NALGO pay debacle

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The debacle of the June 2nd NALGO special pay conference points up not only the bankruptcy of the present leadership but also the complete inability of the opposition groupings (dominated by Stalinists and the SWP) to mount any serious challenge to them.

Following a meeting in London last February, which launched the campaign, 56 branches sent in requisitioning resolutions for the special conference.

This in itself shows that the determination of NALGO memberș to defend living standards has not faded away.

Ths resolution on which the campaign was based was drawn up by the CP-dominated branches in mid-Scotland.

No clear demand While correctly opposing pay control in the public sector through cash limits and direct intervention, and also rejecting the Basnett plans for permanent trade union collaboration with Government pay limits, it failed to put forward a clear demand of its own as to the level of wage claim that should be made.

It called instead for NALGO negotiators to ignore the 10% rule, and to settle for not less than the current rate of increase in the private sector.

Pay claims by comparison rather than by independent action are of course one of the main strands of the Basnett plan.

An even more significant weakness in the main resolution was 'its failure to demand industrial action to achieve its objectives.

Weakness

General Secretary Drain and the rest of the NEC were not slow to seize on this weakness, claiming that the movers believed, as he did, that the members would not be willing to take action over pay.

This line of argument in fact hits the Stalinists at their weakest point. They of course are dedicated to holding back exactly the kind of action necessary to smash wage control.

They could not therefore argue that the membership would fight, unless they went on to explain why they had not called for that fight to be organised.

Even if there were to be industrial action, said Bill Gill, it could not be won. He went on to attack the firemen, teachers and others for taking or threatening industrial action 'against the public'.

The downward trajectory was to continue. A particularly cynical rationalisation was peddled by right wing speakers from the floor, to the effect that the reductions in living standards for British workers had been to the behefit of workers in the third world' and should be supported by 'true socialists'.

The coup de grace was prepared by Mike Blick of Camden branch.

He argued that it would have no effect to pass resolutions on pay claims because the union's negotiators could deliver nothing that the employers would not grant.

As if on cue, stooge from the audi ince moved the question be put and the NEC's wrecking amendment was carried by 350,000 to 188,000.

Indignity was heaped on defeat when the NEC demolished a call that would bind them not to settle for less than 10% and consolidation.

After making the usual plea of the bankrupt bureaucrat ('we must have leeway to negotiate'), Jack Bradburn, the chairman of Local Government Committee assured the conference that he would only accept a reasonable offer. .

The main lesson to learned is that the kind