betrayals of the Labour Government.
the Labour Party to and mass unemployment. A TORY MP tabled a message of congratulations in the House Commons last week. The motion offered full support to the action taken by Jim Sillars and other leaders of the Scottish Labour Party in expelling *communists, Marxists and travellers' at their recent conference in Stirling. The Tory went on to call on Callaghan to take similar action in the Labour Party in the light of events in Lincoln, Sheffield Brightside Newham North East.* Here at least was a man who was not confused by what the press called the wildest psycho drama of recent Scottish politics. He had drawn the correct conclusion that in Jim Sillars the ruling class had another anti-communist friend in the labour movement to join the ranks of the Prentices, Frank Chapples of this world.
But Sillars had other allies in the run-up to the conference. Only one day before, the political correspondent of Daily Record the Scottish equivalent of the Daily Mirror demanded that the "tearaway lefts', the camp followers of the lunatic left' be kicked out.
tions was the International Marxist This was despite the fact that the IMG had consistently explained why Scottish workers should vote for and Scotland. Furthermore, the SLP MPs who split witr form the new organisation declared that they would vote against the Government's policies of cut backs in the social services founding meeting last January. of This red baiting was not confined to the IPC press moguls. The journal Question is produced by an Edinburgh nationalist clique. But there was no mistaking the way in which they fellow conscientiously ran through checklist of who was and who was not in the IMG and other organisations. Our academics their article with the advice that the and "will have to be ruthless" expelling the organised left.
Theme But they were teaching grandmother Sillars how to suck eggs. theme was taken up by the SLP leader Boyds and in the official journal Forward, in an article entitled Conference - Make or Break'. witch-hunt was clear: 'We have argued for a strong Scottish SILLARS - orchestrated a massive press campaign against the left wing in the SLP which clearly implies that we believe in the parliamentary road to socialism."
But the SLP had never taken such a position.
Sillars, fellow MP John Robertson, and SLP general secretary Alex Neil.
Sillars' concern to keep bureaucratic control of his party was further revealed in the same issue of Forward, which explained: 'It will be for the wing of the party.
Rally choose calculations.
their "subversive ended strong socialist so-called left' nationalists, anti-left campaign.
The same group led by political basis of his EEC Parliament, conference, ago.
Spirited EEC resolutions at SEP leadership party's active membership. acitvists.
Split
centrated in The viciousness of the attack by leadership on the party's left wing at its Stirling Conference two weeks ago left even the bourgeois press gasping, and fuelled the right wing's demand for a purge of the Labour Party itself.
Red Weekly has been the only paper to cover the full facts of the SLP conference and pin the responsibilty for the expulsions on the shoulders of the Sillars leadership. Here we continue to explain is presenting to the delegates. The notion that the conference could actureject any of the portfolios did not figure in Sillars' is associated But the group implicated in Sillars suppression of democracy in the SLP was broader than his immediate colleagues. Sillars advanced the line of a Parliament in Scotland... with full representation in the EEC. It was this policy which tied the like Tom Nairn of New Left Review, into Sillars' Thus it was that Tom Nairn woke up in the same bed as John Robertson MP - long time ally of the right-wing Boyd in Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. The support of both the left' nationalists and the SLP apparatus for brought them into direct conflict with the left-wing forces at the who had campaigned against the Common Market project of Heath, Wilson and Jenkins only a year Not all the Sillars wing share this enthusiasm for dissolution into SNP. Sillars himself will be anxious to maintain the prestige and power which with his position as "broker" between the SP and the Labour Party. But this role depends on their ability to carve out an independent political position.
This independence is wearing paper thin. At present the only m policy disagreement between the and SNP is on the EEC; and the St opposition to the EEC has been hearted for a long time. A shif policy on their part would immedi throw Sillars and his followers deep political crisis, since most of t followers, coming mainly from a our Party background, will go
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The foundation of the Scottish Labour Party last January was seen by many militants as being the beginning of a fighting alternative to the bourgeois nationalism of the Scottish National Party and the Party candidates in local council elections gained votes of up to 15 per cent in the West of
the likely dynamic of Sillars towards being the left voice of the SP, and the problems facing the left
*GLASGOW BRE JOINT SHOP STE JARDS C