3180/9. Distribution/advertising 01-359 8371. strongest. striking force.
committee decided to make a serious turn towards industry as a way to begin to pick up the pieces. New membership cards *place Workplace CP branches and bulletins are aimed for; and CP public meetings are planned for most union conferences. A national industrial conference is scheduled for 1980.
The sales of the Morning Star have not reached the targets set by the last Congress. Nevertheless, the Saturday issue will be on sale for the first time April, with hopes it will inspire campaigning amongst sellers.
These problems would be difficult enough for King Street if they existed on their own. Of COUTSC they bound up with the crisis inside the CP which has, in recent weeks, boiled over onto the ages of the Morning Sta general secretary Gordon Eurocommunist Monty Johnstone as delegate for the World Marxist Review Because it hostility from District Committee and even a threatened resignation from its secretary, Gerry incident will be added to the long list of factional disputes at the CP's next congress November. the CP's fortnightly review, members have 'yet to renew their party cards'. With 17,717 members already on the records, that is Last month the executive These at the Tuesday. work form. question was posed, Labour Roberts?' find difficulties in eight-page fered aren't approach' doesn't intimately because elected for Labour When wash either, conference. involved sharp Cohen, this Wore Core policies Comment, some 3,000 instance, difficulties make it impossible kind of internal His not to tread on someone's toes. And that's just what happened CP's press conference Concordat' the 'was the CP standing Monty Goldman the document. in hackney agamst Icit-wing candidate, Ernie anti-fascist Many party members committed to the policies of The written British Road to Socialism will explaining how this move will aid the fight for left policies to be carried out by a Labour Government.' And the justifications oftoo convincing.
Some local Pers argue the candidate is irrelevant because Goldman only polled 400 votes this figure match up with the "official' explanation that the CP has a base in the area and can't drop its commitment just left-winger gets Gordon McLennan argues that the CP has responsibility to put forward its own left policies this won't because Ernie Roberts' manifesto is well to the left of Goldman's. This just illustrates a more general point: the CP's policies are no real break from the left of Labour. It's for this reason that Socialist Challenge refuses to call for a The party has published two documents to back up its 39 Democratic Rights. With the each the party could find itself in worse straits by its next Congress.
The CP has to contend with the practice of its leaders as well as these policies. Ken Gill's antics, in particular, have not gone down well with militant workers. At the 1975 special TUC on incomes policy, for Gill unilaterally withdrew the TASS resolution against the social contract.
off-hand more recently that there was no need for a vote against the even forced the editor of the Morning Star to write a long article condemning Many Pers active in the and anti-racist will also be disappointed that not a word is about the fight STOl labour movement support for black self-defence. In fact, the self-organisation of the oppressed - women, blacks, or gays — doesn't figure anywhere in the CP election material The need to 'prohibit racial provocation and violence' is a fine ideal, but most experience in the anti-fascist movement has shown the utter inadequacy or me crs call Tol legal action against parties which promote racist practices."
It has been the independent mass action - above all, that organised by the Anti Nazi SOCIALIST CHALLENGE TRADE UNION CONFERENCE on 'Alternatives to the Concordat' and "Workers Plans'. 26 May, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1.
Further details from TU Conference, SC, PO Box 50, London N1 do not take up arms against the socialist state. The Stalinist models o in the eyes of the millions of workers throughout the world. We are opposed to election, not the use of the law.
Because the Communist Party insists that the capitalist be transformed, it State call adopts a number of policies on the police which could be met with outright hostility from the black and Asian communities. For instance, the Charter aims to transform the police force into public service to guarantee liberties' Yet increasing numbers of victims of state violence are beginning to realise that the police force exists for one purpose only - to protect capitalist interests. And any amount of reforms are not going to change this class maure ores ale Finally, the manifesto re states the CP's critical comments about the treatment of dissidents in the Soviet Union. It calls for the fullest freedom of political, economic, cultural, scientific pursuits and associations. Good But where has it actively campaigned for the release of Rudolph Bahro; against attacks on Charter 77 signatories; the recent imprisonment of the Czechoslovak rock group The Plastic People; the arrests last month of a group of Soviet artists; and the repression against any kind of political opposition that emergès in these so-called socialist societies?
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WHEN Callaghan announced the date of the election, Communist Party leaders at King Street couldn't have been too enthusiastic. The party is not exactly at its Membership is way down. In the polite language of
a drop of 4,000 in total since 1977. And the CP has difficulty in mobilising even these as any kind of