sion to prosecute Ponting As Dennis Healey once said about someone else, in being able to choose- I mean vet-the membis of a jury if they can't be trusted to -Ah! Another breach of trust.
performance was rather like being savane a she i only people emerge seriously strengthened out of the Ponting were David Owen David Steel, the Alliance. Just compare Arthur Scargill or Tony Benn's defence of the miners, Ken Livingstone's defence of the GLC, with Neil Kinnock's pathetic mess up on even such favourable ground as the Ponting case ingestini the sane giving exactly same message. Last Gallup Poll in the Daily Telegraph Suowel Lilc only half a per cent behind Labour. Both David Owen and David Steel nave higher 'popularity' ratings than Kinnock. While the Tories are slipping in popularity the tionately gaining much more than Labour out of the situation Worse still is the type of thinking going on in right Wills 'centre circles of the Labour Pary. A horrifying example i the piece on the miners strike in the latest issue of New Socialist by Guardian leader-writer Martin Ketwas his bond!
This article repeats the line which Kinnock's sup OUTLCI. have been giving out in the Parliamentary Namely that does not matter and even might be a good thing, miners defeated Because, ding to • Kettle the defea of 1926 led to a new era of 'creative' won the general election of 1929.
Catastrophe The 'small' fact that the electoral victory of 1929 was followed by the catastrophe of the mass unemployment o ine lysus, and by World War Il somehow escapes Kettle and his Kinnockite mentors.
The reality is that the Labour Party today is being led by people who are irresponsible lunatics. Nei Kinnock and his kitchen cabinet may pretend that politics is all about media images and opinion polls But what he is in reality really doing is actively col laborating the unemployment and social deprivation of millions of people. He is also playing a direct role in disorganisPrecisely, young woman! Trust! That's the key word. In my, day a man's word ing the labour movement front the much greater attacks on it which are going to come the left has got to think like the leadership of the entire labour movement. There is possibility of col laborating with Kinnock and his supporters except insofar as they, by accibump path of the class struggle. The lett now set about defining its own priorities and its own agenda in politics The bast rammes the this, miners apart struggle itself, were the way the Camforced in Parliament around the The black section has set a fine example campaigning the Party. It is more of this type of initiative which is required Neil Kinnock is now trying to get three years of unity behind his leadership before he leads us all to disaster at the next elec tion. That really would be the unity of the graveyard.
The left today not merely has the right to act independently and oppose Kinnock. It has the duty to do so. criminals....
Socialist Action 22 February 1985
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PiECE wipe that smirk 1 off your face! It was a disgraceful verdict! judges instructions!
ACTION , of the And what's the point
#872/85 •Cormac If you wish to spout the hypocritical garbage of high-placed privileged
You take my meaning, I trust.