Ls Move to Crush Strikers

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indicating the pressure coming meeting - пеа on may c, Garners float on the London May Day march During the last two weeks there has been a sudden development in the union recognition strike at Garners Steak Houses with a decision taken at the highest level by the TGWU bureaucracy to regain complete control of a struggle that continues to cause them problems.

Brian Nicholson, TGWU EC member, will, it now appears, attend ail the crucial strike meetings and effectively control all communications with the wider labour movement.

He has appointed his own strike supervisor whose job it is to keep a watchful eye on the activities of the strike committee.

Furthermore, George Abrahams (full time catering officer) who for many weeks now has lost all credibility with the strikers, has threatened to bureaucratically censor any material issued from the strike committee by restricting the use of facilities in his offices.

Big guns

By these actions the bureaucracy are aiming to reassert their grip on the strike.

The fact that this involves such big guns in the TGWU as Nicholson reflects the impact of the fight carried out by a section of the strikers to mobilise the TGWU around policies of . mass picketing, secondary blacking of supplies and support for their demand 'of a £36 a week strike pay, if necessary by means of a levy'.

These policies, seen by the majority of strikers as the only way this strike can be won, involves a mobilisation within the TGWU which goes beyond the political limitations acceptable to the bureaucracy.

Trotskyists starting from a Marxist scientific analysis of the role of the bureaucracy, stand that in the current capitalist recession this bureaucracy incapable of winning and defending even the most basic democratic right-the right to join a trade union.

The capitalist class in time of economic crisis is forced to defend profit by a wholesale attack on the conditions of the working class, which remains, however, undefeated : and prepared to fight back to defend its conditions.

Emasculated

In the traditionally unorganised hotel and catering industry, this attack on already barbaric working conditions has resulted in a rapid growth in unionisation.

But the vicious and often prolonged strikes for union recognition taking place over the past year have again and again seen the courage and determination of the working class emasculated and finally crushed by the betrayals of the trade union leadership.

. In the strike at Garners, these betrayals (which restrict 'action' to appeals to ACAS, sterile solidarity conferences, and one day solidarity marches) threaten to effectively paralyse the strike and disarm the strikers.

In the week in which the latest initiative of the bureaucracy, a "day of solidarity' is to take place, it is crucial that strikers demand solidarity for the policies that will develop and win the strike and not for policies of betrayal.

To choose such a road will involve fighting against their own leadership, as can be seen from just a brief look at developments so far within the strike.

Legacy.

From the start the strikers were burdened with the legacy of Abrahams' attempts to tie the recognition issue to ACAS.

While the employer was preparing for a long and bitter battle, the union had made no preparations for the immediate picketing and blacking necessary for such a fight.

In fact, in a recent article by Garners' former General Manager John Owen, in The Caterer, Abrahams is commended for his co-operation and support for management in the handling of staff grievances. • Nevertheless the workers who came out on strike on January 26 did so armed with assurances made over several meetings that 'the two million strong' TGWU would crush Garners' owner Margolis.

One member of the Regional Committee even talked of switching off supplies of gas and electricity.

With the rank and file leadership falling to those who had been involved with Abrahams in the negotiations over the previous months, the conduct of the strike was initially left entirely under the control of Abrahams.

Throughout the first eight weeks of the strike this leadership did nothing to mobilise the rank and file of the TGWU in support of the policies that could win the strike.

By the sixth week of the strike many of the strikers, disillusioned with the support from within the union were openly hostile to Abrahams' continual assurances that the "machinery of the union took time"

An interview published in the Daily Telegraph on March 9, quoted Abrahams saying that he was prepared to call off the strike immediately provided that Margolis would guarantee no victimisation and would abide by an ACAS recognition enquiry.

This finally convinced numbers of strikers that alternative policies were necessary if the strike was to be won.

It was here that the crucial development occured.

The call for secondary black. ing, mass picketing and a regional levy to provide a living wage for the strikers, (policies long argued for by the Workers Socialist League) were taken up.

With the election of a new seven man strike committee on 19 March, Abrahams' control of the strike, which had acted as a complete block on reaching the wider membership of the TGWU, began to be challenged.

• Pressure The first meeting of the newly formed strike committee unanimously adopted the policies mentioned above.

At the next meeting of the 1/647 • International Workers Branch, though Abrahams successfully blocked the demand for a regional levy, the rest of the strike committee's policy was adopted as branch policy.

Despite further attempts to stifle these policies, pressure from the section of the strikers believing in them and determined to fight every bureaucratic manoeuvre, finally bore fruit with the strike bulletin issued on April 4, which for the first time stated that it was official policy to call for mass picketing and mentioned the, need for increased blacking.

The development of this opposition meant that the conference sponsored by the South East Region TUC, Region 1 of the TGWU and the Greater London Association of Trades Councils, was held under increasingly unstable conditions for the Originally intended by the sponsors as one more diversion to convince the strikers that something was being. done, they faced the danger of being actively committed to the strike committee's policies.

Despite the empty rhetoric from left talkers like Dromey and Nicholson, leading members of the EC and TGWU Region 1 were forced publicly to commit themselves to support secondary blacking and mass picketing, AL -KE COMMOTTEE The result of this meeting was the letter issued on Friday 21 April calling for blacking of suppliers to Garners.

By now the strikers, who had been on f6 a week strike pay were suffering severe financial hardship.

Crucial issue The demand for a levy (which had been successfully blocked on March 20 by Abrahams), was now becoming a crucial issue for the strikers.

It was popularised around the £36 a week demand which the much smaller union, APEX, had paid to the Grunwick strikers, and successfully moved on April 24 at the 1/647 Branch.

By the regional committee hold Alma. ther ine BE control the bureaucracy will hope they will then be able to refuse the lovy and avoid pressure to take action on blacking and mass picketing.

ув nave сопе шо авчею• nents within the strike in som detail.

Although a scientific analysis of the bureaucracy's role in general provides a foundation for our intervention in the class struggle, we have to be able to point out how these betrayals work in practice for workers involved in a particular struggle such as that at Garners. It is not enough just to assert the treachery of the bureaucracy.

The crucial development within the strike was that of an alternative leadership in a section of the strikers determined to strengthen the strike by fighting to mobilise the membership of the TGWU around policies that would signal all out confrontation with Margolis.

This challenge to the control of the bureaucracy was mot by seven weeks of sabotage, prevarication and evasion by Abrahams and his associates within the rank and file.

At each stage the fight against the stranglehold of the bureaucracy and for the independent interest of the working class is reflected in the apparently minor day to day struggles of the strike-the fight to get a strike committee elected and then keep it functioning, the fight for policies in the strike committee, the turn to support in the branch, the fight to get policies published in bulletins and internal letters, the fight to win other members' support for the policies.

It is important that those leading this fight realise the significance of their achievements so far.

But while the concessions wrenched from the union leadership on blacking and mass picketing represent absolute gains, the bureaucracy have no intention of being forced to concede more.

Complete independence The immediate form that the fight will take over the next few weeks will be around the question of circulating the 1600 TGWU branches in London with a letter asking for support on the picket line and pressure from the branches demanding the region organise effective "blacking and concede the £36 a week strike pay.

The success of such demands will depend on the strike committee holding regular meetings and maintaining complete independence from Nicholson and his representatives.

The day of solidarity which the bureaucracy is using as an evasion of the main issues of the strike has to be transformed into the launching pad for the recall conference sponsored by SE Region TUC, GLATC, Region 1 TGWU, where these policies can be taken to wider layers of workers, and where the bureaucracy can be made to account for their failure during the past six weeks..

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