Tuc 1978 the Greaz
Socialist Press1978 1978-09-13Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 5 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 5
WHETHER IT was noting with "gravest concern" the prospect of a jobs massacre in the newly taken-over Chrysler factories; wriggling out of criticism from the Fire Brigades Union over the betrayal of their 10-week pay battle; greasing up to wage-cutter Callaghan by adopting a meaningless form of words on pay; fobbing off lobbies of the unemployed, low paid and old age pensioners; or dropping even the call for socialism from its objectives, the 1978 TUC successfully avoided advancing any struggles of the working class. Fisher: new NUPE leader Alan Fisher arrived to propose yet another target for a "minimum wage" , knowing full well that previous such targets have been buried without trace as soon as pay talks began.
And a UPW bureaucrat rose to the rostrum to plead for Callaghan to legislate postal workers the 'right to strike' which, until last year's squalid UPW surrenders over Grunwick blacking, everybody had thought they already had.
In between the double talk, by 'left' and right alike yet another farewell to the treacherous twins Jones and Scanion, and the ritual Tory-bashing came the real unchanged essence of TUC policy: total, grovelling subservience to the reactionary Labour leadership and its defence of British capitalism.
UPW leader Jackson The whole scene was set for Callaghan to hoist the curtain of a General Election-except for one element that the TUC bureaucracy, for all their mighty labours, have • still not managed to contain.
The rank and file of the working class, defiant and hostile, continued to reveal its strength.
In Bathgate and in SU Carburettors, workers stand solid against bureaucratic dictatorship, threatening to precipitate further huge struggles in British Leyland.
This harsh reality which was scarcely referred to during the hullabaloo of the TUC, marred the scene.
A prompt decision was taken to throw the election bandwagon into reverseleaving craven TUC officials bemused.
Even the Labour Party's official journal Labour Weekly, was left stranded high and dry by Callaghan's switch.
The elaborately orchestrated overture had turned out to be a discordant and confused finale. 'outside the hall.
futile protest.
road and the van away.
along by the compliance of the bureaucrats.
doubt helped ns plays the
----- pull-quotes -----
PHOTO: Chris Davies, Report Rep
1978 LONDON Eva