THERE WILL be many comrades who will want to take up the points raised in your 12th January issue by John Ross. For questions: 1) Canbe furnish the readers with any evidence which argues the positions be ascribes to Dave Purdy, Mike Prior or Geoff Roberts, that it is impossible to successfully challenge the most basic ruling class institutions ?
2) Can he likewise give any evidence to show that theabove mentioned ascribe the serbacks in the class struggle solely to the 'overwhelmingly unfasourable factors of capitalist socicty?
3) Could he also indicate - through following allof Poulantzas' work on the Capitalist State where Poulantzas ascribes the impossibility of successtully challenging the most baso rulung class politica institutions, 'simpls because cbe ruling class is overwhelmingly powerful and won't tolerate anything eise 1 4) Could you also give the readers evidence reformists (presumably Purdy, Prior, Roberts) defeated within the working class is not the Labour bureaucracy, but rather the so-called "ultra-left"* "2 Answers to these questions will be interesting to many of Socialist Challenge's readers. ALAN MacDOUGALL, [London] the area who came to declare their support.
The campaign was not for Drax only, though that was required to solve serious problems at Heaton, but for the industry as a whole. At that CEGB, GEC, the Department o NEB, and others to make the Drax order contingent on restructurine of the industry to no doubt that the fight for the Drax order forescalled attempts to ser up a private mono poly under Weinstock and the closure of several nlants in the industm bald assertion that Parsons and GBC were in commen inn for Drax eomolere? bemasses tad realitiesof thesituation. (In fact part of the Drax contract is going to the GEC factory ar Laroc which is particularly short of work.)
The fact that the company turned on sections of the warkforce and tried to force redundancies after Drax had been announood came as Do great surprise and your quarations imply a naivete amongst TASS meinbers at Parsons which does not exist. There was no need for a change in our attitudes or any basic "reapprassal" The broad campaign for Drax wara fight for johs - so also was the local skirmish with management. There was no change of policy. It was simply a matter of becoming involved in a different phase of the trugale to retain jobs in the industr hope that the above points indicate that ut complexities of the Parsons/Drax campagn cannoche com pressed to fit a particular point of view without some distortion becoming obvious R. MERDOCH, [Newcustle] oushiy democratio. Also it wond ne wtone tc try and make SC more 'popular" by jettisoning some of ils nottics, ins some readers have araue What is needed is a paper capable of relating to the ndvanced sechons of the worEine Class anc aiding the current moves towards a revolution. ary regroupment, 1 feel that, although by ne perfect, SC it going a long way to Tuffilling both of these roles STEVE CASS [Middleboroughi] DAVID WIDGERY [Socialist Challenge January) doesn't do too badly with the jibes himselt. But as a 'self appointed revolutionary diplomat", "Patron Sant of Regroupmens' and can 1 suggest that David looks at what Socialist Worker is, rather than telling us what it was supposed to be!
We wanted SW to present the ideas of working class people, in their own words, rathe than processed by professional journalists True, this was the overt rationale for the abrupt changesio SW in 1974. What it bas turned out to mean is that some professional journalists have talked down to the working class, while others who did not agree with this walked down to the dole und out of 15. David does not answer the point that whatever 'we wanled' to do with SV if has in fuet tended to he brash and sensational Itis David'sreiterationof the failed rationale for the present SW which is 'stunningly out of date Isicktomy point that the political levelofSW is abysmally low because, as David Wideery alleges, I think of "politics" as reviews