Mathers kills conference
Socialist Press1978 1978-10-11Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 11 →
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Part of the Cowley Assembly Plant mass meeting which voted for a £27 claim with cost of living clauses 500 local authority and other workers attended a trade union rally at Digbeth Civil Hall in Birmingham on Saturday.
The meeting, chaired by Brian Mathers, TGWU Region 5 secretary, was addressed by Sid Tierney MP, Bob Wright AUEW, Roger Poole of NUPE and a number of floor speakers who mysteriously turned out to be other trade union full-time officials.
There were fiery speeches galore-about the horrors of unemployment and the need for a £60 minimum wage, a 35hour week and free collective A leaflet produced jointly by CLIMA the SWP and the IMG argued that it was necessary to form a 'rank and file committee to coordinate struggles against Phase 4.
A resolution to that effect was moved by Pat Sikorski of CORSE. Mathers, however, refused to accept the motion for discussion.
What all speakers carefully avoided-and what the SWP. IMG leaflet failed to take upwas the role of the platform speakers in the struggles against Phases 1, 2 and 3 of wage control.
Workers sat in bemused silence as those peopie who have derailed all struggles against pay policy called for an end to capitalism, a decent wage for all, and a 25 or even 20 hour week.
• Without an understanding of the reactionary role of these 'left' . phrasemongerers, the danger is that the coming struggles against Phase 4 will be derailed as surely as all previous ones,