WRP: Bans and WRP: Bans and ictontinne listortions

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The leadership of the sunk to new levels of stortion in their attacks on Workers Socialist League.

In Workers Press ((24.6.75) ick Gale writes an article suppocialist Press No. 10 entitled Opportunists Exposed" , in rich we dealt with the opportun in of the IS group (as is pretty brious from the title).

Our article showed how, whereE all the public statements of IS ere against voluntary redundancy, ad in Speke a National Committee rember of IS was on the committee dat proposed a policy for its Filiated factories that workers ino had accepted voluntary redunJancy should not be employed ere, IS had given clearance for other one of their NC memberslock Wight - to accept voluntary ardundancy from the BLMC Body ant at Cowley.

We stated clearly that for a Fading militant to take voluntary edundancy at a time when the ISL members in the Body Plant ere fighting against it, stabbed faht in the hack We said tunist nature of IS.

But Jack Gale, representing the Editorial Board of Workers Press, jumps on this article. From his own ivory tower he completely distorts the article (and on the way defends. both Jock Wight and a Cowley IMG member who also took voluntary redundancy). In horror at our attack on them, Gale compares these men, both leading members of their "revolutionary" organisations, to simply any other worker. He writes:

«Thornett only wants these men to be expelled from their political organisations, expelled from thets union and permanently deprived of the right to work.

"The fate of the WSL member who applies for voluntary redundancy at Cowley does not bear thinking about."

But our article was not just about "members" but an NC member of IS. Can we suppose that the fate of a Central Committee member åf the WRP who took voluntary redundancy in the middle of a struggle would be to be put on the Editorial Board of Workers Press?

Bare Faced Gale's method is one of bare unemployment." (Emphasis added)

On the contrary, the article is about the opportunism of IS, and does not even mention redundancy. Indeed half the article is on the record of Jock Wight in the BLMC Body Plant. IS opportunism is exposed on the question of voluntary redundancy, and, as we do say in the article "gives credibility to the right wing who are accepting it all over the country in order to "avoid confrontation'. '' If that does not mention the trade union leadership, we don't know what does.

Gale accuses us of covering up the real nature of the IS group, saying that our article "counterposes 'unprincipled' IS leaders like Wight to the 'principled' IS leaders who agree with Thornett about driving workers out of the unions" This is easy to say only if your readers are not aware that the original attack is boldly headed "IS Opportunists Exposed". This is facilitated in. the WRP by instructing members not to buy Socialist Press. Gale's distortions rest on such suppression of facts.

Likewise, when the WSL is accused of not dealing with the economic crisis or the IS antieditions of Socialist Press have extensively tackled these questions (Editions 5 and 7)

From these techniques he draws the conclusion that our policy is "to the right of the right wing union leaders. Even they are not selecting which workers should be tower obscures his view. He cannot see that in the Cowley BLMC Body Plant the stewards committee has actually demanded the management speed up the process of voluntary redundancy.

The Workers Press article is riddled with misquotes and distortions. Gale writes, for instance: "Thornett merely calls on the IS leadership to dismiss one or two 'unprincipled' individuals" . The Socialist Press article did not use the word "unprincipled" once, and ended up tocussing on the opportunism of the whole leadership, saying about Jock see it anything "We wait to see if anythin and those who cleared his voluntary redundancy."

Again, since WRP members are banned from reading Socialist Press, Gale feels he can get away with telling them that the WSL has relion ten at on inseminge 'maximum demand, beyond the comprehension of workers." Anyone reading our paper will find the nationalisation demand in nearly all our articles.

For us, opposition to voluntary redundancy is a principle anc volunteria tandor is the slase struggle - not an abstraction. We hold that it is not simply a question Fought a ganst within the mist bo must that those who take voluntary redundancy should go to the end of the queue for jobs is correct as a weapon to threaten those who mig ht otherwise accept it. Ot course, It could only be enforced through workers' control both of manning and the hiring of labour.

