THE FOUR weeks since the end of the miners' strike has seen a rapid process of recomposition witlen the labour movement as the lessons of the strike are driven home.
The overwhelming shift has been the move of the Kinnockites — and their allies in the Communist Party isolate those who led the miners' their allies.
The bourgeoisie, Neil Kinnock, and the Communist Party in this are working as a division of labour in the drive to break every force within bourgeois obensive. This means first and bourgeois offensive. foremost against the Scargill wing of the NUM. But after this is the attempt to isolate those who want to fight in local government, to attack the LPYS, and to try to break up those sections of the Labour Party that stood intransigently with the miners, The result has been seen not only in Kinnock's moves but in a shift to the right by exsections of the Labour left - symbolised by the shift of Ken Livingstone in London. Others have deepened their course of radicalisation. result is an increasing polarisation in the move ment. The shifts are evident. • The GLC, the largest local authority in the country, buckled under when it came to the crunch and refused to break Jenkins law. The move to do this was led by Ken Livingstone who has the GLC to exclude the left and bring the right and centre into key roles. • Decisions by other councils on 7 March ducked the issue by saying it was impossible as yet to make a rate. reruse to set a rate. left, led by the Communist Party, have now proposed the tactic of a work-in instead of strikes to top cuts in jobs and service • Georg Bolton, Communist president of the Scottish NUM, has called for lif ing the national overtime ban.
The result will be completely predictable. No jobs were saved in Steel by the policy of retreat and moving to the right headed up by the Communist Party and Labour right. be saved by these means either. Those such as George Bolton, Livingstone, Marxism Today, or Kinnock who advise retreat simply forces disorganising and demobilising struggle. A Kinnock government, with or without a coalition with the Alliance, saster for the Labour movement opening up r greater demoralisation even than in 197 it is from this situation that shifting alliances within the labour movement are necessary. It is not possible to unite those who do not wish to fight with those who do. That is the lesson both of the miners' strike and the local government strune Bennite left that crystalised around internal reforms in the Labour Party in the 1970s has been tested in the heat of the class struggle over the last 12 months.
Scargill, Dennis Skinner, and a whole part of the rank and file of the labour movement have passed that test and moved to the left - to real involvement in the class struggle. Others have failed that test and are now being driven to the right — as the purge which is beginning in the GLC shows.
The Kinnockites are going on the offensive against those who have moved left. An alliance of those willing to fight the Tories must be consolidated and organised if this offensive is to be effectively countered.
Editor: ALAN FREEMAN Published weekly except two weeks in August and the last week of December.
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- to attempt to means The since purged the chief committees of We have yet to see who actually will local government unions sections of the British Leyland or British No local government services will become would be an historical Tony Benn, Arthur