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Out of the 379 delegates at the Labour Party's Scottish conferonce, there are very few indeed who can look back at the three days spent in Perth Town Hall with much enthusiasm. On the two crucial issues before conference, devolution and cconomic policy, safe and acceptable resolutions were passed, which by now will have found a final resting place in Transport House's waste bin. Two resolutions which threw down a practical challenge to Government policy the proposals to condemn the Labour MPs who voted for the guillotine and to urge Labour councils to defy the Government and vote out the cuts - were defcated.
But this preference For grumbling loyalty to the Government, is only typical of the chumminess which prevails over such patherings. As George Robertson, the new chairman of the Labour Party Scottish Council put it: "Despite our disagreements, we have a common cause. All of us are on the same side". - At conferences like Perth. everyone is a "comrade no matter how uncomfortably the label fits Bruce Millan or Dickson Mabon. This is especially true for supporters of Tribune, whose very existence is tied to this "unity".
Unfortunately for the Tribune Group, the days have long gone where being a "good left-winger" required no more than opposition to foreign generals and support for Clause Four of the party constitution. A good example of Tribune psychology was provided by Brian Wilson. He explained it would be possible to forgive the Government on questions of cconomic policy, if only they would concede at least something, anything, on the "symbolic issues", the issues of "gut sociulism" like penal reform. He could have added, but didn't, that such issues have the added advantage of not costing anything.
In practice this means that far from Icading any opposition to the "right-wingers"; the Tribune group have now become the chief apologists for the policies of the Government. The end result of this political impotence is a real decline in the impact of Tribune at the conference. Since they had nothing to say to the conference, it was left to supporters of Militant to take on the mantle previously worn by Norman Buchan and Dennis Canavan inside the party. This was seen in debate after debate in the stark contrast between the half a dozen delegates who would clap for a Government supporter like Dick Doulas and the enthusiastic ovations for many young Militant supporters.
The Militant fringe meeting, however, was much smaller than expected. To attract only 50 people after a year of unprecedented publicity can hardly be called a success. In part. this is a product of the general stagnation of the Labour left as a whole; but the politics of Militant must also take part of the responsibility. All too often their
speukers it the rostrum merely outlined, for the umpteenth time, the glories of the coming socialist millenium, without ever addressing themselves to the practical perspectives of the fight against the Government and the bosses.
Somehow the real world of Scottish society never intruded into Perth Town Hall. In face of a dramatic rise in working class support for the SNP the only response of the Scottish Council has been to throw apolitical abuse at the nationalists. This is best exemplified by the recently-launched gutter magazine "Attack" whose contents are restricted to dredging up every rumour and allegation ever levelled at the SP without ever addressing itself to a critique of their politics.
Meanwhile, the Labour left has been content to lecture all and sundry on the cvils of capitalism.
Composite resolution number 8 provided an opportunity to break from this political sterility. Originating from Kelvingrove constituency, it committed local Labour parties to an active campaign with other sections of the labour movement, against the Government policies on social expenditure. Its defeat must have inevitably demoralised some of the socialists who attended the conference, despite the fact that the resolution received the support of the NUM and NUPE delegations.
If this demoralisation is transmitted into inactivity, into a passive sleep until next year's resolution, then the conference will truly have been a waste of time.
An alternative does exist. It exists in the fight in all the local Constituency Labour Parties to mandate their councillors to vote against the cuts. It exists in setting up Labour Against the Cuts committees in the localities. And it exists in the fight to involve the unions which voted for action at the conference, in immediate united activity with all other Labour movement orginisations willing to join the fight.
If the Perth conference tells us anything, it is that the days of complacent resolution passing ate ovet. The problems of the real world are much too pressing STEPHAN PIEKARCZYK (Kelvingrove CLP)