on Sunday afternoon, 26 January, must have been rather confusing for the few nervous trade unionists in attendance.
Squeezed between the fur coats and floral hats of assorted local Wom en's Instituters, Tory backwoodsmen and gentlemen farmers, they were confronted by a most peculiariy motey selection of platform speakers. There, un the most chummy terms. were Monday Club Tory MP Richard Body, three Labour Mix, including Tribunite Ron Thomas, and the Liberal candidate for Chippenham.
The 'key' to this most unholy of alliances was to be found ou the bapters it screamed the legend Get Britain Out. As Ron Thomas's election agent explained: * We agree on the need to sink our differences' ( le the fight for socialism) in order to get This will in the months to come quite clearly be the foomula to cover a multitude of capitulations to the forces of the right. Indeed, It was re ported from the platform that T & G leader Jack Jones had agreed to throw out anyoue who attempted to use the campaign for political teasons'The local Communist Party org aniser went even further in an offthe record aside, completely unabashed by the number of right wingers he explained that it was an extremely good sigh that so many Tories were present. The joint Enoch PowellClive Jenkins meeting in Folkestone the following weekend, he continued, was just one of those funny things that happen in a broad front more ment'. No doubt a deal less funny for the black and Irish community tbao the local backs of the CP!
Militants in the Bristol area, however, are not prepared to row in the same chauvinist boat as Messrs Powcll and the Houday Club. They are circulating an 'Open Letter' on the Common Market in the local labour movement which has already, after only a few days, been signed by 12 union branch secretaries. shop stewards, convenors and trade Explaining that it is oniy the wor kers not just of Britain but also of France. Germany, Portugal and all the other European countries who can provide the answer to the pres eult cris, il calls for a united front of socialists, trade unionists and ober workers organisations against the It quite clearly rejects the attempts of certain trade union leaden and Labour Mi's to join forces with right-wing Tories, Enoch Powell and the National Front in a united campaign. "Such a campaign", it continues. can only confuse the working class and thus aid the pro-Marketeers.
In any struggle against an austitution like the EEC, which the ruling class will attempt to use to shore up capital isal and centralise its attacks on the working class, it would be sheer lunacy to co-operate with Powel and his fellow agents of the capitalist ciass The central task of socialists in the mantis to come will on the contrity be to transform the anti-BEC campaign into a real anti-capitalist campaign, which by developing international links with in the lubour movement, can lay the basis for a real working class solution to the crisis An essential part of this task will be the exclusion of all those bourgeois forces who will attempt to lead the campaign back up the blind alley of a crisis-ridden capitalism.