20.04.1995

Two evils

BILL MORRIS, ‘leftwing’ general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, is to face a leadership challenge from Jack Dromey, the union’s public service national secretary and husband of Blair’s employment chief Harriet Harman. Curiously, the ‘official communist’/Labourite Morning Star says Dromey’s challenge will “give fresh impetus to the left” (April 12).

Dromey, who supports the Blairite line of ‘new realism’ and the new ‘market-friendly’ clause four, is standing on a platform - if you can call it that - of spending “less time on politics, more time in the workplace”.

Interestingly, even though Dromey sounds like a typical Blairite ‘moderniser’, he used to be closely identified with the ‘Euro-communists’ of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and was instrumental in the legendary Grunwick strike of 1977. Perhaps that is why he describes himself as a “modernising traditionalist” - ie, a hideous hybrid of fossilised ‘official communism’ and on-the-up Blairite ‘socialism’.

What we must make clear is that neither Morris nor Dromey deserve our support, even though it is tediously inevitable that the reformist and revolutionary left will cling on to the ‘lesser of two evils’ ideology and back Morris.

The Communist Party says no support for any candidate who condemns the working class to the position of a permanent slave-class, with no chance of a decent life.

Danny Hammil