j Readers may be interested in the latest developments in C.N.D. on j WMerseyside, _In addition to the normal local groups, a Merseyside Central Commit— tod? PoP“ LEL8t years to organise:..large scale area activities. As mentioned in reports on the Industrial Committee which appeared in the Bulletin a few weeks ago, this body has behaved in the usual bureaucratic fashion and, in actual fact, the organising of activities such as the Merseyside Whit ifarch has fallen squarely on the one or two really active groups.
Dissatisfaction with this state of affairs led to the calling of an Dxtraordinary General Meeting to set up a more effective area organisation based on a new constitution. This meeting took place on tho lst September. A subcommittee of the old Central Committee brought forward a constitution which would have established a rigid Executive Committee elected at an annual general meeting. This would have presided over monthly meetings of an area council consisting of delegates from the groups and the Industrial Committee,
A. few members of the Sefton Park and West Derby groups countered this with proposals for an executive elected from group delegates and subject te imnediate recall, the delegates themselves being subject to recall by the groups. It was also proposed to state unambiguously that supporters should be organised in groups on a “district, factory, construction site or institutional (e.g university) basis", thus bringing the industrial groups right into the centre of the organisation with full rights of representation.
After a long debate these alternative proposals were adopted, with strong support coming from a contigent of Y.C.N.D. members. ilerseyside C.N.D. has therefore reaffirmed the position of the industrial groups and adopted a principle of elections which could become significant in the light of the recent Arrowswith/Collins controversy.
The presence of comrades at Kessingland was instrumental in assisting with the formation of a new C.N.D. group in Great Yarmouth, where no previous Group existed and where a comrade had been spending some weeks preparing the Ground. Two people from Kessingland travelled to Yarmouth and addressed a succ— essful meeting of supporters which elected its own Committee and seemed all set to establish a thriving groupe The meeting, of about 40 people contained many Labour Party people as well as a large proportion of young people, and there was a lively and fruitful interchange despite the presence of the local "bete noire", The local press received the meeting sympathetically and a report was printed.
_ The same weekend, car loads of people from Kessingland left to take pert in a Young Socialist’ Carnival in Lowestoft, distributing leaflets and reeruiting with local Labour Party people. These two events might be commonplace elsewhere but in agrarian/rocket base Norfolk they are far from being the norm that they are elsewhere, N.B. We have since been informed by an Hast Anglia correspondent that C.N.D. Groups are to be formed in Bungay, Diss, Loddon and Mitford.