ROGER PROTZ APPEALS FOR YOUNG SOCIALIST UNITY by Ian Taylor
at the NALSO/New Left school on 17 September, Roger Protz, Bi + ng ee Left,: called ve a regina eat eae cianeoah eri
cialist movement, The must unite, he ; Lg kee with the common aim of kicking out the Tories and in . Papen showing the adult Labour Party that the YS is an essential ae 8 ae labour movement. The bulk of Protz's.talk was devoted to expl ma = the present crisis in the YS had arisen. There was no doubt prise ere 8 House, under pressure from the regional Labour Party ade rig () ts supported the creation of the YS in 1959, had tried to divert e move into a backwater. When Keep Left was suspended, an all time low was re in the behaviour of Transport House, There can be no doubt now that the - Labour Party leaders intend either to close down the YS or alter the structure of the YS after the election.
What the left in the YS should be doing, however, is not to raise ballyhoo at each and every closure, giving the Tory press manna from heaven in its search for 'fellow-travellers and communists' in the Labour Party. Instead, the YS should immediately get to work in their local CLPs, canvassing against the Tories and at the same time whipping up support among the adult members for the YS for when the attack comes after the election, In the meantime, no one should suppose that the YS intends to go back on its decisions at its 3 conferences. The YS is a militant, leftwing organisation - and there is no reason to hide the fact. But too much talk has been devoted to relatively obscure issues in the recent past. An analysis of more long-term relevance has to be worked out.
On the question of a NALSO-type constitution for the YS, Protz said that if the YS was to become a mass movement, then it would be uncontrollable by Transport House anyway and it would become independent more or less of its ow volition, Although Transport House was largely to blame for the chaos in the YS, he did not think that meddling with the constitution would help at all, Julian Atkinson, ex-secretary of NALSO, pointed out the advantages of integration with the Labour Party at present outweighed the disadvantages. A parallel could be drawn with Sweden where the autonomous 100,000-strong, leftwing Young Socialist movement was fully integrated with the adult party. Ken Coates supp= orted this, saying that the practical test of all the left was saying was to take it to the ordinary LP member, Within each member, the potential ~ was there for agreement to every one of the ideas the left is pushing. The role of the YS and the left was expanded upon and the idea of the leftoeentre focus was mooted. In his summing up Protz, warned first azainst jumping on to the anti- Keep Left -bandwagon. Keep Left had been very active when a lot of people had sat back and discussed. They had organised some short but useful campaigns which may have been misused but. were:. none the less, relevant to contemporary problems. If one is seriously talking about unity of the left and an agreed focus, this must include Keep Left.
Protz said he agreed with a point made by Bill Vester that the election will be a great opportunity for recruiting young people into the YS, The YS must be available to them and this is only possible from within the Labour Parties. He defended the new YS paper, Militant, saying that the YS could stand another paper in.an attempt to end the quarrels between the others, Protz concluded by appealing to all YS members to get to their local ward and CLP meetings immediately, there is only 3 weeks to the election and in that time YS activists must get themselves knowm in the adult parties,