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be an enormous January 22 clearly Militant Group-platform for opportunists One of the most accomplished, armwavers in the movement is NUPE leader Alan Fisher.

His heart-rending oratory against the evils of low pay at the Labour Party conference drew tumultuous applause from all sides. But since these flights of rhetoric last October Fisher and his fellow bureaucrats in the leadership of the public sector manual unions have been conspicuous by their silence.

The November review date for over a million public employees came and went without any call for action-despite the fact that a powerful lead had come from the Ford strike.

Vague talk

Instead there was vague talk of raising a cash levy to finance individual NUPE sections in "selective" strike action.

The low-paid bakers were called out on strike, demanding 26% increases: Fisher, the man who played such a key role in isolating last year's firemens strike, again sat tight.

Even provincial journalists-few of whom have the industrial strength to halt production of their newspapers-went out in pursuit of their £20 claim. Still no action from Fisher and Co. -who merely called a single 'Day of Action' for January 22.

The New Year brought a flurry of action-from tanker and haulage drivers, and on British Rail. • But the NUPE Executive at its January meeting even voted against making 22 January a national Day of strike Action, and decided not to meet again until February!

Fisher had ail this time talked of nothing more than the token Day of Action coupled to "guerrilla" strikes, to be carried out at half-cock. while the majority of the public sector's 1.4 million manual workers continued working normally.

Despite this inaction, pressure was growing within the ranks of NUPE-branch resolutions were coming in calling for indefinite strike action from January 2z, ai unofficial walk-out by water workers took place in the Manchester area, and decision was taken by London ambulancemen to withdraw even emergency cover on that day.

Fisher's left' credibility was in danger of cracking. His line and that of his fellow public sector bureaucrats was emerging as far to the right of his membership.

The possibility sections of workers breaking from their illusions in Fisher's verbal "militancy" was growing, on the very eve of what threatened to Placards-but no fight against / But then along came Militant, Labour's self-styled "Marxist" paper which has so often come to the rescue of the soiled reputation of Labour Party 'lefts' and TUC fakers.

Seeking opportunist gains among public sector workers, Militant offered Fisher its front page to say what he wanted, without fear of criticism.

Fisher, remembering how on the notorious November 11, 1976 Day of Action against the cuts, Militant had provided him with a similar opportunity to disguise himself as d defender of the social services, gratefully seized the chance.

His article the cuts from NUPE leaders opposes the necessary strategy of all-out strike action:

"The Executive Council of NUPE has called on all its members to support the Day of Action on January 22 and to take part in selected industrial action from that date"

Such selective action makes military scabbing on the strike a virtual certainty, and minimises the chance of victory.

He goes on to avoid any examination of how it is that workers that he claims to represent are noW receiving what he terms "poverty line wages which have plunged our members into a nightmare struggle to keep their heads above water."

Pay sell out

Certainly the existing wage levels in the public sector are low: but a major share of the blame for this must rest on successive sellout pay deals hatched year after year by Fisher and his fellow bureaucrats ever since Fisher's betrayal of PRESS linilidrii the hospital ancillary workers' strike under the Heath government.

Fisher concludes on a "left' note by pointing out that:

•The battle to beat the 5% guidelines and win a £60 minimum wage is part of the general struggle of the whole movement to build a socialist society"

But like the tame cat "Marxists" of the Militant group • themselves, risher refuses to draw out the political reality of the public sector pay fight.

The "whole movement" is not fighting to beat the 5% or to build a socialist society: on the contrary, the entire Callaghan-Healey cabinet-Wedgewood Benn and all-have been fighting might and main to uphold the 5% limit and to prop up crisis-ridden British capitalism at the expense of the working class.

In challenging these limits, public sector workers are in effect challenging the Callaghan leadership-a conflict that Fisher and the TUC have struggled might and main to avoid.

A serious fight to improve the living standards and jobs of public sector workers and to defend the crumbling social services demands a campaign to throw out Labour's reactionary right wing leaders, and for the building of a principled, revolutionary leadership in the workers' movement.

In such a fight the real political positions of the left' talkers could be revealed.

Fisher, like the Militant group and the Labour lefts' refuses to take up any such campaign without which socialist policies the in Party are impossible.

Agency

Nor does he even sketch out a convincing plan of action to win public sector workers' immediate demand of a £60 minimum for a 35 hour week.

His wretched opportunism and that of his unpaid advertising agency, the Militant group, must be rejected by public sector workers.

Instead a leadership prepared to mobilise the full strength of the union in the fight and to link up with other sections of workers on strike or coming into struggle over pay, must be built in NUPE and among the best elements in the PRESS

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NO 17805 PHOTO: Laurence Sparham, IFL

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