Bill Jarvis, the president of Birmingham Trades Council who recently made a statement calling for an end to immigration, has now reaffirmed his support for trades council policy against racial discrimination. However, he has refused to retract mis earier satemene mome words, he has opted for the I'm not a racialist, but .... camp or bod Mellish.
Jarvis's refusal to retract his earlier statement flies in the face of resolutions passed by both Birmingham Trades Council and Birmingham Labour Party District Committee (Jarvis is also chairman of the West Midland County Coun cll). witn a bureaucrat's contempt lor expressions of workers democracy, he will neither retract nor resign.
The labour movement's failure to remove this right-wing misleader reflects two things. One the one hand, the Communist Party has refused to take a clear stand against Jarvis. They condemned his statement, but at the same time characterised it as 'unfortunate and *not what we would expect from Bill They thus failed to prepare the ground for the real ligat - to remove him from office. Indeed, CP members publicly stated that such a move would disturb the good relations they have developed with the right wing - by which they are allowed to put through left-sounding resolutions as long as they cont commutanvone actuay to de anything.
secondiv. nowever. the mure t remove Jarvis also reflects the deepseated racialism of the West Midlands labour movement. Over 800 members of the Post Office Engineering Union signed a petition supporting his opposition to immigration, and a number of TGWU branches and Labour Party wards have also backed him.
This makes it urgent to build support in all sections of the labour movement for a local conference on racialism called by Selly Oak Constituency Labour Party on the initiative of Red Weekly support-