hands and voted for the motion. But when it comes to the business of Prentice, they'll vote for him.
A. The key political issues in the Prentice affair developed long before I was a member of the party. First and foremost, when the Labour Party sends a member to the House of Commons, does that person go as a Labour Party representative bound by the structures and democratic procedures of ine Labour Party, answerable to the decisions of annual conference? Or does he go with an open-ended commitment to manoeuvre on the basis of what he thinks the majority of his electorate feels at any particular point in time?
I expect every MP in the Labour Party to be totally answerable to the membership. The membership makes its views known at annual conference. It's not up to MPs to water them down in any way but to carry them out.
B. The Newham North-East situation cannot be seen purely as a question of Prentice. It's quite rightly broadened to the accountability of the Council and its function with respect to the people of Newham in general, and to the Labour Party varuculary.
One thing that is increasingly going to come up is the role of local constituency parties in controlling council policy. At the moment constituency parties have local group observers on the council, but they have no entitlement to minutes or to take part in the discussion. They attend purely in an davisory capacity to do notning one Constituency Labour Party. Party Conference.
absolute clarity. What's the use to the working class of organisations they don't control? That is the question the militants in Newham North-East Labour Party asked themselves, and their answer was to throw out Keg Prentice. But as they realise themselves, the struggle for workers democracy spreads far beyond the bounds of to the crisis At the present time the Labour Government is being allowed to slash jobs and living standards because its anti-working class policies are backed up by the trade union bureaucracy and a Parliamentary Labour Party over which the working class has virtually no control. Not only has this bureaucracy lined up the TUC to toe Wilson's line, but their block votes guaranteed the victory of Wilson's economic strategy at the Labour To bring the bureaucrats to account, Red Weekly is campaigning for recall TUC and Labour Party conferences to break with the Government's policies. This is the essential point on which we think there is a need for We are not simply in favour of democracy in the organisations of the working class as an abstract principle — a sort of proletarian ocracy. art for art's sake. It is an essential part of the fight to remove Wilson, Healey, Murray. Jones etc. from their positions of leadership in the labour movement. And it will only reach fruition when the anti-working class policies of these misleaders are themselves smashed and replaced by a workers solution Nor will this fight be won simply by rank-and-file versus leadership struggles inside the Labour Party and trade unions. It demands the co-ordination of struggles inside and outside the Labour Party and across union boundaries to develop the independent org anisation of the working class and its experience of workers democracy in action: mass meetings, democratically elected strike committees, the formation of broad-based anti-cuts committees and other forms of independent working class organisation, Not only will this provide the working class with its most effective means of struggle against right-wing policies, by fostering mass involvement. It will allow workers to experience in real life elements of the work. ers democracy that must replace the crippling noose of capitalist parliamentary dem6 Women ate 'abuses' in the private sector. Now they're getting bolder. It's not simply taxi-touting they want to get rid of now they make it clear that they wish to restrict the grounds on which women can have abortions.
Red Weekly **** Women and t