The left, the young socialists committees and organised fund-raising
BRITAIN and solidarity action. Young people led the building of Lesbians Support the Miners Against Pit Closures, and Black solidarity
CND [Campaign Nuclear Disarmament] drew the political links between nuclear power, the attack and the miners' strike mining industry and youth unemployment much more effectively than the LPYS even attempted to.
The political ideas of thousands of young people were forged in this struggle.
'he Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) is the youth wing of the
British Labour Party. Its annual conference was held on April as such it was the first national labour movement conference to be held since the end of the miners' strike. It was therefore the first opportunity to judge clearly the impact of the political outcome of the struggle on a section of the British labour movement. Where to stand on the lessons of the strike - the examples of struggle, solidarity, and working class leadership - is the central question facing every labour movement. The answer to it is now dividing and recomposing the whole of the British left. Inevitably the LPYS is part of this process.
Unfortunately the dominant current in the LPYS, Militant, a rightist
British centrist organisation, chose the occasion to politically distance themselves from the key lessons of the strike and, in particular, from the record of Scargill. This is in continuity with Militant's hostility to almost every wave of youth and working class radicalisation over the last few years. This 'Marxist' current denounced the Greenham women and failed to oppose sending the British fleet to the Malvinas.
The result is the current isolation of the LPYS.
The decision by Militant to distance itself from the positive political results of the strike is in line with developments across the left since the end of the strike.
The left has been riven apart on the basis
'Scargillism'. The reason for this debate which is now
"Scargillism' convulsing the labour movement is quite
British society has just lived through the greatest class struggle for years. That struggle had the first class struggle leadership with a mass base to be seen in British politics since 1926.
It was a leadership which broke from class collaboration, which argued politics and which showed itself willing to stand and fight in defence of the working class throughout the strike and different from the leadership the British class has known
It was different from whole period.
broad left' trade union leaders.
It supported militant methods of struggle, such as mass picketing, and forged new lavers of the oppressed. As a result a new social to be created which movement began exists beyond even the defeat of the strike and has put new questions onto political agenda of a section of the masses. This minority current began to go beyond the labourist framework of
British working class politics.
The choice for the currents who claim to form the left of the labour movement is whether to stand with the lessons of the struggle, with 'Scargillism', is a fundamental choice and one around which the left is now reshaping.
The debate in all of the major left journals reflects this recomposition. This talks of 'Bennism without Benn', of the
International Viewpoint 17 June 1985 section of the British 'new realist left', and of the realignments on the labour left.
On one side of this divide, against
, are Neil Kinnock, the
Labour Coordinating Committee, the Eurocommunists of Marxism Today, and Militant. On the other are Scargill, Tony Benn and thousands of militants in the NUM and across the labour movement, the women's movement and the campaigns. It is precisely because strike brought into sharp focus the fundamental political questions the working class has to address - the kind of leadership required to fight in its interests and its accountability, the need to organise mass political action, social alliances with the oppressed outside of the existing confines of the labour every section of the organised left are movement -revealed by where they stand miners' strike. This is nowhere more true than in the LPYS. The historic struggle of the support of working class youth. Young miners were the backbone of the strike.
As Arthur Scargill put it 'How times have we heard the saying "young people today are not like their forefathers.
repayments". But now we are sick and tired of the Jeremiahs of the movement never fight as well as the older generation that built saying young the movement. I say without fear of contradiction, that if those who built our trade union movement could look on this scene today they would salute our young
The young women and men who led this struggle in the mining communities dominated every demonstration, rally and picket.
All this added to the already existing struggles of youth in Youth CND, the women's movement, the Irish solidarity movement and all the campaigns of the oppressed. The alliances forged between young people active in these struggles and support for the miners raised the consciousness of young people onto a new, higher level. It has helped create a class alliance strengthens the whole working class by struggling around the specific concerns of the oppressed and exploited.
The potential to organise this layer of young people who were inspired by was done in limited ways around solidarity actions, campaigns like Youth CND and in certain regions of the country. The obstacle to organising them main left-wing organisation for youth, the LPYS, was the politics of the Militant leadership. During the strike Militant formally supported the miners, organised actions. But not one national LPYS demonstration of youth in support of miners was organised which could drawn together the young people who mobilised for the miners. At did the LPYS openly criticise the Labour Party leadership or present a clear political alternative to Kinnock. Militant's problem was counterposing an open mass socialist youtn paper sales and Militant fund-raising were organisation. Party-building, put above the opportunity to win many thousands of young people to the LPYS.
