Kick Out the Tories! For a Labour Government!
ALL opposition towards Thatcher will sturt from particular issues, but the inevitable tendency will be towards a •ШІС УСТУ existence of the Tory Covernment, How to get rid of them. That's the central theme that will start to dominate discussion in the labour movement. Callaghan's line is already clear. Unite in inactivity and wait for five years for the Tores to fall and elect a Labour Government.
This is not only a betrayal of the working class in is struggle to defend basic rights, but also utopian. In five years without resistance, Thatcher can so alter the relation of forces against the working class that the likelihood of Labour returning would be remote.
Mass action can both defeat the offensive of the Tories and be the vehicle to sweep away that Government itself. As to what would replace it, the best conditions for building a socialist alternative to the treacherous policies of the Labour leaders are when those leaders are in power.
The revolucionaries are nowhere near even starting to be seen governmental alternative. Under these conditions workers are right to vote in thee misons against the ruling class parties and for Labour. We must be in tavour of the return of a Labour Coveriment.
Remove Callaghan and his supporters CALLAGHAN will block with the trade union leaders in opposing any mass action against the Tories, His parting comment as Prime Minister The new government is entitled to a fair show on its voyage. It has got plenty of difficulties WIDOLECUE unnecessany adding them by factional opposition' - makes explicit his intended role.
The sentiment tnat must inform our attitude to the labour bureaucrats is: *Fight the Tories, Fight Callaghan and his supporters because they obstruct that serial igle."
Inside the AUEW and the NUM as well as other unions is a life or death struggle for the continued strength of those organisations. Building an alternative leadership and a new left inside the unions will have to be stepped up.
In the Labour Party the lefts should be forced to run against Callaghan or his right-wing successor. The fight for than previously, This supporters.
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to overcome the Labour place. The primarily be a reflection of right wing force for example, Around automatic resclection of MPs, for the party conference to cloct the leader of the party and the abolicion of bans and proscriptions will be more significant All these actions in practice will pos the question of sacking Callaghan and What type of policy inside the Labour THE MOST decisive struggles in the coming period will not be those inside Parly. It is above all through and inside the trade unions class struggle that the decisive struggles will take women's movement, ants-racist committees and movements, membership anti-imperialist campaigns, the organisations of students will also play a role in 1970-74.
Movements in the Labour Party will these developments rather than their driving - a situation clearly different, Irom the Bevanite movement in the early 1950s. It is to these mass struggles and not to the of resolution passing and rights, canvassing in the Labour Party that revolutionaries must direct their main work. But this should not obscure the class itself. fact that there will be a revival of membership and activity in the Labour Parly and the Labour Party Young Socialists in the next period. This always tends to occur when Labour is in appostion but there is a high level of - a sharp increase in membership of the LPYS and a more modest but definite increase in the of the Constituency Labour Parties took place for example Tories.
Given that Tharcher will pursue extremely reactionary policies this increase is likely to be more rapid this time. Furthermore many Labour figures will try to recapture credibility. and conceal their record in 1974-79, by campaigning on issues of democratic foreign policy, and social questions on which they hope Thatcher will al front even sections of the ruling For all these reasons a real and definite increase in membership and activity in the LPYS and CLPs will the period which revolutionaries must relate to and politicalls orientate they support more class struggle policies anywhere. The key aim must be to draw the Labour Party into united activity with all those fighting the The election of Thatcher was serback for the working class. But it ULT DELUD by bankruptcy of the policies of the Labour leadership and not by a collapse in the combativity and struggle of the working class and oppressed.
Major struggles are coning in th ight against Thatcher. Out of these will be possible TO Can Incron Government and open struggle for socialist policies. That is the real perspective in Britain.