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The first three wecks of 1977 has seen the most blatant example of outside intervention into the affairs of a working class political party since the recent IMF "takeover of the Labour government.
In a concerted campaign, national and local newspapers, radio and TV networks have gone all out to smear the supporters of the newspaper Militant as undercover infiltrators into the Labour Party. This campaign follows the refusal of the December Labour Party NEC, despite government pressure, to discuss a report on alleged infiltration prepared by Labour Party National Agent Reg Underhill. The same NEC meeting further ratified the clection of Andy Bevan, a Militant supporter, as national youth officer: Mr. Bevan was properly clected to this post and his appointment ratified by the last Labour Party conference.
in addition to suffering what TGWU members employed at Transport House describe as political harassment from the National Union of Labour Organisers which has instructed his fellow officers not to talk to him. Andy Bevan has also suffered a campaien of vilification in the press.
The object of this campaign, to get a revised Underhill report discussed at the January 26th NEC, was prodictably achieved when this meeting resolved by I6 votes to 10 to set up a sub-committee to investigate "infiltration".
One local cxample of the press witchhunt came to light in the Glasgow Herald of January 25th, one day before the NEC meeting. Willy Clark, in a Herald exclusive headlined Young Socialists see red over Bevan" Teported the winding up of the Glasgow Queen's Park LPYS.
The branch, he wrote, had "been wound up by its office bearers in protest against the appointment of Mr. Andy Bevan, the 24ycar old Trotskyite, as National Youth Officer'- Oucen's Park YS branch chairman, John Rowan was quoted as saying: The appotment of Mr. Bevan was the final straw for us. We saw no point in having Young Socialists.. if you are going to have a Trotskyite leading them'. He added that he had written to the prime minister asking him to persuade the NEC to rescind Mr. Bevan's appointment.
Scottish Socialist heard a different story about the dissolution of the branch when we spoke to Willie King, a Queen's Park YS member and delegate to the constituncy GMC. "The winding up of the branch", he told US, "had nothing to do with the appointment of Andy Bevan or trotskyite infiltration'. The Queen's Park GMC decided to wind it up, at the instigation of John Rowan and the other branch officers, because
the branch was moribund. The GME has never even discussed the appointment of Mr. Bevan, and Mr. Rowar never mentioned the reasons he gave to the Glasgow Herald to the GMC.** "The folk who attacked the Militant were the branch officers over the whole of the last year and it was they who were responsible for not calling mectings or organising activities. They didn't even consult the YS membership before proposing that the GMC wind it up".
Mr. King's assessment is supported by the assistant secretary of the Labour Party in Scotland, who told the Glasgow Herald, that Queen's Park was always a moribund branch and never very active."
With the press on the lookout to blow any molehill into a front-page attack on left-wingers in the Labour Party, it is, as LPYS Scottish chairman Bob Dick commented, 'unfortunate that sectors of the Labour movement put their case outwith the movement.
STEVEN KENNEDY