from Alan Rooney
This year's May Day in Manchester, organised by the Manchester City Labour Party and Trades Council, was quite a stormy affair. There were large contingents from C.N.D. and the Communist Party. After the Sunday afternoon march through the streets, the cpockers at the Free Trade Hall meeting had to contend with strong heckling at tiwes. It was not true that the only opposition came from ‘irresponsible anarchists' who made up only a small fraction of the 400 strong audience. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the meeting was the failure of some of the speakers, and especially Mr. Callaghan, to capture the imagination of the high proportion of young people in the audience, It is probably not untrue to say that the people present were not, in the main, carried away with the Chancellor's talk of the "revolutionary" Finance Bill, He drew attention to the Corporation Tax which, he claimed, made great strides forward by distinguishing the rate of tax on the company from the rate of tax on the shareholders. Overseas investments would not be helped as under the Tories, George Brown will be examining prices and he added about the Government's incomes policy that, “until someone can find a better answer, George Brown is right, right, right."
Heckled to cut the arms bill, Mr. Callaghan implied that Labour had done this by cutting the TSR-2, despite shouts of "it's up £120 million." When someone shouted "Cut it by half", the Chancellor said that the facts were that this would not pay for Britain's social welfare programme. Another shout "What about Clause Four" from the gallery was countered by Mr. Callaghan with "Dogs bark while the caravan moves on." He got his best clap for this. But even then someone shouted back with "the trouble with your caravan is it's standing still", which also went down well.
Paul Rose, M.ePe, faced the fiercest shouting. He attempted to give an all round survey of Labour's achievements since taking up office. He did not emphasise his known opposition to U.S. policies in Vietnam and made no adverse comments on the Government's incomes policy. A scuffle broke out during his speech and the police were called in. Hugh Scanlon, A.E.U., had the best hearing. He was loudly applauded when he voiced his strong individual views against the present incomes policy, against colon= ialism and especially against U.S. policy in Vietnam. However, he felt obliged to remind the audience of the official views of his union.
In summary, it seems that the local Labour Partymisjjudged the kind of event that May Day is. Last year Bessie Braddock didn't go down well. And Mr, Callaghan after taking his audience through his dull remarks on taxes, and finding that people were still shouting about Vietnam and Malaysia, held up his hands and said that he could not understand why people were more concerned with foreign affairs than with domestic issues.