This of course can only be part of a programme of transitional demands on the defence of jobs, which must centre around work-sharing on full pay, functioned by trade union committees. As a demand, it can only be fought through by the development of revolutionary leadership:

Gale's latest outburst against Socialist Press, however, comes as a contrast to the previous position of Workers Press. Only once before, in this daily paper, have we seen any call to fight voluntary redundancy. This was in an article on the Speke Trade Union Defence Committee, headlined "FACTORY ESTATE COMMITTEE WILL FIGHT FOR JOBS" , published on April 8th.

The article, after quoting Tom Healey, I.S. National Committee member, without mentioning he was in I.S., went on without comment: "Sunday's meeting carried a resolution, proposed by Bill MeCoy, a shop i steward from Dunlop's, urge shop stewards committees to oppose the employment in their factory of any worker who had accepted voluntary redundancy.

McCoy said it was against trade union principles for any man to sell his iob and then take another while there were other workers on the dole."

Who was the author of this article - which never mentioned the economic crisis or the trade

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Thursday 24th 1975 The recent refusal by the stati to allow managers into the building of William Tyndale Junior School appears to be unprecedented in this country.

Since the present headmaster took over the school, in Islington, North London, in January 1974, and employed a NUT member previously witch-hunted from job to job, relations with the politically-appointed managers have deteriorated.

PARENTS Parents have been canvassed and told that their children's education was being "subverted" by long-haired left wing teachers whose aim was to smash capitalism OCIAL S1 At time when the Labour Government is preparing to slash education spending by a further £600m and limit wage increases to f6 per week, 165 members of the NUT and the EIS (Scottish teachers' union) met at a Socialist Teachers' Conference in London on July 12th..

The conference was called because of the failure of the ISdominated Rank and File group to pose a socialist alternative to the right wing and Stalinist leadership of the NUT.

Discussion centred round the The second meeting of the East London Action CommitAgainst the Cuts, held on 17th July at Bethnal Green Hospital, was side-tracked away from political questions by members of the IS.

The committee was formed from a conference of trade unionists from NALGO, NEPE, NUT, T&GWU and ASTMS, originally convened by NUPE on May 10th. Its aim was to discuss defence of the Health Service, particularly the defence of ten hospitals, including Poplar, which have been threatened with closure.

A resolution passed with enthusiastic support at that first conference called for independent action by the working class as the only way to fight the cuts. A committee was to be established to by not teaching working class children.

At one point in the car raign the slogan "let's kick the re i out of Tyndale" was used.

PETIT

It was after the circulation of a secret petition among Labour councillors that staff. banned managers during school hours.

Repeated requests from the teachers • to the education authority to investigate the managers have been side-stepped, despite the fact that the managers have tried to usurp the role of the professional inspectorate in examining the work of the teachers.

The London Evening News has got in on the act and are now being sued for libel by the NUT. Already another Islington primary school TEACHERS COI questions of salaries, education cuts, affiliation of the NUT to the Labour Party, and women and education. Conspicuous by their absence were the WRP, IS and CP, although all other left wing groups with members in the teachers unions, as well as individuals with no political affiliation were present.

MAXIMUM "UNITY One immediate weakness in the IMG-dominated gathering was that group's refusal to criticise the CP or the 'Lefts' of the Labour Party for their role in the trade union movement, on the basis of fight for the resolution which demanded the opening of the books and the waiting lists of the Area: Health Authority, the completion of new hospitals before old ones were allowed to be closed, and a sliding scale of Health Service expenditure to keep pace with inflation.

WORKERS Discussion on: these demands did not figure on the agenda for this meeting, and the first speaker, an IS member, got up to say that as far as the closure of Poplar Hospital was concerned "the matter now rests with the Secretary of State". • In other words workers should put their trust in the tender mercies of Barbara Castle!

