Don't Isolate Fords. Strike Now on Wages

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Beerak off tolks with Carbargho UND FL 220 I

Further action

Their refusal to fix further talks or to go beyond an 8% offer with strings attached now indicates that further action is needed to force Ford and other bosses to concede.

But TUC leaders have shown no inclination to press ahead with the final demolition of the 5% pay limit.

Far from pressing ahead and mobilising other sections of workers on their own claims in strikes alongside the Ford workers, they are now engaged in timewasting talks at British Oxygen and at Vauxhalls, despite the fact that company offers are miles short of workers' demands.

Despite his speeches against Phase 4, miners' leader Gormley last week brazenly ruled out of order Arthur Scargill's proposal for the miners to put in an immediate pay claim alongside Fords.

Problems

And union leaders are even now participating in a series of talks with Callaghan and Healey, the diehard architects of wage These talks are unlikely to produce any significant agreement on a new pay ceiling to replace Healey's 5% ultimatum.

Union leaders know too well the problems that would cause from their members.

But the talks reveal the willingness of TUC leaders to compromise and sacrifice their members' living standards in the so-called "national intérest"

With pay reviews involving one million local authority workers "and over 100,000 Leyland workers now falling due, it is essential that all such compromises are swept aside and the fight taken up for strike action alongside Fords to win workers' demands in full.

And the fight must be carried into the trade unions and the Labour Party around the demand that those who verbally oppose Phase 4 now campaign not only for an end to the Downing Street talks but also for the removal of the wage-cutting Callaghan-Healey Only policy Meanwhile incessant talk of price controls as part of a new proposed package deal shows that • union leaders continue to reject the only policy that can defend workers living standards against inflation -wage increases with cost of living clauses linked to the rising ISA cost of living as assessed by elected trade union committees.

With such leaders in charge, a new danger is opening up in Fords even as the management begins to crumble: officials such as Ron Todd who have gone along with the strike in order to keep control are even now choosing at what point they can attempt to end it-with the claim only partially won. October-forty days (the traditional period for mourning) after the massacres of Black Friday.

This comes after two weeks in which the bloody regime of the imperialist and Stalinist backed Shah has been further shaken by a wave of militant strikes supported by virtually the whole workforce in the WORD SHAR public sector.

Hundreds of workers have been killed and injured in army attacks as have university students demonstrating against the Shah as they assembled at PAY the start of the college term.

The regime's reaction has betrayed growing weakness and panic.

While with one hand the MAKE regime fires bullets at the strikers, with the other it is trying to buy them off.

•PAY But panic offers of wage 1-OFF THE DAY increases of 25% (which the regime admits would severely deepen its financial crisis) have failed to persuade the workers to call off the strikes.

Fears that public knowledge of this critical situation could lead to insurrection drove the Shah last week to try through the martial law authorities to impose total press censorship.

The reaction of print workers and journalists to this was immediate and terrifying to the regime.

They came out on protest strike and brought the presses of all the major newspapers of Iran to an instant halt.

One possible option the Shah must be considering is the abandonment of even the verbal pretence of constitutionalism and the making of the present state of military terror permanent through the appointment of a military government;

Whichever tactic he tries in his desperation he can rest assured of imperialist backing.

In particular, • Callaghan, Owen and Mulley continue to back him on behalf of British arms firms for whom the Shah is a major customer.

That is why the absence of Labour Party and trade union banners on last Saturday's sparsely attended demonstration against martial law organised by the Campaign Against Repres sion in Iran was very serious.

A campaign must be urgently taken up throughout the labour movement to demand the immediate ending