Reconstruct the Fourth

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Few workers would be fooled by Prime Minister Callaghan's pretence that he never intended to call an October election.

His plan has been to go into an election with his Phase 4 wage-cutting strategy intact, and with no major class struggles under way, in order to secure reelection on a platform of permanent wage control.

He was confident that (as under Phase 3) verbal TUC opposition to the 5% ceiling would be combined with sabotage of any struggle to break the pay limits.

Callaghan had watched with enthusiasm the moves by TUC bureaucrats to control the unions by expelling, withdrawing credentials, or disciplining workers who seek to fight the employers.

Scheme upset

This is the essence of the AUEW executive decision to expel the striking toolmakers at SU Carburettors, the withdrawal of credentials from 51 AUEW stewards at Leyland's Bathgate plant, and the revival of TGWU disciplinary charges against leading members at Leyland's Cowley Assembly Plant.

But Callaghan's scheme was upseț when on Saturday September 2 Leyland's unofficial toolroom committee voted unanimously to strike if the SU toolmakers were expelled from the union-bringing the prospect of a shutdown throughout Leyland. And other sections, including Fords; declared support for the toolmakers' stand.

Completely changed This meant that an October election could have taken place at the high maint of a natinnal atronanin postponed. Indefinitely. executive to take away their right to strike has completely changed the class struggle in Britain.

Both Callaghan and Leyland well remember the last time the toolmakers were involved in strike action.

Hugh Scanlon: was howled down by a mass neeting of 3,000 strikers. Car factories ground to a nalt. A union-backed threat o sack all 3,000 toolmakers ed to spontaneous moves :owards national strike iction throughout the AUEW.

A petrified toolroom ommittee backed down at he crucial moment, and a veakened Callaghan turned o a coalition with the iberals for backing in orcing through Phase 3.

Decisive battle

But if the SU men are xpelled on Tuesday and he toolmakers take the inprecedented step of a lational strike against their inion officials, a battle, lecisive to the future of 'hase 4, will be underway.

A victory for the toollakers, forcing the reintatement of the SU men jould be a blow against he authority of every union ureaucracy, weakening room committee, who will SU strike leader George Regan has already said he would settle for £83 plus the Phase 4 5%; and toolroom committee chairman Roy Fraser has not even put in a pay claim for his members in the November 1 pay review at Cowley.

PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report.

Fraser, also last week argued strongly for AUEW stewards to remain in Leyland's participation setup.

These leaders actually want the company-wide pay bargaining which Leyland has been struggling to impose, and insist that they are fighting only for differentials and not against the social contract.

But despite their search for a climbdown, the toolroom leaders, Leyland and tha ATTETIl SOCIALIST LEACH Weslix great difficulty cooking up any answer to the toolmakers' demands.

If the £7 parity money was paid to the SU strikers, then other toolmakers would strike to equal it. And if the £83 was conceded including the 5% Murray and Callaghan Phase 4 increase, the Rover toolmakers would soon move 5% ahead again.

The most likely answer seems to be the Communist Party's policy of bringing forward the imposition of a corporate grading structure-in line with Leyland policy.

But to introduce this scheme by November 1 would create huge upheavals among other sections of workers-while a later date would probably not placate F.I.S.T. review..

TUC conference .. Free jailed socialists. . Ex-soldiers on Ireland WSL lobby of the TUC It seems probable therefore that the strike will go ahead-a strike which will express all the frustration of millions of workers who have been forcibly held back by their leaders while their living standards have been slashed by wage control.

The Workers Socialist League • has consistently pointed to the fact that wage controls have been upheld by growing attacks on trade union democracy.

• This lesson has been drawn from our experience of the bureaucratic closure of the Joint Shop Stewards Committee at Leyland's Cowley Assembly Plant, of the closure of the TGWU Cowley Automotive Group, the splitting of TGWU branches, the disaffiliation of Oxford Trades Council and the attacks. on the Cowley 9.

We have fought at each stage against this, and for the independence of the working class on programme in defence of jobs and wages. We have pointed to the necessity to take the fight back into the unions themselves, and in so doing reversed many of these attacks.

Now is the opportunity to defeat state control of wages and step up the fight in the Labour Party to drive out the Callaghan-Healey Workers must take up the fight for a Labour Party conference to remove these architects of wage control, throw out their right wing election manifesto, and adopt a socialist programme to reverse the cuts, end pay restraint and end unemployment in preparation for the General .Back Back page Every attempt by the Shah to stamp out the fires of revolution that have flared across Iran, has so far only sent the flames leaping even higher-and dangerously close to his own bloodstained Peacock Throne.

On Monday 4 September 200,000 demonstrators marched through Tehran in defiance of the new ban on all opposition mobilisations.

Large sections of the march called for the overthrow and death of the Shah.

But while ten people were killed. in other towns by the repressive forees of the Shah's dictatorship, this main demonstration passed off peacefully.

The reactionary religious leaders, who claim the credit for this achievement, presented flowers to the massed troops who lined the route.

This gesture of peace' neatly symbolised the political intentions of these mullahs and ayawallahs.

They were not of course inciting sections of the army to join forces with workers and peasants in a revolution to overthrow imperialism in Iran.

These Islamic demagogues hope to gain their aims within the context of a 'democratised' dictatorship.

Four days later, a very different mobilisation gathered in the streets of Tehran.

Tens of thousands of workers, peasants and students, including many women, were led by youth in a demonstration of protest against the new measures of repression.

These included •the imposition of martial law on 12 cities (including Tehran itself) and the threat of execution against any demonstrators.

This proved no idle threat. The final toll remains unclear, but it seems certain that 200 people were machine-gunned to death in Tehran alone last Friday.

Once again, the Shah's efforts to suppress the mass popular opposition to his regime has only provoked further expressions of open hostility.

In solidarity with the struggle of the Iranian workers and peasants; workers in Britain must fight in the trade unions and Labour Party for immediate action to end all military and economic supplies which the present Labour leaders have presented in

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SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednisday 13 September, 1978

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SOCIALST LEAGU AlEW EXPULSIONS. IRON FIST PHASE 4