The whole concept of workers is being subjected to similar pressure from its managers, and the local NUT branch is supporting the action of the Tyndale staff to resist this political attack.

The membership of the NUT must be mobilised to defend the right of William Tyndale staff to teach in the way they fing most effective, without McCarthyite witch-hunts.

MOTIONS

A defeat for the teachers at Tyndale would open the way to more wide-ranging attacks on education in this period of crisis.

Motions of support must be passed at all NUT branch meetings.

Further information is available from the school NUT representative, Jackie McWhirter, 24 Palace Road, London N.8. FERENCE "maximum unity" at all costs.

The majority of those present supported the demand for a sliding scale of wages, together with the need for a sliding scale of public expenditure, with trade union committees in each Local Education Authority to open the books to determine the needs and the allocation of resources as a first step towards workers' control.

But it remains to be seen if this agreement is anything more than verbal, and if they will now adopt this programme in the fight in the union branches. This will be shown in practice by the time of the next such conference -scheduled for the autumn.

HEADEI Castle control which is posed by the fight for access to the books and administration of the AHAs was missed by the IS. For them, as another member put it, workers control is merely a "theoretical Mass unemployment is coming for the first time to the Midlands, the industrial heart of the engineering industry, where one worker in every four is employed in one way or another in motor manufacture.

Although the area was unaffected by the slump in the 1930s which depressed the rest of the country, unemployment is now increasing at twice the national average, a sure indication of the recession now developing.

With 58% of the labour force employed in manufacturing industries, the Midlands must now take the brunt of the economic crisis as the car industry cuts back production, factories close, and employers close their books to recruitment.

With the trade union leadership steeped in the boom period of the past, no lead or perspective is being given to workers who have lost their jobs or who face the threat of redundancy in the near future.

The Workers Socialist League calls for the campaign to begin. Birmingham Trades Council or one of the major unions must call a demonstration in defence of jobs followed by a meeting to adopt a programme of policies to meet this crisis. We call on all workers to campaign for this in their union branches.

concept" while the important question is "getting people involved". But involved in what?

Other speakers proposed that to carry out the original programme of demands that they should not only be fought for in every union branch by speakers from the Action Committee, but that they must also be taken in to the Hackney and Tower Hamlets Trades Councils with the demand for supporting action to carry them through.

This proposal was headed off by more interminable "organisational" talk from IS, who clearly see the whole campaign as a single issue protest and not a central part of the defence of jobs and conditions in the NHS as a whole.

The vital question is not "involvement" in rationalisation and closures, but the mobilisation of working class action to oppose the NHS spending cuts.

Pag Blast Furnace The developing crisis, fo ing employers onto the off sive, brings out increasin clearly the reactionary esser of the call for "workers pa icipation" '. Enshrined in V son's Industry Bill and 1 Ryder report, it is also sony after by key employe Chrysler have offered work a £100 bonus if they accep scheme.

In this context it is interest to see how the employers see question of participation. In article in the section "Execut World" in the Financial Tu (25.6.75) James Ensor showed way a form of "participation", forcibly introduced into ICI: "At the start there was resentm that the agreement had been ne iated nationally without invoh local shop stewards. AEU stewa especially, saw it as a threat to status of the craftsman. The stro est resistance came at Billingh and Wilton in the North East wh the local union leaders seen determined to protect their mu bers"immediate interests..._S as] "the preservation of iobs; status, procedural distinctions, marcations, and any other struct defence against a fluid lab situation on the site" • It was o after two old-fashioned confro ations - the dismissal of the A senior steward and the defeat o T&GWU strike - that managem regained some initiative". (emphasis added)

Here are no left' illusions class compromise - rather parti ation is forced on a weakened : leaderless workforce. Ensor is d on this: • .'.. one cannot expect wa officiais, national or local, sudde to abandon their traditional n

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unemployed." Here the height of Gale's ivory

EMPLOYE VIEW OF