THE LABOUR Socialists' annual conference meets in Blackpool over Easter. It will be dominated by the impact of the 12 month struggle of the miners. The strike was one of the most powerful mobilisations of youth ever seen in As Arthur Scargill put it: 'How many times have we heard the saying "young people today are not like their foretathers. i hev're too busy making mortgage repayments.' are sick and tired of listening to the Jeremiahs of the movement saying young people will never fight as well as older generation that built the movement. I say, without fear of contraaichon, mal l lnose wno bull our trade union movement could look on this scene today, they would salute our boung miners.
What is at stake at this year's LPYS conference is very simply whether or not the Young Socialists can become an organisation for taking the immense ponucal lessons thousands of young miners and their active supporters through the labour movement as a whole.
Of course this is the last thing that Neil Kinnock and the right wing of the labour movement would like to see. Despite their very real concern to build up Labour's votes amongst youth, the last thing they want is a mass youth movement - one through which young miners could take the lessons they've learnt about the police, the courts, the role of women organising in their own groups, the role of black organisation, struggles against oppression last the role of the present leaders of the deliver their promised support to the NUM.
those support all and, not failing Young the as The despite exnational such attacks.
the LPYS.
SUCH campaigns with the Solidarity they were CHOI movement'. This infamous leaflet paigns were not Labour Party resulting peaceful co- leadership. port and alliances necessary to defeat For the past 16 years there has been an implicit understanding between the Labour bureaucracy at Walworth Road leadership of the black Whilst left wing groups ouside the Labour Party threw themselves into Lue Vietnam Campaign, the National Abortion Campaign and the Anti-Nazi League, the Militant-led LPYS largely abstained from them on the grounds simply suited Walworth Road because it meant that thousands of youth radicalised through such camcoming THLO the challenging its leadership. The Labourist politics and sectarianism, of suited the interests of the Labour Party This whole relationship is undermined by the førces which emerged in the course of the miners' strike. As we saw at last year's Labour Party conference, all the movements rejected by Militant as 'middle class' and divisive found their expression in the very core of the British working class with the NUM's support for the demands o1 women and women's organisation, for sections, for gay rights, against repression in Ireland.
These formal positions of the NUM reflected the practice of Scargill leadership in the course of the The NUM came forward in practice as the de facto leaders of an alliance of the exploited and oppressed against the Tory government led by the vanguard of the industrial working The policy of the NUM demonsurateu n emoro a enurev oooosite model of working class leadership to that advocated and practiced by Militant. They argue for the most oppressed and exploited - for black people. for women, for oppressed nations and semi-colonies to abandon major parts of their own specific demands in order to get unity with the white working class. Scargill in practice allied the most powerful section of the British working class to whole layers of the oppressed and exploited. significant parts of the NUM broadened their outlook and began to take up important demands of those oppressed and exploited by British capitalism. Contrast The results were clear in the contrast between created in and around the mining com munities and the disastrous split that Militant's politics have engineered between Liverpool city council and Liver. pool's black communities.
The unity will inevitably find increasingly strong expression in the LPYS itself — and will be foremost by the young miners who received their political education in the past 12 months of struggle.
Since 1979, the LPYS leadership has proven on issue after issue to be, in practice, to the right of left wing forces in the Labour Party itself. This was shown on the Malvinas war, on support for the Nicaraguan Ireland and the Fein, the organisation women and black Labour Party left, have in many cases maintained their cratic disdain for youth in general and the LPYS in particular. preferred debates in GMCs and various committees to actually building up a socialist youth movement. the The colossal impact of the miners' strike has the potential to change this situation. In the course of the greatest class struggle outside war for 60 years in all alternative imperialist sectarian politics has begun to emerge in practice in the class struggie. The forces carrying out that alternative were the young men and women of the mining communities What is possible struggle is to build the LPYS in the image NUM and in doing so to build up a wallival lille Militant's leadership within the LPYS.
NEVER In so doing, tending the tremendous unity constituency an to prevent tions approach to brnught there first anc revolution, on dialogue with Sinn rights selfrepresentation people. But the traditional, aristoThey have divisive.
divisions which the pIo following that of the Scargill leadership of the alternative wing apparatniks have dreamed up a new and esoteric way of killing two birds with one stone. Seeking to stop the spread of black sections throughout the party and, at the same time, to give a helping hand to their favourites in the current round of MP reselection, they are instructing constituencies that each general committee delegate atthe reselection meeting must 'sign the pledge' before they are allowed to participate.
Every single delegate of every single • party is expected to sign undertaking to uphold a nonexistent rule, the effect of which will be delegates from black sec(which the refuses voting who should be their candidate in the next general election. But there is no provision in the party constitution that allows the national executive to interfere in this way.
This 'loyalty oath' is designed to mop up the effects of the recent upsurge of black activity in the pearlywhite ranks of the Labour Party. Many sitting MPs in particular feel threatened by the influx of black activists into Labour's midst, demanding the right to self-organisation and challenging the institutionalised racism of the party.
Not for the first time, party chiefs have found an unexpected bed-mate in the form of the Militant tendency. The myopic Militant don't support black sections. They believe the issue of better and specific representation for black people at all levels of the party is Instead of putting the blame for do undoubtedly exist within the working class as a whole and which find a reflection in the party, fairly and squarely where it belongs -with the ruling class who are the rea beneficiaries of any such divisions — demand black people cease and desist from their cantall break up the racism of the Labour Parthis demand is in the interest of work The Militant tendency clalms Wal ing class unity. It is in fact, objectively speaking, in the interest of the right
----- pull-quotes -----
sir own struggle" SHORT of ingenuity,