Ons won't sit back and wait. they won't. But on the other hand I don't the view, and you may not agree with me it this, that there is a short-cut by the exercise dustrial muscle that will carry you forward cialism without the process of persuasion. I K you have to deiend the trades unions and ublic services in their individual battles, and ich from it and learn from it and win a don't see the answer to this as lying in the fer by the exercise of industrial strength without persuasion, beçause I'm not sure such a victory — were it to be possible to ve it would have paved the way for the of support that would be needed to carry h the alternative socialist strategy.
mentioned earlier the necessity of exng the Labour Party roots. Do you think that Labour Party uters in the factories rds committees should actively camas a party in support of events like the s' strike?
rongly. I think there is a slightly artificial Cancel and grassroots industrial politics. We re both.
Jon Lansman, retary. Rank and Mobilising Comse for Labour Mocracy of the Labour left justification for the er the party's constitugovernment Otters a has to do so in the future.
You spoke would be the basis of this? cluster of resolutions.
all the rest.
Warsaw, back into the and the shop are coming together.
parliamenlary bour Party democracy - Why bother?
genuine socialist alternative to Ine ones.
parliamentary leadership cannot be expected to provide such an alternative unless it is made accountable to the party's rank and file.
But the concern abour left is not limited to th policies of tne next Labour government. The vital task is to sion that leads to a parliamentary majority is the historical method by which the labour movement has advanced in the past and the way in which it about regroupment and unification of the left in the party. What A lot of people would be involved simply of the issue of democracy. I think this is why the Labour Co-ordinating Committee began to wane in terms of membership, although everyone in the constituencies supported it.
• The party isn't only interested in democracy but it has reached the point — and I have myself, where I've lost interest in producing policy statements and getting them through conference and then finding that they're not done. Until there is some credibility restored to the policymaking process, policy as such becomes just a But I am very pleased that this year the conference should be dominated, as it is, by the I think what's happened in Poland is relevant here. To take it at its lowest, if I were asked what was me vest acience sulategy 10! Dlllall, Dy. coll paring the siting of Cruise missiles here, targeted with the development democratic movement and the trade unions in Poland, there is no doubt that the latter would be a better defence strategy. I think all these things I don't know what the conference will actually decide but I imagine that it would reinforce and deepen the basic arguments that were set out at the one-day conference at Wembley.
•If that became real, and if that were adconfidence In lne Labour Party as the political instrument working • class.
Only then can the party campaign to mobilise support for its policies.
That mobilisation of supnot only to defeat the Tories at the polls and elect a Labour governApart from Cruise, what issues should be campaigned around?
A return to full employment and how to achieve it. It means dealing with the multi-nationals and much stronger policy Monetary Fund.
If you look back on the IMF episode, the idea that four years ago the pound might have been weakened when one of the factors that is wrecking our economy is the strong pound by returning to the gold standard, which is what we've really done; the weakness of that Cabinet in facing that pressure is inexplicable, except in that a majority of that Cabinet really agreed with the IMF.
When we look back on 1976, if we had told the IMF to go away, I don't think it would have had the will • or the capacity, to damage economy. We would then not have had the winter of discontent and we might still be in power. We would have been in a position to mobilise an awful lot of public support.
My criticism of the last Labour government, and I was in it and I am responsible for what it did in that general sense; my criticism is not basof silence ed on the fact that it couldn't necessarily do more in parliament — it didn't have a majority — but we didn't even argue that case.
We never went to the public and said: 'We are under threat from the EEC here, on our food policy, on our industrial policy, we're threat from Chrysler there, we've got the bankers round our neck, NATO is pushing us to bump up our defence expenditure, we want enough people to support us in the election to see that we have enough power to see that that doesn't happen.' The argument was absent.
To come back to the question about how you ment, but also to mount effective resistance to Tories now and to provide the next Labour with the organised rank and file support it will need to put its policies into practice.
In concrete terms, we will probably not win an outright victory this year, although we will certainly have made signifion the International : our on cant gains. It's been an uphill struggle for constitutional change all along, but we have perseverea ana are not going to give . up until do win outright.
That has been the message from the left political leadership on Labour's national executive and from union leaders. Tony Benn, Eric Labour left is that it spends so much time trying to confuse, to divert ... Because they know in their hearts that if we could get this across there would be support for us. And there would be. Next week: Tony Benn's views on the United States after a recent visit.
Heffer, and Bob Wright have all clearly stated this at rallies held •by the Rank and File Mobilising Committee for Labour Democracy.
The Labour left is stronger and more unted now than it has ever been. To build on this strength and unity should now be the main task of the left in Britain.
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whole question of Cold War, re-armament and 'After 20 years socialism you can't short cut it by industrial muscle'