Sh When Labour meets in Conference at Scarborough in October, what are the main problems which will confront the delegates? e "bread-and-butter” issues will be uppermost in the minds of most iat caeiaes especially those from Scotland, the North-East, South Wales and other areas especially highly-hit by the rapid rise in unemployment. It was not for this that they worked so hard to return a Labour Government with a thumping majority. From the mining villages of South Wales, Durham, Scotland and Kent delegates will come anxious about the future of their industry and about their own livelihoods. Labour, the party which, by definition, believes in planning has set in motion a process of pit closing without making adequate provision for alternative employment for the displaced miners, When Labour met at Blackpool in 1965 Harold Wilson could still bask in the glow of achievement - the magical survival of a Labour Government on a majority of three. In 1966, in Brighton they could still blame the sorry condition of the national economy on 13 years of Tory misrule, what=‘dan’ Wilsor,* Céllaghan’& Co. boast about today? That they have used their power to save a capitalist system which Labour came into being to destroy? That they have done so on the backs of the working class whose votes put them in power? That, in foreign policy, they are aligned with the world's most powerful capitalist country, giving wholehearted support to its efforts to hold back the rising tide of revolution in Asia, Africa and South America? These anxieties are reflected in the resolutions on the Conference agenda. On balance the resolutions amount to a vote of no confidence in this Labour Government but manifest an abiding faith in socialism as the only solution to the problems which beset Britain and the world today. The enemies of Labour can draw no comfort from the critical tone of the resolutions. Indeed, if the majority of the resolutions on Prices and Incomes, on the economy, on the European Common Market, transport, coal and Foreign Policy are carried by Conference and put into effect by the Labour Government, the foundations for a socialist Britain will have been well and truly laid, This brings us to the crux of the whole matter. Who decides Labour's policy - Conference, the voice of the whole movement or a Cabinet cabal arrogantly assuming for itself a superiority of wisdom which it does not possess? In theory and according to the letter of the constitution Annual Conference is the supreme policy making body of the Labour Party, Through the years a bureaucratic leadership has corroded away some of the legitimate rights of Conference the rank-and-file have always fought back, sometimes enlisting the support of powerful figures such as Anuerin Bevan. It is not so long ago that a certain Harold Wilson contested Hugh Gaitskell for the leadership of the Parliamentary party on this very issue!
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