Bureaucrats backing Labour's campaign

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Huntley St. squatters picketing Camden Housing Aid Centre rence fights Trespass law and James Callaghan do their level best to destroy Labour's election chances by spelling out the reactionary wage-cutting policies on which they intend to stand, TUC bureaucrats are attempting to whip up electoral support among their long-suffering membership.

General secretaries of six major unions have come together to coordinate their efforts to support the Labour leaders in the election campaign through a Trade Union Committee for Labour Victory.

with no prospect ot th Labour manifesto containing so much as a hint of socialism l or even any serious efforts at reforms benefitting the working class, this campaign is clearly going to be an uphill task.

An appeal fund is to be launched, which will depend almost exclusively on bureaucratic lump sum donations rather than spontaneous rank and file support.

A clear example of this was the call last week by extreme right wing EETPU general secretary Frank A national conference, entitled Occupations, Criminal Trespass and the use of Law' has been called to arm the labour movement in its struggle against this major plank of reactionary Labour legislation.

The Campaign Against the Criminal Trespass Law, which is officially supported by seven major unions ana a host of local and regional trade union and Labour Party bodies, has called the conference to discuss "criminal trespass' and the tactic of occupation in the context of the increasing attacks on democratic rights by both Labour and Tory leaders.

The call for the conference details some of the numerous developments on this front since the Tory 'law and order' election victory of 1970:

«We have had Callaghan's men: Buckton, Ev Chapple for union officials to give a day's pay to the election appeal.

Labour Weekly conservatively estimates that if such an appeal were successful it would nett some £2,250.

Chapple-a diehard supporter of the wage-cutting Callaghan-Healey leadership-also had the cheek to call on EETPU members-many of whom in the power industry suffered the direct brunt of Phase 3 limits-to give an hour's pay to the Labour Party's election funds.

Carefully avoided at each point by these bureaucrats is the question of the programme on which Healey and Callaghan intend trial Relations Act; the Shrewsbury Conspiracy Trial; the introduction of high-speed possession orders against occupations and the use of the Sheriff's Act; the Prevention of Terrorism Act; the injunctions against the UPW; the bans on demonstrations under the Public Order Act (leading, among other things, to the arrest of prominent members of Leeds Trades Council on May Day).

"What is more, Local Authority Bills now in Parliament intend to make it an offence to organise a demonstration without giving seven days' notice to the police; earlier this year Tory MPs introduced a bill to make mass picketing illegal; and senior Appeal Court Judge Lord, Denning has talked publicly about having unofficial strikes made illegal."

The Criminal Trespass Law, passed with full sand Chapple to stand, the contempt shown by the Labour leaders for the decisions of Labour Party conferences and of the TUC, and the scabbing role they have played consistently against the workers' movement.

The Workers Socialist League calls for a vote to Labour in order to create the best conditions to expose these betrayals in practice.

In this way we can mobilise workers in a break from Labour reformism both left' and right and fight for a revolutionary leadership based on a programme for action in Labour government backing and defended by such leading union bureaucrats as TGWU Deputy General Secretary Harry Urwin, created five new criminal offences relating to trespass which threaten with jail and heavy fines those taking part in any form of occupation, work-in, sit-in or squat.

It gives sweeping new police powers to enter and to search without warrant.

CACTL members played an important role in assisting the Oxford City Nursery Campaign's six-week occupation against the cuts and have taken an important initiative in calling this delegate conference for November 11 in Conway Hall, Red Lion Square.

Conference credentials, (£2 for employed, £1 for claimants and OAPs) are available from CACTL at 35, Wellington St., London WC2. PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report 839..

defence of jobs standards.

But we combine our call for critical support to Labour with the struggle within the workers' movement to break wage control, for the removal of the reactionary Callaghan-Healey leadership and for a programme of socialist policies, which will test out and expose the complete inadequacy of those Labour "lefts' that pose as opponents of Callaghan and This perspective means an all-out struggle against not only the Labour Party bureaucracy, but their brothers-in-arms in the TUC and the trade union apparatus.

The two Southampton dockers who refused to climb a 25 foot ladder to their container lifting cranes last week because there was oil on the steps ought to have known better.

The worst that could have happened to them was a quick tall, a broken neck an But instead they chose to protest, were disciplined by management and 2,000 dockers struck in support.

That is when their problems really began.

The witch-hunt that fell on their heads would have made a fatal fall seem an act of mercy.

The Telegraph has been assiduous in tracing the "crimes" of the dockers as the strike progressed-saving their trump card until they had gone back to work.

By last Wednesday (30 August) the paper had already homed in on Richie Pearce and Ronald Moulsdale, members of the national unofficial dock shop stewards.

This committee, the Telegraph warned its readers "has regularly tried to override official union policy"

The same story (headlined Dockers stay out in row over 'drop of oil') resorted to one of the Telegraph's best known tricks, unattributed quotes.

Noting that dockers had been complaining frequently about such defects, the first bashful informant is

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PHOTO: Laurence Sparham, IFL Conte

PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report JODI

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