Defend Labour Party Democracy

The issue, widely raised in the left press, of the Nottingham purge, in which Labour's National Executive has cloistered and silenced three leading Nottingham socialists: Peter Price, Geoff Coggan, and Bob Gregory, and confirmed the totelly unconstitutional expulsion of Ken Coates, is now growing into a major question of esa me: for the left. Hard on the Nottingham scandal follows another: in “pping, the C.L.P,. had censured some members who had publicly traduced their left wing M.P., our own good comrade Stan Newens, immediately prior to the election. The N.E.C., we hear, have reversed this democratic decision, and thus slapped dow the constituency in its defence of its own member of Parliament, ‘When it deals with Ken Coates and John Palmer, the N.E.C. has only teeth and claws, ‘hen it comes to protecting unregenerate rightists, it is all sweetness and smiles, This is no random fact, It fits into a pattern, Locked in battle with the National Union of Seamen, against fundamental trade union principles, the party leadership is now detérmined to suppress any local criticism which might bring home to the membership how precipitate has been the flight of the Wilson administration from any elementary form of socialist moraltiy. Mr. Wilson's instruments, in Transport House, apt pupils of totalitarian example, are applying what the Hungarian despot, Rakose, used to call "salami tactics,"" You cut up the opposition a bif at a time, and devour it in separate slices, The fact that the first cuts are slim, and affect primarily outspoken individuals, should not allow them to be accepted. After Palmer and Coates, what next? The seamen? The T.G.\/.U.? Make no mistake, the road which has been opened in Nottingham leads to a most forbidding wilderness, For this reason it is vital that the case for the reinstatement of the expelled and "disciplined" victims of Sara Barker's Nottingham purge should be heard throughout the country, This means that publicity is essential, A fund to produce a pamphlet on the whole sordid intrigue is being established and contributions should be urgently rushed to the Committee for Justice in the Labour Party, 19, Greenfield St., Dunkirk, Nottingham, Constituency parties, unions, and other organisations are urged to vote donations, all of which will be gratefully acknowledged,