THE LATEST ISSUE Worker, paper of the Socialist Worker Party, contains a front-page article by Paul Foot on the left-right struggle in-. side the Labour Party entitled 'What Now for the Left?'.
It starts by saying that the showing for the Benn camp in the deputy leadership election 3: 'magnificent' and that 'most socialists were eeply disappointed' loite right. A Benn victory would have given a impluse to the stuggle of the left inside the "bour Party and a boost to workers struggling sainst the Tories the length and breadth of the untry.
But it is a little bizarre for Socialist Worker : offer their heartfelt congratulations to the Jenn campaign, since this was a struggle from • nich they themselves abstained — and part of wider struggle from which, 1o read fool's arle, they will continue to abstain.
4s Paul root puts it:
¡alism, denouncing •J abused unanimously by the press, Tony Benn marched forward."
And we might add, as Benn marched for•ard, Socialist Worker did nothing whatever to = omote his campaign and contented itself with : routine and ritual statements about why Tony Benn didn't have the answer (mostly written by... Paul Foot).
Socialist Challenge did promote the Benn campaign. We do not believe that 'Benn has the answer' (indeed our own interview and our reply to his positions makes it very clear we do not).
We support his campaign because it was an excellent opportunity to promote the fight inside the Labour Party and the trade unions Ot Socialist when Benn didn't win.
Talking about capitalisti, hounded will mon The abstention of Socialist Worker derives from something very simple: they regard the struggle in the Labour Party as something socialists nothing to do with. In making this assessment, they are making an error of gigantic proporWhat Socialist Worker doesn't face up to is that the crisis inside the Labour Party is the most momentous development in British politics for a generation. Precisely because of the organic links between the trade unions and the Labour Party, the differentiations and debates inside the unions are bound eventually to be reflected inside the Labour Party itself. Tof the British working class abovemen. No soul of the British working class movement. socialist can afford to step away from that struggle and wash her or his hands ot it.
The struggle against the Tories, and the struggle against the right wing in the unions and in the Labour Party are part and parcel of the same process.
The labour bureaucracv movement in part because of its ability to divide the constituency left from the militants in the To disrupt their hold of the movement it is necessary to take the struggle to them in all the bastions which they hold.
The questions which are politically polarising the trade union movement are the questions of debate and division inside the Labour Party. It is around such questions as the Benn campaign as well as the fight against the Tories that new alignments will be formed at the base of the To be part of those developments it is necessary to intervene in the Labour Party and take a position on these crucial issues of divide.
Paul Foot ends his piece by appealing to the • Bennite ranks to get stuck in to the anti-Tory should have aominates ine decisive way right wing.
supporters SHOW THE TORIES WHAT PROTEST MEANS:
struggle — on the picket lines, on the protest marches and in the missiles campaign of turning the tables against the Sound advice. Those struggles will be the crucial backdrop against which the fight inside the Labour Party will be fought out.
But as the right wing starts its counter-offensive, in the constituencies and the unions, Socialist NOW — as a enough.
Place, austenion. supporting this or that protest march won't be It will be necessary to be there, fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Bennites against the right, as a crucial pre-condition to debating out revolutionary politics with them. The alternative is, to quote a topical and controversial
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ter Brighton, Paul Foot asks An open letter to Tony Benn and his