However the real problem Militant faced was a political one. This was most conference. The conference than last year, with REVOLUTION AUST PAPER FUH YOUTH BUILDING THE LABOUR CARTI YOUNG
branches sending delegates — remarkable for a socialist youth movement in the aftermath of the greatest working class struggle in Britain for sixty years. There was virtually no presence of miners or women from the mining communities. There was no attempt to identify with the political lessons of the strike.
The key event was a speech by Militant's top spokesperson, Ted Grant, to the Militant rally conference. The core of this was an attack on the Scargill leadership of the NUM. Grant's View was that Scargill had been wrong not to organise a national ballot [on the issue of strike action] and that this proved that Scargill lacked faith in the working class'. This of the leadership of the longest and most political mass strike in British history. For Militant the problem was not the Thatcher government, the betrayal of the labour and trade union movement but the Scargill leadership.
The function of this attack was to distance Militant and the LPYS from the crucial lessons of the miners' strike and the forces which supported it.
The whole course of the strike was in sharp contrast with Militant's political framework. The miners and their supporters organised in ways and in support of issues which Militant did not support. This was shown most clearly at Labour Party conference in October where the NUM took positions to the left of Militant on women, Black sections,
.U.M
FICIAL
ICKET
OFFICIAL
PICKE lesbian and gay rights and Ireland. Militant aligned itself with Neil Kinnock [leader of the Party] on all these questions. Whereas the NUM used its weight in the supporting the self-organisation of the the Labour Party to support the left and thus build its own struggle, Militant ran away from using the strong lever of the LYS to support left policy or organise youth in support of the miners.
To fully identify with the NUM would have started a dynamic which could only have started to unravel Militant's
Two generations: NUM pickets (DR)
at LPYS conference, in form of the emergence in embryo of a to the left of the Militant leadership, linked to the left of the Labour Party and inspired by the miners' strike. The resolution on the miners' mentioned everything Militant omitted: unequivocal support for the class struggle stance of Scargill, for the organisation
These meetings represented the existence in embryo of a small but important left current which has the potential the LPYS in the possible - in the image of the and political alliances created during the political framework. Instead
Militant confirmed its isolation from the left in the labour movement by opposing those issues around which the left is
The best example of the potential of the labour movement, and hostile to the now inevitably going to organise.
However the political lessons of the miners' strike were also positively
20 of women, black people, lesbians and gay men in support of the miners, and open opposition to the betrayals of Kinnock. this left was a huge fringe meeting of
Labour Party Black sections and Liverpool City Black caucus. Here over 300 people heard of the capitulation to racism of Militant in control of Liverpool City Council. (1) The deep divisions created in the working class through to recognise black self-organisation through the NUM's support for Black strengthening working class and the organised support of Black people for the miners.
A further meeting of the left to discuss an alternative way forward for the LPYS attracted over one hundred activists and argued that the way forward to building a mass socialist movement was to identify with the record of the miners' The miners had shown what kind of could be built by uncompromising stance, by not fudging with Kinnock, and by for the LPYS is to continue to stagnate under its present political isolated from the forces in the left in the Labour Party, the NUM and across political issues that the left is organised around. This would only increase the vulnerability of the LPYS to the threat of serious organisational restrictions by the
Labour Party leadership which underexactly the choices facing
LPYS and the threat of a youth movement which mirrored the forces brought together during the strike.
The fight to build a mass, campaigning LPYS, behind a leadership 'stands and fights' has taken one small step further at this conference.
In January of this year the Militantdominated into a dispute with Black organisations and council entered local government employees, over the council's from London was not familiar with the com- decision was argued that Bond. relations to employ officer one a Militant supporter for Sampson the council. Bond as It munity and was not supported by local Black organisations who should have been consulted about the appointment. Militant supporters spread opposition. persisted in the appointment despite wide-
International Vewpoint 17 June 1985
WOMEN'S LIBERATION