Party News: Conway Hall Meeting (1980)

From the December 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Bomb and the Dole Queue—Abolish the Cause, brought 110 people on November 10 to Conway Hall. Three speakers dealt with the subject matter. Steve Coleman, referring to the weapons of mass destruction, denied the relevance of a new-born CND in dealing with this issue. Socialists were not discriminatory; they opposed war in all its forms. E. Hardy showed the absurdity of Labour and Tory Government schemes to deal with unemployment. More, or less, government expenditure had little impact on the dole queue. This was an in-built feature of a system based on production for profit. Dick Donnelly from Glasgow Branch posed the socialist alternative to capitalism that gives rise not only to the problems dealt with by the other speakers but additional problems that were a chunk of working class life. He rammed home the need for workers to reject all leaders and media imposed ideas, and work for socialism where human needs will be the determining factor. A world of co-operation with social conditions that allowed men and women to realise their potential.

Nearly an hour of questions and discussion followed. Dick Donnelly rounded the meeting off with a moving and lucid exhortation to workers to join us now in establishing a harmonious, classless society, quoting Marx's message to the working class, "You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain".