At a large Socialist Worker campaign meeting Newcastle BaSH Thursday, IMG members reaffirmed their support for the candidate Dave Newcastle Hayes. Yet the local leadership of the campaign have been reluctant to accept the otters of practical help from the IMG or the Workers League Contract HO PLATFORM FOR MAC Beyond this measure the IS have practically how -TRE many correct things in their election nationalisation under workers control, troops out of Ireland, abortion on demand, opposition to cuts and incomes policy can be fought for by the united action of the working class.
Speakers at an IS meeting around the closure of a maternity hospital in see for instance, failed to bring up either the Right to Work Campaign conference on the cuts or, more importantly, the 17 November demonstration against the cuts called by the public service unions.
The narrowness of the Socialist Worker campaign was equally reflected in the writing off of the first committee meeting (which attracted 70 militants, many from the black community) as 'white liberals sitting in a room'. And the building of the local cuts commthe last nine months or so. We want them to be involved in the fight against hospital closures alongside us, and i tae proces: we are putting up the alternative of the We will be arguing with Labour Party supporters that they should be involved in the fight against the cuts. We say to them that the Labour Party can't be changed from the inside, it's controlled by big business, and that the Labour Government is carrying out the orders of big We're putting ousiness. me bankers cic.
But you can't simply say to militants. Leave the Labour Party and join IS. Certainly you might recruit a few individuals, but the mass of the membership SWP won't leave the Labour Party until they What we're saying is that IS has, over the last few months. been the main force involved in the fight against unemploy ment through the Right to Work Campaign, and has been the only organisation recently involved in the fight against ittee has not been an important part of the campaign either.
The result of this line of march is that in practice the IS have not used tne campaign to make sure that people go on fighting after election. For the few who accept the perspective of building the Socialist Workers Party there is an alternative But for the many who don't and yet need to fight Labour's policies there is not.
This demobilising effect unfortunately has much in common with the effects of Labour campaigning Those bodies which do have potential of carrying the struggle after the election have actually been weakened by the campaign.
campaign of IMG has been the reverse - to build these bodies to make sure that something is built through these elections other than the piles of election literature.
Labour Party activists on the basis that we're the only organisation that is fighting. In some areas in the last few months, Labour Party members have been leaving to join the IS and the building of a new workers' party But clearly that is still an organisation of the vanguard. It is not an organisation inat is going to attract the mass of Labou activists, or people who simply vote for the Labour Party. So in that sense we don't think you can counterpose the SWP to the Labour Party. What is necessary is to fight for unity in action with those individuals inside the Labour Party who are prepared to fight the Government's attacks, but are not prepared to join the We'll be trying to get a united fight back on issues, a united fight back against hospital closures, against unemployment. We'll be trying to build a rank-and-file movement of people who are prepared to fight on issues such as racialism, unem-
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racialism. We're hoping to win a lot of STRIKE