M Red Weekly 8 March 1974 Page 4 The first indication that workers would have only their own struggles to rely on despite a Labour victory came when Heath refused to resign and instead tried to set up a coalition with the Liberals. What did Labour do? -sit back and gaze in awe at the marvels of the Constitution. It was left to the small revolutionary groups to start mobilising to prevent the success of any manoeuvre designed to prevent the formation of a Labour Government.
GENERAL STRIKE TO FINISH OFF in one of the wards. The national press and TV focused on only one of the elections that took place last week: the general election. But socialists should not forget the other election both for its own importance and because it helps to put the Labour Party leadership's campaign in perspective. The other election was at Clay Cross.
In the general clection, Wilson fought for the national interest' and wou leas than 50% of the seats. In Clay Cross, the Labour councillons fought for working class interests and won more than 90% of the seats. polling the highest ever Labour vole WILSON'S FEET The Labour leadership have tried to excuse their muserable showing in the election by complaining that they have heen slandered as salt on extremists and wreckers. and by bemoaning the undeniably vicious anti-Lahou campaign in the Tory press. At least they cannot be accused of giving support and assistance to the councillors al Clay Cross.
Lord Denning dennunced the Clay Cross councillors as common criminals. The courts slapped penal fines on them. The Whitehall hureacracy moved their agents mto the town to throw the clected councillors out of office and organise new clee tions. And to cap it off, Edward Short went to the trouble of tramping out to the White City to declare on the BBC that the Labour leadership was in no way backing the law breaking' councillors at Clay Cross.
But the lact remains: 903 to Labour at Clay Cross; 45% to Labour in Westminster, If we are to accept the logic of the retormist poiticians in Transport House, we must imagine the working people of Clay Cross to be a bunch of thieves and con menfor how clac could they vote for councillors with the worst TV image in British pobitics?
The answer is simple: Wilson spent three years refusing to support or launch a single mass struggle against the Tories, folieved by three weeks campaigning to per working people to unite with the employers, the landlords and the Lord Dennings in One Nation. That was a campaign for the Liberals and Tories, Ailer ail. it you want to unite workers and boses, why sate Labour, when the Labour Party is based on unions whose job is to struggle against the bosses?
The Clay Cross councillers had the courage to act on a simple truth: the conflict between the interests of working people and those of the capitalists. They relused to raise rents whatever was thrown against them, they refused to freeze the wages of council workers whatever the pay laws said; chey refused to make the people of the town suffer from electricity cuts because the Tory Government wanted to confront the miners. Little wonder that such leaders were backed by the working class of Clay Cross.
And Sulle wonder that working class voters are less than enthusiastic for Wilson, with his feet of clay COMMUNIST PARTY Whichever way you look at it, 32,741 votes for 44 candidates is a disaster for the Communist Party. More than that, it is a decline in the CP vote since 1970 in spite of the tremendous working class struggles in which some members of the CP
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THE TORIES (GENERAL STRIKE