important role in building a movement that would break the back of the Pay Laws.
ACTION NOW!
Furthermore the time to start such action is now. There are a number of small but significantstrikes taking place which are in conflict with the £6 maximum. The Left MPs should help to initiate a national movement by coming out in support of these SEEKES.
This campaign has to be linked with the fight to remove the rightwing leadership of the Labour Party, who are trying to impose capitalist policies on the workers movement. The struggle against Prentice is therefore more than a fight for a constituency party to impose its *right to decide that it no longer wants its member of Parliament to be its future candidate.' Prentice and the Wilson leadership are acting on behalf of the ruling class inside the Labour Party. There is no possibility of reaching some compromise with these people.
THROW OUT
To seriously oppose their measures means openly encouraging the rank and file to break from them and remove them from their positions of influence. That means giving all-out support to the members in Newham who want rid of Prentice. It means organising similar campaigns in all the constituencies which have right-wing MPs. Above all it means a fight to the end against Wilsom and his supporters inside the Labour Party.
Audrey Wise has invariably supported movements like Womens' Liberation, etc. But such movements are not controlled or under the direction of the Labour Party. After all the official Labour policy on the James White Amendments is for a 'free vote.' On Ireland, Chile, Shrewsbury the Labour Party has never officially built movements against the policies of imperialism. The Red Week ly insists that on all these issues to confine the struggle to the confines of Labour Party policy is disastrous. Furthermore this means it is not possible to change Labour's policy.
By openly associating with these movemens me ere LaDour Mes can not only give them strength and viability but can build a real base of support to challenge the rightwing domination of the Labour Party and the trade unions. They can also unite the anti-imperialist forces and help them to establish a common socialist interest.
Audrey Wise wants to fight the pro-capitalist policies of Labour's right-wing. That should, and must be welcomed. What is both important and necessary is to develop a strategy that can not only challenge those policies but advance the struggle for socialism. which crush them.
Capitalism creates unemployment and wars, but even when it is in a state of relative peace or full employment I am still against the capitalist system because it takes away from people the power to control their own lives and to decide on how their labour should be used. The theme of workers' control is to me the unifying theme above all.
• You have expressed very strongly the view that at the present time the central struggle must be to defend the Labour Party Manifesto. But the Manifesto contains the social contract which i opposed by many trade unionists, and which was clearly used to prepare the way for the present Healey measures.
which is put on the social contract. The Manifesto talks about achieving a 'fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families. It makes certain promises about what the Government side of the social contract would be. These promises clearly envisage the transfer of power from irresponsible private hands into the hands of the community. That is the essence of the social contract.
contract as meaning that the workers must accept a wage freeze, then they are distorting the Manifesto and l am not prepared to accept that distortion. The social contract was a two-way thing. I'm not happy about the rather guarded references to wage restraint which the Manifesto contains. But the key to the election The economic policies in my view for example.
It depends on the interpretation If other people interpret the social country:
Nobody in an advanced capitalist country has actually tried to follow through socialist policies so any attempt to forecast can only be speculation. I'm in favour of pursuing what I think are correct policies step by step. I think there are substantial differences between our situation and the situation in Chile, In Chile there was a completely different class balance with a genuine middle class such as small that? owners of transport. In this country the vast bulk of the population is employed population. About 90 per cent, according to the figures given ployed and only about 5 per cent genuinely self employed. Some of the employed of course live on interest and profit rather more than their earnings, but of all the countries in the world this is the most economically polarised.
Many people who would have scorned to think of themselves as having any connection with the working class have found, with the coming of the huge combines and in particular the multi-national combines, that they are workers. I believe that the latent power in the hands of working people of all grades in this country is enormous. I believe that we should make the attempt to carry out socialist policles, and are in a much better position to do so than the other countries you have mentioned.
• But if we take the case of Portugal, do you support the policies which the working class is carrying out in that I have no first hand information on the situation in Portugal, and therefore I'm entitled to be cautious But I'm in favour of direct democracy, I'm in favour of workers control and I think that in Portugal the policies being carried out seem say that you are active in the trade unions, but the trade union movement is so intimately linked with the Labour Party that quite candidly you are on the outside looking in at the struggle.
• Syd Bidwell when we interviewed him said for example that all revolutionaries should join the Labour Party and organise around a newspaper like Tribune. Do you agree people should have the right to do We have bodies called socialist societies as an affiliated grouping. But that's interpreted rather narrow ly-there is the Fabian society but not much else. It might be possible to look at the question of what can be accepted as eligible for affiliation as a socialist society. We've got the Social Democratic Alliance organising, so forming national bodies withir the Labour Party itself can't be excluded. In general, I'm in favour of considerable freedom of action for Labour Party members and freedom to campaign for their views. I'm not someone who believes that expulsion and suppression of views leads to health in a political organisation, so I would extend this freedom to the right and to the left.
This is quite a different question from the one we were discussing earlier about Reg Prentice. I think that when people act as Labour MPs or in other representative ways, then the bodies which select them and help to-secure their election should have the overriding say on whether they should maintain their positions So I'm in favour of constituency parties and trade union branches having considerable power over their representatives. But this doesn't mean that I'm in favour of expelling those with whom I disagree. I wouldn't vote for Reg Prentice as a Parliamentary candi date, but I wouldn't vote to expel him from the Party. I want that kind of democratic attitude applied right across the spectrum.
And why not? The Social Demo cratic and Labour Party, apparently oblivious to the rising tide of Loyalist violence, is up to its neck in 'informal' chats with Paisley, Craig and the rest of the Convention hawks. SDLP leader Paddy Devlin. frightened that Convention memb ers publicly attacking each other might put "jobs for the boys' at risk, is publicly pleading that each party's position is worthy of deeper respect than this. Since the SDLP don't consider Loyalist attacks important enough to publicly denounce their supporters and instigators in the United Ulster Unionist Council, they are hardly capable of opposing the UUUC's takeover plans.
The anti-Unionist population can rely only on their own mobilisations and activity to resist a Loyalist takeover. The protests to mark the fourth anniversary of internment provide a splendid opportunity for a display of the united determination of the Republican
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STRATEGY FOR SOCIALISM